Astra: Synchronicity (6 page)

"And if he refuses?" Tiyuri inquired.

Her lips curled into a wicked smile. "You
know what to do."

***

"Did you hear the one about the Psiman and
the Asian whore?"

Commander Mundammi gazed across the dirty
cityscape, paying little attention to the off-color jokes of his
crewmates. Between the patchwork clouds and the smog of Kivara,
there appeared to be no sun in the sky at all. Multicolored neon
from a sign above them cast an unnatural haze across the ruined
piles of stone nearby. They loitered in a part of the city few
talked about, where subculture and the black market ran free. Pisa
was the final frontier as far as most people were concerned and
definitely not a place for the timid.

The location of the rendezvous point hadn't
been Rashad's decision. They'd been waiting several hours for their
contact and nothing. At least the streets had been calm tonight. He
lifted a hashish cigarette to his lips and took a long drag off it.
One of his companions, a young lieutenant named Sibo Chen, turned
to him and asked, "Do you think he's coming?"

Rashad ran a hand through his black curls. "I
don't know. That fighting south of here was intense for a while.
Thirty more minutes and I'll send you back to the ship to see what
our orders are."

"Is it the gangs or the PAU and UE waging war
out there?"

"The echo of the WX80 tells me it's the war."
Railguns produced a distinct sonic boom because their ammunition
traveled ten times faster than the speed of sound. "I'd say they're
almost hundred miles away. In Serpent's Vale probably. I got my
start in the fleet as a ground soldier. A have some friends based
in the area."

"What was it like—being a soldier?"

"Not much different than sitting at the
weapons controls of a ship, to be honest. We're trained in physical
combat, but the days of waging that kind of war are long gone.
Everything is controlled remotely from bunkers. It's all about
strategic deterrence and attrition with the latest and greatest
robotic war-machines. Very rarely is anyone killed, and when they
are it's more about being in the wrong place at the wrong
time."

If actual people had been involved in combat,
he doubted United Europe would have staked a claim to this wretched
planet in the first place.

The two of them glanced at their shipmates,
who sat on the ground telling dirty stories to pass the time. Kevin
Washington, the
Kearsarge's
weapons officer, stood before
them and thrust his hips around in a lewd display. His dark skin
absorbed the dim light, making his eyes and teeth look fluorescent.
Carmen started laughing so hard she doubled over. The feisty Latina
slapped her hands against her thighs in giddy delight. Dr. Lucas
Jones grinned widely, reminding him again why the man's handsome
façade made all the ladies weak-kneed.

The young man picked up three rocks and
juggled to entertain himself. Rashad never had good hand-eye
coordination, a trait that dashed his childhood dreams. "Believe it
or not, I wanted to be a pilot when I joined up," he said to Sibo.
"The program wasn't as cutthroat then as it is now, but I never had
the knack for it. I don't know how you do it."

"Well, I had an advantage over most people.
Both my parents are racing pilots. They joke that my first word was
'go.' Some of my first memories are of sitting on my dad's lap
while he explained the controls to me. They didn't let me fly on my
own until I was sixteen. They wanted me to join a racing team, but
I thought I should do more with my life. So here I am."

Sibo won several awards and commendations for
his skills as a teenager. Joining the Allied Fleet was a natural
progression of everything he'd trained for. His hard work and
enthusiasm earned him a spot at the Academy, but he floundered
there. He'd never been book smart and it showed in his marks. After
almost failing out of several senior classes, he made it back to
the fleet as an ensign but not without shame. Unfavorable reviews
when he was up for promotion nearly got him thrown out, and he was
assigned to the
Kearsarge
in disgrace the same as the rest
of them.

The sound of footsteps reverberated through
the walls surrounding them. His officers quieted and stood on
guard. Rashad rested his hand on his sidearm, a 380 Prime
disruptor. He thought their prolonged presence would've attracted
the attention of the street gangs sooner. Here, the man with the
biggest gang and the most guns ruled. All the hard-working
legitimate colonists fled decades ago, and ongoing strife between
the PAU and UE tore apart what was left.

Through the shadows, a woman ran across the
street in a long coat. Her eyes searched the gloom with anxious
haste as she dashed toward them. When she noticed the group
watching her, she stopped in her tracks. Obscured by the darkness,
she clutched the white coat around her, seeming to weigh her
options.

Rashad put up his hands to ease her. "We're
not with the gangs or one of the armies. Are you all right? Do you
need help?"

She let out an uneasy breath and glanced up
at the neon sign. The warm glow intensified her airy blond hair. "I
don't know."

He approached her with a slow, open gait.
Thanks to gang rule, rape and murder were as common as petty theft.
When he drew closer, he noticed no obvious signs of assault. "What
are you running from?"

"I woke in a building outside the city to
explosions so I escaped to Kivara. Two men attacked me. I've been
running ever since."

She looked calm in the wake of recent events.
"What's your name?"

A blank stare met his question. "I don't
know."

In a place where people would sooner die than
tell the truth, lying came as naturally as breathing. The mandatory
identification implant act of 2197 had been the first law handed
down by the newly formed Allied Council. Since then, the wrist
implant had evolved to include a host of other functions, but
foremost it remained a non-forgeable form of ID.

Rashad cast a glance back toward Dr. Jones
and signaled for him to come forward. He could scan the iridescent
implant embedded above her left wrist. She had no reason to be
dishonest to them, and yet a nagging worry ate at the back of his
mind.

"Exactly how common is amnesia, Doc?"

"Not nearly as common as people like to
think. I've never once seen a legitimate case of it. With a quick
scan I should be able to see if anything is wrong."

The two stared back at her, half expecting
her to bolt back into the shadows she descended from. Instead, she
took a few steps toward an overturned barrel and sat on the edge of
it. She held out her wrist. "Do it."

Dr. Jones popped the biometric scanner off
his belt and tapped through the menus. In addition to reading her
ID chip, the device would be able to detect any recent injuries
that might have caused true amnesia. He walked toward her and spoke
in a pleasant tone. "I'm Doctor Jones. Aside from your memory, has
anything else been bothering you?"

"My feet hurt for a while," she said quietly.
"But not anymore."

The doctor checked them over, but aside from
minor scratches and dirt, nothing appeared to be wrong with them.
When he finished, he pressed the scanner against her wrist. After a
few seconds, it twittered. "Your name is Amii Martin. Age:
thirty-three. Citizenship: United Europe."

He held the biometric scanner up in front of
her. "I'm going to put this on your chest to scan your vitals and
see if I can figure out what's wrong."

She stared at it for a few moments, more
interested in the device than her present condition. "Okay."

He tapped a few buttons on the screen before
kneeling down next to her. "You're going to have to open up your
coat a little bit so I can put this against your skin."

Without much of a thought, she obliged, not
flinching at all when the cold device touched her skin. After a few
deep breaths, she looked down at it. "How long does it take?"

"About a minute," he said with his attention
returning to her face. "Is it just personal memories that are gone
or is it everything?"

"Personal. I feel like my life started
yesterday. I know this is Kivara. I know—"

"Who's the President of Chara?"

"Thomas Scheidecker, a former admiral in the
Allied Fleet. He won the election of 2308 with 55 percent of the
popular vote."

Dr. Jones nodded. "Impressive. I'd always
thought half the people on Pisa didn't know and the other half
didn't care."

"Get your bloody hands off her!"

The booming voice rattled the nearby tin
walls and made every one of them jump. Before anyone could blink,
Rashad and his three other officers had their weapons drawn. When
the man in the dark overcoat appeared from the murk, Rashad
breathed a sigh of relief. It was the man they'd come for.

Carmen took a few menacing steps forward.
"Identify yourself!"

"At ease," Rashad said. "He's the one we're
here for."

She shared a tense glance with Lieutenant
Washington. "You mean, he's—"

"Yes." He dug his hands into his deep
pockets. "Dr. Xander Adams." He spoke with a heady Euro accent. A
disheveled mop of hair framed his leathery face, worn through with
deep wrinkles that never faded. His bright blue eyes stood out in
the darkness, enhanced by the xenon emissions pouring down on him.
Years in exile had given him a tall, lean build, yet Xander
possessed the sort of commanding presence that made him seem
bulletproof.

"Aren't you wanted for six counts of treason
by the Pan-Asian Union?" Sibo inquired.

"Seven, actually, but that's irrelevant right
now. You, doctor, I presume." He pointed at Jones. "Step away from
her. She's my responsibility."

"Actually," he said, "she just became mine.
She doesn't know who she is."

"Well, I can tell you that. Her name is Amii
Martin, and she's my assistant. When the PAU moved in on us, I lost
track of her. I could only assume she'd already found a route away
to the city. Obviously, she did. She does have a pilot's license;
there must be records of that somewhere."

Rashad turned around and signaled for his
crew to get ready to move out. "Alright. We're taking you
both."

Dr. Jones offered Amii his hand, but Xander
hurried over and pulled her away before she had a chance to take
it. "Wanking doctors."

"I'll be running a detailed scan of her when
we get back to the ship."

"Like hell you are."

"Why? Hiding something?"

"Fine," Xander shot back at him. "You do your
little scan and what have you. She fell the other day and had some
memory loss, but that's all. There is nothing wrong with her."

The doctor eyed him suspiciously. "We'll see
about that."

Xander hurried toward Rashad and the rest of
the company that had already begun heading toward the ship. "Did
President Scheidecker say if my request for asylum had been
accepted?"

"Of course not," Rashad said. "I'm not privy
to that information. For all I know, he might want you to fix his
housekeeping robot."

"You don't think he means to turn me over to
the PAU, do you?"

"They're at war with the PAU. Why would they
hand over a brilliant scientist to them? No, I'm fairly certain
this is something much bigger than that."

Magnius stared out his office window at the
pelting rain that soaked the landscape. The storm kept his boats in
dock all day long, moored to the pier while they weathered the
worst. Because of the vast amount of work to be done, the deckhands
stuck on port managed to stay busy. For one shining moment he could
relax. And yet, at the same time he couldn't.

He hadn't seen his wife since yesterday
morning. The heartrending events replayed themselves without
relenting in the hours since then, and misery followed close
behind. He'd struggled his whole life to fit in with both psions
and normals, but in the end he felt comfortable with neither.

Like most other mysteries of nature, science
unraveled the complicated biology of psions over the years. Being a
psion had all the common features of a disease and a dominant one
at that; due to this, only one parent need have the alleles for all
offspring to be psions. Genetic testing to distinguish psions from
normal humans had never been conclusive because the mutations were
so slight and varied from psion to psion. A complex interaction
produced varying power levels, classified by tiers. Tier-1
designated the psions not far removed from normals with minor
abilities, while Tier-10 denoted the maximum known extent of
psionic capabilities. Distribution amongst tiers was exponential,
with lower tiers making up the bulk of psions.

Like chess pieces, each type had unique
advantages and disadvantages. Telepaths trumped telekines while
Seers got the best of everything. Not all psions could extend their
lives, just those with a high secondary psychometabolism. It shamed
him to fall into that category.

He ran his hands through his mottled hair. A
happy picture of him and Lyneea mocked him from his desk. Life on
Fantasti had been lonely, and he should've known better than marry
a woman so opposed to psions no matter how smitten he was with
her—a foolish mistake that would cost him dearly. With how their
relationship degraded these past few years, part of him wondered if
he'd really loved her at all.

Long ago he resigned to being different,
condemned to life as an outcast if he didn't project a lie. The
persona of Matt Zoleki required years of meticulous planning, long
hours at the office, and mountains of paperwork. He hid behind his
falsified identity for the past forty years, the only thing
tethering him to normalcy, because if he didn't, he stood a good
chance of being dead like all the others glamorized 24/7 on the
news.