Professional writer Annie Reed writes stories that span genres and are always powerful. In fact with Annie, you just never know the type of story you might be reading, but you will always know it will grab you and be a compelling read.

With this story, Annie gives us an amazing science fiction story and world. So far Annie has had a story in every issue of this magazine and as the editor, I hope to continue that streak.

Her story “The Color of Guilt” was selected for The Year’s Best Crime and Mystery Stories. Look for so much more of this prolific writer’s work at her website https://anniereed.wordpress.com/

* * *

A white-hot blast of fire from a laser pistol split the air over Dani’s head as she dove behind the remnants of a blasted permacrete wall.

She tucked her shoulder right before she hit the debris-strewn dirt, turning her dive into a roll, and came up with her own laser pistol in her hand. Not that she intended to use it unless she absolutely had to.

More laser fire erupted from behind her. Return fire hummed from a building in front of her and off to her right. Shouts and screams and the pounding, scrabbling sound of shooters running for cover filled the dusty, smoky air, and somewhere in the distance came the booming report of something with a hell of a lot more firepower than a hand pistol.

And to think, less than an hour ago this sector of the crumbling old settlement had looked completely deserted.

“Another wonderful day on the job,” she muttered, her voice amplified as it bounced off the clear protective helmet of her environmental suit.

Tongusta’s atmosphere supported human life—including the lives of the idiots who’d decided to wage a private little war while she was underground crawling around the basement of the settlement’s old municipal building—but who knew what kind of nasty bugs (viruses and the creepy crawly kind) had taken up residence down there. She’d donned the suit as a safety precaution, and now she was happy she had.

Dani had been hired to retrieve an object secreted in a safe room in the basement. In the centuries since the building had been abandoned, sections of the main floor had collapsed into the basement.

Just finding the safe room, which was remarkably intact, had taken her longer than she planned. The safe room itself insulated her from everything going on in the world around her, which she supposed was its purpose, so to say she’d been surprised by the battle when she emerged onto the surface was the understatement of the century.

She didn’t like the feel of the suit on her skin, and the clear bubble helmet, as vital as it was to her health and welfare, made her feel mildly claustrophobic. She especially hated the sound of her breathing echoing loud in her ears. She’d planned to take the suit off and collapse it back into a pocket on her belt—right next to the hidden pouch that currently held the little stasis box she’d retrieved from the safe room—then she’d heard the hum of laser fire and the sensors in the suit informed her the air was rapidly becoming toxic thanks to fires burning through the abandoned buildings.

She kept her pistol at the ready even though she had no plans to blast her way out of here. She could count on the fingers of one hand the number of times she’d fired the thing, and half of those shots were learning how to use it. With any luck, she could stay out of sight long enough for the fight to burn itself out or move to a different sector, then she could hotfoot it back to her ship and get the hell off this planet.

While she waited, she rehearsed exactly what she’d say the next time she talked to Thomas Leap, the customer who’d hired her to go to Tongusta and retrieve the little stasis box in the first place. Thomas was a collector extraordinaire who focused on memorabilia from old Earth of the Twentieth Century, as the years had been counted back then. No matter what he paid her to retrieve, he always told her exactly where to go.

How he knew, Dani had no idea. But if he knew enough about the planet to tell her where this little stasis box was located, why the hell hadn’t he told her to be on the lookout for roving bands of idiots with laser pistols and heavy artillery?

“Simple job,” Thomas had told her. “You’ll be in and out without a hitch.”

Not exactly.

She should have known something was up when Thomas had agreed to pay her “a pretty penny” for the job. She’d though it was just because he’d pinged her about the job during her vacation. He’d always dealt fair and square with her, and he’d never ever called her “Disco Dani,” so it never even entered her mind that he’d been withholding information.

She should have known better. Collectors were notoriously single-minded when it came to getting their hands on whatever they absolutely had to have for themselves.

She’d done her own research on Tongusta, of course, but there wasn’t a lot of recent information available. Homeland Alliance still considered this sector of space the frontier, and like a lot of frontier worlds, the original colonists who settled here hated any kind of government telling them what they could and could not do. “Remarkably independent” liberal-leaning historians called them. “Ferociously rebellious” more authoritarian sources insisted.

From what she could see, “remarkably independent” and “ferociously rebellious” had merged into “unbelievably belligerent” over the centuries since the last historians had visited the place. No wonder the Alliance had withdrawn its presence from the planet. Tongusta wasn’t exactly strategically located and probably not worth the Alliance’s time or attention.

It wouldn’t have been worth hers except for Thomas.

Who was going to get an earful the next time she talked to him.

She risked a quick peek around corner of the wall. Another laser shot hummed over her head. Damn.

Her suit wasn’t laser proof. If someone tagged her with a direct hit, or even a glancing blow from a high-powered pistol, the suit—and Dani—would be in a world of hurt.

She patted the hidden pocket on her belt to reassure herself the little stasis box was still there. The thing weighed next to nothing. If she had to risk her life for a job, she damn well better deliver the goods—whatever they were—so she’d get paid.

That was the thing that irked her the most. She had no idea what was in the box, and Thomas had given her strict instructions not to open it.

How stupid would it be to die and not know what you were dying for?

Too bad her ship wasn’t closer. She’d stashed it next to a rockfall at the base of a scrub-brush-covered hill at the far end of the old settlement. Her ship was sleek and fast, the hull a dull black that made it difficult to see in space unless someone directly pinged it. On the ground, given the right surroundings, it might look like a deep shadow. If she’d left it closer to the municipal building, say on the rooftop of a nearby structure, she might have been able to make a run for it. The ship had shields that would protect it—and her—from ground fire as it took off.

Of course, if either side in this battle had eyes in the sky, they’d just blast her ship to pieces. The ship’s shields wouldn’t protect it from a direct hit from the heavy artillery blasts she’d just heard.

Did the fighters have eyes in the sky? She hadn’t seen any drones overhead, but that didn’t mean no one was looking. She scooted back away from the corner of the building and craned her neck to peer overhead.

And that’s when she stepped on something that wasn’t just debris.

“Son of a bitch,” she muttered as she heard a distinctive metallic click.

The ground opened up beneath her and she fell into absolute darkness.

* * *

Dani had been born on a planet not that much smaller than Tongusta, but she’d spent a good portion of her life in her sleek little ship, going from job to job, with occasional vacations spent on stations scattered throughout Alliance-controlled space. She liked exploring old places and she worked well alone, which made her perfectly suited to a life procuring all sorts of abandoned oddities, curiosities, and memorabilia—wherever those things might be located, either planetside or in deep space—for the collectors who hired her.

Including an ancient mirror-covered sphere she’d retrieved from the bowels of an abandoned generation ship.

She’d managed to retrieve the sphere without breaking any of the little mirrors, which were exceedingly fragile. The customer had insisted on celebrating her success by not only sharing a drink with her—she always had a drink at the end of a successful job—but also dancing with her. Apparently the mirrored sphere came from an era on old Earth when people danced beneath the things.

She should have given him his money back, but she’d been fairly broke at the time, so she’d agreed to one drink and one dance. That had been one dance too many.

The customer made a vid of Dani’s awkward, alcohol-fueled attempt to dance. Without her permission. Then he’d uploaded it to the net. Also without her permission.

She’d used some of the money she’d earned on that job to hire a lawyer, and her lawyer had sued the pants off the customer. The customer had settled out of court for an exorbitant sum, which had set Dani up in business. It had also earned Dani a nickname she couldn’t quite shake no matter how hard she tried: Disco Dani.

She hated her nickname with a passion. The only good thing about it was that some customers only heard of her because she was “Disco” Dani.

Not that any of that would matter if she never got off this planet.

The farther she fell down the long, slick chute of an emergency escape hatch, getting off this planet in one piece seemed less and less likely.

Old colonies used escape hatches to ferry the colony’s administrative staff away in a hurry from whatever had decided to attack them on the surface. It made sense that the municipal building would have an escape hatch outside. If staff couldn’t get to the safe room in the basement, the hatch would provide a secondary escape route.

What didn’t make sense was that the hatch was still in working order. Government officials had abandoned this settlement centuries before Dani had even been born.

The chute had no illumination. Dani thought about turning on her suit’s built-in lights, but that might disorient her more than she already was. The chute felt slick and metallic beneath her body. She didn’t dare try to stop her fall with either her legs or her hands. Her bones would break before she could stop herself, so she tucked herself into as much of a ball as she could and concentrated on keeping a grip on her laser pistol.

Just in case she needed it wherever the chute was sending her.

When she finally came to a stop, the abrupt cessation of movement disoriented her so much it took her a full minute to realize she hadn’t broken anything when she finally hit bottom. In fact, it appeared the chute had deposited her in a surprisingly comfortable chair apparently designed to absorb the force of the impact while molding itself to the contours of her body.

“Okay,” she muttered to the absolute darkness surrounding her. “That was fun.”

She triggered the forward-facing lights attached to the shoulders of her environmental suit. The chair responded by sliding her to the right, away from the bottom of the chute, before it began to move her forward.

She’d never been in an emergency escape system like this one before. The room she was in had been constructed with gray metal-plated walls studded with rivets and marred by old-style welded seams. Her chair was attached to a track on the floor, but other than the chair, the track, and the chute, the room was empty.

The track was guiding her chair toward a set of double doors, which were currently shut.

Dani tried to get out of the chair, but the thing held her firmly in place.

Wherever the chair was going, she was apparently along for the ride.

She held the laser pistol in her lap, not exactly at the ready, but close enough if she needed it.

Whatever Thomas had gotten her into, he wasn’t paying her nearly enough.

In fact, not only was she going to give him a piece of her mind, she was going to demand hazard pay before she turned the stasis box over to him.

Provided she got out of here alive.

* * *

The job had started out like any other job, except she’d been on vacation.

A fact she’d mentioned to Thomas when he’d pinged her.

“Where the heck are you?” he asked. “I can barely see you.”

Dani smiled at him as his pleasantly bespectacled face fuzzed in and out of focus on the holo that floated above the control console on her ship. She didn’t tell anyone exactly where she was at any given time, not even Thomas, who happened to be her best customer. She just turned the gain down on her communications equipment whenever a ping came through from a customer. It made her location harder for any competitors to trace.

“What can I do for you?” she asked.

“Got a line on something,” he said, pushing his glasses up his nose.

Fussing with his glasses was a sign Thomas was really excited about something. The wire-framed glasses were part of his main collection—old Earth memorabilia. He’d worn them ever since Dani had known him even though he could have gotten enhancements to correct his failing eyesight.

If he was this excited about his find, she might be able to negotiate a higher fee.

“Gonna cost you,” she said.

He sputtered, which was part of his standard negotiation tactics. “I haven’t even told you what the job is yet!”

She leaned back in her chair. “I’m on vacation. If you can wait until I get back…”

She let the implication lie there. If he couldn’t wait, that would tell her how much extra he was willing to pay.

He hadn’t come out and said the job was time sensitive. Instead he’d rubbed his nose, raked his fingers through his graying hair (something else he could have fixed with enhancements but didn’t), and finally agreed with a rueful smile to pay not only a higher that normal fee, but also a “vacation surcharge” once the job was done.

“It’s a good thing I like you, Dani,” he said after he’d transferred the nonrefundable portion of her fee into her business holding account.

“I like you too, Thomas.” She acknowledged receipt of the funds, and then he’d sent her the coded instructions on where and how to acquire a stasis box he said would fit in the palm of her hand. “You sure these instructions are accurate?”

“As sure as I can be,” he said. “Remember, don’t disengage the stasis field. It would ruin what’s inside.”

She smiled at him. “And you’re not going to tell me what’s inside, are you?”

He’d pushed his glasses up on his nose. “As always, I’m paying you a pretty petty for something that’s worth a pretty penny.” Then he smiled at her, tilted his head, and waggled his eyebrows, an expression that came through clear enough even with the static.

She chuckled, which was the response he expected. Just like his glasses and his graying hair, Thomas always talked to her about money in antiquated terms of dollars and cents.

Well, whatever was in the stasis box better be worth more than a pretty penny. So far she’d been caught in the middle of a battle and shot down an escape chute that was now taking her who knew where, and all for something so small it weighed next to nothing.

If she got out of this job in one piece, she might think about making that vacation permanent.

* * *

Right about the time she thought the chair might crash her into the double doors at the end of the track, the doors slid open with a rusty-hinged squeal (the first sign that the emergency escape system might not be all that well maintained). A blast of light so bright hit her in the face, and she thanked her lucky stars again that she still had on her environmental suit.

Her suit automatically dimmed the light, which had the unfortunate side effect of plunging the rest of the room into darkness.

“Just who the hell are you?” came a male voice from out of that darkness.

Dani raised one hand to block the light. “Want to turn those things down a notch?” she asked, trying to keep her voice as calm as possible even while her heart was hammering hard in her chest.

She hadn’t really expected anyone to be on the other side of the double doors. In fact, she’d been wracking her brain trying to remember everything she’d ever read about escape systems like this one. She figured she’d have to boot up ancient tech to find out how to get back to the surface.

If the system would even allow her to get back to the surface. Some systems were designed to keep administrators alive for months—even years—until it was safe enough for them to leave.

“I’ll turn down the lights if you let go of that pistol,” he said.

She didn’t want to do that—who knew if this guy was armed—but if he was, he could have shot her the second the doors opened. She didn’t really have a choice.

She took her hand away from the pistol, leaving it in her lap. “I’d put it away, but it’s normally attached it to my belt, and your chair won’t let me stand up.”

“Oh, yeah. Sorry. I forgot about that.”

She heard something click, and then the chair relaxed beneath her. She leaned forward far enough to confirm she could get out of the chair if she wanted to, which was good enough for now.

The lights dimmed and the sensors in her face shield adjusted accordingly.

She was in a control room approximately twice the size of the cockpit on her ship. Instead of viewscreens, a series of holoscreens hovered over control panels that might have been state-of-the-art a few centuries ago.

The holoscreens all displayed various overhead views of the battle raging on the surface.

The man who’d asked her to put away her laser pistol was the only other person in the room. He was about Dani’s height, dark-haired, dark-eyed, and scruffy- faced.

And he was dressed only in a pair of sleek exercise pants that left nothing to the imagination.

Apparently he hadn’t been born in space either. No one born in space had muscles like that.

Dani felt heat rush to her face.

At least he didn’t appear to be armed. He wouldn’t be able to conceal a weapon in those pants.

She suddenly felt more than a little overdressed in her environmental suit, but she wasn’t ready to take it off just yet.

“Who are you?” she asked.

He crossed his arms over his chest. “I think I asked first.” He nodded toward the nearest holoscreen. “You’re not one of them.”

“Guess the suit gave it away,” she said.

“That and your ship. And the fact that you knew exactly where to go to get what you came here for.”

Clearly she’d been right to worry about someone spotting her from overhead. Whatever he was doing here, the surveillance equipment he had outside was way more sophisticated than the equipment in this room appeared to be.

“You were spying on me,” she said.

“Not intentionally. I’m spying on them. You just happened to show up about the same time they did.”

Okay, so he’d seen her going into the basement of the abandoned municipal building. There was no way he could have seen what she did inside the safe room, and therefore he couldn’t know she’d taken anything that didn’t technically belong to her.

Could he?

“Are you Alliance?” she asked. If the Alliance was thinking about reasserting their authority over Tongusta, they’d probably send scouts in advance. If that’s what this guy was.

If he was Alliance and the Alliance was planning to take over Tongusta again, the Alliance might claim everything in the old municipal building was Alliance property. In that case, if she was caught taking property from the safe room, and if that property was worth a pretty penny, as Thomas claimed, she could be in some serious trouble.

“Are you?” she asked again when he didn’t say anything.

He sighed and cocked his head to one side. “If I’m Alliance, I’m seriously getting busted for being out of uniform.”

It took her a second to realize that he was joking.

“That’s not really funny,” she said, although she found herself smiling anyway out of relief.

“Not used to having company.” He extended a hand. “Michael Trumby, historian.”

She looked at his hand for a moment before she decided to shake it. “Dani,” she said. “Just Dani. Procurer of oddities, collectibles, and rare memorabilia.”

He grinned at her, what looked like a genuine smile. “Dani? Really? I think I’ve heard of you.”

She steeled herself for the dreaded nickname, but he didn’t say it, and she let herself relax. “How would a historian who’s spying on”—she waved a hand at the battle on the viewscreen—“whoever they are have heard of me?”

“Well, we’re kind of in the same business, really. I study history. You go and find things that are a part of history.”

She supposed that sort of made sense.

“So, Michael Trumby,” she said, finally getting up from the chair to go stand in front of the holoscreens. “What is a person who studies history doing hiding away down here?”

“Recording what will be history tomorrow,” he said. “Tongusta’s factions are constantly waging war against each other. History—accurate history—gets lost when there’s no one official to record it.”

He gave her a sideways glance.

“In fact, I’m sure none of the people trying to kill each other up there have any idea that you just found the most valuable artifact left behind by their ancestors.”

She’d made a serious mistake. She’d told him her name and her profession. He’d seen her go into the old municipal building, and he probably knew about the safe room. He was probably also good at connecting various pieces of information to form a whole picture. Wasn’t that what historians did? When they weren’t recording history, anyway.

“How do you I found anything?” she asked.

“It’s your job. You wouldn’t have left until you found what you were after.”

“How do you know I’m not on vacation?”

He snorted. “No one comes to Tongusta for vacation.”

So much for that bluff. “So, smart guy, tell me what I was after.” Hell, she didn’t even know that.

“A legend,” he said. “The silver penny.”

* * *

Every belief system has an ultimate, unobtainable object. The Holy Grail, as one mostly forgotten old Earth religion called it.

For some in the Alliance, the unobtainable object wasn’t an object at all—it was peace and prosperity for all member worlds. For others, it was wealth beyond measure. For the customer who’d captured Dani on vid trying to dance to the music of a long-forgotten era, it was a mirror-covered sphere.

For an ancient Earth memorabilia fiend like Thomas who still thought of money in terms of dollars and cents, it was the silver penny.

Dani knew about silver pennies. She’d researched the coins of ancient Earth after her second job for Thomas just because she was curious about the meaning of “a pretty penny.”

Silver pennies weren’t pretty, and they weren’t made of silver—they were aluminum coins produced on old Earth in 1974 as the years were measured in those days. The coins—bad pennies, every one of them—were recalled for some reason Dani couldn’t remember now and were destroyed by the government that minted them. Rumor had it that a few remained intact, but since they were government property—Earth was part of the Alliance, after all—it was illegal for anyone to own a silver penny. Their existence was, as Michael had put it, just legend.

Or not. Somehow one of those coins had found its way to a safe room on Tongusta and was now housed inside the tiny stasis box in the pocket of Dani’s environmental suit.

An intact silver penny was worth a fortune.

“Son of a bitch,” she said under her breath. “I’m in a lot of trouble here.”

“I don’t think so,” Michael said. “The administrator who brought the coin here, he might have been in trouble. From what I’ve learned, a lot of the collectibles he brought to Tongusta when he was assigned here were stolen from other collectors. One of the reasons he took an assignment way out in the frontier. I take it you don’t do that.”

“No.” She never had. She made it clear to her customers she only retrieved property that had been long abandoned. “As far as I know, my customer doesn’t either.”

At least she hoped Thomas didn’t.

“I’m pretty sure I know who your customer is,” Michael said. “But I won’t tell. I kind of like the guy.”

Dani narrowed her eyes. Thomas had to get his information from somewhere, and what better source of information on the past, and where to find things from the past, than a historian?

“So you’re his source?” she asked.

“Me? No, not on your life. I only know him by reputation. Collectors of his stature and particularly his era of interest are pretty rare. So are historians who study that era, like my brother. And before you ask, he’s not the source either.”

Michael had a glint in his eye that might have been amusement, but might have been something a little more avaricious.

“You’re not going to ask me to look at it, are you?” she asked. “I’m not supposed to open the stasis box.”

“Degrades the quality,” he said, nodding his head. “And no, I wouldn’t ask that. Not even to make sure the penny’s still inside. I’m pretty sure I couldn’t afford to reimburse your buyer for any damage to his merchandise.”

The conversation lapsed into a not-quite-comfortable silence in which Dani was very aware Michael wasn’t wearing much of anything and she still had on her entire environmental suit.

“So,” she said, “I guess the only thing left is for me to ask you where the back door to this place is so that I can get on my way.”

“You won’t make it back to your ship.”

He messed with some dials—actual dials!—on the control panel, and the picture on the holoscreen closest to Dani zoomed out to give her a view of her ship. The booming sounds she’d heard earlier turned out to be small explosions erupting in the area between where she’d left the ship and the central battleground near the municipal building.

“The ‘back door’ to this place lets out in the basement of that building.”

One of the buildings on the holoscreen glowed red. From the amount of smoke billowing into the air above the building, she guessed it was on fire.

“How do I get out?” There had to be a secondary exit that didn’t involve climbing up the chute that brought her here.

“Give it a day or two,” he said. “The fighting will move on to a new sector, or they’ll tire themselves out, or they’ll call a temporary truce to tend to their wounded. Then it’ll be safe for you to go.”

A couple of days. She didn’t have a timetable with Thomas—jobs took as long as they took—but that meant she’d be stuck here with a virtual stranger.

Then again, he was pretty easy on the eyes. So far they’d gotten along pretty well even considering she’d dropped in on him fairly unexpectedly.

Or had she?

He admitted he’d been watching her, and he knew exactly where her ship was. Had he triggered the old escape system?

“Did you bring me here on purpose?” she asked. She’d stepped on the trigger, yes, but nine times out of ten abandoned mechanical things didn’t work the way they were designed to work, and definitely not that well.

He gave her a sheepish grin. “They were about to shoot you. I saw a couple of guys sneaking up on you, and you were practically right on top of the hatch….”

“So you saved my life?”

He shrugged.

Huh. Out in the middle of an abandoned settlement, a good-looking, lone historian in an underground bunker had kept her from getting toasted by the locals. Life, especially her life, was really weird at times.

She’d been on vacation. Spending a few extra days here might not be much of a vacation, but things could be worse.

The good-looking historian could have called her Disco Dani.

She released the seal on her environmental suit and removed her helmet. “I always celebrate a successful job with a drink,” she said. “You have anything down here we can celebrate with?”

He grinned at her. “I think I’ve got a little something around here you might like.”

“An historian who drinks? I’m shocked.” She grinned back to let him know she was teasing.

“I don’t dance, though,” he said. “Never got the hang of it.”

He must not have seen her vid after all, or he wouldn’t have brought the subject up. This unexpected vacation was looking better and better.

“Don’t worry,” she said. “Neither do I.”