Starbourne, page 34
Shocked, Jaeden practically fell from his chair. “That’s insane!” he exclaimed.
“It would seem that good old Desmond got himself into bed with the wrong type of clients,” Cyrus declared while reading the reports. “Although, that will never be public knowledge.”
“I can speak out, can’t I? That is my business they’re talking about!” Nellie interjected.
“You’re better off keeping out of sight, my dear,” Cyrus said, a grim smile forming on his face. “They would sooner have you killed than allow you to publicly change the narrative.”
“Gol,” Jaeden muttered as he slouched in the chair.
“Well, my boy, you certainly have quite the conundrum on your hands,” Cyrus said, a suspicious look in his eye. “How much was the bounty for, Ms. Bray?”
“Seven hundred and fifty thousand,” Alina said, eyeing Jaeden carefully.
“My, my, quite the sum indeed,” Cyrus added.
Jaeden tensed and looked towards Nellie, who also seemed on edge from the direction of the conversation. Noticing the tense atmosphere, Cyrus put his hands up, his palms exposed.
“Don’t misinterpret, my friend!” the broker exclaimed. “I admired young Alexander, and Teagen is like a daughter to me. I would never betray their kin.”
“Where will you go?” Alina asked solemnly.
“I have no idea.” Jaeden laughed. “In the entire solar system, Hoss and Teagen were my only friends. I don’t know where else to go.”
“Well, no time like the present to start a new journey, right my boy?” Cyrus asked.
Jaeden rubbed a finger across his forehead. “Except I have barely any credits to my name. I spent practically everything I had. I was banking on getting a million credits from this job.”
“I do have a few discretionary credits I could provide,” Cyrus started, “Unless you have something of particular value you think I could sell on your behalf?”
That’s right, the chip! Jaeden thought. He reached into his pocket and pulled out the orange data drive. “I have this. Do you think it’s worth anything?” Jaeden handed the drive over to Cyrus.
“Curious,” Cyrus said as he turned the thumb drive over in his hand. “It certainly doesn’t look like any biodata drive that I have come across before.”
“Hoss got it from a dude on the ship. He wasn’t supposed to take anything other than the case, but… well, you know Hoss,” Jaeden said, the last few words stinging as he thought over them. The phrasing was not entirely accurate anymore, as Jaeden should have used the past tense to describe Hoss. He clenched his jaw and looked away from the broker as his mind wandered away from the moment.
“Well,” Cyrus began, clearly not noticing the shift in Jaeden’s demeanor. “Shall we see if it’s of any value?”
Jaeden looked back towards the broker to see the hand holding the drive back out towards him. “What?”
“As I said, this is a biodata drive,” Cyrus said with a sympathetic smile.
“That means it only boots up on internal systems,” Alina added, tapping a finger on the side of her head.
Jaeden suddenly understood what the two had meant. To support all the cybernetic enhancements and modifications people could get nowadays, internal CPUs were installed into the skulls of humans as they were born. It was a practice that Jaeden felt violated their basic human rights, as most people never even had a choice of whether they received the surgery or not.
There were groups in the solar system that believed the entire procedure was a way for governments and corporations to control the population, veiled to make lives easier. Whatever the case was, it was so commonplace now that most people just lived with the fact that they had small computers installed in their heads.
“Okay,” Jaeden responded, curious as to the direction of the conversation and taking back the drive from Cyrus.
Alina smiled softly and explained further. “Which means someone has to plug this into their head.”
“And that someone is me?” Jaeden asked, looking down at the drive in his hand. “Shouldn’t someone with more experience with this stuff do that?”
“Well,” Cyrus started but was cut off by his attendant.
“No,” Alina stated flatly. “If you want to sell it to us, we need to know what’s on it. But that’s for you to find out.”
“I don’t even know what to look for! I don’t know anything about this stuff,” Jaeden exclaimed as he held out the drive. “Can you not just, scan it or something?”
“Trust me, it doesn’t work like that, kid,” Alina responded, crossing her arms. “The only way you’re getting paid for that thing is if you find out what’s on it and tell us.”
“And what if it’s a cerebral virus or something?” Jaeden questioned.
“Exactly. We don’t take that chance; you do,” Alina replied.
“I’m sorry, my boy, but she does have a point,” Cyrus added, attempting to smooth the edges of Alina’s pointed statement.
“I can do it, Jae,” Nellie said, stepping towards him with her hand out. “Teagen still needs our help, and if something happens to you, well… I won’t be able to help her.”
Jaeden instinctively closed his hand on the drive and pulled it closer to his chest. “I can’t let you do that, Nellie. This is our issue; we never meant to involve you.”
“Well, I’m involved now, whether you intended it or not,” The bartender retorted. She raised a hand in an apology. “I’m sorry, I don’t mean that to sound—”
“No, you’re right,” Jaeden cut her off, shaking his head. “We did. This is on us.” He opened his hand and looked down at the strange drive in his palm. “And right now, it’s on me.”
There had only been a few times that Jaeden had used his bio drive; the feeling was never pleasant. He turned the drive over in his hand and regarded the shape carefully. Sticking his tongue out slightly in disgust, he exhaled and brought the drive up towards the left side of his head and positioned the drive above the port, just behind his ear. He felt around for a moment, and once aligned, Jaeden pressed the drive into the port, only to find that it did not fit.
Rolling his eyes as he cringed, Jaeden rotated the drive in his hand and repositioned it over the port. The drive clicked into place with a snap, and immediately, he could hear a low hum coming from the device. In the corner of his peripheral vision, he could see a text box appear, with several lines of red text cycling through various reports. A large word formed, reading “Initializing”.
“Something’s happening!” Jaeden exclaimed, his anxiety rising. “It says initializing. What do I do?”
“It’s probably just the drive booting up; that’s normal,” Alina advised, sitting on the corner of Cyrus’ desk.
“This is weird, man; it feels weird,” Jaeden said, shifting his weight from leg to leg as anxious jitters ran through his body.
“Just relax already,” Alina said dryly.
“You’re doing fine,” Cyrus added, a gentle smile crossing his face.
Jaeden hovered his hand over the device jetting out from the side of his head, ready to yank it out if anything bad happened. A sudden stabbing pain shot through the side of Jaeden’s face, from his scalp down to his jaw. He instinctively grabbed at his jaw to try and ease the pain, and it quickly subsided. Simultaneously, with the pain leaving, the humming sounds from the device began to slow and quiet down.
“Jaeden, are you okay?” Nellie asked, reaching out to touch Jaeden’s arm.
“Yeah,” Jaeden started. “I’m alright, I think.”
“What happened?” Alina asked noticeable concern in her voice.
“Just like, a pain shooting through the side of my face,” Jaeden said, taking a deep breath. “I think it’s settled down.”
“Could be just cerebral rust. How often do you use your port?” Alina asked.
“Never,” Jaeden said, scoffing under his breath.
“Figures, that’s normal then,” Alina said, crossing her arms again. “You ought to use that port more often, to get used to it.”
“Yeah, no thanks. This voxxing sucks,” Jaeden said, steadying his nerves.
“And so? What’s on there?” Cyrus asked, clasping his hands together in front of him.
“It looks like just a bunch of folders and random text files,” Jaeden reported as he mentally scanned through the files.
“Is there a batch file?” Alina asked. “Any executables?”
“I don’t think so,” Jaeden said, searching through the folders and files in the drive.
“Sounds like it’s just a support drive,” Alina said with a sigh.
“A shame,” Cyrus added with a furrowed brow.
“What does that mean?” Nellie asked the question before Jaeden could.
Alina pushed herself off the desk and walked towards a console mounted on the wall. “It’s likely part of a series of drives, useless on its own without the others. Sorry, kid, but we can’t do anything with that.”
“I can give you a few thousand credits out of good will, to help you get out of here,” Cyrus offered. “It won’t be much, but it should be enough for you to evade this bounty.”
“What about Teagen?” Jaeden asked. “And Nellie?”
The bartender put her hand on his shoulder. “Don’t worry about me. I’ll be fine.”
Jaeden looked at Nellie, concern painted across his face as he looked at the woman whose life had been turned upside down by his actions. She simply smiled back, but it was a smile laced with sorrow for all that had happened. She pointed towards the drive still plugged into the side of Jaeden’s head. He raised his hand to touch the drive, and with a deep breath, pulled it free from the slot. Sudden relief rushed over him as the alien device was removed.
“As for Teagen, we will keep an eye out for her and do the same for her as we are doing for you,” Cyrus assured.
“I’ll take a pulse of the city and find her,” Alina added. “She’s good, but I taught her a lot of my tricks. Chances are, I can find her before anyone else.”
Pocketing the data drive in his pants pocket, Jaeden turned to Cyrus. “Where should I go?”
“Leave everything behind. Head to the Elliot Draven Spaceport. It’s only a short distance away from here. Book a flight on a cargo vessel to Vos Tresslar,” Cyrus advised. “It’s a dense melting pot; you should be able to disappear easily there.”
Jaeden raised a hand to his forehead. “But my stuff at the apartment–”
“Leave it all behind.” Cyrus interrupted, turning his head. “Go to the Spaceport now. Take only what you have.”
“I have nothing,” Jaeden said solemnly.
“Then you have nothing to slow you down,” Cyrus advised.
“Here’s the credits,” Alina said, handing a credit chip to Jaeden.
“Take Alexander’s car. You can try to sell it to someone while you’re there, or you can just leave it,” Nellie suggested.
“Are you sure you’ll be okay, Nellie?” Jaeden asked, looking over at the young woman.
“Am I sure? Not at all,” The bartender said with a chuckle. “But I’ll figure it out. I always do.”
Cyrus rose from his seat and approached Nellie from behind. He put one hand on her shoulder, and another on the side of her arm. “Fret not, Jaeden, your friends will be okay.”
“Thank you, Cyrus. And you too, Alina,” Jaeden said as he came to terms with what he had to do next. “And Nellie—”
“It’s okay, Jaeden,” She cut him off. “Just, take care of yourself, alright?”
Jaeden nodded at his friend and regarded both Cyrus and Alina one final time. In unison, the broker and Technologist nodded at him, and he smiled back. Anxiously rubbing his hands together, he could feel they were clammy from his nerves. He turned from his friends and ventured through the door from Cyrus’ office back into the restaurant, making sure not to look back.
He wiped his hands on his pants as he found himself back in the sparsely populated alleyway. Reaching into his pocket, he fumbled for the keys to Hoss’ hovercar and pulled them free.
As he held the keys to the car, he looked around his surroundings. Jaeden estimated he stood nearly exactly in the same spot as when Hoss and Nyx spoke about working for Desmond. Jaeden shook his head and clenched his jaw as he thought back to the encounter. How he wished he could go back and kill that deal in its infancy before it went any further.
Jaeden opened the door to the vehicle and climbed in. As the car started up with a whine, he adjusted the seat and the mirrors. He looked back towards the storefront of Cyrus’ building and took a deep breath. It was time for him to move on and leave this all behind.
“On my own again,” Jaeden said to himself.
The words brought a smirk to his face as he recalled a song where the phrase was utilized as the chorus. Distracting himself from the thought, he would certainly trade his current circumstances for that of the situation in the song. If he recalled correctly that tune was about a relationship breaking up as opposed to one’s entire life falling apart and being forced out into the solar system as a wanted man. Jaeden was convinced; a simple broken heart sounded much easier to cope with than what he looked at now.
Somewhere in the low Mars orbit, a battle-scarred gunship drifted aimlessly. The hull of the ship, which had once been a brilliant white with blue markings and identifiers, now more resembled a metallic rust. Several pieces of the ship had been clearly salvaged from similar models and jerry-rigged together to keep the ship serviceable. The port side of the ship had large white markings, listing its callsign, although the full name no longer displayed properly. The word “Oro” was clearly visible, but where a second word would have been, a large gash across the hull marked the ship instead.
The captain of the tried and tested ship walked across his command deck and dropped himself into his flight seat. He carried over a simple glass cup and a cloudy bottle of dubious contents. He placed the cup on the control panel, and using some effort, uncorked the murky green bottle. He poured the golden-hued liquid into the cup, filling it about halfway before shoving the cork back into the stem of the bottle. Placing the murky glass container on the floor beside his seat, he lifted the cup up to inspect it closely.
The man’s brown hair and weathered features belayed his relatively younger age. As a man in his mid thirties, the captain of the Oro Medonte was an experienced bounty hunter and gun for hire. His messy shoulder length hair draped the sides of his face. Several small scars and marks decorated his rugged facial features. Underneath a thick layer of stubble, a strong square jawline. His nose was long, but a few unnatural bends in the bridge indicated it had been broken and reset more than a few times.
The bounty hunter prided himself on his eyes, not that they were a rich and soft brown like a deep espresso, but that they were his own natural eyes. In fact, no where on his body did the man have any mechanical or cybernetic enhancements of any kind. A natural-limbed human through and through, relying on his own senses and capabilities rather than Technological advancements.
One of the only unnatural accessories that the captain sported was a gold hoop earing hung from his left ear. It didn’t signify anything of importance; it was merely an aesthetic choice. Not that he would ever admit it where anyone could hear him, but he felt the earring made his appearance spiffy.
He wore a tan hide jacket with a large open collar. The interior of the jacket was a beige woolly material, which could be seen around the collar underneath the flaps of the coat. The garment was the preferred choice of outerwear for those that lived in the frontier districts of the solar system.
On the side of his right hip was strapped a holster for his favored weapon. An original SR-two heavy pistol, all factory default, except for the custom grip. Long seen as outdated by the masses, the owner of this particular gun found elegance in its simplicity.
Most modern weapons used heat syncs as replaceable clips, firing a laser or focused beam of energy. While that was the way of the future, it was the opinion of this bounty hunter that nothing could replace the reliability of the tried-and-true weapons of yesteryear. There were no systems troubleshooting, or in-depth manuals required to operate an old-fashioned bullet-fed firearm, and when your life is at stake during your line of work, that was a big consideration.
“Captain Chambers, several new contracts have been added to the board during your extended absence,” a female voice echoed through the ship. Although the voice sounded human, there was an unusual stutter between some of the words that gave it away as digital.
“Why say ‘extended’? It was only ten minutes, Jodi.” The captain said, turning the cup in his hand. He watched the liquid swish back and forth in the container.
“I used the term ‘extended’ because you said you would be gone for five minutes but were gone for thirty-two minutes.” The digital-laced feminine voice responded.
The captain raised his eyebrows and looked up towards a display that showed a red digital clock confirming what his ship’s computer reported to him. With a shrug, the captain looked back towards his cup. “Okay, thirty-two minutes. Any good contracts?”
“A rather large corporate bounty has just been registered in this sector. Locate and retrieve, alive if possible.” The ship’s computer, Jodi, advised.
The captain nodded his approval as he stared at the cup. He gave the contents a cautious sniff. A pleasing aroma caused a smile to spread across his face. He shrugged to himself and lifted the cup to his mouth for a sip. As he tasted the drink, he grimaced deeply, staring deep into the contents of the cup with newly found disdain.
“Oh, that is awful.” The captain murmured under his breath, shaking his head.
“With all due respect, Captain Chambers, you won’t find more lucrative offers in this sector if—”
“No, Jodi. I meant this cup of ass; it’s terrible.”
“General query: previously you have stated that ass is beneficial; however, your current context suggests otherwise.”
“What?” The captain managed to ask between a slew of raspy coughs.
