Star Road Read online

  “All depends on what’s on that data crystal,” she said, taking it from Ivan.

  “Then let’s go look.”

  ~ * ~

  Back in the cockpit, with Jordan watching and Ivan leaning against the door frame in the entryway, Annie held the data crystal up high, between her thumb and forefinger, and rotated it slowly.

  It glistened like a wet diamond; but its surface was curiously cold and dry.

  “I’m guessing this isn’t just any data crystal. Can you—”

  She kept staring at the smooth, clear crystal, studying it... watching the light play along its facets, fragmenting into shimmering rainbows that danced across the cockpit walls and ceiling.

  “Take a look?” she said. “Sure—”

  Leaning over the console, she slid the crystal into an empty port near the SRV’s systems screen.

  She passed a hand over the console, and the stream of information about the SRV’s engine—the waves of energy coming off the Road, all the temperature and atmospheric readouts that monitored every inch of the ship—all vanished.

  And in its place, the logo of the World Council appeared.

  Another wave, and the logo vanished, replaced by a data dump that flashed by before she could make heads or tails of it.

  “Whoa. Do you know what you just did?” Ivan asked.

  Annie shook her head.

  “Unless I’m wrong... I think you just accessed World Council proprietary code without a password.”

  “That’s not possible,” Annie said. She looked at Jordan.

  “It is if you alter the crystal,” Jordan said. “And for a World Council data crystal, that’s a felony with a mandatory life sentence.”

  The data was still streaming by, incomprehensible numbers and figures.

  But Annie made no attempt to stop it.

  “Okay. What’s it about?”

  Before anyone even could hazard a guess, the data stream suddenly stopped, and the screen filled with the World Council logo and the words: “Star Road—O/S 3.5.”

  Annie’s hand was trembling as she reached out and brushed aside the screen floating in front of her.

  A flickering flash of light, and then something amazing happened.

  The cockpit of the SRV-66 disappeared, and in its place a three-dimensional display veined with tiny white lines floated above the console and then spread out to engulf them. It shimmered and sparkled with an undulating white glow.

  Some of the lines were straight. Others curved in wild parabolas that weaved in and out of each other. Some ended in large knots that pulsed in regularly-timed beats.

  The lines were moving subtly, and along some of the strands, tiny white blinking dots were moving.

  “What the hell is this?” Annie looked around in wonder. All of the lines eventually terminated at glowing orbs.

  With a sweep of her hand, she brought a section of the map—if that’s what it was—closer. And then, in an inspired moment, she leaned over the computer console and entered her SRV transponder security code.

  Immediately, a faint beeping sound began, and a single red dot on the fringe of the ball of intertwining lines began to blink.

  “Is that what I think it is?” Jordan asked.

  “It’s us,” Ivan said, leaning closer. The shimmering lights played across his face and body.

  Annie nodded. She had the beginning of an idea ... of what this was.

  Jordan craned his head back to see the display better. He reached up as if to grab the tangled strands that spiraled above their heads, but the projection filtered through his fingers like water.

  “Then here... this is Omega Nine,” Jordan said, indicating a tiny orange dot.

  No one said or did anything for a full minute.

  Until, finally, Annie realized what made this all so amazing.

  What they all had to be realizing.

  “It’s the entire Star Road system,” she said quietly, staring in awe at the amazing complex of interesting and diverging lines and dots. “At least it’s all of the known parts. Some segments simply end, as if a chunk of the map was missing.”

  “And here, at Omega Nine. Look. It’s on the extreme fringe of what we know ... what’s been mapped so far.”

  “Yeah, but there are a lot of spurs, loops, whole chunks of Road I’ve never seen or even heard of before.” Annie locked eyes with Ivan. A thrill ran through her.

  Think of the possibilities.

  “There’s a lot here that the World Council never told us about.”

  “You—and everyone else,” Ivan said. “Only a fraction of the routes open to vehicles? Which is exactly why we want total freedom of the Star Road.”

  Annie couldn’t stop looking at the vast web of silvery lines radiating outward in what she saw now was an elaborate fractal design.

  Fascinating and beautiful.

  “So this is the entire operating system?” Jordan asked.

  Annie nodded. “A copy, at least. And Nahara was going to deliver it to your brother.”

  “Dangerous stuff. And notice that Earth is nowhere near the center.”

  “So who mapped all of this?” Annie asked.

  “Whoever—or whatever—made the Roads,” Ivan said.

  “Why are you using the past tense?” Annie said. “You so sure that they’re not still out there? Not still making Roads?”

  “Maybe you should join up with our Seeker back there.”

  “Not my type,” Annie said, letting her gaze linger for a moment longer than necessary on Ivan.

  Ivan laughed, ever the cool Runner. But it was clear that when he looked around inside the map, he, too, had experienced a feeling of awe and wonder.

  “Incredible to see the full scope of it all.” Annie’s voice was hushed.

  Another slight brush of her hand brought forth a silvery spray of light... a near-infinite tangle of intersecting lines. At the fringes, they ran off into dense blackness, where they ended as though abruptly cut off.

  “God,” Annie said, still awestruck. “Where do they all go?”

  Ivan used a swipe of his hand to bring the map back to show a close-up of the segments that connected their route to Omega Nine.

  “This is ... almost scary,” Annie said.

  “And incredibly valuable,” Ivan added. “Think of it. Whoever has this OS can keep track of everything... all the traffic on every branch of the Star Road.” He took a deep breath. “In the wrong hands ...”

  The thought stuck in Annie’s mind as she tried to grasp just how serious this matter was. Even knowing that the OS existed with all these “secret” Roads would be a felony.

  “It’s a blueprint of the Star Road system ... all the known routes ... the cutoffs ... the short cuts.”

  Ivan glanced at Jordan and said, “You could organize quite an attack - even an invasion, given the men, time, and equipment.” He took a breath. “Like I said, dangerous stuff.”

  Annie nodded. “And it looks to me like this isn’t the whole enchilada.”

  “That’s clear. A full map would be immense. Maybe incomprehensible.”

  “Infinite ...” Annie said quietly.

  As if the power and implications of what she was looking at finally became too much to take, Annie reached over to the console and—with a few pinches of her fingers—shrunk the holographic image down to a more manageable size. The mass of Star Roads was now a small, luminous ball.

  Then she pushed it back onto the flat screen.

  Less unnerving that way.

  Another brush of her hand across the screen, and the ship’s data systems popped back up.

  She took a breath.

  Good to have that gone.

  Ivan reached forward to remove the crystal, but Annie’s hand shot out and clasped his wrist. With her other hand, she quickly took the data crystal from its port.

  “We have to get this back to the World Council immediately.”

/>   “Hang on. Think it through,” Ivan said. “Where did they get this? Where did the council, the Road Authority, get the technology to run this entire navigation system?”

  “We... they, I guess, found a terminal on Pluto, and they explored it and ... and they developed it,” Annie said.

  She winced, hearing how rote it all sounded, like something she memorized in pilot school.

  Her voice betrayed her doubts.

  “Sure,” Ivan said. He looked at Jordan, who was carefully following this discussion.

  “And so you never wondered about the astonishing quantum leap in technology? All of a sudden, in the span of—what? A bit more than fifty years? And all of a sudden we have new nav systems and communications that can cross impossible distances of space—message pods, and ships— that let us use the so-called ‘Star Road’?”

  Annie hesitated. Not knowing what to say. Like she was on the precipice of a terrible truth.

  Ivan took a breath. Annie waited.

  The Runner’s words were compelling.

  “Someone else—not human—made the Roads and developed the technology. We all realize that, but we’ve never met them. But here’s a thought.... What if they purposely gave us the technology for us to find them?”

  “You’re sounding like the Seeker who wants to find the Builders,” Jordan said, grinning.

  But Annie noticed that Ivan wasn’t smiling at the idea.

  “Yeah, I do, except... I think that may not be such a good thing after all.”

  ~ * ~

  There was absolute quiet for a few moments.

  “I’ll hold on to this, if you don’t mind,” Annie said, looking directly at Ivan, challenging him to disagree.

  “Still don’t trust me, huh? After all we’ve been through.” A wide smile.

  He expected I’d take it.

  And as for trust?

  He’d been the leader of the Runners—an outlaw group, and yet he had shot at his own people, disabled their vehicle that was out to destroy or board them. He let Jordan kill their commander. And helped them escape.

  But maybe, with this crystal... could Ivan still want to be the Runner leader again?

  “This is clearly top-secret World Council and Road Authority property,” Annie said. “Nahara downloaded and stole it from the Road Authority’s computers”—she squared her shoulders—”but as the duly appointed official representative here—”

  Ivan laughed out loud. “Go on. Say it, Cap’n. You don’t trust me.”

  She slipped the crystal into her jacket pocket.

  “Sorry.”

  “So why did Nahara steal it?” Jordan asked.

  Annie looked at Ivan, guessing he already had a theory.

  And she was right.

  Ivan took a breath.

  “That’s easy. He stole it to deliver to the same person who sabotaged my solo and who just tried to capture me and bring me back alive to Omega Nine.”

  “Kyros,” Jordan said.

  “Uh-huh, and—”

  A warning beep suddenly sounded. Annie turned back to the cockpit window.

  “Got some tricky curves coming up.” To Jordan: “Maybe we’d best—”

  “Yeah ... back to work.”

  A nod to Ivan. “And you’d best head back to the cabin. Might get bumpy.”

  “Sure, but one more thing.”

  She could see, even now, that the Road had begun to rise up and fall, and the SRV was suddenly in need of some real piloting.

  “What?” she asked over her shoulder, focusing on the Road ahead now.

  “Kyros wants that crystal. We’re going to Omega Nine. My guess is he’s still there, and he’ll do anything to get it.”

  “He’s done quite a bit already,” Jordan said, a sharp snap in his voice.

  “We have our destination. We have our cargo for the settlement. Rodriguez needs to get there for whatever reason the council sent him.”

  “I hear you.”

  Annie nodded. “Right. So we’re not turning around. As long as that’s clear.”

  “I wouldn’t have it any other way.” Ivan started to leave but then stopped. “Just remember, you better be ready. Now you have some idea what my brother’s capable of, but trust me—that’s only a fraction.”

  Jordan sniffed.

  “I already wish we had never found that crystal,” Annie said.

  Then, all was quiet.

  And with the Road suddenly gone from an endless flat ribbon to something filled with twists and bumps, navigating unknown and unseen distortions of space and time, Ivan left the cockpit.

  And Annie told herself: Whatever’s waiting for us on Omega Nine, we’ll find out soon enough.

  “Just have to get us there in one piece,” she whispered.

  “You say something?” Jordan didn’t look away from his screens.

  Annie shook her head and held the wheel tightly as the Road became even more ragged.

  “Nope.”

  ~ * ~

  33

  OMEGA NINE

  Time to sleep.

  Annie hadn’t had even a nap in almost forty-eight hours.

  Forty-eight hours? Feels more like a week.

  “You got the stick?” she asked Jordan as she pulled the lever to lower her seat back. The footrest kicked up, and she was prone. The foam-filled cushion adjusted to her weight and position, surrounding her in comfort.

  Jordan grunted, then said, “Yeah. Took a som-tab a couple of hours ago. I’m good.”

  “You sure?”

  “I said I’m good.”

  Annie rolled her head up and down but still felt too wired to fall asleep quickly. Maybe a som-tab was the answer.

  A lot to think about—transporting a thief with World Council materials, harboring and even abetting a supposedly convicted felon.

  And a load of materials and passengers that she needed to deliver safely to their destination.

  “Do you think the passengers are—”

  “They’re fine. Everyone’s fine. Now get some rest. I got this.”

  Annie grunted and nestled her head into the seatback.

  It did feel good to rest... to let her mind and body go.

  And soon enough, she was in a deep asleep, so deep, she didn’t even dream.

  ~ * ~

  Sinjira—about to sleep—knew she would dream.

  Chip enough, and dreams became a constant, merging with reality.

  After helping Rodriguez—who didn’t seem like such a bad guy, after all— she settled down to sleep.

  The tension of the Road trip so far had weighed on her.

  It was one thing to put on a front and live the life of an adrenaline-crazed Chippie, providing “experiences” for other people.

  But now, out here, on the far edges of the Road, where shit got real very fast?

  She closed her eyes and concentrated on her breathing ... slow ... steady ... in ... out...

  She drifted in a warm, comfortable place. The white noise of the SRV lulled her deeper ... deeper ... until—

  A face suddenly loomed up in front of her.

  “McGowan!”

  The image of the dead man’s face resolved more clearly, and she saw not flesh and blood, but gears and flywheels and blinking lights, all merging to form the man’s features.

  Not the real man!

  She sat up suddenly, a ragged intake of breath. The dream image vanishing.

  Momentarily disoriented, she didn’t know where she was. The light in the passengers’ cabin had been dimmed, and everyone—everyone, that is, except that Seeker—was sound asleep.

  Even her outcry hadn’t awakened them.

  “You all right?” the Seeker asked.

  It won’t hurt you to be nice to her. She’s just showing concern.