Black Swan Planet Read online

  “You know her?”

  “Sure.”

  “Do you know where she lives?”

  “She’s got a place in the hills. I can show you on the map where it is. You’ll never see it if you don’t know it’s there. The entrance is hidden behind a natural hill and the place is built mostly underground. You could drive right past it ten times without ever seeing it.

  “Thanks. You’ve been a great help. What do I owe you for the prints?”

  “Don’t worry about it. I don’t get too many visitors. I enjoyed the talk.”

  “Same here.”

  I made my way out of the basement and got back in the car, and as I drove, my mind wandered. Maven. Once again, referred to as a Queen. Could she really be royalty? Maybe some deposed minor figure from one of the outer worlds of the Empire? The Empire is a conglomeration of worlds technically under the control of one person, but each planet has its own leadership. Monarchism is common, as long as the leaders of each planet swear fealty to the Emperor, they are mostly allowed their own systems. Donating to the families of the deceased? Setting up a scholarship for an orphan? These acts don’t sound like what I would have expected from the Maven I know. The one in the dominatrix’s outfit, cracking a whip on the bare ass of Emperor Caligula the Flatulent, but we were under a lot of stress at the time. There is definitely more to her than met the eye. And from what I remembered of her in that little outfit, I liked what had met the eye all those years ago.

  I drove for a couple hours; the roads went from rough pavement to gravel, to dirt. I headed to the spot marked on the map and truly saw nothing. After a few more miles, I stopped the car and got out to look around. Nothing. No sign of any structure at all. I turned off the car while my stomach rumbled, so I dug into the picnic basket Gina had packed for me. I sat on the hood of the car, drinking lemonade from a thermos and eating a sandwich when I saw something on the horizon. Just a dust cloud, nothing to worry about. I watched it as it grew, for a moment I feared a tornado headed my way, then I recognized it as just a car kicking up dust from the dirt road. I watched as the cloud neared and I noticed it looked to be coming off a silver colored car. Then the cloud changed directions and stopped.

  I threw the basket in the car and fired it up. The driver of that car offered my best chance at finding Maven. I spun the car around kicking up a rooster tail of dirt and sped to where I’d seen the dust cloud. It dissipated quickly, but I had my bearing. Then I saw the silver car and it looked to be entering a garage of some kind, hidden behind a hill. The garage door had been well camouflaged to look like the terrain and had I not seen it starting to close, I probably would have never noticed it. I slid the car to a stop and jumped from it, running to catch the door just before it hit the ground. I got both hands underneath it and pulled up, as hard as I could. The motor fought me for a moment, then it switched to opening the door and I saw her. Maven.

  Getting out of an immaculate mid-fifties silver Mercedes-Benz 300SL, the gullwing door above her head seeming to bow down in respect to her as she exited gracefully, despite the fact that she wore a black dress slit quite high on her thigh. She turned with a start, staring at me with a silent look that first frightened me as if she’d shoot me on the spot. Then her expression turned to a smile, and she ran toward me, arms open.

  “It’s you, isn’t it? Raka! Thank the gods you are alive! My prayers have been answered, and you are here!”

  She hugged me, squeezing me so tightly I had difficulty breathing. I had forgotten her stunning beauty, and she hadn’t aged a day. She squeezed me again and kissed me on the forehead. “Do come in! We have so much to catch up on. I’m so glad you are alive!”

  I cleared my throat and followed her. I had an unwanted but not unpleasant stirring in my loins as I followed.

  Maven Blackheart

  Chapter 22

  String of Pearls

  Maven pressed a button on a panel, and the walls separated horizontally at a seam I had hardly noticed, opening up to reveal a room about ten square foot in size. She then typed a keycode into the panel, and the doors slid closed behind us. The room shifted, and the feeling of lightness indicated we moved downward. We came to a gentle stop, the doors opening, and we stepped onto a floor of polished granite, cut precisely flat and smooth to a level of perfection I’d never seen. My eyes worked their way around the room to take in the sight. I’d been in churches with less space than this one room. The walls held large tapestries of intricate detail, handmade into fanciful pictures of mythical beasts. Unicorns, hippogriffs, dragons, and a minotaur; expertly stitched in blazing color into massive banners.

  I looked to the arched dome ceiling, emblazoned with a fantastic mural: the view into the night sky from Altrusia. The triplet moons formed a line, and the mural depicted the festival of the String of Pearls, in an artist’s romantic interpretation of the Altrusian night sky, showing more stars and clarity in the constellations than ever possible in reality.

  It must have taken years to paint.

  Maven walked to an archway that led into another room and clapped her hands twice, where a red-skinned girl with straight black hair answered the call. Maven whispered into her ear, and I heard scurrying coming from the other room.

  Maven returned and directed me to sit on a huge, white leather sofa; the leather buttery soft and seemed to conform perfectly to my backside. As soon as I sat down, a servant appeared with a bottle of Dom Perignon champagne and two tall fluted glasses. Another servant appeared and walked toward a grand piano that until that moment, I hadn’t even noticed. She started to play a beautiful classical masterpiece, and with perfect timing, another joined in on violin. Maven smiled, sat down next to me and took my hand.

  “Raka, dear Raka. How lucky I am to have you back! Tell me, how did you survive all this time?” Maven said, tilting her head at me, her pupils dilated widely and she touched her tongue to her upper lip for an instant. The look appeared both intimidating and intriguing.

  “I’ve survived. Done things I’m not proud of, but survived.”

  “Don’t be evasive. I want to know. How did you survive the fall?”

  “Airbags. The guard’s suit had auto-deploying airbags. I must have bounced a dozen times.”

  “That would have been a sight!”

  “I’m sure it was.” And a smell, I thought, remembering how my bowels reacted at impending death.

  “Well, I’m glad you survived. You look good!”

  “As do you. You’re doing well, it appears.”

  “Appearances don’t tell the entire story.”

  “I’m sure they don’t.”

  “Raka, is something wrong? What brought you here?”

  “I was looking for you,” I said, not sure what to say next.

  “You flatter a girl!” Maven said, her face flushing. “I’m glad you did. A toast! To old friends reacquainted.” We clanged glasses and took a drink. The music reached its climax, Maven closed her eyes for a brief moment, her lip quivering briefly before she turned back to me.

  “Maven, I know about the technology. I think the Empire may be on the way.”

  “The technology? What technology?”

  “Empire tech. It’s being leaked to Earth. I have proof. Tell me everything.”

  Maven took a deep breath, poured us both another glass of champagne. “After you abandoned us on the ship…”

  “I was sucked out of a pressurized cabin, into near vacuum. I didn’t abandon you.”

  “After you disappeared, I got the ship under control. I didn’t have power for anything more than a controlled crash landing. I had no idea what to expect on a barbarian world, so I naturally looked for an uninhabited area. We came in hot, but we survived the landing. I broke an arm and several ribs. Nicholai and Marco were so drugged up, they just got up after the landing, shaking their heads and giggling. Luckily the shuttle had a full E-Med load-out, so I was fixed up pretty quickly.

  “I wanted to lay low. At least at first, Nicholai and I a
greed on this. We found a place to hide the shuttle and luckily for us, it was equipped with active camouflage, so unless someone was right up close, they’d never see it. I wanted to stay unnoticed and search for you. Nicholai had different plans, though. I went along with him at first. We knew that we’d need local currency to survive. He suggested that we sell some of the drugs off of the shuttle, just enough to make do. I didn’t want to do it, but we faced starvation. So, I agreed with Nicholai. He was a master at it. He could walk into a town and in five minutes he’d know the cops, the users, and the dealers.

  “But something changed with Nicholai over time. The more he sold, the more power and money-hungry he became. One day he complained because he couldn’t get any information, other than from a newspaper or a radio, and he made the comment that we should bring these barbarians out of the stone-age. I didn’t take him seriously at first, but then he started to take circuits from the shuttle. He started bidding wars between companies and countries for the next advance. The money rolled in, and he built this place. This prison. This cage. Sure it’s a gilded cage, but it’s still a cage. I’m trapped here, Raka. Don’t you understand?”

  “Trapped here? You were out driving,” I said, trying to process all she had said.

  “The illusion of freedom is not freedom. If I hadn’t returned at a preset time, these servants you see here are sworn to report to Nicholai. If I’m reported like that, I probably have an hour to live. He’s like that. Planning, setting up contingencies, and always one step ahead. If I tried to go against him, he knew about it before I could even act. He acts like he’s stoned and doesn’t care, but he’s always listening, always plotting.”

  “Is Nicholai here?”

  “No. He left after…” Her face paled, her eyes looked sad. “After fifty-nine.”

  “What happened in fifty-nine? Oh, the quake. Did you have something to do with that?”

  “Yes. Not by choice, though. We were surprised to learn the shuttle leaked cesium. Not enough to be dangerous to us, but there was a geological survey going on. They brought a bunch of students up here to camp and take samples, measurements, readings; they covered the whole area. The cesium lead them directly to the shuttle. Nicholai knew that they would eventually find the shuttle and we’d be exposed, so he set his worst plan into action.”

  “What did he do?”

  “He used some of the tech from the shuttle and mapped out the natural geological fault-lines. He made me help him. I still feel so guilty, but I had no choice. We drilled a series of holes into the ground at specific points. He had precise locations and depths, and in each one of these, we placed a charge. He set up a trap. If someone got too close to us and the shuttle, it would set off the charges and cause an earthquake, which would create a natural dam, flooding the whole area, and taking any evidence with it.”

  “I see. Nicholai did all this? The Nicholai that was constantly stoned with Marco?”

  “That was his cover. He’s actually an agent for a group that wanted to bring the Empire down. I underestimated him and learned to regret it. He is cold, calculation, and conniving. His goal now is to weaponize the Earth and turn it into a pawn to use against the Empire. That’s why he’s advancing the technology.”

  “Nicholai. An agent to take the Empire down? I can’t believe it.”

  “That’s only because he’s that good at his job. I was shocked too. So the trap worked just as he had planned. Killed twenty-eight people, leaving empty families…”

  “And orphans.”

  Her eyes turned downward. “Yes. Orphans.”

  “I heard about the donation you made, and the scholarship. May I ask, why?”

  “I couldn’t stop Nicholai. I felt guilty, but I know that if I’d fought him or turned him in…”

  “He would have killed you.”

  “Yes, he would, but perhaps he wouldn’t have been able to murder all those people. It was cold-blooded murder, and he set it up. After it happened, I couldn’t stand to look at him again. I told him that he could kill me, I didn’t care, but I couldn’t be a part of his plans anymore. Marco disappeared after the quake, and I detested being in the same room with him. We came up with an agreement. He set me up here and sends me enough money to live on. I spent the first year’s worth on that donation. He gets updates on me regularly and lets me live in this cage, while he makes deals and makes people owe him favors. I have no doubt that if he wanted me dead, I’d not survive the day.”

  “So he left after the quake. Do you know where he went?”

  “I do.”

  “Where?”

  “I can only tell you if you promise me something.”

  “What? What do I need to promise?”

  “Promise me you’ll kill him.”

  My heart fluttered and a sick feeling crept up from my stomach. I let out an involuntary cough. “I’m not a killer.”

  “Your reaction tells me something different, Raka.”

  “Is it that obvious? I’m sure it is. There was an accident.”

  She leaned in toward me. “What happened?”

  “A man had pulled a gun on me. I talked him into relaxing and then when he trusted me, I took the gun from him. He said the gun wasn’t loaded, and he tried to show me. He squeezed my hand shut. The bullet went through his head.”

  I found myself stuttering and tears flowed freely.

  Maven put her arms around me and squeezed me tightly. “There, there. I know you’re not a killer. That sounds like a tragic accident.”

  “An accident that left a man dead.”

  “Was he a good man?”

  “I’m not qualified to answer that. He was unusual, but didn’t deserve to die.”

  “Raka, Nicholai does deserve to die. He’s brought an entire planet into danger. We could have lived out our days here in safety, but he wanted more. He has signed the death-warrant of all of us, and all the inhabitants of this world. If you kill him, perhaps we can make this right.”

  “How the hell can we make this right?”

  “I don’t know, Raka. Maybe if the technology advances stop?”

  “They have already skipped an entire generation. I estimate this planet has progressed at least eighty years in the time we’ve been here, maybe more. They are currently screaming their location in all directions of space with their television and radio signals. They are sending ships and satellites into orbit. When the Empire finds this place, they’ll either destroy or enslave it.”

  Maven’s eyes turned upward, her brow raised in a calculating manner. “But what makes you think the Empire is on its way?”

  “The man. The man I accidentally shot. He was convinced that the Empire had found us and were on the way. A retrieval team.”

  “Retrieval Team is Empire code for ‘destroy all traces and leave nothing but a pile of ash’.”

  “I know,” I said; the pile of ash references stung more than I expected. “I just don’t know what to do.”

  “I know what to do. You go and take care of Nicholai. Then you and I can escape. Just the two of us, we’ll find another barbarian world and start all over. Forget about this place.”

  “You could do that?” I said, wondering if I could. “Just leave them all to their fate?”

  “I wouldn’t like it, but if it meant survival, I could. You’ve heard of coyotes chewing their own leg off to escape a trap? The urge to survive is programmed into all of us. You think that you wouldn’t do it, but you would, Raka, you would. When the ships arrive and start the grid pattern bombing with the Empire’s best tact-nukes, and you see the flashes off in the distance, all in a perfect line, one flash after another along the horizon and just when you think they are done, the flashes start again, but the line has moved closer to you and you know the cycle will continue and will not stop until this planet is sterilized. At that moment, you will want to be on that shuttle with me, leaving this rock.”

  “The shuttle. Where is it? Is it spaceworthy?” I said, wondering about the cesium
leak.

  ‘Nicholai took it. I fixed the cesium leak easily enough; it was a simple O-ring adjustment. The trick was in finding a way to repair the damaged hull. I learned a few things about patching nano-carbon shuttle skin – basically you can’t. The only option I had was to build two sections out of the best materials available on this primitive planet, and that was titanium. I had a section perfectly machined to fit over the outside of the hole, with dozens of threaded rods built in, perfectly aligned with another piece made to fit the inside. The inner plate had holes built into it to meet the rods. Essentially, I built a sandwich patch out of titanium. I bought the best airplane sealant available and sealed up everything. It took two days to perfectly torque it all together because I was afraid I might crack the nano-carbon skin. But she’s spaceworthy. She’ll fly like a cow while in an atmosphere, but once in space, the repair should hardly be noticeable. Of course, that section of the ship won’t have much shielding. Titanium just doesn’t block cosmic rays like nano-carbon does.”

  “So, Nicholai took the shuttle and left you here. Why didn’t he just kill you and be done with it?”

  “Nicholai had this fantasy that someday I would come running to him. I think he kept me alive and under surveillance with the hope that someday I would fulfill his wishes.”

  Maven straightened her back and grimaced for a moment. “His fantasy is just that. It will never happen.”

  “Where is he?”

  “Jamaica. He’s got a plantation there. Officially he’s in the rum business. He’s got the shuttle stored in one of his distilling factories. He makes enough rum to explain the factory building, generators, and workers. I imagine some of his workers have no idea that anything is going on, other than making rum. But he has others that take the Empire technology and compare it to current tech. They find an incremental improvement and map all the players in the electronic business. Competition is beneficial to them, so if one of the companies is struggling, they appear with a minor advance that propels that company to the front of the market for a few years. He’s a master at only leaking a minor improvement and keeping everyone hungry for more. He’s made millions this way, if not billions.”