During those times when he’s dream-projected back home, Adam asks his father for more advice.
“How do I find out where the bad guys are?”
Nassir thinks about that. “The police would usually have records about that,” he says at last. “You’d consult the archives, talk to whoever keeps tabs on activity, that kinda thing.”
The look on his son’s face tells Nassir what he feared. “You want to know, but not go through official channels,” he concludes. “We’re going back to our earlier discussion about trusting the authority you report to.”
Adam nods his head.
Nassir thinks some more, then smiles. “You get a line on someone you know who the cops are interested in. Find out where they are. Find out who they mingle with. Go where they work.”
Jordan remembers some names from her time in space. Zaxelis. Kwa Benga. Om the Face Flenser.
Adam isn’t sure he wants to take his friends to meet anyone named “the Face Flenser”. He had to look up what that word meant, and he didn’t like what he read.
Zaxelis, on the other hand, is a name hard to miss. Since her escape from Orion Schema, she has dedicated herself to making a splash in the galaxy. Bounty hunters are interested in her location, and have been asking for details for the last year. By using the interstellar network terminal in the ship, Space Bug is able to put together a picture of her movements.
“When she is entangled, jailed, imprisoned, she is to be put to Concordance Tribunal,” the bug-like alien explains. “Now she defies the Concordance through sheer stubbornness, brazenness, audacity. It is heartwarming and exciting!”
“Where is she now?” Adam asks patiently.
“Ah.” The bug holds up two digits in a gesture inviting patience. “Bounty hunters chase her. They go to many dangerous sounding places. The bounty increases. Then she disappears into the Blue Haunts. The bounty hunters will not follow.”
“What is the Blue Haunts?” Adam asks.
Space Bug shows him on the map.
The location is a cluster of young blue stars, about 445 light years away from Earth. Adam knows it by its Earth name: the Pleiades Cluster.
The next problem presents itself. How does this group ingratiate itself into groups the Concordance calls enemy?
Adam had again put the question to his father.
“Undercover work requires a core of authenticity,” Nassir had said. “You can’t send a white boy from uptown into a downtown drug den. He’ll stand out like a sore thumb. He doesn’t talk like them. He wasn’t raised like them. He doesn’t get it.”
“Maybe I can fake it with my powers?” suggested Adam.
Nassir shrugged helplessly. “I don’t know. I do know that people can smell a lie from a mile away when it’s about who you are. The best undercover guys I know were one wrong choice away from working against the law.”
Now Adam puts that advice to use.
Space Bug is easy. The creature is already a criminal - a smuggler of artifacts, a thief, a shipjacker, probably more. They’ll blend in without any effort.
Armiger will probably be the hardest. If he doesn’t start talking about justice and Excalibur and stuff, maybe he can be a bodyguard? He and Jaycee - she has the swagger Adam thinks he’s looking for.
He doesn’t want to think about Keri, not at first. But the truth comes to him, and he talks to her about it in privacy.
“We’re going to where there’s a lot of bad guys,” he explains delicately. “And, well, I thought about it. Can the Lamb pretend to be a Lion for awhile? You know, bring out–”
Keri stops him by raising the palm of her hand, and glowers. But she relents after a moment. “You’re asking a lot.”
“I know,” Adam admits. “If you want to stay behind–”
That suggestion makes her wince, and Adam regrets it without quite knowing why. But she explains.
“I talk a big game. I haven’t been a very good hero, but I’ve tried to pretend like I was, and somehow I wound up fooling a lot of people. Even you.” She chokes out a brief, pained laugh.
She speaks more softly, and finally finds herself able to meet Adam eye to eye. “I’m gonna take care of you, Adam, and the others too. I think I can be a bad guy and still do that.”
Adam isn’t sure what to say. So he speaks, and lets the words come on their own.
“Good people get hurt too. I think if you were really a bad person, you’d be a lot less conflicting about feeling like one.”
He smiles, and pats her arm, and leaves before she starts crying.
It’s Peri that gives him the breakthrough he needs. But he hates the idea of using it.
What if… Peri was a Collective agent, but had her Shard shut off, and they were trying to fix it by finding other members of the Collective?
It has the advantage of being absolutely true in all particulars.
It has the disadvantage of endangering Adam’s beloved little sister.
He thinks about using himself instead. He could transfer Tau - he’s done it before - or try to mess with the Antares Alpha-One Shard Somber lent him - or–
There’s a lot of ors, and he’s not certain of any of them.
Ultimately, all he can hope is that Somber is as good as their word, and that Jordan will be safe on Earth. She’s only a projection here. All she has to do to run away is wake up.
Ultimately, he hates that he’s thinking like this at all, and he blames that on Somber too.
“Space Bug, set course for the Pleiades,” he orders.
The work begins to give the team a cover story, as space scum on the run from the law.
They’re literally flying in a stolen ship. It takes very little effort to add a few touches here and there to suggest a more violent past. Battle damage, some nanopainted graffiti on the hull, and a couple of spikes really add character.
Jaycee and William receive fabricated weapons and armor - William a wicked-looking sword with a gently curving blade, like a Japanese katana, Jaycee a pair of powerful blasters, and replica Rainbow Imperial body armor. Space Bug, already similarly equipped, evaluates the result and gives the pair the Space Bug Seal of Approval ™, for a very low price to be negotiated in the future.
Adam, Jordan, and Keri all have their respective powers. Adam’s experience with using negative emotions during their battle with the Blot makes him confident he could fool a casual examiner, but he prays he won’t need to.
Jordan pouts at being told she needs to change her princess look to something darker, but becomes much more enthusiastic after Keri volunteers to work with her. The two girls spend quite a bit of time at the effort, and Adam has to admit the results look convincing.
Finally, Space Bug announces the ship has reached the perimeter of this unknown but lawless space.
“We will be fired on unless we answer their questions,” they say cheerfully.
“What questions?”
Space Bug tunes in the communicator, along with translation into English, so the group can hear someone who’s already hailed them.
“Vessel ‘Love Bug’, what are you doing in this space?”
“Profit, yes,” Space Bug responds immediately, before Adam can say anything. “Plus we have enemies of the Concordance aboard. They seek help, aid, succor, yes.”
“What are you paying for safe passage?” the voice demands gruffly.
“Mercenary services, fighting talent, violence,” Space Bug announces proudly.
“You’ve got three days to find a patron,” the voice announces. “After that, your ship is ours.” With that, the call is cut short.
Space Bug gives four thumbs up to Adam.
Adam has to rely on Space Bug for the next part - find the team a port of call, somewhere to dock and start nosing around.
The bug starts checking the regional network. As they do, Adam wrestles with more doubt.
Space Bug is a criminal. The bug could easily turn the rest of the team over to the bad guys here, get paid handsomely for a Concordance agent and two Earth heroes, and disappear into the Pleiades.
Adam isn’t sure the distrust is coming from Somber’s influence. He’s pretty sure he’s feeling it.
He’s pretty sure he doesn’t like it.
Space Bug starts reporting back likely locations. “The Supernova of Sin! Every pleasure a material being could desire–”
Adam firmly declines this option.
“The Crimson Stain. Gladiatorial games, battles to the death, free cremation services–”
Adam declines this one as well.
“The Phantom Parsec. Home of the Starbusters. Accommodations and work for the savvy spacer,” Space Bug reads off.
“Let’s do that one,” agrees Adam quickly, before any more unsavory names come up.
The Phantom Parsec is a space station in orbit around the third moon of a gas giant. This planet in turn orbits one of the many stars in the cluster. It is a vertical spindle, with docking points stretching out in all directions like the arms of an octopus.
Numerous ships are docked here, and Adam and the others can see people coming and going from the center spindle via pressurized tubes.
Gun turrets poke out everywhere, presumably operated by whoever’s in charge of the Parsec. They swivel as the Love Bug approaches, but don’t fire. Space Bug receives and obeys docking instructions, and the ship plugs comfortably into an assigned berth.
Now is the time, Adam tells himself. He reminds himself of high school theater, and does his best to get into character.
The crew that pile out of the Love Bug look motley enough.
Two bodyguards, a man with a sword and a woman with blasters, are first and last out. Between them march a dark princess bearing a Continuum Sword, an intense young man wielding a similar weapon, a chittering alien smuggler with their own blasters, and an angry-looking girl in a black poncho, who looks ready to punch the first person who looks at her funny.
They enter the tube, and are transported automatically toward the spindle. The tube is semi-transparent. As a result, Adam and his friends get to see the spectacle of the moon below them, the gas giant beyond them, and the radiant blue star off in the distance. Though close to Earth as these things go, they are on a frontier, and Adam drinks in the wonder of it.
Don’t slip. You’ve got to be a hard, dangerous criminal, an inner voice tells him.
He sighs, and draws out his “game face” again.
The doors dissolve for them, and the six travelers enter the Phantom Parsec to meet its unknown masters, the Starbusters.
