Starbound (Stealing the Sun Book 5) Read online

  “They are very big,” Katriana replied, then took a large swig of wine.

  Yes, Deidra thought. Katriana Martinez had been drinking for some time.

  “Maybe we should stop?” Deidra said.

  “Stop attacking?”

  “Yes.”

  “Bad idea.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  Katriana used her free hand to wave at the celebration. “You see them, right?”

  Deidra smiled.

  “Besides, that’s not who you are.”

  “I want to be like Ellyn and Papa.”

  “You think they would stop?”

  Deidra hesitated. She had considered the question before, but now that Katriana was glaring at her, the answer was less clear.

  When she was first deciding these courses of events and setting the U3 toward vengeance, Deidra worried that Gregor’s accusations were right, that her own passions were hotter than those of the citizenry and that her desire for revenge for the death of her father was overwhelming her ability to lead the people. Gregor thought she was too young—as did several others. Admittedly, those concerns dimmed some time ago because, while many of the leadership group tried to stay with a message of peaceful freedom, it became clear to Deidra that the need for vengeance in their populace was high.

  Nearly everyone she knew had lost someone to the UG.

  And the fact was that both Ellyn Parker and Papa had come to understand that a certain degree of violence was necessary to make real change happen.

  Neither Ellyn nor Papa would pull back now.

  She was sure of that.

  The UG was huge, though. They had billions of people, and what was essentially infinite resources relative to their own. Someday, something would happen, and the UG would find them.

  The idea made her more tired than angry, more resigned than afraid.

  No matter what happened going forward, this situation meant that she had to keep pressing the matter. UG was a monster, and U3 was an angered hornet that could attack as if from nowhere. If nothing else, every drop of blood they could draw from the beast drained it of resources it could use against them.

  Aggression was now the ultimate form of defense.

  She drank wine and listened to the music that filtered up from below. Drums and a stringed instrument. Katriana leaned against her, and the heat of her arm felt oddly good despite the heat of the night. For a moment Deidra imagined she could feel Kel’s arm against hers. She recalled Kel’s aroma, imagined the tone of her voice.

  “You should find a man,” Katriana said.

  “Or a woman,” Deidra responded. She didn’t like this topic.

  “Whichever.”

  Deidra smirked. “You’ve said that before.”

  “Don’t wind up like me, Deidra. I live for the past. I let the world make me too hard, let my grief turn me cold.”

  “I like you just fine.”

  Katriana gave a gruff grunt.

  “There is a way to stop this,” Deidra said.

  She glanced at Katriana, who nodded and gave a heavily lidded smile that told Deidra she had been deep into her own imaginings, likely a pair of little girls.

  “A way to make it impossible for the UG to find us.”

  Katriana drew a deep breath and raised a skeptical eyebrow.

  “If we can break the wormhole gate that fuels the Star Drives, they couldn’t get to us,” Deidra said. “And if that could happen, we would be free to live on our own.”

  A series of emotions went over Katriana’s face then.

  “Easier said than done, I think,” she finally replied.

  “Tomorrow I’m going to meet with Catazara and his scientists. We’ll see what we can do.”

  Katriana raised her bottle to Deidra.

  Deidra raised hers.

  They drank, then. They watched the people of Universe Three party. They listened to their music.

  Eventually, they went home.

  CHAPTER 9

  Europa Station: Jovian Science Center

  Local Date: June 22, 2217

  Local Time: 0945

  Torrance looked at the listing he kept pinned in his projection system. Today would have been a launch day. Under the original plan, Magellan would already be posted in a spot in the TRAPPIST-1 system, and would jump to three additional locations assuming the safety scans Marisa’s team worked out showed the landing zones could be managed.

  Instead, there was no science happening outside the Solar System.

  Instead, the only news worth scanning was a steady series of reports from the military wires as they jumped from rock to rock and achieved nothing more than reducing the possible locations of Universe Three outposts from ten billion to nine billion nine hundred ninety-nine million nine hundred ninety-nine thousand nine hundred ninety-nine.

  That trickle of news seemed never-ending, but it would never be enough. In the meantime, Universe Three was running some kind of mission every week.

  He thought about Marisa, stationed on Magellan and helping the ship hop through the galaxy on its classified mission path. All he could say about her whereabouts was that, assuming everything went as expected, she would return to the Solar System in a month. They would get a few weeks together, during which they would complete their adoption papers.

  Then she would be gone again.

  This would last at least two standard years, then she would likely move to another post.

  “You have a call,” Abke said.

  He had missed his comm flag flashing. Abke’s breaking into his thoughts meant the caller was on his “approved” list of priorities.

  “Connect, please,’ he said.

  The image of Thomas Kitchell filled the screen.

  “Thomas!”

  “Hey, LC.”

  “Where are you?” The call was on standard channels and was nearly real time, so Kitchell had to be close by Europa Station.

  “I’m on a shuttle, heading your way. Thought I would call to see if we could get together.”

  “That would be fantastic. What’s the occasion?”

  “I’m doing a research project for Professor Anders, and I need to work with a couple of the folks there. I’ll only be on station for a few days.”

  “I can make myself free all week if you want,” Torrance said, suddenly excited.

  “All I’ve got is tonight.”

  Torrance tried to quiet his annoyance. He wanted to see Kitchell, and the idea that the kid would be on station but not want anything more than a simple check-in made him feel pitiful. Pining over the kid? Was that what his situation boiled down to now? The kid was a grown-up. He was making his own way. He didn’t need the help of a washed-up ex-systems guy who spent his time shining the edges of missions that would probably never fly.

  “One night is better than none,” he said.

  Kitchell gave one of those bright grins that only the young can manage.

  “I’m sorry to hear about Magellan. I should have called earlier.”

  Torrance gave a now-practiced shrug. “Things work out as they work out.”

  “That might work on everyone else, but you can’t hide your disappointment from me,” Kitchell replied.

  Torrance sat back.

  “Seriously,” Kitchell said. “I’m sure you’re doing everything you can to get missions going. What can I do to help?”

  “Nothing, Thomas. I love your enthusiasm. But you’ll need to understand that once decisions have been made at a certain level, there’s really nothing you can do to stop them.”

  “I can’t accept that, LC. You and I both know we can’t give up on Eden. Hell, the project I’m working on is focused on ideas about using multilayered composite data to process deep space radiation signals, but I’m doing it with the idea that the algorithms we create will have uses on the Eden data. There’s got to be a way to get out there.”

  Torrance shook his head and scratched the back of his neck. The observation panel began to open, and he
looked out to take in the pristinely rounded edge of Jupiter’s profile. A wave of anger built inside him, sensations he had kept tightly bottled for months rising closer to the surface now in a dark and ugly surge.

  “It doesn’t matter,” he said.

  “It matters,” Kitchell said. “Eden has your pod.”

  “Which, assuming they exist, will probably help them zero.”

  “Not true.”

  “Very true,” Torrance snapped back.

  When Kitchell didn’t say anything, Torrance continued, his voice growing terser as he went.

  “We both know this was a dumb-assed game from the beginning. Reengineering on that scale is damn well impossible. Too many things to go wrong, right? The pod itself has to make the surface, and then it has to stay in one piece. The civilization has to be there, and then has to actually see the damned thing. Just finding it could be near impossible, not to mention dealing with the technologies inside. Then, assuming these people have the math and science it takes just to figure out how it works, the pod would have to actually find those right ‘people’ to do it. Then there’s manufacturing capability and the resources it takes to make spacefaring technology. What kind of metals they have on the planet, right? I mean, do you know how much molybdenum it takes to build a sensor system? Better yet all the other complex boxes it takes to build a spaceship? Christ. What kind of an idiot does it take to pretend that something like that could ever work?”

  Torrance took a breath.

  His fists were clenched even tighter than his jaws. He looked at Kitchell, who sat silently.

  “I’m sorry,” he said.

  “Guess we should just quit, eh, LC?”

  “That’s where I’m at. I mean, crap. The fact that I’m mad about things doesn’t make that entire argument wrong—and that doesn’t even take into account the fact that even if there’s an alien existence on Eden, it has to be at the right state of development to make anything happen.”

  “True.”

  They sat together for a bit.

  “All of that discounts the one fact that matters, though, LC.”

  “What’s that.”

  “That the life-forms on Eden have already proven they can send signals.”

  Torrance’s chuckle was soft and full of mirth.

  The kid’s perseverance was annoying.

  “Don’t mind me, Thomas,” he said. “I’m just…whatever.”

  “You’re fed up. That’s fine. I get that.”

  “The people who run this thing…they need to get a spine.”

  “They’re too busy keeping themselves in their position,” Kitchell replied. “Age-old game, right, LC? We’ve been through this before, right? You’ve said it time and time again. People argue among themselves about trivialities and ignore the things that are important, we drive our people into the ground in the name of protecting them, and we’re willing to exterminate entire populations of creatures in the name of progress for ourselves. Does that do it?”

  This time Torrance merely smirked, knowing what was coming.

  “Yeah, I think that’s got it.”

  “But, still, somehow we make things work.”

  Torrance pursed his lips.

  “It’s a long game, LC. If there’s anything you’ve taught me over the years, it’s that when you can’t win today, fall back and play the long play. The truth eventually wins out.”

  “I hate that people have to pay the price, though.”

  “I know. That’s why I think you’re a helluva man.”

  Torrance sighed.

  Kitchell was right about the long game.

  Magellan may never take a scientific flight, but there would be other ships, and other moments. It would take time. Probably a lot of time. It meant the same battles would have to be fought again inside the scientific community, and then again in the political offices. With Farina Janic in Reyes’s shoes, some of those battles might be more difficult, but he had seen Reyes at work. He had seen how a single person with a single vision could come within a hair’s breadth of pulling it off, even in this weirdly complex system where nothing is real.

  Torrance’s despair settled into something that might someday resemble fortitude.

  Yes, he could still make a difference.

  But to do so meant he had to plan.

  Take a while to rest, maybe. Let the world run on its own for a bit. Play the game, find the levers, maybe be the father to a kid who would eventually grow up to leave him like Kitchell was, and be the partner of a high-profile military woman while he silently filled the spaces that could let him guide certain decisions.

  Yes, he thought. It was time to play the long game.

  “Thank you, Thomas,” he said. “I can’t wait to see you tonight.”

  NEWS

  SOURCE: INFOWAVE — NEWS for the 23rd century

  TRANSMITTED: November 11, 2222, Earth Standard

  HEADLINE: UG Space Crew Finds Ancient Civilization

  United Government Interstellar Command spokesperson Casper Gran confirmed today that the crew of the UGIS Hercules, the ninth Excelsior class spacecraft to be built, and the first to be used for partial scientific purposes, has discovered relics of a civilization in the Sigma Draconis system. The data sheet, distributed shortly after the broadcast, indicates that rubidium-strontium dating suggests the location is roughly 700 million years old.

  “We’re excited at the discovery,” Gran said. “Unfortunately we are several hundred million years too late to shake hands.”

  The site was described as a small village.

  Fossil records suggest life-forms existed, including an apelike reptilian animal that met its demise through a volcanic eruption.

  The exercise was brought to a halt when Universe Three raiders drove the science crew out of the area.

  “It’s a shame we’re just finding this,” Gran said in reply to a question as to whether skirmishes with members of the terrorist faction Universe Three had affected their progress. “It’s very hard to do good science when you’re facing attacks every time you turn your back. So, yes, it’s slowing us down, but I’m sure we’ll return.”

  SOURCE: INFOWAVE — NEWS for the 23rd century

  TRANSMITTED: April 19, 2223, Earth Standard

  HEADLINE: First Interstellar Colony Settled

  UG officials announced the successful landing and installation of the Freehold colonists on Florecer, the innermost planet in the 16 Cygni B system.

  The colony represents the first public commercial venture to come from the Star Drive program, and has been sponsored by the United Government Consortium for Advancement of Humanity, a corporate think tank that has recently been making a controversial splash for their advanced concepts on the use of capitalism to drive progress into the stars.

  “This is an important day for us,” said consortium spokesperson Allegra Hopkins. “It’s exciting to know that we have a place where human beings can live and grow out in the stars.”

  The establishment of the colony also represents Interstellar Command’s latest approach at providing security against Universe Three attacks.

  “The Command has dedicated an entire wing to the garrison and defense of Florecer,” Hopkins said. “For which we are grateful.”

  In related news, scientists have discovered a striated methane and sulfuric atmosphere over the third planet in the Omicron Eridani system. “We don’t think the planet is one we would want to settle. It’s not as pleasant as Florecer,” joked Io-based Cal State University professor Leif Womar. “But we’re certain that we can grow biological material there, and we’re interested in determining if we can use it as an interstellar agricultural center.”

  The United Congresses are apparently considering a joint effort to place a bioengineering station in orbit around the planet in hopes the remote farming techniques could result in Omicron Eridani being converted into a food services facility.

  SOURCE: INFOWAVE — NEWS for the 23rd century

  T
RANSMITTED: October 6, 2229, Earth Standard

  HEADLINE: 70 Ophiuchi A: No Life

  UG scientists announced they have come up empty again in their search for extraterrestrial life. UGIS Terraplane, the newest Star Drive spacecraft, completed a two-month mission to the 70 Ophiuchi A system, where six planets and their twelve moons were scanned for signs of life.

  “We are disappointed but not overly surprised,” Chief Engineer Samuel Berk explained at a Lester Space Research Center press conference. “It’s a very big universe out there, and we’re looking for a needle in a haystack. We remain confident, though. Star Drive technology means it won’t be too long before we’ve had a look-see at most of the nearby galaxy.”

  The UG space program has been facing controversy over the size of its budget, and several opponents have begun calling for a curtailing of planned missions in order to save resources and focus on the Universe Three attacks that are still wreaking havoc in many wild territories.

  SOURCE: INFOWAVE — NEWS for the 23rd century

  TRANSMITTED: May 7, 2231, Earth Standard

  HEADLINE: Search for Terrorists Continue

  After a pattern of recent attacks struck stations on Mars, Uranus, and the asteroid mining belt, UG Interstellar Command officials released declassified data describing the methods being used to triangulate the possible whereabouts of Universe Three’s central location.

  “Given the time we’ve been involved in these skirmishes, it would not be surprising if the renegades have split into multiple outposts,” said Sector Admiral Omir Lassiter. “As such we’re deploying listening telescopes and other ground-based processing personnel to keep our feelers out.” The analysts are tasked with identifying radio emissions that reach the Solar System, and comparing them to data recorded during the multiple jump operations being taken to study various sectors of space.

  Critics suggest that the approach is too lackadaisical.

  “The latest round of attacks have proven once again that the current administration does not care about the people of the Solar System and our colonies,” said newly announced candidate for supreme president, Tomas Halper.