Guided by Starlight

by Matt Levin

  “Right. That doesn’t sound like a good plan,” Riley said.

  They continued to sit and watch the crowds pass by. “Honestly, I’m surprised we haven’t seen more Syndicate enforcers,” Russ said. “They were all over the marketplace, but it doesn’t seem like they’re patrolling the residential areas.”

  Russ knew from his research that, somehow, the Syndicate was actually popular with the desperate suckers who lived in Nen Fatha. He figured that just meant none of them could see the crime organization’s boot on their neck. Dreams of getting rich quick through doing business with the Syndicate had blinded the populace. Or maybe they just hated everyone else more.

  Even if the Syndicate was popular in the city, however, Russ might’ve stationed a few more guards on patrol. Personally.

  “Maybe some of the Syndicate presence isn’t visible,” Riley said. “Sure, they’d have enforcers. But I’d bet that they have a big network of spies or informants. Information is its own kind of currency.”

  Russ thought that was actually a decent point. Real control was when you didn’t have to have armed thugs patrolling the neighborhoods. And if the Syndicate was dug in deep, he figured a network of hidden informants might be able to do jobs that guards couldn’t.

  The possibility got the wheels in his mind turning again. “We could start rumors about some kind of uprising,” Russ said. “That ought to get the authorities’ attention for sure, and if we keep it all hypothetical, then hopefully they’ll bring us in for questioning instead of taking us out.”

  “Maybe,” Riley said. “Permission to speak freely, sir?”

  “Of course.” Russ had never been the kind of commander to ignore the advice of his soldiers.

  “I think the Syndicate is probably worried about security, yes. But if they have informants, they’re probably trying to keep tabs on business opportunities. The Syndicate seems too powerful to take down, especially in their backyard. But they’d want to keep an eye on any chances to expand into new markets, make more money. That sort of thing.”

  Riley was right, Russ realized immediately. He had spent so much time thinking about the vulnerability of his own people’s position in the system that he had forgotten he was dealing with an organization far more powerful, and far more deeply entrenched, than they were. He felt a sudden onset of envy for that kind of safety.

  And then a new plan formed in his mind. Maybe they didn’t have to cause trouble to get the Syndicate to notice them. Maybe it was as simple as getting out the word that they had a lot of money they were looking to spend. That wasn’t strictly true, of course, but it might get them the audience with Lena Veridor they needed. Then, Russ could come clean about their real identities and their actual situation.

  “Soldier,” he said, “I think you’re a genius. Come on, let’s raise some eyebrows.” Russ felt a certain smugness that he had picked a damn good traveling companion.

  The two of them headed back into the crowded marketplace just outside the spaceport. Already, another commercial spaceliner was arriving, and the one they had come in was departing. The two vessels crisscrossed in the air overhead.

  Russ looked around for the nearest arms dealer, who wasn’t particularly hard to find. The two of them approached a woman with a variety of plasma handguns, rifles, and shotguns splayed out on a rug. Probably secured with a fingerprint ID, Russ figured.

  “Hey,” he said gruffly. “My friend and I here are looking to spend a lot of money. We’re looking for guns. Lots of ‘em, actually.”

  The vendor’s face lit up. “You came to the right place!” She babbled on about how she offered the best weapons at the lowest prices. Real generic shit. If she really had quality goods, Russ wondered, why was she selling stuff on the streets instead of working with the Syndicate? But there were probably tourists stupid enough to fall for it.

  Riley, playing along, looked deeply skeptical. “I think I saw someone back a few blocks who was offering all this stuff at half the price,” she said.

  The vendor’s face dropped. “That’s impossible—” she stammered.

  “—we’ll keep you in mind,” Russ cut her off. “Let’s go,” he said, turning to Riley. The vendor shouted at them from behind as they crossed the marketplace.

  Russ had a sort of sixth sense for when someone was watching him, and he definitely felt that now. Hopefully, someone out there was taking notes on these strange two arrivals with a deep purse.

  They arrived at another vendor and repeated their spiel. He talked about being a big spender, Riley played the skeptic. They left over the protests of the second vendor. Rinse and repeat.

  Russ was heading toward a third weapons dealer when he saw a woman dressed in plain clothes talking to two Syndicate enforcers on the other side of the block. She pointed to Russ and Riley. A grin crept across his face.

  He turned around to face Riley, and couldn’t help but notice two enforcers on the other side of the marketplace working their way through the crowds toward them. “Don’t get too excited yet,” he said, “but I think we’re in.”

  CHAPTER 18

  * * *

  It hadn’t been real for Nadia even after the Junta, embarrassed by the utter failure of their plan to seize Arcena and extort her people, had left the planet in shame. Or when the work of securing the settlement instead turned to preparing the settlement for the first wave of arrivals: countless hours spent clearing debris, repairing settlement structures, and performing maintenance on the power system. Or when Vincent messaged her to let her know that he had brought the first hundred out of cryo to begin the settlement process.

  But now, standing on a sandstone ridge overlooking the sprawl of Arcena, the lights of the approaching fleet of Preserver shuttles shining through the red atmosphere of Calimor, it felt real: the scope of the victory she had accomplished.

  It was their first settlement on Calimor, their first foothold in the Natonus System. Dozens of engine drives arced in the sky, moving further down until their hulls were visible. It was a diverse fleet, comprising shuttles, survey ships like the Exemplar, or even mid-sized transports.

  A sense of pride swelled in her body as the colonial fleet descended on Arcena. Their first settlement was won through clever tactics from Boyd, a Calimor native, and assistance from Derek and his raiders from Ikkren. The first wave of colonists weren’t coming to Calimor as a conquering fleet. They were arriving with their arms outstretched to all in the Natonus System, a beacon of cooperation and mutual uplift. It was everything she could’ve dreamed of.

  The fleet of ships were like a swarm of fireflies, the kind she used to see every night from the steps of her family’s porch. It had taken over a century, but she had finally found something that could be home in the way her parents’ farmstead had been.

  In another few seconds, the arriving fleet of ships leveled out and circled over Arcena’s various hangar bays. The canyons and mountains that had been dead for so long reverberated from the roar of the engine thrusters.

  The first few ships came in for a landing, and a grin crept over her face beneath her helmet. It was a proud grin: one that recognized the monumental success of her first expedition. But it was also a knowing grin: the kind that indicated yes, I know the work has only just begun.

  . . .

  Even as the first few days after the colonists’ arrival had turned into weeks, and had eventually turned into a month, reflecting on their initial arrival still made Nadia feel giddy and light inside. There was still so much to do, and the work was exhausting, but the thrill of the other colonists’ arrival made everything worth it.

  The Preserver had sent a few hundred colonists by this point, enough to staff the settlement. Which was now officially called New Arcena: a name Nadia found uninspiring, although not enough to object to it. Each time the shuttles dropped off another wave, they returned to the sleeper vessel to pick up the next round.

  Most were farmers, but there were some technicians and skilled workers among them to k
eep the facilities up and running. The colonists moved fast, bringing in fast-growing seeds from the Preserver’s storage. By the time the most recent wave of thawed colonists arrived from the Preserver, they were able to load the vessels with a meager amount of crops for the return journey.

  And, in a turn of events that had given Nadia plenty of told-you-so mileage with Boyd, the Horde expedition teams stayed and helped, at least for the first few weeks. Most of them headed out to explore and evaluate other settlement sites afterward. Derek and a few others stuck around.

  Nadia had thrown herself into the work with abandon. After having spent most of her career in St. Louis, she missed the simplicity of working the fields on her parents’ farm. Growing crops in the hydroponics bays was like a return to her childhood. She liked imagining her parents making a new home for themselves out here, once Isadora greenlit their release from cryo. Nadia wondered if they’d found Calimor’s first mosque.

  She found it hard to pull herself away for her scheduled meeting with the New Arcena mayor. The man’s name was Morris Oxatur: a former construction team boss from Atlanta. They had never met in their past lives, although the construction firm Morris worked for had once contracted with Nadia’s resettlement agency to build new homes for immigrants coming to the United States.

  The man himself was portly and jovial, his dark face mostly devoid of hair save for a thick mustache of intertwining black and grey hairs. “Nadia!” he said, opening his arms in a welcoming gesture as the door to his office swished open. She poured herself a cup of coffee and sat down on the other side of Morris’ desk.

  It was a strange return to her life from right after the Preserver’s computer had brought her out of cryo: a haze of unending meetings over coffee. And now here she was, back to the past. At least Russ wasn’t here to bark like some mad dog.

  “You look good,” Nadia said. Morris had, so far, avoided Isadora’s unfortunate fate of getting sunken cheeks and tired, red eyes only weeks into his new job. “How are you holding up?”

  Morris folded his large hands over each other and sat forward in his chair. A moment of doubt flickered across his eyes. The same kind Nadia had seen in Isadora, Russ, and Vincent plenty of times, and the same kind she knew they’d all seen in her. None of them was truly prepared for what the universe had thrown at them.

  “To be honest, I’m still trying to figure out why you all settled on me,” Morris said with a laugh. His voice was booming and sonorous. A great choice for someone whose speeches were expected to electrify hundreds—hopefully thousands, someday—Nadia thought. “I’m sure you could have found people with actual government experience frozen in those damn pods.”

  “Because this isn’t really a government,” Nadia said. “Not yet, at least.” The decision had mostly come down to Isadora, although Nadia, Vincent, and Russ had all given input based on Vincent’s skill set database. Morris ended up being Nadia, Vincent, and Isadora’s first pick. Russ had wanted someone with military experience. Typical.

  “True enough,” Morris mused. “I guess the job’s basically the same as my old construction gig: organizing work teams, coordinating shifts, making sure everyone is happy enough to stay at it…”

  “Sounds like we knew what we were doing when we picked you,” Nadia grinned. She had been ripped from her sleeping pod with only an emotionless computer to comfort her. She resolved to do for her successors what had been denied to her.

  “Well, no one’s revolted yet, so I’d say I’m at least keeping my head above water,” Morris said. “And I guess if they picked as well as they did with you—”

  “—oh, stop. I just assembled a good team.”

  Nadia’s thoughts turned to the soldiers Russ had assigned to her. In her first meeting with Morris three weeks earlier, she had expressed her hope that someday, the new mayor could assign some of his workers to start construction on a pair of holo-statues in honor of Mason and Gage’s sacrifices. “Maybe a commemorative plaque?” Morris had countered, wincing. It was a compromise Nadia could live with.

  “An eye for talent is a skill in itself,” Morris said. “But you’re being modest. What you achieved here is a damn miracle.”

  The compliment took her by surprise. She had spent so many years obsessed with intangible ideals like justice, fairness, or integrity. It felt strange to accept the congratulations of another person directed toward her personally. To feel like she deserved it, even.

  But Nadia also refused to let herself dwell on her self-satisfaction for too long. She wouldn’t let herself become complacent, nor rest on her laurels. It was astounding that they had brought a hundred settlers out of cryo. But that represented barely a dent in the millions still aboard the Preserver.

  “But despite how much you’ve accomplished, I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask you to go even further,” Morris said, his voice lowering in its severity.

  “Of course,” Nadia blurted out immediately.

  “To be honest, I’m not sure we can operate at full efficiency while we’re only focusing on food. I’ve been poring over the primers and talking to your friend Boyd, and they all say the same thing: Calimor isn’t meant to grow food. It’s all about spices.

  “Right now, everyone’s working nearly every day, and their hours are longer than I feel comfortable assigning. And we’re still reliant on those nutra bars for subsistence needs. The surplus we’ve sent back to the Preserver is just a trickle.”

  “What we need is trade,” Nadia said. Boyd had told her as much: back when his people had lived on Calimor, they hadn’t even produced food at subsistence levels. It just didn’t make sense to use up all of their hydroponics bays on food when spices—nutmeg, cloves, coriander, turmeric, cardamom, and others—took less land to grow and fetched a much higher price on the solar market.

  “Bingo. But I can’t just have us start growing spices right now. We’re trapped by our own food needs. And hydroponics facilities are a limited resource on Calimor.”

  “So what we need is trade, right now,” Nadia said.

  Morris chuckled. “That’s more or less what I’m saying.”

  Nadia thought about the problem more. The issue was the same as when it had just been her, Isadora, Vincent, and Russ aboard the Preserver: they had no real resources to trade, especially if the sum of the surplus food grown in New Arcena was barely keeping the skeleton crew on the Preserver afloat.

  She doubted she’d be able to convince a board of Union banking executives to throw money at their efforts. Trade with the Union was less than feasible, since high shipping costs from the core worlds meant higher transaction fees than they could pay at this point. And, thanks to her actions earlier, she had made enemies with the Junta. That again left her with only a single option.

  “I’ve been thinking a lot about these Horde folks you partnered up with,” Morris said. Great minds, Nadia thought. “A lot of people here don’t trust them. The primers all said they’re the boogeymen of the outer rim. But me, I’m inclined not to look a gift horse in the mouth.”

  “So far, you’re the only one who approves,” Nadia said. Including Boyd, she didn’t add.

  “I don’t just approve. I say we lean on that. For whatever reason, they went well out of their way to help us get set up here. So either they’re unbelievably altruistic, and they’ll start sending us the food we need regardless...or they have some kind of interest here. If we can find out what that interest is, maybe we can squeeze them to set up a trading network with us.”

  “Derek alluded to the Horde’s interest in expansion,” Nadia recalled. “But he said their allchief—the Horde leader—would know more about it. Maybe we can come to an agreement to give them one of the dome plantations nearby as a base for their raiding parties.”

  In truth, the skeptics could be right about the Horde, and their fledgling cooperation could all be a ruse that the Horde was using to exploit Nadia and her people. Or worse. But Nadia had always believed that accepting and internalizing the possibilit
ies and limits of those around you was an obstacle to any real kind of breakthrough. And with her people’s hopes of a sustainable settlement project hanging by a thread, anything less than a breakthrough just meant collapse. Nadia had always been willing to take the chances that others couldn’t or wouldn’t.

  The gears in her head started turning. If she wanted to discover what the Horde wanted—why they had been willing to fight to help Nadia and her people secure their place on Calimor—she had to go talk to the head of their entire organization. That meant a trip to the farthest planet from the Natonus sun.

  “You’re asking me to go to Ikkren,” she said.

  A big grin spread across Morris’ face. “I’m asking you to go to Ikkren.”

  . . .

  After Nadia told him the news, Boyd’s head had been resting in his palm for a full half-minute. “You know, I read a story once about how they skinned and ate some outsider who landed there, all the way back in the 2380s,” he said at last.

  They were on board the Exemplar, standing at the rear of the ship’s cockpit. They had moved their vessel to a small landing pad outside the settlement to make room in the hangar bays for the Preserver’s shuttles. As much as it delighted Nadia to walk around the settlement, there was something special about returning to the Exemplar at the end of the day.

  “I’m surprised you’re still skeptical of them,” Nadia said, crossing her arms. “Derek’s raiders did so much to help get New Arcena ready for when the rest of my people arrived. And without them, I dunno if our plan to secure the power grid would have even worked.”

  Boyd nodded. “I know you’re being logical, but it’s hard to forget the fears I had growing up. That we all had. And they could still have an agenda we don’t know about. They’ve been bogged down with the Junta for years, but now they have an in...if they wanted to seize New Arcena, they could do it in a heartbeat. Or they might be planning on using us as a buffer between them and Enther. Or—”