Solar Storm (Galaxy Mavericks Book 5) Read online

  “And there’s nothing we can do to cross-reference his memories and weed out the false ones?”

  “Not without more information,” Dawn said. “We’re working on that.”

  “So what exactly is the good news?” Miller asked. “I haven’t heard anything yet that I can get excited about.”

  Dawn handed him a sheet of paper with several notes on it:

  AGE: 35 years old

  Rah Galaxy resident

  Unencrypted signature: T.M.Z.E.

  Gosiah Federation (defunct)

  Federation of Moons

  Federation Alliance

  Federated Planet Brokers

  “WHAT’S ALL OF THIS?” Miller asked.

  “Your leads,” Dawn said.

  “Hmm,” Miller said. “Not sure if these are going to help.”

  “We had to do quite a bit of work to get that unencrypted signature. Someone wasn’t careful once or twice. I also cross-referenced all mentions of ‘Federation’ in the GALPOL database. There’s a lot there worth exploring. Legally, this is as far as we can go without violating the Accord. Hopefully you’ll find the answers you’re looking for.”

  Miller stared at the paper and frowned. Then he folded it and shook Dawn’s hand.

  “I’ll never forget this. I really appreciate it.”

  He glanced up at the screens again; Smoke’s body rotated on one.

  “Whoever knew a cyborg would cause so much trouble?” he asked.

  Then he tipped his hat to Dawn and the engineers and walked out.

  28

  The pod heated up as it plunged into the planet’s atmosphere.

  Smoke could feel the sweltering heat—there was only one thick wall of metal between him and outside. From the way the pod shook, he wondered if it was going to break apart before he ever reached the surface.

  The walls shook and he tightened his grip on his straps.

  Outside, the horizontal slant of space and planet disappeared, replaced by a golden-brown sky that reminded him of a sunrise. A corona of sunlight blinded him temporarily and he looked away as the pod tumbled and turned away from the sun.

  As the pod shook, he prepared himself for what was next.

  Death.

  He was going to crash onto some continent and die in a ball of flames.

  That wouldn’t be so bad.

  Or the pod might land safely, but he would emerge and die of suffocation in the planet’s atmosphere.

  That wouldn’t be so bad, either.

  He banged his head against the wall again.

  In the sky, he spotted dozens more pods falling through the sky, like pockmarks of a plague. They streamed downward like comets, with long tails of fire blazing behind them.

  As the pod twirled again, he saw the faint outline of a continent through the brown clouds.

  Rocky. Barren.

  He thought he spotted a river, but he couldn’t be sure.

  Then, the pod shook once more and the shaking stopped.

  The rapid descent slowed.

  The spinning stopped.

  He looked out the window again.

  The other pods had bloomed parachutes.

  His must have had a parachute as well.

  A strong wind carried him downward, and he loosened his grip on the straps. He rubbed a bruise near his forehead. He sat in the darkness, closed his eyes, and breathed in deeply.

  He would be ready for whatever was coming.

  First, he’d have to figure out how to get out of his handcuffs and his chains. If he could do that, maybe he’d have a chance at getting off this planet somehow.

  The clouds parted and Smoke got a better view of the continent. It was a sandy, rocky continent in the middle of a violent sea. The pods steered toward the coast. As they descended, Smoke could hear the waves railing against the shore.

  The wind howled against the metal walls of the pod as it circled downward like a helicopter leaf.

  The ground came up quickly, and Smoke braced himself as the pod crashed into the ground, bounced high into the air, smacked the ground again, rolled across sand and rock and came to a slow stop upside down.

  Smoke let go of his straps and he fell onto the ceiling. The impact hurt his back.

  The pod beeped, and then whooshed.

  A door on the side slid open, and a torrent of sand and dust blew inside. Smoke coughed. He brought his hands to his face in an awkward motion with the handcuffs, and he wiped sand from his eyes. It didn’t work very well.

  He crawled on all fours and escaped the pod, collapsing outside on a bed of sand.

  The wind was mildly warm, and it blew a column of sand around him.

  He couldn’t tell what time it was.

  And then the ground shook—another pod crashed to the ground near him.

  Smoke jumped back into his pod as the other pod threw up sand and rocks and rolled across the ground.

  It struck Smoke’s pod, and Smoke grimaced as the impact threw him against the wall. His pod rolled like a marble across the sand. It came to a rest upright this time, and he looked outside.

  All across the sand, pods landed and rolled across the ground, sometimes colliding with each other. The impacts sounded like explosions following by shearing, crumpling metal.

  Smoke waited for all the pods to land. It was a miracle his didn’t get smashed.

  He crawled outside again.

  The wind howled. He could hardly see the sky through the blowing sand. He tripped on a rock and fell face-first into a dune.

  Slowly, the pod doors opened, and the other prisoners climbed out, dazed and confused. They all looked around, wiping their eyes.

  “Where the hell are we?” someone asked.

  “Hey, over there!” someone else said.

  Smoke squinted.

  Several shadows stood atop a sand dune.

  People.

  And as they came closer, Smoke saw them.

  They wore scarves over their mouths.

  And they had guns.

  29

  Miller flashed his badge to security at the GALPOL Database Records. A pudgy security guard pressed a button at his security terminal and the turnstiles opened for Miller.

  Miller waved to the guard and entered an area that was filled with library stacks, but instead of books, the stacks were servers piled high toward a row of skylights that let in the stars.

  The room was quiet and cold. The only thing he heard were the fans inside the servers, humming softly.

  No one in sight.

  Miller had never been to the Database Records. He’d always joked why anyone would want to spend time with a bunch of servers.

  But now he was here, with a purpose that had surprised him.

  A year ago, he would have never thought about taking on an investigation himself without leadership’s blessing.

  But with this cyborg, he got the feeling that there was something hiding in the data that didn’t want to be found. And he wasn’t about to follow the rules and let it stay buried forever.

  It bothered Miller that he cared about this case so much. As he walked through the servers, past the blinking green, yellow and red lights, he unfolded the piece of paper that Dawn had given him.

  AGE: 35 years old

  Rah Galaxy resident

  Unencrypted signature: T.M.Z.E.

  Gosiah Federation (defunct)

  Federation of Moons

  Federation Alliance

  Federated Planet Brokers

  NONE of it made any sense.

  He stopped at the edge of an aisle and looked up at a sign.

  SERVER SEARCH —>

  <— Server Maintenance

  HE WHISTLED.

  He definitely didn’t want to be one of the poor schmucks that had to maintain these damned servers. He couldn’t imagine what kind of hell broke loose whenever one of them failed.

  Whenever the computer in his corsair malfunctioned, that was painful enough. But an actual server?

  He
shuddered.

  Yeah, he preferred the field. Always.

  He started down the aisle for Server Search. The stacks fell away into a large carpeted circle filled with couches, tables, and desks with recessed touchscreen. Just like a library. There was even a vending machine in the corner.

  Miller stopped at the vending machine.

  Peanuts.

  Almonds.

  Celery.

  Carrots.

  “Good God, what’s a man got to do to get some chocolate in this place?” he asked.

  And then he noticed a sign next to the machine.

  FOR THE SAFETY of our servers, please no drinks or messy food

  HE LOOKED BACK at the stacks, regarding the note. Guess chocolate qualified as ‘messy food.’

  He scanned his thumb on the payment panel and bought a small bag of baby carrots. As he popped open the bag, he laughed to himself.

  “If only my ex-wife could see this,” he said, sliding into a chair at the nearest desk.

  The GALPOL logo flashed across the screen. With a carrot hanging out of his mouth like a cigarette, he scanned his thumb again. The screen unlocked and he leaned in close and it scanned his retinas.

  Then he typed in his GALPOL password.

  The screen unlocked and brought him to a simple search engine.

  He looked at the paper and tried to make sense of the leads.

  Didn’t make sense to search for the guy’s age. Who knew how many thirty-five year-olds there were in the galaxy? Far too many to count.

  He typed in the unencrypted signature.

  T.M.Z.E.

  No results.

  He tried the signature in different ways, with and without periods.

  Nothing.

  “So much for that,” he said.

  He searched for the federations and took notes.

  Gosiah Federation. Known for drug trafficking. Defunct twenty years ago after the fall of the Gosiah alien race. A sect of humans perished alongside it. No known activity in twenty years aside from displaced survivors.

  “Doubt that’s a lead,” Miller muttered.

  Federation of Moons. A group of moon enthusiasts consisting of scientists, artists, and authors trying to show the beauty of the galaxy’s moons. Staged a protest three years ago in response to one of Gargantua’s moons proposed as a garbage dump site. Group vehemently opposed the proposal. Some members were arrested. GALPOL involved due to death threats, but the group was never proven guilty.

  “Just a bunch of a moon lovers,” Miller said.

  Federation Alliance. An alliance between two different organized crime families on Provenance and Kavios II. One was known for its smuggling and money laundering; the other was known for its intimidation tactics. The two families joined in response to GALPOL’s organized crime elimination initiative. However, the Galactic Guard intercepted a large shipment of drugs shortly before the deal was finalized, which was a major blow to the alliance. It never formed.

  “I remember that,” Miller said, chuckling. “Oh, what a shitshow that was.”

  Federated Planet Brokers. Real estate company that came under investigation for business dealings with Arguses. Founder was convicted for several crimes including human trafficking.

  “Hmm,” Miller said, “This is a dead end.”

  He looked at his notes.

  FEDERATION Alliance

  THAT WAS the only one worth exploring. Maybe.

  He searched for the Federation Alliance again, read through the history, how it started, who the key players were.

  But there was no scientist involvement.

  Organized crime was known for a lot of things. Cyborgs weren't one of them.

  Miller ran his hands through his hair and he slouched over the screen.

  Dead end.

  He ran through the searches again, looking for anything he missed.

  FEDERATED PLANET BROKERS

  SO WHAT IF they had gotten into trouble with a bunch of pigs?

  But the human trafficking…that was an interesting lead.

  He expanded his search, looked for any mentions of ‘federation’ that also included human trafficking.

  They were the only one.

  He read the notes. Apparently, this group was working with Arguses to give them a steady stream of human traffic. Mostly children.

  Asteroid mining.

  He remembered this. Happened about twenty years ago. Huge scandal. The Galactic Guard found a bunch of kids slaving away on an asteroid. Killed a bunch of Arguses. When it came out that humans were involved in the trafficking, the police went out for blood. And they found it. The Federated Planet Brokers was dismantled overnight.

  Was the cyborg one of those kids that they found on an asteroid?

  It didn’t make sense. Didn’t add up. From the medical notes, it sounded like Smoke was “found” not that long ago.

  Another dead end.

  Miller ate the last carrot. A beer would have tasted great right about now.

  Yeah, a beer sounded good. But if he had one, his liver would punish him for it.

  He tucked the paper in his pocket.

  Just before he signed off, he swept the screen again to make sure he hadn’t missed anything.

  A button at the top of the screen caught his eye.

  VIEWING History (2)

  SOMEONE ELSE HAD VIEWED the page. Not terribly interesting.

  He clicked on the button anyway.

  VIEWERS in the last 7 days

  R. Miller

  D. Sharma

  ANOTHER AGENT. GALPOL agents looked at the database all the time.

  He clicked the back button, back to the Federation Alliance.

  Again, the history had two viewers. Miller and a D. Sharma.

  He clicked the back button again.

  Federation of Moons.

  Viewers: R. Miller, D. Sharma.

  Miller cocked his head.

  The nice thing about the GALPOL database was that everything was public. Agents got reassigned from cases all the time, so you could look up their search history in order to keep the momentum on cases going. Whoever this agent Sharma was, he or she suddenly became more interesting.

  Then, he got the idea to expand his search: ‘Federation,’ ‘human trafficking,’ [WILDCARD+User search history: Sharma].’

  A list full of results scrolled down the screen.

  “The hell?” Miller said.

  At the top of the screen, a phrase appeared in bold, red letters: Zachary Empire.

  30

  Smoke put his hands up as the silhouettes approached. As the sunlight fell on them, he saw that there were men and women.

  Women…

  But this was supposed to be prison. A male prison. What were women doing here? And above all, women with guns?

  One of the women had yellowed teeth and a bandana around her head. She wore a hunter green tank top, and her arms were sunburned. Smoke could sense boners rising all across the sands, and then immediately shrinking the moment she opened her mouth.

  “Hands up,” she said.

  The other prisoners raised their hands.

  “Welcome to your new home,” the woman said.

  The other strangers aimed their guns at everyone. The prisoners dropped to the sand. Smoke did the same, not taking his eyes off the newcomers.

  “Listen up,” the woman said. “You’re on the planet Defestus. You’re not home anymore. We play by a different set of rules here.”

  She crossed the sands and stopped at Smoke. She looked him up and down and twisted her face in disgust.

  Smoke narrowed his eyes slightly at her.

  “Where is the prison?” someone asked.

  The woman laughed. “This is the prison, you idiot.”

  The strangers laughed.

  “You really are green,” the woman said. “We’re going to have some fun with you punks.”

  Stacks, who was nearby, spit into the sand.

  “We ain’t punks,” Stacks sa
id.

  “We’ll see about that,” the woman said.

  Stacks sneered at her. After she passed, Stacks called out to Smoke.

  “Told ya we have to stick together!” Stacks said.

  Smoke ignored him.

  “You newbies are going to have to earn your freedom,” the woman said. “And it's not really freedom, so don't go getting any delusions.”

  A mustached man with a scarf around his mouth tapped the woman on the shoulder.

  “Tara, we better get going.”

  Tara nodded. With her gun, she motioned for all the men to line up.

  “Follow us,” she said. “Tyrone, pick up the rear.”

  A black man covered in tattoos walked near the back of the line with a rifle in his hand.

  Smoke fell into line and marched with the rest of the prisoners through the sand.

  In the distance, he spotted a row of gray buildings. The buildings were two stories with fabric covering the windows. They were austere and looked as if they had been thrown together.

  More people lined up at the entrance, waiting and watching curiously.

  As they entered the small city, Smoke saw the people waiting.

  Men.

  Women.

  And, between the legs of the men and women, small children. Dressed in rags and scarves with bright eyes.

  Kids?

  The children watched the prisoners with fearful eyes as the long line passed into the walls of the city.

  “What kind of bullshit is this?” a prisoner whispered behind him.

  Smoke didn’t reply, but he was thinking the same thing.

  Tara motioned for the line to stop. When it didn’t, she fired her gun into the sky. Everyone stopped immediately. A strong gust blew, twirling the jacket wrapped around her waist.

  “Welcome to your new home,” Tara said. “And from now on, we’re the wardens around here.”

  She grinned.

  “I think we ought to start with a fun housewarming activity,” she said, as a brown dust storm rolled in from the desert.

  31

  Miller bought another bag of carrots and sat down at the desk again.

  His notebook was full of notes now and he had written so much he could hardly read what he wrote.

  He snapped a carrot and closed his eyes, resting them. Staring at a screen wasn't something he was used to. Not for this long.