Star Road Read online

  Sinjira licked her lips, feeling their dry texture.

  “Yeah,” she said, her voice a froglike croak. “Just a ...”

  “Bad dream?”

  The image of McGowan’s face lingered in her memory, filling her with a feeling of dread.

  It was all but impossible to describe, but she had the feeling it hadn t been a dream.

  No. It had been a vision ... or something.

  Somehow she had experienced a kind of connection with the man she knew, for a fact, was dead.

  “We all have ghosts inside us,” Ruth said.

  Sinjira nodded.

  A ghost. A phantom.

  Or... something else?

  A warning?

  One thing for sure, though—she wasn’t going to get to sleep now.

  So she popped a stim-cap.

  ~ * ~

  The view out in front of SRV-66 suddenly changed.

  The shimmering, rotating lights of the portal appeared in the distance. Jordan, starting to feel the strain of sleep deprivation himself, nudged Annie’s shoulder.

  “Hey. Captain. Time to wake up.”

  He watched Annie’s eyes open, crusty with sleep and cloudy.

  She could have used more sleep. But running the Road, you got used to grabbing a few winks when you could.

  She looked confused for a moment. Then—in a flash—she was awake.

  “How long was I out?”

  “Few hours.”

  “Everything okay?”

  “Couldn’t be better.”

  He reached down and made slight adjustments in preparation for the jump through the portal.

  “Passengers quiet?”

  “Not a peep.”

  He nodded at the display showing the immobilized Nahara. His eyes were closed, but Jordan doubted he was asleep.

  “But we’re coming up on Omega Nine.”

  “Okay,” Annie said, a chill hitting her gut. Then: “I’ll take over from here.”

  Jordan nodded. The captain was back in charge.

  Annie pressed a button on the side of her chair, and with a faint hum, the back and footrest retracted, shifting her to a sitting position.

  Jordan, like Annie, wanted to drop their passengers and supplies, deal with Nahara as quickly as possible, and get the hell back on the Road to home.

  Maybe getting too old for this, wanting to get back to Earth.

  Maybe this Road trip was just a bit too much fun.

  A fleeting thought. He knew well enough that he’d never settle down. Maybe he was feeling low because—after the mad race out of Hydra Salim—now there wasn’t enough going on.

  Annie took over the controls, and he settled back in his chair.

  “You strapped in?” Annie asked.

  Jordan nodded, then watched as Annie flipped the button for the intercom.

  “Attention passengers. We’re approaching our final destination, Omega Nine. Please make sure your harnesses are secure. We’ll be landing soon.”

  She keyed off the intercom.

  Then Jordan saw something on the security screen.

  A face had appeared at the cockpit door.

  Ivan.

  Eyebrows raised—a silent question—Jordan glanced at Annie and pointed at the screen.

  “Let him in. Let’s hear what he has to say.”

  ~ * ~

  “You like getting banged around on takeoffs and landings?” Annie asked, looking at him. “You heard my announcement. Take your—”

  “I’m fine where I am,” Ivan replied.

  Up ahead, the spinning light of the approaching portal grew closer, filling the screens. Jordan ran through automatic readouts.

  Annie stayed focused on piloting her SRV, adjusting speed and vector to make as smooth a landing as possible.

  There was a moment where everything felt like it was shrinking... contracting into an infinitely small point, and then—like that— they were through the portal and on the runway.

  A glance at Ivan, who was tightening his grip to keep from swaying around too much.

  The sudden glare of sunlight stung Annie’s eyes, making them water; but through the blur, she could make out the terminal building in the distance.

  Beyond the terminal, a ring of jagged mountains rose up into the sky like a ring of rotten teeth. The sky was clear and had a greenish tinge like algae in a pond.

  “Long runway,” Annie said.

  “Planet this far out of system ... got plenty of room to stretch out,” Ivan said.

  Annie leaned forward and flipped the switch on the commlink, but as she cleared her throat, preparing to speak, Ivan stopped her.

  A gentle touch on the back of her hand.

  She looked up at him. He bit his lower lip and shook his head.

  “I wouldn’t just yet, until we see what’s what... that way.”

  He pointed, and Annie steered the SRV up the runaway toward the far end of the terminal.

  Its engines roared in the sudden stillness. Brakes squealing ... wheels thundering on the tarmac, kicking up a plume of dust that rose into the oddly green-tinted sky.

  Now Ivan leaned closer to the control, his fingers poised over the nav system.

  Before he touched the screen, though, he looked Annie straight in the eyes. Close.

  “May I?” he asked.

  She nodded slowly.

  Trust.

  At least for now.

  ~ * ~

  Ivan’s fingers slid back and forth as he entered a code.

  Annie was watching his every move. Did she trust him or not? He could feel her apprehension. He also noticed that Jordan’s right hand never strayed far from his sidearm.

  “Go to these coordinates,” Ivan said, his voice light, not betraying that he’d read her concern.

  Annie gave him another, longer look.

  Then she nodded and hit enter. Making minor adjustments, she had to use both hands to steer the vehicle as it left the smooth ramp and headed out across the wide, rock-strewn plain.

  Ivan had been here before—too many times.

  This desolate rock.

  He wondered how it would all end, but satisfied himself that the answer wouldn’t be long in coming.

  ~ * ~

  Ruth wondered what Ivan was doing up in the cockpit.

  Do they have him under arrest again? Collared? And they don’t want me to know?

  Or has he done something horrible to the pilot and gunner?

  “Why aren’t we heading to the terminal?” she asked.

  Nahara couldn’t respond. It looked like it took immense effort simply for him to shift his eyes.

  Rodriguez was busy going through his attaché case, as if taking inventory.

  And Sinjira—Sinjira was sitting, her eyes glued to the portal, no doubt recording everything she could.

  Ruth swayed in her seat as SRV-66 bumped across the rocky terrain, dodging the larger boulders. She saw things, scurrying into hiding. Off in the distance, she could barely make out the winding blue ribbon of a river.

  Behind the terminal, she noticed a few buildings—the beginning of a settlement.

  But why are we moving away from it?

  Craning her head forward, she tried to see where they were heading, but the angle was bad, and the curvature of the window’s Plexi distorted her view.

  “Does anyone know where we’re going?”

  “The captain better,” Sinjira said with a lilting laugh.

  Ruth didn’t like the nervous edge in her own voice, but there it was.

  And no one saying anything else.

  Something had happened—was happening—and they weren’t going to get off at their regularly scheduled stop.

  Ruth would have undone her safety belt and gone up to the cockpit, knocked on the cabin door, and asked what was happening. But the SRV kept bouncing jerkily over the extremely rough terrain, weaving and swaying from side t
o side.

  And all the while, her tension was mounting because she couldn’t stop thinking that, however bad things had been, they were going to get even worse.

  ~ * ~

  Ivan stared straight ahead at the forward view.

  “Damn,” he muttered.

  Jordan stayed silent. Aware, alert. Ivan had come to expect that.

  “What is it?” Annie asked.

  “This place ... I know it. Not exactly like coming home, but”—he struggled to put into words what he was feeling—”as close as I ever got with the Runners. But now I don’t belong here anymore.”

  They kept rumbling across the rough terrain, the terminal and surrounding settlement having vanished in the shimmering green heat haze behind them.

  The road—a barely discernible rocky track—wound its way up into the mountains, taking sharp switchbacks that Annie had trouble negotiating.

  “Narrow pass ahead,” Ivan said. “Keeps it limited to smaller vessels.”

  “All right. Any chance you can tell us where we’re going?”

  Ivan smiled. He was almost tempted to bring her up to speed. But—

  Always good to keep an edge.

  “You know,” Jordan said, his voice flat, “all this dust won’t help our deionization units.”

  “We’re almost there.”

  “What about the atmospherics?” Annie asked.

  “As close to Earth normal as you could ask for,” Jordan said. “Interesting, though. Oxygen’s a little high.” He looked out the side portal. “Might help with our breathing this high up, but you may feel a bit giddy at first.”

  “Giddy …” Annie said.

  Ivan nodded and added, “Yeah. Gravity’s a bit above Earth norm, too, so you might feel a bit heavy.”

  Jordan—without looking away from his scanners—said, “I exercise on Grav 1.5.”

  Figures, Ivan thought.

  As they got closer, anxiety steadily built up inside him.

  Steady, he thought.

  Whatever lay ahead, whatever unknowns, filled him with emotions he hadn’t experienced in ..., he didn’t want to think about how long.

  All he knew was, he was a much different man from the one who had been captured and thrown into prison.

  They entered a narrow defile when Ivan signaled Annie to cut the engines and run on electric backup.

  “Nice and quiet,” he said.

  Annie nodded, saying nothing.

  Her anticipation had to be building up, too.

  But not Jordan.

  Like a stone, staring straight ahead as the road unspooled before them.

  Then Annie asked: “You think anyone will notice the funnel of dust we’re kicking up behind us?”

  Ivan glanced at the rearview.

  Shit.

  He grimaced and shook his head.

  “So much for the element of surprise,” he said.

  “So Kyros knows we’re coming ... probably already knows we’re here,” Jordan said.

  “That is if your brother’s even on this planet.”

  Annie shot Ivan a quick, questioning look that clearly communicated exactly how much she wasn’t liking this so far.

  “We’ll find out one way or another soon enough. Our—the Runners’— camp is just around the cliff up ahead.”

  The control board sounded an alarm and started flashing a reading that their destination lay half a kilometer away.

  “Okay. Let’s take this nice and easy, now,” Ivan said. His hand dropped to the pulse pistol on his hip.

  Realizing he was hovering over the controls like he was the instructor, and Annie the student, Ivan straightened up and stared at the view ahead.

  All so familiar, painfully so because of all the hopes and dreams they’d fought for.

  But now—returning like this—it all looked so small.

  And now, knowing how large the Star Road system truly was made his and the Runners’ hopes and dreams seem pathetic ... ridiculous.

  They rounded the bend, and there it was up ahead, the Runners’ base camp.

  “That’s it?” Jordan said. A smile twitched one side of his mouth. “Not what I expected.”

  A few buildings with a dirt street running down the middle.

  Only one thing was at all impressive: On the far side of the makeshift “town” was row upon row of vehicles—speeders, Road ships, cargo ships, a decommissioned battle cruiser, and other personal and crewed vessels.

  Yes. The Runners were here.

  And Kyros, too.

  And yet—like every station they’d stopped at so far this trip—the place looked deserted.

  “No welcome committee, hmm?” Jordan asked.

  “My guess is they’re watching us.”

  Ivan started to reach forward. Then stopped himself. He looked at Annie, his hand poised above the commlink.

  “May I?”

  Annie shrugged. “It’s your party.”

  Ivan picked up the headset, but Annie stopped him before he put it on.

  “Keep it on speaker so Jordan and I can hear.”

  Ivan caught the nod of approval Jordan gave her.

  “Sure,” he said.

  He flicked the switch. A green light came on, and he leaned close to the microphone.

  “Kyros. You there?”

  Nothing.

  “Kyros! I know you’re listening.”

  He made a few adjustments. Looked at Annie.

  “We’re broadcasting full spectrum,” she said “If he’s out there, he can—”

  A sudden wash of loud static filled the cockpit, but then nothing.

  “Do you read me, Kyros. This is—”

  “I know ... who this is.” The voice was low, almost sleepy-sounding— instantly recognizable.

  Ivan locked eyes with Annie and nodded. Then he cleared his throat. “Brother. We have to talk.”

  ~ * ~

  FIVE

  OMEGA NINE

  ~ * ~

  34

  AN INVITATION

  “Can we get a visual? Annie whispered, leaning close.

  Ivan shrugged, knowing that Kyros could hear her as well.

  “Who’s your company?”

  The voice, no more than a growl. Like he was drugged.

  “No one you’d know,” Ivan replied. “For now, it’s just you and me.”

  Kyros laughed. More of a cough.

  A faint click came over the speaker, and then a low hum filled the cockpit. Within seconds, a clear hologram of Kyros drifted in front of them.

  He looked about the same as he had two years ago. A bit heavier, maybe. His hair longer. Unkempt.

  The way he sat? Confident. Like a king. An all-powerful ruler.

  Leaning back with both hands clasped on the arms of his chair.

  And the chair. Strange. Not designed for a human. Someone or something much larger, taller.

  An alien design?

  Within the arc of the hologram, Ivan could also see that Kyros sat at a semicircular console. But like the chair, totally unknown and unfamiliar.

  What the hell is it?

  “Did you go soft in prison, brother? Get stupid? Lose your edge?”

  Ivan caught a strange reverberation—a quaver—in his brother’s voice.

  Is that from the transmission equipment or is it the room he’s in?

  “What do you mean?” Ivan asked. His muscles tensed. He didn’t like what he was seeing—the odd arrogance of his brother, the strange chair, whatever the machine was he sat beside.

  “There’s nothing left to talk about.”