A Lords of the Stars Short Story

Mattias von Schantz

January 27, 2181, Kehr-ban district, Kerrma-non, Jerr

Mikhail Johnson wanted to look away.

He wasn’t squeamish, not in the slightest. As a Sunguard Special Agent, how could he be? But it was hard to stay objective when a child was involved. He couldn’t help but think about his own daughter.

The Jerrassian Liberation Front had hit the café just before noon. There was nothing special about this location, not really. Located along a bustling street in the capital city of united Jerr, it was a place where people gathered after having walked the beautiful, historic avenue, framed by an alley of blue-green kareba-n trees, their needles rustling in the wind as the summer sun cast its bright orange light upon the city. Here, humans of all four races usually sat at the small tables, chatting about their day and gossiping about the latest rumors, all while enjoying a cup of coffee or korta-ben.

No, the only thing special about this café was that it was located right across the street from the Terran Federation Salary Office.

During lunchtime, this place was frequented by Federation officials. Regular people, with family and friends, and a job that had brought them to the Jerrassian capital from all over the Terran Federation. At some point the night before, the JLF had placed a bomb in the outdoor section of the café. Security footage showed them taping a small, yellow cylinder with an electronic device attached to the underside of one of the tables.

He wished the café owners had reviewed the footage before opening up for the day. But why would they have? Even better, he wished the security cameras had been integrated with the Sunguard grid. The intelligent computers monitoring the city would have caught the perpetrators in the act, and a Sunguard squad could have been sent to catch them before any damage was done.

But no one had seen the terrorists preparing to turn a place of joy and laughter into a scene of carnage and death. And now, two Etarians and one Terran working for the Salary Office, and two Jerrassians - a mother and a child - who had just been there to enjoy their lunch, lay there on the floor, in broken, bloody pieces.

Mikhail Johnson wanted to look away.

“This is a Sunguard arrest! Drop your weapons. Now!”

Johnson shouted the command as he forcefully broke down the door to the apartment.

It had taken the Sunguard computers only seconds to scan through the security footage from the café, rapidly matching the faces and voices of the individuals involved with the Terran Federation’s record of all Jerrassian citizens.

Other security cameras had captured images of the suspects entering this particular apartment block. That’s where the track had ended. No matter. As a Special Agent, Johnson had full authority to enter any residence without justification. The squad with him had systematically gone from door to door, questioning tenants and, if necessary, breaking down doors when residents refused to open them. People had their own reasons for not wanting to talk to the Sunguard. In this part of the city, Johnson mused, there were plenty whose work was of the more, shall we say, shady kind.

But those small-time criminals weren’t his concern. He was a Special Agent, here to hunt down and destroy the Jerrassian Liberation Front. The local drug dealers, muggers, pimps, and jaywalkers could be handled by the regular Sunguard agents. He was a wolf on the hunt for bigger prey.

On the third floor, they encountered something more than the usual miscreants.

There had been nothing particularly suspicious about the door. Its faded green paint and broken, rusted handle were no different from what he had seen elsewhere in the old building. When he had knocked on it, he heard someone move around inside, and when they didn’t open the door as commanded, his team broke it down.

The moment the door was reduced to splinters, three men - all of them Jerrassians - opened fire on the Sunguard squad from inside the apartment. The apartment erupted in chaos. Johnson hurled himself to the floor, then rolled to the side to avoid the gaser beams’ deadly violet glow as they excited the air molecules they sliced through. When he hit the ground, the Sunguard soldiers behind him - a mixed group of Jerrassians, Terrans and Kelar - returned fire, filling the apartment with smoke. He heard a piercing scream and saw the shadow of one of his men fall backward, then a second scream from within the hazy room. Johnson took cover behind a large, battered bookshelf, filled with everything from communist pamphlets to doctoral theses on hyperspace field theory. As he cautiously peered out from behind it, he saw one of the Jerrassians collapsed on the floor. The man cradled another in his lap, blood pouring from a deep wound in the other's throat. Off to the side, the body of the third man lay still, his lifeless body marked with lethal wounds inflicted by the coherent gamma rays.

He was just about to stand up and repeat his order for the two remaining terrorists to drop their weapons and surrender when his whole world was torn asunder. The room seemed to shatter in an instant. The explosion ripped the bookshelf to pieces, its splintered shelves flying through the air like arrows. Johnson was flung across the room. For a second or two, or perhaps longer, he must have lost consciousness. When he woke up, there was a persistent ringing sound in his ears. The room was filled with dust and smoke, the furniture reduced to fragments. The remaining Sunguard soldiers - many of them now bloodied and wounded from shrapnel - searched through the chaos and wreckage for further threats. He quickly realized the soldiers weren’t the only ones injured; he could feel the warm trickle of blood running down his face from a deep gash in his brow. Nothing that wouldn’t heal eventually, but it would definitely keep him out of any photo ops for the next month or two!

Slowly, he rose to his feet. There were no broken bones, just bruises and scrapes that would fade with time. He moved to the other side of the scorched apartment to inspect the door leading to the next room, which was now hanging precariously from only one hinge and very clearly in need of replacement. As he neared it, the door suddenly burst free from its last remaining hinge, and a lumbering dark shape crashed through. With the reflexes of someone who had years of martial arts training, Johnson threw himself to the side, allowing the muscular Jerrassian to pass by without hitting him squarely in the chest. He then swiftly grabbed her from behind, his right arm clamping across her throat, and using his legs for leverage, he pushed with all the strength he could muster.

As a Sunguard Special Agent, he was an accomplished fighter - the best of the best - but he was still only human. The Jerrassian possessed muscle groups that didn’t even exist in a Terran. Though she was shorter than he was, she probably weighed a bit more, and with the brute strength she possessed, the outcome of the fight was far from certain. He knew he had to subdue her immediately if he was going to succeed in doing so at all. He didn’t want the soldiers to have to open fire on her. With the three Jerrassian men now dead from either gaser fire or the explosion, she was now his sole link to the terrorist masterminds.

But fate did not show him any mercy that day. As they struggled, they both fell to the floor of the apartment, which was cluttered with the wreckage of broken furniture, overturned tables, and sharp pieces of glass. One of those jagged shards penetrated her side, slicing her paraliver in two. As she bled out on the dusty, stained floor, one of the Sunguard soldiers, a Terran lieutenant in his early thirties, approached Johnson.

“All the suspects have been neutralized. What are your orders, sir?” he said, his voice betraying his pride in the work they had done.

“Identify her. Such a large female would likely hold a leading position in the organization. Once we know who she is, we can find her connections. She’ll have friends or family we can put pressure on.”

“I’ll get right to it, sir,” said the soldier. He brought out a forensic kit, retrieved a sampling needle from it, and inserted it into the limp body of the Jerrassian woman. Though she was unconscious from the pain, she was still alive; however, that would not last long. With her paraliver severed, she would bleed out within minutes.

Fifteen seconds later, the screen of his sampling kit lit up with a soft glow. The needle had wirelessly transmitted the full genome of the Jerrassian to the kit, which then matched it to the Sunguard database.

“Kham Gar,” he read from the illuminated screen. “Forty-two years old. Born in Kervmor-ra. Married to a Kham Men since 2173. No children.”

The body in the corner of the dark alley in the Kvarok-nor district was broken, its limbs twisted unnaturally, as if it had been hurled against the rough stone wall by a force far greater than a human could withstand. The little Kelar lay in a heap next to a reeking garbage can. When Johnson and his team had arrived, a small baor-mak, its fur matted and dull, had been licking the man’s drying blood from the ground. It was fortunate, Johnson mused, that the Kelar and Jerr biospheres were biochemically neutral to one another - while the baor-mak would gain no nourishment from the blood it consumed, it would, at least, suffer no harm from it either. It would have been far worse if the man had been a Terran. While Jerr biochemistry was neutral to Terrans, the reverse wasn’t true. Certain enzymes unique in Terran bodies acted as toxins to Jerrassians. These enzymes wouldn’t kill them, but they would certainly make them queasy, or worse. There had been more than one instance of this causing diplomatic issues in Jerr-Terran relations, Johnson thought with a wry smile.

He didn’t feel much sympathy for the Kelar. The man had had no legitimate business in these shadowy parts of the city, with its debris-strewn streets, and if he had died breaking the law, Johnson wouldn’t shed a tear. Not because he was Kelar, but because of the implication of him being here, in a place frequented by a suspected JLF member. The man likely had had a nefarious purpose coming here, and Johnson held no sympathy for criminals, or worse.

They had come here to look for clues. The street, with its cracked pavement and walls tagged with graffiti, was a known hangout for Kham Men. Although Johnson didn’t think the man would risk being here now, not with the Sunguard combing the area, there still might be leads to find.

“Find out how he got here,” Johnson ordered firmly. They had already identified him as Larb-eff-tour-mat, a sixty-seven-year-old male from Kearotang. Records showed he had once been caught in possession of a firearm. But that was back on Kelar. What had he been doing here on Jerr?

The lieutenant talked with the Sunguard computers for a couple of minutes before reporting back to him, concern etched on his face.

“It seems he must have snuck in under the grid,” he said, his tone carrying an apologetic note. “I’m sorry, sir. Large parts of the city are still not monitored.”

Johnson sighed. Twenty years had now passed since Integration. Back then, large swaths of the city hadn’t even possessed electricity. These days, every Jerr carried a gridphone in their pocket, and none wanted to return to the old days of switchboard operators manually moving cables to connect their calls. In the span of two decades, Jerr had transitioned from the Jet Age to the Hyperspace Age. And yet, here in this part of the city where it mattered most, there was no surveillance grid to be found, no intelligent computers monitoring the murkier deeds of its citizens, and no one to inform him about what the blue-skinned reptile had been doing here.

But Johnson was willing to bet his life - or at least a bottle of fine brandy - that the delinquent had been up to no good.

He looked around, taking in the dimly lit surroundings. Across the street, upbeat music flowed from a late-night drinking establishment, its neon sign flickering intermittently. After carefully crossing the dark street, he opened the door to the small building, which creaked in protest. The building had windows facing the alley - perhaps someone inside had seen something. Johnson didn’t even bother to consider that those who might have witnessed the altercation could choose not to talk to the Sunguard about it. They would, sooner or later.

Inside, the room was thick with the smell of smoke, alcohol, and the lingering scent of sweat from patrons who had been there too long. The music, which had been loud out on the street, was deafening now. He caught the eye of the owner, a silver-streaked Jerrassian tending the bar, and made a slashing motion with his hand to signal him to lower the music. The old man immediately complied and cut the volume. Upsetting the Sunguard was never a good idea - especially considering the muffled sounds he now heard emanating from the back room. Johnson was certain the owner would be more than willing to cooperate with the investigation; after all, keeping the Sunguard on his side was in his best interest. He wasn’t here for the backroom shenanigans, but he made a mental note to mention the bar to the local regular agent when he returned to the barracks.

Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

His hope sank when he looked around and saw the room he was standing in. It wasn’t brightly lit, but it was bright enough to pose a problem, and outside, the alley on the other side of the street lay shrouded in darkness. The light from one of the moons barely reached the farthest end of the alley, but from inside this room, the contrast with the indoor lighting still made it impossible to discern anything clearly. It made sense; Kham Men would not have chosen this place for his rendezvous if he could have easily been spotted. The clientele in this establishment, he thought, were not the type to pay much attention to events around them. Johnson didn’t even bother to ask anyone for information.

He did, however, notice an adjacent room. It was an arcade area, with three electronic gaming cabinets - one of them facing the street, its display playing a demo of some sort of fighting game. To make the screens appear brighter than they actually were, there were no lights in this room. The absence of lights meant no reflections in the windows, further obscuring the view of the street outside. Each arcade machine was equipped with security cameras discreetly integrated into them. If they were lucky, the camera in the machine facing the street had recorded the events in the alley earlier that night.

Johnson motioned to his tech specialist. The lieutenant, a small Kelar woman with a long ponytail of glossy black hair sticking out from under her helmet, immediately started to dismantle the gaming cabinet, her precise motions showcasing her expertise. It was a native Jerrassian product, manufactured by an electronics company he recognized from the southern, previously capitalist, continent. It wasn’t modern by any standard; however, it at least utilized transistor based microchips rather than the antiquated vacuum tubes that the Jerrassians had used prior to first contact. It was clearly inspired by Federation technology, albeit not quite there yet.

Once she had carefully freed the motherboard from its housing, she positioned her handheld camera to show it to the intelligent computer back at base. Within seconds, an answer came back.

“I’d like you to place electrodes at the soldering points marked as C14, E2, H8, H9 and J21,” it instructed.

She brought out her compact hacking kit and opened it to reveal an array of tools. From it, she retrieved five electrodes of suitable size - small pincers with nonconducting handles that were wirelessly connected to the hacking kit, which in turn was directly connected to the intelligent computer.

Once placed in the indicated spots on the motherboard, the computer initiated its analysis, monitoring the currents that flowed through those soldering points.

“Move E2 to E4, and add a sixth electrode to J17,” it continued. The tech specialist obeyed without hesitation, her small, nimble fingers quickly positioning the electrodes in the right position.

The arcade machine rebooted.

As the boot process neared completion, the computer interjected, “I have successfully reverse-engineered enough of the protocol to trigger a readout of the solid-state memory within the device. The current transfer speeds are hovering in the vicinity of one gigabit per second. This will take a while. Please stand by.”

Johnson sat down on a worn, wooden chair in the dimly lit corner of the room to wait for the process to complete. It was frustrating to know that the computer back at base could process data at petabit-per-second speeds, yet it was hampered by the design of the Jerrassian electronics it was attempting to read. He briefly considered heading to the bar for a beer while he waited but ultimately decided against it. It was now early in the morning - far too early for a drink. Besides, he doubted the bar even stocked any beers he would like.

Half an hour later, the tech specialist roused him from his sleep.

“We have video,” she said. “I’m afraid it’s not good, though. The unit only had an HD camera, and given the distance to the far end of the alley and the necessity of recording through the glass panel of the window, the resolution simply wasn’t sufficient.”

“Did we get anything?” he replied.

“The altercation is there. We can confirm Larb-eff-tour-mat handled a large case of some sort to Kham Men. He then says something, and the Kelar becomes visibly upset and tries to grab the case back from the Jerrassian. At that point, Kham seems to snap, lifting Larb-eff-tour-mat and throwing him straight across the alley. He then proceeds to retrieve the case again and exits the alley, heading north. But we don’t have enough resolution for lip reading, so we don’t know what was said.”

That was disappointing, Johnson thought. But it was a start. Now they knew Kham Men had been here, and they knew the direction he took when he left.

Still, that was not much to go on. North - that just meant he could have intended to go anywhere on the vast expanse of the entire continent. It meant nothing in itself. But wherever he was eventually headed, he couldn’t have walked there. And that presented an opening for Johnson.

He brought the squad with him out onto the street. It was now early morning. The orange disc of Tau Ceti was starting to appear above the horizon in the east, casting a warm glow across the landscape. Drilling, whistling songs sung by the nocturnal birds were beginning to be replaced by the sharp shrieks of the next shift, eagerly welcoming the warmth of the morning as they prepared to take flight in search of breakfast.

To the north, the concrete façade of a large apartment complex loomed. Beyond it lay the highway to the Northern Plains, cutting through the landscape in a straight path. It seemed obvious that this must have been Khar Men’s final destination before he left the city. But again, that didn't tell Johnson much. Thousands of cars traveled along that highway every hour, speeding across the continent in all directions. There was no way to know which one was Khar Men’s.

After walking along the road for ten minutes, they received a lucky break. At the end of the apartment complex, there was a parking lot. This early in the morning, it was mostly empty, save for a few scattered vehicles. The parking lot had charging stations, and the charging stations were equipped with cameras. The tech specialist got to work again.

This time, the process went much smoother. The electronics inside this particular model of charging stations were already known to the Sunguard. The computer provided instructions to her, and she set to work on the charger’s electronics box. With the arcade machine, they hadn’t known what time Khar Men was present, so they had to scan through the entire video record from the night. Of course, they didn’t exactly know when, or even if, he had been to this parking lot either, but they could make an educated guess. And within minutes, they had found him.

The camera in the charging station showed him entering an inconspicuous gray car - obviously not his own - and driving away at 01:23:47 this morning. Its limited field of view only covered that particular parking spot, so they couldn’t see him merging onto the road. However, with some light application of his deductive skills, Johnson soon identified the unique identifier of Khar Men’s car.

It all boiled down to the fact that the highway was electrified. While the charging stations were adequate for keeping a car topped up for shorter drives within the city, they weren’t very practical for longer journeys. Ideally, one wouldn’t want to have to stop a car and recharge every fourth hour during a cross-country drive. For that very reason, many of the roads constructed by the Terran Federation on Jerr were electrified, continuously charging any vehicle driving upon them by means of induction.

Only you didn’t want to electrify an entire road, just in case a car happened to drive on it. Instead, each individual vehicle was tracked as it moved,  so only the specific stretch of roadway directly beneath the car had to be electrified. Of course, this had the added benefit of making it simple to invoice the owner of the vehicle for the charging cost as well.

The entrance to the highway was roughly a two-minute drive from the parking lot. At 01:25:32, a car had entered the highway from this side of the road. At that time of night, traffic on the side road had been light, with no other cars making the transition within three minutes of that event. While the proof wasn’t conclusive in a mathematical sense, it was close enough to draw a reasonable conclusion. That car must have been Khar Men’s. Obtaining the unique identifier for it was now just a matter of querying the grid - as was tracking it as it sped along the highway.

The hunt was on.

Khar Men drove along the eastern coast,  never pausing to rest until he reached his intended destination. Mikhail Johnson followed his progress on a large screen in his office at Reagan Base. Eventually, the terrorist pulled into a quaint fishing village called Kerfa-ember, nestled at the base of the towering, white chalk cliffs of the Tober Coast.

He was not just tracked via the highway grid; as soon as he veered off the main road, orbital surveillance continued to monitor him. Four hundred kilometers above the ground, a Sunguard cruiser hovered in a pseudogeostationary orbit. Unlike a true geostationary orbit - 50,000 kilometers out in space - the pseudogeostationary orbit was maintained by the cruiser’s field generator, which modified the local gravity field around the spaceship. From a true geostationary orbit, no telescopic lens, no matter how sophisticated, would have been able to detect Khar Men. Yet, from 400 kilometers away, the computers onboard the Sunguard cruiser could read the headlines of his newspaper. But when you look at a piece of paper, you lose track of the rest of the world. Orbital surveillance was only practical when you knew where to look. And now they did. 

As soon as Johnson was certain that this was indeed Khar Men’s final destination, rather than just another stop on the way, he swiftly assembled his team and boarded a waiting Sunguard shuttle. The vessel was roughly cylindrical, with harsh, boxy protrusions extending from its sides. It lifted off in complete silence, elevated by the invisible forces of the inverted gravity field its own field generator created. Once it reached an altitude high enough for air drag to become negligible, it proceeded at high speed to a designated landing area just outside Kerfa-ember.  It descended abruptly into a vast field, where tall strands of yellow kaftor-mat grass swayed and billowed in the wind.

The Sunguard squad fanned out in silence, creeping along leafy hedges toward the small house where Kham Men had holed up. The cottage, a red wooden structure with white corners, stood perched on a slight rise overlooking the harbor, no more than fifty meters from the shoreline. On the side facing the sea, there was a large, weather-beaten patio with a wooden table, a couple of chairs, a rusted grill, and a faded, yellow parasol that leaned on the railing. Khar Men sat at the table, fiddling with something hidden inside a silvery case in front of him - the same case he had gotten from the Kelar in the alley. What was in it, Johnson didn’t know. The angle wasn’t quite right for the orbital surveillance to see its contents.

Johnson would never know what tipped the terrorist off to the Sunguard’s presence. Perhaps it was the faint crack of a twig snapping underfoot as the soldiers crept toward the cottage. Maybe it was the subtle scent of Terran sweat carried on the breeze, or a sudden glint of sunlight reflecting off the optics of a sniper’s gaser rifle. The Jerrassians had senses that far surpassed those of a Terran, and unless the Sunguard found a way to augment their agents, Johnson thought, they would always be at a disadvantage.

Whatever the reason, Kham Men abruptly looked up, then swiftly grabbed something from inside the case and bolted over the railing. With the lid no longer obstructing the view, Special Agent Johnson could finally see what the Jerrassian had retrieved from the Kelar in the alley.

A bomb. Just like the one used in the café. So Larb-eff-tour-mat, the Kelar, had escalated from firearms possession to arms dealing.

No matter - the Kelar was dead now. What mattered was the crowd into which Kham Men had fled: fishermen preparing their nets for the day, a few Jerrassian families who looked very much like tourists, and the harbormaster standing near his shed, casting a watchful eye on the pier. Kham Men had slipped into the crowd, bomb in hand, ready to use them as human shields.

Knowing he had already been spotted, Johnson threw caution to the wind and sprinted after the terrorist, his hand gaser raised, tracking the figure of Kham Men as he weaved through the unsuspecting crowd. But with people milling about in all directions, he never had a clear shot.

“Kham Men! Stop where you are! Now!” he shouted at the top of his lungs, trying to sound as intimidating as possible.

The Jerrassian turned around to face him.

“Stay where you are, Sunguard!” Kham snapped, his deep voice resonating. He held up the small, yellow bomb, making it clear what would happen if the Sunguard Special Agent dared to move any closer.

Johnson’s team was scattered out there, likely setting up sniper positions to take down the Jerrassian on his command. But at the moment they weren’t ready - they hadn’t radioed in yet - and in this tense standoff, things could spiral out of control in a heartbeat. There was no time to wait for the snipers.

From where he stood, Johnson now had a direct line of sight to the terrorist. He could make the shot. But the risks were too high. The slightest mistake, and an innocent bystander could get hurt. As a Special Agent, Johnson was a highly skilled marksman, but he just didn’t possess the reflexes needed to guarantee, beyond any doubt, that he could take out Kham Men without someone else getting hurt.

At that moment, a huge, dark shadow erupted from behind the harbormaster’s shed. With an ear-piercing roar, one of the Jerrassian soldiers from Johnson’s squad launched himself at the terrorist.

“Luss-ker take you, cub killer!” he hissed between hard lips, his voice dripping with disgust. The soldier's powerful body slammed into Kham Men with full force. The two Jerrassians tumbled to the ground in a chaotic tangle of arms and legs. As they crashed down, the bomb slipped from Kham Men’s grasp. Johnson lunged forward, fear in his heart, and snatched it before the terrorist had a chance to take it back - should the soldier fail to subdue him.

But while Kham Men was a fighter in mind, he was not a fighter in body. Within a few seconds, it was all over. The soldier had him in an iron grip, his forearm pressed against the other man’s neck, threatening to break it if he resisted further.

“Kham Men, this is a Sunguard arrest!” Johnson declared loudly.

“You are found guilty of six counts of murder, domestic terrorism, possession of explosive materials, endangering the public, and treason against the Terran Federation. By the authority vested in me as a Sunguard Special Agent, I hereby sentence you to five years of hard labor, followed by a lifetime of monitoring.”

Johnson knew the first part of the sentence would not faze the Jerrassian. But the second part… for a freedom fighter to have to live the rest of his days under constant Sunguard surveillance, watched day and night as the weeks blurred into months and years, would be a punishment worse than death.

Mikhail Johnson did not look away.