How far will humans go to survive when they have nothing to lose? Flight of the Albatross is a tale about treachery and love far in our future.
Enjoy Chapter 1.
FLIGHT OF THE ALBATROSS
Chapter 1
Syn Asteroid at the edge of the Centauri System
Chenvro Salvaging Company extraction site
He perished before Cali's eyelids flicked.
The mangled rudder of the starship soared through low gravity on an intercept course, too perfect of a projection to be an accidental casting. Swathed in the glow from the mobile work-lights, he didn’t have time to turn, or to run, or to motion to Cali or her remaining crew that a hunk of their commissioned cargo now sped toward him. Its source of ejection remained unknown to her because it had emerged from behind a heap of the asteroid’s surface rock, closer to the crash site. But she felt certain he had seen who’d done it. And she speculated on the why, a conjecture she could never reveal.
He had been Cali Bank’s fourth and she hoped final personnel loss.
At least this time there was a body to claim, albeit just half of it.
#
The grit on Cali’s palm tainted the white parchment gray as she crumbled the note in her hand. Another time, she might savor the paper’s texture, trace its fine grains with her calloused fingertips. But not this time.
Lodum Maxfield, her supervisor, sat behind the dented metallic desk in front of her. He had recently shaven. Tiny nicks riddled his brown face. The shoddy oxygen generator beside him popped and grinded, a sign it was about to blow.
“Those who own paper wield power,” Lodum said.
The tarnished grid suit Cali wore felt stifling and reeked of greasy ore dust. The life-support suit felt as though it were suctioning the moisture from her pores now that she was in a breathable atmosphere. “That’s not always true. Is it?”
He shoved aside the array of items on the desktop and lowered his voice, as if he didn’t want anybody else in his small, pop-up office to hear him. But there were only the two of them there. “No, not always. But in this situation, I think it is.”
She squeezed the summons in her aching hand tighter. Her skin had been stripped raw. Handling and categorizing parts from old starships came with risks. Minor risks, usually, like burns or cuts or broken bones, and raw skin if field-house gloves wore through, and hers had. But the operation on the Syn Asteroid proved to increase the risk to a deadly level.
Proceed with caution, she reminded herself.
Cali had worked for the Chenvro Salvaging Company for nearly ten years. Before the end of her second year there, her hard work had been noticed, resulting in her promotion to chief engineer. As long as she did her job, and saw that her team of fifteen did theirs, scrounging for food and water remained a thing of the past. She didn’t want that to change just because she questioned the origin of the paper summons, or its intent. But her exit interviews were normally conducted before a holographic interface with a bot in the privacy of her sleeping cubical, not in person, nor at the request of a handwritten note, so there had to be more to her being sent to Lodum’s office. Paper was an expense the salvaging company couldn’t afford, and it couldn’t be traced: there would be no log-in trail, or virtual fingerprints proving she had debriefed. Just Lodum’s account of her being in his office.
Everything about the operation on Syn was highly unusual, from its secrecy, to the inadequate food they fed to her and her crew.
She tossed the crushed note onto Lodum’s desk. Lodum looked down at it and sighed. He flattened it out with his palm, lit its corner with the pocket igniter he had been holding, and dropped the burning message into the metallic waste can by his feet.
Cali flinched, the only physical evidence of her being there now gone.
“Protocol,” he said, noticing her reaction.
Lodum drummed his fingers on his desk, watching her. She wished he would get on with it. Fire her, or do something, anything to rid her mind of the guilt and heartache she felt for losing crewmembers in such unexplainable ways.
Leaning toward her, he locked his hands together. “Look, I don’t know why you were sent to me, or who sent you the note. But this is just a debriefing, nothing more, and I can assure you the company will receive your responses through the same channel. We’re almost done here. I just need to verify a few more things before I submit my report. I’m deeply sorry about the crew member you lost.”
She held up four fingers, cringing. Her sweating caused her sleeve’s grid-glove attachment to tighten around her wrist, making hand movements painful. “I lost four of my team.”
He looked at the holo-screen beside him. “Yes, I have that right here in my report. That would be your... Fifth?” His eyes drifted up to her.
“My Third,” she corrected him, recalling her team coming through the airlock for the last time, moments before she had received the paper summons from a courier she had never seen before. As usual, they entered in the order of their ranking, tired, and somewhat unsettled. Her First, Gerof, floated through before the others, a weary smile drifting up his pale face. Then came her Second, followed by her Third, who, before the job started, had been her Fourth. The original Third had been her initial casualty. Her Third simply disappeared while nobody was watching.
Lodum altered the report through a series of finger manipulations. “Yes, yes. Your Third. She disappeared on day 1 of the salvaging operation?”
“That’s right.”
He rubbed his fingers together and continued, focusing on the holo-report in the air beside him. “You also lost your Seventh, your Eighth, and your Fourteenth.”
“Yes, that’s correct.”
Sitting back in his seat, he exhaled loudly. “That’s an unprecedented number of casualties.”
“Yes, it is.” She struggled to lift her feet, repositioning them to ease the cramping in her calves. Her magnetic boots adhered more tightly to the metallic floor now that she was in a gravity-controlled room, or maybe her body was too tired to move.
“And the conversation between the crew at the end of each workload had been...”
Careful, now. “Not much conversation at all. Everyone slept a lot. Some talk about the food, like I already told you. We should have been given more to eat. We were famished after a day’s work.”
Lodum chuckled. “Well, you’ll be happy to know that a feast awaits you and your team before we get off this miserable asteroid.”
She forced a smile, doubting the food they offered would satisfy her, not after she ensured her remaining team ate their share first. What little remained would only tease her appetite.
He tabbed a few more entries into the report and then stood. She staggered to her feet, clutching her helmet in her arm.
“We’re finished here,” he said. “You’ve done good work, as usual.” He nodded once, giving her the cue to leave.
She hesitated. There was more she wanted to ask. She trusted Lodum, respected him even, and hoped the sentiments were mutual because she was counting on his honesty now.
“Lodum. Some of the questions you asked earlier. They were… irregular.”
“I was given a script.”
“Who gave you the script?”
He tossed up his arms, letting them drop to his sides. “I don’t know. I, too, had been given a paper message… to debrief you.”
She waited, expecting more from him, but he remained silent. Her being summoned to report to Lodum meant something. She just didn’t know what.
Turning to go, she paused at the hatchway, and looked back at Lodum. He was watching her. A sudden sense of doom clouded her thoughts. “Is anything bad going to happen to me?”
Lodum’s droopy eyes looked sadder than usual. He rubbed his forefinger along the edge of his desk. “Not on my watch. Go eat. I’ll see you in the stasis bay.”
Cali left Lodum’s chamber, her gaze roaming every which way. Sensing nothing but an empty, dim passageway, she clambered onward to the changing bay, where she would peel off her tarnished grid suit and be checked for radiation exposure.
She rotated her shoulder. After her meal, she planned to massage the kinks in her muscles until Centauri’s suns crossed paths. Hopefully, as long as her remaining team could feign not knowing the load they salvaged differed from the specifications of the commissioned job, they would all soon be in stasis for the trip home.
#
The planet Malachite, three days earlier
Monty Du’ran regained consciousness in a dark room on a cold stone floor. He struggled to sit up, the pain in his ribs making it hard to breathe. His arms were bound behind his back, cutting off circulation to his hands, numbing them. And that was a good thing, considering his finger had been hacked off earlier.
An iron-taste seeped into his mouth. Blood. He squinted, trying to see through the darkness. With one eye sealed shut from the swelling, the task proved difficult.
A flame ignited, highlighting the bearded face of the interrogator sitting in the chair. Monty breathed easier realizing the interrogator was alone, that his torturer had left the room.
Tobacco smoke struck Monty’s face as the interrogator spoke. “We can stay here another day, if you like.”
Monty stretched his legs, seeking a more comfortable position. He had nothing more to say. It had all been beaten from him.
The interrogator stood and faced Monty, offering him the cheroot. “Smoke?”
Expecting the hot tip to bore into his cheek, Monty shifted. But the interrogator just stood there, the cheroot dangling between two fingers. Monty leaned into it, accepting it between his lips.
The interrogator reclaimed his seat. “There’s more to your story.”
Clutching the cheroot between his teeth, Monty said, “I told you everything.”
With a quick shuffling of the chair, the interrogator picked up the bucket beside him and tossed ice-cold water at Monty. The cheroot flew from Monty’s mouth. Cold air blew down on him, chilling him instantly.
“You’re a fool,” the interrogator said. “A failure of a citizen.”
Monty folded his knees beneath him and bent his torso toward the ground, trying to find warmth. Yes, and your kind made me what I am.
“The fertilizer we’ll make from your body will be unfit for our fields. We’ll have to ship it off to lesser colonies.”
A long pause, then the interrogator spoke again. “Now, tell me more about the heist.”
Monty took a deep breath, thinking about everything that had gone wrong. If he had been quicker, perhaps he wouldn’t have been caught. But he talked too long on the comm, asked too many questions, hesitated with the access codes, failed to ignore the ancient treasures basking in their crystal cases. By the time his awe faded and he found the item he had been there to steal, the alarm had been triggered. That gave him only seconds to smash the preservation case and snatch the artifact.
Holding the ancient text had quickened his pulse. His hands had been glued to it, his eyes transfixed. Its dark cover contained no lettering. Its thick pages were filled with sleeves holding digital chips. Pictures, and encrypted text he had never seen before, covered faded pages. He stowed the text inside his preservation sac and fled the archives moments before the Elite Guardia stormed the building.
The hovercraft had been waiting for him. He steered it away just in time. Then, as instructed, he delivered the text to the translator database, and within a short amount of time, the billions of data entries were deciphered and transcribed onto three ocular reading discs.
Monty hid the text in his home and then delivered one ocular disc to the mastermind of the heist. He placed the remaining discs in a small white bag, which he gave to an ex-colleague at Airways Station 6, where he had once been a pilot.
The guardia arrested him outside the airways station. Perhaps they had followed him, traced his comm. Monty didn’t know.
Timing. That’s what did him in.
If only he had been quicker.
“Did I mention that we found the book?” the interrogator said. “Your home, of all places. It was just a matter of which stone it was beneath, so we ripped out the entire floor. Don’t worry. You won’t be going back there.”
Monty shuddered. The ancient text began to disintegrate soon after he transcribed it. By the time the inspector found it, it no doubt was nothing more than crumbled parchment and oxidized metal. Unrecognizable. Gone from the world forever. He found no pleasure in knowing that. It only made his crime worse.
“When do I see my counselor?” Monty mumbled.
“You don’t deserve a counselor.”
“But… it’s my right.”
The interrogator chuckled. “You should have thought about your rights sooner. Tell me more, before I call my assistant back.”
“Your assistant does little talking. Your cruelty--”
“--will go unnoticed. Nobody knows you’re here.”
Monty glanced over the dark room, wondering where the door was. His legs were not bound, but he couldn’t run away even if he did find the door. The bottoms of his feet had been burned with an acid.
The interrogator said, “Back to business. Give me more names.”
“I gave you the names of everyone involved.”
“Thrum scum like you and your co-conspirators couldn’t have possibly pulled this off without more help. Who gave you access codes? Or a floor plan? We tracked your movements. You knew exactly where you were going. I can kill you. Your cooperation is your only savior. Live or die, it’s your choice. We’ll find the three accomplices you already named. Let them make their own choice.”
“Give me a blanket, and I’ll tell you more.”
More shuffling of the chair, and a heavy blanket landed on top him.
Monty sighed, relishing the sudden warmth. Then he realized it wasn’t a blanket at all, but a large, fetid animal pelt that smelled like rotting flesh.
His breath rushed from his mouth. Horror moved through him as he scrambled out from beneath it.
“Names,” the interrogator continued, “and I’ll get you a real blanket.”
A panic rose within Monty. He had no more names to give. There were only four involved in the heist. They were to retrieve the book, translate it, deliver the optic discs, and then wait for their pay.
He could make up a name. But whom would he implicate? And when this was over…
No, he couldn’t rationalize that in his mind. The people he knew had it bad enough.
“There were only four of us.” Monty breathed deeply. If he were a religious man, now would be a good time to pray. But he was not.
The interrogator’s chair skidded across the floor and hit the wall. He grabbed Monty’s arm and pulled him to a stand. Monty crumbled, his legs unable to support him, his feet unwilling. A blade nicked the nape of Monty’s neck. The interrogator released him, letting him slump to the floor.
“I was told there were five of you,” the interrogator said. “Tell me who this woman is and I will stop your bleeding.”
Pain inundated every cell in Monty’s body. He could barely think. There were no others involved, except for the mastermind, and he vowed to keep their anonymity, otherwise he and the others would never get paid, and it would all have been for nothing.
Monty spoke. “The floor plan--”
“I’m not interested in the floor plan. I want a name. Any name. I don’t care if they were involved or not. I just need a name. And you better hurry.”
A chill ran down Monty’s spine. He couldn’t implicate an innocent person. It would be uncharacteristically cruel of him. Taking a long, painful breath, he struggled to his knees and lifted his chin, lowering his brows at the inspector. “No. I will not implicate the innocent, you fuc--”
The interrogator grabbed his arm and yanked him to a stand. A knife plunged into his back, and Monty drew in a long, painful breath.
The interrogator pulled out the blade. “I do this not without regret.”
“Regent Amatoson--” Monty wasn’t sure if his words came out, but he heard the interrogator gasp just before he died.
