The Star Collector

by Matthew William

“I’m not waiting,” Alistair said.

  “He’s not waiting, Joe,” Deniz added.

  “You won’t be waiting,” Joe said. “I’ll just be prepping. Please sit.”

  He guided them over to a table and went back to his deputy who sat wide eyed in the booth. She sprung up on the edge of her seat as he approached.

  “Holy moly, that’s Alistair Mezza.”

  “Yeah, no duh,” Joe said. “Let’s get out of here.”

  “But... he’s on the Quadrant’s most wanted list.”

  “That’s more of a recommendation than an actual to-do list,” Joe said.

  Tammy checked her phone. “He’s wanted for murder in this sector too.”

  “I know,” Joe said.

  “We should make the arrest.”

  “Like hell we are. We’re sneaking out.”

  “No we’re not,” Tammy said.

  “Suit yourself,” Joe said. He left her in the booth and was about to slip out the side door when the waitress came by with the check.

  “Not planning on dining and dashing are we?” the waitress asked.

  “I’d never dream of it,” Joe said with a smile.

  She led him to the register, his stomach in knots. Suddenly, Joe realized that the path he was taking made it look exactly like he was trying to sneak up behind Mr. Alistair Mezza.

  From the corner of his eye he saw the hitman stand and come to cut him off at the pass, his hand on the vary blaster Joe had just said was worthless. Alistair wasn’t planning on going quietly. Which was a shame, because Joe was.

  “Cash or card?” the waitress asked.

  With a shaking hand Joe took a debit card from his wallet and handed it over. He turned to see Alistair standing only a couple meters away, blocking the front entrance.

  Everybody in the diner went silent and turned to watch the scene unfold.

  “Were you planning on calling for backup or sneaking up on me?” Alistair asked.

  “Neither?” said Joe. “I was planning on paying, then coming to talk to you.”

  “Don’t lie to me, man,” Alistair said, flipping the safety off the blaster. “Don’t disrespect me like that.”

  Deniz McGee approached his friend with his hands raised. “Now I think this has all been just a very big misunderstanding.”

  Joe noticed his deputy was frozen back in the booth. So much for backup.

  “No, Deniz, this guy was sneaking up on me,” Alistair muttered, shaking his head. “And now he’s disrespecting me in front of all these people by lying to my face. The Great Specter as my witness, no one gets away with that.”

  “How about I pay for your meal?” Joe suggested, he turned to the waitress. “Put his on my tab too.”

  “There’s a problem,” the waitress said.

  “What’s that?”

  “Your card’s been declined.”

  The sweat gathered on Joe’s burning forehead. “Oh, wrong card,” he said with a smile, taking another card from his wallet. “Try this one.”

  Alistair took the blaster from his belt.

  The waitress shrieked.

  Joe was paralyzed.

  Deniz stood between them, pale faced and shocked that it had all come to this.

  Alistair held the blaster firm at his side with his finger on the trigger.

  “Aren’t you going to do something?” the waitress whimpered to Joe.

  “Just run the card,” he said, looking back to Alistair. “Nobody can say no to a free lunch, right?”

  “A free lunch won’t get you out of this,” Alistair replied.

  The seconds passed like hours. Joe couldn't foresee any way out that didn’t result with him in a body bag.

  “Umm, sir,” the waitress said. “This one’s been declined too.”

  Joe peered into his wallet for anything else that might be considered legal tender. He knew he had kept a postage stamp in there at one point in time.

  The crowded diner sat in silence.

  The waitress handed Joe his credit card. “Looks like you’re going to have to do some dishes, Mr. Corbit.”

  Alistair began to laugh. It started as a scoff, evolved into a chuckle, then a full-blown cackle.

  Joe turned to the man with a wince, unsure as to whether or not this was some sort of pre-murder ritual.

  “Looks like you’re in more trouble alive than dead!” Alistair exclaimed.

  An uneasy laughter spread through the diner.

  “Here, Joe, wash this for me while you’re at it,” a nearby trucker shouted, tossing a coffee spoon at Joe’s feet.

  The diner erupted into laughter. Joe nodded and smiled. His face went from sweaty, to burning with embarrassment in an instant. He wondered if his word would still be taken as gospel after all this.

  “Here, let me get the bill for you,” Deniz said, approaching the register.

  “No,” Alistair said, grabbing him by the arm. “He has this coming. Make those dishes shine, my friend.”

  The hitman turned and walked out the front door.

  Deniz looked with a pained expression to Joe. “I’ll be in touch.”

  “You owe me,” Joe said.

  “Of course,” Deniz answered as he sauntered towards the door. “Call me sometime. I’ll be at my drill – you know, the big one. Ciao!”

  Joe recoiled at the man’s use of 'ciao'.

  The chatter returned to the room and the next thing Joe knew, he was whisked away to a mountain of dirty dishes. He turned on the piping hot water and the steam began to rise.

  By the time he was done, all the old collectors at the bar had left and gone home. Joe had the sinking feeling that they weren’t coming back. He shouldn’t have said he was guessing when he made appraisals. He never guessed. Every claim he made was one hundred percent certain. Eh. What difference did it make anyway? Who was going to take advice from a guy who couldn't even balance a checkbook? His reign as king had ended.

  Sweaty, exfoliated, and still wearing a dirty apron over his gray uniform, he trudged out to his ship – the Crown Vik. This had been his home and mode of transportation for the better part of seven years. It was a boxy, two-room/one cockpit vessel, with a tan exterior and dual thrusters. It didn’t look like much, but it was semi-reliable and he couldn't afford much better.

  Tammy was asleep in the cockpit. Her left eye popped open as Joe sat down.

  “How did it go?” she asked as she stirred to life.

  “They didn’t have rubber gloves,” Joe sighed. “And now my fingers are prunes.” He squinted to see if he still had prints. He did, but only barely.

  “Why don’t you have any money?” Tammy asked.

  “I have money,” Joe said. “I just over-saved this month.”

  “I could give you a little something if you need it.”

  “I said I over-saved, alright?” He sighed and stared out the windshield, thinking back to that fateful assessment he had made on Alistair’s blaster. “Counterfeit crap ruins my life.”

  “Then why do you even do it?”

  A mayday call lit up on the dashboard, a flashing red hologram. Joe leaned in to answer.

  “Where’s it coming from?” Tammy asked.

  “The Ruins Visitor’s Center,” Joe replied.

  The deputy’s brown eyes lit up. “Does that mean we’re going to the ruins?”

  “I said the Visitor’s Center, not the ruins.” Joe answered the call. “Hello, Sheriff Corbit.”

  “Hey, we tripped and bumped the alarm by accident,” came the voice.

  “Oh alright, everything okay there?”

  “Yeah, no problems.”

  “Well, be more careful, or I’ll have you cited for recklessness,” Joe said jokingly.

  “Alright.” The caller hung up.

  Joe started up the engine. “That was a load of bull.”

  “What? They said they tripped.”

  “I didn’t recognize the voice,” Joe said.

  “Are you sure?”

  “Pretty
sure.”

  “And you know everyone who works there?” Tammy asked.

  “Yep.”

  “Do what you got to do,” Tammy said, leaning back with her hands folded on her stomach. “Sounds to me like an accident.”

  Just then, an empty shuttle for touring the ruins floated past the diner and out into the asteroid field.

  “Well, let’s see who was right,” Joe said with a grin as he pulled out from the parking lot and set a course for the ruins Visitor’s Center.

  2

  “Can I drive?” Tammy asked as they flew towards the ruins.

  “Nope,” answered Joe, shifting to a lower gear to save on fuel.

  “I aced my space flight classes, you know.”

  “That’s nice.”

  Joe could tell she was awaiting further comment, but he was content to stay quiet.

  The colossal yellow ruins, even from a distance, filled the entire view screen, tricking the eye into thinking it was one massive wall, never-ending up and never-ending down. It used to be a Dyson Sphere, or at least that’s what the scientists could surmise from studying its remains. Built around the star, it was meant to harness all the energy that emanated out. The species who built it, the Talashaa, had disappeared without a trace billions of years ago and now ruins scattered throughout the galaxy were all that was left of them.

  It wasn’t until a Moroccan prospecting crew stumbled upon this system that mankind realized they hadn’t been the only sentient species the universe had ever produced. They dubbed the species the Talashaa, based off the Arabic word for ‘vanished’.

  Countless millennia of asteroids, gravity and neglect had taken their toll on the Dyson Sphere before Joe. Now only a skeleton remained.

  The Visitor’s Center was a mere speck against the ruins, although it was larger than the largest of museums back on on earth. And to call it a “Visitor’s Center” was a bit of a stretch, since there were more or less zero visitors nowadays.

  That’s not how it used to be. The ruins had, at one time, been the biggest tourist attraction in all the galaxy.

  Upon discovering the superstructure, the leading nations and corporations declared the sector a neutral zone in order to investigate the findings on a level playing field. And once they had looked around to their satisfaction and realized there was nothing valuable – no precious metals, artifacts or usable technology – they handed it over to the one industry that required absolutely no resources to function.

  Tourism.

  “All these spotels are out of business now?” Tammy asked, noting the string of abandoned space stations outside her window.

  “People got tired of the ruins, I guess,” Joe replied.

  The deputy leaned forward to see if she could spot the top of the colossal construction. “But they’re incredible.”

  “They are the first time you see them.”

  “I don’t think I could ever get tired of this view.”

  Joe admired her optimism, but knew it was ultimately futile.

  The ruins had no backstory. And to truly resonate with people an object needed to have a narrative.

  And narratives were what sold. Joe himself had increased the value of many a worthless trinket with the invention of a clever little anecdote regarding its origin. When it came to antiquities, people were never really buying the object, they were buying the story that came along with it. But since no provable story could be told of the Talashaa, since no trace could be found of the them, all visitors to the ruins ultimately lost interest. They went on with their lives and found something else to distract them.

  Eventually, a story for the mysterious aliens did come in the form of a book written by the foremost Talashaa expert, Enoch Applebottom. He tied together the loose threads of evidence scattered throughout the galaxy. It briefly rekindled interest in the Talashaa, but by that time it was too little, too late. The masses had moved on.

  There were, of course, those strange people who worshiped the Talashaa, that were still coming in for tours from time to time. But no one really took them seriously.

  Nowadays, this sector was a shadow of it’s former glory, holding on for dear life.

  “There’s more debris coming from over there,” Tammy said, pointing towards the center.

  Joe nodded. That could mean there had been gunshots somewhere inside. He entered the air-sealed parking lot.

  “You know, if I was driving I could pull us in nice and close,” Tammy announced.

  “You can’t drive this ship,” Joe said flatly as he ignited the parking thrusters.

  “And why’s that?”

  “There’s a few tricks to getting it right and I don’t have the patience or the desire to deal with that right now.” He looked over to the deputy. “Is that reason enough?”

  Tammy shrugged.

  There were hundreds upon hundreds of parking spaces in the lot, but only two of them were occupied. They belonged to the park rangers.

  However, sitting in front of the main entrance was a Martian tug ship. It must have been the very one Joe had spotted from the diner. He had seen Martian handiwork before and it wasn’t pretty. This must have been a robbery gone wrong.

  “Listen,” he said to Tammy. “I know you think you’ve been prepped at the academy, but things can get pretty brutal out here.”

  “Don’t worry about me. Just keep an eye on your driving.”

  Joe shook his head and smiled.

  Tammy grinned and continued. “All herky jerky. Do you need glasses, Joe?”

  “Take it easy, sprout salad,” Joe said. “And I’m not kidding right now. This has all the markings of a botched robbery.”

  “Is that a bad thing?” Tammy asked.

  “There was a fueling station about a quarter parsec outside Gallipoli that was robbed,” Joe began, trying to keep the memory of that slaughterhouse at bay. “It was Martians. They took everything that wasn’t bolted down and butchered anything with a pulse. And I mean anything. It was a nightmare.”

  Tammy nodded and did the sign of the cross on her forehead and chest.

  ‘That won’t do you any good out here,’ Joe wanted to say, but didn’t. He had learned it was best not to.

  Although the parking lot was air sealed and pressurized, Joe kept the ship running just in case they needed to make a quick escape. He checked to make sure his trusty Husqvarna bolt-action pistol was in his holster. It was a good thing he had cleaned it this morning. He probably wasn’t getting through the center without using it.

  He went out from the cockpit and into the kitchen, where he lowered the ship’s on-ramp. His deputy remained nervously seated in the passenger seat.

  Finally, she got up and went to the arms closet. To Joe’s dismay she pulled out a stun stick instead of the perfectly good handgun the outpost had assigned to her.

  “Good one,” Joe said.

  “Good what?”

  “Good joke. Take the gun please.”

  Tammy was silent for a second. “I can’t.”

  “What do you mean, you can’t?”

  “Didn’t they tell you on my transcript?”

  Joe became nervous all of a sudden. “Tell me what exactly?”

  “I won’t kill anyone.”

  “I can’t tell if you’re joking or not.”

  “I’m not.”

  “Alright…” Joe said, adjusting his feet and bracing himself for a frustrating conversation. “And why won’t you kill anyone?”

  “It’s a sin,” Tammy said, her face red with embarrassment. “I can’t believe they didn’t tell you.”

  “No, they decided to leave that out,” Joe said.

  “Well, what do you want me to do then?”

  “Besides being open to killing somebody?” Joe asked.

  Tammy rolled her eyes.

  “Just stay close to me,” he said, turning and marching down the ramp. “I’ll contact the outpost later and get you transferred.”

  “Transferred?” Tammy said running aft
er him. “On my first day? You know how that’ll look on my record?”

  “Yeah,” Joe said, approaching the front door of the visitor’s center. “It’ll look really bad.”

  “Well, can’t you change your mind about it?”

  Joe turned to face the girl. Now that they were both standing he realized that she was a good ten inches shorter than he was and her large eyes became afraid. Accordingly he softened his tone.

  “Having a deputy is bad enough. Having one that can’t even defend herself is suicide. I’m not going to put up with that.”

  He turned and began to march towards the pillared entrance once more. Without a word, Tammy followed after him.

  When he went to open the large wooden doors, they remained stuck. Someone had locked them from the inside. Joe had been there often enough to know that was a bad sign. Fortunately, Tom the park ranger, kept a spare key under the potted plant beside the entrance.

  Once inside, Joe saw there was nobody sitting at the front desk. Yet another bad sign. Usually Zodiac, the old-timer, sat there playing video games.

  Joe waved Tammy after him and walked past the desk into the main corridor.

  The building was beautiful, built in the Talashaa style – with smooth cavernous ceilings, single crystal chandeliers and inky swirled arches. The carbon walls resembled black glass.

  Joe’s feet glided over the polished stone floor. At least the artificial gravity was still working. He remembered reading somewhere that the Talashaa used super-dense matter for their anti-grav systems, and didn’t mess with gravitational fields the way humans did. It was probably healthier in the long-run.

  The first door to their right was the tour shuttle docking bay. Joe peaked in through the circular window. Only one tiny egg-shaped shuttle remained. The two others that usually sat in there were missing.

  “I think I just found out where that rouge shuttle came from,” he announced.

  “You think they were trying to escape?” Tammy asked.

  “I hope not. Those shuttles should be condemned. More likely they were trying to get somebody’s attention.”

  Joe walked in further through the corridor, his steps echoing off the tall walls. This place used to be packed with people eager to see the monolith structure up close. There were lines for hours. It was hell.