Tethered Worlds: Unwelcome Star

by Gregory Faccone

  "We have a counter-protest approaching from nine o'clock," she transmitted into his ear.

  He saw how the street at nine o'clock intersected the middle of the square's long axis. Even a small group funneled by that street could wedge and bisect the crowd. It was a move with military significance even in the world of peaceful protests.

  Those causing trouble at these rallies usually fell into three categories. First, the small vocal minority of social liberals. The second was ubiquitous on any civilized planet, long-adolescents with young skulls full of mush seeking anything to rebel against. The third category posed the most immediate danger—Legion troublemakers in the guise of locals.

  In the middle of the square, people noticed the approaching rabble-rousers.

  "Let's stand together in unity," Kord said to reassure. "Nonviolent. We hold our ground because we want new representation, not a revolution."

  "I don't like the look of them," Vittora said.

  She wouldn't pull an espy off sniper watch as long as he remained on the rostrum. Her ability to sense trouble, though, was a sure enough bet.

  The counter-protest made a lot of noise entering the square. The speakers were hacked, and their emergency recall initiated. The counter-protesters lit VAD signs. The crowd in the square turned and lit their own VAD signs. Two groups of people with glowing placards above their heads came together. A ruckus broke out as those in the square refused to be split.

  "You're right," Kord transmitted privately, "some of them are maneuvering."

  Switching back to the speech frequency, he was about to suggest yielding the square and dispersing, but all he heard was squeal and digital static. The frequency had been overridden. A dense cloud of irritating smoke erupted in the center of the crowd causing pushing, coughing, and finally panic washing outward in waves. Where the counter-protesters entered, pandemonium broke loose.

  People rushed to leave the square through every avenue. Withdrawal was best to avoid trouble. Kord leaped off the rostrum shouting for the crew to pull out and the militia to regulate an orderly exit. Panic was spreading dangerously. "We've got to remove fuel from this fire."

  The snipe screens folded. The militia picked them up as he and the crew moved behind the rostrum toward the vehicles. But the crowd overtook them like a chaotic wave. Kord lost sight of the militia and grabbed Vittora's hand. The tumult enclosed them. Highearn tried to keep them heading in the direction of the lightwheels.

  Though no longer under the protection of the snipe screens, no one could get a clear shot on them through the jostling, smoke-covered crowd. Vittora's AI was still monitoring espies, concern for her husband's safety unfailing.

  "Don't worry," Kord said, straining to be heard over the din, "it's too volatile now for something as overt as sniping."

  The only visible remnants of their militia escorts were two toppers about 10 meters ahead. Both halted, allowing Kord and Vittora to catch up. A line of surly individuals stood between them and the lightwheels.

  "Does an old-fashioned mugging count as overt?" Vittora link-said.

  "Bracers on." He was taking no chances.

  The expanded right sleeves of their jackets retracted. With a quick low thrum, the clamshell devices on their forearms came to life. An invisible layer of cold plasma surrounded them.

  A second later, the chaos from behind caught up in earnest while the surly individuals closed. The next thing Kord saw was a fist flying out of the crowd toward his head. He half dodged it and saw sparks as his hair went on end.

  "Your nearest opponent is wearing shocker clothing," Highearn said. "Your bracer and clothes will afford partial protection."

  He exchanged a series of lightning fast blows. None landed solidly, when suddenly his opponent's feet were swept. Kord delivered a powerful blow to the man's jaw before he even hit the ground. One surly individual was out of the fight. Vittora stood from her sweep, back leaning against his. He didn't know a couple who practiced team hand-to-hand more than they, with the possible exception of married dojo masters.

  Moving as one, opponents quickly found her flashing kicks and his crushing punches more than a match. Kord winced as his poorly healed right shoulder strained. Vittora made extra efforts to guard the damaged side of her face. They circled and stepped together. Sometimes they even rolled over each other, although those kinds of cineVAD maneuvers were too fancy for street brawling.

  "Infrared, Highearn," Kord requested, breathing heavily.

  Multifunction rets were unpopular, and widely considered uncomfortable. His showed a half dozen nearby opponents without heat signatures. They fought in pairs, and were the largest individuals.

  "These aren't thugs."

  The bruisers were all solid men whose sharp eyes hardly wavered from their goal while clearing out protesters and militia. Their focus was singular. A subtle formation was closing around the couple.

  "Yes," Vittora transmitted. "A little too disciplined for long-adolescence troublemakers."

  "Keep an eye on them, Highearn. If any go to gun, I want to know before it happens."

  Asterfraeo cultures differed greatly from those within the Hex. Beyond Perigeum borders, many people carried defense weapons habitually. Sojourner roots gave Adams Rush a traditional distrust of government. Since an armed populace was harder to control, the percentage armed on Adams Rush was great. No one drew down unless it was absolutely necessary. Someone's life needed to be in imminent and obvious danger. The local colloquialism, "if you draw down, prepare to be cut down," was generally true. Although exaggerated, this frontier concept did keep the Adams Rush crime rate low.

  The Legion learned that brandishing rifles or even pistols was counterproductive. A bloody incident early on that moved a district firmly against anything egress was a hard teacher. The entire Starmada task force couldn't produce enough legionnaires to intimidate Adams Rush with small arms like a Hex world population.

  If someone drew in this riot, they would have a dozen weapons pointing back at them. If someone shot, they would be cut down in a second. It meant the Legion had to be sneaky. They could not make Kord Wilkrest a martyr, but if a key leader in the new government movement happened to be incapacitated by fellow citizens, that news would erode support.

  Two more bruisers approached. Kord and Vittora were already engaged with undercover Legionnaires. It was about to become four against two. Kord, not fully recovered, was beginning to tire. Vittora, more skilled than any of her opponents, had to work twice as hard to incapacitate each lummox. She was skirting a dangerous edge. In her current shape, she couldn't afford a facial hit.

  A topper-clad man detached from the crowd and leaped upon one of the new assailants. It was the militia leader from earlier. The two rolled on the ground in a furious tussle.

  "Get to the lightwheel!" he yelled. They disappeared into the crowd.

  The three remaining assailants regrouped and attacked with a close quarters combat formation right out of Legion boot camp. Shocker sparks flew at every contact. Everyone's clothes were configured for hand-to-hand. Gloves unfolded, treaders set, and hardened collars sprouted to protect necks. Kord landed a flurry of blows against his primary opponent's ribs. Each was nullified by expanding ripples distributing the force across armored clothing.

  The Legionnaire grinned. "Problem, Wilkrest?"

  They knew who he was.

  Kord spotted an incoming kick from another attacker and tried to roll as it hammered his wounded shoulder. He somersaulted. The pain blurred his vision. Highearn tried to blunt it with micros. It reduced to just excruciating when he came out staggering to wobbly feet, somewhat disoriented and vulnerable. The kicker raced to finish him.

  A growling sound, like an old-world big cat, cut across the din. A vengeful angel arced through the air. The kicker turned, shocked. Vittora's soaring body impacted full force into his face. She held onto his head with both arms, slamming it into the ground with tremendous energy. Hardened bones did not easily break, but sheer concuss
ion took one legionnaire out of the fight.

  Vittora rolled with the momentum, trying to regain footing. A legionnaire put a shoulder into her causing a dead stop. Breath left her lungs, and she blinked as if trying to clear her vision. A fist streaked into her damaged face. A horrid crunch emitted from the impact, and her senses, barely held together with micros, shut down. Her knees buckled, but before collapse rough hands held her upright. Another fist came out of the tumult, hitting her in the stomach. No wind remained to be knocked out, and her consciousness dimmed.

  Just a couple of meters away, Kord dodged and weaved with an opponent, trying to regain equilibrium. His opponent continually blocked attempts to reach his wife. No militia was in sight.

  "Nooo!" Kord yelled as he saw her struck again.

  The intense desire to draw down on these bullies was only mitigated by the stronger desire to not get him or his wife shot. If he drew, everyone would draw, and this would become a bloodbath. His face and limbs flushed with sudden heat. A strength grew within him along with an oddly objective awareness. With a shout of frustration and no regard for his body, he plowed straight into his opponent. Kord thrust him into the legionnaire holding Vittora. Everyone went down in a heap.

  She stayed down, rolling groggily. Kord landed on top of his opponent and pounded his face with a trio of incapacitating blows before he was tackled from the side. The crowd closed around him as his face grew hotter. Part of his mind wondered what happened to the pain in his shoulder. Something in his jacket pocket burned against his chest. Legionnaires grabbed him from either side, yet they bucked wildly. It almost felt to Kord like he was objectively observing his body shake grown men as if they were children. But they retained their grasp, and more approached.

  The mean-faced one who had sloughed off blows with a taunt stomped Vittora in the back before approaching. The uncanny strength Kord displayed kept him a moving target even with bruisers hanging on his arms. The taunting legionnaire managed to find his stomach with a vicious body blow.

  "Highearn." Kord paused for one last reluctant second. "Activate the stun floater."

  He was carrying a number of nonlethal gadgets. Kord loved his "scientum toys," as Aristahl would say, though at the moment that side of him felt far removed. His consciousness focused on the single mystic device he was carrying. The old espy-sized object was growing hotter by the second.

  A stun floater hovered on fans above its user. Celebrities and police used them to encourage people to keep their distance. Someone getting too close received the prick of a painful mini arc, but that was the extent of what the little devices could do. To someone wearing a bracer, a stun floater was a non-factor. A bracer designed to intercept seeker drones would zap a stun floater to molecules without breaking a sweat. Even a person whose bracer wasn't programmed so aggressively had no need for concern. A stun floater's arc couldn't penetrate bracer plasma.

  Kord found it hard to focus. His face felt like it was going to melt, and his mind split in three directions. A man sneering before him, causing a distant tightness in his stomach with punches. A bright spot in space centered near his chest, into which his mind was being drawn. And frustratingly out of reach, Vittora trying to prop herself up on elbows. The left side of her face was re-damaged and bleeding. She beheld him with an expression of concern, and dread.

  Time slowed as Kord took everything in. He heard Vittora's synthesized voice distantly in his link. Was it transmitted in shout mode?

  "KORD! STOP!" He could barely hear her. "DON'T DO IT!"

  Kord thought that a strange request. He needed to save her. They needed to get away. They needed to hold on until—until what? It was so hard to focus. Something leaped about next to his chest. He saw it through the bright spot in his mind.

  Its freecells were wrong somehow. Neutered. Why? They could hold a hundred times more energy. A thousand! Why was he thinking that? He was a scientum guy. He didn't do mystic. He had to protect Aristahl, had to protect his family and lineage. Kord's vision jostled again as he took a hit to the face. It was as if someone else was being hurt. Vittora shook her head pleadingly. From somewhere far away he could hear her imploring, "NO!" Then a goon fell atop her in slow motion, sticking his knee in her back and twisting her arm.

  Anger burned within Kord, righteous indignation that he poured into the gleaming spot. So much space abounded in the stun floater's freecells. He pushed their confines in all directions.

  "Take... take it out, Highearn."

  The AI had gone quiet, but it followed orders diligently as usual. Highearn undulated the pocket, bringing the stun floater to the top. When a path cleared during the struggle, the AI engaged the fans. As it rose out of Kord's jacket, the mean-faced legionnaire was concerned for only a second.

  "A stun floater?" he mocked. "You really are desperate."

  The smiling legionnaire raised his bracer. The instant the stun floater left Kord's cold plasma protection, it would be arced to ash. A dazzling flash burst between the two men, and the legionnaire staggered backwards. He gaped at his bracer.

  "What the drak?"

  Kord knew the Legionnaire's bracer was now totally inert. Every erg of current that was in it had just been arced to the stun floater. The part of him still seeing through physical eyes noted the return of an infrared signature around the dumbfounded thug.

  His mind was attached to the stun floater, and it moved wherever he wished. It passed over the two goons on his arms, and their bracers also mega-arced the now red-hot device. The surprise discharge staggered each back with the same dumbfounded expression. Without the grip on his arms, Kord fell to his knees.

  "Highearn, keep a solution on every Legionnaire who arcs it."

  "The device isn't designed to discharge simultaneous targets."

  "Can't you feel its new capacity?" Kord's words slurred. Eyes bulging and face burning red, sweat poured down his scalp. "Jus' keep it informed," he heard himself say from a distance. Even on his knees he swayed, nearly falling over. Everyone around him continued to slow.

  He sent the device past the legionnaire on Vittora's back, and he staggered off at the unexpectedly powerful arc. The floater was glowing almost too brilliant to observe. Kord let out an unconscious spurt of laughter. He could hear his wife calling from somewhere, telling him to come back. Where had he gone? She had to know he was doing something important.

  The stun floater whirled around in a quick circle. Each succeeding mega-arc made it glow with greater intensity until it was a blazing white sun, causing all nearby to avert their eyes. A growing heat vortex swirled around it. Fighting stopped as the bright light penetrated eyelids.

  The device, which was no longer a stun floater, moved above the crowd. "Looking" down through it, Kord saw twelve targets and laughed. He also saw his wife crawling toward someone kneeling on the ground. The mocking legionnaire moved toward her. When the kneeling person screamed, Kord released all the bound up current.

  Solia sat at the controls of the lightwheel. She tapped the dash in frustration. She'd received a frantic call from the militia leader. Get to the Wilkrests. Legionnaires in civvies were targeting them. She was in contact with Highearn, but the crazy melee prevented the vehicle from getting closer.

  A radiant light cast long shadows from off to the right near Highearn's position. Its glare grew so bright the lightwheel's canopy darkened automatically to compensate. Whatever it was, the fighting was breaking up around it. She eased the vehicle closer, steering around a couple with anti-egress VAD placards still above their heads. The man had a bloody nose but didn't notice as he led the woman away from the painful radiance. The canopy continued to darken as the strange yellow light burned white. The intensity outside must be tremendous, and she wondered what could be causing it.

  As more people dispersed, she saw Kord kneeling on the ground. Vittora was hurt, pulling herself toward Kord while other men closed. Solia needed to get there, but a man moved into her path. She tried to maneuver around him, but he was int
ent on blocking her way. He stared through the canopy with an expression of confidence. Too much confidence.

  Solia was tempted to run him over but knew that would just escalate the situation. Where one legionnaire was present, it was almost certain more were near. Indeed, peering past him, she saw the men surrounding the Wilkrests resembled her blocker. He probably couldn't even turn his head due to the blinding blaze. All were shielding their eyes except Kord, who knelt strangely swaying among a vortex of dust and debris. Then he yelled, mouth wide.

  A nova flash caused the lightwheel canopy to flicker. An instant later, Solia leaped in her seat as the loudest thunderclap she ever heard penetrated the lightwheel's insulation. Where the white sun had been was now the nexus of a dozen arcing lightning bolts, each connected to surrounding goons. The overconfident expression on her blocker turned to shock before a bolt rag dolled him over the lightwheel with a gruesome clunk.

  Next to the Wilkrests, big men were propelled backwards in airborne trajectories radiating outward like spokes.

  "God of my mystic mother."

  Then the light was gone, and so were the legionnaires. For all she knew, they had achieved orbit. Moving forward, she reached Kord. He had fallen over, seemingly lifeless. Vittora was struggling to pick him up, her bearing radiating desperate concern. Solia bounded out and slipped her arm under his other shoulder. The women exchanged a look of incomprehension. Vittora's face was smashed. Whatever fate befell those thugs was earned.

  "Is he, will he be?" Solia asked.

  "I... don't know," came Vittora's synthesized voice.

  Solia surveyed the emptying square. She didn't know who was the victor, although today the Legion was certainly the loser. But, at what cost?

  Jordahk had not expected the maintenance bot to explode. Should he have? How does one expect the unexpected? He schooled his shocked facial expression and glanced at Aristahl, who didn't look surprised at all. Typical.