The Stars are Red Tonight: The Paradisi Chronicles Read online

  Saya smiled a little bit when Andy turned around and jumped at the sight of the massive man. But they shook hands, and Andy led him into his private office. Saya watched as the stranger stood at the office window that overlooked the call center, scanning the room.

  I wonder if he is a new boss. Maybe Andy will get fired! She liked that idea. And so she returned to her work grinning.

  At four in the afternoon, Trevor’s ten-hour shift was finally over, and he still hadn’t found Bobby, so he still didn’t know what was on the drive. WelCo hadn’t kept them outside very long. It seemed like there was a bomb threat or a biological weapons’ scare going on somewhere all the time now, so the company sent everyone back inside as soon as possible rather than lose any more money. There were thousands of people out there in the world, just waiting to sign up for one of WelCo’s services. Couldn’t let them wait…maybe lose a sale! Ugh.

  The rest of the day was fairly uneventful. Around noon there had been a small tremor. But mostly it just gave people an excuse to quit working and stand around and talk about how their coffee cups “jumped right off the desk!” Whatever. Small tremors were pretty common even as far north as the greater Seattle-Portland area. All the geologists insisted that the Pacific Northwest was due for a big quake with accompanying tsunami––overdue, in fact. It was the same story they had been spouting for years, if not decades.

  But who cared about a future disaster when there were so many actual disasters going on all over?

  After his shift, Trevor dragged himself to the transit stop, having already punched in the request on his mobile for a shared-passenger car to take him up to Ballard. He usually took one of the cheap but ancient trolleys, but this afternoon he was anxious to get home quickly to look at the drive. Only the wealthiest company executives made enough money to afford a single-person vehicle that would take you door to door. What a sweet life they must have. No sitting crammed with another fifty people on a trolley or ride sharing in a car with whoever was going your way. No waiting at a transit stop or walking three blocks once you got to your destination. His pop used to say that when his grandpa was young, everyone had their own cars, even the poorest people. You might not have a job or a home, but you had your car … might even live in it. Hard to imagine.

  It looked like it had rained sometime in the afternoon … what else was new? By the time the car he’d requested showed up, there were three more riders waiting. Trevor flashed his mobile at the computer screen that was mounted on the side of the car before he climbed in. This would tell the rideshare company he was on board, deduct from his bank the right amount for the ride, and tell the car when to stop to let him off.

  He moved over to the seat by the window, buckled in, and slipped his wireless headphones over his ears, slouching way down and leaning against the window. That way he could close his eyes and drift off, without bumping up against his neighbor every time the car took a turn or stopped. The trip home was almost an hour to Ballard, northwest of downtown, and he usually slept through what he could. But today he was too anxious to sleep. There was too much on his mind. He touched the plastic rectangle still resting in his pocket and then tapped the on switch of his mobile, scrolling through the menu.

  “The wildfires that have been burning now for fourteen months straight continue to ravage the western coast of SoCal. Drones have been flying around the clock, bringing in water from all over, trying to put out this fire before it destroys another of the solar farms. The surrounding water reserves are being depleted at a rate the SoCal Water Administrator calls …”

  He changed the channel.

  “… another bombing in Venezuela took place during a meeting to discuss peace between the rebels and the government forces … it is estimated that …”

  “Beijing is doing everything it can to help those families displaced by …”

  Trevor hastily touched the icon for a music channel. He hated the news. All it ever did was tell him all the different ways he could die. Like he or anyone else needed that information. Not a single person he knew had escaped the loss of someone they loved to a disaster. A chemical spill had killed both his parents six years ago. His little sister moved to Boston to find work only to be killed by the latest super storm that had ravaged the eastern coastline.

  No wonder Trevor and his co-workers accepted a little tremor every now and again without any fuss.

  He let the rocking of the car and the music in his ears take him away from his day, from his worries about Bobby, from everything.

  Trevor must have drifted off because he almost missed his stop. He didn’t remember falling asleep, but suddenly he looked up and the car was pulling up to his street. He took off his headphones, exited, and started towards his apartment. Since it looked like it was about to rain again and he didn’t want to get soaked, he jogged the whole three blocks, only to step in a huge puddle that had formed just outside the front door to his apartment building. Cursing, he squished the rest of the way up the stairs to his apartment on the second floor.

  Trevor was relieved to find that his roommate, Matt, wasn’t home yet. Matt had taken to getting high pretty much twenty-four-seven ever since he lost most of his left hand in a work accident. His WelCo insurance only covered a cheap plastic replacement, without any functionality, and his company cut his hours without firing him so he couldn’t collect workers comp. But at least he still had his work papers and his citizenship ID, so he wouldn’t be kicked out of the city to fend for himself with the rest of the refugees caught in the death spiral of no work, no citizenship ID, which meant no work.

  However, the combination of few hours of work, even less money, and a never-ending prescription for pain pills had turned Matt into a different person. Trevor tried not to be there when he was at home anymore.

  After slipping off his wet shoes, Trevor sat down at his 3D monitor. His computer system was a much better model than they gave him at work, and he upgraded it every time he got a little ahead financially, so it should be able to handle anything Bobby had downloaded. When he plugged in the flash drive, a directory with a list of folders popped up. How weird. Ten of the folders had names starting with “SS” that reminded him of the way NASA named their spaceships, back when they could afford spaceships. SS Flying Cloud, SS Queen of Nations, SS Great Republic, SS Northern Light, SS Serica, SS Syren SS Young America, SS Nightingale, SS Surprise, SS Lightning.

  But he didn’t recognize any of the ship names, if that was what they were, although he, like everybody on Earth, knew that there was some privately funded Foundation, called Solar Horizons, that was building ten space ships to go and colonize Mars. He guessed they were scheduled to launch soon since stories about the new colony were all over the nightly news. Solar Horizons was also responsible for building the three space elevators and the big Nautilus Space station. Waste of money as far as Trevor could see, although it would be wicked to get a tech job working on one of the Foundation projects. Would beat the job at WelCo, that’s for sure.

  But what did WelCo have to do with the Mars Mission? Curious, he opened the SS Great Republic folder and saw that it contained several files. One file consisted of what looked like 3D plans for a ship—which meant he’d guessed right that they were for the space ships going to Mars. But the ship seemed huge, and the bulk of the space was labeled Cryo Sector. He assumed that referred to some sort of cryogenic system. But he didn’t even know that freezing people for any length of time was really possible. And why would they need to put people to sleep to go to Mars, anyway?

  Another file seemed to be listing supplies for the trip, and the third file had a list of people––each name with an odd number next to it that contained too many digits for the usual citizenship IDs. What did this mean? He had heard that the ten ships being built for the Mars Mission were going to take only a couple of hundred or so people to start, until the colony got up and going. Yet there were thousands of names staring back at him in just this one file. Maybe the explanation was the fold
er labeled Paradisi Project. But when he clicked on this folder and began to open up the documents, he discovered they were encrypted. Even if he could crack the code, it would probably take hours to do so. What can WelCo be trying to hide? He was fascinated but wondered why Bobby seemed so freaked out by what he’d found. Had he been able to hack into the decrypted files?

  Trevor spent an hour playing with the encryption code, trying to crack it. He was just feeling like he was making some headway when he heard his roommate’s voice. Damn! Ejecting the flash drive, he grabbed his jacket, put on his shoes, which unfortunately were still soaked, and left the apartment, passing Matt in the hall.

  He had two buddies with him and a girl under his arm. They all were leaning on each other and glassy-eyed. Trevor hastily worked his way past them. They barely noticed he was there. Matt may have mumbled hello, but he could have been saying anything as it sounded like he had marbles in his mouth. His eyes drooped low and hung there. Trevor was glad to get around them and back out to the street.

  As he walked the three blocks to the transit stop, he thought about where he could go. The apartment was too crowded, and Bobby’s place…he still didn’t want to go there yet. Not until he’d worked on the files more. He kept seeing his co-worker’s eyes looking back at him. Eyes that were filled with such terror––such paranoia. Whatever Bobby had found was important, and Trevor wanted to figure out the encryption. But he wasn’t eager to see that look in Bobby’s eyes any time soon. He wanted to see Saya’s eyes.

  He knew she had a second job at a little computer repair shop in the University district. She had told him about it one day when they hung out during break time together, but he never had a good reason to go there, until now. He could ask to borrow one of the more powerful machines in the shop, with more memory and computing speed. Ask her help in cracking the encryption. Trevor smiled as he walked to the stop, fingering the drive in his pocket that gave him the perfect excuse to go see Saya. He pulled out his mobile and called up a car, punching in the repair shop address. He couldn’t wait.

  Chapter Two

  “I want that Mac80 cleaned up tonight, Saya. I want it done by the morning so we can get it out of here.”

  Frank, Saya’s boss, was talking to her, but she barely noticed. Her eyes were glued to the computer screen in front of her, her hands moving effortlessly across the keyboard with lighting speed. She paused for a moment to push an errant brown curl out of her eyes and replied, “Yeah, sure, Frank.”

  “What are you working on now?” Frank prodded her some more. But her hands were moving again. She heard Frank sigh as he walked away. He knew better than try to get her attention while she was working on code. Everything else for her simply disappeared, and she was lost in the zone.

  Frank went into the back room. As the curtain closed behind him, the only noise was the tip tapping of her keyboard. This was her bliss. She hated her job at WelCo. She needed it to afford her nice little studio apartment, but debugging and coding were her passions. She would get lost for days trying to fix the bugs in a particularly difficult piece of software. After the day she’d just had at WelCo, she needed the distraction. So she’d sat down with relief when she got to the shop and dived head first into a virus that had taken over one of the older Mac76s. She’d barely even noticed Frank when he came in and said hello.

  She was still in this state when someone walked into the store and cleared his throat. She jumped and let out a squeal, then felt her cheeks go hot when she turned around and saw it was Trevor from work.

  “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to startle you,” he apologized immediately.

  “That’s ok. I was just focused on this problem. Why are you here?”

  He stood in front of her, his short auburn hair going every direction at once, the faint line of beard and mustache against his creamy brown skin, and his strange emerald eyes staring out from under dark brows. She caught her breath. Those eyes, for once, stared directly into her own, and they didn’t waver. The effect was even more startling than the scare he had just given her. But in a heartbeat the moment was gone, and he was looking all around at nothing and everything.

  He said, “I brought you the drive. The one that Bobby gave me.” He held out the small, dark grey plastic case he’d showed her at work.

  In an effort to maintain her dignity, she shrugged and casually said, “I guess I could take a look. Maybe tomorrow I will get around to it.” She pushed a curl of hair out of her eyes and tucked it behind her ear. It immediately popped forward again.

  “I think you should look at it now. Half of the folders seem like they contain documents about that big mission to colonize Mars.”

  “Why would Bobby ask you to look at that?”

  “I don’t know. But don’t you think it’s weird that he found this stuff on the WelCo server? And, even stranger, instead of small ships, it looks like they are sending ten huge ships with what looks like cryogenic chambers. Why would they need that for a trip to Mars?”

  “So, who cares? It is probably the details for some other space trip in the way distant future. Ya know those big tech CEO’s think long term, and they don’t announce all their plans to the public.”

  “That’s what I thought at first, but there are launch dates, set for less than a month away. Isn’t that when the Mars Mission is supposed to blast off?”

  “Hmm, that is a little odd. Maybe you were looking at earlier plans that were scrapped,” Saya suggested.

  “Maybe, but that’s not all. Half the data on this drive is encrypted. And done well. I spent an entire hour trying to crack it, with no luck. And I don’t mean to brag, but I am a decent hacker.”

  Saya didn’t know what to say. She’d spent the last few years trying to ignore the outside world, particularly the world of big corporations, with their secrets and dirty politics. And here stood Trevor, the twitchy guy from WelCo, trying to pull her back into that world.

  “See? That’s interesting, right?” Trevor beamed at her.

  “That doesn’t mean anything.” She tried not to show her growing interest, shaking her head. “Lots of companies use encryption to protect their data.”

  “Lots of companies use passwords and firewalls. This is on a whole other level. Like nothing I’ve ever seen at WelCo. I’m telling you, whatever is on this drive, someone went to a lot of trouble to make sure people wouldn’t see it.”

  She did love a puzzle, and she might not like Trevor, but she’d heard about his code-cracking ability. And if this had stumped him––well, it was definitely worth a look.

  “All right, let me see it.” Saya sighed in pretended defeat. She held out her hand and Trevor placed the drive in it. She noticed his hands shaking ever so slightly. What a weirdo.

  Saya turned around and pulled out her personal laptop and set it on the desk. Then she plugged in the drive and pulled up its contents onto her laptop screen. At first the directory didn’t look like anything out of the ordinary. When she opened the first folder, she saw something that looked like a ship’s manifest. She’d seen one on a naval client’s machine once—the manifest for an ocean-going ship, but this one definitely seemed to be for a space voyage. Although it never mentioned a destination, she could see why Trevor thought it was for a much longer trip than the trip to Mars.

  The more she looked, the more she found there were all sorts of things that didn’t fit. One file listed supplies that were enough to last over two years. Another listed the number of decks and crew for each deck, and it was way more than the fifteen-person crews that had been reported in the news vids about the Mars Mission. And there had certainly been no mention of a Cryo Sector in the ships going to Mars.

  Trevor echoed that thought as he pointed over her shoulder at the screen, saying, “See, right here. Why would they have a section for cryogenics? Even if putting people to sleep for space travel is really possible, why so many? Maybe that’s the WelCo connection. Maybe they perfected the technology and sold it to whoever is funding thi
s mission.”

  Saya just said, “I don’t know.” But her curiosity was growing. “Are there any names anywhere in the files, something to link the ships to a specific company or a project leader or something?”

  “Oh yes, I forgot to tell you about the names.” Trevor pulled up a chair and sat down, leaning in front of her and placing his hands directly on the keyboard.

  She moved back in astonishment. Who just takes over someone else’s computer like that? The nerve! But before she could protest, he had clicked on a folder called SS Great Republic, opened a file with a list of names, and sat back in his chair.

  She turned to look at him, expecting some explanation of his behavior, but he wasn’t looking at her. His green eyes weren’t darting around, either. They were trained right on the screen with a kind of glow that Saya found intriguing. She decided to swallow her protests, and she turned her attention back to the screen and whatever had made his eyes shine like that. What she saw was a very long list of names. Many more names than could be explained as a list of the crew and colonists who were supposed to be going to Mars.

  “Did you recognize any of them?” she asked as she started to scroll down the screen.

  “Not really,” Trevor said. “Although further down the list I think I saw one name of a woman who was in the news just recently … with the same last name as a lot of the others on the list … like an entire family tree is on here.”

  “What’s the name you recognized?”

  “Let me see.” Once again, Trevor reached across her like they occupied the same space all the time. “I remember she was in the news for funding some research for a new superfood that could be grown in space and could be maintained in almost any climate,” Trevor said as he skimmed the list.

  Saya opened her mouth to say something about his utter lack of computer etiquette, but the words caught in her throat as he stopped on a name.