The Triple Stars Trilogy

Chapter 5-2

“Wherever the hell you"re going.”

Selene stood and brushed herself down. “Call a cab if you want to go somewhere.” She wasn"t entirely sure what that meant, but hopefully her translation routines did.

“I just saved your life, right? That"s clearly some kind of death ray he"s holding. Now I want to get off-planet with you.”

A death ray. Really? “Look, I"m grateful,” said Selene, “but I have no idea what you"re talking about.”

The woman gave Selene a look that meant stop treating me like an i***t on just about every planet in the galaxy. “Oh, come on, it"s obvious to anyone. You"ve hardly kept your secret hidden.”

She didn"t need this. She needed to get away before the Void Walker"s friends arrived. “You"re crazy. Sorry, I have to go.”

“Do you want to see the proof? I"m happy to share it on the internet for the whole world to see.” The girl held out her comms device. The video of Selene"s efforts in the museum was shaky but clear. The woman had clearly been hiding behind one of the other exhibits, a replica longboat most likely. The pictures zoomed in on the beads as Selene lifted them from the case, catching the distinctive shimmer of light in them.

“It"s your eye that gives you away, you know,” said the woman. “Just the left one, yes? It"s very good, but up close you can see all the lenses and mechanisms in it. We don"t have anything like that, not even close. Next time you should wear sunglasses.”

The video was clear; no one from this planet would be able to do what she"d done. “Thanks for the tip. You don"t seem particularly fazed by meeting someone from another planet. An alien.”

The woman shrugged. “I"ve known you were out there for years.” She c****d her head on one side as she studied Selene. “So, why come here to steal a necklace? It"s hardly super-valuable. With your technology, you could probably take anything you wanted.”

“I"m not going to explain that to you.”

“And this guy? He"s with you?”

“I"m definitely not going to explain that to you.”

“Okay, so, tell me when we"re up there.” The girl indicated space with an upwards nod of her head.

“Or I could melt you and your machine with my death ray and there"d be no evidence of anything,” said Selene.

“You have a death ray, too?”

“As a matter of fact, yeah. A f*****g good one.”

The girl appeared to find that amusing. “Shame the images are already uploaded, then. Zap me and someone"s going to look at my online activity to see what I"ve been doing. Someone will work out the truth about you.”

Was that true? Possibly. Which meant Selene had a problem – Selene and everyone else on the planet. Concordance appeared to have no knowledge of the crashed starship at the northern pole, or at least of the Augury she"d found there. When word reached them of what had just happened – which it may already have done – perhaps they"d think the primitive planet was nothing more than a hiding place for Selene and Ondo. But if they discovered pictures of Selene risking everything to steal an apparently unimportant glass bead, there was a good chance they"d work out why. Then they"d make the calculation: debris from the ancient wreckage could be anywhere on the planet, making the only rational response obvious. Concordance would bring down darkness upon the world; the inhabitants of the planet would wake up one morning to find a widening black dot, a tumour, on the face of their sun.

She decided to take the direct approach. The Void Walker was still out of it; the woman had done a good job with the brick. But if there was one of the enemy here others would come, especially when Concordance realised this one had been knocked out cold.

“Look, you seriously do not want to come with me. You have no idea what it"s like out there.”

The young woman shook her head. “And you have no idea what it"s like down here. We"re trapped, we can"t go anywhere. Did you know I could get on a plane and fly around this whole world in, like, two days.”

“So?”

“So, two days and that"s it. I"ve covered the whole place, everywhere I can ever go in my whole life. Okay, maybe a month, or a year to see everything in detail, but then I"m done. The rest is repetition. Meanwhile, there"s a whole galaxy out there, thousands of millions of stars. Visible but so out of reach. I want to go there. I want to never run out of new.”

“How do you know I"m not a galactic renegade engaged in a desperate fight for my life?”

Once again, the woman seemed delighted rather than scared. “Is that true?”

“Actually, yeah, it might be.”

“Then even better. Seriously. I"ve been working in an office for three months since I left college. Three f*****g months and it feels like three billion years. I"ll take your life any day.”

“You might die. You probably will.”

“I might live. I"ll take that chance.”

Something about the woman amused Selene. Perhaps it would be good to have a person closer to her age on the Dragon, someone who wasn"t a Concordance maniac. The people on this planet had endless books and films and games imagining what was out there: the other worlds, the endless scale of everything, the wonders and horrors. Most of them wildly wrong, but still. It was like they were ready for the great leap outwards but couldn"t do anything about it. It had to be a killer. And, of course, they didn"t know the truth about what was out there.

Besides, if Concordance did unfurl another shroud, at least Selene could save this one person. It wasn"t much, but it was something. She understood the worth of that well enough.

“You must have friends, family.”

“Friends, yeah. They"d totally understand, believe me.”

“Boyfriends, girlfriends? I don"t know, subsentient lifeforms that depend on you?”

“None of the above.”

“Social networking statuses to maintain?”

“You"ve really done your homework, haven"t you?”

“What"s your name?”

“Lilith Jones.”

“Selene Ada. If I agree to this, I want you to destroy all those images first.”

“Oh sure, then you zap me with the death ray. Just because we don"t have working warp drives doesn"t mean we"re stupid.”

“You said you wanted to start living, taking risks. This is a start; you"ll just have to trust me.”

Lilith considered for a moment, then shrugged. Showing Selene what she was doing she pressed buttons on her phone. Selene"s flecks, updated with details of local tech, told her that the images were indeed gone from the network.

“Stand back and shield your eyes,” said Selene. “I need to remove all the evidence of this one.” She pointed her blaster at the body of the Walker. He was still alive, chest still rising and falling.

“Wait, you"re going to kill him?” said Lilith.

“I am. Trust me, if I told you about him you wouldn"t object. Plus, while I suspect it"s too late, we need to destroy all the evidence we can.” Selene fired, incinerating the body. The heat was intense, making the two women step backwards. Selene shut off her olfactory senses so the smell of burning flesh didn"t reach her. Lilith, from the scowl of distaste on her face, didn"t have the option.

Selene continued to fire. After a few minutes, there was only a pile of grey dust on the floor, glowing dimly orange. She sifted through the little mountain range of ash with her foot.

“What are you looking for?” asked Lilith.

“Another sort of bead.”

“There"s nothing there.

“No.” Which was interesting in itself: whatever was done to the Void Walkers, it didn"t appear to involve embedding ancient communication devices into their brains. If some coercion or punishment fleck was wired in, it was presumably some cruder modern device. That was good to know.

There was a metal grille in the floor nearby, a drain down into the city"s sewers. She kicked the piles of ash in as best she could. Concordance agents could go and look for it there if they wanted. It was right where they belonged.

“So,” said Selene. “Follow me to the river. You might get your feet wet.”

The woman shrugged and followed. Selene sent instructions to the lander to prepare to surface.

Ondo was not going to be happy.