Excerpt: First Chapter, Day of the Ancestor
Chapter One: The Break-In
Rej Antares prayed that the bracket of pipes and conduit would hold his weight as he pulled himself up the outside of his apartment building on a cable. He cursed the lump-headed, four-armed landlord who had locked him out. Sure, he’d missed rent a few times, but he knew that blubbery purple bastard hated him, and used the rent as an excuse to get rid of him.
At this height, the gusts swung him like a pendulum on the cable, billowing his pilot’s jacket and whipping his mop of curly hair in front of his eyes. Light flashed eight stories below. He could hear shouts and looked down. A group with blasters ran from a bulky mechanoid mounted with laser cannons. Fights between rival gangs happened every day on this street. Every neighborhood has its charms.
He reached his bathroom window and dug his fingers under the frame. He pried, but it didn’t move. Too tired to be graceful about it, he pulled his blaster out of its holster on his thigh and smashed the glass. A couple of energy bolts sizzled over his shoulder and sparked against the wall above him. Someone had just shot at him.
“Hey! Get away from there!” An elderly Bargeerian in a stained T-shirt hung out of a window below and ogled him from bulging eyes in baggy eye sockets.
“I’m not a thief. I live here!”
“Sure you do. Now get outta there.”
Rej didn’t need to argue. He reached in, unlocked and opened the window frame, then crawled inside just as the old alien shouted and fired another warning shot.
He maneuvered over the lidless metal toilet and lay on the concrete floor. It didn’t smell like much, but it was home. His body went limp. He couldn’t remember a time when he had felt this sore and exhausted. The cold, dirty floor soothed his aches.
He had left his job as a field agent in the Galactic Intelligence Agency two years ago and had been taking freelance gigs to pay the bills since then. He’d had one gig with the GIA, but most of his work had come through the bug-eyed crime lord, Kagga Jín. In the beginning, the jobs were easy tasks like tailing rival crime lords and their goons or finding stolen assets. Those jobs came too sporadically to pay his bills, so he found himself taking gigs with Jín’s associates who operated in much less careful ways.
He had just come back from the Axa system where he’d been working with Kagga Jín’s hot-headed cousin, Bah Garrár. One of Jín’s hustles moved stolen weapons from various locations and then sold them to the desperate insurgents fighting on planet Hekka. An employee had been siphoning weapons off during shipments and hiding them in a warehouse on Axa. This employee had been clever. Finding evidence had not been easy. But just as Rej finally located the stockpile in a warehouse and broke in to capture images of the stolen weapons, Jín’s cousin sent a bunch of drones in to blow it up. Rej barely escaped the blast.
His job in the GIA had not been easy and there had been plenty of hot-headed directors and careless military commanders who might have done the same thing, but at least field agents had partners to help watch their backs on the dangerous missions. His had been Lucas Espinoza, who had been killed in action on a mission to Vul a year ago. Sometimes Rej thought about getting his job back at the GIA, but always decided against it. Corruption ran rampant and, in the end, agents were just expendable pawns for political games. He only wished Espinoza or someone trustworthy could have his back on these stupid jobs.
His limbs went limp, and his eyelids began to droop when something startled him: the tinkle of glass and the shuffle of feet. Someone else was here. He rose and raised his weapon as quietly as he could. He twisted the grubby handle and slid the bathroom door open, looked both ways and stepped into the hallway. A figure sat on his couch in the dark. Damnit. Some local delinquents had broken into his apartment and had taken up residence in his place.
“Okay, vacation’s over. Get out.”
The figure rose. Its bulbous head turned and revealed a set of two large, pale blue eyes with two smaller ones above. Its mouth puckered and pulsed with a dozen folds and segments like the business end of a maggot. “But I came to converse about a certain matter, and I have not completed my messages.”
Now Rej recognized the eight-foot-tall Voharian and his odd accent as Kagga Jín’s personal engineer, Sedem Ikrah. Most of Jín’s associates called him the Chef because of his ability to cook up hacked technology from just about anything.
“What are you… how did you get in here, Chef? I’m a former galactic agent. You don't sneak up on a guy like me. You could get killed.”
“As you know, I am building an ultra-hyper drive engine for our mutual acquaintance, Kagga Jín.”
“Yeah. I’m aware. I’m the one that found the plans for the thing.”
“I’m able to run simulations with the engine but I’m unable to test it without a certain rare material and I am hoping you can help me acquire it.”
“Rare? Like what?”
“Ullarian antimatter crystals.”
“Wow.” Rej had never heard of it.
“I need only one or two. I can replicate its atomic makeup and crystalline structure to make more as needed.” The alien lifted a bottle of brown liquid to his lips and slurped.
“Hey, is that my good bourbon?”
The Chef looked at the bottle. “Is that the name of the liquid?”
“Yeah. That’s imported from Earth. It’s two hundred credits a bottle.”
“That is quite expensive. I’m sorry to say it tastes spoiled. All the sugars have turned to alcohol.”
Rej sighed. “So, why are you here? Why break into my apartment?”
“Well, you’re the one who managed to successfully secure the lost plans for the engine in the first place. You know that Kagga Jín hired many thieves and bounty hunters who never got close, but you succeeded in a few months. This is telling of your skill.”
“So, you thought maybe I’m the right guy for this job, too.”
“I think the probabilities are better than all the rest.”
“The rest?”
“Kagga Jín sent out a message to all his thieves and bounty hunters. I specifically requested your participation, but you obviously did not receive the communication. He’s offering one million credits to the one who can find the crystals first.”
A million credits could really change his life. His brain had come awake now.
“Okay, Chef. I gotta get some sleep.”
“Yes. It is necessary for human physiology. I understand seven to eight hours a day is required—depending on maturity. It is truly a wonder your species get anything done.”
“Chef, another interesting thing about humans. When your host says he needs to get some sleep, it means it’s time for you to go.”
“So soon? I thought we could discuss your plans for retrieving the crystals. I am very keen to get my hands on them.”
“If I decide to take the job, I will probably not tell you my plans ahead of time. Good night, Chef.”
* * *
He felt exhausted and his body ached. He should have just passed out, but he lay in his shabby bed staring at the water stains on the ceiling. The molecular food replicator in his kitchen purred. An alert in his access terminal beeped on the nearby desk. Air cruisers tore through the night sky, interrupted by the occasional shouting gang fighter or babbling demented addict on the street below. He thought about pouring himself a glass of bourbon to settle down, but just could not shake the disgust of seeing the Voharian’s pulsating lips slurping the bottle.
He could check his accounts on his wrist-com, but he knew he had about ten thousand left. A year ago, Kagga Jín had paid him a million credits to recover the legendary lost plans for an ultra-hyperdrive engine that went down in a mysterious shipwreck fifty years before. The job had been a longshot. He almost lost the data canister containing the plans to the Galactic Intelligence Agency, but he got them back and earned his million credits and the respect of Kagga Jín. Now only ten percent of that prize remained.
The work looked promising in the beginning. He felt sure he’d be running a lucrative spy-for-hire business and picking up jobs outside Kagga Jín’s circle by now, but his clients turned out to be bullies who never paid on time, if they ever paid at all. If he could get another million credits for finding those crystals, it could tide him over for another year while he looked for better paying clients. He jumped out of bed and stumbled to his access terminal. He needed to contact his friend, Shady. If anyone knew where to find alien engine parts, it was him.
* * *
Half an Earthday later, Rej whisked along a sand-covered street on the planet Arídu. He’d worn his usual getup for gigs like this—trim-fitting khaki pilot’s jacket with all kinds of pockets where he kept his nano-drones and other useful tools of his trade, a belt with other tools such as grappling drone and knife, and his old Fleet-issued service pistol strapped into a holster over brown trousers. He didn’t expect any trouble, he just liked to be prepared. Shady had given him a tip to go and see an old scrapyard owner that everybody here just called the Junkman. He remembered the conversation.
“The whole planet’s economy is junk recycling. How does this one Scrapper get to be called the Junkman?” he asked.
Shady responded, “All the other Scrappers are Voharian or Bargeerian or Arídan. He’s the only man, so he gets the name junk man. Anyway, the guy is really into alien tech, especially the Ullarian stuff. He’ll talk your ear off about it if you let him. He collects parts so he can study them. If anybody knows where to find those crystals, whatever they are, it’s him. He might even have one to sell you.”
After spending a thousand credits on transport, Rej found himself in Quedd City on Arídu, the salvage yard capital of the galaxy. The street stretched out beneath city walls fashioned out of stacked cubes of crushed starships, air cruisers and other vehicles. Between breaks in the walls, he could sometimes spot hazy outcroppings of high rises constructed from stacks and stacks of junk piled hundreds of feet into the air. Many of these stacks were used as buildings by the Junklords—the feudal rulers of this planet.
Freighters roared overhead on their way to take reclaimed and recycled metals, oils, plastics and other materials to meet starships and space stations which orbited the planet. Several smaller craft called Tugs pulled a massive derelict Voharian starship down to the surface where it would be sold to the highest-bidding Junklord.
Arídu had been treated as a worthless dumping ground for derelict spacecraft for thousands of years by the Voharians. Three centuries ago, the native Arídans had the wise idea to cash in on all the old scrap metal. Soon it became known through the rest of the galaxy that a few of them had amassed fortunes from this business and became known as Junklords.
Humans, Hekkans, Voharians, and others moved there, hoping to strike it rich. Companies formed and set up scrapyards, but soon the lawless frontier descended into anarchy with alliances of Junklords and their fiefdoms in constant feuds over rights to junk or land.
He rounded a corner and found himself on a busy market street. Most of the crowd were Scavengers—the local name for poor Arídan natives who made a living by selling scrap. Some pulled junk-laden pushcarts. Some of the younger Scavengers rummaged through the piles of scrap that fell off the city walls. Older Scavengers led pack animals called Choonyahs through the dusty streets. The beasts had wide feet and two muscular, ostrich-like legs designed to move quickly across burning sand. The creatures’ eyes rested at the same level as their jaws and their mouths sagged in a permanent frown in response to the heavy saddlebags and stacks of bundles piled onto their backs.
A host of others mixed in with the Scavengers. Heavily armed local police known as the Trashkeepers patrolled the streets. Outworlders called Traders from Vohar and Durgon I looked to grab a bite or a drink at one of the roadside stalls.
He stopped and checked his wrist-com for the address again: Sherra Maúr sector, Gate 12. Out of the corner of his eye, he sensed something stop when he stopped. He turned to look. At first, he didn’t see anything out of the ordinary. Then he noticed a tall, thin humanoid wearing a scratched and dented helmet. He couldn’t see through the helmet’s mirrored visor, but he knew the invisible eyes behind it stared at him.
He knew lack of sleep caused paranoia, but just to be safe, he ducked behind a passing Choonyah and walked with it until he felt he must have lost the stranger. He wondered who would be following him. Could this be one of Kagga Jín’s other bounty hunters looking to ambush him and take the crystals?
Now he wove through the crowd on the shady side of the street. He could see Gate 12 ahead. Several Trashkeepers stood guard around it. He glanced behind him to be sure he’d lost his shadow. No. The helmet bobbed above the Scavengers’ heads, weaving between pushcarts and pack animals. The stranger noticed him looking back and moved faster now, pushing a couple of outworld traders out of the way. Rej twisted right and then zigzagged through traffic across the street. A hoverbike swerved to miss him and knocked an old Scrapper’s pushcart over. He didn’t stop.
