(Photo by Space X)

Sleep was a terrible way to clear one’s mind. Chester hadn’t slept well the last few days and then not at all the night before. Why, upon waking up when the rapid transport reached the space port, did Chester’s mind clear enough for him to think properly about what he’d just done?

“What have I done?” he muttered, shaking his head as he rested it in his hands. “I still had a full day to think, to plan. Why did I…”

It didn’t matter anymore. Regardless of what the other could have‘s or should have‘s might have been, he couldn’t go back and try any of them.

“Idiot,” Chester said to himself. “Of all the times to be impulsive.”

Outside of the rapid transit Chester could see the others he’d summoned to meet him at the space port. They were milling about, chatting with one another and generally acting naturally. It was a good thing he’d found out about the implants from Smythe and had them all removed. Otherwise, this trip would undoubtedly end prematurely. Although, it already was in a significant amount of danger.

“Come on,” Chester waved for H’lay and the three security drones to follow.

He knew it wasn’t necessary but it made him feel better, having someone else to interact with even though he knew they were all his puppets.

As Chester and his entourage approached the port he could tell this wasn’t going to be easy. There was a queue already formed up outside the main entrance. People were crowding in and a few had begun shouting, demanding they be allowed to leave.

“I’m sorry but the port is locked down until further notice!” the port master’s voice shouted, amplified over the loud speakers. “Only those with official designation, and official permission, may leave.”

Security personnel began to move out among the crowd, scanning and sorting out everyone who did and who didn’t meet those requirements. H’lay still had her official designation, it was what Chester had been counting on to get them through the check point, but no official permission to leave. With a thought, he ordered the Solar King to make just such an order for H’lay and those with her. It was a risk since Chester had no way of knowing whether the Solar King’s word would be accepted anymore. He’d made his speech, but Chester hadn’t actually transferred any authority yet. Still, it would look suspicious to anyone who knew what was going on to have the Solar King giving out such an order at this time.

There were hardly any people being allowed through the checkpoint and into the space port. A few people tried to force their way in but they were shot at once. Security wasn’t taking any chances here. That made everyone else reconsider their position and most people left after that. It made Chester reconsider as well. Being scanned now would reveal the Solar King’s order for their departure, and if it was known that the Solar King was compromised, well, all it would take would be for them to check when the Solar King had issued his permission. The timing alone would be evidence enough to kill them all then and there.

“What do we do?” Chester put the question to his drones. “We need to get off world.”

The buzz over the neural up link was unpleasant as the minds that could still think all focused on the problem at once.

“We have our equipment,” the saboteurs said as one in Chester’s mind. “Explosives, weapons, some body armor. We could fight our way in. Steal a ship.”

“We’d be shot out of the sky before we could even reach orbit,” Chester replied.

“I was having an affair with an advisor to the Solar King,” one of the saboteurs said. “I could ask him for help.”

“Do it,” Chester said and the woman stepped back from their group while she contacted him. “Anyone else have any ideas, in case the advisor doesn’t work out?”

While the others continued to think, Chester probed H’lay’s mind, searching for anything she had built that could be used here. She knew about some of the defenses around the space port, specifically with regards to their surveillance systems. Clouds of micro sensors could detect any intruder, though they could be blown around in high winds. Since the weather was controlled here that wasn’t an issue that Chester could exploit. There were pressure sensors in the ground, full spectrum visual scanners, not to mention the offensive deterrents like the auto turrets, gas vents, and security forces.

“I guess I shouldn’t be surprised the port has such tight security,” Chester muttered.

The woman with the affair returned to the group. Chester hadn’t been focusing on her so he didn’t yet know if she’d been successful or not.

“I can get a seat for myself, but only to the moon. He wants me close by.”

That wouldn’t work at all. This whole time, Chester had forgotten to also keep an eye on the scanning team who were making their way through the crowd. It wasn’t until he felt the familiar tingling sensation that he realized his mistake. He should have moved away from the checkpoint rather than stay where they were.

“You lot,” the port master called out. “Up here!”

A group of port security were already moving towards them. Chester’s three security drones wouldn’t be enough if it came to a fight. The saboteurs had some weapons but those were all stored away at the moment and not readily at hand.

“Okay,” Chester made H’lay say. If he really concentrated he could take more direct control over her. It meant that he had a hard time walking straight or noticing things right around himself but it was H’lay that the port master was looking at. H’lay was the only one among them with an official designation now.

Theirs was not a small group, which Chester regretted now as well. It made them stand out. Even if they made it through, they would be easily remembered as opposed to the ones and twos that were occasionally being let through.

“What’s nanotech need to get off world for?” the port master asked, already suspicious and glaring at H’lay. “And with so many friends.”

“Solar King’s command,” Chester managed to make H’lay sound mostly like herself. “I met with him this morning, and he ordered me here. That’s all I can say on the matter.”

“Right, the Solar King has given you his permission,” the port master nodded, though not at all convinced. “But we all saw and heard his announcement a few hours ago.”

“I was already en route here when he made it,” H’lay said.

“Yeah, I guess you would have to have been, coming all the way from the capitol.”

Chester couldn’t help but notice how everyone else was being cleared away from the checkpoint, only to be replaced by more security forces.

“Where’re you going?” the port master asked. “I don’t see any listed destination.”

“Correct,” H’lay said.

Chester knew it wasn’t uncommon for the Solar King to send people off world without an official destination submitted, but whether that would help or hurt his chances here and now he couldn’t tell.

“Well, the Solar King’s sons want you and your team to return to the capitol,” the port master said. “They have some questions for you.”

“Very well,” H’lay said and they all turned and began making their way back towards the rapid transit.

It was only when they were at the platform, waiting for the rapid transit to open for boarding that Chester remembered to breathe again. He was sweating again and struggling to keep himself from shaking. It was then that he noticed the distant pinging in his mind that let him know someone was trying to speak to the Solar King.

Chester shifted his focus, letting H’lay go back to her muted state so he could concentrate on the Solar King instead. At once, the throne room came into his mind. The Solar King was still standing in the middle of the room, where Chester had left him.

“Father,” someone was saying. “Please hear me. Come back to me.”

Chester made the Solar King turn his head and look down. There, kneeling, was the Solar King’s oldest son. What was his name? Chester realized he’d never heard anyone ever call any of the royal family by their name. It was always just the Solar King and the Solar Princes, Dawnstar, Daystar, Nightstar and Newstar.

“Dawnstar,” the Solar King said. “What troubles you?”

Chester wasn’t sure if this was how he should speak but he didn’t have the luxury of time right now to sift through the Solar King’s memories for examples to follow.

“You aren’t yourself,” Dawnstar said. “That announcement you made was,” his face clouded over with doubt, “it wasn’t you.”

There was no point in denying it, was there? That would only cement Dawnstar’s suspicions.

“You are correct,” the Solar King’s deep voice reverberated through the throne room. “It was not I who made that announcement. It was an impostor. Someone from the fringe, I suspect. A rogue operative trying to sew distrust among us.”

Dawnstar eyed the Solar King, weighing his words. There was a strange expression on his face that Chester hadn’t seen before.

“That was my fear,” Dawnstar said at last.

He got up, no longer kneeling, and faced the Solar King, stoic and tense.

“I remember the day you told me who and what I was,” Dawnstar said. “That I would one day take your place and rule over the solar system. I never believed that you could be defeated or killed, or…well, anything.”

Chester frowned. He began searching through the Solar King’s memories for whatever Dawnstar was talking about but he found those memories walled off by some neural blocker.

“To whomever I am speaking to now,” Dawnstar’s tone was immediately different. It was defiant, angry, and cold. “I will hunt you down and make you suffer for whatever it is that you have done to my father.”

“Dawnstar I –

Dawnstar slapped the hand that Chester was extending forwards.

“The real Solar King never called me that in private. Never. That is how I know he’s gone. That is how I know what you have done.”

What was there to say? What could he do? Kill the Dawnstar? That didn’t seem like a good idea, least of all because he doubted very much that he’d be able to make the Solar King fight with any sort of proficiency.

“Tell me now and I may give you a quick death, who are you, and why did you do it?” Dawnstar gripped the Solar King by the edges of his chest plate and held him close, almost touching face to face.

“It was an accident,” Chester didn’t mean to answer him but it slipped out all the same. “He would have killed me, and I…I didn’t know what else to do.”

“LIAR!” Dawnstar shouted and he shoved the Solar King over onto his back.

Chester tried to get back up but something was wrong. The Solar King wasn’t moving at his commands.

“You expect me to believe that in the midst of the fringe seeking their own pitiful independence, that you happen to have accidentally subverted control of my father?”

“It happened even before you told him about Newstar’s death,” Chester admitted.

Dawnstar paused, a look of fury and confusion flashed across his face.

“How could you know about that?” Dawnstar demanded, bending down and looking the Solar King in the face. “No one but my brothers and I were in the room when we told him about that. He would have guarded that memory from you.”

“I was already in control of him,” Chester said.

Dawnstar looked into his face for a long while though Chester wasn’t sure how much he could see of Chester’s expression. The Solar King, he was sure, was expressionless.

“Something else has happened since then,” Dawnstar said quietly, more to himself than to Chester. “I did notice something was off then, since you didn’t use any of our names, but I thought it was from the shock of hearing our report. I saw you in your councils, though, and you were perfectly yourself then. What’s happened?”

“I want peace,” Chester said. It was even becoming difficult to make the Solar King speak now and the neural connection was beginning to fade. “I wanted peace. The Solar King didn’t. He…resisted.”

“I bet he did,” Dawnstar grinned wickedly. “And that damaged your hold over him? Was that farce of an announcement the last straw for him, then? Was that why he sounded so patently unreal?”

“Yes,” Chester said, not wanting to get into the nuance of the truth.

“Well, father, if you’re still in there, take comfort in knowing that you will be avenged.”

“Please,” Chester fought to make the Solar King speak. “Peace…peace for the solar system. No war.”

Dawnstar laughed darkly but whatever he said was lost to Chester as the connection finally broke. In those last moments he could sense the Solar King’s armor was shutting down and as it went, so too did the Solar King’s life support. He was dead now and with him went Chester’s best chance of getting off world.

“Get to the moon,” Chester told the one drone. “Find me a way off world if you can.”

The woman turned and left to do just that.

“The rest of you, get back to your jobs. Hopefully your absences won’t be too easily noticed. Deny any knowledge of this if you’re questioned about it. You were just worried about the Solar King and panicked but got over it.”

That left only Chester and H’lay. H’lay, who’d been scanned and would have a record of being sent by the Solar King to get off world.

“Not just H’lay,” Chester said. “They scanned us all. They’ll know exactly who we all are.”

He cursed, calling back all of his drones except for the one he’d sent to the moon. With luck, her initial inclusion in this group will be seen as an error. The rest of them couldn’t just go back to their lives, though. It was too obvious what was going on, and Chester, who would show up on any scan as just a nameless citizen, would obviously be the one Dawnstar and the others would be searching for.

“I’m an idiot.”

That was when the second wave of the saboteur’s plans, the plans he’d told them to keep following, began to unfurl. With everything else going on, Chester had completely forgotten about those plans. Bright flashes and plumes of debris erupted on multiple points along the horizon. The rapid transit lines were being destroyed.

“You attacked the power supply first,” Chester muttered, “and now you’re hitting our transportation.”

A moment too late, Chester realized the explosions were getting closer, and that he was standing near the rapid transit station. The rapid transit station at the space port.

He was about to ask the saboteurs if they were in any danger when everything around him began to explode. People were shouting and screaming and suddenly Chester was back in his childhood, dodging falling rubble as the orbital bombardment leveled his home.

“Run!” a voice shouted and it was a moment before he realized it was his own voice that had spoken. It was deeper than it should have been. He was, after all, only nine years old.

The group of people he’d been standing with all moved as one, helping to carry him as they fled towards the only escape in sight; the space port. They weren’t the only ones with that idea but the port security wasn’t letting anyone in. They fired indiscriminately into the crowds at first, but then their own emplacements began to fall as the ground beneath them exploded and fell away.

“How?” Chester gasped through the dust.

“Bombs in the sewers,” was the reply but he wasn’t sure who had said it.

Either way, people in the crowd surrounding Chester began to return fire on the port security. They moved forward, step by step, as more of the port and nearby transit system exploded. The bombs seemed to have been timed to herd the fleeing people into subsequent explosions. It was horrifyingly effective. Fortunately for Chester, the people with him seemed to know exactly where they would be safest as they made their way into the port.

“We have to get away,” Chester sobbed “We have to get someplace safe.”

“There,” someone said and pointed to a ship.

It looked old but not disused. It was also small, probably only three to five hundred cubic feet of livable space inside. Given the alternatives, though, Chester was willing to take it. The next part was a blur as they charged across the open ground. What remained of the port security was split on holding down the main entry and fighting those who had made it inside. A few of the people around Chester went down to the gun fire but most of them made it to the ship.

Chester was hyperventilating by this point, he couldn’t help it, and his heart was racing so fast it made his head and chest hurt.

“I can’t,” he gasped. “I can’t…”

A steadying hand rested on his chest as he was buckled into his seat.

He was going to be sick. The world was coming apart all around him and the explosions were all so close now that they were all that he could hear. He was going to die.

I don’t want to die, he thought, squinting his eyes shut tight even as the explosions shook him violently.

“I don’t want to die!”

He was falling, and yet he felt so heavy. He couldn’t move. Something was holding him down. Was he already buried in rubble? Please, anything but that. He remembered the cries of pain and desperation from those who were trapped in rubble. There was nothing anyone could do for them unless they were right at the surface. Any deeper and it was pointless to try and dig them out. That didn’t stop people of course. Friends and loved ones all died together whenever they tried to dig someone out and ended up bringing the whole thing down on top of themselves.

Chester couldn’t breathe. His chest was being crushed and this last explosion just kept going on and on as if it would never end. Every person, every body has its breaking point and Chester finally reached his and he blacked out. In the split second before he lost consciousness, he hoped with all his might that he wouldn’t wake again.

Let this be it, he thought. Let this be the end of the nightmare.