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

by Stephanie Ricker

  “You throw a rough party, Volkova. Any word from the planet?”

  She shook her head, even though Tsarevich couldn’t see the gesture. “Not since this started, Captain. The yards are being hit pretty hard. We need to get these ships away from Atthis while there’s still something left of the archipelago. Several more Demesne ships are on their way to Anser, if they haven’t reached the construction shipyards there already.”

  Humphreys was frowning in bafflement. “Captain, how did you get here?”

  “We took a short cut.” Was it Bruno’s imagination, or did Captain Tsarevich sound a little abashed? He heard Tsarevich snap an order to his own weapons officer: “Take out the next one.” The Sovereign corkscrewed around for a renewed attack, more gracefully than anything so large had a right to be.

  “There is no shortcut through the Castle Nebula,” Humphreys said definitively. “You couldn’t pass through without scrambling your navigational systems. You can’t even use the sails anywhere near it.”

  The Sovereign took another strafing run across the backs of two of the Demesne ships and appeared to do damage to both. “Evasive action,” Tsarevich said, presumably to his pilot. “They’ll recover soon and shift their attack.” Then he added, “I was going to tell you, Humphreys, I swear…we got an experimental shield upgrade last month. Turns out we didn’t have to go around that maelstrom.”

  “Wait a minute. Why didn’t you mention you could cut across the nebula instead of navigating around it when we called for assistance earlier?” Volkova asked, her voice tinged with outrage.

  “To be honest, I didn’t know if it would work,” Tsarevich admitted. “Fortunately the new shields gave us enough protection, but we could just as easily have been lost for hours inside the nebula. I’m still not sure whether the sails were damaged in the crossing.”

  Humphreys looked affronted. “Someone else worked on my baby? Who authorized that refit?”

  “Common Union officials who exist at higher levels of the stratosphere than you or I, my friend,” said Tsarevich.

  “We can chat about how he cheated on you later,” Volkova told Humphreys. She waved a hand at the viewscreen, drawing their attention back to the fray.

  Having recovered from the shock of the Sovereign’s sudden appearance and attack, the Demesne ships were rallying and beginning to reform. Bruno watched the Sovereign take a few glancing hits as it twisted between the enemy vessels. Soon enough, the Demesne’s greater numbers would overrun a single ship, no matter how powerful.

  Volkova was obviously thinking the same thing he was. “One ship can only do so much, Tsarevich. And we only count as half a ship more, at the moment. Do you have any ideas? We’ll both be cut to pieces if we stay here.”

  “What about Anser and the Wilhelm?” Humphreys pleaded. “They’re defenseless.”

  Volkova shrugged helplessly. “With what propulsion we have left, we can’t get there in time to do any good. There are at least three more Demesne ships there. The Sovereign can’t be in two places at once.” She addressed Tsarevich again. “Captain, Atthis is more densely populated than Anser, and there’s a chance the yards were able to evacuate personnel from the most likely areas of attack. I think we can save more lives here, if we can think of a way to draw the ships away from Atthis. If we survive that, we’ll see what we can do for Anser.”

  “Agreed,” Tsarevich replied. “I hate to say it, but Anser is on its own for now.”

  Elsa, Godfrey, and Milcent hung their gear in their lockers, fetching their headsets before going to their classroom. Gahmuret’s education system relied heavily on subspace classrooms tailored to the individual, meaning that they had technology not readily available in most districts.

  Mr. Nielson waved at the students as they entered the classroom and took their seats.

  “You won’t see me stuck welding cendrillon bulkheads in the construction shipyards,” Milcent said, continuing on a common theme of hers. “It’s the Fleet for me. Once I leave, I’m never coming back. I’m sick of winter. We had proper seasons back home. During the summer—”

  “Yeah, we know all about the summers back on New Gaul,” Godfrey said wearily, tapping his stylus against his desk. “You’ve told us a million times.”

  Milcent glared at him. “You think Anser is all there is,” she retorted, “but there’s a whole galaxy out there. I’m not going to sit around on a chunk of ice my whole life, racing sled hunds and hunting mammut. I’m going to see worlds you’ve never dreamed of.”

  Elsa listened, torn. She wanted to defend Godfrey—though stars knew he got on her nerves often enough too—but Milcent’s points made sense. While not as eager to leave as her classmate, Elsa loved to hear about other places: places she wanted to see for herself someday.

  Mr. Nielson cleared his throat in the way that meant they had better pay attention, and class began. After the preliminaries, each student put on his or her headset for the first period class. While some classes were taught in person by faculty like Mr. Nielson, most of the more complex classes were taught by teachers far from tiny Gahmuret. The headsets were all linked to different classrooms in different places, some of them in Cygnus and other cities on Anser, some as far away as Atthis. Each student viewed and listened to a classroom at his or her own level. The headset’s visual display showed the wearer what the rest of the class, lightyears away, was seeing. The students conversed with their faraway classmates in low voices or whispers so as not to disturb the other learners around them.

  Elsa loved working with the headset because it made her feel very grown-up. The Fleet used similar headset systems for much of their training, and while she was learning, she could imagine that she was already on board a ship being trained for a special mission. She was already taking as many science classes as she could to help her towards her goal of becoming a propulsion engineer, and she pestered her mother with questions constantly. She doodled ships with her stylus during her free time and daydreamed about the time when Elsa Vogel would save the day through her brilliant expertise.

  Today, though, she was having trouble focusing. She wanted to get home and spend time with her mom. She was in economics class right now, a topic she found about as exciting as watching snow melt. After half an hour, distracted and fidgety, she took off her headset to listen to her classmates in the same room with her. The combined whispers of all of the children susurrated around the room, each child focused on something the others couldn’t see. Disquieted, Elsa frowned. There was something eerie about hearing so many children whispering at once but not to each other, all speaking to different classes, some on other worlds. Mr. Nielson caught her eye as he looked up from his grading.

  “Not quite natural, is it? Still, it gives all of you a chance to learn.”

  Elsa nodded. Hearing his calm voice over the whispers was somehow reassuring.

  “Used to be that kids on isolated worlds like Anser didn’t have as many opportunities for education. Now you can learn from the best, even if you’re stuck here with me,” he joked.

  Elsa snorted. “You are the best! You let us go to that mammut preserve last month, and we got to blow up an ice cairn last semester.” In Elsa’s opinion, the more exciting the class, the better the teacher.

  “So basically you just like me because I indulge your thrill-seeking addiction,” Mr. Nielson said with a grin. “I appreciate the thought, though. Now get back to work, Ms. Vogel, you’re missing your class.”

  When she put the headset back on, her class was learning about the economics of cendrillon mining, if the heading scrolling across the headset was to be believed. She sighed to herself. Boring. As if everyone didn’t already know all about cendrillon.

  Blessedly, the class skipped over the history of cendrillon mining, which was deadly dull as far as Elsa was concerned. The headset projected a video of a lava-strewn planet in front of Elsa, titling the clip, “Benizara: The Road to the Stars?” Benizara was a chthonian world located on the Periphery of the Commo
n Union, as most mining worlds seemed to be. The class examined the current ore hauls from the planet and analyzed the costs of mining versus the benefits. As it turned out, the teacher said, the cendrillon being taken from Benizara was helping the shortage, but there still was never enough to go around. The Fleet, the merchants, and private individuals all bid eagerly on the cendrillon, which was used to make ships of all kinds. Elsa’s eyebrows rose when she saw the price the ore was commanding.

  She clicked the button on her headset to signal that she had a question. “Why is it so expensive to buy cendrillon?” she asked. “I know demand explains part of it, but is that the only reason?”

  The teacher explained that the high cost of extracting the cendrillon was part of the problem. Mining on chthonian worlds was very expensive due to the heat and danger. “That’s why cendrillon miners, often called cinders, are paid so much,” the teacher continued. “It’s a dangerous and frequently unpleasant career. High salaries are needed to motivate employees to join the mining companies, and those high salaries in turn drive the cost of cendrillon up.”

  Elsa pursed her lips in thought, an expression she had picked up from her mother. Interesting.

  She blinked as the sound in her headset cut out abruptly. Disoriented, she looked around the room. “What happened?”

  The voice of her school’s principal came over her headset. “Attention, all students: please discontinue your classes at this time and consult your in-room teacher for instructions. No further headset classes will be held today.”

  Godfrey whooped.

  “Hush,” Milcent told him, her eyes wide and fixed on their teacher. “Something’s wrong.”

  Mr. Nielson was frowning at his commlink, his face pale. He looked up, giving his head a little shake. “Class, please gather your things and prepare to return home for the day. If any of you live in the direction of Cygnus, please come up to the desk to see me. The rest of you will be transported home via air ferry.”

  Milcent raised her hand. “What if we live close by? I walked here.”

  “So did half of us,” Godfrey said, rolling his eyes at her.

  Mr. Nielson shook his head. “Everyone goes home by ferry today.”

  “What’s happened?” Elsa asked.

  “The shipyards both in orbit and at Cygnus are being evacuated,” Mr. Nielson said. His voice was calm, but Elsa saw that he was clutching his commlink so hard that his knuckles had turned white. “We don’t have any confirmation on why yet, but everyone is being sent home as a precaution even though we’re almost thirty miles from the capital. Now, everyone move quickly and quietly to the office, please.”

  “Is your mom at the yards?” Godfrey asked Elsa, concerned.

  Elsa shook her head. “She’s home safe. Just got in this morning.”

  “Good.”

  “Yeah,” Elsa said, but her brow was furrowed.

  The kids were herded onto the school’s large air ferries and were dropped off at their homes one by one. Running the entire route took time, and the kids scrolled through their commlinks, searching for news. Little was to be had, other than that the city of Cygnus was being evacuated due to a possible threat.

  The ferry was heading away from the Vogel house to drop off children at the other end of town when it abruptly turned around in mid-air. Elsa leaned over to look out the window. Two men on hund sleds were waving the ferry down, chasing after the vehicle.

  She gave Godfrey’s shoulder a shove. “Look, it’s your dad and mine!” She unbuckled her harness before the ferry had settled on the ground, earning herself a glare from the pilot. “Milcent, want a ride?”

  Milcent eyed the hund teams, who were clearly excited by their pursuit. They danced and jigged in their harnesses, snapping playfully at each other and kicking up snow. “I’ll pass, thanks,” she said.

  Elsa shrugged. “Suit yourself.” She and Godfrey made their way out of the crowded ferry, waving to the pilot as the doors opened with a whoosh of pressure.

  Elsa waited a moment as Helias called to the hunds, and they leaped forward. He turned the sled homeward so quickly that the sled runners on one side left the ground, jamming the brake abruptly to hold the team. One of the hunds yelped as the gangline caught him, nearly yanking him off his feet. Elsa frowned as she ran to the team. She had never seen her father drive that way before.

  “Dad! How did you know to come find me?” She jumped onto the sled, and Helias released the brake, not answering his daughter. The hunds tore forward.

  “Dad? Where’s Mom? Why didn’t she come with you?” Elsa turned in the sled so that she could see her father’s face. The sight of his tears chilled her more deeply than the biting winds of Anser.

  Aboard the skiff, Lies wiped her eyes with her parka sleeve one last time, trying to shove her guilt aside. She should be used to feeling torn by now—should be, but wasn’t. Every time she left her family, she wished she were back with them, and every time she was at home, she wished she were sailing. She had yet to find a balance between the two desires. Sometimes she wondered if such a balance was even possible.

  Her commlink chirped again, and she welcomed the distraction from her self-recriminations. The message displayed drove all thought of soul-searching from her mind. A fleet of Demesne ships would reach Anser within the hour. Her orders were to get the Wilhelm in shape to fly out as soon as possible. If the ships at Atthis had been destroyed, the Wilhelm was the Union’s best hope: saving her was the priority.

  By the time the pilot docked with the Wilhelm, Lies was already standing by the door, one hand braced against the wall to steady herself as the shuttle docked with a lurch. She slapped the controls, slipped through the door before it slid open all the way, was through the airlock in record time, and hit the deck running, darting towards the nearest lift.

  Behind her, she heard the clang as the pilot who shuttled her to the Wilhelm cut loose from the dock as fast as he dared, heading back to Anser again. Made sense. Gahmuret and the other small settlements were probably the safest places to be, not offering much in the way of a target. So she told herself, anyway, as her thoughts strayed to Helias and Elsa in spite of her best intentions.

  She exited the lift and sprinted to the engine room. The Wilhelm looked fairly complete from the outside, but inside her unfinished state was obvious. Inner bulkheads were still exposed, showing the raw cendrillon. Lies’ boots rang on the unpadded deck. She glanced down each corridor as she ran, but the ship seemed empty.

  She skidded around a corner into the engineering section and into a buzz of activity. Crewmembers hustled back and forth shouting out instructions to each other.

  Lies glanced around, disoriented. “Who’s the ranking officer here?” she called. There had been some lieutenant or other in charge of the little shakedown cruise they’d taken around the Avis system, but she knew most of the crew had returned to Anser afterwards. Everyone in the engine room seemed to be shipyard personnel, not Fleet personnel. Probably they were the only people who could get here so quickly, she thought.

  A crewman stopped in his tracks in front of her. “No officers have made it back yet,” he said breathlessly. “They’re all still on the planet.”

  Still? They couldn’t have much more than half an hour before the Demesne ships arrived. “What if they don’t make it aboard in time?” Lies asked.

  The crewman shrugged. “We make tracks to the lifeboats, I guess, and the Wilhelm dies. No shuttle pilot will come within a mile of this place, I’ll bet. We might as well have a big red target painted on the hull.”

  Lies raised an eyebrow at his fatalism, even though she secretly shared it. “Right, well, let’s get to work.” She raised her voice to carry across the section, calling for anyone with propulsion experience to join her as she evaluated the situation. The Wilhelm’s sublight drive was operational but buggy, as their recent cruise had demonstrated, and the space sails weren’t fully installed. Doing so would take days.

  “Okay, forget the sails,
” she muttered, eying one of the power flow panels. “Powering up the sublight engines.”

  “Shouldn’t we run a diagnostic first?” asked one crewwoman, raising her hand. Lies could see her fingers trembling. “The shakedown cruise reported some issues with sublight.”

  “You really want to wait around here while we run a diagnostic?” Lies asked dryly. “We don’t have time. If we overload a few things on our way out, we’ll patch it up later.” She gave the crewwoman a reassuring smile that she most definitely didn’t feel. “Right now we need to get her out of the system. Fire it up, and let’s route the power where we need it most.”

  The shipyard crew might not be much when it came to leadership, but they knew their stuff when it came to engines. Within minutes, Lies was receiving a steady flow of data from various crewmembers as they monitored the Wilhelm’s vital signs. Lies knew very little about shields, but fortunately one of the crewmen did, and he managed to get the Wilhelm’s shields up to capacity.

  “I’m drawing power from the sails’ auxiliary backups,” he informed her. “I figure we won’t be using those?”

  “You’re right, good thinking,” Lies said, relieved that someone else seemed calm. Her own serene exterior was an act she was hard-pressed to maintain. Everything seemed to be running as smoothly as could be, without time to run the proper tests. They were ready to leave. She glanced at the time on her commlink. Only a few minutes left. “Any word on the officers?” she asked the section at large.

  No response other than heads shaking around the room.

  “I don’t think anyone else made it in after you did,” the crewman on shields said.

  Lies frowned in thought. “The officers were probably staying in Cygnus. If they evacuated the city—”

  The crewman finished her sentence. “—Then the shuttles were probably being used to get people out of town. They must not have been able to catch a flight back.”