Starshine by G. S. Jennsen Read online

  Ah, as kind and doting as always. She shrugged. “I was working.”

  “I see. Would you like some tea?”

  “Water’s fine,” which she proceeded to go to the cabinet and get herself.

  “How are you, dear?”

  Alex took a long sip from the marbled glass tumbler and leaned in deliberate casualness beside the teak bookcase filled with antique texts on military and political history. “Fine. Busy. You?”

  The tiny vein in her mother’s left temple pulsed. She traded the screen for a teacup. “As well as can be expected. The Fionava Province has been a nuisance of late. I would share the details with you, but of course the parking attendant has a higher security clearance than you do.”

  The tenor with which the statement was delivered seemed to imply it was somehow a failing on her part. “Alas.”

  Miriam took a slow, measured sip of her tea then stared pensively into the dainty cup, as though it would magically supply her a suitable topic for small talk. “I ran into Malcolm at the Cascades Memorial Charity Auction last week. And met his new wife.”

  She needed a wiser teacup. Alex raised a studiously unimpressed eyebrow. “I’m sure she was lovely.”

  “Not so lovely as you, I must say, but attractive enough. He asked about you.”

  Her eyes flickered over to the window…shit. She bit back a cringe at the display of weakness, not wanting to compound the error. “And what did you tell him?”

  “The truth—that you’re still gallivanting around the galaxy, raking in millions and pouring it all back into that damnable ship of yours.” She paused, undoubtedly for dramatic effect. “I do believe he looked a little morose at the notion.”

  Alex groaned and plopped down in the hard, purposefully uncomfortable chair opposite the desk. She pulled one knee up to hug against her chest. “I’m going to give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you didn’t ask me here in order to throw failed love affairs in my face. It’s a long list and I haven’t the time. What do you want?”

  Miriam placed the teacup on the hutch behind her and sat as well, rigid-straight spine not touching the back of the comparably luxurious chair. “I can’t simply want to spend time with my only child?”

  “You can—but you don’t.”

  Her mother’s shoulders squared with military precision, an indication she wouldn’t argue the point. “Very well. I asked you here to share a wonderful opportunity for you. The Minister for Extra-Solar Development contacted me yesterday. He finds himself with a vacancy in his department. Apparently the Director of Deep Space Exploration is resigning to ‘pursue other endeavors,’ and the Minister would like to offer the post to you.”

  A flashing pinpoint of light in the corner of Alex’s eVi signaled the delivery of the diagnostics she had set to run before departing the hangar. Her right pupil constricted to start the results scrolling on her whisper. “Prestigious position.”

  If her mother noticed the somewhat unfocused nature of her gaze, she hid it well. “It’s not nepotism. While you lack oversight experience, you’re otherwise more than qualified.”

  “More qualified than the parking attendant at least.” The whisper blurred out of focus and auto-paused as she directed a sharpened gaze toward the woman on the other side of the desk. Her mother couldn’t seem to decide whether to scowl or laugh; the result was an uncommonly animated expression. “But what exactly of everything you know about me says ‘government desk job’?”

  “It’s not a desk job. You’ll need to travel to evaluate new discoveries several times a year, I’m quite sure.”

  “Several times a ye—” her nose scrunched up in disdain “—you know what, never mind.”

  “So you’ll consider it then.”

  The whisper snapped back into focus…she frowned at the percentages displayed. A blink and a small aural materialized, and the diagnostics data began flowing in greater precision and detail twelve centimeters beyond her right eye. “No.”

  Her mother’s jaw clacked shut at the response. Or because of the aural. Possibly both. “I didn’t say accept it unconditionally, merely consider it.”

  Damn, there must be a power leak somewhere along the fiber. She pulsed Charlie to send the bot in to inspect the line. The dampener had to be a minimum of twenty-eight percent more effective or it wasn’t worth the diamond picocrystals which generated it. Her last find had almost been snaked out from under her because Terrence Macolly, too much of a lazy ass to do his own work, had tracked her emission signature and followed her into the asteroid ring orbiting Delta Lacertae. She didn’t intend to risk a repeat intrusion. “No.”

  “Alexis—”

  Her mouth twitched, though her focus didn’t shift from the data this time. “You know I hate it when you call me that.”

  “I have every right to call you by your birth name. I am the one who gave it to you after all.”

  Alex spared a brief, withering glance. Her mother’s eyes were averted downward, ostensibly studying the patterns of foam in her tea, perchance for more lousy ideas. When she spoke again, her tone was softer and no longer quite the voice of The Admiral.

  “Your father was the first one to call you ‘Alex.’”

  She shut off the aural in frustration. “Don’t you think I know that?”

  “Yes, well.” Miriam’s chin notched upward. “I think you should reconsider the Minister’s offer. It is a position of some prominence and will provide a measure of stability you could benefit from.”

  She snorted. “I realize you’re used to dictating people’s lives to them around here, but you don’t get to make my decisions for me. You haven’t for a long, long time.”

  Miriam nodded with measured grace, appearing to acknowledge for the moment, Alex had the upper hand. “Perhaps it was…inconsiderate of me to insist you come here.”

  “To order Richard to deliver your summons and drag me before you, you mean?”

  She raised a hand in mild protest. “Richard wanted the chance to see you. I hope you don’t blame him for any unpleasantness.”

  “Oh, I don’t. I blame you.”

  To her credit, her mother was nearly impossible to provoke. If anything, her expression softened in response to the barb. “I’m not trying to tell you how to live your life. But I worry about you, out there all alone in deep space. That ship of yours is too powerful for one person to handle.”

  Yet even in her attempt at kindness or at least civility, she managed to choose the exact wrong thing to say.

  Deep down, Alex knew it probably wasn’t intentional. But there was too much—too many hateful words and spiteful reactions to them, too much water under a broken bridge—and she had no desire to grasp at a tenuous thread only to have it fray and dissolve like all the others.

  “The past eight years would beg to differ with you. With all due respect, you have no idea just how much I can handle.” She stood abruptly. “Is there anything else?”

  “No. Not when you won’t listen to reason.”

  She didn’t rise to the bait. She simply wanted to be gone. “If you’d like, I will send a graciously worded response to the Minister thanking him for the honor of considering me but regretfully declining due to other obligations.”

  “That won’t be necessary. I’ll inform him.”

  “Suit yourself.” She pivoted and headed for the door.

  “Alexis?”

  She paused mid-stride—an inborn response to a mother’s plea—but didn’t look back.

  “At least be careful out there.”

  A tight nod and she was gone.

  It was well past twenty-three hundred when Alex got home. The bot had found two micro-imperfections in the fiber which had to be rewoven. Then the diagnostics had to be run again, the ware re-modded, and the power system ratios recalibrated again before she closed the ship up for the night. Securing the line to the hull and shielding it would have to wait until the morning.

  She opened a bottle of Swiss cabernet and left it to bre
athe while she ran through the shower, then combed out her hair and slipped on a silk robe to wear back downstairs.

  A glass of the cabernet in hand, she stepped out onto the balcony. The glittering night lights of the city spread out beneath her, the light reflecting off the full moon mirrored in the Sound beyond.

  She didn’t pour all her profits into her ship. The loft eighty stories above downtown had cost more than a few credits; the custom tech installed in it nearly as much again. Though she was only here maybe three months out of a given year, she wasn’t above enjoying at least a few of the finer things her income now afforded her.

  As the glass touched her lips her thoughts drifted to Malcolm. She hadn’t done so in some time, but after the mention of him today quite a few memories had crept to the forefront of her mind. Most of them were good…she had loved him, after all.

  But according to him she loved her ship more, and that was something he couldn’t accept. And since he was mostly right, she hadn’t fought him when he left.

  She had missed him for a while, missed his warm smile and tender yet expert touch. But she had also welcomed the absence of the invisible leash which had tugged her back to Earth more often than she liked, which had whispered of duties to another and required explanations and justifications for every excursion. And eventually even the good memories had faded into the background, replaced by the thrill of new endeavors.

  Her thoughts continued to linger on the past as she walked inside and her gaze fell to the far wall of the open room that constituted the entirety of the loft, save for the kitchen and the elevated sleeping area overlooking the main floor.

  It was decorated in visuals she had captured in her travels across the galaxy. They included a supernova in bright, perpetual explosion, a comet on a flyby of a crescent moon, the slow pulse of a ghostly blue and lavender nebula and the gamma flare of a neutron star.

  Those and others framed the centerpiece of the wall: a panoramic side-on image of the Milky Way, taken far from the light pollution of any suns or haze of any nebulae. Trillions of stars shone and sparkled to converge on the brilliance of the galactic core.

  Malcolm hadn’t been exactly right. Yes, she loved her ship more than she had loved him. But what she loved even more was what it gave her: freedom, and the key to the marvels of space. It gave her the stars, and she doubted she could ever love anything or anyone more than she loved the stars.

  Speaking of…she refilled her glass and settled onto the couch. She sent a passcode to the control interface and the opposite wall dissolved into a three-dimensional holo of the nearest quadrant of the galaxy. A slight wave of her hand and it zoomed into the Metis Nebula and its environs.

  Near to but definitively outside Federation-controlled territory and on the outer edge of explored space, it would take her five days to reach the periphery—far less time than most, but still a trek. It was an allegedly uninteresting, ordinary plerion wrapped in an ancient, gas-heavy supernova remnant which had stubbornly refused to dissipate into the interstellar medium.

  But she had made a small fortune by seeing what others did not. The ‘experts’ had said the Lacertae asteroid ring was nothing but dead rocks until she had found the ultra-rare heavy metals in the cores of the largest ones. Now Astral Materials was using it to develop frames for space stations they claimed would be strong enough to withstand a Type Ia supernova shockwave.

  The golden-blue glow of Metis had caught her attention several excursions ago and had danced and thrummed at the edge of her consciousness ever since. Now flush with the considerable proceeds of the Lacertae find and the resultant ship upgrades, she figured she could afford to indulge a hunch for a month or so.

  Her eyes widened deliberately, pupils dilated and ocular implant flashing as she simultaneously reviewed the data she had pulled in her library query of the scientific archives—which was appallingly sparse—scrolling up her eVi, the rotating full-spectrum image of the Nebula, and her own data flowing alongside it.

  “Well, you lovely, mysterious Metis…what secrets do you have to show me?”

  2

  SENECA

  Cavare, Capital of the Senecan Federation

  * * *

  The kinetic blade slid into the man’s throat like a knife through butter. Caleb held him securely from behind as the blood began to flow and the man jerked and spasmed.

  He generally preferred clean, painless deaths. But he wanted to watch this man die, and die slowly.

  When the man had lost all motor function, Caleb dumped him onto the desk and flipped him over. Eyes wide with fear, confusion and outrage met his. The man’s lips contorted in a caricature of speech, though no words came out.

  He had a good idea of the intended utterance. Why. It was a question easily answered. Vengeance.

  “Justice.”

  As the pool of blood spread across the desk and formed waterfalls to the floor below, the eyes belonging to the leader of the Humans Against Artificials terrorist organization glazed over. The last spark of life within them dimmed, then went out.

  One down.

  Caleb Marano stepped out of the spaceport into the cyan-tinged glow of a late afternoon sun reflecting off the polished marble tiles of the plaza. The chill breeze caressing his skin felt like a welcome home. Cavare was always cool and often cold; Krysk had been a veritable oven by comparison.

  He descended the first set of stairs and angled toward the corner to get clear of the bustling thoroughfare, then relaxed beside the ledge to wait for his companions.

  Isabela exited the spaceport a moment later. She held a bag in one arm and a fidgeting bundle of arms, legs and long, dark curls in the other. She looked disturbingly ‘momish’ as she struggled to brush out Marlee’s tangled hair—but he could remember when she had been that little girl with long, dark curls…and it wasn’t so long ago.

  With a groan she gave up the futile endeavor and allowed her daughter to escape her grasp and make a beeline for Caleb.

  He crouched to meet Marlee at eye level. She plowed into him with almost enough force to knock him over backwards. He would’ve laughed but for the forlorn look in her pale turquoise eyes.

  “Do you have to go away now, Uncle Caleb?”

  He tousled her curls into further disarray. “Yeah, I’m afraid I have to go back to work. But it sure was great spending my vacation with you. I learned a lot.”

  She wore her best serious face as she nodded sagely. “You had a lot to learn.”

  He grinned and leaned in to whisper to his co-conspirator. “You remember what all we talked about, right?”

  Her eyes were wide and honest. “Uh-huh.”

  “Good. Want one more ride before I go?”

  Her head bobbed up and down with gusto, instantly that of a carefree child again.

  “Okay.” He scooped her up in his arms and stood, made certain he had a solid grasp of her tiny waist, and began to spin around with accelerating speed. Her arms and legs dangled free to swing through the air while she cackled in delight.

  After another few spins he slowed—he had learned her limits during the last few weeks—letting her limbs fall against him before he came to a stop. He gave her a final squeeze and gently set her to the ground as her mother reached them.

  Isabela wore a half-amused, half-exhausted expression as Marlee started running in dizzy circles around her legs. “Sorry about the hold up. They let us back on the transport and we found Mr. Freckles under the seat.” She patted her bag in confirmation of the stuffed animal’s now secure location. “Are you sure you don’t want to have a quick dinner with us?”

  He responded with a dubious smirk. “You can be polite if you like, but the truth is you are sick to death of me and counting the minutes until you are at last rid of me.”

  “Well, yes. But I never know when I’ll get to see you again….” The twinkle faded from her eyes, replaced by something darker and heavier.

  She knew he didn’t work for a shuttle manufacturing company, and he
knew that she knew. But they never, ever, talked about it. Partly for her safety and his, but partly because he preferred to continue being in her mind the strong, stalwart older brother with the easygoing demeanor and wicked sense of humor, without introducing any moral grayness to the relationship dynamic.

  Because he never wanted her to look at him with caution, disillusionment…or worst of all, fear.

  He merely nodded in response. “I’ll come visit again soon. Promise.”

  She reached down to pause the cyclone at her legs. “I’ll hold you to it. I’m going to take Marlee to see Mom, then we’ll head back home.”

  He leaned over the struggling cyclone to embrace her. “Thank you for the extended hospitality. I’m glad I was able to spend so much time with you.”

  “Anytime, I mean it,” she whispered in his ear. “Stay safe.”

  He kept his shrug mild as he stepped away. “Of course.” Not likely.

  Two insistent and tearful hugs from Marlee later, they parted ways. He watched them disappear into the throng of travelers, then headed in the direction of the parking complex.

  Caleb stepped in the adjoining lavatory and washed the blood off his hands and forearms. Then he returned to the office, reached under the corner of the desk and triggered the ‘Alert’ panic signal—the one he had never allowed the dead man to reach. There was a surveillance cam hidden in the ceiling, and he looked up at it and smiled. He had a number of smiles in his repertoire; this was not one of the more pleasant ones.

  The commotion began as he exited the building. He quickened his stride to his bike, jumped on and fired the engine. Three men bolted out the door, two Daemons and a TSG swinging in his direction.

  It wouldn’t do to get shot. A flick of his thumb and the bike burst out of the parking slot. He laid it down as laser fire sliced barely a meter overhead, his leg hovering centimeters above the ground while he slid around the corner and onto the cross-street.