Fractured Stars

by Lindsay Buroker

  “I track people down using the data available in the sys-net, not by their joke-telling skills.” She waved jerkily at the control systems. “Familiarize yourself with whatever you want. I need something to eat.”

  She rushed out, feeling his eyes boring into the back of her head.

  These law officers had only been on her ship a few hours, and she already felt like a mess, like she was raising suspicions left and right. She wanted to talk to Scipio, who never stared at her or made her feel uncomfortable, but he’d shut down his systems and locked himself in his cabin. She stalked off to her own cabin. Maybe she could stay there for the whole journey, and her unasked-for passengers wouldn’t notice.

  Dash rubbed the back of his head and stared at the hatch that McCall had slammed shut as she stalked out. He hadn’t meant to upset her; he’d been trying to tease out whatever secrets she kept hidden. Admittedly, he hadn’t been the smoothest interrogator. She wasn’t what he had expected.

  Not that he’d spent a lot of time contemplating what kind of person McCall Richter, skip tracer extraordinaire, would be, but judging by the fees she was able to charge and how many people sought out her services, he’d imagined someone in slinky, expensive clothing with a face that the finest plastic surgeons had sculpted into the epitome of human perfection. He’d also expected her to have a contingent of bodyguards and a crew at her beck and call, delivering dainties on a silver tray while she lounged in bed, alternating poking through files and reading the latest romance novel.

  Instead, she was… He wasn’t sure what. He’d mostly felt that she had been uncomfortable from the moment he walked in and that she’d truly struggled to tell if he was joking or not. He’d realized when they shook hands, and the physical contact made her feelings even easier to read, that she’d inwardly recoiled from the touch and hadn’t wanted it to last. As if he were some leper.

  He wasn’t used to having women feel that way toward him. Granted, he wasn’t as handsome as some vid actor, and a few of the thugs he’d arrested had left scars for him to remember them by, but he didn’t usually repulse the opposite sex. When he wore a tight short-sleeve shirt at bars on space station layovers, he often drew admiring gazes from women. Of course, he always had to be careful not to let them find out what he was—however weak his mental abilities were compared to those of his mother and so many of their people. Mundane people were terrified of Starseers. Nobody had forgotten that they had tried to take control of the system centuries earlier, even though their numbers were now so small and they lived—were forced to live—in hidden enclaves.

  The earstar comm unit hooked over his helix beeped and Dash tapped it. “Yes, sir?”

  “You got control of the ship yet?” Axton demanded.

  “I’m in NavCom now.”

  “That’s not what I asked.”

  Dash sighed. “The captain said I could familiarize myself with the controls, and then she left.”

  Axton grunted. “Make sure she can’t cause any trouble. If the Alliance magically figures out we’ve moved the prisoners over here, we may need to take control of the ship and go into battle with them.”

  Dash frowned at the emphasis on that word. Magically. Had it been sarcasm? Or something else? He couldn’t read people’s emotions over a comm link, but Axton was on the ship somewhere, well within Dash’s range to poke into minds. But again, he hesitated, afraid the cyborg would sense him. Dash didn’t need his Starseer background being discovered any more than he needed his link to the Alliance being sussed out.

  “I’ll see what I can do, sir.”

  “Good. Axton out.”

  Dash looked around the NavCom cabin, considering again how it might take some of the pressure off him if he gave Axton another focus for his suspicions. Would McCall have left any damning evidence out in files that weren’t passcode or retina-scan protected? He’d already checked that so-called storage cabin, but the hatch was locked.

  He could find some tools and force his way in, but that would leave evidence of his passing. Technically, he could force his way into McCall’s thoughts, too, but the idea repulsed him. Using telepathy to invade and manipulate minds was one of the reasons mundane people feared and hated Starseers.

  Dash slid into the pilot’s seat and ran his fingers over the control panel, admiring the massive holographic display that showed the space all around the ship. He tapped a spot in midair, and the image zoomed in to a comet sailing past in the distance. The display magnified it with breathtaking detail.

  McCall’s clothing might not be sleek and expensive, but her ship was. He would love a chance to take it through battle maneuvers before they reached Frost Moon 3.

  No, he thought, sitting back. He didn’t want that, for it would mean the Alliance was attacking again, trying to rescue Rose Akerele. He would be obligated to pilot the ship with ineptitude and, once again, risk Axton noticing. Better if the Alliance simply stayed away. Dash would find a way to help the prisoners escape on his own. Ideally, by diverting Axton with something else.

  “Like you, Captain McCall,” he murmured, hunting around NavCom for clues.

  It, like most of the ship he’d seen so far, was sparsely decorated, more like a military craft than someone’s private vessel. Usually, private ships were full of fuzzy asteroids hanging over the pilot’s station and other kitschy souvenirs from space stations and tourist areas. One expected dust lining the nooks and crannies, rubbish wrappers tucked away in bins, and sticky round cup marks staining the control panel. But this ship looked like it had just come out of the factory.

  His roving gaze stopped on the only decoration in NavCom, a framed quotation. It hung at head height near the hatchway.

  The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion.

  It was attributed to an Old Earth philosopher from more than fifteen hundred years in the past.

  “Unfree empire,” Dash muttered, “not world.”

  All of the planets and moons in the system fell under the empire’s rule, and even out on the less-regulated border worlds, there weren’t many places to be truly free. The closest one could come was to have a ship and be able to sail among the planets as one wished, but even then, the empire expected its draconian taxes to be paid each year.

  “Not for long,” he murmured to himself, thinking of the changes the Alliance wanted to make once it overthrew the empire.

  Too bad that was such a Herculean task and their forces were so small. Still, more and more people joined the movement each day. And he’d heard the time was nearing for a big push. Maybe all-out war.

  Dash left NavCom, confident he could fly any ship without spending a large amount of time studying it, to look around the rest of the vessel, hoping for more clues as to what McCall kept in that locked cabin.

  The corridor was empty, and he paused to put his ear to the hatch.

  “Talk about a low-tech surveillance method,” he murmured.

  He didn’t hear a thing. He rested his fingertips on the hatch and closed his eyes, stretching out with his mind as his mother had taught him to do as a boy. Though he wasn’t as talented as people with two Starseer parents, he could sense if there was life on the other side of a wall or bulkhead. There wasn’t. He hadn’t truly expected it since, as he’d told Axton, he had scanned the ship with their sensors before they had come aboard. Whatever McCall kept inside was likely some physical item or items. Stolen goods? Condemning evidence? Top secret plans to some imperial base?

  He snorted. If she had those, he would have to recruit her to join the Alliance.

  Her cabin was the one across from the locked one. Was she in there? Her personal place might be a fount of evidence. Ah, but he sensed her inside. The dog was in there, too, looking toward the hatch, perhaps hearing him in the corridor.

  Dash drew back immediately, not wanting McCall to feel his telepathic touch. He had no reason to suspect she would be sensitive to such things, but some p
eople were. Some people had Starseer genes that had never been turned on. They weren’t able to perform telepathy or telekinesis, but they tended to be more sensitive than other mundane people.

  He moved to the next hatch and tried it. He and Axton had claimed two empty cabins at the end of the corridor for themselves, but he hadn’t seen what was in the middle ones yet.

  The hatch wasn’t locked, and he poked his head into an exercise area with mats on the floor, two treadmills, and several pieces of weight-lifting equipment. Why would she need two treadmills if she was the only one on the ship? He stepped closer, thinking of the possibility of criminals hidden away in cabins shielded from sensors, but then he saw the gouge marks and dusty paw prints on the belt of one of the machines.

  “A dog treadmill?” Dash supposed canines needed exercise the same as humans when cooped up on a small ship for long periods of time.

  The next cabin Dash checked held bins of books and art supplies. Numerous painted canvases leaned against a wall, and another rested on an easel, a painting of the distinctive blue Ellipsoid Nebula partially completed. The dry paintings on the deck were a mix of space-scapes and landscapes, all done in an impressively accurate and realistic style. He paused, drawn to one of a misty ocean and a cliff-filled shoreline with dark rock formations rising up from the waves. It reminded him of Arkadius and the temple, a home he hadn’t seen in almost twenty years.

  A home he’d voluntarily left because he hadn’t fit in, he reminded himself, pushing down feelings of nostalgia. It was mostly his mother and grandmother that he missed, not the rest of the community or the way he’d always been treated—like something lesser because he lacked the impressive powers of other Starseers.

  Dash backed out of the cabin. The paintings were good, and he wondered why she didn’t hang any of the finished pieces around the ship, but they weren’t clues to nefarious crimes she might have committed.

  The next cabin looked to be more promising. It was her office, a desk with a comfortable mesh chair and a dedicated computer terminal. A porthole looked out onto the stars. He didn’t see a filing cabinet or much in the way of physical paper or note boards, so she wasn’t one of those people who thought best in the old-fashioned way, with pen and paper. He did spot a single paper stuck to the wall next to the desk. Suspecting another quotation, he stepped in for a closer look.

  But it was a list. The heading read: What motivates people. The list included such things as need for companionship, desire to avoid pain, desire to obtain pleasure, desire for recognition, and money and rewards.

  They seemed like obvious things to him, but for some reason, he could imagine McCall glancing at the list as she followed leads on the sys-net. Needing the reminder.

  Dash stepped out of the office, closing the hatch behind him. He’d run out of cabins to check. He could investigate the cargo hold and engineering, but then he risked running into Axton, who was on that end of the ship, glowering at the prisoners and making sure they didn’t escape.

  Besides, Dash suspected the answers were up here. He let his gaze drift toward that locked hatch again. Some Starseers could use telekinesis to move matter and unlock doors. He didn’t have that knack, alas. It would have been handy.

  He walked to the hatch again, resting his fingers on it and considering the lock and what kind of tool he would need to break it. And also whether he had the right to do so.

  “What are you doing, Dashmukh?” came Axton’s snarl from the end of the corridor.

  Dash jumped. He hadn’t heard or sensed the cyborg’s approach.

  “Just looking around the ship,” he said carefully, not correcting his boss’s pronunciation of his surname. It was typical. There was a reason he’d ended up with the nickname Dash.

  He thought about mentioning the locked hatch, since Axton could tear it open with his bare hands, but he had no proof that there was anything in there. It was entirely possible that McCall didn’t want them in the cabin because that was where she kept something embarrassing that she didn’t want strangers rummaging through. Her neon dildos and erotic art, perhaps?

  Dash snorted inwardly, having a hard time matching such things to the woman he’d met.

  “I told you to learn how to pilot it,” Axton said, stalking closer, “not take a tour of it.”

  “Yes, sir. But I thought—”

  “Nobody’s paying you to think. You’re the pilot, and that’s it. Got it?” Axton stopped in front of him.

  Dash hated how the man towered over him, even without his combat armor, but he lifted his chin and met Axton’s gaze, refusing to simper. To his surprise, one of Axton’s eyes was swelling shut. Had he removed his helmet at some point during the prisoner transfer, giving one of them an opportunity to land a punch? Dash wished he’d been there to see it. Maybe it had been the Alliance man in there with Rose. Or maybe it had been Rose. Probably not, since she was in her sixties and looked like the professor she had been in her past life, not some Amazon warrior woman from Old Earth.

  “I’ve got it,” Dash said.

  “Sir.”

  “Sir,” Dash spat out.

  “You’re an insubordinate little git, Dash. Couldn’t have made it in the army. I’m surprised the enforcers let you in. I looked you up, and I know what you are.”

  Dash’s breath caught. Had Axton figured out his allegiance to the Alliance?

  “You used to be a bounty hunter, the rogue bastards. Skirting the law and doing whatever it takes to bring people in, dead or alive. I know your kind. You’ve got no respect for anyone or anything except making money. For ten tindarks, you’d turn me over to the black marketeers collecting cyborg implants. Don’t think I don’t know it.”

  “That’s long in the past, sir,” Dash said. “I joined the law enforcers because I didn’t want to be a rogue. I wanted to help people.” Specifically, he’d wanted to be in a position to help the Alliance. “Legally.”

  “I bet. I don’t know why I got stuck with you, but if you so much as piss wrong, I’ll pound you into the deck and report you to HQ for insubordination.”

  “Insubordinate… pissing?” Dash couldn’t help himself.

  Faster than lightning, Axton’s fist came out and tangled in Dash’s shirt. He lifted Dash to his toes and then clear off them until he dangled in the air.

  Dash balled his fists. He was so tempted to punch the bastard, but if he lost this job—or ended up in prison somewhere for striking a superior officer—he would be no good to the Alliance. Or anyone. Besides, as competent a fighter as he was under most circumstances, this wasn’t a normal man he faced. He had little doubt Axton had the strength and speed to beat him.

  He did his best to remain calm and keep his chin up while ignoring how hard it was to breathe with someone lifting him by the front of his shirt.

  “Watch your tongue, or I’ll blazer it out,” Axton growled, then dropped him. “Now, get in that pilot’s seat and learn to fly this ship.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  As Dash turned to obey, he spotted a hatch open a few inches. The one to McCall’s cabin. And she was looking out—suns’ wrath, had she seen all of that?

  The fire of embarrassment burned Dash’s cheeks as he strode into NavCom as quickly as he could. Thankfully, Axton didn’t follow. A soft click sounded. McCall’s hatch shutting?

  He told himself it didn’t matter if she’d seen him humiliated, that he wouldn’t see her again after their little voyage. But that didn’t make him feel any less emasculated.

  She didn’t know that he was working undercover and had a lot to protect. She didn’t know that he would normally put a blazer bolt through the head of someone who bullied him like that. She didn’t even know who he had been as a bounty hunter. True, he hadn’t been anywhere near as famous—or infamous—as she, but they’d been in similar industries, so he’d thought she might have come across his name before.

  Not that it mattered. All that mattered was figuring out a way to free the prisoners before they were stu
ck in the mines of Frost Moon 3. People didn’t get out of that prison, and it was rumored to be a quick death for most. And the Alliance needed Rose Akerele. So did he, or all this humiliation was for nothing.

  He vowed to find a way into that locked cabin soon so he could get Axton thinking about something else.

  3

  McCall sat cross-legged on her bed and drummed her fingers on her thighs as she studied all the holo images floating in the air around her.

  One showed the camera display of her single-cell brig where the sheriff had crammed his six prisoners—there wasn’t room for them to lie down. Most were sitting with their knees pulled up to their chests and their heads resting on their crossed arms. They looked miserable. And from what McCall had been able to discern, using facial-recognition software and the judicial databases to which she subscribed, none of them had committed crimes heinous enough to deserve sentences of life in the mines. At least in her opinion. Two were thieves, two ran with gangs on Cleon Moon, and two were known affiliates of the Alliance, including an older dark-skinned woman with wiry gray hair who was a higher-up in the organization. That seemed to be her only crime. She’d been a respected professor on Perun, with three advanced degrees, before walking away from it all to join the Alliance.

  “So, why did you all earn one-way trips to the Frost Moon 3 coal mines?” she murmured to herself.

  Usually, the empire adjusted, as they called it, the minds of lesser criminals and also of Alliance loyalists so they could be reintegrated into society. Throwing them to the pack ghorettins seemed strange.

  Was it possible Axton had been acting on his own? Capturing people and dropping them off without due process? If so, to what end?

  McCall supposed it could be worse—they could have been executed—but nothing she’d heard about Frost Moon 3 was good. Prisoners sent there were forced to work in the mines and plants beneath the world’s icy surface to provide heat and energy for the hardy colonists who lived in domes up above. Escape was reputed to be close to impossible since the mines and factories were over a hundred miles from any of the domes or the planet’s single space port. Those who did slip out tended to freeze to death on the surface before they made it far.