Crooked Stars

by Rock Forsberg

  It was my chance. ‘Take Cressor and Naido to safety.’

  ‘Roger,’ Henk said, and laughed. ‘Never underestimate the peashooters!’

  I stood up and scrambled out of the hole. Just as my eye caught Marc, he disappeared behind some scaffolding.

  I scrambled up from behind my cover as the peashooters tickled the cyborgs and insides of the Petals through the open doorway, and I ran after Marc.

  A flame burst from inside the Petals, and in seconds, a massive explosion engulfed the beautiful craft. The blast wave hit me to the ground, and all I could hear was a high-pitched whine. A piercing pain jolted through my hip—I had landed on a sharp rock.

  But I couldn’t stay still.

  I staggered up and jogged forth, every step like a blade cutting deeper inside my hip. When I reached the scaffolding, I slowed down. It was a maze of metal tubes and walls extending above and below the ground. Marc could have gone anywhere.

  Even though I was sure I had lost him, I snuck slowly forward. It became darker as I trod a downward slope.

  I heard a crack from the dark but was too late to act.

  The force of the tackle threw me to the ground. I screamed from the pain in my hip, and couldn’t do anything before Marc was already on top of me, hitting my face.

  For him, it might have a been a good strike, but for me, it was a wake-up call. I grabbed his collar with both hands and kicked my left knee up as hard as I could.

  He stumbled headfirst over me, and I cried out in agony.

  Still, I rolled to the side and into a crouching position.

  While Marc was staggering up, I charged at him, my shoulder against his belly.

  He whimpered as he flew backwards. I jumped on him and hit his face with the ball of my fist.

  His arms fell loose by his side, his nose twisted and bleeding. ‘You got me,’ he whimpered. ‘You got me.’

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  I stared at his face. Though sweaty and bleeding, he looked like his father; younger, of course, but he was much more like him now than ever before. He was no ghost; he was, like me, just a man.

  His breath wheezed. ‘You killed my father, and now you will kill me?’

  I stared with disdain at the face of the man who had caused me so much pain, suffering, and grief, from mugging Tiana and destroying my marriage, to killing my brothers and destroying my business. I held him at gunpoint, wanting so much to pull the trigger, but I refrained.

  He grinned.

  ‘What are you laughing at?’

  With a smug face, he said, ‘You can kill me, but you can never win.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘You will kill me anyhow, so why bother? Just get it over with.’

  I wanted to know. I shifted my weight and adjusted my aim. ‘Tell me!’

  He laughed. ‘It’s true. You have nothing. You might as well kill me because my work is done.’

  ‘You little piece of shit,’ I said and shot a blast right next to his ear.

  He startled, but then grinned again. ‘You can’t even shoot straight.’

  I pushed the weapon against his face, but to get the closure, I had to control my temper.

  I asked, ‘How did you create the illusions of Tiana?’

  ‘I’ve no idea what you’re talking about.’

  ‘I think you do. I’m talking about the woman that appeared right before every incident; I’m not blind.’

  ‘And I’m no woman; just the ghost that haunts you…’ he said and laughed, which then turned into coughing. ‘Killing me won’t let you live in peace, not ever.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘A superweapon,’ he said. ‘You think you’re done, but you’re not.’

  We had just downed all of his cyborg clones. ‘You mean the cyborgs, they’re your superweapon?’

  He nodded with a grin. ‘You don’t think they’re a superweapon? Think again.’

  I raised an eyebrow. ‘You’ve more of ‘em?’

  ‘You’re on the right track…’

  ‘An army?’

  He grinned again. ‘A massive one.’

  I squinted.

  With a calm voice, he said, ‘Perhaps a hundred… million of them.’

  I almost choked. If that were true, I understood why he called them a superweapon. But then again, a hundred million was ridiculous. That number of cyborgs required a massive amount of material and energy, but also space—you couldn’t put them in a warehouse.

  ‘How’s that even possible?’

  ‘When I left Runcor after my father’s disappearance, I met a man, Colonel Powell. He was a winner of the genetic lottery, but also enhanced with cybernetics to make him into the ultimate marine. I’m not proud of the way I killed him, but I did.’

  ‘Get to the point.’

  ‘Getting there. Well, I froze his corpse and brought it to a covert cloning facility in the Yedda system. They had what it took, and I had the money. Together we built a factory, and throughout the years, they’ve been churning out copies of Colonel Powell on autopilot.’

  It sounded to me like a fantasy. ‘Suppose your cyborg clones exist; where are they?’

  ‘That’s the best part.’ He laughed and coughed. ‘It’s something more powerful than all the cyborgs together…’

  ‘What?’

  ‘An ancient creature… to carry the cyborgs.’

  ‘A creature?’

  ‘One that’s bigger than this city.’

  ‘Bigger than this moon? That’s just insane.’ A creature bigger than Spit City was a physical impossibility. He was trying to confuse me, but I had to play along. ‘Where would a creature like that live?’

  ‘Like a stray planet, it lies in the cold emptiness between the stars, ready and waiting for activation.’

  While I had witnessed copies of Colonel Powell, I didn’t believe he had even a hundred of them, let alone a hundred million. The number of resources required would be beyond even Marc’s capacity to invest, and this talk about a planet-sized creature carrying them was just nonsense.

  I snorted. ‘I don’t believe you.’

  ‘It’s still real.’

  ‘Why would you need all those cyborgs?’

  ‘You ask too many questions,’ he said, and chuckled. ‘This world is overdue for a re-boot, and my cyborgs are the key to the next one… everything has a reason, and it’s not always about you, Daler.’

  ‘You’re delirious.’

  ‘Maybe, but so are you; and you know what’s great?’

  ‘I bet you’ll tell me.’

  ‘You’re the reason the cyborgs exist. If you hadn’t driven me to suicide by killing my father, I would never have had the epiphany… or let’s call it the meeting with the goddess; that’s when I realised that our world order is overdue. Big plans are on the move, and you, Daler Tait, are the inspiration and the enabler; it’s as if you created the cyborg army.’

  That was it. ‘You’re insane.’

  ‘Nothing you can do matters anymore… I’ve given FIST an anonymous tip that you hold secret information about a superweapon in Yedda that can wreak havoc on a massive scale. They’re going to take you down.’ He laughed and coughed.

  Looking at his indifferent face made me so angry. He was the root of all my suffering, and now I had the chance. I had come all this way to get him. Whatever they said about revenge, leaving him alive was not an option. He was leading me on with the cyborgs, and I would call his bluff.

  I set my gun to kill mode and raised it to point at his face. ‘I will have my revenge.’

  ‘As will I,’ he said. ‘If FIST fails, the cyborgs will get you.’

  ‘Good luck with that.’ I gritted my teeth and squeezed the handle of the gun, ready to pull the trigger.

  Marc laughed at me.

  Feelings from the past flooded in, memories from the gloomy chamber with Marc’s father, who cursed me with a tormentor. That tormentor was here, right at my mercy. I thought about him already being dead
and realised that when that happened, I’d be a ghost, too. There would be no place for me to go, and only sadness around me. Leaving him alive wouldn’t help either. It never was about the mayor or Marc. It was always about me; I had brought this all to the people I cared about the most.

  The anger clenched my entire body, and I pulled the trigger.

  The blast snapped his head back, and he fell without half of his face.

  For a moment, I just stood there. The dirty breeze rubbed my skin. The scaffolding clanked, and somewhere in the distance, a spaceship broke the escape velocity.

  The ghost of my past was no more. I had killed him.

  I let the idea sink in, and as it did, tears formed in my eyes, and I dropped on my knees, crying.

  With heavy thoughts, I lifted my gaze up into the darkening sky. All the pain and suffering; was it all for nothing? I thought of all the galaxies, stars and planets in plain sight, the ease with which I could travel anywhere, and the omnipresent dangers for simple humans like me. Life seemed in vain. Killing Marc brought me no joy; instead, it removed the scraps of happiness I once had. Ten glorious years growing my business and spending time with Tiana—it was like they had never existed. It all succumbed to the empty void above me. There was nothing. All my efforts were for nothing. My life was for nothing.

  I spoke to no one. I was incapable of any social interaction, and I shunned everyone away.

  I had no direction, nowhere to go.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  A few days passed in a dark haze. Back in my Spit City apartment, I watched the gas clouds rotate on the surface of Heeg, spinning as if in slow motion. I could not stop thinking about the incident with Marc Puissance. It was as if a constant noise in my ears had stopped, but left me with silence, as if I had lost something. Perhaps it was because our paths had spiralled together for so long.

  Every day the clouds looked the same—different, but the same.

  They say revenge is a dish best served cold, but for me, that dish had gone foul. I had been naïve to think that killing Marc would somehow fulfil me. Instead, it made me scared.

  My rational mind was sure that the hundred million cyborgs were just a fantasy, but it didn’t stop me worrying about them. I did what I could, scanned the Ghostnet and talked to people, not revealing what I was seeking. There were no signs of cyborgs, not even one, let alone one hundred million of them.

  Perhaps it had been a mistake. I never found the cyborgs, nor did I find peace of mind. But someone had found me looking.

  FIST had arranged an underground hit. They had hired a bounty hunter on my trail.

  I had time to prepare, get the building security on standby, test the force field and the cannons in the public lounge of my home.

  I hunkered down in my apartment and waited.

  Late one night, as I sat in my lounge chair, reminiscing the times with my brothers and watching Heeg turn, a ping indicated someone was coming in from the elevator. They had all the right clearances, otherwise they wouldn’t have gotten in from the reception.

  I picked up my terminal and checked the visitor. The doors opening revealed an electrician.

  I had never ordered one.

  And I remembered that face. It was the ex-Alliance Navy bounty hunter with the fake cookie.

  I stood up and set the lights on full.

  ‘Tredd Bounty. Welcome to my lair,’ I said with a theatrical flair. It was a show, after all.

  He fumbled about in the lobby and said, ‘Is it that obvious?’

  It was that obvious. We exchanged a few snappy words, and then the idiot took a few steps towards me.

  ‘Stop right there,’ I said.

  He stopped and stared at me with a dumbfounded expression.

  I told him about the S11 field between us and asked what he wanted, and the answer was the obvious: FIST. They wanted me, but this fellow did not understand why.

  ‘It involves stakes bigger than you could ever understand,’ I said.

  ‘The city, the planet, the universe?’

  ‘All of them. And as a bonus, a superweapon,’ I said, just for kicks. If FIST thought there was a superweapon, I would give them something to think about.

  The bounty hunter seemed confused.

  ‘That’s why they want me. I know all about it, but I will not take it to FIST. I’m a businessman, and I know an opportunity when I see one,’ I said, leading him on, as he seemed to swallow everything. ‘That means it’s time for you to go. I like you, sport, but I can’t have you running around poking your bits into my bytes. Server, take him down.’

  Before my service robot could tranquillise him, he dived, turned, and shot its head off. That annoyed me. Then he turned and fired at me, but the force field repelled the shots in a burst of white light.

  I shook my head. ‘You should have listened to me. I liked that robot, and now I need to call the cleaning service. Well, why not make it a good mess?’

  No fumbling bounty hunter would get me—not on my turf. I raised my rifle and clicked a button on its side. The alert sounded. My defence turrets emerged from both walls behind the force field. I saw him close his eyes in a pained expression.

  Then something freakishly weird happened. I’ve still to understand what, exactly.

  I thought I had just blinked, and suddenly he wasn’t there at all.

  The turrets fired, hitting the floor behind the force field, but the bounty hunter had disappeared.

  Instead, he held me from behind. Somehow, in the blink of an eye, he had passed the force field and caught me. It was like magic, like Tiana’s appearances. I winced at the realisation as something stung my neck, and I lost consciousness.

  The next time I came to my senses, I opened my eyes to the blinding bright lights of an operating room. I couldn’t move my arms or legs, even though I felt them pressed tight to the bed I lay on.

  A covered face appeared in my field of vision; a doctor, perhaps.

  ‘We will place you in the hold, because FIST and the Dawn Alliance have deemed you a threat to galactic safety.’

  I tried to speak, but the words didn’t come out. Everything around was mellow and wavy. I sought to move, but it was impossible.

  ‘But before we do that, we will conduct a complete download of your brain.’

  Cold metal pressed against my forehead. They connected wires and operated the surrounding systems. As they moved, they left trails, as if the pixels of my vision faded slowly.

  When they engaged the download, everything started moving backwards, and I experienced things from my past—bathing in the sun with Tiana, hitting the president’s face, and floating over the desert on the funeral ship. I felt it all, and I saw it all, at the same time as my conscious mind stared at the cold bright lights above me and the masked men going about their business around me in a trail of slow motion.

  I understood what was happening. They were taking it all in. Everything out in the open, I was bare to the core. I had no secrets anymore.

  But I never knew a touch of shame. I was what I was, and perhaps the chance of digging up my memories, my entire life, at this stage of strange existential doom, was weirdly grounding and provided me with an odd sense of happiness.

  Perhaps I smiled, perhaps I didn’t, but I was present in two realities at once.

  Still, to this day, I don’t know how long this lasted. For all I know, it could have been for a second, or a few days.

  When the past faded, and the present came into focus, someone said, ‘That’s all, get him boxed.’

  By that point, I understood what would happen, but before I had a chance to worry, my mind went back to unconscious blackness.

  Awakening

  I wake up inside the box. Or maybe I just stopped dreaming.

  I’ve been here for months already. Or is it years? It is difficult to tell. I don’t know what time it is, what goes around outside this box, or how long I will have to be here. I know I was once a complete human being. I remember being a child i
n Runcor; I remember my parents and my brothers. I remember Tiana and how we rebuilt my father’s empire. I remember how it crumbled.

  Revenge is a funny thing. I should have some experience on the topic. You need it the most when you’re far from having it, and the closer you get, the more unsure you become, and when you finally get your revenge, even though you’ve just pushed past your protection mechanisms, you feel drained and empty. It’s like you open an empty box, and only then realise you have paid ten times more than you thought you could afford. To me, revenge has become a gateway to depression.

  I did this to myself when I avenged my father’s death.

  Now, in this box, there’s no reason to be anything. I owe nothing to anybody.

  I feel I’m close to finding an understanding of something, and it burns my mind. When the doctors said I was a threat to galactic safety, and the gateway to the superweapon, what did they refer to? Superweapon, that’s what they both said. That’s what Marc had told them.

  Did Marc just tell me about a superweapon on Yedda so that FIST would find it in my brain and lock me up?

  After a full download of my brain, I don’t blame them for putting me in a box. I would have done the same.

  Maybe Marc was bluffing, and nothing really existed. But I can swear I saw at least a dozen cyborg clones, and if there were a dozen, there could be a hundred, and if there were a hundred, there could be a thousand, and…

  There might be something in my mind that even I don’t comprehend. A neuro-analysis software could find meaning where I find none. Or perhaps I’m just losing it and making up my past as I recount it in my head.

  I also think my story has changed in my head. The ghastly appearance of Tiana in Spit City is a sure sign of it. I swear she wasn’t there before—or was she?

  The same with the creature holding millions of cyborgs. It’s crazy! There must have been something else there before.