Star Runners: Revelation Protocol

Chapter 1-1

1

The freighter came apart, the Tyral Pirate fighters firing with lethal precision. Josh's body floated through a burning gap in the hull and into the vacuum of space, his hands reaching out as he stared with eyes as black as eight balls.

"Help me!" His face twisted in pain.

Austin Stone jolted, kicking the seat in front of him. Blood pumped through his ears with the force of a cannon shot. A bead of sweat dripped down his cheek.

"You okay?"

The passenger next to him turned, the tablet in his hands momentarily forgotten. He wore a green flight suit with the Lobera patch.

Austin blinked and shook his head. "Sorry."

"Bad dream?"

He nodded. "Yes."

"They pass."

Austin leaned forward and rubbed his face. Outside his window Earth's moon passed, the blackened craters drifting past his view. The freighter's engines whined as the shroud activated, hiding the vessel from any instruments on Earth. It had been a year since he had seen the moon's surface. He remembered Bear and Skylar pressing against the window, their excitement something tangible and real. Their anticipation of what would happen next mixed strangely with the professional boredom of Captain Jonathan Nubern.

He smiled.

Before he boarded this freighter for his anticipated flight home, Nubern said the Legion recruited medical personnel. His stomach churned whenever he thought about the impending conversation with his mother. She wouldn't believe him at first, would probably accuse him of doing drugs while he had been at school. He wondered how he would even begin the discussion, and then somehow tell her she might have the opportunity to join him.

It wasn't something he would bring up right away. He hadn't been home in a year, so he wanted to soak in the next two weeks of leave. He needed to make each day count, maybe even each hour.

A cold twinge struck his heart. Josh's parents had been notified by now of their son's disappearance. The Legion had an Expiration Protocol for missing pilots and crewmen who hailed from dark worlds like Earth. The families would be told a story of their loved one's disappearance, but Austin dreaded facing the Morris family. He thought of avoiding them for the entire two weeks, but knew it was an impossible task since his mother had probably told Mrs. Morris he was coming home.

He thought of Josh every day since the Tyral Pirates had taken the Saber within sight of Tarton's Junction. Josh had probably been killed along with the other several hundred passengers. From what he had gathered from the scuttlebutt around the station, the pirates were not known for their humanitarian gestures toward prisoners. In fact, most pirates would either kill the prisoners during interrogations or work them to death through mining, farming, or whatever other work they required. He glared out the window.

"Don't fight the battles of the past," the passenger said as if he were telepathic.

"Excuse me?"

"Your nightmare. It's best to try and let things go."

Austin sighed. "You didn't lose your best friend."

"No," the man admitted, "but I've lost comrades. It comes with the territory. For what it's worth, I'm sorry. Are you headed home?”

He nodded. “You?”

“Same.” He extended his hand. "Lieutenant Ryan Bean. I'm from Bozeman, Montana."

"Austin Stone. Atlanta, Georgia."

"Nice to meet you, Austin. Been flying long?"

He glanced at the shiny wings on his chest. "Just got these, actually."

"Ah, going home on the reward leave. Enjoy it. It won't come again for a while."

"Have you been gone long?"

Ryan looked out the window. “Three years on a carrier, and one year planet side for training. It’s been long tours of nothing broken by brief sessions of crazy. I've been told most tours are like that on the Fringe."

"I see," Austin said.

In his courses, he learned about the boundaries of Legion and Zahl space. However, the infinitely more interesting aspect was the broad regions at the edge of known space, a location the Star Runners referred to as the Fringe. The sparsely populated worlds struggled with marauding bands of vicious pirates, conniving smugglers, and oppressive warlords. The Fringe was a boundary the Legion needed to patrol just as aggressively as the border with the Zahl.

"Have you received your orders, yet?" Ryan asked.

"Not yet. I’m supposed to get them after my leave is up."

Ryan smiled and gazed at the ceiling. "I remember my first trip home. My cousins and I went camping in the Spanish Peaks. We sat around the fire for hours. They wanted to know about my travels, but I had to give them the script of helping people. It's true, I guess, just not the people they thought I was helping. It was hard, but I knew it was important to keep the secret." He exhaled slowly. "That was four years ago."

Austin looked at Ryan, who was not much older than himself, but the tone of his voice seemed different than that of his classmates, aged and without emotion. Ryan’s mind seemed to be elsewhere, lingering on a memory. "I bet you've seen some things out there."

Ryan didn’t blink. "I've seen things you wouldn't believe."

“Like what?”

He shifted in his seat. “I don’t want to disappoint you. I remember when I was in your shoes.”

The tone of Ryan’s voice once again sent a chill straight through Austin’s gut. “Go ahead.”

Looking over his shoulder before he spoke, Ryan leaned closer. “Just be sure, when your term is up, that you really want to continue being one of the Legion’s ‘Star Runners.’”

Austin frowned as Ryan held his fingers over his head in mock quotes with the words Star Runners. “What do you mean? Why wouldn’t I want to do this?”

Ryan lowered his voice. “Some people love it—I’m not denying that. But let’s just say they don’t exactly tell you the entire truth during flight academy. Everything’s not puppy dogs and ice cream out there.”

Austin shook his head, his blood pressure rising. “You don’t know what I’ve seen. The pirates—“

“Pirates,” Ryan said shaking his head, “they’re nothing.”

“They killed my friend.”

“No offense, Stone, but your friend is just one of the million pilots recruited off these Legion backwater worlds. You ever wonder why they recruit from a video game? I mean really wonder about it? And why everything’s set up like a happy flight academy with sim pods and Rockshot competitions? You’re being indoctrinated. They want you so into this that you’ll be willing to go anywhere.”

Austin thought of Nubern and the entire recruitment process. “I don’t believe that.”

“It’s why they recruit so young. They identify you have talent, but they are also looking for dreamers; people who want to get out of their current situation.”

Pausing, Ryan eyed him. “You’ll be sent so far away you won’t even remember what Earth looks like.” He looked down at his hands. “Or what it smells like…feels like. This galaxy’s a big place. There are rumors of factions setting up for another galactic war, who knows if it’s true. Then there are the pirates, warlords, slavers, and the endless vigil of what might come from the Fringe or Dark Space beyond. And we have to patrol all of it. It’s why the Legion desperately needs pilots. You’re giving up the best years of your life for this and they know it.”

Austin didn’t know what to say. What if Ryan was right?

The Legion had him locked into service for the next five years until he was allowed to re-enlist or leave. He was so focused on going to college and getting a degree because he knew it was what Dad had wanted for him. He didn’t stop to ask questions and when he did have questions, he just shook them from his mind. Then his wildest dreams came true once the video game he used to escape reality became his reality. Maybe he was too deep into the trees to see the forest for what it was.

“Look,” Austin said after a long pause, “I want to do this.”

Ryan held up his hands in a mock surrender. “I just wanted to tell you the truth. Some people love this, are born for it.”

Austin decided to turn the tables. “So you aren’t? Are you going to re-up?”

Ryan rubbed his chin. “I’m coming home to think about it. I’m due next year. I just don’t know. I was recruited when the game was brand new. I was so excited.”

For the first time, Ryan’s eyes softened. Austin relaxed a bit, listening to the other Star Runner speak.

“Four of us left the school in San Francisco. I remember seeing Atlantis for the first time.” He shook his head. “It was like having the blinders pulled off. And the first time I saw a Trident? Forget it, man. I was hooked.”

Ryan fiddled with his hands. “I left my girlfriend for this. At first, they don’t tell you how long the tours are going to be—or maybe I just didn’t really get it. You just give the mission trip speech over and over.”

His face grew rigid. “But right after you are rewarded leave home after flight school and you sign your papers for that first assignment, months turn into years. Command knows you don’t need any cover story after that. Your friends and family give up on you, figure you’re just some reclusive freak because you’ve had to live with vague stories about why you’ve been away so long. They think you just don’t like people or that your antisocial. My girlfriend even said I was agoraphobic because I was always gone and didn’t want to do anything in public when I was home. I got so tired of lying to people with these ridiculous stories.”

Austin looked at him. “What happened to your girlfriend?”

“Same thing that happened to all my friends,” he said softly without looking away from the deck. “Sometimes I wish the Legion would take a page from the Zahlian playbook.”

Austin frowned. “Like what? I thought they are our enemy.”

Ryan exhaled. “That’s what I’m told. I just know there are no dark worlds in Zahlian space; they have no need for the lies…the secrets.” His eyes bore into the back of the seat in front of him. “I might still have Vanessa if it weren’t for the secrecy.”

“I thought the Legion didn’t reveal itself in hopes of protecting the systems in their territory and providing natural freedom to progress.”

Ryan closed his eyes. “I know the line just fine, Stone. They taught me, too.”

The moon passed out of view. Austin sighed, the dream images of Josh reaching for him searing into his mind once again.

"We made it," Austin breathed.

"Made it where?"

"Past the moon."

Ryan nodded. "I heard about the Saber. Getting pretty ballsy, those Tyral Pirates. I've never heard of a vessel attacked so close to Earth. I don’t know how they plotted a curve this far out. I've heard agents from the Zahl Empire work on Earth all the time, but not pirates."

"Why not?"

"Can't afford shrouding tech and no pirates are going to risk revealing themselves to a dark world unless they have an invasion force.”

"But the Zahl Empire sends agents to Earth? For what?"

"Spying, stealing technologies, disrupting our operations." Ryan shrugged. "All unofficially of course."

Austin thought of Earth's history. "Sounds like the Cold War."

"It is the Cold War, just on an infinitely larger scale. There’s so much space with so many planets in Zahl and Legion space, I doubt there will ever be a full scale war again. It’d be the end of us all." Ryan placed his tablet in his lap. "Did you lose someone on the Saber?"

Austin looked out the window, craning his neck for a view of Earth. "My best friend was on board."

"And you saw it?"

He nodded. "Once they passed back through the curve at Tarton's, I saw the fighters bearing down on the freighter, the other transport craft attached. It happened too fast for the alert fighters to respond. And then they were gone."

"He could still be alive."

Austin sighed and cracked his knuckles, knots forming in his stomach. "Thanks, but I've heard stories about what pirates do to prisoners. If he was taken alive, I hope it wasn’t for long. I don't want to think of Josh living as a slave.”

“No, you definitely don’t want that.” Ryan turned back to the tablet in his lap.

They rode in silence, the hum of the engines lulling him to sleep. Despite the lingering doubt brought on by Ryan’s words, Austin focused on reuniting with Mom and Kadyn. It would be good to see them again.

When he opened his eyes, the blue-green of Earth filled most of his window. The cloudless sky over the Pacific revealed Australia and New Zealand. Passengers started picking up their belongings and Ryan tucked his tablet into a black satchel.