[Lurius Star System, on the far edge of explored space, population 4,832]
Trey sat at his command desk, looking out the plasticized sapphire windows of his office. His modest station sprawled before him, suspended in the vast nothingness of space. Light from the nearby sun glinted off the flat surfaces of the refueling bays. Robots crawled along the exterior, performing maintenance and waiting to assist docking ships.
A Fure Corporation freighter was moored in bay number three, replenishing supplies before its long voyage back into civilized sectors. Trey’s sophisticated scanners would tell him everything it was taking back.
[Scan complete: New Log Entry Created] flashed up on one of his monitors.
Wow, that’s a lot of boron and lithium, Trey thought. Fure must have hit another massive deposit.
Trey smiled. The Medex Corporation, Fure Corp’s rival and the only other organization out this far, would pay good money for this information.
This new star system was far surpassing the initial resource estimates, and because of the increasing profitability, the two corporations were becoming aggressively belligerent toward each other. This suited Trey well; as owner of the only fuel station in the system, and de facto entry point, Trey was poised to make a lot of money. That profit came not just by selling energy to fuel the hungry freighter engines, but even more so by selling information.
Trey copied the log entry, then swiped it across his displays to his encrypted long-range burst-array comms terminal. He couldn’t help but laugh childishly. There was a pleasure in these activities beyond the money.
“Medex Freighter A-86 requesting docking in refueling bay four,” came through the short-range approach channel.
“You’re cleared to dock in four, A-86,” Trey responded.
Let’s see if Medex found anything Fure will be interested to know about.
As he watched the massive ship maneuver, Trey’s eyes suddenly widened. He reached under his desk for the hidden switch that turned the scanners in docking bay four on and off. Trey confirmed the scanners were on.
The switch was useful. While information was always profitable, occasionally discretion was even more profitable.
Relaxing back into his chair, Trey waited to see what cargo this new vessel held.
Without warning, the door to his office was thrown open with a crash. Trey started in his chair and looked over.
“Chloe!” he shrieked.
The young woman before him looked as if she had been pulled straight from some historic photograph capturing the tragedy of war. She was disheveled and distraught. Raw emotion ran unchecked through her, causing her to shake and her breathing to fluctuate rapidly. The tears running down her cheeks cut paths through the dust that covered her face. Her tough Fure Corp miner’s duty uniform was ripped all over, and was stained with dirt and ash, and blood that was likely not her own. Her hands were black with filth, and in them she held a gun, which she pointed at Trey.
“Was it you?” she screamed.
“What?” Trey cried. “Don’t point that gun at me!”
“Did you sell us out?” Chloe wailed even louder.
“Of course not,” Trey shouted back, his eyes shifting between the gun and Chloe’s face. “I would never….”
“Liar!” Chloe screamed, sniffing back her running nose. “My dad said…my dad said you must have had something to do with it. He said he’s coming here to choke the truth out of you!”
“Your dad just hates me because I’m dating his daughter,” Trey replied, his face growing more collected. “He’s poisoning you against me. But you know me. You know I would never lie to you.”
Chloe drew in a breath. She looked at Trey, her eyes filled with confusion and uncertainty.
“I love you, Chloe,” Trey said.
Chloe’s face contorted in raw emotion, and she lowered the pistol. She hung her head and wept.
Whew, Trey thought.
Trey rose and moved to comfort her. He hugged her with one arm and grabbed the top of the pistol with his free hand. Trey tried to pull the gun away, but Chloe resisted. Eventually Trey’s strength won out, and he gently pried the weapon away. Chloe fidgeted while Trey leaned over and placed the pistol on his desk. When he returned his attention to Chloe, she reached up and around Trey’s neck, pulling him into a deep embrace.
“What’s the matter with you?” Trey said softly. “Don’t point a gun at me, ya nitwit.”
“I’m sorry. I just don’t know what to think anymore. Everything is so crazy.”
“What happened?”
Chloe pulled away and wiped at her tears. Her breathing had normalized, and her composure was returning. “There was a bomb. A bomb went off outside the Fure office on mining site LS-418. It killed so many people. We all helped the best we could, but it was chaos.”
“A bomb?” Trey asked in shock. “Who did it? Was it Medex?”
“No, everyone thinks it was Fure who did it themselves, to frame Medex. Right after the explosion, we got word Fure called an emergency meeting in the Core System Senate and accused Medex of terrorism. They declared war, and Medex declared right back.”
Trey’s eyes grew wide as he looked down and away. He ran his fingers through his hair as his mind processed the information. “That’s…it’s…“he stammered. “I never thought Fure was capable of that. Killing their own people to justify a war… for mineral rights!”
“But that’s not it,” Chloe cried. “That wasn’t the real reason! Yes, they wanted war, but the real reason for the bomb was to target the meeting!”
Trey looked at her with a furrowed brow.
“The meeting!” Chloe repeated, shaking her hands in front of her. “To vote on petitioning the Senate for formal colony status, so we could form a government out here. It’s the only way we can fight back against these corporations, so they’ll have to stop treating us the way they do. We were all in the building next door. No one was supposed to know. The bomb went off right as everyone was gathered. We’re not even sure how many delegates died in the blast, at least half.”
Chloe clenched her fists, and her tone grew sharp. Her eyes watered again. “They knew! They knew about the meeting, and they sent that bomb to blow it up. People were already scared before, and now there’s no way anyone will stand up against them.”
Trey stood in stunned silence. He reached out and grabbed his chair, then collapsed into it. His eyes searched the top of his desk as he covered his mouth with his hand.
Those idiots! Morons! They went too far. This is really bad. No, it’s okay. I’m smarter than everyone. I’ll be all right.
After a long silence, Trey looked and saw Chloe watching him.
“I’m so sorry this happened,” he said as he rose and held Chloe’s hand. “But you can’t blame yourself. You and the Movement had no idea Fure would sink this low, would do something this horrible, to stop you from organizing people. You were just trying to help.”
Having fully regained her composure, Chloe stood motionless. She silently stared at Trey with an unsettling intensity. “Blame?” she finally asked. “Yes, someone is to blame. Someone sold us out.” She pulled her hand away from Trey. “You knew about the meeting.…”
Trey jolted upright. “No, I didn’t,” he snapped. “You know the Movement doesn’t tell me stuff like that.”
“I told you,” Chloe shot back. “That night last week when we met… and we… then, after, when we were talking in bed, I accidentally told you.”
“You’re confused; you never told me anything. You know your brain gets things mixed up sometimes.”
Chloe drew in a breath and clenched her fists. “Yeah well, what about the bomb?” she said, the emotion coming back into her voice. “It was a military-grade explosive, not like the mining stuff we have. It had to come from outside the system, which means it had to have come through your station. You scan all the ships. You know what comes in. You would have seen it, and you didn’t tell us. You didn’t warn us!”
Trey took a step back, his movements jittery. “No one has to stop at my station,” he sputtered. “There’s no government out here, remember. I’m not an official entry checkpoint. Ships can come and go as they please. Whoever brought that bomb could have come with extra fuel reserves, approached from a different vector. I never would have seen them.”
The fierceness in Chloe’s eyes didn’t diminish. She mutely stared at him.
“I’ll prove it!” Trey shouted, moving back to his desk. “I’ll give you my station logs.”
“You edit those logs,” Chloe shot back, crossing her arms.
Reaching down to his computer terminal, Trey pushed a button, and a small rectangular piece of metal jutted out. He grabbed it and held it up to show Chloe. “This data stick is my unedited station logs. Everything I see, exactly how I see it. It’s proof that no bomb ever came through my station. I would never have let it through in the first place, and I certainly wouldn’t have told anyone about your meeting, if I had even known about it.”
Chloe glanced at the data stick, then looked Trey in the eyes.
Trey extended his arm and moved toward her, offering the logs. When she didn’t immediately accept them, he took her wrist and placed the data drive into her hand.
After a moment, Chloe relented, and her posture softened. “You’re telling the truth?”
Trey reached his arms out and pulled her into an embrace. “I would never lie to you.”
With her head leaning into his chest, Chloe stared off to the side at nothing. She rubbed the data stick in her hand. After a moment, she whispered, “Okay.”
Trey released and stepped back with a smile. “And be sure to show those logs to your father. He’ll have to trust me after that.”
Chloe stared out the window, gently chewing her lower lip. The stars glowed in the ether. She then slipped her hands into her jacket pockets and looked at Trey. “I will,” she said with a bright smile. “Once he checks it against the counter and sees you’re telling the truth, he’ll realize he was wrong. Then we can be together without having to sneak around. We can see each other whenever we want.”
Trey’s eyes narrowed. “The counter?”
“…I wasn’t supposed to say anything, but the guys hid a device on your station that counts the ships. When it matches the logs, the Movement will know you’re telling the truth.”
Trey stood still, his lips pressed tightly together. His eyes briefly flicked down to the data stick, then returned to Chloe. His heart pounded in his chest, and his pupils widened.
Those roughnecks will kill me for this. I don’t have a ship that’s jump-gate capable. I’m stuck in this system. Blast, I should have bought that single-engine star cutter when I had the chance. I’ve got to do something.
After a moment, Trey forced a smile across his face. “Great… yes, that’s great news. Everyone will know I’m telling the truth. Now hurry and take it to them so we can start figuring out what to do against Fure and Medex.”
With a smile, Chloe headed toward the exit. As she turned away, Trey leapt to the desk and grabbed the gun. Chloe looked back, drawn by his burst of movement. Trey raised the pistol and pointed it at her. She screamed and fell over as Trey pulled the trigger. A round ripped through the air, missing her only because of the fall. Chloe’s right hand in her jacket pocket thrashed furiously. Trey adjusted his aim, but right as he was about to fire the shot that would end her, a jolt like lightning struck his entire body.
Radiating from the back of his neck, every nerve in him seized. Everything stopped. He lost control. His entire body went rigid, and he couldn’t move anything.
On the ground, Chloe was hyperventilating. She tried to stand, but her legs failed her. Her hands shook as she pulled a small remote control from her jacket pocket. She pointed it at Trey and mashed the button.
“W…wha…” Trey tried to force the words out but couldn’t. It was a struggle to even move his eyes.
Seeing Trey’s state, Chloe visibly relaxed. She took her time to recover as the adrenaline dump subsided. After several moments, she had partially caught her breath. She stood and reached into her jacket again. She pulled out a paper-thin white rectangle about the size of a fingernail. Her hands still shook when she held it up to show Trey.
“Modilys patch,” she puffed. “Chem-cuffs, like the Fure guards have. When I hugged you….”
Trey’s eyes filled with panic. “T-ake…it…uuffff,” he struggled.
She stood up and looked at him. Her eyes burned with rage. “No.”
“You tricked me, Trey.” The tears broke free and flowed down her cheeks. “But I’ll never be tricked again.”
Trey fought in vain against the chemical cocktail infiltrating his nervous system. He tried to move his extended arm, tried to pull the trigger of the gun, but it was all useless.
Chloe walked over and wrestled her pistol out of Trey’s hand, then returned it to her holster. She wiped the wetness from her cheeks. “I’m going to tell the families of the people killed today what you did. You should leave this system as fast as you can.”
Trey watched Chloe turn her back on him and head for the door. The veins in his neck bulged, and his eyes grew bloodshot. Every muscle in his body burned.
When Chloe reached the doorway, she paused. She looked back at Trey with the light of realization spreading across her face. “You and Medex and Fure are all the same,” she said,” you all think you’re smarter than you actually are. You’ve shown me how to beat them.”
And then Trey was alone in his office. The paralysis remained, and inside was a storm of panic, fear, and shattered pride.
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