The Colossus Collection : A Space Opera Adventure (Books 1-7 + Bonus Material)

by Nicole Grotepas

  “Are you sure, Ms. Drake? The ship will be teeming with bodies. Might I remind all of us that the Olavia Apollo is smaller than a zeppelin. It could get crowded.” Shiro sighed. “But, it also might be incredibly helpful. I do admit, if there’s room for an additional member of the team, it should be Iain Grant.”

  Holly heard the attempt at good sportsmanship and smiled. Shiro wouldn’t love having Iain around, but they might need a former military member. Ixion knew what the base would be like once they were there. “Yes, I’m sure, Shiro. He’d be an asset. I haven’t made the decision lightly. Does anyone else have an opinion against bringing him?”

  “Bring it on! I love me some Iain Grant,” Charly said.

  “All right, all right, that’s too exuberant, Charly,” Holly said with a laugh. “Keep in touch, everyone. Get what you need for the journey. Tomorrow we’ll meet at the Bird’s Nest to go over the final trip details.”

  The crew conference call ended and Holly sauntered over to where Iain was working amidst his shelves, checking products. Holly picked up a tube of blue oil paint. “I think you need two more of this one.”

  “Do I?”

  “The demand is off the charts.”

  “Now, now, Ms. Drake, I think I know what sorts of stuff I need. And extra blue paint isn’t one of them.”

  “Ugh. Get a room,” a voice called from the inner office of the shop.

  “Kaye’s here?” Holly asked, feeling her cheeks flare up. She laughed. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  Iain’s grin widened. “I didn’t know I needed to warn you. Neither of us said anything outrageous. Kaye’s just sensitive.”

  “I am not!” Kaye said.

  “She is. She thinks it’s OK for her to flirt and bring boyfriends around, but no one else is allowed.” They exchanged looks and waited for a few seconds, silently continuing to look through the products. Finally, Holly broke the silence.

  “We’re leaving in two days. Think you could come?”

  “Not a chance,” he said without hesitation.

  Holly was expecting this. “Not a chance? There’s nothing anyone could say or do that could convince you to join me?”

  “I’m only too happy to never go out past the moons.”

  “I hate to say it, but I agree. I don’t want to do this either.” She waited for the accusing question, asking her why she was going, then. It didn’t come. Iain continued to sort through the tubes of paint, making notations on his vscreen. That was one of the things she appreciated about Iain—he knew that sometimes a person had to do something they didn’t want to do. It was just what needed to be done. At least, that was the understanding she’d seen developing between them.

  “Money?”

  He gave her a look.

  “Fame?”

  “Holly Drake, is there something you’ve not been telling me? Are you in fact famous?”

  “Companionship?”

  “I have that here. You’ll come back. I’m patient.”

  “It’s a military base. I know nothing about military bases. None of us do.”

  He walked to the checkout counter and put his vscreen down. Holly followed him. He turned to look at her. “What’s the purpose of your trip?”

  “Taking someone out there to retrieve something.”

  He rubbed his chin and paced. “You said you had reason to be suspicious of the journey? Of Xadrian?”

  “Right now I’m suspicious of everyone.”

  He paused in his tracks and looked at her.

  “Except you. And Shiro. Odeon. My crew. But everyone else who isn’t in my little circle of trust? I don’t trust them.”

  “A betrayal will do that.”

  “Yes, exactly. George betrayed me. Now I’m not sure who is safe.”

  “I would go, but this time, I can’t leave my shop. I have too many things that I can’t leave behind at the moment.”

  “Kaye?”

  “I’ve used her too many times. I can’t ask her to back me up again.”

  A loud sigh came from the back room.

  “What’s she doing in there? Taking a nap on the couch?” Holly asked.

  “Scotch knows my price!”

  “See?” He laughed. “She extorts me.”

  “I’ll pay her. Just come.”

  A crooked smile crept up Iain’s cheek.

  Holly shook her head. “I always suspected you still had the wanderlust.”

  * * *

  Holly and the crew showed up at the landing pad together, leaving from the Bird’s Nest and riding the spireway over together. They walked along the designated footpath areas to where the Olavia Apollo waited. As they got closer, Saanvi Chadda stepped out from under the belly of the ship. The mechanic wore a jumpsuit that was covered in smudges and dark stains.

  “Hello!” Saanvi called. She directed her assistant and then ran over to greet them. “Trip is already on board. She’s been running tests with the new equipment and it’s looking like a good time for a long trip.”

  “Has the other crew member showed up?” Holly asked. Charly, Shiro, Odeon, and Iain had all arrived with her.

  Saanvi scanned the pathways leading between ships. “Maybe that’s him?” She gestured and Holly followed the direction she pointed.

  It was Xadrian, walking in that animated way of his toward them. Accompanying him was a man with a backpack slung over one shoulder. He was taller than Xadrian, a human with short black hair shaved close to the scalp.

  “Yes, that’s him.”

  They waited, making small talk between them until Xadrian reached them.

  “HD. Hello.” Xadrian gave her his customary besos, then turned to introduce his companion. “This is Jamie. He’s a doctor, and will be personally picking up and bringing a supply cache of medicine back to Kota. It was surplus. On a military ship. We bought it.” Xadrian explained to Holly.

  The rest of her crew overhead the conversation. Looks passed between them as Xadrian explained. The fact that he explained it at all lent a suspicious air to the situation. No one believed Xadrian, but everyone nodded as though they did.

  What Holly didn’t understand, and what she would never say for fear of betrayal, was why Xadrian and Dave felt it necessary to hire an unknown element like this Jamie, and not simply send Holly out there to get whatever they were actually getting. Were they hiding something from her?

  “Welcome, Jamie,” Holly said. “This trip should be a blast. Right?”

  “Oh yes, a blast,” Charly agreed.

  Jamie nodded, and gave each of them a beso.

  “Bring him back in one piece, if you please,” Xadrian said, his lisp showing up rather fierce.

  “I intend to,” Holly agreed.

  “Good, because the danger on these aetherways isn’t just behemoths and leviathans. It’s also pirates.”

  “Pirates?”

  “I’m sure it will be fine.” Xadrian said.

  Holly glanced at the human, wondering if he was toying with them. “Thanks for alerting us to the fact that there are space pirates out at the moment.”

  “Always happy to do that, HD. Jamie has a way to communicate with me if he needs it. You as well, so please keep me apprised about what’s happening.”

  13

  Most people—humans, Constellations, Yasoan—didn’t have a reason to push past the final orbit of the most distant moon tracing its path around Ixion. None of the other planets circling the sun Yol were habitable, though many had a base of one sort or another. Some were derelict that the Centaus had built near moons and planets to mine materials to build the cities, space platforms, and bases before they’d gathered the four races to the 6 Moons.

  There were obvious reasons for military bases to dot the solar system, though Holly had grown up not really thinking about the why of it. It just was. That’s the way it is. There had been a few small wars or skirmishes, but they too had been glossed over as unimportant parenthetical concepts to the overarching narrative that the Centaus app
roved of being taught. The Centaus took care of the inhabitants of the 6 Moons, and so they hardly worried what was out beyond the final orbital path of the last of Ixion’s moons.

  Holly’s crew were rookies when it came to traveling along aetherways that would take them farther than the last moon. They’d heard rumors of the dangers, though they didn’t know them firsthand.

  But Holly knew.

  The hatch to the crew quarters opened. She stepped inside and found her pack inside the footlocker next to the bed that she’d claimed as her own. Opening a zipper, Holly looked up at the sound that someone else had stepped through the hatch. It was Odeon. He leaned slightly against his Ousaba. His violet complexion was shadowed beneath the utilitarian lighting. His brilliant eyes seemed to glow with their own luminescence. Holly paused with her fingers on a bottle of imperial red ale.

  Odeon watched her. There was an expectant, non-accusing air to him. The rest of the crew was on the bridge or in the mess. Trip had enlisted Iain to help with navigation, while Charly and Shiro were babysitting Jamie, keeping their eyes on his movements. Just because.

  Only a few minutes ago, the Olavia Apollo had shot out past the last elliptical of the final moon—Paradise. They were on an aetherway path that helped propel them out to Shakti. The safety net that the wards secured around the 6 Moons were now gone—honestly, they weren’t always perfect, occasionally something got past them and entered the safe-zone, but they were an attempt. Which was better than nothing, which was what they would have now as protection against the behemoths and leviathans. Nothing. It was their tiny cruiser against the monsters of the deep.

  Holly felt their weakness in a way that reminded her of the old familiar nightmare of standing naked in front of everyone. Vulnerable. Fragile. Completely at the mercy of the strength and power of others.

  She could manage it, with just a little drink.

  “Holly Drake. Let me help you.” Odeon’s voice rang through the quarters, clear as a bell ringing across the winter morning in a small village, like Elan’s. It was warm and welcoming.

  But it also stung to be caught. How had he known where she was going?

  She drew her hand out of her pack. “It’s one drink.”

  “And you can have it. The choice is yours.”

  She put her hand back in her pack. “Thanks. I don’t want to overdo it. But I think it’ll help.”

  “What will you do if we need to make a choice? Ixion banish it, what if we encounter a behemoth? Do you want to leave the hard choices to Iain Grant or Trip Taurus? I think they could make good choices. But do you want it to be up to them?”

  She hesitated again, then jumped up and away from her pack like it had bitten her. “Dammit, Odeon.”

  He laughed softly. “I know you, Holly. You are the red-arrow reed in a windstorm. The gusts try to rip you from the earth, but your roots are too strong. You twist in the gale. The storm thrashes against you, but you bend until your seed-top touches the water.”

  She paced in the space in the middle of the quarters, circling the bolted-down table and chairs.

  “But you never break, Holly Drake,” he whispered as she got closer. “You are true strength.”

  The anxiety about the journey reached its fever pitch, crested the dams she’d erected to contain it inside her, and flooded her. She collapsed against Odeon, into his arms, his chest. His arm went around her back to support her. She felt the fist that held his Ousaba against her bones. His other hand went under her arm and helped hold her up. She felt his chin against the top of her skull.

  “I am here for you.”

  “I didn’t want to to do this journey. I didn’t want to take this god-forsaken job. I had a choice, I did, but the choice was do nothing and let it happen, or do this damned job.”

  “You have me. Use my calm-song to get through the journey. The drinks help in their own way, but when you are needed, you can’t help. You’ll be needed.”

  She wiped her cheeks. Tried to control the tears. Worried that someone else would enter the compartment and see her with all her weakness on display. “Sometimes,” she whispered, “sometimes I just don’t want to be needed.” Those words had always sounded terrible inside her head, when she felt them. Spoken aloud they sounded like sacrilege. They defied the evolution of social life. They went against everything that pushed people to rely on each other in a cooperative environment.

  But damn if she didn’t feel them some of the time. Bone-weary tired. Exhausted from caring for the needs of her crew, and back when she taught school, from caring for the children. She needed to sometimes just give back to herself.

  Odeon kept holding her. He didn’t say anything about her feelings. He just let her be there, in his arms, sharing his strength and calm with her.

  Was it weakness for her to need him? To want to borrow his strength to help her through the journey to Shakti?

  She didn’t know. The fact was that she had to get through the gauntlet of the trip on the Olavia Apollo without being overtaken by a behemoth. They were all a bit scared. None of them had experienced having their ship destroyed by one of the monsters.

  Holly finished her tears, finished wiping them from her cheeks, and pulled away from Odeon.

  “Have I ever told you what happened?”

  Odeon gave her the Yasoan variation of a quizzical look. “I don’t think so.”

  Holly opened her mouth to tell him the story of her encounter years ago on a zeppelin, her near destruction, when the hatch opened.

  “There you are,” Charly said. “What’s going on? Oh boy, does it feel serious in here or what! You guys need to cheer up because the vibe in here is dead. Oh, is that it? Did someone die? Is there a funeral?”

  Holly laughed despite herself. “We get it. Already. Got it. It’s dead in here. Thanks, Charly.”

  “Did you need us, Charly?” Odeon asked.

  “Not really. I wondered where you were. What’s the status?”

  “Iain is helping Trip navigate,” Holly said. “Those other crew members she brought are also helping her with course information and whatever. They’re on the bridge. Last I knew you and Shiro had Jamie in the mess, keeping him busy, keeping your eyes on him.”

  “I could use a kasé, Holly. Should we go to the mess? I can keep the song going.”

  “Is that what’s happening here? I started to feel really chill after I went off, teasing you guys.”

  Holly lifted her chin in defiance of the embarrassment she felt for still needing help to get through the journey. Charly noticed and slugged her in the arm. “I need it too, Hols. This journey is wack. None of us are thrilled about it. We’re in it together.”

  Holly nodded, exchanged a look with Odeon, and hoped he knew that what she was conveying was that she’d tell him about her experience soon.

  * * *

  When they reached the galley, it was empty. The metal cabinets were all closed. The fridge door was latched shut. The countertops lining the bulkhead were clear and the main table, which stood in the center of the room and was bolted down, was also empty.

  “It’s like no one has been here, ever,” Holly observed.

  “I guess they left?” Charly offered.

  “There’s not a lot of places they can go,” Holly pointed out, beginning to feel better than she should. That was Odeon’s song working on her, and possibly the left over catharsis of letting herself actually cry. Someone should bottle that and sell it—five steps to feel better. Number one, cry your eyes out. Steps two through five were still a mystery to Holly.

  “Let me make myself some kasé, then we can go look for them?”

  “Sure thing, Starlight. Get yourself a drink. Then we’ll get to chasing down Shiro and Jamie. He’s a doctor, supposedly. As Xadrian mentioned. But I don’t really see it. What would a doctor need out there?”

  “A doctor? Hmmm. What do you think he’s doing going all the way to Shakti?” Holly asked, waiting while Odeon made his drink.

  “Like in l
ife, or on this mission?”

  “The mission.”

  “No idea. Supply run? Grabbing some top secret medical records that can’t be trusted to be sent over the nets? He alluded to nothing. That guy is tightlipped as a squid in an aquarium of lemonade. What do you think? You getting any vibes from him?”

  “He seems innocent enough, which makes him seem more suspicious, to me,” Holly admitted.

  “We’ll find out more, before too long. We’re his ride.”

  “Ready Odeon?” Holly asked.

  “Yes,” he replied, putting the lid on his vacuum flask. They left the galley and headed through the Olavia Apollo’s passageways.

  When they reached the bridge, Iain looked up from his position at the navigation console, and made eye contact with Holly. His gaze connecting with her sent a swirl of emotion through her. She sighed softly to herself and nodded at him. He returned the nod, then went back to his work on the console. Ixion’s ghost, it was amazing to work with him. She respected the hell out of him, and knew that he returned the respect. That was really something—respect. It wasn’t infatuation or mad obsession. It was something stronger, finer, but powerful.

  Trip called out to him. “What’s our current course?”

  “We’re holding steady in an aetherway set for Shakti.” Iain’s eyebrows knit together. “However, I’m detecting some changes up ahead in the streams. Not sure what that is.”

  “Pay attention to it, Iain Grant. Though it could be nothing, I’ve seen it on these long trips where the aetherways shift.”

  Holly sat down in one of the seats on the observation level of the bridge. Odeon sank down beside her, his hand holding steady on her arm, just under her elbow. Jamie, she noticed, was off to one side of the bridge, seated in a row of observation chairs against the bulkhead. Shiro wasn’t too far away. When Holly looked at him, he glanced at her and nodded. Jamie rose and came to sit by her.