Two Against the Stars Read online

  TWO AGAINST THE STARS

  By

  Veronica Scott

  Copyright 2017 by Jean D. Walker

  This book is a work of fiction. The names, places, characters and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locales or organizations is entirely coincidental.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned or distributed in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the author except in the case of brief quotation embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  Cover Art by Fiona Jayde

  DEDICATION

  To my daughters, Valerie and Elizabeth;

  my brother, David and my best friend, Daniel,

  for all their encouragement and support!

  And to Pauline – hugs!

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Julie C and The E-book Formatting Fairies!

  CHAPTER ONE

  Carialle rubbed her right wrist where the cuff was chafing the skin and curled tighter against the headboard, watching Dobkin as he frantically worked the vidcoms, in between taking hits of feelgood.

  Her Amarotu Combine handler threw his personal AI against the wall and cursed in three languages. “Where the seven hells is everyone?” Rising from the desk chair, he paced around the cheap hotel room as he ran one hand through his greasy hair. “It’s like they all disappeared or fell into a black hole.”

  She noted with interest how unsteady his gait was and the way his words were beginning to slur. Today might be her chance to escape. Certainly this job hadn’t gone like any of their others, beginning with the moment she first roused from cryo sleep imprisonment, nauseous and dizzy, to find herself in a cargo warehouse alone with Dobkin. No local contact had met him, which was unheard of. Their team of two came in to do a task and depart the planet just as rapidly, not to flounder on their own. Use of Carialle’s time and powers cost the customers a fortune so a local liaison was required to meet them and expedite the arrangements.

  At the warehouse, Dobkin had gotten her out of the concealed cryo chamber, released her shackles, seeming glad of her company for once. He was plainly rattled if he was being nice to her. He sealed the cargo crate where she’d been concealed with a thump revealing the state of his emotions. For an hour he’d prowled the private cargo office the Combine maintained, making fruitless calls, before abruptly deciding to rent a ground car, find a cheap hotel and regroup. Now here she and her handler sat, in a room smelling of harsh disinfectants and stale smoke, hours later and still no wiser.

  Carialle looked with distaste at the serving of greasy food he’d given her after fastening her handcuff to the bed. Her stomach roiled after a few bites. With her free hand she pushed the now-congealed offering further away.

  Dobkin pulled a bottle of cheap whiskey from his pack and took a hefty swig just as the AI pinged for an incoming call. Stumbling, he retrieved the unit and accepted the comlink. “At last. Edmorad, where have you been? Why didn’t anyone meet me at the spaceport? Time is money where these services are involved.”

  “It’s a mess, man. No one knows exactly what’s going on. Where the seven hells have you been, not to have heard the news?” The voice on the other end of the call was nearly hysterical and so loud Carialle heard the words easily.

  “The Combine booked us on a slow freighter so I’ve been in transit until today.” Shaking his head, Dobkin clenched his fingers tighter on the AI unit. “Never mind my itinerary, what’s happened?”

  “Well for starters your base on Devir Six was blown up by the SCIA. Must have been right after you left. Then the rumor is the cops hit the big overlords’ secret meeting, wherever they were. Not secret enough obviously. Everyone left has gone to ground, securely under cover. I suggest you do the same. No one’s in charge right now and the situation is way out of control, every sentient for himself. Find a safe den and stay there. Good luck.” With a click the link closed and no one answered when Dobkin tried to call back.

  He sank onto the desk chair, swigging the alcoholic beverage straight from the container absent mindedly.

  Carialle tried to piece together the fragments of information, based on her limited knowledge of the Sectors. If the base on Devir Six was gone, taken off the board by the Sectors Criminal Investigation Agency, then the rest of her people were gone as well. No one left to be a hostage for my good behavior. She’d had no close friends there, no loved ones, but sorrow for those who’d died choked her breathing and brought tears to her eyes. Impatiently she swiped the moisture away with her free hand. She had to concentrate on Dobkin, because her life depended on his whim.

  He was eyeing her now. “Well, this is a shitstorm but at least I’m left with an ace.” He strolled to the bed, staggering as he walked. Fingering her hair while she shrank against the pillows, he said, “You’re a high value asset in anyone’s game and now you’re all mine. I just may come out of this on top. This could be Lan Dobkin’s lucky day. Go freelance, set my own terms.” Relishing the visions he was contemplating, he took another drink.

  Wandering to the desk again, Dobkin selected a handful of colorful feelgood tabs from his stash and washed them down with a generous amount of the whiskey.

  For the thousandth time, Carialle wished her power worked on Dobkin. As she understood matters, her ability affected 95% of humans and humanoids, but in certain rare sentients there was a genetic quirk shielding them from her use of empathy. The Combine had combed their ranks for men and women with the trait, to become the handlers for their new slaves.

  Dobkin took another drink and set the bottle precariously close to the edge of the desk. Rising, he fumbled with the fastening of his trousers. “Gotta answer nature’s call,” he said, walking a crooked line to the small bathroom, bumping into the desk and the bureau as he proceeded.

  The light came on in the tiny space and a moment later, Carialle heard a thud and a groan. “Dobkin?”

  No answer.

  She waited, counting to one hundred, and called his name a second time. No response, not even a groan.

  Heart pounding, she turned to the old fashioned headboard, which featured elaborate knobs at the top of each post, including the one her wrist was chained to. She knew Dobkin hadn’t noticed since he’d been well on the way to literally falling down drunk, but the ornate knobs were threaded onto the posts. Now she spun the orb atop the post holding her cuff until the decorative piece fell to the floor with a clunk. Raising her arm to bring the anchor cuff up and over the top of the post, she slid off the bed. Freezing in place like a terrified woods creature, holding her breath, she gazed in the direction of the bathroom. It’s now or never. Grabbing the abandoned bottle to use as a weapon, she crept toward the half open door, only to stop short of the threshold with a gasp.

  Her handler lay sprawled on the cheap imitation tile floor, a pool of blood spreading from the back of his head. He’d evidently fallen or passed out from the drugs he’d done, striking his head on the commode as he toppled. His sporadic breathing was labored and halted on a harsh exhale even as she stared at him. His head lolled to the side and his entire body went limp.

  Her heightened senses confirmed Dobkin’s lifeforce had fled.

  The handler’s death left her numb. He’d never assaulted her, nor beaten her, as some of the other handlers did with their charges, but he’d been casually cruel since they met. He clearly didn’t see her as a person in her own right. Indeed, not as anything but a tool to use for the Combine’s profit and his own advancement.

  “I’m not going to be used for anyone else’s purposes ever again,” she said.

  Setting the bot
tle aside, Carialle swallowed hard and forced herself to go through his pockets, snagging the AI control for her deadly explosive-laden necklace, the key to the handcuffs and his ID and credit tag. Her hands were shaking so hard it took her three tries to release the shackle around her wrist but then she pushed the button on the AI to unclasp the deadly golden necklace – another incentive for good behavior the Combine forced their empathic slaves to wear. Weeping, she caught the gaudy pendant as it fell away from her neck.

  “Four years and how many deaths, you bastards?” She took a deep breath to quell her rising hysteria. No time to waste. Struck by a grimly amusing idea, she locked the explosive device around Dobkin’s neck. It wasn’t real gold anyway and the gems were also fake, so she couldn’t hope to sell it for any credits. Let whoever came to investigate figure out the mystery.

  Carialle unfastened a gaudy, retro timepiece from his wrist and sidled away. It took her a few moments in the bedroom to dump out the contents of his small pack, snatching whatever might be useful and leaving the rest on the bed. She contemplated the small hand weapon for a long moment. She’d no idea how to use it but the allure of possessing a means of defending herself against those immune to her power was impossible to resist. Grabbing the shiny mini blaster, she hid it at the bottom of the pack and sealed the seams.

  She straightened her spine, took a deep breath and checked the mirror to be sure there was no blood on her drab gray tunic, leggings or shoes. She hastened to the door and stepped into the hall, closing the portal behind her, keying the advisory to Do Not Disturb.

  Her emotions were running on overdrive, with adrenaline, disbelief and a wild joy mixing to give her the shakes. She forced herself to walk slowly through the corridor to the gravlift and once in the lobby to duck out a side door and head away from the hotel at a measured pace. She wanted to run as fast as she could but the key to a successful escape was appearing as if she belonged on this street, as if everything was normal. Although of course there were no other sentients of her own race in the throngs of pedestrians, she observed many aliens mixed with the Terran-descent humans in the crowd. No one would give her a second glance. She wouldn’t stand out too much, although her hair was distinctive in its fernlike qualities. Nothing I can do— buy a scarf maybe. She stopped at a credit machine and withdrew as much as she could from Dobkin’s account, thanking her good fortune people on this planet apparently still dealt with actual money. She’d watched him perform this transaction enough times to know how he accessed his resources. Regretfully she tossed his credit tag into the nearest waste disposal bin, where it would be vaporized with all the other trash. The risk of being tracked was too high to use it again.

  Walking onward, she found a mass transit stop and boarded the first vehicle to arrive. She didn’t care where it took her as long as she was further away from where she’d last been seen with the Combine handler.

  Carialle rode the line all day, well into the afternoon, working her way into seedier and more rundown portions of the city. Fortunately the planet was a Sector Hub, so there was a diverse mix of humans and humanoids throughout the city, which made her appearance unremarkable. True, there were no others exactly like her—how could there be, when her home planet lay far away, outside the Sectors in enemy territory? But neither did she stand out, even this far away from the spaceport. She made one stop, to sell Dobkin’s wrist chrono for a few credits at a pawn shop, to add to her stockpile, after which she took another transit vehicle going in the opposite direction.

  Eventually she got off the transit line and walked deeper into the uninviting area she’d chosen. No stranger to the poor, hardscrabble side of life, she wasn’t afraid to venture into the slums. She’d find her way somehow and her power to influence others would protect her. Pausing to watch the activity at a line of street vendors, she worked out what the proper amount of credits must be and then strolled over to a cart whose offerings smelled delicious. Taking the plate of gravy-covered meat, noodles and crisp vegetables, plus a drink, she sat on a bench in the small park nearby, among crowds of other people eating their early dinner or late lunch. The trees and flowers were sparse, tired-looking, but she absorbed energy anyway. Thank Thuun this planet was blessed with bountiful plant life.

  After finishing her meal, surprised at how healthy her appetite was after the traumatic events of the day, she wandered through the area, which boasted small shops with the proprietors’ living quarters above. The neighborhood was crowded and lively with street musicians playing for credits. Carialle kept her eyes open for any signs of Combine activity but detected none. Oh, there were scammers and pickpockets, but when she touched them lightly with her highly attuned senses, the petty crooks had no thought of the Combine.

  It doesn’t mean they wouldn’t sell me out in a heartbeat, but at least for now they pose no threat.

  Reassured she’d made a good choice, she strolled further, observing the mix of older, poorly maintained buildings and the newer, refurbished places. Obviously a neighborhood in transition but not too far into becoming more prosperous territory yet. She encountered no police or authorities of any kind, which for her was just as reassuring as not seeing Combine enforcers. Who could predict how the mysterious authorities would view what she’d done as a Combine tool? And she’d probably be suspected of killing Dobkin, which was another huge problem.

  High in the azure sky, the glint of an ascending spacecraft drew her attention for a moment. Averting her gaze, she blinked away tears. This planet was going to be her home for the rest of her life. Being without official papers locked her onto the surface of this world. She doubted she’d ever be able to afford fake ID good enough to board a spaceship openly. And where would I go anyway?

  Deciding her first priority was a place to live, she was delighted to see a rooms-for-rent sign on a gray building a few blocks to the south of the marketplace square. She keyed the signal button on the gate.

  “Yes?” The voice was querulous.

  “I’d like to ask about renting a room.”

  “First week’s rent in advance, cash money only, no credit.”

  Carialle smiled. Does the woman think I was born yesterday? “I need to see the room first.”

  “Fair enough. I’ll be right down.”

  Carialle stepped into a patch of shade and waited. Eventually the old fashioned portal creaked open and she blinked at the elderly figure who peered out at her. Short, with white hair in intricate braids, the woman wore floating multicolor robes that reminded Carialle of how her visualization of the colors of other people’s emotions appeared in her mind’s eye. Belatedly she scanned the woman even as they shook hands and introduced themselves. She applied influence to make Mrs. Galaganos want to help her.

  “I’ve recently arrived in the area and I need a place to stay,” she said.

  “We have a lot of turnover in the building, doesn’t bother me as long as the rent’s paid.” The owner shrugged. “No refunds if a tenant leaves without adequate notice. City with a big spaceport like ours has, people are always coming and going. Not my business. Come inside and let me show you the apartment,” the landlady said, drawing Carialle across the threshold.

  She stopped, transfixed by the lush garden growing in the apartment building’s hidden courtyard. Riotous blooms and vines were everywhere, accented by small trees, with a large shade tree in the center. A fountain burbled off to the left, supplying water to a fish pond beside it. Carialle felt her soul replenishing itself in the presence of so much carefully nurtured nature. The park had been pleasant but underwhelming. This was a true oasis.

  Obviously pleased by her reaction, Mrs. Galaganos was grinning. “I like to garden.”

  “So I see. I could help, if I lived here.” Drawn by the scent she went to the nearest flowering bush and bent to inhale a delicious whiff of deep perfume. “I’m quite good with plants.”

  “Point in your favor. The apartment is over this way.” The elderly woman led her through the garden to a gaily paint
ed door, which she keyed open, before preceding Carialle into the small unit. “Not much—a bedroom, bathroom, kitchenette and sitting area.”

  The space was clean and neat, the furniture battered but sturdy, and Carialle was astonished how much she wanted to call it her own, at least for a while. The cell on Devir 6 was a featureless cubicle with no window and a slab to sleep on. “How much?”

  The landlady mentioned a number and added a security deposit whose size had Carialle swallowing hard. Her backpack contained enough credits for one month’s lodging, with a bit left over for food. But to walk away from this place and the garden outside was impossible. “I’ll take it.”

  “Good. Come upstairs to my place and we’ll sign the lease.”

  “I’m not sure how long I’ll be in the area. Can I stay month to month? No lease?” Carialle made her tone casual. “The less paperwork the better, right? Keep life simple.”

  Eyeing her up and down, the woman took a long time to nod her agreement. Carialle added to the pressure she was placing on Galaganos’s innate desire to be helpful and to nurture others, and suppressed the landlady’s natural curiosity as much as she dared. Oblivious to the emotional manipulation, the woman fell in with Carialle’s desire for a temporary home. “All right, credits in advance, like I said.”

  Carialle set her pack on the sidewalk and retrieved the funds, counting out the agreed upon amount and restoring the pitiful remainder to safety. Good thing I sold Dobkin’s chrono.

  Moving faster than her wizened appearance suggested would be possible, Mrs. Galaganos scooped the credits into a pocket on her voluminous dress and hesitated. “Will you need a job by any chance?”

  “Yes, actually, now that you ask, I do, but I don’t have any papers.”

  “Few in this area are documented.” Mrs. Galaganos chuckled as she pulled a cookie from another pocket and nibbled on the frosted edge. “Part of the appeal of this section of town, live and let live. Stay out of trouble, no one’ll give you a hassle.” She waggled a finger at Carialle. “No bringing anyone into my building, mind you. I run a clean establishment. I don’t rent by the hour, if you follow me.”