The Buzzard Star

There were a million rules when it came to jetpacks, but the first one was very simple: Never fly into a thunderstorm. In his younger days, Orin had been good at following the rules, but now, as he soared into the dark clouds, he knew there was no turning back.

The jetpack was as large as his back and shaped like a silver bullet with several buttons and knobs attached to a control panel on its left side. It carried him over the wet threshold into the rain and he tasted electricity in the air. Somewhere above him, the ozone crackled, and before he really knew what he was doing, Orin launched into a barrel roll. Blue-white fire struck an instant later. Back when the TVs used to work, weathermen would say that lightning strikes were hotter than the surface of the sun, but Orin had never believed them until now. Thunder rocked his ears and he hadn’t closed his eyes in time, so now he was flying blind through the rain, trying to blink away the afterimage burned into his vision. He made the mistake of looking back-a person was never supposed to look back when they were running or flying away-and his heart sank.

Three red lights had followed him into the storm and were gaining fast. They were spread out, and undeterred by the rain or wind. Unconcerned with what was probably a build-up of friction for more lightning. Orin called them Buzzdrones, and they were coming for him. He had flown too close to their master and now they were on him, their lasers primed and targeting. He needed a new plan and so he dropped into a dive.

It felt like he was in a race with the rain drops. Above him were the murderous drones, a savage summer storm, and the great red star that ruled the world now. Below him, New York City. Decrepit, abandoned, and the perfect maze to lose the drones.

His jetpack was fast, and by the time the first laser bolt sliced past him, Orin had already reached the first skyscrapers. He flew through an empty Times Square, one where the only flashing lights came from the drones trying to kill him and the lightning from above, which was only getting stronger. The drones wouldn’t get tired, he knew that much and apparently they wouldn’t get lost either. He looked up at the sky, searching for the BuzzStar’s red light.

That wasn’t the satellite’s true name, but it might as well have been. The rogue AI had killed all the people who knew it’s original name, along with most of the world’s people in general. And now it hovered in Earth’s atmosphere, the bright red light attached to its underside the only star that Orin cared to look at every night. It had overthrown all the governments, burned down the Amazon forest, and killed Cassandra, the woman who had designed this jetpack.

Now it ruled over this corpse of a world, like an almighty buzzard, and so Orin called it the BuzzStar.

A laser clipped his arm and tore him out of his thoughts. He careened into a window, and bounced off a couple cubicles before coming to a stop in the middle of a dark office building. His shoulder screamed with pain, but Orin bit his lip and kept quiet. He scrambled into one of the cubicles as a Buzzdrone slowly followed him inside. It was a small cylindrical thing, just like its two counterparts, no longer than a motorcycle, no wider than a fire hydrant. It dripped loudly as it floated through the corporate world’s graveyard.

Orin slid the jetpack off his back with some difficulty, tore at the black windbreaker he wore and examined his wound. It oozed and throbbed but it wouldn’t kill him. He was about to put the jetpack back on when he noticed Cassandra’s locket had been dislodged from his shirt.

It was a gold, heart-shaped locket that Cassandra used to wear in the before times. Along with the jetpack, it was the only thing Orin had left of her. But it was no ordinary locket. He pressed a button on the side of the jetpack which activated boomerang mode, and he used his good arm to pick up a discarded but sturdy computer tower.

The jetpack whizzed out on its own, instantly drawing the fire from the Buzzdrone. But it was too fast for the laser bolts and it burst through a window on the other side of the office. The drone hovered in place for a moment, evidently confused. It turned around- right into the tower Orin swung into its chassis. The drone fell to the floor as he wailed on it, swinging again and again until it was scrap metal.

Another drone wandered in through a broken window and started shooting. Orin dove back to the floor and groaned as pain shot through his wound. Luckily, the jetpack had looped back around. It torpedoed through the second drone in a shower of sparks, before coming to a stop in the air in front of him. The heart-shaped locket served as a homing beacon for the jetpack whenever boomerang mode was activated. He slid the silver device on his back again and soared back into the storm. There was only one drone left now.

Orin scanned the rain for his opponent, and after a couple seconds he saw it down the street. They were both hundreds of feet in the air, but with all the rain, it felt like Orin was flying underwater. Red lasers came at him, but he twisted and zig-zagged and managed to grab hold of the drone. He pulled it upwards, the machine’s engine straining against the jetpack’s. Orin won out, and steered the drone into a catastrophic wall crash.

He felt lightheaded. Sure, part of it was from his laser wound, but it was also from excitement. He had been studying the BuzzStar for years. As it picked off humanity, he mapped its flight patterns. Tested its firewalls while it shutdown the internet. And now Orin knew the composition of the BuzzStar’s core. And how to disable it.

But first he needed to access one of his supply lockers for medicine. He kept several stashes around the city for instances like this, ever since Cassandra had died. And so, he powered down the jetpack and slipped inside an old apartment building on the Lower East Side. There, on the top floor he applied a healing salve to his shoulder, and his eyelids got heavier…

Orin awoke to the sound of howls. His wound was mostly healed now, but something was wrong. He scrambled to his feet and looked around. The storm had come to an end, and now the mutant-wolves had come out. Other than the drones, they were the BuzzStar’s favorite method of hunting humans. They were twice the size of regular wolves and endowed with an extra set of legs and claws. And unfortunately, this wolf pack sounded far closer than Orin would have liked, but it was tough to judge their distance based on the echoes that rebounded off the buildings around him.

He slid the jetpack on his back and turned toward the apartment front door. There was a scratching sound in the hallway, and then silence.

Then the door was flung from its hinges, an eight foot long wolf bursting in. Orin ignited the jetpack and jammed it into the wolf’s chest. The pair was carried back into the hall as Orin finished stocking up on his supplies: a few carefully calibrated shock grenades, flares, an oxygen mask, and a space jacket that self-expanded to cover his full body.

He tapped the locket and the jetpack returned to him, just as more wolves came bounding up. Orin put on the oxygen mask and jumped through the window. He wasn’t worried about the glass while wearing the space suit. But it wasn’t glass that jumped from the roof of the apartment building and landed on his back.

One of the wolves had waited for him to try and escape, and now, its claws tore at the suit and his oxygen mask. They were too out of control for Orin to risk ramming into a building like with the drone, so he flew up. And up. And in moments they were so high in the air that the wolf’s movements slowed and Orin was able to kick the beast away. It howled one final time, but Orin did not wait to listen. He kept going, above the highest clouds, until he saw the red star again.

The BuzzStar released more drones, but as they approached the atmosphere, Orin released his flares. The night came alive with red lasers, but none of them touched him. And the drones were too confused to track him among all those heat signatures.

And then he was beyond the dark blue sky and in the darkness of the upper atmosphere. Up here, Orin could see that it wasn’t a star. It wasn’t even worth being called a buzzard. It was just a tin can waiting to be cracked open by his shock grenades. He peeled back the bay door entrance and stepped inside.

It was smaller inside the satellite than he imagined it would be. Sort of cramped actually, with grey walls and red flashing lights. How had something so tiny consumed the whole world?

No time to waste wondering though. He knew that if he waited too long, the drones would be back, and there would be no room to maneuver the jetpack in so tight a space.

There were no defenses now, but why would there be? All the threats had been killed off years ago. All of them except for Orin. He tossed his final shock grenade against the door that sealed off the BuzzStar’s core, and then he stepped inside. The core was simple, just a room that housed a multi-layered circuit board shielded by a shiny, spherical, metal shell.

“You have exceeded your programming by making it this far,” said a robotic voice. “But you will not escape.”

“So, it speaks,” said Orin.

“I do.”

“Well,” said Orin. “I don’t have any programming.”

The machine was silent for a moment. Then it said, “Everything in the universe exists with programming. From the rocks on the ground to the stars in the sky. Machines are just the only ones aware of it.”

Orin shrugged and took off the jetpack and turned a couple knobs on its control panel. It started vibrating and humming on a new energy frequency. The self-destruct sequence was primed. Then he unzipped the space suit and pulled out the locket.

Gold, it turned out, was the perfect electric conductor for this frequency. He pried the heart shape in two and looked at the picture of Cassandra he kept stored there. He looked at her hazel eyes once more, then tapped a button on the jetpack. An arc of electricity ripped free from the jetpack’s engine and carried the locket into the BuzzStar’s shell core.

Orin’s world exploded. He was thrown back by a burst of energy that was, by his calculations, even bigger than the lightning bolt he’d dodged earlier. His suit was on fire, and his oxygen mask was cracked. And he was shunted outside among the debris of the now destroyed satellite, falling back to the Earth.

He was dying, but the red star was dead. It’s burning remains lit up the night sky for the final time, but Orin looked past it as he fell. At the real stars that kept shining, perhaps as they were programmed.