Derwin Lester IIVeterans of the Belron War
Updated: Apr 30
Tommy Sampson grew up in an endless war fought by a corrupt government that stretched across the galaxy against a group of intergalactic cannibal terrorists that could strike at any moment. Some days it was hard to tell which group was worse. Some days they were the same group. When the Belron War veterans came home, the war came with them. Tommy wasn't so sure he could survive another round.
Credits and Copyright
Third Edition. Copyright©2022 Divided By Zero Books
Second edition. Copyright©2017 Divided By Zero
First Edition Published as
Omnibus: Distant Travels: The Complete Saga
Copyright©2016 Divided By Zero
All Rights Reserved.
Written by Derwin Gerald Lester II
Edited by Cassie Poormokhtar and Travis Weik
Cover art by Derwin Gerald Lester II
All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental
Book I: The Balad of Tommy Sampson
The future is quieter in space, and that's how Tommy Sampson like it. Less people to bother him, more time to himself in between worlds. But no matter how much Tommy wants to be left alone, inter-galactic terrorists, missing sisters and the need for gainful employment interrupt his quest for solitude. Good thing he has a trusty hologram assistant from the work release program to help him figure it all out.
From The Author
I spent nine months in Iraq. It was an easy tour, and I have no complaints. But one of the things that impacted me the most about the trip overseas was five days spent in Kuwait. There was a sandstorm, and we were stuck in Kuwait. I was in no particular hurry to go back, as sitting in an airport was much more relaxing that going back to Iraq. I remember sitting in a tent and I looked across to see a funny and charming woman, a fellow soldier, talking to her friend. I joined in the conversation. That funny and charming woman and I talked for the next five days. This story and Divided By Zero Books are what came out of it. I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did. Thank you for reading it.
Derwin Gerald Lester II
Jan 2013
Updated March 2022
Chapter One
“I had no idea I was short ‘til like six months ago,” I said to the girl to my left. We had been sitting in our chairs talking for the last six hours. I had met her five hours before and we were talking ever since. She was sitting facing me and cross-legged.
My left foot sat comfortably on my right knee, my body sitting upright while my head faced her.
She touched me on the shoulder and laughed, asking “How tall are you?”
“Five foot seven,” I said.
“How did you not know you were short?” she asked me, brushing her soft brown hair away from her eyes.
“I’m not sure,” I told her. “I just figured I was always around tall people. Like maybe there was a different spot for all the other people of natural height.”
“And by natural height, you mean short people like you,” she said, smiling with her quick wit. I didn’t know what to think at that, other than I wanted to introduce her to my mom. If mom wasn’t dead.
“So what’s your favorite color?” I asked, changing the subject to something childish and silly.
She gave me her smile, one that was worth a million, and asked, “Why?”
I stood up a little straighter and said, “A person’s favorite color tells a lot about their personality. Or at least that‘s what they say. But so far it’s been pretty spot on. Mine’s blue.”
“And what does blue mean?” she asked, curious where this was going. I didn’t have a particular direction since I was making it up as I went.
“Means I’m calm and level headed. Heroic,” I said. “But in a humble fashion that suggests a sense of importance that stretches beyond one’s self.” She laughed at that, just like I meant for her to. Then she brushed the hair out of her eyes.
“Alright smart guy,” she said. The interest in her eyes perked. “Mine’s pink. What’s that mean?”
“It means you have the ability to grant three wishes, and I have to rub your belly and say the special chant to get them. But I need to find the jade monkey first.”
I enjoyed seeing her laugh some more. I think I liked seeing people laugh because it showed joy on their face, a change in their life that was caused by me. I was always good at being funny.
She brought her hands to her face and sneezed in a soft, quiet way. “Bless you,” I said.
“Thank you. So you’re a giant dork, huh?” she asked. I smiled in agreement and reached in to dig through my backpack, grabbing a binder and putting it on my lap.
“So what do you like to do for fun?” I asked her, going through the book.
“You mean besides disturb total strangers?” she asked with a smile, masking her true question in a joke.
I shook my head and told her, “I’m not disturbed at all. Well, not by you. Although clowns do freak me out. And large groups of birds.”
“Birds?” she asked.
I shrugged and said, “Yep. When I was a little kid, I was traveling through Israel. I walked out of this coffee shop and then there were dozens and dozens of birds. Maybe it was the way they were all squawking at me, but I swear they were out to get me.”
I raised my right eye brow in a goofy dramatic way. It was my go-to facial expression when I met someone I was attracted to. It tended to put them at ease.
“Yep, they probably were,” she agreed, her body posture relaxed as she gave me a polite smile. Guess all my jokes can’t be winners.
“So what’s in the binder?” she asked.
I opened it up and said, “Just pictures and things. Stuff to remind me of home. I like to look at them a lot when I’m on the road.”
“Can I look at them?” she asked.
I nodded and handed the book to her.
“Was this your cabin?” she wondered, pointing to the photo.
“It was my grandfather’s cabin,” I told her. “That was up in Michigan, where I was born. We used to go up there in the summertime.”
“Any brothers or sisters?” she asked.
“One sister and close female cousin, but they used to fight real bad,” I said, losing myself a little in the picture. But that was the point of pictures, to lose yourself in happy times.
“My sister and my mom used to get into it real bad, so my cousin Heather and I would just run off. There was this lake by the cabin, so we’d grab my grandfather’s paddle boat and go out there. Some days we’d fall asleep on that little boat and wake up with the worst sunburn. Dad would be so mad at us and say we weren’t allowed to go on the boat, but he’d forget in a few days and we’d just do it again.”
I liked telling the good stories. Everyone had a bad story to tell, some sort of negative story that was to evoke pity for the teller. I hated that, it was so unoriginal. So I spent my time trying to remember the good and not think about the bad. Because if I thought too much about the bad I tended to get a little angry and closed off. I didn’t want to do that with this girl.
“So what about you?” I asked, wanting to change the subject.
“Well, my parents were from Africa, and my grandfather was from Spain. That’s where I get my eyes from. We moved to America when I was about three. I don’t remember much about where I grew up in Africa, just that it was a city in the middle of the desert. And kinda gloomy. Of course they decide to move us out to El Paso, which was another gloomy city in the middle of the desert. My father ran a dry cleaner service in the city. I didn’t have any brothers or sisters, but I did have a lot of cousins who lived in the city. My oldest cousin was a mechanic for fighter pilots at the base. I wish I had more time with him. He was like an older brother.”
“He die in the war?” I asked as she handed me the binder. I closed it and put it back in my backpack.
“He got shot down when he was in transit back home. They never found his body. After that, his parents got a divorce and everyone in the family kind of went their separate ways after that. I moved out about a year later. That was…six years ago,” she said, looking down. I decided to try to change the subject to something a little less gloomy than our families.
“So where are you going?”
As if by some sort of magic, a voice came out over the intercom and answered my question. “Attention all passengers, attention all passengers, all flights out today are rescheduled due to the storm. There will be complementary meals served at the dining facility at 1500 hours.”
“Apparently, I’m not going anywhere,” she said, annoyed. But not too much, by the looks of her smile. It was her smile that I liked the best, in the five hours I had been talking to her. It was her gift.
“Well, if we ever get out of here where are you off too?” I asked. She uncrossed her legs and then stretched her full body out. I thought about looking away, but I didn’t. I studied the tight curves of her body, and wondered what she would look like naked on a bed with her hair flowing over a pillow, anxious for my kiss.
“Well, I was going to visit my friend,” she said, smiling knowingly as she knocked me away from romantic fantasy. “There might be a job opening where she works. But I’m more doing this just to get away for a few days. You?”
“Much of the same,” I said, cracking my knuckles. “I’m on my way to my next job. I work as an Emergency Medical Technician for a company called Interstellar and I got a transfer. Better pay, big city, that sort of thing.”
A father with three children walked passed us as we talked. He looked tired. Each of the kids following him were holding hands. Every few minutes he turned to count them, pointing at each with his right index finger then gave himself a thumbs up.
The girl to my left smiled at the tired dad, then looked at me with genuine interest and asked, “So, what do you want to be when you grow up?”
I laughed and asked, “What do you mean? I thought we already were.”
She shook her head and told me, “No, we’re in our twenties. Now is when we make all our decisions on where our life is going to go. I’ve been going to school to be a hospital administrator through those distance learning courses.”
“Oh, that’s cool. Follow the money, right?” I said, nodding.
She disagreed, shaking her head and saying, “Well, money isn’t everything.”
I snapped at her a little, stronger than I meant to.
“No. Money IS everything,” I said, the two years of homeless shelters coming back. “And I’m here to tell you, when you don’t have it, there is nothing more important…except maybe love. And money is a close second.”
“But money can’t buy you happiness. Or love,” she said.
I nodded, but didn’t say anything. She was right, but only on paper. Love was relative, and even though all the toys in the world couldn’t make someone happy, at least the heat would be on.
“Maybe I should rephrase…,” she began, but I cut her off.
“No. Let’s not worry about it. Just cause I made mistakes a long time ago doesn’t mean you’re wrong,” I told her, reaching over and squeezing her hand.
She gave me her smile again to let me know we were ok and asked me the big question. “Where were you when it happened?”
I grabbed a piece of gum out of my pack, and then I grabbed three more. I chewed them all in a big gob. Day three hundred and forty nicotine free.
“I was on my way back home from the Army,” I told her.
She nodded and said, “Wow. Did you re-up when it happened?”
I had actually thought about it. Everyone else I knew signed back up.
“No,” I said. “I had enough adventures in shitholes where people were trying to kill me. And after everyone was gone, I didn’t see the point. There was no enemy to fight over what happened. We did it to ourselves. To look for someone else to blame would be stupid.”
I stood up, wanting to distract myself from memory. I realized that I hadn’t eaten in the many hours I had been talking to her.
“Look, I’m going to grab some food. Want anything? A burger and a beer maybe?”
She gave me a sad smile of understanding. I was glad she let me change the subject. I hated talking about what happened.
“Sure, a beer if you’re buying. I’ll get next round,” she said, leaning her head back and closing her eyes. I put on my coat and walked to the food court.
There was a restaurant with a sign that simply read “Bar and Grill,” so I sat down at the bar and asked, “What does a human have to do to get a burger and a beer around here?”
The male robot behind the bar looked at me with a somewhat confused rubbery face.
“Pay money,” the robot said, his head cocked far to the left as it continued to wipe down the counter.
I laughed and told him in a very cheeky voice, “I would love a burger and a beer from your fine establishment, please.”
“Please slide your card,” the robot said as he handed the card machine out towards me. I swiped the card. It chirped as it read ACCEPTED and showed me a printout of my balance. Shit. It was a good thing I got paid in two days.
Another human sat down next to me.
“How ya doin', man?” he asked. The man looked familiar, but to be honest, I met too many people to keep track.
I nodded and said, “Good.”
“How long you been stuck here?” I asked.
He laughed and looked at his watch. “About two days. You?”
“The same,” I said. “You must have got here right when the storm hit, huh?”
He nodded with comradely agreement and said, “Yeah. Those radiation storms can be a bitch. This your first time off world?”
“Nah. I was an army medic up to a few years ago,” I told him, giving him the short hand. I got tired of telling the whole story. “I was getting out and on my way home when Earth happened.”
The robot put a beer in front of me and the man next to me. I smiled and raised my glass at the male robot. He just looked confused as he started to wipe the inside of the glasses with a napkin.
“You weren’t by any chance with Delta Company, 143rd Transportation Battalion on Belron Prime during the war, were you?” the man next to me asked.
I knew I recognized him from somewhere.
“Campbell! Wow. How ya been, man?” I said, shaking his hand.
“Good, doc. I got a wife now,” Campbell told me.
“You got married?” I asked, happy for him.
He smiled with pride and said, “Well, Doc, Maggie was very persuasive. It was either marry her or die.”
“Were those her words?” I asked, laughing.
Campbell took a long drink of his beer and said, “Yep. Especially after we had Angie.”
“You got a little girl, too? Wow, I got to see pictures,” I told him.
He pulled out the photo album that everyone kept in their right breast pocket nowadays and started going through. It was probably the ugliest baby I ever saw in my entire life, so I knew what the right thing to say was.
“Wow, she’s beautiful. I bet she’ll have a hundred guys all around her when she gets sixteen.”
“She had better not!” Campbell said, laughing as he put the photo album away. The robot brought us our burgers.
“What about you, Doc? What have you been up too?”
“Ever since Earth I’ve been working odd jobs here and there on the outer colonies. Mostly, I’ve been working as an EMT with Interstellar Ambulance. Even worked on a few alien ships that had human crew-members on them. Just…looking around, I guess.”
Campbell nodded.
“Yeah, a lot of people doing that nowadays,” he said.
“We should be looking around for who’s responsible for Earth,” came from my left at the end of the bar. I rolled my eyes.
“Didn’t you read the news? It was that mining accident,” I told the drunk, hoping that he would go away. This specific discussion went on and on sometimes, and I didn’t want to get caught up in it. But his type never went away, at least not politely.
“You know what I’m talking about! That wasn’t an accident! That was a terrorist!” the drunken gentleman to my left said.
He turned to me and took a step forward, saying, “Yeah right, a mining accident. That’s what they want you to think. It was a secret armada. They were hiding behind the moon and then they-…”
“I was there!” I yelled, slamming my drink onto the counter and rattling the bowl of peanuts to my right. “I saw what happened! I read the reports coming out on the internet about the deep core mining and how dangerous it was, but they kept doing it for the cheap electricity. The smart guys kept saying what would happen, but no one cared. And you know what? I was six hours from Earth when the distress calls came out. There were maybe a hundred ships that got out in time. Everyone else just died when the mantle cracked and flash-fried the atmosphere. So don’t go talking about secret terrorist armadas, guy! I was there. We did this to ourselves.”
The drunk walked off after that, muttering dark things about evil conspiracies. The bar was silent, with only Campbell and me sitting next to each other. The rest of the place was empty. Most places were empty these days.
Campbell took a drink out of his beer.
“That makes it our job to pick up the pieces, doesn’t it, Doc?” he asked.
I looked at him skeptically and asked, “What’s the point? It’s not like it’ll ever be the way it used to.”
“It doesn’t have to be the way it used to be, Doc,” Campbell said. He was always an optimist. “But maybe we can make it better. The new human government…”
“You mean the one they set up on Mars? The one where the President got caught having a love affair with a horse?” I asked, finishing my beer.
I contemplated whether I should have another one before I returned to the girl. I raised one finger at the robot. He poured me another beer and set it in front of me.
“Well, you know how these things work,” Campbell said. “It’s not the man; it’s the system you work for. The man can be interchangeable. And I’m pretty sure he won’t get out of that crazy hospital anytime soon.”
The robot brought Campbell another beer.
He nodded with determination. I saw in his eyes the hope that I was still trying to find after fifteen billion humans died.
“My wife is in the senate. She voted him out with the rest of congress,” Campbell said. I took a bite out of my burger and he continued.
“Things are still rough, but with what we have going for us on Mars, I think we can make something good, you know?”
Then the voice that knew all came over the loud speaker, saying “Attention Jupiter Station, Attention Jupiter Station, the radiation storm has passed. Please check with your gate terminals for new flight times.”
I put a paper napkin over what was left of my burger and finished the beer. The robot took both away, and I said, “Thank you” even though that was confusing to the robot.
“Well Campbell, I think it’s time I got moving,” I said, getting up out of my seat. “There’s a pretty girl watching my stuff and I told her I’d be back a little while ago.”
Campbell put his left hand on my shoulder. I was proud to see him with such confidence in his eyes.
“You know, Doc, I never did thank you for saving me on Belron,” he said. “So let me give you a piece of advice. After Earth, I got out of the Army. Then I just started to drift. I didn’t know anything besides some temp job on whatever shithole freighter I was working on. I was just looking, like you said. Then I met Maggie. And I stopped drifting. Maybe the next time you find a place you like, you should stay there for a while. It might help.”
We shook hands and hugged. It was damned good to see him again. Maybe he had a point. I ordered two more beers and walked back to the girl who was watching my stuff and found her asleep. As soon as I got to her the big giant voice came over the intercom and said “Attention Jupiter station, the radiation storm has passed. Please look at the board for new flight times.”
I smiled and gently tapped her. “Hey, the storm’s over. Let’s go see what our flight times are.”
I put both the beers by the couch she was sitting on. She held my hand as I pulled her to her feet and we walked over to the terminal 8A time board. We were taking different flights, so I squeezed her hand as I walked over to my flight terminal. I handed a female looking robot my ID card and she scanned it. I shook my head as the robot gave me my boarding ticket, and I walked back to my luggage. The beautiful girl that was so fresh and new in my life was standing there with her bags. My fight left in ten minutes.
“I’ve got six hours. How long to do you have?” she asked, looking hopeful. I looked down at my boarding pass and smiled.
“I got seven hours. You wanna finish those beers?”
Chapter Two
“You still think about her a lot, huh?” my cousin Heather asked me as she refilled the glass of the guy to my left. The man nodded quietly at her and continued to drink in silence.
I looked at the glass in my hand, a whiskey neat, and took a drink.
“Every once in a while,” I told her, enjoying the mild burning inside my throat. “I mean…I know it was six months ago, but I stayed passed my flight to be with her and she got on her’s. So I guess that means she wasn’t…”
Heather shook her head, her long brunet hair catching on her sharp nose. She sneezed and blew it away.
“That doesn’t mean a thing,” Heather told me, putting a glass up on the rack. “Did you tell her that you missed your flight on purpose?”
I stopped to think about it.
“Well, I just…,” I said, feeling a little stupid.
“You just figured that there would be some sort of hidden mind-meld between you two,” Heather said, drying another glass and putting it up next to the first one.
I wasn’t sure if bartenders took a class on logic and life advice studies, or if people who were born with those gifts were drawn to their life calling.
Heather shrugged with her entire body, just like she used to when we were in high school.
“Tom,” she began, turning off the shrug and smiling with all her heart. She was good at that. “Next time that sort of thing happens, tell her. Talk to her. Say something! Or do you want to just keep screwing the easy girls that you work with?”
“Yep!” I agreed, giving her my goofy little idiot smile.
She rolled her eyes at that and said, “Really Tom?”
I held up my hands in surrender, saying, “You’re right. I won’t just keep screwing the easy girls at work. Thanks for listening, Heather.”
She was always there to listen to me over-think everything. It was one of my character defects.
“Anytime,” she told me.
She came around the bar to stand next to me. “So how is Jane doing?”
I shook my head.
“I left a message on her machine like a month ago,” I said, looking into my drink. “I don’t know.”
“Maybe you should stop trying for a while,” Heather suggested. “Eventually she…”
I snapped a little sharper at Heather than I meant to and said, “She’ll what? Want to talk to her brother? No. There’s three of us left in the family, and she wants to ignore me. I’m done. Anyway, I gotta go. I got an early wake up tomorrow.”
I reached for the off button, but before I could push it, she said, “Tom, wait. Whenever you want, come live with me. You don’t have to be on the move all the time.” She put her hand on mine, and it passed through to the counter. My hologram hand shimmered, making me wish I wasn’t so far away.
I looked at our hands melting into each other, then at Heather.
I smiled and said, “I’ll stop by soon.”
“You better,” she told me. “You owe me one hell of a bar tab, asshole.”
I waved my hand at her and pushed the OFF button, taking me back to my apartment at Vega Colony. The drink was still in my hand. I finished it in one gulp.
It wasn’t much of an apartment. I wasn’t in it very often, so that didn’t matter a whole lot. The entire apartment was no more than three hundred square feet. That was counting the hide-away shower and the foot and a half wide oven. I hit the button on the side of my bed by the pillow and said, “Display.”
A holographic screen shimmered out of the wall, showing the default homepage, Yahoo.com.
“News, Mars Government.” I said. For a brief second, the Holographic Display went fuzzy as it searched for the latest and greatest from the Associated Press.
“It is the second anniversary of the destruction of Earth, and people all around the Human System have gathered in prayer and remembrance of humanity’s home world.”
“The Martian Congress, having failed to pass a budget for the second year in row, closed their emergency monetary session for a day of remembrance for the loss of Earth. After the accident, the newly formed Martian Government was granted emergency funds to last no more than one year. They have since been unable to form a working budget, and talks have ground to a halt.”
I rolled my eyes at that. Even after the end of the world, they still couldn’t make a government work.
“News, Human Colonies, Vega Colony”
The Display went fuzzy and, and then the screen showed a dark skinned girl with a touch of alien reptile in her eyes.
“There was an explosion in Third Berlin today, just outside of the Colonial Capitol Building. Thirteen were injured and seven were killed. The group known as the Cartels, thought to be a remnant of the defeated government of Belron Prime, claimed responsibility for the killing. The Cartels, dormant for several years since the Belron War, resurfaced after the destruction of Earth and have conducted several terrorist bombings in the last two years.”
I sighed.
“Display off,” I said as I got up from my bunk. The bunk retracted into the wall as I walked up to the door on the wall labeled “Work Clothes.”
I lived in Third Berlin, several solar systems away from my cousin Heather on Jupiter Station. Even though the bombing wasn’t on my shift, I knew that I would probably get called in to cover down for the ambulance crews at the scene. As soon as I got my belt into my work pants, my display shimmered into place and SKYPE floated in the air in big letters. Below it read “Bossman” and I was given two options, voice or hologram chat.
“Voice,” I said, tucking my Interstellar Ambulance Service shirt into my pants.
“Sampson, you awake?” Bossman asked.
I nodded, not that he could see it, and said, “Yep, I saw the report on Yahoo. Did you call my partner in yet?”
“That I did. We need you here ASAP. He’s on his way, how long are you out?” Bossman asked.
“Maybe twenty minutes. I’m dressed and heading out the door now,” I told him as I pushed the OFF button on the side my bunk and walked out the door, finishing the last button on my work shirt. It wasn’t an army uniform, but by god I was going to look presentable.
Out passed the door, there was a short hallway to my left. I followed the hallway to the sliding door and put my palm print on the reader to the right of the door. It to open with a swoosh to a dark room. Lights on the ceiling lit my way down rows of taxi cabs and police squad cars to my bike. The bike wasn’t that impressive, at least not by first glance. It had its rust spots, chips in the pant, dings in the armor. But it was mine, and that was enough. I sat on the bike, twisting the nob to the left for the lights, pushing the button under the throttle to activate the armor, and smiled. As the armor encased my entire body in a protective semi-hard metal, I gave the command, “Open garage door.”
The city of Third Berlin opened up to me, a sky full of humans.
It was the largest city on Vega Colony, and second only to New London on Mars in number of human survivors. She was beautiful, this city. Towers upon towers that reached into the atmosphere, banks that had their own docking stations in orbit. The view from my apartment garage was rather impressive, an open scene into a landscape of humanity, bustling around in taxis and bikes and personal cars and school buses, all competing for the same air space. The traffic was organized into lanes, of course. Digital markers were for each lane of traffic. If you got below your marker by more than two feet, a rather loud warning would come over through your car’s music speakers that you were violating traffic laws. Most of the time it worked, sometimes it didn’t. Such was life in the fast lane.
The door to my garage opened in-between both lanes, each a one-way going opposite of the other. Route 39 East was a hundred feet above my apartment garage, 39 West was three hundred feet below. Both roads had traffic markers leading up and down for traffic to merge. There were driveway lanes from each apartment building meant for merging from the side. I knew Route 39 East would be blocked due to traffic, so I hit the throttle and dove downward along the driveway lane from my apartment. I hit the anti-grav for several seconds, soaring above the lane. Then I killed the anti-grav and dropped, the city rushing past me as I waited just long enough to hit the anti-grav and merge into traffic from above.
There was a graying Asian man in a delivery truck behind me yelling in Chinese. I turned around and gave him my middle finger as I sped through traffic. God, I loved it here. Some days I could almost pretend Earth wasn’t gone. That was what most of us did, go about our lives and look for meaning as best we could. Drove a little faster to make it go away. Better than the groups of idiots that gave up and died by drinking the Kool-Aid on New London after Earth happened. No great loss. To give up is to fail, and I wasn’t the failing type. At least, not after the war.
I took the Holt Road exit and merged right into the traffic, a trio of ambulances racing past me on their way to help those that needed it. The driver of the lead ambulance nodded at me, and I returned it to her. She smiled and brushed her hair back, swerving the ambulance as she lost concentration for half a second. I smirked, thinking about how good she looked when we got naked in the back of the ambulance, and kept on driving into the Interstellar parking garage.
I felt under the throttle and pushed the button, causing the armor to retract back into the bike. I rubbed my eyes as they adjusted to the light. After I got off the bike, I walked over to the New Berlin city map. The city itself was set up in five levels, one on top of the other, each level with its own municipal government and spread out over a hundred square miles. There was a number on the top right of the map, indicating which level was displayed. Interstellar Headquarters, along with my apartment, were on the third level. Orange dots sped throughout the Third Level map showed where Interstellar ambulances were. The bombing was on Third Level in the Colonial Capitol Building. Most of the orange dots were heading that direction.
My partner on the ambulance, John Richards, walked up to me with a cigarette in his mouth. I could tell he was nervous; he was dragging on the mist cigarette like it was his only chance for air. “Tom, did you hear?” he asked. I nodded.
“Where are we at today?” I asked him.
“We’re on Third, south side. Those of us that aren’t at the Capitol are pulling coverage for the rest of the level,” John said, putting the electronic cigarette back into his left breast pocket. “I got the ambulance stocked and clean already, we just need to sign into the Run Book for today.”
“Right on. How’s Amanda? Doesn’t her dad work at the Colonial Capitol?” I asked.
John shook his head.
“We haven’t heard from him all day,” he told me. “I’m trying to keep her calm, but she’s really worried.”
That was terrible news, since Amanda was expecting a baby.
“Ok. Well, let’s earn the company some money,” I said, knowing he wouldn’t want to talk about it. I just patted him on the shoulder and walked through the garage door into the Ambulance Bay.
There was only one ambulance in there. Well, only one that was operational. Seven trucks sat in various states of disrepair due to lack of funds. The company wasn’t horribly profitable, but I had a feeling that the relief effort at the Capitol would raise our stock price.
I approached to front passenger door and put my hand on the Grey palm reader. It flashed red while it scanned my entire hand, opening the passenger door and clocking me in for the day. I climbed into the seat and, the windshield came to life with three windows that filled up the screen.
The first screen was information about the patient and the run, a simple nursing home transport to The Third Level Methodist Hospital. The second was a GPS mapbook that gave us directions on how to get there while avoiding all traffic stops from the bombing. The third window was a warning that Cartel members had issued a bounty on any first responders or policemen that assisted in the relief/rescue of the bombing victims. I looked over at John, studying his face as he read the warning. He was set off to go to basic combat training for the Army in a few weeks.
“Didn’t you fight these guys during the war?” he asked me.
“I didn’t do much of the fighting,” I told him. “I was in an Aid Station on a major Forward Operating Base for most of it. But yeah, the Cartels were the enemy. I guess they still are.”
My hands got tense as I closed and reopened them, trying to work out the tension I felt in entire body. The war was supposed to be over.
“But we’re going to be fine, ya know?” I said, pushing the old hate for the enemy down into the furnace of my heart. That was where I kept it, letting it stay warm.
“Yeah, I know,” John said, the old layer of confidence coming back.
Good. He was going to need it.
He hit the ignition sequence, roaring the ambulance to life and starting our way out the ambulance bay. After a hundred and fifty yards, the concrete walkway ended and the anti-grav kicked in as we turned right down Petrol Alley. I looked down past the traffic markers to see the great space in-between Layer Three and Layer Two. It was about a half mile gap between both, with an anti-grav net in the middle to catch those unlucky enough to fall off the edge. It usually worked.
As we drove into the nursing home driveway, I tapped the top right corner of the windshield and said, “Dispatch, this is crew five-oh-four. We are on scene.”
A small window opened up by the top right and a voice said, “Roger, five-oh-four.”
As we stepped out of the ambulance, an invisible micro-protective film secreted from our uniforms and covered our bodies. It wasn’t one hundred percent effective, but it made sure most of the germs we came into contact with didn’t get to us.
I met John around at the back of the ambulance. He put his palm on the print reader at the top left side and the backdoor slid open to the left. The anti-grav stretcher floated in place. I grabbed the end of it and followed John into the nursing home. A voice from above the door said, “Welcome to Plainwood Meadows.”
There weren’t too many people in the main lobby. I found a very busy nursing assistant answering the phones. She looked at the floating stretcher then saw the word ”Interstellar” written on John’s breast pocket. “Three-oh-five,” she mouthed, covering the receiver for a brief second and then proceeding to yell into the phone.
We moved around the nurse’s desk to a main hallway that ran through the middle of the entire nursing home. As we walked down it, I looked for the 300 hallway, taking a left when I saw it. Room 305 was right at the beginning of the hallway on the right. We walked into the room and I greeted the patient.
“Hello, Mister Johnson.” I said, “We’re here to take you to the hospital.”
He nodded in that semi-coherent way most of the nursing home residents had about them. The dead eyes that came to life occasionally were depressing at first. It made me wonder if I would end up like that.
It turned out that Mr. Johnson could walk, so John and I lowered the anti-grav stretcher enough for him to walk up to it and climb in. As Mr. Johnson lay down, three straps slowly slid over him, securing him in place.
Another CNA walked in. He was a short man, maybe five foot three. I didn’t like his eyes. They seemed too nice. I hated people with nice eyes.
“Hi, I’m Billy,” he said, shaking my hand and then John’s. “I’m supposed to go with Mr. Johnson to the hospital.”
I checked the info on the display window towards the top left of the stretcher. Yep, there was a CNA named Billy Williams that was supposed to come with us. I shrugged.
“Alright, Billy. Come on,” John said, as I gently pulled the stretcher towards the ambulance.
John kept chatting with the CNA, but I ignored him as much as possible. I hated his eyes.
I loaded the patient into the ambulance, satisfied that the stretcher was secure. John was up front, and I heard him start the engine. Then I heard a soft click coming from the left side of the vehicle. I turned around and saw that smiley Billy Williams had an old-fashioned pistol pointed at my face.
“What’s goin on, Billy?” I asked.
It wasn’t the first time someone had pointed a gun at me, but I still pooped in my pants a little. Then I looked under his left ear. There was a small cross-hatched box tattoo. Just like the Cartel soldiers had during the war.
“Get in,” Billy said. His eyes weren’t so nice anymore.
I smiled and told him, “You first.”
He shrugged and pointed the pre-war pistol at the old man in the stretcher. I shrugged in return. Chances were that Mister Johnson and I were dead already. All I could do was buy time for John.
Billy fired a shot into the air.
“Get in, now!” he yelled.
The CNA that was so busy answering the phones earlier had come outside for some fresh air. She heard the shot and screamed. It startled Billy for half a second. I punched him in the throat as hard as I could, causing him to make a choking yelp noise that I would never forget. Also, the gunshot to the left arm was memorable.
I screamed as my arm burned and stumbled back about four feet. I fell to the ground. The ambulance’s reverse lights came on, so I rolled out of the way. John punched the accelerator and backed into Billy. The ambulance was over him, and I could see him try to move out from under it. John turned off the anti-grav. There was a wet splat and bits of CNA Billy Williams sprayed all over my face.
“Oww, this really hurts,” I said, holding pressure on my arm. John ran up to me with a very serious look on his face. He sprayed clotting foam into the bullet hole. It stopped the bleeding and numbed my entire left arm. I was grateful he’d been on the job for two years and knew how to handle himself.
I felt the calming agent start to relax my body. John smiled and said, “You’re going to be ok.”
I smirked and said, “Well, better than Billy at least.”
Page BreakTwo months later
I looked at my bank account balance again. It was unreal. I had never seen so many zeroes.
It turned out that the old man in the back of the ambulance was the father of the woman who owned the nursing home. She gave John and me a very generous tip. He quit Interstellar and moved to a small ranch on Mars, just outside of New London. Amanda’s baby was due at any day. Her father was found in the wreckage of the capitol building and made a full recovery. From what John told me, he was more than happy to get away from the big city and play babysitter at the ranch for free.
I tapped the right hand corner of my DISPLAY glasses, turning my enormous bank account off. I took the glasses off and looked around the used spaceship lot. I was always told that you should look around before you made a decision.
“Never pick the first one you see,” Dad used to tell me.
But I couldn’t help myself.
The old man who ran the used ship lot quietly followed me around, experienced enough to let me look in silence. He had shown me fifteen ships, but I kept coming back to the first one.
It was an older model Mobile Surgical Center from the start of the Belron war. I had heard of the mobile surgical centers. They carried three patient beds and enough space for three surgeons to do their jobs. I walked around it, studying the dinks and old laser burns in the hull. The front driver’s seat had holes in the leather, but that was ok. It just made me love it even more. I made my way around to the other side, the old man still following, and we both walked into the back door at the rear of the ship.
It was different from the mobile centers we had trained on before deployment. The guts were taken out and it was made into a residential ship. A musty shag carpet sat on the living room area. A burn mark scorched three feet of carpet in front of the couch, which was in pretty bad shape too. But that could be fixed. So could the carpet. There was a small kitchen area that was to the left of the living room. I walked in and it was intact, if a little dirty. To the right of the kitchen was the bedroom, which resembled the rest of the ship. Used. Worn, with miles and miles on every piece. But there was a future here.
I turned to the old man and said, “I’ll take it.”
Chapter Three
I walked up to the cash register and smiled at the girl working behind the counter. She gave me a professional smile, one that told me she didn’t really mind me being there, but she would just as soon go home. That was okay. I had been on that end of the register before.
“Any fuel?” she asked.
I nodded and told her “Sixty five on pump two.”
She pushed a button. I looked through the glass window behind her and saw little green men in Grey jumpsuits scurry about on the docking bay floor, hooking different hoses and pumps to my spaceship.
“Happy Earth Day,” she said as I stared at the counter.
I looked up and said, “Excuse me?”
She swiped my card and said, “You’re human, right? Isn’t today the anniversary of Earth?”
“In about four weeks,” I said, nodding. “It’s not usually a happy day for us, but thanks anyways.”
She took her pale green hand and scratched the scales on the back of her head. She handed me back the card with her other hand. Outside, the green men were disconnecting the hoses and wiping my spaceship down. I nodded and told her to leave a ten percent tip for them. She gave me a strange look.
“That’s very kind of you,” she said. “I always heard humans were so mean.”
I smiled and told her, “We have our moments.”
Then I waved goodbye and walked up to the gate, scanning my ID card. As I passed, I winked at the rubbery looking female gate attendant. She gave me a confused look. Hitting on robots was a bit silly, but sometimes you got to do the silly stuff to keep your sanity.
The left side of my spaceship still read ‘Medevac Three.’ It was the old designation from when it was an Army Mobile Surgical Center, and no one had bothered changing it. I didn’t see any reason to, either.
I placed my palm on the reader by the rear hatch, smiling as it opened slowly to my left. It squeaked a little, but that was low on the list of things to get fixed. I stepped through the entrance and into the living room. After I took off my shoes, I plopped on the couch.
My secretary Sara shimmered from the wall next to me and onto the couch, wearing a light green hooded sweater and a pair of baggie pajama pants. She had brown hair which was just a shade darker than her light brown skin. Both had just a hint of Africa, as my dad would have put it.
“How’s it going, boss?” she asked.
I shrugged.
“Well, we should have enough fuel to make it to the Mars, seeing as how we’re only six hours out. But there’s another fuel point at there. How much money do we have left?” I asked her.
After the medical relief job at the Capital on Vega Colony, I had gotten paid a considerable sum by Interstellar on top of the bonus from the nursing home director. That money, plus selling my bike, was used to pay off the credit cards and buy Medevac 3. I was debt free and had a full tank of fuel, on my way to a new job on Mars. If only I had the money to buy more food…
“We should be able to fuel up again when we get to Mars,” Sara told me. “But after that, presuming you want to eat daily on the way there, you will be broke. Also, your E.M.T. license is about to expire again. They’re having a recertification class on Jupiter Station, so I signed you up for that.”
She was good at managing my life.
“Well, having money was nice while it lasted. Any word on what work will look like when we get there?” I asked.
She stuck her hands in the pockets of her sweater and said, “Mostly shift work. The New London Methodist Hospital on Mars is looking for experienced EMTs, so I sent them your resumé.”
I nodded.
“That sounds good. It’ll probably pay more since the anniversary is coming up.”
It wouldn’t be enough for anything fancy, but that didn’t matter. It would get me by. Plus, I wouldn’t mind seeing my cousin Heather again when I got to Jupiter Station.
I got up from the couch and went into the bedroom, taking my clothes off. I left them in a pile on the floor and stepped into the shower that was in the tiny bathroom area, three feet from my bed.
“You want me to join you?” Sara asked.
I turned the water on and laughed. She was a hologram, of course. Her real body was in a prison somewhere. The minimum security prisons allowed inmates with good records to apply for the work release program. Mostly she just worked as my secretary, and I got a tax write off.
“Nah. Thanks, though. So, did they fix the engine?” I asked.
She laughed and said, “Yep. He tried to overcharge me for the new filters. You know what I did?”
I shook my head. I knew she was looking at me through the shower curtains. It was a strange relationship. She chuckled and said, “I closed the doors and started leaking the oxygen out. Slowly, of course.”
I laughed and clapped my hands once.
“That’s my girl.”
“So does that mean I can join you?” she asked again.
I opened the shower curtains a little. She was smiling at me, in that way that made most men give us a discount on ship parts.
“I’m not really in the best mood right now, Sara,” I told her.
While I usually loved the game she played that involved trying to see me naked, I just wasn’t feeling it today.
“You mind turning off for a while?”
“I guess. If you want to talk, let me know. Or anything else,” Sara said as she turned around and shook her ass a little, fading back into the ship.
I got out of the shower and got dressed, walking to the kitchen to see what that amazing smell was. Sara had finished dinner while I was in the shower. Her usual was a pot of beans with hotdogs cut up in them, which was my favorite. Soft bluegrass music played over the speaker by the stove.
For just a minute, I felt like I was fifteen years old, and my dad was making dinner on a Sunday night. Sara was a good woman, and she knew all my favorite foods. I often wondered if I should marry her. Although, if we had a fight, she did have complete control of the ship‘s oxygen. Lots of factors to consider.
I filled a bowl of beans and franks and mixed some crackers in with them. I grabbed a bottle of water out of the fridge and moved into the living room, plopping into the big comfy chair. My finger swiped over the biometric reader on the coffee table and turned on the Display.
“Email,” I said, as I took a bite of the beans and franks.
Yahoo Messenger shimmered out of the wall and into a hologram that floated in the middle of the room. Fifteen offers for prostitutes from Mars, some looking underage by about ten years, displayed in living colorful 3D. I took a drink of water, washing down the beans and franks.
“Delete.”
The next seven emails were offers for the search to find the real reason Earth blew up.
“Delete.”
I took another bite of the beans and franks. Then, I looked down at the bottom of the display at the last email. It said Jane. I almost deleted it.
“Open.”
The camera was tilted, like it was hidden. My sister was on her knees and had a gun to her head. Looked like a pre-war model laser pistol.
“Wait…!” she began, and then someone off screen kicked her in the gut.
I recognized the tattoo on his face. It was a cross-hatched box under his left ear. The Cartels. He smiled and took his knife out. A few seconds later, Jane was one ear short. Then she faded back into the Yahoo Messenger display.
God damn it, Jane.
“Sara!” I said. She shimmered next to me on the couch.
“Yes, boss?” she asked. Then her eyes went wide and she went fuzzy for three seconds. Her image restored, and she asked, “Any idea who sent the message to you?”
“I don’t know. I got a lot of people who owe me favors after the war. Also got a lot of people who hate me.”
“Don’t you have a friend whose wife is in the senate?” she asked.
I nodded and said, “Look though the web address book and find a guy named Frank Campbell. I think he lives on Jupiter Station now. Tell him I’m going to need that favor he promised me.”
The Display holographic homepage came into view, floating two feet in front of the wall. The screen came alive, and my contact list started to scroll down too fast for me to read. It stopped at Campbell.
“You have a few friends in the Human Medical Association. They tend to run real tight with alien governments. You want me to make some calls?” Sara asked.
I thought about it but decided against.
“No, but keep that option on the table. We want to keep this in house at the moment, but if it blows up too big, we might need outside help.”
She grunted and the display came to life again, opening new windows and sifting through information faster than I ever could. Her brain was hooked into a computer, which helped her run the ship. Made me feel good to have her around. I might actually be able to figure this out.
“Any luck?” I asked her.
“Yep,” She said, her eyes moving back and forth as she scanned invisible information. “I talked to Campbell’s AI. He arranged a lunch for you, Campbell and the Senator.”
“Fantastic work,” I said, giving her my best flirty smile. She smiled back and then cocked her head to the left.
“Boss, I’m getting a lot of weird comm chatter from the ships in the area. They’re talking about us,” she said.
I clapped my hands together and told her, “Time to go. Can you bypass the security procedures for the fuel station docks?”
She smiled.
“Already did. Course set to Jupiter Station,” she said as she faded into the wall.
The ship lurched up and shot through the barely open docks. Sara always loved to play it close. I think she just liked the attention from me. I rubbed the wall where she disappeared, and I heard a slight purr come from the ship. Smiling, I stepped through the living quarters, opened the door to the bridge and sat in the pilot’s chair. Not that I ever used it. Autopilot is a great blessing upon the people.
About an hour later, Sara shimmered into the copilots chair next to me, wearing baggy sweatpants and a tee-shirt that was three times too big.
“You want some music, boss?”
I nodded, and she put on something with a slow hard beat. A mellow, tough song that helped me relax. One of the little things she knew I liked to fall asleep to.
Sara rocked back and forth for a moment, moving with the music. Then she turned to me and asked, “Tommy…do you love me?”
It wasn’t that I didn’t. Certainly not because it was platonic, because there were definitely dreams that were very erotic. But I wasn’t sure. And if I wasn’t sure, I couldn’t say yes.
“I’m sorry,” I told her.
She gulped, and covered her face as she faded back into the chair. I didn’t fall asleep for a long time.
Chapter Four
I woke up to a loud beeping. There was a notice on the forward display for the bridge from Port Authority on Jupiter Station. It was a real person, an overly perky teenage girl dressed in a sombrero, a black tee shirt and a grass skirt.
“Hello sir, how are you today?” she asked.
I nodded, shaking the sleep from my brain and not wanting to talk.
“What is your business on Jupiter Station?” she asked me, sincerely interested.
“Going to see an old war buddy of mine,” I told her.
She got excited and asked, “Oh really, you were in the war?”
I nodded.
“Well, thank you for your service,” she said.
I nodded.
“And your final destination is Jupiter Station?” she asked.
I nodded.
“Ok. You are cleared to dock. Remember to have a pleasant day!” she said, ending in an excited squeal.
I nodded. Talking to people was weird.
“You know,” Sara said through the ship’s comm system, “It wouldn’t hurt for you to talk to other people besides your war buddies.”
She shimmered into the chair next to me, dressed in a baggy pair of jeans and a large tee-shirt.
“That’s what I have you for,” I told her. “So I don’t have to talk to anyone else. And what’s wrong with having a close group of friends?”
Sara laughed and said, “You have a list of people you never talk to, who are mostly paranoid hermits themselves that spend all of their time talking to their secretaries, just like you. Trust me, we talk about you guys.”
She then covered her mouth and sneezed.
“You getting a virus?” I asked her.
She wiped her nose with her finger.
“I keep telling you to update your spyware,” she said, pointing a finger at me. “But you want to watch that weird porn they make out on the outer colonies and I always get sick. So you owe me, buster.”
I smiled and told her, “I’ll get you to a geek. Any response from my war buddies?”
She nodded and a piece of holographic paper appeared out of thin air. With a pair of fake reading glasses that instantly appeared on her face, she looked very intently at the page.
“I got a hold of one, a Jennifer MacDonald,” Sara said. “She is supposed to meet you on Jupiter Station after you meet with Campbell.”
“Good work. You are totally getting a raise,” I told her, giving her my best cheesy smile.
She laughed and then sneezed again.
“I’d settle for some decent anti-virus software,” she said.
We started the docking procedures for Jupiter Station, and she faded back into the chair. Twenty minutes later, I met Campbell in the Jupiter Station Welcome Center. I smiled and shook his hand.
“Doc, it’s good to see you,” he told me.
I nodded and said, “Seems like we just keep running into each other here. Thanks for your help, man.”
He shrugged reluctantly, saying, “I don’t know how much help I can be, Doc. But let’s talk to the wife and see what we can do. You eat yet?”
I shook my head.
“Good, because I had the house chef whip up a little something.”
I patted him on the back and said, “Well, thanks.”
We walked through a long hallway to the Senator’s home, past doors with built-in holograms, pictures of the families of nicely dressed governmental types. A rubbery-looking robot male dressed in a tuxedo opened the door and took our jackets.
“Follow me,” the robot instructed.
We walked through three doors to the banquet room. The table must have been fifteen feet by five feet. I tried to find a spot where there wasn’t food, but it just wasn’t happening.
I turned to my old buddy and said, “Bruce, I can’t eat all this food.”
He smiled and said, “Doc, think of it as a dinner in your honor. You liked beans and franks with crackers…and Heineken beer, right?”
I smiled.
“Good memory.”
As I sat down next to Campbell, I heard “Sorry I’m late, everybody.”
It was a beautiful six-foot-tall Norwegian-looking woman, blond and angelic and perfectly symmetrical in every way. She was dressed in a conservative dark blue business suit. I shook my head, trying to focus on being polite instead of staring.
I stood up and offered my hand.
“Hi, I’m Tommy. Your husband and I met during the war.”
She smiled, but I could tell she was good at smiling. At least the type that she was giving me. Made me wonder what her real smile looked like.
“I’m Margret, but my friends just call me Maggie,” she said, sitting down next to Campbell. The service robot was at her side a moment later.
“A Heineken, please,” she told him, enunciating each syllable. The rubbery looking robot nodded and grabbed one out of the bucket full of beers in the center of the table and poured it into a glass full of ice.
“I know why you are here, Mr. Sampson, and I am telling you no,” Senator Campbell said, cutting right to the point, ever the statesman. “We do not know the whereabouts of your sister and her disappearance is a matter for the local police, not a member of the Senate,”
Bruce looked at me, knowing what he wanted to do but he couldn’t quiet find himself.
“Well that was fast. So why make this big spread? Why even see me?” I asked her, pointing to the food on the table.
She wiped her mouth with a cloth napkin and said, “This was not my idea. Had I known, I would have told you in advance. I apologize for my husband’s lack of foresight.”
I looked at Campbell, trying to gauge his reaction. He had the look of a man who lost a fight a long time ago. But there was something else. I couldn’t place it.
“I’m sorry to have bothered you. Have a nice life, Campbell,” I said, as I stood up and left.
Campbell called for me, but I was too mad to look back. All the thanks in the world, but when I needed him he hid behind his damned wife. I walked in silence back to the docks where Medevac Three was parked. I looked at her hull. She could use a bath.
“This was such a waste of time,” I said, storming inside the ship.
Sara shimmered into the kitchen wearing a frumpy looking outfit. It was a rather bland white shirt and a large pair of blue jeans that just hung on her ass in that perfect way she wore everything.
“Dinner’s almost ready, boss,” she said, stirring a pot.
I was glad she had fixed dinner. I didn’t get a bite at Campbell’s house.
“Beans and franks?” I asked, hoping.
With her best perky voice, she said, “Of course!”
“You know me so well,” I told her.
She smiled and looked at me with an understanding face. She blew the long brown hair out of her eyes.
“So why was it a waste of time?” she asked.
I shrugged and told her, “I guess Campbell changed. I mean, we all have, but…he’s just not the guy I remembered.”
“Didn’t you tell me once that the way you acted over there was different than the way you were at home?” she asked. “Well, maybe that’s him. Maybe he was brave over there because he had to. Now he doesn’t.”
I nodded and gave her my best flirty look.
“You know, you’re probably right,” I said. “That’s some good thinkin’. You’re smart for a hot chick.”
Sara smiled with sad eyes and said, “Enjoy your dinner, boss.”
She walked away and faded into the wall.
“Wait a minute!” I said, alone in the kitchen. She had probably gone back to her prison cell. That’s where she went when she wanted to be alone, or at least alone from me. I didn’t feel like eating. I went back into my room and went to sleep.
Chapter Five
Seven hours later, I woke up to a loud beeping. There was a text message on display from my wall clock, floating a few inches above my head.
Your paranoid hermit associate is waiting for you at MacDonald’s.
~Sara
I got out of bed and dressed casually, a black tee shirt with a baggy pair of blue jeans and tan sandals. I walked into the kitchen and saw the food was still there. She must have been really pissed to not clean up. Her body was coded for hard light, letting her pick up certain things like pots and pans. That came in handy. I couldn’t afford the human interaction upgrade, though.
A half hour was spent cleaning the kitchen in silence. Then I went out into the space station and through customs. A rubbery-looking robot conducted a full body scan. They were all rubbery-looking around here.
“Please continue,” he said.
I grabbed a quarter out of my pocket and flicked it at him. It bounced off with a clink. The robot looked at me confused. I laughed.
MacDonald’s was on the third level. I went to the front door and greeted a robot in a red outfit and a yellow “M” on the front. I showed him my ID.
“Please go to the VIP section, sir,” the robot said.
I nodded and walked to the back room. I opened the door and was greeted by a stripper on a pole, a dark skinned girl with just a touch of reptile in her spine. She must have had an interesting childhood.
Past the stage, I saw a rather beautiful Caucasian female sitting at the far back. She had a mean-looking scowl and short brown hair. It was my old Commanding Officer from the war, Captain Jennifer MacDonald. I sat down next to her.
“The fuck’s the matter with you?” she asked as way of salutation.
I rubbed my head. “Can you be more specific, Ma’am?”
“You asked Senator Campbell about your sister,” she said, crossing her arms.
“What’s wrong with that?” I asked.
Captain MacDonald uncrossed her arms and took a drink. “She’s bought by the cartels,” she explained. “They own every shop on this level--except for mine. Not to mention fifty percent of the businesses on Jupiter station and half of the senate! You don’t think they know you’re here?”
I just looked at her with astonishment. She relaxed a little.
“No,” she said. “You had no idea, did you? I mean, it makes sense. After Earth, you dropped off the radar like the rest of us, but you didn’t…never mind. I already warned your work-release girl to get the hell off of Jupiter Station as quickly as possible because law enforcement will be after her soon. Your sister is alive as far as my people can tell. But we’re not quite sure where she is.”
“Wait... you’re tracking my sister? Let’s go find her!” I said, hopeful.
Captain MacDonald smirked and said, “Kid, there’s a lot more going on right now than your sister.”
She got up and walked to the back of the VIP lounge to a door with a palm print. I followed her over, just to figure out what was going on. As her hand was placed on the palm print reader, the door opened. It was a freight elevator. Thirty floors later, we were in the docks. MacDonald and I walked up the flight line to her ship, which was so sleek and shiny it made mine look like a row boat.
We walked up to the ship and the side door slid to the left. I followed her inside.
“Jimmy, set course for rendezvous point, take long way home, run cloak as soon as we get out of Space Dock,” she ordered in her command voice.
A rather manly voice responded.
“Yes ma’am.”
“Strap yourself in, Doc,” MacDonald said as we walked through the living area and to the bridge of her ship. The moment I sat down in the passenger seat and put the buckle in, I felt the weight of the whole ship pressed against me, squeezing my body as we left Space Dock. A few minutes later, I felt the pressure ease up and MacDonald unbuckled herself. She looked at me and said, “Not bad. Most men scream when I drive.”
I felt the blood slowly return to my face.
“Is it always like that?” I asked.
She laughed and said, “Come on back, let’s have a drink.”
Her eyes lit up and she unbuckled herself, walking to the back of the ship. I shook my hand to try to get the feeling back into it. It somewhat helped. I walked back behind the cockpit to the rather dingy looking living room area where MacDonald was pouring drinks.
“You still drink a whiskey neat?” she asked. I said yes and sat down on the black fluffy couch that wrapped around most of the room. Her bedroom was to the right of the living room
She sat her glass down on the coffee table and said, “I’ll be back in a minute.”
I took a big gulp of my drink and she came back from her bedroom, wearing a pair of very short shorts and a white tee-shirt with a black bra that made her already impressive breasts stand out even more. She grabbed her glass and sat next to me. There was a deep loneliness in her eyes. During the war, she was too tough for anything to hurt her. I guess loneliness weighs everyone down after a while.
“What happened to you?” she asked, searching for the words. “I mean, we all kept in touch after Earth, and everyone sort of had a tab on you, but…you were just so…”
I shrugged and took a drink.
“I always kind of kept to myself, even during the war,” I told her. “I missed everybody, don’t get me wrong. But after Earth, I figured the best way to move on was to keep moving. There was so much talk of war with random aliens that everyone was so sure were responsible for Earth or different factions inside the government. I just figured it was better for me to fall of the radar than to get involved.”
MacDonald nodded with understanding.
“What have you been doing since then? You go to university at all?” she asked.
I took another drink and said, “I thought about medical school for a while, but life gets in the way. I’ve been working as an EMT with Interstellar for the most part.”
She nodded, taking a long drink.
“You know, my husband is dead,” she said, inching closer to me. “Died on Earth.”
I coughed into my drink.
“I’m sorry to hear that, ma’am,” I said, my voice breaking a little.
She laughed and said, “What was it you guys used to call me, when I wasn’t around? Jenny Mac? I always kind of liked that.”
She put her left hand on my right thigh. Gone was the war-hardened commander. Now she was just... Jenny. I looked her in the eyes, smiling. She cocked her head to the right and asked, “You’re not gay, are you?”
I laughed and replied, “No. Why?”
She shook her head and told me, “Because most guys would have me naked by now…”
I put my glass down and held her hand. I began to say something but stopped, because I suddenly realized something else. Something so simple that it should have come to me a long time ago. Sara never accused me of being smart.
“Jenny…” I said softly, hoping she wouldn’t feel too hurt.
With reluctant defeat, she smiled.
“Alright…I hope she treats you well,” she said. “We should get to the rendezvous point in three hours.”
She turned and walked to the back room, not explaining who we were meeting up with at the rendezvous point and honestly I was too distracted to think. Normally, when a beautiful woman wanted to sleep with me, the answer was a resounding yes. I’m sure I could have joined her with a quick apology, but instead I stood up and walked to the copilot’s chair on the bridge and sat down. I fell asleep wondering if Sara was still mad at me, and if my sister was still alive.