Starclash (Stealing the Sun Book 4) Read online

  Table of Contents

  Blurb

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Series

  Other Work

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Introduction

  Prologues

  Summer

  Two Standards Ago

  One Standard Ago

  The Olive Branch

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  The Meeting

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Fallout

  News

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Starclash

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  News

  News

  Epilogues

  Galopar

  37 Gem

  Europa

  News

  Infowave

  End Note

  About the Author

  Acknowledgements

  “STARCLASH proves once again that Ron Collins is a master of the science fiction adventure story—not the crazy stuff you remember from the pulps, but the kind of interstellar adventure that has believable characters, plotting that makes sense, and a future that rings true.”

  Mike Resnick

  Hugo Award–winning author of Kirinyaga

  STARCLASH

  STEALING THE SUN: BOOK 4

  RON COLLINS

  STARCLASH

  STEALING THE SUN: BOOK 4

  Copyright © 2017 Ron Collins

  All rights reserved

  Cover Image:

  © Innovari | Dreamstime.com - Space Fighter And Alien Moon Photo

  This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. All rights reserved. This is a work of fiction. All incidents, dialog, and characters are products of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to persons living or dead is purely coincidental. This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without permission.

  Skyfox Publishing

  ISBN-10: 1-946176-06-0

  ISBN-13: 978-1-946176-06-6

  STEALING THE SUN

  includes

  STARFLIGHT

  STARBURST

  STARFALL

  STARCLASH

  STARBOUND

  STARBORN

  Other Work by Ron Collins

  The Knight Deception

  A Trevin Knight Thriller

  Saga of the God-Touched Mage

  includes

  Glamour of the God-Touched

  Target of the Orders

  Trail of the Torean

  Gathering of the God-Touched

  Pawn of the Planewalker

  Changing of the Guard

  Lord of the Freeborn

  Lords of Existence

  Picasso’s Cat & Other Stories

  Five Magics

  Six Days in May

  Ron’s website is: www.typosphere.com

  Follow Ron on Twitter: @roncollins13

  Sign up for Ron’s newsletter and get a free book!

  Get Your Free Book Now!

  For Mom and Dad, who’ve always helped me reach for the stars.

  Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself.

  Leo Tolstoy

  INTRODUCTION

  It seems to me that we in the United States are entering a period where we’re once again asking ourselves what is, for us, a question we come around to again and again—that being: Who are we?

  The options are several.

  Are we a kind and giving society?

  Are we a nurturing community?

  Are we a selfish “I got mine” people?

  Are we a capitalistic, driven machine that lets markets decide our fates?

  Are we the proverbial melting pot of communities that somehow finds a way to make it all work despite our clear and present differences?

  Do we give more than we take, take more than we give, or take only what we give?

  Are we the lone ranger—the ruggedly individualistic cowboy who rides out of town to find his own way, and suffers the fate of being posse bait if he goes too far?

  Which brings me to the question that feeds this story.

  It’s complex, right?

  Complicated.

  Confusing.

  And for some, me included, the question that keeps coming back into my mind is the push that has driven through this particular story.

  What can I do?

  What should I do?

  The world is so big, right? How much can I change? How much does my voice count? How much does a vote count?

  Yes, just how much energy should I spend dealing with some of the events of the day?

  In the end, I decided that what I was really dealing with was a much more basic question. How much can one person matter? How much change can one person create by their decisions?

  Technically, I suppose all stories have a bit of this question in them, but that was what I was asking myself as I brought these characters together again. That’s what I was wondering.

  In the end, I’m still not sure I have the answer.

  I suspect that the answer is different for each person—because life is like that, mostly. There are so few simple situations. So few binary settings. So I suspect that the amount of change you or I can each make is variable.

  In the end, though, unless we actually choose to do something, the answer is “none.” Do nothing, create no change.

  But take an action, and then change is possible.

  Which brings us back to the beginning.

  To take an action that drives change, it seems to me that we (meaning you or I or anyone else, specifically including the characters in this little story of mine) need to answer that most basic question for ourselves.

  Who are we?

  What kind of world do we want to live in?

  Then, of course, we get to the harder question.

  What are we willing to sacrifice to get there?

  Ron Collins

  December 2016

  Prologues

  SUMMER

  During the summer months of Torrance Black’s eighth year, his father often stood with a pair of binoculars in the field behind their backyard, looking up at the night sky. The Wisconsin breeze would be thick with the smells of timothy grass. Katydids and crickets would sing. Meanwhile, his dad would point out the dippers, and Draco, Cepheus, and the North Star—all circumpolar in the northern sky. He would show Torrance Cygnus, Sagittarius, and Hercules, and tell him how Scorpius was running across the horizon chasing Orion, who would be hiding on the other side of the world until November came.

  Other kids remembered the dippers, the big one in particular. But Torrance always considered Cassiopeia to be his favorite constellation because its W-shaped scatter floated in the sky like a huge wing and because he knew it ran along the Milky Way. His father once told him Cassiopeia’s story—how she connived to keep Perseus and Andromeda from marrying, and how Jupiter hung her upside down in the nort
hern sky to atone for her sins.

  Later in his life, Torrance would spend considerably more time learning legends about Cassiopeia and the rest of the constellations as told from different cultures. These stories did nothing but increase his love of the sky as a whole, and as he grew older and dealt with difficult times he found himself going to the night sky and remembering those nights with his dad. Thinking about the people throughout history who had gazed up at these very same stars and seen the very same things he was looking at right then always made him feel better.

  Eta Cass was a bright dot on the lower leg of the W.

  It became his favorite star on the day he learned that, despite being a single dot in his field glasses, it was really a binary pair, a G spectrum star that orbited with a K spectrum star at a period of just under five hundred standard years.

  Knowing things like this made him feel more than smart. There was something ancient, powerful about knowing this single dot in the sky that oscillated colors between gold, red, yellow, and purple was really two stars.

  Torrance learned several things that summer when he was eight.

  He learned his father could speak volumes with a single grunt. He learned that spiders built their webs at night, and that it’s a good idea to wave a stick along your path as you walk through the gloom. But mostly, he learned that when unanswered questions were gnawing at the pit of his stomach, discovering the truth—finding out how things really were—filled that ache in a more satisfying way than he could possibly describe.

  TWO STANDARDS AGO

  U3 Ship Icarus

  Atropos Orbit, Eta Cassiopeia System

  Local Date: Conejo 12, 7

  Local Time: 0720

  The support rail was cold against Deidra Francis’s palms. The observation panel ahead of her opened to a star-patterned view of deep space. Below her, rows of command stations fell away in rings that made her perch at the top of the command bridge feel like being on the balcony of a theater.

  The crew prepared for jump.

  They were a calm group, the definition of professional, which made her feel even worse about her own anxiety. They moved with simple precision and spoke with hushed tones that the ship’s noise reduction system muted even further. Air from the ventilation system was cool and dry.

  A nervous tick played across the corner of Deidra’s lips.

  The mission profile would take them to the Solar System—back to Miranda Station—for the first time since Universe Three’s brilliantly devised raid had derailed the United Government’s Star Drive program, first by destroying Sunchaser and stealing Icarus and Einstein, then by returning with Icarus to destroy Miranda’s production facilities. She had still been a girl then, barely thirteen. She was nearly nineteen now. If everything went right today, their mission would do considerably more damage to UG’s situation than even that success had managed.

  It was only a week before that U3 had been informed Professor Jorge Catazara, the driving intellect behind the UG’s thrust to expand Star Drive technology, had finally grown so disenchanted with his government’s policies that he could see what damage he was doing. Today Universe Three was going to help him change sides.

  They had extracted people before, of course.

  So often, in fact, that most of the Universe Three citizens were already in the Eta Cass system and several other sympathizers had been recovered, too—all in ops designed just like this one, jump to a spot in space, pick up a rider, and hop the hell out of the zone before things got too hairy. They had done it often enough that the tactic was now more than a thorn in the UG’s side. So often that even UG’s own journalists were asking pointed questions like: How can the UG be winning the war if Universe Three is so free to operate?

  UG politicians were still trying to get away with answering these questions with their standard talking points, saying that this wasn’t really a war so much as a continuation of the skirmishes that had been so prevalent before the Operation Starburst catastrophe. But Katriana Martinez, Deidra’s mentor, was still attached to Universe Three’s security teams and Deidre knew Katriana well enough by now to be able to read her. Even her mentor’s silences told Deidra the answer was growing threadbare among UG citizens.

  That anyone bought those arguments in the first place stood testimony to her father’s view that most people preferred comfortable lies to painful truths.

  Universe Three had never gone after someone like Catazara, though.

  This kind of defection would be hard to ignore.

  Everything had to happen just so.

  The op had to be perfect.

  “Is everything progressing?” Captain Keyes said as he came from his briefing room to stand beside her.

  Matt Anderson and the rest of his three-member security detail were still in the compartment, gathering up material in preparation of the jump and launch.

  Deidra stood straighter.

  She had been the one managing preparations, but this was still the captain’s ship.

  For now, anyway.

  “Yes, Captain,” she said. “Prelim testing is complete. Impulse power is functional for our arrival on station, trim bursts too, in case we need fine tuning. The crew is accounted for, and the skimmers are all on full power and full green status. We’re cross-indexing our navigation calibrations now. Once those are finished, we’ll be ready for your command. Should be any moment.”

  It was standard protocol that whenever either Icarus or Einstein jumped, the target parameters would be run through both ships’ navigation simulators to ensure they were appropriate. “Two sets of eyes,” Katriana Martinez had told her back in the earliest days. “You want it to be right.”

  Deidra had argued about the idea of redundant passes, preferring to move more quickly, until Katriana pulled out the big guns.

  “Nothing the UG does works right the first time, Deidra,” she had said. “Do you want to be like them?”

  That phrase had been enough to change her mind all by itself, but later she remembered Ellyn Parker’s catchphrase: Make sure you’re right, then go ahead. She had never again complained about the idea of taking pains to do something right.

  “Thank you, Director,” Keyes said.

  “My father is the director,” she replied.

  The captain’s eyes sparkled as his lips tightened into a gentle smile.

  “Perhaps I was speaking in future tense.”

  “Flattery will get you everywhere, is it?”

  “Only if it turns out to be right.”

  Matt Anderson stepped out of the room, followed by his team. He had grown more angular over the years, and now filled out his mission jacket in ways that would be attractive to a certain type of woman—of which Deidra most certainly was not.

  Even if she was, she couldn’t ever see being with him.

  With the names Francis and Anderson, the two shared the baggage of having expectation heaped upon them. They had been on the fast path together, each quickly taking more responsibility than their ages might have suggested was intelligent. Matt, now twenty-five, was ruggedly cut and boyishly handsome. Deidra was seen as bright and judgmental. She understood how people matched them up in their minds—the storybook romance and all. But it wasn’t happening. Matt’s demeanor made her anxious. She didn’t like his disregard for the command, or, to put it better, she didn’t like how he only had respect for the command when the command agreed with his viewpoints or when it was in his own best interest. Beyond that, it was obvious Matt Anderson didn’t like the fact that she was quicker than he was, and she could tell he held discomfort that her father was the leader of Universe Three, and that his father was second in command.

  None of that was her fault, of course.

  All that mattered is that, despite the fact that both of them had been given leadership roles on this mission—Deidra coordinating the ship’s prejump activities and Matt leading the rendezvous flight—the pairing of Matt Anderson and Deidra Francis was not going to happen.

&
nbsp; “We’re on our way now, Captain,” Matt said as he led his team out of the briefing room. “The mission team will be on station in three minutes.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Anderson,” Keyes said.

  Deidra glanced at the captain, then turned her gaze to the forward observation panels where prejump data scrolled by.

  “I notice you didn’t call him Director.”

  The captain squared himself and took in a raspy breath through his nose.

  “No,” he said. “I didn’t, did I?”

  * * *

  The jump to superluminal occurred exactly on time.

  Having seen the light show before, and given that Uranus was surrounded by buckets of space junk that made being perfect even more important than usual, Deidra focused on the ship’s position readings throughout the maneuver.

  Their “splashdown” was within a hundred meters of her projection.

  “Nice work,” Captain Keyes said.