Star Force: Starchaser (SF69) (9 page)

Mina slammed a fist down, splashing out a quick lived
hole in the water and cursing herself for being so stupid…but rethinking her
actions since that day she found that she really could find no fault with
herself. Her head had been clouded, and honestly she didn’t know what had just
changed now to clear it. Maybe it was just a cumulation of time or the fear of
the water had kicked something into place, but whatever it was had pulled her
out of a very dark place, and had she still been in it right now she didn’t
know what she could have done differently than she’d been doing over the past
month.

Her head was clear and she needed to keep it that way.
That was her one priority right now.

Mina splashed at the water with her left hand, feeling
it more than seeing it as her wet body began to thoroughly chill in the breeze.
She relished the feeling, but knew she needed to take care of herself and not
get sick…or sicker, for that cough didn’t come out of nowhere. Fearful that
even moving might cause her head to fog back up again, Mina gradually crawled
up onto the dry sand, moving slowly and letting her head adjust.

Fortunately the dark doors didn’t close back in on her
mind and she decided to take her good luck and run with it, literally. She
stood up and began jogging down the dark beach, not having had a workout since
the attack and remembering all those maturia lessons about running and how it
could be used as a reset of both your body and mind. She felt a little stupid,
running around naked on the beach in the dark, but no one else was out here so
she didn’t care. Running the full length of the beach and making a total of six
circuits back and forth, Mina ran her worries about her mind closing in on her
away for good and ended up back by her towel, dropping to her knees in the sand
and feeling like she’d just dodged a huge bullet.

Those commandos had saved her, and while some people
would say she needed to return the favor by helping someone else in need she
immediately disregarded that. If someone was in need she’d help them because
she could, not because she owed a favor. That was petty thinking. No. She had
been the one that was saved and the emphasis was on her, not someone else. She
may not have earned it, but she was still alive and needed to make use of the
save rather than squander it away.

Now that her head was clear she needed to move, not
away from the resort or even this beach but internally. She needed to heal and
that fog in her head had been preventing that, but now she felt the blissful
movement inside and knew she had to act on it.

Pulling on her clothes and grabbing her towel,
sunglasses, and slipping on her sandals, Mina walked away from the beach and
through the grounds until she got to the tunnel network that led to her
treehouse, climbing the short ladder up to the door that led to a lift chamber.
Once inside she locked the door with the keypad and the emergency barricade
slat, ensuring that no one would disturb her privacy.

Mina walked into the lift and rode the slow ascent up
until she was standing in the middle of her treehouse quarters. Walking around
and locking every door out to the encircling balcony and closing the shutters
on every window, she sealed herself in then hopped into the shower to rinse the
sand and cold off her body. Not lingering there, she dried off after a few
minutes and pulled on some pajamas before diving under the covers of her bed
and pulling herself into a fetal position as she let herself begin to shake a
bit as the lingering paranoia worked its way out of her body and the rest of
the mental toxins she’d been accumulating did likewise.

9

When she woke up the next morning her nerves were
settled and her body was, well, more tired than when she’d went to bed the
night before, which she oddly took as a good sign. She felt alive again rather
than in a perpetual stasis, and even the fatigue was welcome so long as it was
real.

Mina ordered room service and had a tray of food
arrive on a conveyor inside one of the cabinets within minutes. She ate a
large, warm breakfast then immediately began packing up. Whatever she was going
to make of her life going forward would be accomplished by action, not sitting
on her ass. She wasn’t going back on tour just yet, but she needed to start
recalibrating herself and that run last night had been a good first step…as
well as showing her just how out of shape she’d gotten over the past month. She
hadn’t put on any weight that she could tell, but Mina had definitely lost some
of her well maintained fitness.

 
Accessing the
computer in the treehouse she booked reservations at another Australian
facility on a nearby island then called for a porter to get her bags down to
the dock where she took a private boat over to the exclusive training facility.
No one did training better than Star Force, but then again they never charged
anything for access to facilities either. Everyone could use them and was
encouraged to do so…which was a problem for people like her that needed to
avoid crowds and the attention they drew. Like everything with Australia, if
you had the credits you could buy an upgrade, and the same went with training
facilities.

They had one reclusive one on Optimus, which serviced
not just their own small territory in the system but everyone else as well. If
you wanted to train in private, this is where you came. If you wanted to hire
specialists to put you through your own personal boot camp that was available
as well. Most people, if they wanted to advance their skills in a formalized
way, enrolled in an advanced maturia but Star Force only trained in
‘responsible’ ways and some people wanted to do something more reckless, like
losing 50 pounds in 4 weeks or body building for appearance rather than skill
and power.

Star Force was no nonsense when it came to training
and, basically, everything else. For those individuals who didn’t like that
approach and wanted other ‘variety’ there were corporate options for that if
you had the credits and Australia had surged to the forefront in that
subcategory as well. Though they were very much a part of Star Force they’d
emphasized their differences whenever possible and today Mina was glad for
that, for when her boat arrived she was greeted with a personal attendant that
took her inside the mountain-like complex and directly to her quarters without
having to see or hear from any of the other guests.

Mina had booked the most expensive training suite,
which gave her basically an entire mini facility on the island to herself. It
had a track, pool, obstacle courses, fitness rooms, sparring equipment, and
various challenge scenarios similar to what Mainline Star Force used. She
hadn’t wanted any formalization, so once the attendant dropped her off and made
sure everything was in order, Mina was left to herself and she got to work
right away with a stretching regimen followed by a few swimming laps in the
long pool.

Those were far more taxing than they should have been,
plus she was having to fight some claustrophobia from being in the water again.
It wasn’t
so
bad as before and mostly wore off by the
time she finished, but she was thoroughly drained by the time she was done and
that disappointed her. Normally she could have done a lot more, which testified
to just how out of whack she was.

Mina took a crash nap, then ordered some room service
that included a stack of pancakes and colored nutrient drinks. She’d save the
sugary stuff for later after she did a second workout in the day, but while she
digested she took a dip in her own hot tub and tried to work out some of the
soreness from the prior night’s run.

After an hour there she tried some light weights but
didn’t make more than 10 minutes before she had to quit for the day. Mina had
no energy, but at least her head was still clear. She retreated back into her
quarters for another nap then allowed herself to wander out into the commons
area of the facility and took a perch on a sunroof where she stripped down and
worked on her tan a bit more with a handful of other people doing the same.

They didn’t talk to her and she was glad for that, but
over the following weeks as her energy level slowly came back up to normal Mina
continued to mingle in the commons and even got into a few conversations with
people that seemed not to know who she was. They were here to train as well and
that offered a common topic of conversation. Most people here were Human, but a
handful of them were not and she was curious as to how they trained, especially
one of the Bsidd that stood shorter than she was and looked to be a living
bush.

Turns out he/it was a businessman that owned a
shipping company than ran supplies between the various races on the Alliance
worlds that were not part of Star Force. Apparently there was quite a market
for independent shippers so long as they could undercut the prices on the ADZ
transit grid. The Bsidd said that was easy enough so long as you owned your own
fleet of ships, and therein lay the hard part. One had to have the ships to
generate the credits…but you needed the credits to buy the ships. He/it had
taken more than 80 years of doing other work to save up enough currency for his
first purchase, then from there he’d made a living out of hauling cargo and
expanded his operations as quickly as possible.

He/it was another entrepreneur like herself, self-made
and taking advantage of the possibilities Star Force had sculpted within the
ADZ. No one had to work to live, but if you wanted to prosper you had to work
your ass off to do it. Didn’t matter what race you were, everyone had options.
She knew that more than most people, having grown up in an Axius colony, but it
was reassuring to meet someone else who was in a similar position to her.

Mina didn’t share any details about her recent history,
and the two talked for quite a while about the idiosyncrasies of being wealthy
within the ADZ and the unique perspective and challenges it presented, with her
hearing similar ideas to what she’d already experienced personally and feeling
quite relieved to have a peer, even if in a drastically weird sense. Person or
not, the Bsidd was still a walking bush, so there was only so many similarities
to draw, but in a weird way she could connect with him/it more than the Humans
she encountered in the music business.

Mina actually made a habit of meeting with him and a
few others on a regular basis, or irregular actually, given that they never
planned any get-togethers. They just bumped into each other in the commons at
similar times and she got to get their perspectives on a wide range of topics.
The more she related to them and their stories Mina realized that she needed to
get back on tour sooner rather than later. She was a singer and building her
career, and one common theme amongst all of her new friends was that when they
had trouble they didn’t quit what they were doing, but found themselves along
the way as a byproduct of the struggles.

Mina realized she had begun to feel like singing was a
petty thing after so many people’s deaths, but now she realized it wasn’t. It
was what she did and a big part of who she was. Those commandos hadn’t saved
her so she could wallow away and live half a life. They saved her so she could
continue going on doing what she wanted, and Mina realized that she was just
cycling garbage through her head. Probably stuff she’d picked up from others
accidentally. She’d have to pay closer attention to her own thoughts going
forward to avoid that again. Going with the flow of society was never a good
idea, for there were always more stupid people than wise, regardless of the
efforts Star Force made to give people the tools they needed to learn and grow.

Some people just didn’t want to, and those were now
floating to the bottom of the tier 1 pool after the ADZ-wide restructuring.
Here though, you had to have credits to buy your way in, and in such sums that
you more than likely had to earn them and stupid people didn’t earn anything.
They leached off of others in one form or another, letting Star Force take care
of them and it seemed Star Force didn’t mind. They were now scooting them off
into their own little corner along with the
newbs
coming out of the maturias, letting those who earned their way into better
crowds.

Mina went where the credits were, so often her
followers were amongst the ‘stupid’ but a good number of them were not, and in
fact her upcoming tour…before she’d canceled it…had been going to more of the
tier 2 sites than previously because they were considered higher class and,
frankly, more profitable because those citizens had more credits to spend.
She’d cut her teeth doing free or cheap concerts for anyone who would come, but
now that she was established she was gradually moving up the status ladder and
made a choice to, when she did go back, cut out the lower class performances
regardless of whether it made monetary sense or not.

She’d never thought about it before, but now that she
was actually hanging around with people that were more or less her peers she
found that she felt more like herself. Even with her old team she never felt
like one of them. They were there to service her as part of their job rather
than being on par with her. When Mina put together her new team she was going
to do it herself, no more label execs assigning people. She liked this feeling
of having peers, and there were many musicians and support staff out there for
her to choose from. There had to people out there of like mind, it was just a
matter of finding them.

Her jumpship was her home after all, and if the rest
of the ADZ was living with their ‘peers’ now and greatly preferring the change
then she should probably give it a try herself. There was no rush getting back
on tour and she could take as long as she needed assembling a new team…which
she could start from here while she continued training. She needed to be in
very good shape if she was going back to stripping on stage, which she used as
her measuring stick to make sure she never lost her self-sufficiency. That was
her true priority, with the public exposure being a way to make sure she never
deluded herself into thinking she was better off than she was like many other
people did who hid behind their clothes.

When she was walking back through the commons area one
evening intending to get in one more short workout before bed she heard
footsteps behind her in the hallway and glanced back, seeing a woman walking
briskly whom she recognized as another of the guests but one that she had never
spoken with. Mina moved aside to let her pass but as she did so the woman
slipped her hand around her arm and latched onto her. In a fluid motion she
pulled Mina into a side alcove and through a doorway.

Her feet caught and she tripped, but the strong arm
kept dragged her along as she fought to push the other way. Suddenly she was
thrust up against a wall and unable to scream, for her vocal chords refused to
utter a sound as the woman pinned her bodily against the cream/white colored
paneling beside a large potted bush.

“You’re in danger,” the woman whispered. “The people
who tried to kidnap you before are in this facility and trying again. I’ve been
assigned to protect you. Understand?”

The woman eased her grip slightly but did not let go,
but Mina’s vocal chords were back under her own control. “Who sent you?”

I’m an Archon
,
the woman said inside her mind. “And we need to move now.”

Mina found herself pulled off the wall before she
could respond, but she didn’t fight her. There had always been rumors about the
Archons having special powers, but she hadn’t actually thought someone could
speak mind to mind until just now. That was all the proof she needed, so Mina
started jogging alongside her as the woman pulled her through the room and down
another corridor. They were halfway down it when an alarm sounded twice,
followed by a voice being transmitted everywhere within the training facility.

“All guests please report to your quarters and stay
there for the immediate future. We have a security breach and the facility is
going on lockdown until the situation is resolved. Do not try to leave, just
get out of the hallways and let our security
teams
deal with the problem. Stay down, stay put, and stay out of the way.”

“Keep moving,” the Archon said, never having let go of
Mina’s arm. The pair jogged down the hallway then as they came to a set of
closed double doors the Archon pushed her out of the way and into the nook
outside a closed side room just as the doors opened up and two Humans came
through wearing Australian uniforms and carrying weapons.

The Archon moved so fast Mina couldn’t see what
happened, but the two men were on the ground in a flash and their weapons were
removed from them…then Mina was pulled off the ground by an invisible force and
over top of them, landing in the open doors as the woman grabbed her by the arm
again and forced her into another jog.

“Sorry about this,” the woman said, grabbing hold of
Mina by the waist and wrapping her up in a hug a moment before she lost all
coordination. Her body suddenly went twitchy and out of her control, and she
would have fallen had the Archon not been holding her up. By the time her head
came back into alignment and her feet responded the woman had already pulled
her into another room, keeping them on the run.

Mina didn’t ask any of the questions she wanted to,
recognizing the danger of the situation even if she didn’t understand it. She
just kept moving as instructed and within a minute they burst through a small
door and climbed up a twisting stairwell that led to a roof exit. The hot sun
was gone, replaced by evening twilight and a cool breeze as the Archon shut the
door behind them and pushed Mina across the roof towards the edge where several
large trees were just poking up over the edge.