Astralis
Lucien waited until late for Tyra to come home, watching holo-cartoons with the girls to pass the time. Theola succumbed to sleep first, sucking her thumb, her eyes slowly drifting shut. Seeing the glazed look in Atara’s eyes, Lucien realized she wasn’t far off, so he put them both to bed, carrying Theola, and taking Atara by the hand. He tucked Atara in and kissed her on the forehead. “Goodnight, Atty,” he whispered. “I love you.”
“Night, Daddy...” she mumbled back.
He shut the door softly behind him and went to the living room for a drink—his nightly ritual. It was almost midnight and Tyra still wasn’t home. He’d probably be in bed himself by the time she returned.
Lucien poured himself whiskey, neat, and went to sit in an armchair by the picture windows, in front of a crackling fireplace. He sat sipping his drink, allowing his stress to melt away. Orange tongues of electric-fueled flames danced over convincing metal logs, mesmerizing him. The window beside him seemed to radiate cold.
He looked out that window, into the night. Just like their home in Fallside, this one was situated on the side of Hubble Mountain, looking out over the city. Giant snow flakes tumbled from a black sky, accumulating on the deck. Street lights shone intermittently through the falling snowflakes. The view was as mesmerizing as the fire.
Lucien reclined his chair and balanced his drink on his stomach, allowing the warmth of the fireplace and the crackling sound it made to lull him to sleep...
He awoke to desperate screaming.
The girls.
Lucien bolted out of his chair, sending his glass and drink flying. He ran down the hall to the bedrooms, his heart pounding in his chest. As he drew near, he recognized those cries.
It was Theola.
Lucien collided with the door, unable to stop in time. He turned the handle and opened the door. Theola’s cries became ten times louder.
The room was still dark. He couldn’t see a thing. “Lights!” he roared.
The overhead lights snapped on, and he blinked the spots from his eyes, searching desperately for his daughters. Atara was in bed. She sat up and rubbed her eyes. “Dad?”
Lucien hurried over to Theola’s crib. She was writhing on the mattress, making a mess of the sheets. Her face had flushed bright red, and tears streamed down her cheeks. He picked her up in shaking hands.
“She won’t go to sleep,” Atara explained.
“Shhh... it’s okay, it’s okay,” he said as he bounced Theola in his arms, but she refused to be comforted. He kissed her forehead—
And promptly recoiled from her. Theola’s skin was like ice. His heart leapt into his throat. He placed a hand on her forehead. “She’s freezing!” Lucien said, shaking his head in disbelief. The room was cold, too. He turned to Atara. “Did you mess with the temperature in here?”
She shook her head quickly.
Not buying it, Lucien stalked over to his eldest and felt her forehead, but she was warm.
Lucien’s brow furrowed in confusion.
Theola was calming down now. She had her face buried in his chest.
“Maybe she’s sick?” Atara suggested, her eyes wide and blinking. “Is she going to be okay?”
Lucien felt Theola’s forehead again. It was warmer now. “She’ll be fine...” he said, trailing off. He glanced at the window beside Atara’s bed and went to check it. The window was shut and locked, but looking closer he found greasy fingerprints around the latch.
“She might have a fever,” Atara suggested.
He rounded on her and pointed to the window. “Did you open this?” he demanded.
Atara’s bottom lip began quivering. “Why are you yelling?”
“Yes or no, Atara!”
“I was hot!” She cried, and dove under the covers.
Lucien felt a pang of regret for getting so mad. He went over and sat on the edge of her bed. He placed a hand on the sobbing lump under the covers.
“Atara,” he said in a gentle voice. “You could have made your sister sick. You can’t open the window again, do you understand me?”
“I was allowed in Fallside!”
“This isn’t Fallside, sweetheart. It’s too cold here for you to open the window. If you’re hot, then throw off one of your blankets, but don’t open the window, okay?”
Atara said nothing for a moment, but at least he could tell that she wasn’t sobbing anymore.
“Can you come out, please? I’m sorry for yelling.”
Atara popped her head out of the covers, and beamed up at him. “I forgive you.”
Lucien blinked, taken aback by Atara’s abrupt change of mood. Her eyes were dry, and so were her cheeks. Was she just pretending to be upset?
“I’m going to take Theola with me for a while...” he said.
Atara nodded. “Okay.”
He leaned in and kissed her on the forehead. “Good night, sweetheart.”
“Good night, Dad,” Atara said as he was leaving.
“Lights off,” he said, and closed the door behind him.
Theola sighed and snuggled into his chest, already asleep. Lucien walked carefully back to the living room with her, trying not to wake her.
He puzzled over what had just happened, and why he felt so troubled by it. Atara had opened the window because she was hot, and even if she hadn’t been genuinely sobbing, that wasn’t anything to worry about. Kids learned to manipulate their parents from a young age. Maybe Atara was learning how to fake her tears.
Lucien sat in his armchair by the fireplace once more. He reclined the chair with Theola on his chest. She stirred sleepily and popped her thumb in her mouth for a good suck. After a few moments her features relaxed in sleep and she stopped sucking. He smiled, watching her, and his thoughts turned idly back to the incident....
Something clicked.
Theola’s crib was far from the window, tucked away in the corner of the room. Even with the window open, it would have taken a while for her to freeze like that. Atara’s bed, on the other hand, was right next to the window. If anyone should have been ice-cold with the window open, it was her.
Unless...
Unless Atara had taken Theola out of her crib and held her up to the open window. Or left her on the window sill...
Lucien shuddered at the thought. It was a long way down the mountain from their house. Anyone who fell out that window wouldn’t just fall one story to the ground, they’d fall more than two, because of the walk-out basement, and then they’d still roll a few hundred feet until a tree or another house stopped them. Not that a baby could survive a two-story fall to begin with.
Lucien shook his head. He was being crazy. Atara wouldn’t even be able to reach Theola to get her out of her crib. She wasn’t tall enough. She’d probably just opened the window and then pulled the covers over her head when she got cold. Later she must have got up to shut the window again when even the covers weren’t enough to keep her warm.
Being a baby, Theola hadn’t been able to adjust her blankets properly, so she’d frozen in a matter of minutes.
That was the most reasonable explanation. Nothing sinister. Just parental paranoia, he decided, and let out a sigh.
He wrapped both his arms around Theola, hugging her to his chest to keep her from rolling off, and then he lost himself in the warmth and rhythmic crackling of the fire. The flickering flames had him mesmerized before long, and his eyelids grew heavy with sleep. He let the warmth carry him away, and this time there weren’t any screams to wake him.
***
Mokar
“We’re wasting time chasing our asses like we have tails,” Garek said, picking through a plate of bland-looking food that he’d selected from the Specter’s meal fabricator.
“Colorful,” Lucien replied, picking at his own food with dismay. He’d chosen some kind of eggs with a side of meat strips, but the eggs tasted sour and the meat... Lucien’s stomach clenched and he set his fork down.
“Look, I’m all for being neighbo
rly and helping a down-on-his-luck alien find his way home,” Garek said, shaking his fork at Lucien, “but this whole thing stinks, and you know it.”
“I’ve been feeling uneasy, too,” Addy admitted.
Lucien looked at her. “You didn’t say anything to me.”
“Because I know how much you want Katawa’s story to be true. I get that you want to go on some crusade against all the evil in the universe, but Garek’s right, why would anyone hand us a fleet of a thousand warships as payment just for finding them?”
Lucien shook his head. “It’s not about crusades. That fleet is our best chance to rescue our people. We can’t go in guns blazing and rescue them without any guns.”
“So we find or steal some guns along the way,” Garek said. “We can start by stealing Katawa’s ship.”
Lucien scowled. “I’m going to need proof that he’s planning to betray us before I agree to go along with a plan like that.”
“By the time we have proof, he’s going to have us over a barrel of antimatter,” Garek replied.
Lucien shook his head. “Let’s follow this Mokari rumor first. Go to their underworld and see what comes of it. If it’s a dead end, then we convince Katawa to take us somewhere that has a Faro slave market, so that we can do something to advance our goals. I’m sure he won’t say no to that.”
“And if he does?”
“We’ll cross that wormhole when we get there.”
“Fine,” Garek said. “But don’t say I didn’t warn you when the krak hits the turbines.”
“Let’s hope it doesn’t,” Lucien replied.
Brak walked up, wearing all but the hood of his shadow robe, his plate piled high with foul-smelling raw meat.
“Ugh!” Garek said as Brak sat down. “What the... I’m done,” he said, and dropped his fork.
Lucien clapped a hand to his face and pinched his nose. “Where’d you get that?”
“Mokar breakfast,” Brak said, grinning as he picked up a foot-long bone and ripped off a giant chunk of bloody meat. “They agree to share with me.”
“Isn’t that the same krak they were eating last night?” Garek asked. He was leaning as far away from Brak as he could without falling out of his chair.
Brak chewed twice and swallowed the massive bite. “Yes,” he replied. “Want some?” He held the bone out.
“No!” Garek almost fell out of his chair in his hurry to leave the table. He left the mess hall at a run.
Brak heaved his massive shoulders. “More for me.”
Lucien left the table next, taking Addy with him. They went to sit in a booth at the far end of the mess hall, as far as they could get from Brak without physically leaving the room.
Addy grabbed his hand and laced her fingers through it.
“I’ve been thinking about what we’re doing—starting a war and rescuing our people. Maybe we should set our sights somewhere closer to home.”
Lucien regarded her with eyebrows raised. “What’s home? The Etherian Empire? Astralis?”
Addy placed her free hand over his heart. “Here.”
He smiled wryly and leaned in for a kiss, but she pushed him away after just a moment. “I mean it, Lucien.”
“So do I,” he said, matching her tone.
She frowned and looked away, placing their hands on the table in front of them. She spent a moment studying the way their hands locked together, her gaze far away. “I think I’m in love with you,” she said.
Lucien blinked. He hadn’t expected that. “I...”
“Can’t bring yourself to say it back?” she asked, turning back to him.
“No, it’s not that. It’s... I just haven’t had a chance to stop and think about us. It’s been one crisis after another since we left the Etherian Empire and you and I met, and most of the time we’ve spent together since then has been in bed.”
Addy nodded slowly, her hand leaving his. “I get it.” She sighed. “Story of my life. I find a great guy, and he just wants to have fun.”
Lucien found her hand again. “That’s not true. I want more than that. I could actually see us together fifty years from now, a ship of our own, exploring the universe together, seeing things no one has ever seen before.”
“Sounds amazing,” Addy said, smiling dreamily at him. “So why don’t we do that? Forget Astralis, the Etherian Empire, Etheria, Etherus, Abaddon, the Faros—forget everything but you and me.”
“I don’t know if I can do that.”
“Why not? Neither of us have ties to Astralis. And as for family back in the Etherian Empire... my ties to family were cut long before I left, and your family has probably forgotten you by now.”
Lucien frowned and shook his head. “I don’t know about that.”
“It’s been eight years, almost nine, since they’ve heard from you. They probably think you’re dead. Maybe they’ve even convinced Etherus to let them bring you back to life from backups taken before you left.”
“I don’t think Etherus would agree to do that,” Lucien replied.
“Regardless, nine years is a long time, and if your family ties were so strong, you wouldn’t have left the Etherian Empire in the first place.”
“Fair enough, but what’s your point?”
“My point is we’re free, Lucien! As free as two people can ever get. So why aren’t we living like it?”
“Well, for one thing, we don’t have a ship of our own to go exploring the universe with,” Lucien said.
“No,” Addy admitted, “But we could get one.”
“How?”
Addy shrugged. “Work for a Marauder crew until we can afford our own ship.”
“Become outlaw pirates, you mean. I don’t think the life expectancy is very long in that job.”
“We could find legitimate work, too. An empire as big as the Farosien Empire has to have plenty of work.”
“But we’re humans, not real Faros. We’ll end up enslaved to them in no time.”
Addy shook her head, smiling. “Thanks to Katawa, we look like Faros, we sound like Faros, and we even have fake ID-chips. We’ll blend in perfectly no matter where we go.”
“What about Brak?”
“We take him with us.”
“And Garek?”
“If he wants to come.”
“I doubt he’ll be interested.”
“That’s fine,” Addy said. “He has his own path to follow. Unlike us, he does have ties to Astralis. He has to go find and rescue his daughter.”
Lucien nodded.
“So?” Addy prompted. “What do you think? Just you and me and the stars. No commitments—except to each other,” she added with a wink.
“And to the netherworld with everyone else?” Lucien asked.
“Well, I wouldn’t put it that way, but yeah. What makes you think it’s our job to save them? Astralis left the Etherian Empire knowing the risks, and so did we. I don’t want to be heartless, but I don’t think there’s actually anything we can do to help them. By now our people have been farmed out to slave markets all over the universe. Even rescuing one of them would be hard, but all of them?” Addy’s eyebrows shot up, and she shook her head. “Garek has a reasonable goal: save his daughter and beat it back to the Etherian Empire, but even that won’t be easy.
“You want to start a war and defeat an alien empire that spans the entire universe. Even if you find the Etherian Fleet and Katawa really does give it to you, a thousand ships are never going to be enough.”
“We can’t just give up,” Lucien said.
“Why not? Look, I know you believe in Etherus. You think he’s almighty God. Well, if that’s true, then why doesn’t he go wage a war with Abaddon? What’s he doing hiding behind the Red Line?”
“That’s neither here nor there,” Lucien said, looking away from her.
“It’s both here and there,” Addy replied. She touched the side of his chin with her forefinger and turned his gaze back to her, forcing him to look into her bright green eyes. They
weren’t cold as he expected them to be, but warm and full of sympathy. “Who are you to do what even your God will not?”
Lucien frowned. “Let’s break it down: you’re saying we shouldn’t fight evil because Etherus isn’t out there leading the charge.”
Addy shrugged. “Pretty much, yeah.”
“What if he’s waiting for us to do it?”
“So he’s lazy?” Addy asked, her brow screwing up. “How’s that any better?”
“What if Etherus created the Faros and the Etherians, knowing full well that they’d start a war with each other. What if he’s testing them? Testing us. We used to be Etherians, after all. And if this is some kind of test, I don’t think we’re going to get full marks by leaving all the questions blank, and waiting for the teacher to tell us the answers.”
“But the Etherians aren’t free,” Addy objected. “So how can he be testing them?”
“They have to be,” Lucien said. “Maybe they’re not tempted to do evil, but I think they still can, and the history we’ve learned about them supports that. Look at the Gors and the now-extinct Sythians. They were Etherians who fought with the Faros in the Great War. Their punishment was to remain stranded on the worlds they destroyed, and eventually they evolved into entirely different species.”
“What’s your point?” Addy asked, shaking her head.
“My point is, a long time ago some of the Etherians did choose to do something wrong. The Gors are living proof of that.”
“Okay, so they’re free-ish,” Addy said. “But what does that have to do with anything?”
“Simple. The first time the Etherians did something wrong was back when some of them joined the war against Etherus, and now they’re doing something wrong for a second time by not starting a war with Abaddon. The Etherians are just sitting there in paradise, content to forget about the rest of the universe and its troubles. Pacifism is their new sin, but what scares me is what their punishment might be.”
“Such as?”
“The Etherians and all of the Etherian Empire are like a sand bar in the middle of an ocean. All it takes is one big wave, and they’re gone.
“If you take the Red Line and everything in it, it’s just a dot compared to the rest of the universe. The sheer difference in size and numbers between Etheria and the Farosien Empire makes them extremely vulnerable.”
Dark Space Universe (Books 1-3): The Third Dark Space Trilogy (Dark Space Trilogies) Page 43