Stars & Empire: 10 Galactic Tales Read online

  “We’ll have to get that catheter out later,” she said as she typed on the screen on the wall of his pod. When she finished, she started pulling him by his arm to get him moving.

  “I…”

  “Jed. Don’t talk. You’re in danger. We’re all in danger. We have to get out of here. Just do what I say and don’t ask questions, okay?”

  He stared at her, not knowing what he should think or do.

  Dawn put a finger in his face. “If we’re still standing here in two minutes, you will be arrested and you will never, ever make it to the AZ. Do you understand me?”

  Jed blinked.

  “I am the only hope you have of getting out of here and getting home. So put on your shoes and let’s go!”

  He struggled to pull his shoes on his feet, and Dawn didn’t give him enough time to lace them up. She pulled him by his arm and pushed him ahead of her until his feet started to cooperate with his brain. Pins and needles in his legs, arms, hands and feet gave him the first signs that life was returning to his extremities. Dawn continued to push and pull him, but after a few steps, he stopped and bent over at the waist. A deep, diaphragmatic cough shook him to his core, and a blackish-gray, gelatinous mass worked its way out of his lungs and mouth and was deposited on the floor.

  “That’s actually not uncommon,” Dawn said, then reasserted herself by pulling him by both his arm and shoulder. He picked up the pace and soon his legs were carrying him along without Dawn having to do most of the work.

  “Medical,” he said through another cough.

  “What?” Dawn replied.

  “I’m supposed to stop in Medical.” He pulled up as if to stop, but Dawn grabbed him again, shaking her head.

  “If you stop at Medical, you’ll never be a free man again. Do you understand me? We have to get out of here!”

  They exited the long tunnel that led from the ship to the gates and concourse. As they hustled along, Jed noticed that the terminal looked identical to the one in Columbia, where he’d met Dawn before flying to West Texas. Identical. Only older. As they ran, he noticed that the gate area was unmanned, and the whole facility gave off the impression that it was nearly, but not quite, abandoned. It was as if a war were raging in and around the place, and only a few functions still remained. Some lights hung by wires overhead, and here and there the bench seats were pushed out of line or were turned over completely.

  Jed looked over his shoulder as they ran, and he noticed the sign that hung at a crooked angle over the counter at the gate.

  Gate 13.

  They ran past where, back in Columbia—back on Earth—he’d purchased the soup and sandwich, but there was no vending machine in this terminal.

  ****

  He was beginning to breathe heavily from the exertion, and was still struggling with his equilibrium. Dawn kept a hand on his shoulder to steady him as they ran. They rounded another corner, and in the distance Jed could see the check-in area, and beyond that, the entry doors. He was shocked at how similar this terminal was to the one back on Earth. Maybe they had the same people build it, he thought.

  Dawn pulled him into a small administrative alcove, and he bent over to put his hands on his knees and draw in deep breaths of the stale air. Alien air. I’m on another planet, he thought. I guess I’m the alien, though.

  “I hope you guys aren’t planning on blowing this popsicle stand without me,” a voice said, and Dawn snapped to attention.

  The man whose voice they heard was just rounding the corner to enter the alcove when Dawn stepped forward and drove her elbow surprisingly hard into the man’s face.

  The man was big. Very big. He dropped to one knee and his hand came up to his face. Dawn braced herself against the wall and kicked hard at his head, but this time he was ready and he caught her leg and tossed her easily to the ground.

  “What is wrong with you, lady?” the man said. He was bleeding from his nose, and his eyes narrowed as he tried to focus through his blurry vision. When his hand dropped from his face, Jed recognized him. It was Jerry Rios.

  Dawn was back on her feet and Jed could tell that she was ready to resume her attack, but he stepped in between her and Jerry and put his hands up, palms out, to convince her to stop.

  “This is my friend,” he said. “This is Jerry. He was arrested at the same time I was back in West Texas.”

  Dawn lowered her hands and rolled her eyes. She exhaled deeply, pursed her lips and shook her head before stepping past both Jed and Jerry to sneak a look back down the concourse to see if anyone was coming or had seen them.

  “You guys were never in West Texas,” she said. “Are you ready?”

  -o0o-

  Dawn spoke matter-of-factly, with no hesitation or indication that she might have second thoughts. “Okay, from here on in we walk. Do not run. Walk quickly and act like you belong here.” As she talked, Dawn examined the flat muscled area above her elbow that she’d used to hit Jerry in the face. Seeing that there were no lacerations, she rubbed it before looking back up. Jerry watched her do this and snarled as he checked his own nose to see if it was broken.

  “Sorry about that,” Dawn said.

  “Sure,” Jerry replied.

  “Okay, pay attention,” she continued. “If anyone says anything to you or asks you to stop, you keep walking. Mutter something like you don’t understand them, but keep walking. We’re looking for a man named Donavan. Do not stop until we run into Donavan. Any other name on the tag, I don’t care who it is, you do not stop! Got it?”

  “Donavan,” Jerry said. “Got it.”

  Before Jed could say “Got it,” which he dearly wanted to say, Dawn had already turned the corner and was gone. Jerry and Jed had to walk hurriedly to catch up with her.

  “We’re going to turn left up here,” she said, “then another quick left through a doorway. Someone will probably say something to us there, but keep walking.”

  “How do you know all of this?” Jed asked.

  “I’ve been here before.”

  They turned to the left, and then Dawn headed immediately toward a door marked Staff Only. The door had a push bar release, and just as Dawn punched open the door, Jed heard a voice to his right say “Wait a minute!” Jed scampered through the door and saw that Dawn and Jerry had turned right after entering the hallway, and were walking at a fast clip toward another distant door.

  Jed heard the door swing open behind him, then footsteps. Voices, one male and one female, shouted, “Sir! Sir! I need you to stop!” Jed didn’t stop. He caught up with Jerry and Dawn and he could hear the footfalls behind him speeding up and they were catching him just as the trio of travelers reached the far door.

  “Sir! All of you! All three of you! We’re going to need you to stop and come back to the desk!”

  A hand reached up and grabbed Jed by the shoulder just as the door swung open and a uniformed man stepped through. Donavan was on the man’s nametag.

  Donavan recognized Dawn and looked past Jed toward the two staff members who had just reached him.

  “Okay, you two. Back to work. I’ll take care of this. Thank you for your diligence,” Donavan said with authority.

  “But sir!”

  “Back to work. I’ll take care of this.”

  Before Jed could fully process what was going on, the three had been shuffled past the second door and they were walking through a heavily fortified parking lot toward a waiting Transport Authority minivan.

  -o0o-

  “You barely made it, Dawn,” Donavan said. He guided the vehicle through a maze of heavy concrete barricades, and Jed could hear distant explosions. Fantastic beams of light sped by overhead like ethereal shots fired from nearby cannon, and when the explosions were close, the ground would shake, and night turned into day all around them. “And I was expecting two of you, not three. This’ll cost you more.”

  “How much more?” Dawn asked.

  “I don’t know. Seven total.”

  “Seven hundred thousand unile
ts? Have you lost your mind?”

  “I could take you back and you can work it out with Transport … if that’s what you want.”

  Dawn was quiet for a few beats. “We’ll make it work … somehow,” she replied.

  An explosion off to the right, on the other side of the concrete barricade, shook the van violently. Jed looked at Jerry, and with their eyes they asked one another, What have we gotten into?

  “How many unilets do you have left?” Dawn asked Jed under her breath.

  “Let me see,” he said. “Five hundred ninety-eight thousand … minus the one hundred thousand from the flight … Four hundred ninety eight thousand. And that will make me completely broke.”

  “We’re all broke,” Dawn whispered to him. Then she gestured toward Donavan. “He just doesn’t know that unis will be worthless real soon.”

  “I have just a bit over one hundred thousand unis,” Jerry added.

  Dawn reached forward and tapped Donavan on the shoulder. “Six!” she said loudly. “We have six. You’ll have to take that, Donavan. It’s all we can get.”

  “Six? You’re kidding me, right? The price was three for one person, and you want me to move three people for six? What do you think this is, some cut-rate BICE shop?”

  “They’ll only have to cut two of us, Donavan. The Plain kid doesn’t have an implant.”

  “I only have a TRID, not a BICE,” Jerry added. He looked at Jed and shrugged. He didn’t know if it would help in the negotiations, but it couldn’t hurt.

  Donavan shook his head and pounded the console with his hand.

  “Unbelievable. So now you have me doing discount hack work! Okay. Okay. Listen, lady. I’m going to do it, but you owe me, do you hear me, Dawn? You owe me big!”

  “Okay! Sheesh. Settle down, Donavan. You’re making six for driving us a few blocks. Think of it that way.”

  This little response inflamed Donavan all the more. “Driving you a few blocks? Driving you a few blocks? Is that what you think this is? I just secured three criminals from a secure facility in the middle of a major enemy offensive … all at the risk of my own neck, don’t you know!” He exhaled loudly and struck the console again with the flat of his hand. “Driving you a few blocks! Wow!” He turned to Dawn and pointed at her. “You owe me big, Dawn. Big!”

  Dawn rolled her eyes and shook her head.

  “Yes, Donavan. I owe you big. Are we there yet?”

  CHAPTER 7: New Pennsylvania

  Indeed, Dawn did owe Donavan. She owed him even more after they arrived at the underground BICE chop shop, and Dawn discovered that Jed had hidden the gold coin in his pod. This little fact triggered another loud argument between Dawn and Donavan. In the end, after Dawn admitted that this time, she really, really, really owed him big-time, Donavan agreed to go back to the station for the coin. Jed told him precisely where it was, and Donavan wrote down the pod number on a piece of paper so he could remember it.

  There was one last argument when Dawn told Donavan that she wasn’t going to pay him the six hundred thousand unis until he returned with the coin, but this time the hostility storm blew in fast and didn’t last long. Jed heard Donavan curse under his breath as he left.

  Dawn went under the knife first. Removing a BICE was a complicated but minor operation, and they only used some form of local anesthetic. Jed and Jerry sat against a far wall, and the operation took place in the middle of an expansive room and not in any kind of specialty operating theater. A slice was made along the hairline at the rear of the neck, and the BICE unit was removed with practiced precision. They’ve done this before, Jed noted.

  Jed and Jerry talked during Dawn’s operation, but there wasn’t too much they could say. All they had were questions, and there weren’t many answers to those questions available to them. They were both just glad to be alive, and no matter how bad it was here, they both agreed that it had to be better than if they’d been sent to Oklahoma. At least now they had a lifeline, however tentative it might be.

  Jerry went to the operating table next, but before he did, Dawn instructed him on how to transfer the unis from his TRID to Jed’s wristband. Once the unis were on the band, Jerry headed to the table and Dawn filled Jed in on some of the things that were happening—or at least, what he could expect to happen next. TRID removal was a lot easier than removing a BICE, Dawn told him, and it wasn’t nearly as dangerous. Being caught without a TRID was what was dangerous.

  She told Jed that she hadn’t expected to come on this trip, even right up to the moment when she’d given him the note and the coin. Coming along was a last-minute exigency that she’d have to explain in greater detail later.

  They needed the gold to get into the Amish Zone. Getting to the AZ meant that they would have to travel safely through the battle that currently raged all around them in this new world, and there was only one man Dawn knew who could accomplish such a thing. That man was her cousin. Pook Rayburn.

  -o0o-

  A harrowing walk of a few blocks through a darkened city under siege brought them to Pook’s place of business. From all appearances, Merrill’s Grocery Supply was mostly a bombed-out shell of its former self. Broken crates of canned and packaged groceries and kitchen supplies were scattered helter-skelter around the place, and Jed was surprised when they found Pook Rayburn himself still working at his desk in his second-floor office.

  “What in the world happened here?” Dawn asked, as she gave her cousin a hug.

  “Which world?” Pook replied with a wink. “We happened here. We—that is, the resistance—happened. It’s a major offensive. This is the closest they’ve ever come to the City. I barely learned about it in time to warn you. I’m glad you made the trip. There probably won’t be any more after yours.”

  “It’s that bad?”

  “For now it is.” Pook placed a file he’d been looking at back on his desk and sat down, indicating that the rest of them should sit down too.

  Jed was surprised to notice that there were no computers, no electronic devices anywhere to be seen. Jerry must have noticed the same thing, because he leaned over to Jed and whispered to him. “Apparently the resistance is purely analog … like you folks in the Amish!”

  Pook overheard the jest and smiled. “All of this,” he pointed to the paperwork and files on his desk, “this all has to do with my legitimate business. Everything else, I keep up here,” he said, pointing to his head. “Anything digital can be traced and tracked. A lot of things that are not digital can be traced and tracked. We try to avoid leaving a signature anywhere, but…” He hesitated a moment before speaking again. “ … But as this war develops, it seems that there are no guarantees about anything. I suppose uncertainty is always the product of any war…” Pook looked up and appeared to decide against whatever it was he had been going to say.

  “How did the trip go?” Pook asked.

  “Not bad when you consider how bad it could have been,” Dawn said with a sigh. “Things have obviously gone downhill since I was here last. The biggest road bump was when Jed here and his new friend Jerry got pinched by Transport for insurrectionist conversations during their holo-trip.”

  Pook looked at Jed and nodded his approval, as if he were impressed. Jed responded silently by pointing at Jerry.

  “That’s a story you’ll have to tell me later.” Pook looked at his cousin. “Do you have the gold to get yourself into the AZ?”

  “Donavan had to go back and get it from the station.”

  “Donavan?” Pook snorted with obvious dissatisfaction.

  “Jed thought he was busted, and he hid the gold in the seat of his pod.”

  Pook nodded again. “Okay … well … Jed here is a thinker. I’ll give him that, for sure. How do we know Donavan won’t skedaddle with the gold?”

  “I told him I wasn’t paying for the exfil or the BICE removal until he shows up with the gold.”

  “Clever of you. Not so much of him. Doesn’t he know that unis are basically worthless?”

&
nbsp; “Apparently not.”

  “Well let’s hope he gets here with the gold before he finds out,” Pook said with a wink. He stood up and walked toward the door. “We’ll have to go next door to the antique shop, that’s where I keep the Transport forms for the AZ.”

  -o0o-

  Merrill’s Antique Shoppe had been spared most of the damage from the recent battles that the grocery supply building had suffered. Pook unlocked the door with an old-fashioned metal key, and as they walked in, only a faint blue-grey light from the streetlamps filtered into the darkened building, casting a ghostly hue on the items in the shop.

  Without even being able to see much of it, the old building gave Jed a brief feeling of comfort. He felt like he was in one of the ancient buildings on his family’s farm back on Earth. Everything in the building was old—and for Jed, strangely, it was the first time he’d felt safe since he’d left the Amish Zone back home. Here he was on a planet in a completely different solar system, and everything around him looked vaguely familiar.

  Pook pulled some heavy blanket curtains down over the glass windows in the storefront, leaving them in almost perfect darkness. Then he walked through the store, and as he did he paused occasionally to light some fuel-burning lanterns that hung from wrought-iron hooks throughout the building. Jed couldn’t say what kind of fuel the lanterns burned, but in his melancholic reverie he could swear that it smelled just like kerosene. A golden glow flooded the store as Pook lit the last lantern.

  “A lot of this stuff might look really familiar to you, Jed,” Pook said, almost as if he sensed what Jed was feeling. “We buy a lot of old junk on our regular trips to the Amish Zone. People in the City like Amish stuff for some reason. They’ll hang just about anything Amish on their walls. I sold a six-inch piece of rope the other day for a thousand unis.” He shook his head and let out a little giggle. “Of course, now that unis are worthless, maybe I was the one who got the short end of that deal. Seemed good for me at the time, though.”

  “The paperwork?” Dawn asked. To Jed, Dawn now seemed like she was in a hurry. Like she had somewhere else to be.