Astra: Synchronicity (11 page)

"I'm sorry to hear that. No one deserves to
die that way."

"When I got my start at the Academy, our
class was shown a video of a psion feeding. The sight was so
gruesome I had nightmares for a month afterwards. And the damned
mind-raper who did it is probably still out there somewhere. I have
got to believe there's a fate worse than death waiting for those
people."

She furrowed her brow. "What about the
others, the ones who choose not to kill and just want a normal
life?"

Her blatant naïveté annoyed him. "There are
no innocent psions. The fact that some are ashamed to be psions
only proves that point."

"And for that they deserve to die?"

"I just wish all of this psionic criminal
testing had come along sooner. Then they would've caught the psions
that abused their powers before it became so us-versus-them. I'd
always been indifferent toward psions. I didn't bother them and
they didn't bother me. It's funny how one twist of fate can change
someone."

Amii smiled. "Kind of like something falling
off a shelf and hitting me in the head?"

The captain allowed himself to chuckle. "Yes.
Just like that."

"For however much it's worth, I think you
should know Nadine is a good person. She has every reason to hate
normal humans. By every account she should've become the next
Aliane. But she didn't. She put that bitterness aside. She's
fighting for psions' rights and working to broker peace across
Astra. And she's being rewarded for all this by being confined to
her quarters. She's a better person than I am because I'd have
given up a long time ago."

"Why are you defending her? You barely know
her."

"You're right. But there are three types of
people: ones who contribute to the world around them in a
meaningful way, those who seek to destroy that which others have
built up, and people who don't matter in the greater scheme of
things. I happen to think Nadine is someone who will change Astra
for the better, and for that I'm willing to give her the benefit of
the doubt."

After several pulls off what remained of his
hashish cigarette, Commander Mundammi sighed. "I can't argue with
that logic." He threw the butt on the ground and smashed it into
the dirt.

Most pro-psion advocates drew on people's
compassion, declaring equality a founding principle of democracy.
Before he could ask her about her ideology, Rashad caught sight of
a vehicle heading in their direction. The headlights were spaced
too close together to be a hovermobile. His other two officers
snapped to attention and drew their weapons in caution.

"Amii, why don't you head back inside…" he
said. She seemed to object, but nodded and darted into the cargo
hold out of sight.

When the vehicle pulled into the light, they
noticed it was not a car but a hoverbike. Few people owned the
braying death machines because of their cost. The rider removed his
black helmet and put up his hands to dissuade any cause for alarm.
His dark eyes possessed a sleepless shadow, and his suit bore
wrinkles on top of wrinkles. His build was average, but Rashad
underestimated no one.

"Identify yourself," the captain
declared.

He raced up to the
Kearsarge
and took
several deep breaths to compose himself. "My name is Matt Zoleki. I
would not have come here but it's an emergency. I was being chased
by a psionic assassin—"

"And you confused the military with the
police? Why do people always do that? If you need to get in touch
with your local law enforcement, do that and be on your way."
Rashad narrowed his eyes at him, and then his mind shifted gears.
"Wait, you said a psionic assassin? I don't know anyone who's
gotten away and lived to tell. What happened?"

The man took a deep breath. "He was in an
accident with another vehicle. I was just amazingly lucky. There's
nothing the police can do for me, no way for them to protect me
from anyone like him. You know that. He will keep coming until his
mission is complete."

Sibo regarded Magnius. "You do look
familiar…"

"I own Fantasti Fisheries. It's on the coast
a few miles from here."

Kevin and Sibo glanced at each other and
smiled, humming the jingle the company was famous for. "The best
fish in the sea come from Fantasti! Fishery!"

An uncomfortable silence followed. Magnius
glanced back and forth between both of them. "I'm not insane.
Really, I'm not. I wouldn't be asking if this wasn't a
life-or-death situation. But it is. Please."

Rashad pursed his lips. "Why was this
assassin after you?"

"He's under the impression I'm somebody else.
And I'm sure I'd make great blackmail fodder for those people on
Superbia. Every year they seem to keep getting bolder and bolder.
Who will they target next? The President of Chara?"

He wanted to toss Magnius back to the wolves
when something occurred to him. He recalled the name Lyneea Zoleki
on the passenger manifest. Was the story he'd just spun real or an
excuse to join her here? Certainly the bruises on that man's face
weren't self-inflicted. The last thing he wanted to do was turn him
away and read about his murder the next morning.

"You said you own Fantasti Fisheries?"

He nodded. "Yes."

"You can stay aboard on one condition: we
leave with a hundred pounds of fish in the hold. That should be
enough for two good meals to each member of my crew. And I'll drop
you off on New England, Chara. Is it a deal?"

"Yes. Thank you."

As Magnius dragged his hoverbike into the
cargo area, Rashad left him with one parting thought: "I want you
to stay away from your wife. If you disturb the peace, you'll spend
the remainder of your time in the brig. Is that understood?"

He peered down at the floor.
"Absolutely."

"Lieutenant-Commander King is on the bridge.
I trust you can guide him to the loading dock of your operation."
Mundammi gestured inside the ship. "Welcome to the
Kearsarge
."

From Amii's upper bunk the striated metal
ceiling looked alive. When she focused on one section, the grooves
in her peripheral vision churned like charmed snakes dancing the
conga. The ship's hyperdrive variance generated the optical
illusion as a side effect of faster-than-light-speed travel. The
Kearsarge
had a unique audible signature because the engines
were tuned so well. The deep, pulsating rhythm never faded no
matter where she went, but it was insufficient to lull her off to
bed.

Nadine fell asleep below her more than four
hours ago. Since then, she observed every minute pass on her
implant. Being on a strange ship did her no favors, nor did laying
alone with her muddled thoughts and questions about the kind of
life she might have lost. Did she have a husband or children out
there somewhere, fretful that their mother had perished in the
attack on Pisa? What did she like to do in her free time? Did she
have any hobbies?

The uncertainty festered and ate her brain as
the hours ticked by. She remembered Astra with great clarity. The
AC. The PAU. Human history of the past 300 years. Politics of the
24th century. But none of that shed any light on the woman she used
to be.

The door latch clicked. Her defensive
instincts took over and she watched it open with urgent vigilance.
When Dr. Jones entered the room shadowed by Xander, she breathed.
After the scientist glanced toward her, the anxiety returned. While
she didn't remember the man, there was an indescribable familiarity
about him. As she climbed down from her bunk, she barely noticed
the doctor leave.

"Xander, what's going on?"

He hugged her. "Amii, Amii, Amii…I'd be so
lost without you." He spotted Nadine under the blankets of the
bottom bunk and lowered his voice in respect. "You really don't
remember, do you…even I hoped you might be faking it. Bloody
wishful thinking."

"What happened? On Pisa?"

"The PAU finally caught up to me, though why
they decided to shell the lab is anyone's guess. Wankers. Sorry
excuse for a military if you ask me. I looked for you, but you'd
already left. I was terrified, but at least I could track you." He
pointed to his wrist implant. "I knew you'd gotten away, but you're
fast. All I could do was pray the Souljas didn't find you."

"So our meeting hadn't been fortuitous?"

He smirked. "Hardly. People are quick to
credit fate, but upon deeper inspection, control was never out of
their hands in the first place. Fate is not the new-age religion
some make it out to be. Everything that happens in life is our
doing. Never forget that."

Amii spotted herself in the mirror and felt
again as though she laid eyes upon a stranger. "Do you know how
terrifying it is to not have any idea who you are?" Her gaze fell
upon his reflection in the mirror. "I look around at all these
faces and don't know who's a friend. I look at you and see a man I
don't know. I feel lost and helpless, not knowing who I can
trust…"

He lowered his eyes to hide the hint of
sadness inscribed on his face. "I'm sorry," he whispered.

She quelled her grief and touched his hands.
"Xander, have you ever felt so alone?"

"Yes. It was actually what I wanted for some
time. My wife had just died. I felt like my work wasn't coming
along like it should have been. I needed to hide for a while. And
then…" He stopped and stared at her. "And then there was you."

"Me? Tell me about my past. Anything. It
would mean so much to me."

She sat at the table and watched him pace
around the room as he spoke. "Well, your parents were from New
England. Very smart, top notch, cracking people. I met them when I
began my research at The Palmer Institute. They asked me to tutor
you in the sciences, and you were so fascinated with how things
worked, I couldn't refuse."

He paused and swallowed as though he was
holding something back, but continued in his next breath. "You were
never any good at programming, but you have steady hands for
electronics and robotics. Over the years, my assistants left me…all
of them but you. No one else believed in me like you did. When I
decided to go to Pisa, you begged me to take you along, much to the
chagrin of your parents. They disowned you for leaving with
me."

"Why?"

"For the same reason everyone in Astra hates
my bloody guts and calls me a fraud. My passion, my
dedication—every one of them is blind to it. They call
me
a
failure? These worthless bobbins whose names will be forgotten the
moment they die? The truth would bite them all in the arse."

His arrogant tone shamed her. "What else can
you tell me?"

"Let's see…you're an incredible pilot. You
sit in the dark and paint to trance music. You view politics as
reality drama, and you have a bit of an obsessive interest with it.
And you always get what you want."

"I'm an incredible pilot?" Of all he'd
mentioned, it intrigued her the most.

"Simply the best I have ever seen. We've had
to get out of some fairly dicey encounters with PAU ships this past
year."

"What did I fly?"

"A petaflop." The small, unarmed vessels were
renowned for their speed and amazing agility. Most pilots tried to
fly them at some point in their careers, but few had the the skill
required to utilize the ship to its full potential.

"How did I get to be such a good pilot?"

"Some people are just born to do things with
ships that defy the laws of physics, I suppose."

"You don't have to exaggerate."

He knelt down beside her. "Six months ago,
the two of us went to Tau Ceti. I have a friend, a rogue scientist
on Beseepin, who had a new polymer he wanted me to look at, to see
if it was anything I could use. So we went, and it was just the
kind of thing I wanted for my android's skin. I paid handsomely for
a bunch of it, and suddenly the PAU's military police barged in. It
had been a sting to lure me out. I'll never know how we made it
back to the ship with the stuff in one piece. Five of their
fighters were on our tail, and I'd pretty much resigned myself to
the fact that we were already dead.

"Beseepin has a very mountainous terrain.
Most people don't even try to navigate through it because it's so
treacherous. But it was our only chance to lose them. You did
things that day I didn't even think were possible." His eyes began
to cloud over with tears. "We lost three of them in the maze of
ravines. One clipped its wing in a narrow mountain pass. And the
last one crashed when it didn't ascend fast enough." Recounting the
event made goose bumps perk up on his lower arms. He put his hand
on her shoulder. "You have a remarkable gift, Amii. You're a
remarkable woman."

Amii weakly smiled back at him. "I'm happy
you're here. I've been so bothered I haven't been able to
sleep."

"A problem easily solved," Xander said as he
reached into his coat and pulled out a couple bags of tea.
"Mandarin Cherry. You drink it before bed every night. It's sort of
an acquired taste that I've never grown fond of, but it's something
you've always sworn by."

He walked over to the sink to prepare the
tea, and Amii thought it was fortuitous he happened to have just
what she needed in his coat pocket. Of course, Xander struck her as
a man who had all sorts of tricks up his sleeve. The notion
frightened her, and she worried she might be as wanted a criminal
as he was.

***

"What do you mean there aren't any quarters
left available?"

Magnius glanced at the security officer in
incredulous shock like he'd been given a spoon and asked to dig to
the center of the earth. He never gave much thought to the idea the
Kearsarge
might be filled to capacity. Making it on board
was the only thing that mattered a few hours ago. Since then, he'd
been stuck with the doctor where he tried to explain what happened
with Tiyuri. Because the days on Fantasti were shorter, exhaustion
threatened with every step. And now this.