Starbound (Stealing the Sun Book 5) Read online

  CHAPTER 5

  Europa Station: Jovian Science Center

  Local Date: January 7, 2216

  Local Time: 1800

  Torrance sat across the table from Marisa. They were at the Ocean View, a high-end restaurant built on one of the highest points of the station and named ironically for the remarkable view of Europa that came from its upper tier. The dining area was dimly lit to provide for the view, but the room was wide and open. The rich aroma wafting from the kitchen, an invisible fog of seared meat and baked vegetables, would have been worth the price tag alone, but Torrance would have paid twice as much if he had known for sure how the night out would affect her.

  She was radiant tonight.

  In the restaurant’s dim light, Torrance could barely make out the darker patches of Marisa’s skin that still remained to be fully repaired. Her expression was light and full of wonder that he hadn’t seen since the accident. Her eyes were bright.

  As they waited for their drinks, Marisa gazed over the rugged surface of the moon. From here, Europa was a collage of visual sensations—smooth and reflective in patches, shattered and cracked in others. The northern “desert” was ground rough and looked like iced concrete. From the station’s current position, light from Jupiter fell on a crescent of the tide-locked moon, leaving a majority of the surface barely visible and fading to black.

  “What are you thinking?” he said.

  “About the freshwater miners there.” She pointed to a spidery network of facilities scattered over the lighted side of Europa’s surface. “And the idea that we have fifty scientists down under the crust. I’m thinking about how they’re doing. What they’re testing. Are they happy with their choices?” She gave a lilting chuckle accompanied with a wry smile. “I’m wondering if they’re warm.”

  The scientists she referred to were on Donnager II, a submerged laboratory the Jovian Science Center funded and monitored. It had been operating in the open seas under Europa’s surface for a decade now, and was chartered to study rudimentary life-forms that could survive in harsh temperatures. The pod was mobile, but was currently tethered to the floor just down current from a large thermal vent that served as the cultural center for a community of phosphorus bacteria and several multicell algae and molds, cousins to those found on Earth. It was one of several high-profile projects the center ran.

  Torrance smiled. “Those are good questions.”

  “They’re making a difference,” she said, turning back to Torrance. “They’re living in one of the harshest places a human being can possibly live in, but they aren’t letting that stop them.”

  “I guess life is like that,” Torrance said, feeling the edge of the data crystal without actually touching it. He caught a hint of Kitchell’s energy. The idea of seeing real data from a mission focused on Eden made him happy in a marvelous way.

  “What do you mean?” Marisa said.

  “Life fights for its place.”

  “Like Universe Three.”

  “And like us.”

  And like you, Torrance was going to add. He held up at the last moment, though. No reason to push things too far now. Better to just let her be who she was.

  “It’s good to see you interested in things again,” he said.

  Marisa pressed her lips together and regarded him more intensely than she had in a long while. “Why are you doing this?”

  “Doing what?”

  “Taking care of me,” she said. “Why are you taking care of me?”

  Heat rose in Torrance’s cheeks. “Isn’t wanting to see you get better reason enough?”

  “At first I thought you were just feeling guilty. You’ve always been susceptible to that, you know? Feeling bad for things that aren’t really your fault—and I mean that in a good way. Then as time went along and you kept it together for me I thought maybe you were just doing your duty. You know, leader who sent a subordinate to battle and all that?”

  The automated drink service arrived and placed long-stemmed wineglasses on the heavy tablecloth. They sat pristinely empty for a moment until the system poured wine, then left the bottle wrapped in its chill sleeve. The liquid gave an aroma that hinted of dark cherry.

  “I don’t want to hurt you,” Marisa continued, “but you know it can’t keep going like this, right?”

  “Like this?” Torrance said.

  “I’ve got to do something. I’m bored out of my skull.”

  Torrance picked up his wineglass by the stem and gave it an absent twirl, then glanced out the observation panel to the mining facility on Europa. “Is that what you really mean?”

  “I don’t know,” Marisa said. Her lips twisted in a way that said she was thinking. “I can’t possibly just stay at home and be an ambassador’s partner.”

  “Too sedentary of a life, I suppose.”

  “Unfortunately.”

  He put the glass down.

  “Then I suppose it’s a good thing I talked to Jared Kulpani about you earlier today.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “When we talked about Thomas’s work, I told him you might be interested in doing something while you finished your recovery.”

  Marisa’s jaw went slack, but carried a subtle smile.

  It was an expression he enjoyed.

  She started to speak, but Torrance raised his hand.

  “Short term, only,” he said. “I’m guessing you’ll want to look into other roles with Interstellar Command once you’re released back to active duty, but for now I thought you might like to get your feet wet again by helping some of the teams here. At least get back into the game.”

  Marisa bit her lip then. The beginning of tears formed in the corners of her eyes.

  This is the moment, he thought.

  How did he feel? What did he want? These were easier questions to avoid than to answer, but if things were going to be different this time, it seemed obvious this was the moment he needed to be clear about what he wanted. He needed Marisa to know he would always be on her side.

  “I notice you didn’t say we couldn’t be together at all.”

  She sipped her wine, seemed to get ready to reply, but then held her tongue. She put her glass down, and sighed in a way that he couldn’t interpret.

  “I don’t want you to be an ambassador’s partner, Marisa. But I want you in my life.”

  “How does that work?”

  Torrance opened a palm, then closed his fist. “I don’t have a clue.”

  “That doesn’t leave for good odds.”

  “I don’t think it’s about odds. I think it’s about decisions and actions and sheer desire to make things work. I think it’s about love—whatever we decide that means.”

  “I see.”

  “I know you’ll be doing something different soon, and I’m going to be working with Coordinations for however long that lasts, and then—with some luck—Magellan will roll off the line and I’ll get to do something with Eden. Neither one of us can say where we’ll be over the next several years. But I like being with you, and I think you’re amazing. I’m willing to help you get anywhere you want to go, wherever that is.”

  Marisa glanced to the moon again.

  “Long distance?” she replied.

  “Maybe,” he said. “Maybe not. We’ve got some time to figure all the details out, so if you’re willing I’d like to try.”

  “All right,” she said. She gripped his hand back. “Let’s see what happens.”

  He smiled. “This,” he said, leaning forward to take her hand, “may well go down as being the best day in my life.”

  ARMS RACE

  CHAPTER 6

  U3 Ship Icarus, Apogee orbit

  Fourth Planet, 37 Geminorum System

  Local Date: Undefined

  Local Time: 1/8:15

  Temporary or not, when Universe Three first came to the 37 Geminorum system, Deidra Francis had brooked no argument on the naming of their new home. If Ellyn Parker took Perigee as her alias due to a need
to be as close to the truth as possible, Deidra wanted this ball of rock to be known as Apogee for its distance from anything resembling the United Government.

  Others had suggested something less obvious, something that would let what remained of their people settle into a more normal life. But Deidra would have none of that.

  “There is no longer such a thing as a normal life for us,” she proclaimed. She had been upset at the time. She would remember that for the rest of her life: Not yet twenty-two standard years old, and in control of the leadership of a Universe Three organization Papa—her father—had spent his life creating, still reeling from the destruction of their home in the Eta Cass system, and she was addressing the fate of the people she commanded. Not surprising her blood was up.

  “This situation isn’t what we prefer,” she continued. “It’s not what we asked for. But it’s what we’ve been given by a United Government that has no sense of what true freedom means. Every person in our ranks needs to understand and see that from this point forward, we will always be at war with the United Government. To forget that is as good as signing our own death warrants.”

  Deidra was no fool. She understood how people would see her—raw and inexperienced, someone who might well be in over her head. Her organization hung by a vulnerable thread. Universe Three was on the run, working to find a new home where they could hide away and lick their wounds while they got their feet under them again.

  It was important that things go right.

  She was busy all the time now, of course, but one of the reasons she let herself work around the clock was that any time she slowed down Deidra found the doubts that rose in the sudden quiet grew loud enough to be debilitating.

  “Better to keep moving,” Papa had explained to her once. “Keep moving, and you can forget how little control you really have.”

  Deidra needed the people of Universe Three to see her as capable. She needed them to follow her.

  She got her way on the question of names, of course.

  Their new home planet would be called Apogee, which made her happy.

  The Uglies had no idea where the planet was, which made her even happier.

  And, while the logisticians made short work of getting the colony settled and headed toward self-sufficiency, she was able to direct a series of brilliantly successful raids on Solar System targets.

  “It’s like a shooting fish in the barrel,” Katriana Martinez, her mentor and now captain of Vengeance, told her after one operation.

  Which made Deidra happier still.

  * * *

  Right now, though, Deidra and the rest of her bridge team on Icarus had seen the result of their last attack run—a mission targeted at industrial complexes in Earth’s China district, a mission that should have been straightforward but clearly had not gone as planned. The room had gone quiet when the reports rolled in, though, silent and cold. A new UG ship had disrupted everything.

  Skimmers had been lost.

  The damage done to the UG had been slight.

  The room felt tight, and Deidra thought she could hear the breath rasping in and out of the lungs of every worker on the deck.

  “Damn it,” she said. “What happened?”

  “The reports I have are inconclusive so far, Director,” a communications operator replied.

  “Unacceptable,” she snapped.

  “Deidra?” The question came from Gregor Anderson, her father’s chief adviser. He sat at the copilot’s control station because it was the closest seat. He was an old man now, and seemed to be growing old three times faster than he had been before both his best friend and his son had been killed. His hair had gone from distinguished gray to fragile white, and the color of his face had changed from fleshy to pale.

  It bothered her to see the depths of Anderson’s grief on everything from his features to his posture. Deidra Francis had lost more than most in the UG double cross, but she had no time to mourn.

  The tone of Anderson’s voice matched the concern that colored his face.

  The comment was an admonition. He wanted her to be calm.

  But screw him.

  The sting of this defeat hurt.

  “Sometimes a leader has to show what she’s feeling,” she said. “Even my father said that.”

  Anderson let his question hang.

  The temperature of the room cooled even further.

  She looked at the mission clock, which had just been synched to local time and which mostly served to annoy her that much further. She would never get used to a clock that started with what orbit the planet was on. That was the kind of thing that happens when your planet rotates in ten hours and your body deals in twenty-four-hour chunks, though. To make it more difficult, the planet completed an “annual” orbit in roughly forty-eight days, which had people whose lives were predicated on a calendar scrambling for options.

  Life on Apogee was going to take some getting used to.

  “Report from Captain Martinez,” the comm officer said.

  “Tell on,” Deidra replied.

  “It’s marked confidential.”

  Deidra scanned the bridge. The faces were all turned her way. None of them would find it wrong for her to have the message sent to a briefing room, but that’s not how she wanted to do this.

  “If you’re on this bridge, you’ve earned the right to hear what goes on here,” she said aloud. “But what you hear is classified beyond that. Does everyone understand?”

  Heads nodded.

  “Tell on,” she said to the communications officer.

  “An unexpected Star Drive ship appeared in orbital space above China, Director,” the man replied.

  “I see,” Deidra said, rubbing her eyes.

  The mission profile called for Vengeance, Universe Three’s second Star Drive spacecraft, to make a mess of China district then stop to gather the latest intel reports from moles in key positions across the Solar System. It should have been simple—get in, get out, no issues. But the intel was off.

  “The UG has a new Star Drive?” It was Kazima Yamada, the U3’s primary engineering coordinator, and the woman who was responsible for the implementation of technology and industrial capability as the colonization of Apogee proceeded.

  “That’s how I interpret it,” Deidra replied.

  “And I,” Anderson said.

  Deidra let the facts settle.

  The Uglies had been ready, and they had a new ship themselves—which was ahead of schedule.

  That was unacceptable.

  “We have to have Defender ready now,” Deidra said to Yamada.

  Yamada scratched the back of her neck. The engineer’s hair was beginning to go gray, but otherwise she could pass for a woman a decade younger than her fifty or more years. Fatigue showed in her face, though. The bugout from Atropos had her running on a serious lack of sleep.

  “That’s not going to happen, Deidra,” Yamada said. “We’ve only been here two standard months. The facilities are just now taking shape.”

  “We need that ship now.”

  “It’s not happening.”

  “You see the same thing we all see,” Deidra argued. “Our advantage will be gone if we don’t make this happen.”

  “We’re doing our best to accelerate—”

  “Our best isn’t good enough.”

  The door to the bridge slid open, and Katriana Martinez stepped into the room. Her appearance turned heads, and made it clear that the rest of the room had remained awkwardly quiet during Deidra’s argument with Yamada.

  “Welcome home, Katriana,” Deidra said.

  If there was anyone in existence who could help calm Deidra, Martinez was that person. Katriana Martinez had been Deidra’s mentor when they first came to Atropos. In many ways Deidra was closer to Martinez than she was to her mother.

  “You have my report?” Martinez said.

  “Yes,” Deidra replied. “We’ve classified it for all coordinators, so speak freely.”

  “The Unit
ed Government has accelerated their schedule. The intel we picked up from Miranda and on Kensington say that two more craft will be available mid-next Solar year.”

  Deidra turned to Yamada and raised an eyebrow that was more of a threat than anything else.

  “Perhaps you need to find a new engineer,” Yamada said. “I am already pushing everyone as hard as I can, Deidra. The system can only run as fast as practical.”

  Deidra rubbed one hand absently over the closed fist of her other hand.

  “Kazima is right,” Katriana said. “You cannot get blood from a beet.”

  “The people want vengeance,” Deidra said.

  “And they’ve had it,” Anderson said. “Perhaps we should lay low for a brief respite.”

  “Lay low?” Deidra said.

  “For a bit. The UG doesn’t know where we are, so we could focus on putting everything we have behind engineering and construction. Give our crews a bit of a breather from the steady raids, and put our energy behind building a third ship faster.”

  Martinez nodded. “That could mean we could accelerate plans to spread over the system, too. We’ve been running raids every few day. I’m sure that’s diverting a lot of attention.”

  Deidra, calming, took a breath, nodded.

  “All right,” she said. “I only have to be shouted down a few hundred times. We back off the raids, and we focus on building on Apogee. But I’m serious: Our only advantage is that we know where they are. I don’t want to let the UG breathe. I want Defender as soon as is humanly possible.”

  “As do we all,” Gregor said.

  She turned to Yamada.

  “What do you need?”

  CHAPTER 7

  Europa Station: Jovian Science Center

  Local Date: March 14, 2217

  Local Time: 1000

  The last year had passed in the blink of an eye. Magellan would be ready for maiden voyage in three weeks. There were a million things to do.

  Torrance sat in CEO and President Kulpani’s waiting area, sipping coffee that Kulpani’s steward had brought, and scanning information off the public projection system. Truth be told, it was nice to have a minute to himself.