She took a step closer to him, and he could see the concern in her eyes. “This doesn’t make sense,” she murmured, scrutinizing him, “and it isn’t like you. What’s going on here?”
Bruno struggled to articulate why he felt so strongly about the matter. He was terrified for her, and a little angry at himself for acting based upon that fear. “You do know me,” he said. “You know I have respect for the Fleet and its regulations; ordinarily, I’d be the first person to make the very same objections you’re making. Believe me, a part of me is very much at war with the idea,” he admitted. He reached out to cup her cheek with one hand. “But love for you overrides every objection. I can’t shake this feeling that every minute you’re here, you’re in danger,” he said softly, “and that is unacceptable to me.”
She leaned into his hand briefly, a hint of apology and a great deal of love present in the action. When she spoke, the anger had left her voice. “What makes you think I’d be any safer on the ship than here? The Laika could be going into combat with me on board.”
In truth, she was right, but he had no other options. “I don’t want you on the planet, and I don’t know where else to take you. Just come aboard for now, until I can figure out how—or whether—to broach the subject with Captain Volkova.”
Katrin sighed, but Bruno suspected that he had won. She ran her hand down his forearm as he brought his own hand down from her face, tangling their fingers together. “And just how do you plan to get me on board?”
Bruno’s mind skipped back to his conversation with the crewman in the shuttle on the way down to the planet. “The repair yards are always hiring, so new personnel go back and forth to the drydocks often,” he said.
Katrin waved a hand at him in an “And?” gesture.
Bruno gazed into the distance as he thought quickly. “Your work clearance has expired, true, but they’re rushing repairs on several ships to get them done before the Sovereign and several ore barges dock in the next day or so. It’s not outside the realm of possibility that they’re bringing on extra staff in a hurry, staff who may not have had time to get their paperwork completed. It shouldn’t be too hard to get you to the drydocks.” He hoped. He was banking an awful lot on the disorganization of the yards, which might be a disastrous assumption. Then again, he had seen the chaos up there.
Katrin let go of his hand, but she didn’t tear the idea apart as he had thought she might. “And then how to get on the Laika?”
“The Laika is in drydock getting her shield emitters checked,” Bruno replied. It paid to listen well when the captain spoke, he was finding. He glanced at his commlink sitting on the counter, checking the time. “But not for long. They were going to hurry her out of there as quickly as possible.” He winced and looked at Katrin. “We should leave in the next hour.”
Katrin threw up her hands and turned away from him, back to the vegetables.
Bruno moved to follow her, panic rising again. He had hoped she would acquiesce, if only for his sake. “What are you doing?”
“Packing this food up,” she said over her shoulder. “We can eat on the catamaran on our way.”
Bruno grinned in relief, the tension releasing from his chest so abruptly that it almost hurt. “I’ll help you pack your things. You won’t need much,” he promised. “I’ll get this sorted out. Maybe I can even get you stationed aboard again!” He knew he was babbling but couldn’t bring himself to care.
Katrin laughed at him, and he thought it was the best sound in the worlds.
“Tell me the story of how you met Mom,” Elsa asked as she set her mother’s parka on a nearby seat. Too excited to sit down herself, she leaned against the tall port window, searching the stars for the first sign of her mother’s ship. Her breath fogged the duraglass slightly, and she drew a smiley face in it with one finger.
Helias scanned the crowded docks around him, packed with workers coming home to Anser after building the Fleet’s newest ships. Here and there Fleet members walked past, their long, dark coats making them stand out from the workers’ more varied garb. A very few people stopped to admire the view through the arched windows of the observation deck, but for most of these people, the brilliant starfield outside with the occasional incoming ship was as commonplace as office décor was for planetside employees.
“You’ve heard it a million times, silly goose,” he told his daughter. No matter how often Helias came to the space docks, they still made him uneasy. He was more comfortable by far on the snowfields. Far too much hustle and bustle at the port, and the people doing the bustling looked as though they took themselves far too seriously. Then again, he remembered thinking the same thing about his wife when he first met her. He’d initially feared she was completely devoid of a sense of humor. Fortunately, he turned out to be wrong.
“I like geese,” Elsa said briskly, undeterred. “It’s a good story, and I’m bored.”
Her mother’s ship was late—very late. Helias was also impatient for his wife’s arrival, but unlike his nine-year-old daughter, he was trying not to fidget.
He had come to Anser to run as far from the Tremaine Mining Company as he could get. If a career in cendrillon had an antithesis, it was that of astroglaciologist. He chose the post at Anser in a fit of rebellion, but he ended up falling in love with the snow planet…and with Lies Brabant, a particularly brilliant—albeit overly serious—propulsion expert.
“I was a lucky fellow,” he told his daughter, secretly glad for the distraction from his own unease. “I almost didn’t meet your mother at all. Fortunately for you and me,” he said, tapping Elsa on the head, “her skiff broke down during her last week planetside before an assignment. There she was: marooned in the middle of the snowfields, madder than a mammut in summertime and looking almost as fearsome by the time I came upon her in my hund sled.”
Elsa swung her father’s hand idly, enjoying the story she knew by heart. “I’m telling Mom you compared her to a mammut,” she teased. “And then what happened?”
“I rescued your mother, though of course she would never call it a rescue, and she lectured me all the way to Cygnus on the backwardness of my planet, one where dog sleds, of all things, were actually considered a passable form of transportation.” Helias smiled at the memory. “I told her it was a lucky thing she had her backside firmly planted in my backward form of transportation, or she’d be food for the snow wolves by then.”
“And then what?” asked Elsa obligingly.
“And then she laughed,” Helias said with satisfaction, “and I knew we were going to get along just fine.”
“And then you married her,” Elsa said with equal satisfaction, “and I was born.”
Helias laughed, throwing back his head. Elsa grinned at the infectious sound. “It did take a little more than that, both in terms of time and effort, but that was the eventual result.”
“And I was named after both of you,” Elsa prompted. “You have to finish the story.”
“Right. Yes. Lies and Elsa come from the same name.”
“But it’d be dumb to have two Elsas in the same house,” Elsa interrupted, “because how would we know which of us you were talking to?”
Helias huffed in mock frustration. “Are you going to let me finish, little bird?”
Elsa subsided.
“Better. Lies was named after her mother, Ilsa. It’s traditional among the Brabants. But we wanted a little Vogel in you too. Helias and Elsa are just the same sounds rearranged.”
“It’s a good name,” Elsa said with such solemnity that Helias had to stifle another guffaw. Then she clutched his arm. “Dad, look! There she is!”
Helias turned to the windows. A ship drew slowly into port, her white hull glistening in the starlight. The Wilhelm was exquisite, a work of art—albeit a work in progress. Like her sister ship, the Sovereign, the Wilhelm was a frigate, the largest class of the Fleet vessels. She was just returning from the second of many test flights through the Avis system. Many of her systems were
still incomplete, and Helias knew that the rumors floating around the construction shipyards reported that massive changes were to be made to the frigate before she truly set sail. But he had to admit, the ship certainly looked complete from a distance.
Elsa watched, enraptured, as the frigate furled her space sails. From a distance, the sails looked delicate, but in truth they were incredibly durable, able to withstand tremendous forces. Helias quelled a pang of envy. Elsa enjoyed going out on the snowfields with him, but she was obsessed with propulsion, like her mother. He found himself hoping she changed her mind before she grew up and joined the Fleet.
Having one of the women in his life sail away periodically was more than enough.
As the Wilhelm passed from view and pulled into her docking station, he entertained Elsa with jokes and stories while they waited for Lies to disembark. An hour later, their sailor strode into the observation area of the docks, a wide smile on her face. Lies was tiny, and looked even more so next to Helias’ lanky height. Her blond hair was tied back neatly out of her way, and she carried a bag slung over her shoulder.
“Mom!” Elsa hurtled through the observation deck, barely slowing before hugging her mother. Lies fell back a step with the impact, ruffling her daughter’s hair.
“I’ve only been gone a week, little bird,” she said with a laugh.
“Long enough,” Helias said, approaching at a pace more sedate than Elsa’s, if no less eager. He bent his tall frame to kiss his petite wife soundly on the lips, their daughter sandwiched between them.
Elsa twisted free of the hug. “Ewww.”
Lies broke the kiss, but only to fluff Helias’ hair as she had Elsa’s. “You manage to look perpetually disheveled,” she told him affectionately. “How do you do it?”
“Practice and natural-born talent,” he said, reaching to mess up her hair as well. She ducked, but not before he got a good swipe in.
“Let’s go home,” Lies said, giving them both another joyful squeeze. “I’ve missed you so much!”
They boarded the shuttle to fly back to Anser, which was stuffed with shipyard personnel heading home. The Vogels looked around the vehicle, trying to find seats together.
A painfully young-looking Fleet crewman with an empty seat next to him glanced up and noticed their hunt. “Here,” he said, “you can have my spot. I think there’s a single empty one farther back.” He stood and took his long coat from the overhead compartment.
“Hey, thanks,” Helias told him. He gestured for Lies to take a seat and tossed her bag and the extra parka into the compartment. Then he scooped his daughter up and set her on his lap. The shuttle was intended for adult commuters, not children, and the seat’s harness was too large for Elsa, who was petite like her mother. He buckled his own harness around them both while Elsa chattered away.
“Godfrey scored awfully on his last test,” she said soberly, relaying all of the happenings at her small school. “I don’t think he wants to get into the Fleet at all.”
“Very possibly,” Helias said. “There are other careers, you know.”
He couldn’t see her face, but he knew she was rolling her eyes. “Not everyone likes studying ice all day like you, Dad.”
“Hey,” he protested, “it’s way more complicated than that! You make it sound so…boring.”
Lies laughed at the aggrieved expression on his face. “Your dad’s work is just as important, Elsa. We have to learn about the planets we come from, or exploration means nothing. And you love to ride the hund sled as much as anyone.”
Elsa couldn’t argue with that point.
“However,” Lies continued, turning in her seat to face Helias, “I think I do hear more interesting gossip than you do, given our differing sets of coworkers.”
Helias nodded, deadpan. “It’s true. The hunds aren’t terribly chatty. Couldn’t say why. What have you heard on this latest trip?”
Lies’ smile faded somewhat. “Well, it’s serious this time. You’ve heard the rumors about the fay planet?” she asked, looking at Helias inquiringly.
He nodded. Even an astroglaciologist working alone most of the time couldn’t help but catch wind of the stories, though he was of the personal opinion that they were mostly nonsense.
“The latest is that the inhabitants have some kind of radiation immunity,” Lies said. “The word is that it’ll make them even better cinders, resilient enough to mine in the toughest areas. The fay homeworld is supposed to be located closer to the Demesne than to the Common Union worlds, and the fear is that the big mining companies in the Demesne will swoop in and use the fay as a labor source.”
“Fairy stories,” Helias said, shaking his head. “The fay homeworld can’t be where these rumor-mongers are claiming it is. You know as well as I do, Lies: no colonists left Earth earlier than three hundred years ago, when New Gaul was settled. There simply are no records of humans reaching that region.”
“I’m not so sure the fays are human,” Lies countered. “If you’d heard some of the stories going around the Fleet…”
Elsa looked on with interest, following the discussion. Both Helias and Lies made it a policy to discuss galactic happenings as a family. Isolated as they were on Anser, one could easily end up with an overly insular view of the galaxy, something neither of them wanted for their child. Wise as this protocol might be, sometimes Helias wished they had been a little less enthusiastic in the execution. Elsa had a yen to explore the galaxy that bordered on obsession.
“No one will officially confirm that they’ve even discovered inhabitants in that sector,” he protested mildly, pulling himself back to the conversation at hand. “We’ve never had contact with any people-groups other than those who have originally come from Earth, never come across any signs of other star-faring civilizations in all of our exploration.” He shook his head. Much as some might hope there were other sentient races out there, the evidence just didn’t exist.
Lies’ eyes flickered to the window as the shuttle entered Anser’s atmosphere. Helias knew this was her least favorite part of the trip: even though it was a normal part of shuttle travel, the noise and heat of reentry made her uneasy, no matter how many times she did it.
He kept talking to distract her, raising his voice to be heard over the rumble of atmosphere as the shuttle streaked planet-ward. “I think this is all an excuse to start a full-scale conflict. If we bruit it about that a sweet, beautiful, defenseless race—conveniently located on the Periphery, in a location so remote that no one can even verify their existence—is being exploited, we can tell ourselves that we have the moral high ground, justifying an attack on the Demesne and their mining companies. This is about the cendrillon, and it always has been.” He couldn’t quite keep a note of bitterness from his voice.
“I don’t dispute that,” Lies said carefully, knowing this was a sensitive topic for him. “I’m not that naïve. The area in which the fay are supposed to be has always been contested space between the Demesne and the Common Union. I agree that sooner or later, one of the powers will make a move on that region. But I have a feeling that more is going on out there on the Periphery than you’re willing to admit.”
She looked out the window again as the shuttle descended and their hometown came into view. The brightly colored houses stood out vividly against the snow. Most of the houses in Gahmuret, like the Vogels’ home, had domed roofs to prevent the snow from accumulating, although a few favored the steeply pitched A-frame construction for the same reason. Underground housing, while more efficient to heat, had never caught on. The costs of digging deeply enough into Anser’s glacial ice just wasn’t worth it.
“Time will tell,” Helias said, seeking to defuse the discussion. He and Lies always had a bit of an adjustment period when she came home. Their perspectives were very different, and discussions easily turned into arguments. He looked at Elsa. “What do you think, little bird?”
Elsa thought for a moment before answering. “I don’t believe in fairies, even thoug
h Godfrey’s grandmother tells stories about having seen snow sprites out on the pack. But,” she said, shrugging philosophically, “Mr. Nielson says that war is in our nature. We learn about wars all the time in history class, so it seems like it could happen again.” She shook her head in disapproval, and Helias and Lies looked at each other, working hard not to smile. Mr. Nielson was Elsa’s teacher at the branch school, and as a former Fleet officer, he was Elsa’s current object of hero worship.
“Which means we have to fight our nature,” Helias told her, “so we can stop repeating history.”
“Ever the idealist,” Lies said quietly. “But your father is right,” she told Elsa as the shuttle settled onto the launch with a clang. “We’ll just keep making the same mistakes, otherwise.”
The family unbuckled their harnesses, and Helias stood, plunking Elsa on the deck and grabbing Lies’ bag from the overhead compartment before the family followed the stream of people leaving the shuttle for their homes in Gahmuret. Before the Vogels left the launch station, Elsa gave her mother the extra parka. The family bundled up before stepping outside into Anser’s crisp, frigid air. Lies pulled Elsa’s hood up, making sure most of her face was covered.
Cygnus, Anser’s capital city, was the logical choice for most of the shipyard workers to live. Most of the planetside shipyard facilities were located in Cygnus, and shuttles ran almost continuously from a variety of convenient launch stations around the city. Cultural opportunities abounded, relatively speaking—it was still Anser, after all, so the city would never have the polish of Illiger or the other cities on Atthis. However, some workers, like the Vogel family, chose to reside in the quieter, smaller town of Gahmuret to the south of the capital. The town’s remoter location was situated closer to Helias’ work out on the snowfields, and the family occasionally rented a skiff (much to Helias’ displeasure) to take into Cygnus on special occasions. The launch station was one of only two servicing the community of Gahmuret.
The Battle of Castle Nebula (The Cendrillon Cycle Book 1) Page 6