The Battle of Castle Nebula (The Cendrillon Cycle Book 1)

by Stephanie Ricker

  Levanter and Vardar had received the worst of it, and she ran her hands over them, searching for serious injuries. She wasn’t sure about Vardar; the hund licked Elsa’s hand contentedly enough, but one of her legs had been badly bitten.

  Elsa pulled her up onto the sled and made her lie down on it while she addressed the snarled mess of hunds and twisted harness lines. “You get to ride with me, girl.”

  She had sliced some harness lines, others had broken or been chewed through, and the rest were knotted around hunds, dead snow wolves, and the sled. She bit back a sigh as she set to untangling the wreck, but in truth the task helped to calm her. She was still shaky from her fight with the lycaon. She couldn’t believe she’d killed it. There had been no real need; Harmattan had the situation under control.

  The hunds stood patiently while she worked, and she occasionally pressed one of them into service to help her haul a lycaon carcass out of the way. She hated to leave so much meat behind. Lycaon was good hund-food, if nothing else, and she was sorry to waste it. But there wasn’t time. She caught herself watching the sky apprehensively, concerned by how fast her daylight was slipping away. It occurred to her that for someone who had contemplated permitting herself to fall into a crevasse less than an hour before, she was working awfully hard to survive. Either old habits died hard, or she cared more about living than she was willing to admit.

  At last the jumble was as organized as it was going to get. She had knotted the cut or broken lines back together, replacing one of the most badly damaged with a spare from the sled. She managed to retrieve her glove from where it had fallen in the scuffle, relieved to have found it. She didn’t fancy the frostbite she would surely have received without it.

  “Line out!” she called to the lead hund.

  Harmattan led the team out from the sled, ordering the hunds into a straight line of pairs. Each hund knew its position in the team and found it unerringly. Except for the lead, hunds in a team were paired based on gait and speed so that the entire team pulled smoothly and efficiently, and the hunds knew to line up next to their partners. Levanter whined and looked over his shoulder at Vardar, lost without his companion.

  “Sorry, boy. I know, this throws off your stride,” Elsa murmured.

  She swiftly re-harnessed the team, checking them again for injuries. Bise and Bora were a little battered, but Elsa didn’t have time for much in the way of first aid; they all needed to be off the snowpack before night fell, and with it the temperature. An early spring night on Anser was bitterly cold. And wild hunds hunted at night.

  She climbed back on the sled runners and lifted the brake. “Hike!”

  The team started, perhaps a bit less smoothly than usual, and the sled jerked into motion, picking up speed as the hunds’ strides lengthened. Elsa glanced back over her shoulder. Blood and seven lycaon bodies lay scattered behind her on the snow. She was lucky there weren’t more. If the whole pack had come down on their heads, she and her team would be the ones sprawled in stillness on the snow. As it was, any travelers passing this way would think there’d been a massacre. She didn’t know how to feel about what had happened and what she had done. Why had she felt the need to kill the lycaon herself?

  Every aspect of her life was sliding wildly out of control, and the result was a mess much harder to untangle than a set of hund harnesses.

  The team finally pulled into Atticora as the sun was setting. The clouds had cleared somewhat, and in the failing light, the buildings of the little town cast long, slanting shadows across the snow. A few inhabitants still moved about, but soon everyone would be indoors for the cold night.

  When Elsa was a child, there had been no town here; the settlement had sprung up a couple years after the battle as Anser’s inhabitants attempted to rebuild. A launch site was one of the first requirements, and people quickly gravitated towards one of the few ways offworld remaining, after the port was destroyed. In the early days after the battle, most of those who could leave did so. The ones who stayed were either those who were trapped onworld, or those too tough to give in and go elsewhere. Elsa still wasn’t sure which category she and her father had fallen into, but either way, the Vogels had stayed through all the long years of chaos.

  Until now. The last of the Vogels was leaving Anser, and she wasn’t sure whether she would ever be back.

  The livery kennel sat near the edge of town, a convenient place for folk to buy or rent a team. Before the battle, a few Anser locals still valued hund teams for their reliability, but the years after the battle saw a dramatic increase in their use. Small, short-range space vehicles—known as skiffs after the Fleet name for the vessels--and other aircraft transports were scarce on the newly ravaged planet, and running a hund sled suddenly became less of an eccentric pastime and more of a vital method of transportation. In spite of his love for sledding, Elsa’s father had always hoped some entrepreneurial company would bring other options to Anser’s tech-thirsty populace, but the truth of the matter was that no one would touch such a business venture. Anser was fast becoming a ghost-town world; the effort wasn’t worth the cost of supplying a world that would never be rebuilt to the state of its glory days.

  Elsa slowed the team outside the livery kennel and dropped the sled’s snow anchor. This was the part she had been dreading most. The team stood quietly, tired but not drained in spite of their fight earlier in the day. They could easily have run farther in a day, as Elsa knew. She unhitched Harmattan, and the hund followed at her side as she opened the door to the large, barnlike livery.

  She didn’t realize how tense she was until the smell of hund, kibble, and kennel bedding stole some of the tautness from her shoulders. It smelled like home. The livery was warm compared to outdoors but was still cool by human standards; with their thick fur coats, the hunds were most comfortable in cooler temperatures. A central aisle ran the length of the building, with spacious pens on either side for the hund teams. Each team was kept in a pen together: once a team was formed, it was rarely separated. The pack instinct ran unsettlingly strong in the hunds.

  Several of the animals inside watched Elsa and Harmattan with interest, their ears pricked. Harmattan whined a greeting, and Elsa pushed back her hood to look around. She noted with approval that all of the animals looked content and healthy. She had only talked herself into this course of action by telling herself that the hunds would be taken care of. Even then, it had been a bitter struggle for her. But what choice did she really have?

  The hund master looked up from where he was working on a harness. He started visibly at the sight of Elsa and dropped the harness, jumping to his feet. “Stars above, what happened to you? You all right?”

  She glanced down at herself. She had forgotten that she was covered in lycaon blood. Harmattan’s muzzle was still a gory mess as well. “I’m fine. We ran into a lycaon pack on the Wolfram Range. I’m Elsa Vogel.” She started to extend a hand automatically before realizing that in her current state, she would be doing him more of a courtesy if she didn’t shake his hand. “The girl who wanted to sell the hund team. This is my lead, Harmattan. The rest of the team is still hitched up outside, and they’re a little battered from their fight. May I bring them in to care for them while we discuss terms?”

  The hund master nodded. “Sure.” He nodded toward Harmattan. “He looks a little rough, but nothing too serious. Any of them hurt bad?”

  The hunds were hardy beasts; Elsa had seen play fights between hunds that left each one bloodier than most of her team was right now. “I don’t think so, but one of the girls needs to be looked over.”

  “You crossed alone?” The hund master regarded her with a mixture of skepticism and admiration.

  Elsa nodded, unwilling to elaborate on her reasons for doing so.

  The master shook his head in wonderment. “And you with no one to call for help either. Crappy satellites.” Commlinks were notoriously unreliable on Anser, and they were practically unusable on the snowfields. So much battle detritus hung
in orbit around Anser that communications satellites were nearly impossible to keep in the air—even if the planet had possessed the resources to keep replacing them—and towers had to be constructed around the remaining population centers to boost the signals. Almost nothing reached all the way across the snowfields. Signal picked up close to Atticora, but that was no good to any travelers on the snowpack.

  Elsa grimaced but didn’t comment. Her father had been working on a plan to build towers on the snowfields, but she doubted it would materialize now without his leadership.

  The livery master put food and water in an empty kennel and gathered medical supplies while Elsa unhitched the hunds from the sled and brought them inside the livery. As Elsa bent to help Vardar off of the sled, the hund whined and licked her face with a sandpapery tongue. Elsa hid her face in the hund’s ruff for a second before leading her inside. The animal was favoring her right hind leg slightly; the wound had stiffened while she rode to Atticora on the sled.

  The hund master was in the team’s pen, running his hands along each animal as Elsa brought it inside, checking for injuries. “You’re right,” he said. “A little banged up, but naught too bad in the case of most of them. I’ll take a look at this one.” He nodded his head at Vardar.

  Elsa helped hold Vardar still while the hund master dressed her wound. Most livery owners were also veterinarians, an occupation that had experienced a resurgence since the battle.

  Vardar lay quiet when they were finished, and Elsa rose to rest one hand on Bise and the other on Bora while she and the hund master settled matters.

  “The price I gave you for the hunds and the sled still stands,” the hund master told her. “Your lead is even better than you said, and he more’n makes up for the condition of the team.”

  “Harmattan. Yeah,” Elsa said, looking over at the hund. “He’s the best.” A muscle jumped in her jaw, and she swallowed painfully. She was reminded of the day Harmattan had come home without her father, distraught to the point of panic. Elsa cut off the thought savagely. She couldn’t think about that now. She was barely keeping it together as it was.

  The hund master reached into a pocket for his commlink. “I’ll send the payment over now,” he said, keying in the information. “You’ll be on your way tomorrow, yeah?”

  Elsa shook her head. “Tonight. There’s a launch in only two hours.” Leave now, she thought. Leave before she thought too hard about any of this. She felt as if she would lose her nerve if she waited another day.

  “You don’t waste any time,” the master said. He frowned at the commlink. “Blasted signal…come on…” He stared at it for another few seconds. “There. Done. Money is in your account.” He put his commlink away. “I wish you safe travels.”

  “Thank you. I’m grateful to you for taking care of my team and sled for me. I’ll just…say my goodbyes.” She looked at him pointedly, unwilling to cry in front of this stranger—and she knew she was going to cry.

  “Oh, right.” He hurriedly slipped out of the pen.

  Elsa knelt down in the soft kennel bedding, and hunds gathered around her, slinking low on their bellies and pressing close. Harmattan nudged himself underneath her arm and licked her face, whining softly.

  Elsa hugged each hund in turn, burying her face in their rough grey coats and breathing in the smell of hund and harness leather. Most of the animals had been her father’s hunds for years; she had grown up with them. Countless mornings, she had waved goodbye to her father as he rode out on the sled with the team. Now she was saying goodbye to the last of her family.

  “Sorry, boys and girls,” she said, her voice warped by unshed tears. “A mining world is no place for you. You belong here, where it’s nice and cold.”

  Harmattan butted her knee with his head, chuffing softly. The sound meant he was contented, and it broke her. She kissed Harmattan swiftly on his head, tears finally falling on his pelt, and tore herself away before she lost her resolve completely. She closed the door to the pen behind her, scrubbing at her eyes with one hand. The hunds leapt and cried behind the pen door, and Harmattan gazed at her with his uncanny eyes. Elsa couldn’t stand to watch him another moment, and she hastened to leave the livery.

  “I’m sorry,” the hund master offered, following her out through the door. Elsa didn’t respond as she began coiling up the harnesses and piling them on the sled.

  The hund master hesitated, obviously uncomfortable with the situation. “You seem awfully young. That is, are you sure you know what you’re about? I mean…this is—well, you seem pretty torn up…” He trailed off.

  Elsa didn’t say anything, afraid of what might come out.

  He caught her sleeve, and Elsa winced as the movement tugged at her wrenched shoulder. “Hey. You sure you’re all right?” he asked, scrutinizing her.

  “I’m fine!” she finally snapped, vicious as any lycaon. “Keep your nose out of my business.” She couldn’t handle sympathy right now. She just wanted to be left alone.

  He let go of her sleeve and took a step back. “At least clean up a bit before you go,” he said softly. It was probably the same tone that he used for frightened animals. “You’re likely to frighten the launch crew, looking like that.” He gestured with his chin to a small door on his left. “Washroom is over there, and you’re welcome to use it.”

  She paused. “Thanks,” she said grudgingly. She supposed it wouldn’t do to show up at the launch looking raw as a slab of wildekreet steak.

  As she turned from closing the washroom door, she met her own eyes in the mirror over the sink. For an instant, she didn’t recognize her reflection. Dried blood covered most of her face, and her tears had made tracks through the dark brown. Gore had dripped down her parka and frozen there during the sled ride. Her fur-edged hood and face cover were stiff with blood, and the cover’s original color wasn’t even discernible.

  But what shocked her most wasn’t her slaughterhouse attire—it was the expression on her face. Bleak eyes stared back at her from a drawn face, above a mouth on the verge of a snarl.

  What was wrong with her? This wasn’t the face of the beloved daughter of two scientists. This was the face of a wounded animal, ready to turn on anyone who approached it, friend or foe, ready to lash out blindly because it was in pain. She had killed the lycaon, not because it needed killing—although it did—but because she wanted to extinguish the thing that reminded her too much of herself.

  That’s enough of that, she could almost hear her mother murmur in her calming voice. Pull yourself together.

  From her mother she had learned to do her duty. From her father she had learned to do it with a smile. “This isn’t helping anything, little bird,” she told her reflection. “Pull yourself back together again.” She gave herself a brisk shake.

  When Elsa emerged from the washroom several minutes later, her face and clothes were as clean as she could get them. She walked over to the hund master and shook his hand. “Thanks for your help,” she said, carefully keeping her voice level. “I’m sorry, I didn’t even ask your name.”

  He blinked in surprise at her change in demeanor. “You too. It’s Clive.”

  “Please take care of my team, Clive,” she told him. “See that they find a good home, will you?” Knowing they were safe and happy would help her to do what needed to be done. So she told herself.

  Clive nodded. “I will, don’t you worry. Have a safe voyage.”

  She mustered a smile, feeling proud of herself for that. “Thank you.”

  Elsa shouldered the pack she had left in the sled, wincing as she absentmindedly slung it on her sore shoulder. She switched the bag to her other side, promising that she would get herself checked at the first med station she ran across. She was now carrying everything she owned. The pack contained more than a few memories: a model ship, her father’s commlink, Kaver’s old collar. She had already sold her family’s home. The money was safely in Elsa’s account, to be transferred to her creditors along with the price of the hunds and
the sled.

  But she wouldn’t think about that just yet. She wanted to savor the last of her time on Anser. Night was falling by the time she left the livery. Most of Anser’s inhabited areas were near the equator, and the sun didn’t set so much as plummet. Twilight was short, and the moons had already risen. Atthis, the other planet in the circumstellar habitable zone of Anser’s sun, was low and bright on the horizon. Her boots crunched on the moons-lit snowpack as she walked to the launch. The launch was near the edge of Atticora, and this end of town was quiet.

  The cries of snow geese pierced the still evening. Elsa pushed her hood back and gazed upward into the crystal-sharp air, craning her neck. She could just make out the ghost-pale shapes of the geese bound northward, a grey V against the blue-black sky.

  The old restless feeling stirred in her, and she wanted to take off to somewhere new. Well, she was taking off, surely—but not setting sail aboard a ship of the Galactic Fleet as she’d always dreamed. Still, it was time to leave Anser, site of far too much anguish for the Vogel family. She thought of how the fields looked after a fresh snowfall, wiped clean of any sled or animal tracks. A new start. That’s what she needed.

  She pulled her hood back up and walked towards the launch that would take her to the nearest transport hub, and from there to the neighboring star system and the planetary headquarters of the Tremaine Mining Company. The girl who had dreamed of exploring the stars was off to chase the cendrillon instead.

  Until now, Elsa had set foot on only two worlds: Anser and Atthis, both in the Avis system. The planet that housed the Tremaine Mining Company was nothing like either world. Anser was a frozen world and Atthis a tropical planet; whatever Dempsie’s original climate had been, it was shrouded now beneath the mining company’s terraforming and weather control satellites. The planet had no identity of its own, but the role it played in galactic commerce was immeasurably important. The Tremaine Mining Company was the largest in the Common Union, and it supplied nearly half of the galaxy with the coveted ore. Always, always, everything came back to cendrillon.