Once Upon a Starman

by Allie Marell

  The kitchen table is laid with plates and knives. A pot of something luscious and sticky looking. A tub of yellow matter Andra is currently scraping onto something resembling flaky bread.

  “Sit down and help yourself,” she says around a mouthful. He pulls out a chair, recognising her attempts to sound and carry on as normal in the face of his untimely intrusion into her life. “The croissants are a bit stale, but still good to go.”

  Leaning across the table, she drops three crescent-shaped breakfast breads onto his plate and pushes across a glass jar.

  “Blackberry jam. I made it myself with berries gathered from the hedgerows. Or there’s honey if you prefer.” She sits in her seat, flicking him covert glances. As if she wants to say something but needs to gauge his reaction first.

  There’s a lot on his mind too. Better that they continue to speak frankly.

  “I wish to find this Mrs Chapman, if she still lives. Will you help me do that?” He fires the first shot. Waits for her to respond.

  “Only if you come with me to the hospital.” Andra meets him eye to eye. Hair freshly washed and hanging in sleek waves over her shoulders. Her cheeks pale and devoid of the paint she wore yesterday.

  Makeup. Is that what females call it on this planet?

  As if she caught him looking, she touches a hand to her cheek. “I must look a fright this morning. Didn’t sleep very well.”

  “The pallor becomes you.” He’s a master of flattery, of working undercover to get what he requires. Brain not too sharp this morning though and he obviously said something amiss. Andra grimaces and pinches her cheeks to bring them colour.

  “The pale as a ghost look went out with the Victorians. When we’ve finished up here, I’ll slap on some makeup and we can visit Oliver.”

  “I do not think that’s wise.”

  “Well, tough. If you’re going to steal a sick kid’s Christmas present, you can jolly well go and look him in the eye when he asks if Santa got him a General Jo and I have to lie through my teeth about it.”

  He closes down the unaccustomed stab of guilt before it morphs into a pang of full-blown shame.

  “For now, my need is greater. Fear not, I may yet return it.”

  Andra feeds the remains of her breakfast to the begging dog. Jess wolfs it down in a noisy mouthful. “If you find out who you are?” She takes her plate to the unit designed to wash the dishes.

  “If and when I discover who I am.” His gaze strays to the window and the startling light bouncing from the snow. Beyond the confines of Andra’s dwelling is the bleak high place where he may have landed. A familiar tingle in his gut tells him that something’s off.

  He almost laughs at that. Something’s very off. For an espionage specialist trained to read the smallest of clues, no matter how inconsequential, his gut’s telling him his diversion to this planet is more than a simple case of larceny or bribery involving a bent crew.

  “What?” Andra tilts her head, reading his expression. “Keep talking, Santar.”

  “Safer if you do not know.”

  The ensuing silence fills with the clink and clatter of dishes and spoons. Andra clicks closed the washer unit door and walks around to stand by his chair, squinting to take in what he sees from the window. “A beautiful sight, isn’t it? The stone tower on the ridge is over a hundred years old and the moors roll on for miles up here. Santar, you have to talk to me. Make me understand.”

  “I’ve put you in enough danger as it is.”

  “So what’s a little more?”

  “Andra.” How does he explain the soldier he was? The ruthless operative who coldly factored in collateral damage, then went right in to get the job done?

  “Andra,” he says again. “There was a time when your life would have meant nothing more to me than a means to an end. If my programming had held, you might already be dead.”

  She takes a careful step away, the atmosphere in the room suddenly frigid as the icy snow. “If your programming still worked, you wouldn’t be here.”

  Reaching out, he offers his hand. Knows he’s walking a knife blade of trust. One wrong word and he might well find himself out in that cold. “You speak the truth. With the memory emergence, my moral priorities changed.”

  “And that meant you couldn’t do your job?” She touches her fingers lightly to his. It’s enough.

  “Not in the way they wanted me to. You don’t know them, Andra. You don’t want to know them.”

  “No.” She’s walking a knife blade, too. “But I want to know you. Together, we’ll find out.”

  He drops his hand. Picks up a croissant loaded with sticky black jam. “My mind, my logical senses are still confused by the crash. But we must be on our guard.”

  “You think they’ll be coming for you?”

  “I do not wish to alarm you. I do know the remains of my landing craft are out there somewhere. I need to find it.” Taking a bite of the croissant, he stops himself saying more.

  Andra pats his shoulder lightly. “I knew you were going to say that.” Crossing the kitchen, she tosses him a mischievous look that’s a little forced. “So what’s it like? A flying saucer? A rocket?”

  “Nothing quite so grand.” She’s mocking him again. Dealing with his outlandish pronouncements in her own way. This is what humans do.

  “Tell me, Santar. I want to know. How do you think you got here?” She busies herself wiping down surfaces, sweeping up crumbs with a small-handled broom and a pan.

  He crunches for a moment, consuming the first of the breads with relish. Trauma might dim the appetite in some, but not him. Earth food is good. Anything is good compared to the chemical tasting strike rations issued by military logistics. He loads another with the honey and watches the clear sugary mess ooze across the bread. What does he divulge?

  “Tell me I have your full trust, Andra.” He’s deadly serious now. This is no longer a game.

  “I’m not about to call Central Command on you. You can trust me.”

  “Centrum Command.” He corrects her without thinking. “When I escaped, I paid for a remote stasis pod, programmed to deliver me to my destination intent. I walked out of a presentation ceremony, which is why I’m in full dress uniform and hitched a ride on the first rogue trader I could find.”

  Andra leans her back against a kitchen unit, arms folded. “So you deserted. Paid for someone to get you out of there, and they shafted you and you ended up here? Is that about right?”

  Shafted. To cynically take advantage of. Oh yes, he thinks with murderous rage. They did that.

  “Could be that they never intended to transport me anywhere other than the fires of the great pit, or perhaps the intent reader merely did its job and read what was truly in my mind.”

  A distinct possibility and the longer he spends on this planet, the more he discovers, the more likely he was meant to be here all along.

  By his own intent? Or that of some other being? More questions that need answers.

  “Intent reader?”

  Polishing off the croissant, he reaches for another. Earth isn’t the only planet where they’d laugh in his face for telling this tale. Where he’d have been incarcerated in a facility for the insane, or simply executed by now for spinning stories of dropping from the stars. Andra, with her primitive understanding of space travel and alien species is giving him more consideration than he deserves.

  A very good woman, he realises, who will make someone a fine mate one day when she chooses to join or bond. Why has that not already happened? Is it considered impolite to ask such a question?

  He desists, needing to fill in the blanks of this culture lying in pieces in his mind. Centrum Command troops were required to remain single, mating, bonding and the production of offspring punishable by the highest dictums. Perhaps it is so for some sectors of society on this planet, too.

  He brings his mind back to the conversation.

  “An intent reader takes a psychological and physical profile, matching a migrating
being with the best likely location for its species to thrive. It’s also a way of hiding a destination. Only the reader is supposed to know what is programmed.”

  “So how did you end up here? Weren’t you destined for the planet Zorg or somewhere?”

  He pauses, croissant half way to his lips. “Intent readers have a terrible habit of giving you what you need rather than what you want. I should have programmed it more carefully, but with the urgency to flee, I was lax and obviously allowed it too deep into my subconscious mind.”

  “And you needed to flee because? I still need to understand why you ran.” Andra’s voice drops to a low whisper, as if the walls themselves might have ears and learn his secret if she spoke aloud. Even the dog had crouched to his haunches, watching him with rheumy, anxious eyes.

  “I was no longer Omigati.” How does he translate that? “No longer their deaf and blind slave. Not literally. It’s a term used to denote total unquestioning obedience to the military rule.”

  “Because of the memories?”

  “Because of the emerging memories. I should warn you they may come for me, Andra. I was a valuable agent, an expert in gathering intel. I paid the tech medics to disable my tracking device on the rogue transport. They did not complete the task.”

  Her eyes are glazing over and he can see she’s at saturation point. He raises a hand.

  “But do not concern yourself. Retrieval is expensive and I will already have been replaced.”

  No need to tell her that retrieval of deserters is contracted out to bounty hunters who’d turn in their own kin for a single credit profit.

  Andra bites her lip, and he can almost see her brain churning, trying to work out how much to believe.

  “I have writing to do, Santar.” She tilts her chin at the window. “Feel free to explore. You can pick up the path to the tower from the back gate. I’ll need you back by midday, okay?”

  “You do not fear the intruders will return with the house left empty?”

  His transport is out there. He does not remember the tower, its stones blackened by age. Only awakening to brisk winds bending sparse vegetation on a flat, high plateau sweeping down to a valley below.

  “I’m working on the premise they’re agents for a fanatical collector. But it’s not valuable enough to kill for.”

  “You believe your life truly may be in danger?” He’s half out of the chair, a lifetime of training kicking in. Ready to do battle on her behalf.

  Andra’s expression turns contrite. “Sorry, force of habit. I write crime fiction and thrillers. You’d be surprised how often the killer isn’t the most obvious of the suspects.”

  “No, I would not.” His murmured words are barely audible as he remembers one particular assassin with a face so innocent she fooled even his highly tuned senses. “I must find where I landed. There may yet be some useful salvage left, if the wreckage has not totally disintegrated. I will keep the toy on my person for safety.”

  “You do that. And be back in time, Santar. If you don’t have a watch, I’ll loan you one.”

  Watch. Chronograph.

  “My alpha core tracks the passage of time. Though I suspect the chip is compromised.”

  “Of course it is.”

  She pats his shoulder in a gesture he interprets as solidarity. He’s beginning to like these small, human touches. Andra pauses at the kitchen door, one hand on the frame.

  “Don’t get lost, Santar. After lunch, we’ll hit the charity stores and turn you into a civilian and then we’re going to visit the sick.”

  Chapter 10

  She was almost starting to believe him. Andra’s finger hovered over the open tabs, itching to click them and fall further into Santar’s story. With a determined stab, she closed them down and fired up her next chapter. Her planner lay lonely on the desk, the weekly list she prepared every Sunday evening in an effort to be more organised taunted her.

  Hours wasted searching out a General Jo toy she could actually afford. And now Santar and his need to discover himself and where he came from. A mystery she couldn’t ignore if she wanted to.

  She typed on autopilot, manoeuvring her characters into place, organising a village fete with the obligatory dead body. She liked to have at least two bodies per story to give her grey-haired heroine something to sink her teeth into.

  She needed to lose herself in someone else’s story for a few hours. Santar wasn’t going away. She’d help him, no question about that. But there was only so much her poor human brain could take without having to sit back and chill out for a while.

  She managed a whole hour of determined typing before her thoughts strayed back to Santar and that dark unkempt hair hanging into pale grey eyes. Eyes that still held the hurt and the trauma of that small boy found wandering in some wreckage. Was it a plane crash? A bus or train, and he’d invented this fantastical story to make sense of it all?

  The soft click of the back door closing, followed by the dog’s claws clattering on wooden floorboards cut through her thoughts. Quickly, she reapplied herself to the story, attempting to look busy while one ear listened for footsteps on the stairs.

  The footsteps came right on into the room, the dog wheezing like a bellows. Andra dropped a hand to fondle its old head, feeling the animal quivering with fatigue.

  “I hope you haven’t exhausted my dog,” she said without turning around. “He’s not up for long walks these days.”

  Yet the animal had followed with such grim determination, she hadn’t the heart to stop it.

  “You set him to guard me,” Santar crouched behind her to read the screen. She huddled in his shadow, his chilled skin a counterpoint to the hot breath fanning her cheek. Peeping sideways, she caught a blurry glimpse of the dark hair, the blade of his cheek.

  He’d placed one hand on the desk, making a cage of his body as he scanned the screen and she fought the urge to minimise the document because she never let anyone read her first drafts. And not just because they needed improvement and editing.

  He’s hardly going to steal your story. She let herself relax and enjoy the closeness. Despite his weird ways, she liked this serious-faced man who spun such bizarre tales without batting an eyelid. Maybe he was a writer himself. A Sci-Fi author on a research mission.

  What did they call it? Method acting, when you lived the story for every breathing moment to get right inside its skin.

  “This is your...work?”

  “It’s my new story. Only a rough first draft, but it’s flowing well.”

  Was flowing well. Until you came.

  “I do not wish to interrupt you, but it’s important that you see this.” Santar leaned over, pausing for a microsecond to scan the drop-down menu. He hit save and spun her chair around, a hand on each arm, trapping her in place.

  Panicked, Andra twisted, trying to see if he’d hit the right button. If he’d lost her an hour’s work, she’d throttle him.

  “Rest calm, the document is safe,” he said, his face so close she could pick out the darker greys flecking his eyes. The deep rumble of his voice sent tingles dancing over her skin.

  “It better be.” She tried to check the screen again. “It was a good scene, the murderer was about to strike...”

  “Get your coat and boots. There’s something you need to see.” Excitement burned in his eyes. Or was that anger?

  “The men? They’re back?” His skin smelled of soap, his uniform of a mixture of burning cloth and some kind of oily solvent. Dirtier than it was before, black streaks marred the sleeves, as if he’d been elbow deep in oily mud. One long dark stain streaked over his cheek.

  “No, not those who want the toy. Come.”

  “Where have you been? What happened to your uniform?”

  “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.” He tugged her from the chair, a large hand on her back steering her to the hall. “Better that I show you. Which coat do you favour for walking the plateau?”

  “You want to take me out on the moors?” He was e
yeing the variety of jackets crowding the bentwood coat stand in the hall. None of which were her go to jacket for walking the moors.

  “My boots and padded jacket are in the boot room at the back of the kitchen. But Santar, I planned to be at the hospital for two o’clock. Planned for us to be there,” she corrected.

  “And we will be.” He put his hands on her shoulders, tilting his chin to his chest to catch her eye. “I need you to believe my story. And time is slipping away. The pod will soon become an indefinable heap. I need you to see it now.”

  “The pod?” She almost ran after him to the boot room where he handed her a pair of furred, waterproof boots. She sat on a bench to pull them on and saw him waiting with her padded jacket, holding it open for her.

  She found a wool hat in one pocket, a pair of gloves from the other.

  “There are a variety of gloves and scarves in that box,” she said pointing to the box of miscellaneous all weather gear she kept for visitors. “See if you can find anything your size.”

  He looked cold, but he’d never admit it.

  “I require no extra covering, let’s go.”

  On impulse, she touched his hand, sliding her palm against his. “Santar, your hands are like ice. Wait up.”

  She found a pair of stretch woollen gloves that should fit his fused fingers and a long scarf. “Here,” she said offering the gloves.

  “Refusing will only waste time,” he muttered and flexed his fingers around the wool.

  When she tried to loop the scarf around his neck, he stepped sharply away, a hand moving to protect his throat. Andra narrowed her eyes.

  “I’m not about to throttle you. Not yet, anyway. I just don’t want you expiring on me from a chill.” Offering the scarf, she nodded. Almost contritely, Santar lowered his head for her to fix it in place. His eyes remained wary as she tied a loose knot at his throat and pronounced him ready.

  He touched the scarf once, then opened the back door and stood back for her to exit. A proper gentleman, well trained in etiquette. When the dog tried to follow, Andra ordered him back into the house.