The Triple Stars Trilogy

Chapter 5-1

Before she left, she applied synthetic flesh to her face and left arm. Long black boots would suffice for her lower limbs. So long as she kept her clothes on, she"d pass for a citizen of the planet. The last thing she needed as she committed her crime was for people to take any notice of her.

There was still no indication that Concordance knew where she and Ondo were. Ondo came to find her as she climbed into the lander.

“If it looks too dangerous, come back; these beads aren"t worth risking your life for. If I see any sign of Concordance incursion, I"ll come get you at maximum g and the hell with scaring the locals. Understood?”

“Understood.”

The lander took her around the moon and back to the blue planet, moving in a finely crafted, spiral trajectory that allowed her to slip between the layers of their monitoring and communication networks without eclipsing any vital satellites or triggering thermonuclear destruction. Positioning the lander on the surface was going to be a problem: the nearer it was to her objective, the shorter her escape route, but there"d be trouble if the locals saw the ship. Some of them still feared people from the next land mass along; they weren"t going to cope well with an individual from a different planet.

Fortunately, the museum housing the necklace was in a city with a reasonably large river running through it. She could approach underwater and leave the lander under the surface while she went ashore. The river was too shallow at its nearest point to the museum for even the Dragon"s smallest shuttle, but she could get close enough and use local transportation. If things went badly wrong, she could summon the lander remotely and escape. Which she"d obviously try to avoid.

The city of London was small by galactic standards, a little larger than Zandia, say, but a mere village compared to the continental conurbations common enough on other worlds. She"d downloaded all the data they had on local languages, customs and practices to her flecks. In her experience, that only ever got you so far. The best way of surviving and stealing the necklace was to avoid engaging with the local population.

She left the lander under cover of darkness, climbing out of a hatch to stand on top of its hull. The lander held steady just below the surface of the river while she surveyed the scene. London was a very different place to Zandia. There were no warm desert winds breathing on her face. A cold rain trickled from an orange sky to soak her through. The background roar made by cities the galaxy over – the combined symphony of vehicles and buildings and voices – came to her ears. It was a sweet sound, like the planet humming to itself. Her olfactory systems picked up a wash of smells: the acrid residues of the carbon fossil fuels they burned in their vehicles; spicy aromas of cooking food; the watery, weedy smell of the river.

If anyone had seen her, they might have thought she was walking on the water as she splashed across the lander to the bank. She climbed a flight of steep stone steps to street level while the lander slipped quietly beneath the waters.

She needed to traverse the city"s underground travel network. The hardest part of the whole operation turned out to be the machinery that sold tickets, a part of the journey she hadn"t even thought about. She used devices a thousand times more complex every day, but there were so many buttons to press that the whole process took longer than it should have. She was conscious of the queue of people waiting behind her. Fortunately, no one engaged her in an argument.

Soon she was swaying along on the rattling underground train. It was packed so that she had to stand, but no one stared at her. She was surprised at the range of languages being spoken, many of which she didn"t have translations for. Most people stared blankly into the middle distance. None of them appeared to have any idea she was from off-planet. A great many of them wore masks over their mouths and noses, to protect against infection and pollution. Selene was glad of it: she could cover much of her face and not look out of place.

She found the necklace easily enough in the museum. It stood in the corner of a room given over to Norse and Viking Culture, protected by a square glass case. The beads were polished to a sparkle and a card next to the item explained the necklace"s story and possible origins. Selene zoomed in closer with her left eye, face right up to the case. If the central bead was nothing more than jewellery she could give up and leave right away. It was immediately clear that it wasn"t. Transparent solids like glass let the light through because their molecules were disordered, arranged randomly, but it was clear that very specific patterns had been imposed on this bead. Peering close, she could discern repeating patterns and lines, giving the glass its characteristic shimmer. It had to be a data storage device.

“Pretty, isn"t it?”

A young woman was standing beside her. She was maybe nineteen or twenty although it was hard to be sure. Biology varied. The newcomer threw an intrigued glance at Selene, her eyes narrowed as if she could see that half of Selene"s face was artificial. The woman had black hair – as in dyed completely black – and wore colourful clothing depicting women fighting a fantastical beast with swords. Jewellery peppered her eyebrows and nose. Glass beads of her own dangled from her ears.

“Yes,” said Selene, slipping into the local language. “Do you know about them?” The sounds were strange to Selene"s ear, but it looked like the woman understood.

“I come to look at them in my lunch hour sometimes, and in the evenings after work. I love the story attached to them. It"s, like, where did they really come from? The Vikings traded all across the northern hemisphere but there"s nothing like these anywhere else. I like the name they were given, too. The star stones.”

Selene needed to close down the conversation, but she needed to be polite, too, not draw attention to her behaviour. “Where do you think they come from?”

The question seemed to amuse the young woman. “Somewhere a long way from Iceland, I"d guess.”

Selene shrugged. “I expect we"ll never know.” Trying to make it look like she wasn"t really that interested, she wandered over to the next case, where a rusting sword lay beside a shining modern replica. She pretended to study the artefacts, waiting for the gallery to empty.

When it was finally deserted, she set about stealing the necklace.

Defeating the technological defences of the museum was the easy part. There were cameras in the high corners of the room, and there were alarms on the glass case. It was the work of moments to defeat both with signals from the flecks in her cranium. She sent false images to the camera and temporarily deactivated the alarms. When she was ready, she checked the nanosensors she"d dropped outside to make sure she was safe. A guard sat on a chair in the corner but no one was approaching. Selene took her chance.

She slipped a glove onto her right hand. Her left hand, having no fingerprints, didn"t need it. The case was locked, but the mechanism was basic, easy to defeat. It took a lot of strength to lift the reinforced glass cube – probably four normal people would be needed – but her boosted left arm managed it easily. She held the case aloft while removing the necklace with her right hand. She slipped it into a pocket, then took out the replica she and Ondo had fabricated with the help of the Dragon and the images they"d identified. They had the distinctive shimmer pretty good. When the fake necklace was in place, she positioned it exactly to match the original, overlaying an image taken beforehand so that no movement was evident. Would an expert ever spot the difference? Perhaps. They probably wouldn"t be able to decrypt the data Selene had slipped into the false bead"s molecular structure. Her own name and story, heavily encrypted. Ondo hadn"t approved, but it had amused her.

When she was satisfied, she lowered the case back into place, locked it, stepped away, then let the primitive technology function properly again. Precisely nothing happened. No alarms went off, no one came running.

Yeah. She was pretty good at this.

She strode from the room, one hand on the stolen alien artefact in her pocket. She smiled at the sitting guard as she strode by. The woman in her blue uniform smiled back, as if appreciating the efficiency of Selene"s crime.

Selene"s flecks had her optimal route back to the lander planned, avoiding crowds as much as possible. She slipped down litter-strewn side streets, cutting across the city to reach the underground train station that would get her back to the river. She would be off-planet in thirty minutes.

The shot to her torso sent her reeling. She"d lost concentration, flushed with her success at the museum. So much for her skills as an interplanetary jewel thief. She staggered to the ground, turning as she fell to face her attacker. Fortunately, she"d been hit on the artificial half of her body. Her biomechanics protected her: absorbing some of the energy, shunting the rest of it away to ground.

A hooded figure stood over her: a man she thought. Great. Some low-life thug thinking he could mug her for money. Given the stakes of what she was doing, it was laughable.

She shone a piercing light from her eye into her attacker"s face. Maybe it would be enough to scare him away. Or maybe she"d have to kill him: no one was going to raise too much of an alarm if a street robber met his end in a darkened alley on a backwards planet like this.

Then the figure pulled back his hood and she saw the mistake she"d made. They didn"t have blaster weapons on this world, did they? The man turned his head so she had a clear view of the faded scar curving behind his ear. He was maybe fifty or sixty years old, but his body was lean, well-honed.

A grin of delight smeared across the face of the Void Walker. “Selene Ada, heretic and disciple of the apostate Ondo Lagan, Omn would like to talk to you.” He pointed his weapon at her head for another shot. “I"ll send you to him by the direct route.”

Had they invaded the system? Was the Dragon destroyed, Ondo dead? She"d had no warning. She sent a desperate message via the lander, knowing the delay meant she might be dead before a response could come back.

She raised her own weapon, but there was no time. The Walker"s eyes narrowed as he sent instructions to his blaster to fire … and then he went limp, slumping to the ground.

The young woman from the museum stood behind him. In her hand, she held a yellow-brown brick, now stained red with the Walker"s blood.

“You"re really not very good at this are you?” she said.

The reply from Ondo came back then. All well, no sign of Concordance. Should I come? Selene sent back a message telling him to hold position. She needed to know what was going on.

“I usually manage,” she said to the woman. “Why did you follow me?”

“Isn"t it obvious? I want to come with you.”

“Come with me where?”