The Stars Came Back (73 page)

The message reads “
We’ll take care of them. Have a safe return to surface. Be in touch soon. Thanks.” There is a musical note icon underneath the message.

Flicker: -or may
be not.

Carrier Captain: Think the attachment’s safe?

Admiral Flicker nods, and the captain nods to a techie. The techie taps the music note icon on his screen. A song blares from the speakers about the bridge. The captain and crew look at one another wondering what it means. The Bee Gees, “
Stayin’ Alive.”
Almost.

Well you can tell by the way I go to fight

I’
m a warrior-ship, the time is right…

Flicker: Fleet Directive! About face, return to orbit! Now!

CUT TO

INT - NIGHT - Bridge of the
HMS Hussein

The captain is red-
faced with anger. Everyone else on the bridge is studiously looking occupied unless he’s directly addressing them. He’s talking to one of his officers.

Captain of
Hussein
: What do you mean you don’t know what’s happening yet? Our drives are not back up yet, but we are clearly not in our own universe. You said you’d know more in an hour, and it’s been
four
! In the name of-

Navigation Tech: Sir! Something here! I can get readings, now.

The captain whirls around to face the young man.

Captain of
Hussein
: Where are we?

Navigation Tech: Ah, just a sec- no, can’t be right. We are
… no, we should be, but we-

Captain of
Hussein
: SPIT IT OUT!

Navigation Tech:
The Deep, sir.

Com Tech: Signal, sir!

The captain turns to face him, glares, and is about to say something vicious when on the main screen the
Tajemnica
avatar appears, the same one as before. In the lower corner of the screen appears the same previous cryptic transponder data.

Ship AI:
(Quiet and intense) I
said
I’d be back. Welcome to your nightmare. My name is
Freedom
. You try to kill my people. Prepare to die.

The captain and crew look
around the bridge. The avatar shows up on ALL the screens.

Ship AI: Here is your situation. You are in The Deep, so you can only fly in conventional space once the drives are repaired. There are three equidistant stars, about which your data is centuries old. One has people, two don’t. Your quartermaster has sold for personal profit most of your emergency supplies, so you only have food to make it to
one of them
. That is,
if
you are on a starvation diet… and
if
three quarters of your crew never eat another bite… and
if
you immediately put all those bodies on ice to cannibalize later. Drive, power, and life support techs are not expendable. Officers, once security codes are extracted,
are
. The coward’s way out, the ship self destruct, has been disabled. This voyage will be an excellent test of your leadership skills, Captain. I’m sure it will be memorable.

The screen goes blank. Everyone looks around for a moment. An armed guard goes for his holstered gun, but the other guard next to him is faster
, his rifle already at port arms. A com tech whips out a mostly decorative knife and stabs the man sitting next to him. The captain turns in terror and runs through the side door to his personal ready-room, hitting the “close” button as he runs through, hearing the screams of chaos behind him. He stops and faces the door, holding his hands against it, as if that will stop anyone from coming through a powered sliding pocket door. He doesn’t see the bruised adolescent behind him raise a large carving knife from the elegant serving platter on the nearby table.

CUT TO

INT - NIGHT -
Tajemnica
bridge

Quiritis, Helton, and Kwon watch the same short avatar speech on a screen. They are silent. The speech finishes.

Ship AI: I didn’t tell them their interior ship security monitors will record all their actions, and transmit them to Emirate for posterity. It was an idea from a crew discussion on “worst case scenarios” a while back.

Helton: Remind me never to piss you off.

Ship AI: You’d be safe, but when dealing with people like them,
nice
is just not on the table.

Quiritis: How did you know how much food they had?

Ship AI: Didn’t. Their inventory software is a mess. Seemed a reasonable guess. I expect more than three quarters of the crew will be dead before they do an inventory and the second-guessing starts, ah, eating at them.

Helton: OK, they are taken care of. Now to take the sleeping beauties to meet
Borealis
.

CUT TO

INT - NIGHT - Cargo Bay

Amid the heaps of men and gear scattered about the deck, there is restless moving. One sits up with a start, looking around wildly. Grimy, unshaven, blood-caked, Kaminski is barely recognizable. He slumps, picks up the water bottle next to him, and takes a long pull. He carefully, painfully, gets to his feet, strips off the rest of his armor, then takes the water bottle and walks carefully between others, heading slowly for the side door.

CUT TO

INT - NIGHT - Showers

There are three men already there, silently scrubbing the crud from their faces and bodies. They are all strong and well muscled, but have faces that are hollow-eyed and dead tired. Kaminski walks in shedding the last of his blood-soaked padded clothes and starts scrubbing vigorously with a bristle brush, trying to get the blood and memories of events off of him. He scrubs his hands, again, and again. And again. Rinse everything, then scrubs his hands again.

CUT TO

INT - NIGHT - Bipasha’s cabin

Bipasha tosses and turns on her bed. There is a chime at the door. She jumps up, goes to the door and opens it. There stands SGT Kaushik, still in blood-soaked armor padding, looking like death warmed over. He speaks with a raspy voice, sounding as bad as he looks.

SGT
Kaushik: Marry me.

She nods vigorously and throws her arms around him, making him
sway and stagger a little bit, leaning against the edge of the door for support.

Bipasha: OK with Harbin as your uncle?

Kaushik: Think he trusts me, now.

Bipasha:
He always did.

CUT TO

INT - NIGHT - Cargo Deck

Harbin lays down on the deck. He opens his eyes a slit, then wider. He rolls on his side, slowly sits up. He sees the water bottle, takes a drink from it, gets up and starts quietly taking off his armor, stacking it neatly on the deck. Then the brownish-red blood-stained padding, stripping to his shorts.

CUT TO

INT - NIGHT - 12-berth room

Harbin looks tired, but not like a reheated corpse. His face more is an unfathomable mask. He’s cleaned up and dressed neatly in camo uniform, putting a bundle away in a locker. He turns around to see Quinn standing there, watching him. They look at each other silently for a moment. Quinn walks up to Harbin and gives him a hug.

Quinn: Ship said you didn’t have anyone else right now.

A tear forms in Harbin’s eye. He kneels down, hugs Quinn tightly, then starts sobbing. Hard, full-breath, choking sobs, from the depths of his soul. Quinn hugs him back, hard.

Harbin: (
Whispering, choking back more tears) Children. The things they did to the children.

He hugs Quinn
tighter, rocking back and forth, weeping. After a minute, he pulls back, and wipes his eyes.

Harbin: Sorry. You shouldn’t have to see me like this. Weak.

On a nearby screen, the monk avatar appears, and talks quietly.

Ship AI:
You cry not because you are
weak
, but because you are
good
. It was a terrible thing to have to do, but if you didn’t, worse would happen, a thousand times over. To people like Quinn. I understand. I’ve been there. It’s a dark place, but… you are home now.

Harbin nods, knowing
Taj
is right, but still in the grip of recent memories. He sits down, takes Quinn on his lap, rocking gently back and forth, and continues to weep, quietly.

FADE TO BLACK

FADE IN

INT - DAY - A small interrogation room

A small room similar to the one Helton was convicted in when first leaving home. On one side of the small table sits the same judge who sentenced Him. In the background is the overweight woman who initially flagged him. She still wears her sharply pressed but ill-fitting uniform, now sporting a shiny gold ’One Million Confiscated‘ ribbon and a fancy sidearm. Both are grinning smarmy, knowing, corrupt smiles. On the other side of the table sits Sharon, a nicely dressed Caucasian woman in her 30s, attractive despite being stressed, tired, and disheveled.

Sharon
: He’s not a criminal, he’s a teacher, for God’s sake! History and science at the high school!

Judge: (
Condescendingly) No one teaches history
and
science. They’re separate.

Sharon
: Normally, maybe, but you’re making a mistake! Check the record! He does!

Judge: We did. We check
everything. We don’t make mistakes. He’s an interstellar class-one criminal who used to be a teacher. And he’s not here anymore. Now, Sharon, tell us the truth about why you are here and why you want to find him. Your life will be much easier.

There is a deep THUMP in the background, barely heard above the sound of the air conditioning. There is a long, awkward silence as the woman stares hopelessly at the judge.

The door bursts open, and in strides Helton, Allonia, and Kaminski, dressed in body armor under their traveler’s coats, carrying suppressed rifles, sidearms, high-tech shields slung across their backs, faces lit up with excitement, and looking like they own the place. The judge freezes. The overweight uniformed woman stares in surprise, then starts fumbling clumsily for her sidearm.

Helton: (
To the overweight woman) Draw. Dare you.

The fat woman pauses, her piggish eyes narrow
. With increasingly incredible ineptitude, she fumbles with her fancy-looking pistol and the retention holster. She finally manages to get it out and pointed nervously at him, while the three of them watch her, rifles at a casual low ready, shaking their heads.

Checker:
YOU
! You’ll
pay
for this!

Helton: That’s a very nice looking FedGov Mark 14. Authorized user only. Go ahead. Pull the trigger.
Bet you can’t do it.

In front of the look of surprise and horror on his sister’s face, the fat checker aims it right at him, hands shaking wildly, and pulls the trigger from only two meters away. ZZZZZ
TT! She drops to the floor convulsing and twitching.

Helton: (
Cheerfully) Howdy, sis! God, I
love
it when governments issue smart-guns we can hack!

Helton turns to judge,
letting his rifle hang from its sling as puts his hands on the table and leans forward toward her, talks quietly, intensely.

Helton: You took
from me just about everything but the clothes on my back. Turned my life upside down and inside out. You stepped on me, a
nobody
, just because
you could
. Made me realize what was really important. But you finally stepped on the wrong person.

He bends down and picks up the pistol
by the barrel from the checker’s twitching hand, hands it grip first to the judge, and presses it firmly into her hand.

Helton:
Here. Hold this.

The judge reflexively grips it in her hand, looks at it, then
back at Helton, surprised.

Helton: Just remember:
hold it too long or drop it, taze yourself; bad for your heart condition. Pull the trigger, get tazed hard like her. Uniforms around here are a bit jumpy at the moment; if you
don’t
drop it they might just drop
you
. And that is just the start of your own personal hell. All the data you collect and abuse people with? All of
your
business, personal, and finance data just went public.
Everyone
you ever shook down got the message. Folks might be surprised who you talk to, how much you’re making here, what sort of profit-sharing deals you have with the uniforms. They won’t like it. Some might possibly even hold a grudge, if you can imagine that. They have
your
address, now. And the addresses of all your family members. And friends.
Your
data. (Points to fat uniformed woman)
Her
data.
Every
government employee’s data. It’s. All. Public. Full disclosure. Complete honesty, with everyone. As you keep telling
us
: if you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear.

His sister finally wakes from her shock
, jumps up from her chair and rushes to him, the surprise of seeing him gone and the relief of seeing him flooding her features.

Sharon
: HELTON! What are you doing here? Why are you in armor? And who are they? What-!?

Allonia:
Not a lot of time for chitchat, dear! Don’t want to keep the new wife waiting!

Helton: (
With a great big grin) Nothing like setting knowledge and people free to make a man feel alive! Welcome to the revolution!

FADE TO BLACK