Goldbird
“Listen,” Risa—Communications Officer Risara Luden—said over his private comm channel. “If it goes to shit, promise me you’ll get out of there.”
“You know as well as I do that if it’s gone to shit, I won’t be able to,” Orion told her. “But, I promise I’ll do my best. I’d hate for you to have to replace me—it’s taken years to build up our catalog of inside jokes. Years!”
“Don’t remind me of the work I’ve put into you,” she replied, trying not to laugh. “Be safe.”
He tapped his comm button three times in response, ksh ksh ksh, their secret static signal. I am yours.
A guy with his skill set, if it could be called that, was not afforded the luxury of relationships, for a couple of reasons beyond his control. One being personal relationships between Starfleet personnel were strictly forbidden and punishable by dishonorable expulsion, at best. The second being, well, the reason he was on this likely ill-fated special mission to begin with.
His skill was highly classified. Not even Risa knew exactly what it was. For that, he was thankful. If word got out, the top brass was sure other galaxies would go to war to get their hands on him. And for all he complained about his circumstances, the ability to have a somewhat normal life in exchange for the occasional use of his skill was worlds more preferable to being chained up and forced to use his hands all day, every day, for the rest of his miserable life.
He pulled at the wrists of both gloves he always wore, an unbreakable habit that never failed to offer the minutest sense of security.
Negligence had cost him so much.
“All set, Commodore?” the pilot asked. Orion had to think hard to recall this pilot’s name: Jer Mackleroy. First time flying with him, but not the rest of the crew.
“Good to go, Captain,” he replied. Technically true, despite the nausea.
Aside from Jer, there was the co-pilot Toq, and two guards. Twins with excellent intuition that had allowed them to save more lives than the average fleet gunslinger. That didn’t make their names—Solar and Lunar—any less hilarious. But Orion knew better than to laugh about it, as did anyone who’d been in the fleet more than a few days.
Orion checked the bag in his vest pocket—still there. It was made of the same material as his gloves and should contain the asset that had thus far eluded the fleet and cost dozens of lives.
In theory.
If this didn’t go to plan...well, Orion was fine with that. Risa might be a little sad, but she’d get over it. Eventually. Probably.
“We’re clear,” Jer announced, bringing Orion back to reality. “Now sit back, relax, and we’ll get to the Aurium System in no time. Plus or minus ten hours and, oh, fifty-three clicks.”
Orion sighed. One of the worst things about being in the fleet was the travel. Someday, when he retired, if he was ever allowed to, he’d like to stay in one place for a whole month, just to know what that would feel like.
“I’m clocking out,” he informed the crew, and prepped his suit for sedation. Unlike the crew, Orion didn’t have to do anything yet. So he didn’t.
The asset, nicknamed “Goldbird” by some idiot brass who thought he was clever, did kind of look like a bird. If one didn’t know what a bird looked like. Still, it was an awful nickname for something that had wreaked so much havoc.
Orion didn’t understand what was so precious about this particular planet. Clearly, it had been deemed worth the trouble of removing the asset by those who made these kinds of decisions. Those who weighed lives and livelihoods against prosperity and profits. But they weren’t the ones who had to weave through the dozens of bodies, frozen solid as they’d tried to free eachother from the asset’s touch, after they’d realized what it was capable of.
It hadn’t gone well.
The sprawling scene before him very well could’ve been an artist’s masterpiece cast in shimmering gold, were it not for the fact that each statue had once been a living, breathing person not too long ago. Each person was connected to the person before them by a touch of some kind, spiraling out from the center, where the asset sat.
A giant white tent had been erected around the scene. A few guards patrolled the exterior perimeter, while the twins stationed themselves just inside the entrance.
The earth-like planet had been in the pre-colonization stage when this incident happened, and the brass were eager to resume their timeline. However, they couldn’t very well leave something on site that turned people to gold with a single touch.
It seemed to Orion that some people never learned—those on top would always undercut safety for savings, and too many of those on the ground doing the work would take matters into their own hands rather than wait for the right people to handle things. Like they should’ve done in this case.
How many times had it been drilled into his head—and everyone on the fleet’s? Don’t mess with alien shit.
It never ended well.
He would know.
Thankfully, only two people had been dumb enough to touch the asset directly, so Orion had some room to work in the center of the chaos. Orion lifted his faceshield so he could get a fresh breeze while he worked, not that there was much airflow in the tent. Still, a lot could go wrong, and feeling stifled wouldn’t help him.
Carefully, he peeled off one of his gloves.
The asset was about the size of a large bird—a gooz? Goose? Orion couldn’t quite remember the term he’d learned so long ago in primary school, where children were still taught about Earthen animals. A fuzzy image of a large white bird with the accompanying audio of a horrible honking sound played in his memory. If he squinted, he could almost see a long neck tucked under a mottled, golden wing. It was just his human eyes trying desperately to see something familiar. He knew that.
His bare hand hovered above the asset. It looked rather harmless, nestled in a natural bowl of dust, sitting on what might be called a boulder. How it got there, he had no idea. All he cared about at that moment was whether he was immune to its effect, or if he’d become the third person connected to it forever.
He reached out with a shaking finger and gently brought it down to the asset until his finger made contact. His stomach twisted—the sensation was agonizingly familiar. He let out the breath he hadn’t realized he held, then placed the rest of his hand on the asset.
Immune.
Orion removed his hand and took the special bag out of his vest pouch with his other, gloved hand. The bag, and his gloves, cost more to manufacture than the ship they’d arrived on, the material so precious it was under lock and key at all times. It was the only material immune to him. Someday, he’d been promised by the Admiral, he’d have an entire suit made of the stuff.
In theory, he should be able to remove the asset, place it in the bag, and bring the bag on board. But first, he had to free it.
Times like this require intense concentration. A wayward touch could start a cascade of misery—only his bare hands could touch the artifact and its victims, and nothing else.
Carefully, he pried each finger of the first victim’s hand off the asset until her hand was at least a millimeter or two above it. Orion was sweating by this point. He wiped his brow with the back of his hand, careful not to touch his suit. The second victim’s fingers were larger, so it took longer for Orion to pry him off.
Finally, the asset was free of their touch. Orion glanced at the time on his forearm display—he had about fifteen clicks before they needed to head back to the ship. Looking over his shoulder, he could see the twins stationed about thirty paces away, at his back.
Orion didn’t know if the twins knew about him. It was better to assume nobody did.
After several deep breaths, Orion opened the bag and carefully slid it over the asset, between the frozen hands of the first two people who had tried, and failed, to remove it.
Were they just trying to save time by handling it themselves? Or had they thought they could make a quick buck on the black market? It certainly looked like something expensive and exotic that some bigwig collector would pay a lifeshare of money for. Somewhere between gold and mercury, the shimmering artifact seemed to dim as Orion pulled the bag over it.
With the asset tucked away, Orion put his gloves back on, tugging them at the wrist to make sure they were secure, and shut his faceshield. He took a deep breath and lifted the asset.
It was heavy—close to 50 kilos, by his estimate. He’d just made it to the twins when he heard cracking behind him. He stopped and turned, as did the twins, just in time to see every single frozen body crack into thousands of shiny pieces and fall to the dusty ground.
Orion looked down at the bag cradled in his arms, nausea blossoming. He should drop the damned thing. He should leave it here and declare the mission a complete failure. Maybe then the brass would abandon whatever project they had planned for the Aurium System.
Bull shit.
Breathing hard to get himself under control, Orion turned to the twins and trudged past them, through the doorway of the tent, and toward the ship. A stunt like that wouldn’t do any good. He knew that.
A couple of the perimeter guards waved them down.
“Afternoon, Ensign, Officer,” Orion said by way of greeting.
“Commodore,” they replied, at attention.
Orion gave them his abbreviated report, intentionally leaving certain things out, then said, “Please stand by for further instructions.”
“Yes, sir,” they replied, saluting.
Orion nodded, and the twins returned the salute before the three of them continued to the ship. The site would probably be demolished and buried, but Orion shouldn’t be the one to tell them that. With all the pieces of bodies...Orion shook his head to clear it, glad he wasn’t in charge of cleaning up that mess, but disgusted and saddened all the same.
With a grunt, Orion placed the asset in a special container and locked it. Without access to organic material, as long as it stayed inside the bag and inside the container, it shouldn’t be able to turn anyone else into metal.
In theory.
Orion salivated with nausea, so he breathed deeply to prevent himself from puking in front of the crew. He just wanted to forget. He needed to forget.
He didn’t even wait for the pilots to check before sedating himself for the trip home.
