Oh, and there was Valkyrie.
It hadn’t taken long for the combined processing power of three Artificials enhanced by the neural imprints of some damn clever humans to result in a host of technological leaps. The list of ways they were changing the world was long, but most relevantly for the Siyane was the radical miniaturization of quantum boxes and hardware circuitry. What once filled a large room now fit between the interior walls and bulkhead of a small ship .
Abigail had protested the final stage in her loss of Valkyrie, contending she needed the Artificial to assist in the rebuilding of Meno, and in the rebuilding of a human brain. But while quantum communications were able to span the universe—this universe—in an instant, they could not penetrate the portal. Alex needed Valkyrie with her where they were going. She had of course kept that detail to herself, instead arguing the need to get Valkyrie out from under government control.
A compromise had been reached which, while very expensive, did have the benefit of at least partially satisfying the bureaucrats as well: a complete copy of Valkyrie was constructed and an image of her neural net flashed to the new machine.
From the time the new Artificial was activated, it and Valkyrie began diverging, and in a matter of weeks they could no longer be considered the same in any meaningful way. Valkyrie professed no misgivings about the situation, explaining that she intended to view her mirrored copy like a sister. In fact, she was somewhat enamored with the notion of having a sibling; as Alex was an only child it would be a wholly new experience for her.
Caleb grasped Alex’s hand in his, and she stood to join him at the viewport. After a moment she halfway faced him, eyes dancing in delight to match his own. “Ready to see what’s out there, Mr. Solovy?”
“Hell, yes, Mrs. Marano. Beyond ready. Show me this supposed ‘adventure.’”
“Knowing we won’t die simply by going through doesn’t take the adventure out of it?”
He wrapped an arm around her waist and yanked her closer for an ardent, tantalizing kiss which ended far too soon, then murmured against her lips. “No, it does not. Now let’s do this.”
She reluctantly disentangled from his embrace to ensure all the systems were in order. “Valkyrie, how about you?”
‘You are taking me to explore other universes. I am ready.’
“Okay, then. ”
The aliens had asserted no one should ever come looking for them—but she had never agreed to that particular term of surrender.
She reached down and sent the gamma signal.
The ring exploded outward to fill with the still mysterious, luminescent plasma. Around it the patrolling ships reacted the next instant, rushing to take up a defensive formation.
Her hand slid across the HUD to the thrusters. With a touch she gunned the impulse engine to full power and accelerated into the portal.
AURORA THESI (PORTAL PRIME)
E NISLE S EVENTEEN
I considered the form lying inertly in the stasis chamber.
It appeared a stranger to me. I felt no kinship, no attachment to the body providing my life force. Memory my aspect, I no longer recalled having resided within it. Even so, logic and the reality of Katasketousya origins dictated I once did so.
To find oneself bound inside the confines of a small, frail body, rendered hapless by its myriad limitations, was anathema to me. I moved the stasis chamber into the deepest corner of the structure. The life support system was designed to function for perpetuity without my intervention. Unseen, it would trouble me no further.
I left the structure and its refuge behind to hover at the shore of my lake, finding myself uncertain of what to do next.
Exile.
Such had been the verdict of the Idryma Conclave. Exiled from their ranks in name, title and consciousness. Exiled from Amaranthe. My body retrieved from the krypti and relinquished to the dirt of Aurora Thesi.
A watcher with no subjects.
An Analystae with no dominion .
It would be far simpler if it were such a simple matter as this. But my task extended well beyond the rigid strictures of the Idryma. Aurora had been entrusted to me because I understood our purpose more deeply than anyone, save possibly Lakhes.
Histories. Futures. What was inevitable, and all that was not.
The Conclave called Aurora a failure. We would refocus our efforts on the other Enisles, Lakhes proclaimed, in the search for new and innovative prospects. We would try again, Hyperion declared, but ensure firmer restraints were in place from the beginning this time.
To invest time and effort in such an endeavor was foolish, risking all while invalidating the experiment from its inception. Interference may be acceptable in the other Enisles—but not in Aurora, whether this incarnation or any future one. No, the sole path to the answers sought was to serve as Clockmaker Gods, to create the universe then let it become what it dared. But Hyperion’s clumsy meddling had demonstrated a lack of understanding of this most fundamental notion.
The answers, I believed, still resided in Aurora. For what the Conclave was too insular to see—or too fearful to admit if they did see—was this: the uprising by the Humans had in fact proven the validity of the principal thesis underlying Aurora’s existence. Now was not the time to recoil as mettle failed.
This was the kairos. This was what we had wanted . The others might flinch and turn away, but I would not.
I extended, diffusing out over the lake and above the mountains. I was truly alone on Thesi now, as neither Hyperion nor any others would be venturing by to consort with an exile. I was truly alone in spirit now, my consciousness denied entry into the Idryma.
Before departing Aurora for the last time, representatives of the Conclave had placed spatial triggers at the Metis Portal, designed to pitch the apparatus into a dimensional singularity upon its opening from the other side. It had been a near thing, our—their—decision to refrain from destroying the portal immediately. Only my most elegant arguments had convinced the Conclave they need not permanently foreclose this avenue. Katasketousya appreciated the concept of ‘forever’ better than most species, and when presented with the alternative of the spatial triggers Lakhes had eventually been persuaded to not take such irrevocable action.
But the Conclave, eager to be rid of the troublesome Aurora and its equally troublesome Analystae Mnemosyne, had perhaps not paid sufficient attention to the details.
I was and had always been the First Analystae of Aurora. This meant I controlled all the apparatuses of the Enisle, observational and otherwise.
The triggers had been deactivated. I could rearm them at any time, and should it become necessary—should the Humans or their scions attempt to launch an armada through the Metis Portal, one bent on wanton destruction of whatever they found—I would do so, regrettably but without hesitation.
But I was the First Analystae of Aurora, and this experiment was not over. Once a proud member of an underground resistance, I was now a rebel from the rebellion.
As the sea spread out beneath me, an alert transmitted the opening of the Metis Portal. I halted far above the waters and waited.
What emerged from the portal was not the feared armada. Instead, it was a single ship. A familiar ship. I felt a quickening in my atoms.
Clever, dangerous girl. I have been expecting you.
V ENATORIS
Humanity may have colonized much of the galaxy, but space remains as dangerous as ever, and so do the people inhabiting it.
When Alexis Solovy—space explorer, freelance scout, recalcitrant wanderer—lands the contract of a lifetime, the race is on to claim the prize. Now she must not only outrun but outsmart her rivals to uncover the secrets of an ancient, mysterious pulsar. For deep in the void, far beyond the reach of civilization, wealth and renown matter little absent the ultimate reward: survival.
Set five years before STARSHINE: Aurora Rising Book One (Aurora Rhapsody #1 ), Venatoris takes a younger, wilder, rough-around-the-edges Alexis Solovy and Kenned
y Rossi on an unforgettable adventure across the stars.
*
Venatoris is the most fun I’ve ever had writing a short story, and some of the most fun I’ve had writing, period. It’s a wild, rollicking space adventure starring Alex Solovy, Kennedy Rossi, and Bob. Who’s Bob? You’ll see.
Venatoris takes place after Restless I and five years before Starshine. While your enjoyment of it can only increase the better you know Alex and Kennedy, it can be enjoyed at any time.
D RAMATIS P ERSONAE
* * *
Alexis ‘Alex’ Solovy
Starship pilot, scout and space explorer;
daughter of Miriam and David Solovy.
Faction: Earth Alliance
Kennedy Rossi
Ship Designer, IS Design;
friend of Alex Solovy.
Faction: Earth Alliance
Bob Patera
Starship pilot and space scout.
Faction: Independent
Joaquin Kyril
Starship pilot and space scout.
Faction: Independent
“The fast lane I am flying down is one
with no end in sight
filled with reckless adventure and
paved with dangerous delights.”
— Ashley Young
2317
(5 Y EARS B EFORE THE E VENTS OF S TARSHINE)
* * *
YUZHOU LI ORBITAL STATION
S HI S HEN S TELLAR S YSTEM
1,080 P ARSECS FROM E ARTH
“DOUBLE BOURBON, STRAIGHT UP. Double everything. Except the ice. Don’t double the ice.”
Alexis Solovy glanced down the bar in idle curiosity at the source of the dramatic pronouncement. A woman with frizzy black hair and pale, bleached skin sagged off a stool and onto the bar, arms splayed out in defeat. She looked familiar, but damned if Alex could pull a name out of anywhere. “Bad day?”
The woman didn’t lift her head from where it lay propped sideways on her elbow. “My ship is trashed. A mangled heap. Bloody asteroid spun out when I tried to grapple it. I limped back here like a crippled monkey, jack shit to show for my trouble.”
Alex raised her glass in contrived sympathy and turned away. If the woman didn’t have any useful leads, it wasn’t worth the pain of engaging in conversation, polite or otherwise.
Intel was the only reason to come to this godforsaken place, the sleaziest bar on the sleaziest space station for two kiloparsecs. Tidbits. Information. Leads. On a good night, contracts.
Her eyes roved over the room in search of better prospects. The bar was nearly two-thirds full—loud and busy, but not so full as to preclude card and target games and the occasional display of bravado. Bad synth blaring out of the speakers made it feel rowdier than the reality.
Alex knew half the people on sight. Some she was on a last name basis with; others, an epithet basis. Many were interstellar scouts, freelance—same as her, while a few were traders, smugglers, or both. But she didn’t see any corp reps or brokers. Was no one in this cursed place doing business?
“Alex, doll, you need something stronger than…what are you drinking?”
She leveled an unimpressed scowl in Bob Patera’s direction as he leaned on the bar beside her. “A Carina Nova. They make it in civilized places like Earth. Luckily, the bartender’s visited civilized places.”
He nodded with as much vigor as his inebriated state allowed. “Still need to get you something stronger.”
“Can’t. I’m working.”
He stared at her skeptically but couldn’t seem to think of a suitable response. Finally he took a long, fulsome sip of his drink, a dark and frothy concoction. “Go on a date with me.”
It had to be at least the seventy-fourth time he’d asked in the two and a half years since she’d met him. “No.”
“Why not?”
“Because you think you’re a space pirate, Bob.”
“But I am a space pirate.”
She laughed in spite of herself. “My point exactly.”
“You dated that Ethan Tollis guy, and he thinks he’s a synth star.”
“He is a synth star.” And the dating happened years ago, before Ethan found well-deserved fame, but she wasn’t inclined to correct him.
He looked genuinely offended. “I am a space pirate.”
Patera was a good guy; a functioning drunk and a righteous lech, but a good guy nonetheless. He took the odd scouting job mostly to entertain himself and to have tales to brag about at any of a staggering variety of bars, of which this was only one .
“Oh, clearly. But—”
She recognized the man the instant he stepped in the bar and made sure she was the first person he made eye contact with. “Sorry, Bob, got to go. Working.”
The man sat down at a table in the corner near the door. She stood up and headed for it with an air of deliberate casualness. It wouldn’t do for anyone else to notice him and beat her there, but she also didn’t want anyone else to notice her running for him.
She made it to the table scot-free and slid in opposite him. “You have a job?” Perhaps not the smoothest greeting, but she rarely had the patience for pleasantries.
He didn’t appear to mind. As a respected and experienced broker for numerous Alliance corps, he presumably knew interstellar scouts weren’t always the most socially well-adjusted people.
“Astral Materials is getting ready to post an open contract for rare, high value elements at a newly discovered pulsar in Messier 71.”
Messier 71 lay a considerable distance from Shi Shen, out in the void beyond settled space. She was okay with that.
“What’s special about it?”
“It’s a millisecond pulsar with three suspected planets identified. The scientific data is so promising they already gave it a name: Shanshuo. It’s the Chinese word for—”
“Scintillation. I know. And it’s an open contract?”
“Should hit the boards in the next hour or so. You did a great job on the contract for Palaimo last month, so I thought you’d be interested in a little forewarning.”
Pulsar planets were rare, and rare was interesting. Better yet, millisecond pulsars were very, very old, which meant lots of opportunities for elements to bake, mature and transform. The odds leaned toward something lucrative waiting at Shanshuo.
She harbored no doubts she would find that something if it was there to find, but she also had to find it first . “What’s the payout?”
“Depends on what you find.”
Her gaze bore into him until he made a prevaricating motion. “200K to 1.2 million. ”
She managed to stand up without sending the chair skittering across the floor. “Appreciate the tip.”
Then she slinked out the door, hoping no one noticed her exit, and hurried down the curving walkway of the station’s outer torus as she messaged Kennedy.
Ken, where are you? It’s time to quit partying and start working.
The response took several seconds to come in.
Are you sure? I literally just met a delicious merchant from Arcadia. He sells custom wide-band decrypters fabbed onsite.
And he needs you to come to his hotel room so he can show them to you?
Actually I suggested the hotel room.
Alex reached the transfer lift and hopped aboard as it departed.
Hey, it’s your vacation, but you said you wanted to come on a job with me so you could, and I quote, ‘See what I did with all my free time.’ Here’s your chance. You can stay and bed Don Juan if you want, but I’m clamps off in twenty.
Oh, fine. I’ll meet you at the ship. I’ve got to disentangle myself here.
Twenty, Ken.
The hangar deck did not look to be in compliance with any safety regs from this century, and certainly not Earth Alliance regs, which Shi Shen claimed to be subject to. Maybe the jurisdiction got fuzzy once one breached space? Alex knew better, though. Her mother—Queen Admiral of the Universe, Earth Alliance Strategic Command Di
vision—would have an apoplectic fit if she saw the wreck this place was. But her mother did not deign to frequent places such as this.
A third of the bays were filled with half-broken ships while their owners, bots and assorted mechanics tried to put them back together. Two men were busy installing a new impulse engine in the ship next to hers, right there on the deck. She shook her head and strode past them .
The Siyane sat at the end of the left row. Sleek, aerodynamic lines gleamed panther black, giving it a predatory appearance. It wasn’t the largest ship in the bay, but by God it was the most beautiful. As well it should be, since she’d designed it herself. Built to spec by the company Kennedy worked for, it represented nothing short of perfection.
…Except for all the upgrades and customizations she desperately wanted to make but could not yet afford. Step by step, day by day.
Kennedy came rushing up behind her, a mess of golden curls bouncing around a flushed face as she repositioned the straps of her jade slip dress on her shoulders. She skidded to a stop in a huff. “You’re not on board yet? I could’ve gotten—”
“You can tell me on the way, Ken. Come on.”
“Where are we going?”
“On an adventure. Trust me, it’ll be fun.”
SIYANE
M ESSIER 71
PSR J 1952+1846
4,220 P ARSECS FROM E ARTH
Many people believed humanity’s mere presence in the stars beyond its home planet had rendered space civilized.
Superluminal travel allowed them to hopscotch over the void on their way from one colony to the next. Half the time they didn’t even bother to glance out a ship’s viewport and note it was the stars they journeyed through.
But out here, twelve hundred parsecs from the nearest settled world—which happened to be the most uncivilized world of them all, run by gangsters, murderers and thieves—space revealed its true nature. Vast. Untamed. Dangerous.
Short Stories of Aurora Rhapsody Page 10