Once Upon a Starman

by Allie Marell

  The whole bizarre scenario felt like some nightmare she couldn’t wake up from. The trio were in her kitchen when she crept downstairs to surprise Santar with coffee and breakfast when he finally used up all the hot water and climbed out of the shower.

  After their night of sweaty love-making, tender love-making and everything in between. A night that felt too much like goodbye, they both deserved a full English fry-up. As she moved down the stairs, she sniffed coffee and thought Santar had beaten her to it and loaded the machine.

  With her head full of silly dreams, she floated into the kitchen humming all I want for Christmas, hips wiggling in time to the music, and saw them.

  The old man seated on a kitchen chair, one withered hand clutching a wolf-head walking stick. General Jo on the table in front of him.

  No time to turn and run. One of the guys grabbed her arm, marched her to the sitting room and thrust her onto the sofa. She remembered hearing the old man issuing a curt order to move the Rolls Royce. Get it out of sight.

  A Roller? The intergalactic police had come calling in a Rolls Royce?

  And if the moment needed to get more bizarre, the two lackeys entered the sitting room, carrying the old man between them. He settled into the wing-back chair and issued an order for coffee to be served.

  “I’ve always had a weakness for this brew.” The old man lifted the scalding liquid to his lips with shaking hands, spilling a few drops onto his immaculate grey suit. No sign the hot coffee burned him, he drank it straight down and held out the mug for more.

  And then they waited in a tense, awkward silence, the old man ignoring all her questions, her threats and pleas, as if she was nothing but a bothersome fly buzzing in his ear.

  Santar was their prize. She, only the means to capturing him.

  And she’d felt shame for only half-believing Santar’s story. This wasn’t the regular army coming after a deserter from the ranks. This was way more sinister.

  And now she and Santar sat side by side, waiting for the big reveal before the old man decided their fate.

  “Santar, listen to him.” She found a voice in the face of a cold gun barrel poking into her cheek. Said a small prayer and thought of Oliver, waiting in the hospital on Christmas Day for her, for Santar. She had to be there and to do that, she had to live.

  They both had to.

  “Listen to this creature’s lies? He’s a Harvester, Andra. A procurer of younglings to brainwash and turn into expendable drones for The Grand Order’s military wing. I should know. I was one. You think he’ll utter one word of truth?”

  The old man considered the insult, nodding to himself as if in agreement. “I do admit, this decision has not come easy to me. After my recent visit to your mother, I still did not know which way to bend. I did truly love her, William.”

  “But you loved the Order more?”

  The old man sighed. “With the misplaced folly of youth, yes perhaps I did. Would I do the same again?” He waved a hand. “Who knows?”

  “I’ll kill you before they take me back.”

  Andra gulped in a lungful of air at Santar’s chilling words. Coloured lights from the tree played over his face, casting devilish highlights and shadows. She almost didn’t recognise the murderous expression from the man she’d come to know.

  “You may try. I’m not as frail as I look, son. But I am a male of advancing years and call me a sentimental old fool, but here, on this planet, ’tis the season of giving. So naturally I come bearing a gift.”

  Santar snorted, his eyes never leaving the old man. In this war of nerves, he’d have a good chance of winning. But she? She only killed people in her books. He killed them in real life.

  “Speak then. I can kill you later.”

  The old man nodded at his cup, sending the lackey standing at his back to replenish the brew. “Guard the front door,” he said to the henchman holding her hostage. The henchman’s expression turned questioning.

  “But sir...”

  “Go.” The old man said in a voice that had the guard loosening his hold and striding from the room, slamming the door behind him. Andra tensed at the noise. Forced herself to breathe. She had a crack commando sitting at her side. Santar wouldn’t let anything happen to her.

  “So now it’s just me and you.” The old man spoke directly to Santar, ignoring her completely. She chose not to be insulted. The less those rheumy eyes turned on her, the better.

  By sending away his bodyguards, the old man had made himself deliberately vulnerable. That must count for something.

  “Just me and you,” Santar agreed in a voice of deceptive calm. The old man lifted an arm with an almost audible creak of bones, grasping General Jo in one palm.

  “Do you remember how desperately you wanted this, William?”

  Santar’s eyes dropped to the toy. No masking his longing, or the memories behind the feeling. Andra almost wanted to weep at the cruelty in the old man’s tone. Or was that sympathy? Regret? She shook with the effort of sitting still.

  When no answer was forthcoming, the old man continued. “Your mother was a manual labourer on Meran 9, a small moon on the outer reaches. Content with her allotted life until she crossed paths with a fugitive absconder. A soldier deep in the throes of memory resurgence.”

  “My father was an operative?” Santar’s fingers gripped hers so tight, it hurt. “You lie.”

  “Some days I wish I did.” The old man’s mouth stretched in a grim smile showing off a set of blindingly expensive looking teeth. He spent a long moment studying the tree lights cycling through their flashing patterns, his lungs rattling as he caught his breath. “I came to this planet in the year they called 1865. Saw the opportunities, so I stayed. I harvested your father just before the Christmas of 1932 at much the same age that I took you. He was an exceptional specimen, heading for the highest of commands when the madness hit.”

  “But it’s not madness. Is it, Harvester?”

  “Call it what you will, William. Superior intelligence, perhaps? The irony is that the finer the recruit’s mind, the more those little seeds of latent memory take hold. The more they need to question and analyse and discover things they should not know.”

  “Nothing shall disrupt the Order. No past, no future. There is only the now.” The words were robotic, said in a monotone as if Santar was reading from a manual. The old man nodded his agreement.

  “Amen, as they say on this world.”

  “So my father ran...”

  “Your father was a traitor.”

  “Once, I would have believed that.”

  Andra could only imagine the effort it took to remain so calm. Let Santar crush her fingers if it helped. His chest rose and fell as he waited for the rest of the story.

  “You were the product of their ill-advised liaison and of course, your existence was of great interest to the Order. Though the begetting of young was forbidden in the military, the deed was done. And they rightly believed that any spawn of Commander SA BN5 would be worth reprogramming. Your retrieval attracted a worthy bounty.”

  “But she escaped? His mother got away.” Andra refused to be sidelined from this story. “So what happened to him?” The old man continued to ignore her, directing his words at Santar.

  “Your mother and father took you and fled, leading the Hunters in a merry dance across the sector before they found themselves backed up against impenetrable walls. In brief, you and your mother’s escape came at the cost of your father’s foolish sacrifice.”

  “Some might call it noble.”

  Santar loosened the hold on her crushed fingers, rubbing them back to life with his thumb. Andra searched his face for a reaction, a sliver of emotion. Nothing. The poor guy looked as stunned as she was. Or maybe he was simply a master at hiding his feelings.

  “They tracked your mother here.”

  “And that’s where you, the Harvester, came in.”

  “Not my usual remit. I preferred the clean harvests. Runaways tended to get a little
messy. But Norana captured my full attention from the start. I engineered the meeting and marriage with your stepfather as a cover and then offered her a mutually beneficial deal.”

  Santar’s fingers curled into fists on the arm of the sofa. No one wanted to hear about their mother sleeping with the enemy. Keep calm, Andra willed him. Hearing this story might at least silence some of his ghosts, if not all.

  Outside, the prowling henchman’s shadow fell across the window. A car engine grumbled and toiled through the snow in the lane. Her neighbours had no idea of the drama unfolding behind the cheery Christmas tree lights.

  “The Order had no interest in Norana. But as long as she had you, she was a target. I simply removed that danger and saved her life. And in doing so, broke her heart.”

  A flash of remembrance softened the old man’s face. So brief she almost missed it. Santar hadn’t. He leaned forward, tense and ready to strike. Andra jerked, prepared to jump on him if necessary. He looked ready to kill.

  “And yet she still sees you?” The old man creeped her out, but the guy sure knew how to keep an audience hanging onto his every word. “You said you visited her recently.”

  The old man turned to face her so slowly, her mouth went dry. She pressed her knees together to stop them shaking. Just a decrepit pensioner, but with a look that could kill.

  Santar immediately circled her protectively with one arm, drawing her close. At one time, she might have been insulted at the implication she needed taking care of. Now she was glad of his strong arm, the very fact that he was on her side.

  “I can’t decide if your female is very brave or very foolish to goad me. Young lady, who do you imagine pays for the best room in Norana’s elite care home?”

  Okay, this was a lot more complicated than some scary pensioner from outer space.

  “After you were taken, I had no more use for your stepfather. He was a hard man to kill.”

  He’s provoking Santar deliberately, Andra thought with growing horror. Though the old man had become so immersed in his own story, he hardly noticed the storm about to break. He continued pushing in the knife, giving it a twist.

  “And after he died in the explosion, I had Norana all to myself.”

  “You son of an Ekalean whore.”

  All hell broke loose. Andra uttered a small cry as Santar flung himself on the old man, hands circling the wrinkled neck. She jumped up after him, knocking the half-full coffee mug from the table. It went down with a crack, spilling dark coffee on her prized oriental rug. She couldn’t bring herself to care.

  Throwing herself on Santar, she tried to pull him off. The door burst open a few seconds later, the henchman barging in brandishing his gun. His eyes skipped from Santar to the old man, unsure of who he’d hit if he let off a shot.

  “Don’t shoot. He didn’t mean it.” She tugged on Santar’s arm, pleading on a broken sob. “Let him finish the story, Santar. You’ll get no peace unless you let him finish.”

  The old man still hadn’t mentioned General Jo. The toy, all this fuss to possess it, had to be significant.

  “William.” The old man grated out the words around Santar’s enclosing fists. “Stand down, soldier. If I die, the female dies too.”

  “You will not touch her.”

  “You’re fast, William. But not faster than a speeding bullet.” The man had turned from grey to a sickly green, like someone about to throw up. Or more like an expiring alien from outer space. Gradually, Santar’s hold slackened, the murderous expression replaced by the chilling calm.

  He wasn’t as human as he thought. Not if the strange man’s story held any truth. And neither was Mrs Norana Chapman.

  After a few noisy breaths, the old man recovered his composure. He took a moment to rearrange his cravat and Andra thought she saw the ring flash once on his finger. But with conspiracy theories screaming in her head that might well have been the reflection from the Christmas tree lights.

  “You’re wondering about the toy? Where General Jo fits into all this?”

  The figure lay on the floor where it landed in the life and death tussle. Limbs twisted but not broken, thank God. Andra still held hopes it would be on little Oliver’s bed come Christmas morning. She ached to pick it up, to assert ownership of what was hers by rights.

  This time it was Santar warning her back with a tiny shake of his head.

  “The toy brought me home, old man.” Santar almost sounded weary now, as if this revelation took things full circle.

  “It was always going to be a beacon, yes. At first, I sought to track down and destroy all the potential memory triggers connecting you to this world.” The old man leaned heavily on his stick.

  “But your mother begged me so many times to find you and bring you back. In the early days, I could not, of course, thwart the will of The Order. So I waited for the right moment.”

  “You knew I’d turn.”

  “I’ve followed your rise through the ranks with keen interest all these years. Knew you were your father’s son, of great value, but just as expendable to The Order. I waited and I watched, and when you ran, I saved you for her.”

  “It was you who had them reprogram the intent reader. You who stopped them disabling my tracker and interfering with the pod.”

  “Is that why you offered to buy General Jo? You wanted it as a lure?” It was a lot for Andra to take in, too. But wheels were turning, puzzle pieces clicking into place. The strangest of stories was actually starting to make sense.

  The second henchman slid around the door, pistol in hand. He shot his partner an enquiring frown. The second shrugged his shoulders as if completely bored by the exchange. How many confrontations like this had they witnessed, working for this covert operation headed by old Father Time?

  She had to bite back the laughter at the comparison. Hysteria would only get her killed.

  “I was perhaps hasty in destroying all the others.” The old man shook his head. “When I needed another, they were scarce. And your female beat me to this one.”

  To her surprise, the old man nodded at her, acknowledging her victory.

  “The toy wasn’t a lure. It was a trigger.” Santar butted in. “You knew what it would do to me the moment I saw it.”

  “It was to be planted where you would find it. The internet searches of your original disappearance all planned for you to discover. I knew you had landed, but when we tracked the pod, you were no longer there. I had my men negotiate with Ms Andromeda, but it seems they lacked the appropriate charm. But they did return with some interesting intelligence regarding her visitor. It seems the toy was more of a beacon than I realised. It had already found you.”

  The old man lifted a hand, waving over the henchmen. Snapping to attention, they crossed the room and one on either side, heaved him bodily from the chair. General Jo lay where he fell on the rug.

  “And that’s it?” Santar took advantage of the move to stand, covering her with his big body. “So what now, Harvester?”

  “Now, William, it is up to you. My work here is done.”

  “You’re leaving?”

  The man gave no indication he’d heard until he reached the sitting room door and despatched one of the henchmen to bring the Rolls Royce to the front of the cottage.

  “You won’t see me again. The pod and all evidence of your arrival will be destroyed. Your tracking device will cease to work in the next few days and your bio implants will degrade and be eliminated from your body.” He didn’t turn around. “Tell your mother I found her that gift she always wished for.”

  “You mean me?”

  Andra sat very still, ready and willing to offer comfort. Almost too afraid to touch the man trembling to hold back an emotional tsunami.

  “Yes, William. You.”

  Chapter 19

  He must find the dog. The only coherent thought in Santar’s head is that he must find the dog before Andra. If the beast tried to defend the property, it would have been given no mercy. He doesn’t want h
er stumbling over its blooded remains.

  “Santar. Are you okay?” Andra takes a cautious step, one arm lifted to him. He should go to her, hold her and tell her that if the Harvester spoke the truth, the threat has passed. But he’s still on alert, shaking with the need to hit something while roaring out his anger for stolen lives.

  “Why wouldn’t I be?” Immediately, he wants to claw back the harshly spoken words. He’s far from okay. Still doesn’t know who he really is.

  “Because you’ve just been hit with the mental equivalent of a ten ton truck. You have every right to be angry, confused.” She takes another step.

  “Don’t come near me,” he warns her. “I’m not in control.”

  “And I’m not afraid of you.” She’s close enough for him to reach out and touch. He steps away. She mirrors him, blocking his escape from the room. “Santar. Let me...”

  Holding out her arms, she offers comfort. He blinks and the anger leaves him in a rush. Then he’s in her arms, breathing in the scent of her hair, holding and being held.

  “Do you still want to see her?”

  “I don’t know. That creature is a manipulator. How can I believe a word of his lies?”

  “Only one way to find out.” She’s rubbing circles on his back, bringing him down. “Did the care home medical files mention anything about Dementia? Mental impairment?”

  He lifts his head. “You’re saying she may believe I’m her lost son, even if I’m not? The files say she’s prone to fantasies of other worlds beyond Earth. Obsesses over the son who was lost to her, but she believes will return. In all other respects, she’s perfectly sane.”

  “It could be her.” Andra tips her head, eyes full of a kindness he never thought to experience. “Are you brave enough to find out?”

  He strokes her hair, finding peace in the rhythmic movement, the feel of the soft strands under his palm. “I thought myself brave. Would face the fiercest of adversaries without flinching...”

  “You’ll survive. If it’s not her, you’ll survive. I’ll make sure of it.”