Fractured Stars

by Lindsay Buroker

  “That should be fun when we have no money and we’re wanted felons.”

  “We’ll worry about it later, when we’re warm.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Marco said.

  McCall let the Alliance people go first. With her netdisc and a satellite link, she would have no trouble finding her way through the wilderness, but she had doubts about her abilities with low-tech survival gear.

  McCall wasn’t upset when the leaders set off at a jog, boots crunching through a thin layer of windswept snow. They needed to get as far away as possible as quickly as possible. On the open tundra, all it would take was someone in a low-flying shuttle to spot them. They could only hope the prison didn’t possess such craft and would have to call in people from elsewhere on the moon to hunt for the escapees.

  Had only she and Dash escaped, McCall doubted the prison overseers would have bothered—they might have simply trusted the cold or predators to get them—but with a whole group, including an important Alliance leader, McCall expected pursuit.

  “Here.” Dash, striding along at her side, pressed something into her hand.

  She could barely feel it through the thick padding of her oversized glove. “What is it?”

  “A hand warmer. We may only have a few rifles and three stun guns, but Marco grabbed a box of these. And we’ve got enough ration bars for a few days, assuming nobody gorges themselves.”

  “Do they have vitamins and useful nutrients?”

  “The hand warmers?”

  McCall elbowed him. She couldn’t see his grin through his face mask, but she knew it was there.

  “I’m imagining dehydrated rectangles of the same gruel they served us inside,” she admitted.

  “You’re a bit of a pessimist, aren’t you?”

  “You just now noticed?”

  “We escaped from a secure imperial prison,” Dash said. “You should be ecstatic. And optimistic about our prospects to win at the game of survival.”

  An eerie howl drifted across the frozen tundra.

  “Are you sure optimism is called for?” McCall asked.

  When she had heard that same howl from the landing pad with the safety of her ship right behind her, she hadn’t worried about it. Now, she worried.

  “We have rifles,” Dash said. “I’m sure blazer bolts will fry the wildlife sufficiently.”

  “Maybe.” McCall envisioned a pack of fanged predators overrunning them, and the rifles not taking them down quickly enough. She would have preferred firearms with bullets—those things made enough noise to scare animals away. Some of the border worlds used such weapons exclusively since they were easier to manufacture with limited resources than energy-based weapons, and BlazTech didn’t have facilities out past Aldrin. Too bad this place apparently got imperial deliveries of modern weapons. She imagined their dead bodies torn apart on the tundra, with the blazers lying uselessly on the white ground.

  Dash glanced at her. “You are pessimistic.”

  “You’re not poking into my thoughts, are you?” she asked, keeping her voice low so the others wouldn’t overhear.

  “I hardly need to. They’re oozing out of your mind like pus—serum—from a blister.”

  “You’re learning.”

  “Yes, I’m a good boy. I can be taught new words.” He slapped her on the back and grinned again, his eyes, the only things visible behind that mask, crinkling at the corners. But his humor faltered as he lowered his arm. “Sorry, I forgot about the touching.”

  “It’s all right.” She hadn’t even been thinking about her aversions—with all the layers of clothing, it wasn’t as if that had been intrusive or intimate. “That wasn’t smothering like a hug.”

  “So, kisses are gross and hugs are smothering?”

  “Just… from most people. In most circumstances.” She flailed as she slipped on ice and shook her head. She didn’t think she could manage to explain her feelings in this environment.

  Another howl drifted across the tundra, and this time, it was answered by a second one.

  Especially in this environment.

  “I’d be curious to hear sometime if there are people and circumstances that you find appealing,” Dash said. “Or at least not unappealing.”

  More howls started up. It reminded her of the Old Earth wolves calling to each other in their enclosure at the Perun Central zoo. She had a feeling any creatures the scientists had engineered to make the surface inhospitable to escaped prisoners were far more inimical than wolves.

  “If we don’t get eaten by predators, I’ll tell you,” she muttered.

  “Oh? Promise?”

  “I…” It had been sarcasm, not a serious offer. She hadn’t even expected him to hear it. “I guess,” she said, then promptly wondered why she had agreed. She didn’t like talking about herself, especially when it came to things that made her seem odd.

  “Such enthusiasm. I’m going to reward you with a ration bar.” Dash pulled one out of his pocket and handed it to her.

  It was too dark to read labels, but she recognized the brand from its silver and black wrapper. It was a brand she avoided because it was full of sugar and a bunch of other ingredients that made her gut unhappy. Surviving on remote planets was for people with heartier gastrointestinal systems. She much preferred her well-stocked refrigerator and cupboards on the Surfer.

  “Thank you,” she made herself say and stuffed it in her pocket. At least it would taste more appealing than gruel.

  “How’d you get past the guards?” Walters asked, startling her.

  McCall hadn’t noticed him falling back to join them. Or maybe it was more that he was having difficulty with the pace the others had set. She couldn’t see his face behind the snow mask he wore, but his eyes were squinted with pain.

  “What?” Dash asked.

  “You can’t attack the guards. I know. I tried, and my body worked against me. I wanted to punch them, but my brain couldn’t make my arm do it.” Walters tilted his head. “How’d you attack them?”

  McCall glanced at Dash. Since she was a horrible liar, she decided to leave this to him. She doubted it would work to suggest there simply hadn’t been any guards to fight along their route. Who would believe that?

  “With fists and kicks.” Dash shrugged. “I know you said something about brainwashing, but they didn’t do anything to us. Maybe we were too new?”

  “Oh, that’s weird. They came out with a doctor my first day and hooked me up to this machine and stabbed a needle through my skull.” Even with all the cold-weather clothing bundling him, Walters’ shudder was visible.

  McCall understood the feeling.

  “Huh,” Dash said. “Guess we got lucky.”

  Walters stared at him. Not believing him? McCall couldn’t tell. She wouldn’t have guessed the young man would be the perceptive type, but it was possible he was intelligent under his enthusiastic blather.

  The howls grew louder. McCall glimpsed movement out on the tundra, and she forgot all about Walters.

  Frost Moon 3’s frosty giant of a planet wasn’t visible in the sky, nor were the other two moons that orbited it, but the pale blue light of the nearby Ellipsoid Nebula provided some illumination. Enough to see a dark creature moving over the white ground. Make that dark creatures.

  The leaders slowed down, making sure the group was together.

  “Do we want to stop?” the mechanic, Jae-yoon, asked, waving his rifle. “Make a stand?”

  “Not particularly.” Rose looked around, the fur lining of her parka hiding her face. “Out here in the open wouldn’t be a good place.”

  “Can someone give me a rifle?” Walters asked.

  Nobody answered him or offered him one. There weren’t enough to go around. McCall had the stun gun she and Dash had taken from the guards.

  “I think we’ll have to get to those mountains to have a chance at finding a cave or any kind of cover,” Jae-yoon said.

  “Those mountains forty miles away?” someone else asked.


  McCall thought his name was Aleksei. The introductions at their little meeting had been a blur to her, but he had a guttural Sarkian accent that made him distinct.

  “Those are the ones,” Rose said with grim determination.

  The group marched along as people talked, but the black and gray animals out there drifted closer. McCall could not imagine them waiting two days, or however long it would take to trek forty miles, to attack.

  It didn’t even take them two minutes. As a team, two shaggy animals turned and loped toward their group.

  “Incoming,” Dash barked. “Stand back to back.”

  He touched McCall, and she put her back to his, letting the other people work out their positions in the formation. She couldn’t see the creatures without craning her neck to peer past Dash’s arm, but they soon split up and circled the group. After that, she had no trouble seeing them.

  The four-legged furry animals had long whip-like tails at odds with their hulking bodies and broad heads and snouts. They looked vaguely like Old Earth bears, but they moved with the agility of panthers as they bounded about, nostrils twitching in the air.

  One growled and crouched to spring at the group.

  “Fire,” Dash barked.

  His rifle squealed faintly as orange blazer bolts shot out.

  McCall, focused on a leering creature with black eyes in front of her, did not see if his bolts hit. She assumed they did, since the animals provided large targets, but she didn’t hear anything cry out in pain.

  The hulking creature rushed toward her, its massive paws churning up snow. Her hands shook, but she kept her calm enough to aim and fire. Her stun gun flashed, the white nimbus crackling as it surrounded the creature.

  It didn’t go down.

  “Look out,” she blurted and dove to the side as the animal kept coming.

  She fired again before she hit the ground, and she witnessed the stun bolt striking, but again, the energy did nothing to halt the creature. Dash had started to move at her warning but not quickly enough. The creature clipped him in the back of the shoulder, and they both tumbled to the ground, the massive creature almost burying him.

  Feeling she had betrayed him by not properly guarding his back, McCall scrambled to her feet to help. But how?

  Dash tried to shove the creature off as its jaws dove for his shoulder. It was too big, too heavy. Even with his strength, he couldn’t budge it.

  McCall wanted to fire, but her stun gun hadn’t done a thing. Worse, she risked hitting Dash and knocking him out.

  Jae-yoon dropped to one knee and fired a rifle, but he could only get off one shot because another one of the animals charged straight at the group. Someone else’s rifle skidded across the snow, knocked aside by one of the creatures. Walters ran for it. Those without weapons screamed and waved and jumped up and down, but it did nothing.

  Aleksei rushed forward and tried to haul the creature off Dash. It didn’t budge.

  “They’re impervious to our fire,” Rose shouted. “We have to try something else!”

  Dash roared in pain and lost his rifle.

  McCall rushed in and kicked the beast in the side. It was like kicking steel rather than fur and flesh. What the hells?

  She spotted scorch marks in its dark fur where someone had hit it with a rifle and a flap of skin hung free. As Dash maneuvered under the creature, trying to keep its maw from closing around his neck, McCall snatched at that flap and pulled as hard as she could. A huge piece of hide ripped free, and she stumbled back, scarcely believing the animal did not roar in pain.

  But the reason why clicked in her mind even before she saw exposed circuitry under the piece she’d torn free.

  “They’re robots,” she yelled over someone’s fire. “Try a sustained blast!”

  Dash got his knees up to his chest, planted his feet against the creature’s underbelly, and thrust upward. This time, he managed to kick it off him for long enough to roll to the side and snatch up his rifle.

  He started the sustained blast McCall had suggested, but the creature rushed him, and he had to dive to the side again to evade it. Claws raked the air, almost catching him.

  One of the Alliance people screamed. The two other creatures kept harrying them. Rifles fired, but nobody could do enough damage to stop their robotic assailants.

  McCall looked down at her stun gun, wishing she had the one that she and Scipio had modified. They’d taken out the insides and packed explosives into the casing. But maybe she could make this one explode. The typical battery pack contained enough energy to detonate if heated sufficiently. Could that work?

  She yanked off her gloves and opened the stun gun’s case, her already chilled fingers soon growing numb and clumsy from direct contact with the cold air. The job would have been hard enough without tools, and she struggled to disassemble it. Finally, the case fell free, and she yanked out the battery pack.

  “Dash,” she yelled, hefting it. “Fire at this when I throw it.”

  He was alternating between dodging the creature and shooting at it whenever he got a chance, and he barely glanced over at her. Had he heard? Did he understand?

  “Got it,” he barked. “Ready!”

  McCall waited until she couldn’t possibly miss, then threw the battery pack at his four-legged attacker. It was an inch from striking the robot’s furred hide when Dash fired. With impeccable aim, his blazer bolt struck the battery.

  It exploded as McCall had envisioned. Except with even more power. White light flashed, and the shockwave caught her, hurling her onto her ass in the snow.

  “Dash!” she cried.

  He had been closer to the creature—to the explosion. McCall blinked furiously, willing the white stars dancing in her vision to go away.

  “I’m all right,” he called from the ground and rolled to his feet. “We got it!”

  When McCall’s vision cleared, she spotted something grayish-black on the snow in front of her. A piece of the creature. More small pieces were scattered about, but the majority of the robot lay crumpled and warped in a heap, smoke wafting from melted mechanical innards.

  “Good job,” Dash called to McCall before running to help the others.

  Two more of the creatures were attacking, and one of the men lay on the ground, not moving. If the robot animals knew that one of their cohorts had been destroyed, they didn’t show signs of caring. They were probably programmed to kill escaped prisoners and nothing else.

  “Who’s got the other stun guns?” Dash yelled.

  Rose waved one, and someone else pointed to the fallen man.

  “McCall?” Dash also pointed at the fallen man but only for a second. He dropped to one knee with his blazer rifle and attempted a prolonged blast at a creature rushing toward Rose.

  Realizing what they wanted, McCall ran to the crumpled man on the ground. Her gut twisted as she realized the person might be dead.

  Yes, as soon as she glimpsed his body—it was Marco—and the way his eyes were frozen open, blood spattering the snow all around him, she knew they had lost him. Dash was fortunate he hadn’t been killed when he’d been under that creature.

  With a hand so numb she could barely feel it—damn, she should have put her glove back on—McCall made herself dig into Marco’s pockets. Someone had believed he had a stun gun. She kept from looking at his face, not wanting to see those dead eyes.

  A scream sounded as Dash cried, “Stay in front of her, Jae-yoon!”

  Walters fired at one of the robot creatures, holding the trigger down, the crimson beam burning into its head. Smoke billowed from its snout and one side of its furred face. The other robot was springing around, evading Dash’s attempts at sustained fire.

  Finally, McCall’s frozen fingers clunked against the metal and plastic of a stun gun. She yanked it out of Marco’s pocket and had to use her teeth to pry the casing open. Her fingers couldn’t manage it.

  “Got it,” she yelled, jumping up.

  “Here.” Dash fired at the creature
harrying Rose and Jae-yoon.

  Walters’ robot animal pitched to the snow, gaping holes where its black eyes had been. The young man had good aim. The creature’s CPU or another critical component must have been in its skull.

  “I killed one,” Walters yelled, waving his rifle in triumph.

  McCall ran and threw the battery pack at the remaining problem. The creature spun and jumped in another direction, accidentally or intentionally avoiding it.

  “Wait,” McCall cried, afraid Dash would blow it up too far away.

  But he saw the problem on his own. He sprinted in, snatched the battery pack from the snow, then threw it at the creature’s head as it ran toward him. He fired an instant later, and the pack blew up in its face.

  This time, McCall squinted and looked away before being blinded. The boom still rattled her eardrums, but she didn’t care. So long as it worked.

  When she looked back, she saw that the creature’s head had been blown off, and the rest of its body was in pieces. Thank the suns.

  In the aftermath of the battle, the tundra fell silent, nothing but an eerie wind scraping across the raw night. McCall didn’t hear any more howls in the distance. Odd that these robots had been programmed with such verisimilitude. Perhaps the howls were meant to act as a warning as well as to scare the escapees, giving them a reason to change their minds and run back to the prison.

  “Check Marco, please,” Rose said, her voice impressively calm.

  McCall knew there was no point but didn’t say anything as Jae-yoon limped over to kneel by the dead man.

  After scanning the horizon for more threats, Dash lowered his rifle and ran to McCall’s side. He wrapped an arm around her and pulled her against him.

  “That was good thinking out there,” he said, then lowered his voice to whisper, “Are you all right?”

  Forgetting any inhibitions she had about touching, she leaned into Dash and squeezed him hard. Her heart was still pounding, and she couldn’t get the image of Marco’s frozen, staring eyes out of her mind.

  “They didn’t get me,” she managed after a moment. “Are you all right?”

  The front of his parka was torn to shreds, and blood dripped from his chin. She reached up to touch his jaw, wishing she had a medical kit. She didn’t know if that supply closet had held any.