Blue Sky Tomorrows
Page 1
Blue Sky Tomorrows
A Novel in the Triorion universe
By LJ Hachmeister
Contents
Copyright
Publications
Dedication
Inspiration
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Epilogue
Acknowledgements
About the Author
Copyright © 2019 by Source 7 Productions, LLC
www.triorion.com
First Edition
This is a work of fiction. All names, characters, events and situations portrayed in this book are products of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons or events is purely coincidental.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. Please do not participate in or encourage the piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.
Cover art by Tithi Luadthong
Cover design by Nicole Peschel
Edited by Vivian Caethe
Source 7 Productions, LLC
Lakewood, CO
Novels by L. J. Hachmeister
Triorion: The Series
Triorion: Awakening (Book One)
Triorion: Abomination (Book Two)
Triorion: Reborn, part I (Book Three)
Triorion: Reborn, part II (Book Four)
Triorion Universe
Blue Sky Tomorrows
Forthcoming
Shadowless – Outlier (Volume One)
Triorion: Nemesis (Book Five)
The Laws of Attraction
Corbyn Black: The Demon’s Kiss
Short Stories/Anthologies
“The Gift,” from Triorion: The Series
“Heart of the Dragon,” from Dragon Writers
“Prisoner 141,” from Parallel Worlds – The Heroes Within
“Soul Song,” from Unlocking the Magic: A Fantasy Anthology
“The Waking of Jim Walker,” from Crash Philosophy
This book is dedicated to Noelle and Yuko
for saving more than just this universe
“Be a rainbow in someone else’s cloud.”
— Maya Angelou
Chapter 1
On Cam’s tenth birthday, the skies turned black. He ran out of their apartment, forgetting the cardboard cutout of a birthday cake, and his sisters who did their best to assemble some kind of meal as his mother screamed for him to get back inside. He had to see, he had know what sent deep, bass vibrations that unsettled the flimsy walls and floors of his home, scrambled the digital interfaces on the sidewalk advertisements, and turned all the radio broadcasts into static.
Cam stopped halfway down the crumbling front stairs, his neck craned. Behemoth warships scored the Cerkan sky, blotting out the sun, casting a great shadow over the city. His entire body vibrated from the rumbling ships’ engines.
Red insignia on the wings.
His heartrate doubled.
The United Starways Coalition.
As his mind wrapped around the galactic military’s arrival, sirens cried out.
“Camzen, get inside!” his mother slurred, stumbling out of the door, brown bottle in hand. She tipped forward, catching herself on the iron railing. “It’s not safe.”
Cam ignored her. How did she know? Not safe was a single-bedroom, east-side apartment crammed with five people, and a mother who drank herself into oblivion each day. Or long winters with no heat and scavenging for food in back alleys and dumpsters. Not this. This was something else, a monstrosity, another world, bigger than his, colliding—
Kara burst through the front door, dodging their teetering mother, and ran to him.
“Hide,” she said, grabbing his hand.
But Cam resisted, transfixed by the interstellar juggernauts and the swarms of fighters dropping from their open bellies.
“Cam!” Kara, ten years older and stronger than him, yanked him inside. “Help me with the others.”
Dazed, he didn’t realize what she asked him until she gathered up their entire lot—his drunk mother and two other sisters—and guided them down into the utility room in the basement.
No electricity flowed through the broken lightbulbs, but the lone, rectangular window, smeared with dirt and debris, let in enough light for him to make out the bulbous shapes of the water heaters and furnaces, and the silvery webs that connected them. He didn’t like the damp smell, or the smoke residue from whatever maintenance person came down here under the guise of work.
“Keep Em and Sarh safe,” she said, trying to comfort the four-year-old twins as they sobbed and clung to her leg. Prying them off, Cam led his little sisters over to the driest spot and sat them while Kara tended to their mother.
“It’s those chakking leeches!” his mother slurred.
“Shhh, mama,” Kara said, brushing back her peppered hair and guiding her down as she collapsed against one of the inert furnaces. “Everything will be alright.”
Still clutching her bottle, the inebriated woman muttered another slew of expletives as her eyelids drooped shut. Kara took off her jacket and covered their mother, making sure to tuck in the sides.
The walls rattled, shaking the dust from the ceiling and unsettling the spiderwebs. Em and Sarh whimpered, hanging on to one another. Cam did his best, putting his arm around them, but they didn’t calm to him the way they would have to Kara’s solace.
Other families crowded inside as the steady thumping of gunfire and bombs drew closer. Still new to the complex, Cam didn’t recognize half of the dirty-faced kids or the slow-moving adults Kara helped to find a place to sit or lie. Some of the younger adults approached Kara, talking to her in low whispers while everyone else cried or hid their faces.
He didn’t like the congested smell of unwashed bodies in a cramped space, the way the old woman next to him coughed and hacked, or how the twins pushed his arm off, whispering to each other in their secret language. He especially didn’t like his mother, oblivious to another attack by the USC, unable to do anything but lie there, head drooping, and snoring loudly for all the rest of the complex to see. He stared at her, wishing her to wake up, to see how he didn’t cry anymore, and after five years of being fatherless—motherless—cold, hungry, tried, angry, afraid—he didn’t need her anymore.
But he did need someone.
“You okay?” Kara asked, kneeling in front of him. Her brown eyes, much like his, searched for the answer he would not give her.
An explosion, this one closer than the one before it, shook the building, making the children and adults cry out.
Cam nodded.
“It’s going to be okay.”
When he didn’t respond, she repeated herself, this time taking his hand. “It’s going to be okay, sweet boy. I won’t let anything happen to us.”
She said it with such sincerity, such authority, that despite all that had happened, all that had been stamped into him by the stree
t-slums, by terrorism and death, moved aside, allowing something he wouldn’t let himself feel. Not unless Kara said it.
The lopsided-smile, the one that inevitably came with her ridiculous giggle, lightened her face. “Cam-cam, don’t make me sing it.”
He bit his lip, not wanting her to, and wanting her to at the same time.
“Alright then. Rain drops a fallin’ today,” she sang just above a whisper, “washin’ all our tears away. But the sun will come again, and take away our sorrows. Just hold out, my love—”
She kissed his forehead.
“—for blue sky tomorrows.”
Blue sky tomorrows.
Her promise since their father was killed and their mother withdrew; since their entire world was ripped apart by the telepath wars.
“I got you,” Kara said, pinching his side. He squirmed, but she only doubled her attack until he relented and met her gaze with a smile.
“How about we play our game?” she asked, settling into a cross-legged position.
“Now?”
“Why not?”
Cam pulled at the knots in his shredded shoe laces and shrugged.
“Okay,” Kara said, closing her eyes and conjuring their imaginary pieces. “I’ve got four knights, one paladin, and a queen. You’ve got a mage and a hawk. Twenty by twenty board, elimination only.”
“Come on!” Cam exclaimed. Not that she ever made their strategy games easy. Yes, his hawk wouldn’t take any damage unless his mage got hit, but two against six much stronger opponents didn’t seem fair.
“Okay, since it’s your birthday—you get first move.”
“Oh, gee, thanks.”
“You’re welcome.”
Cam sighed, thinking through the moves. Kara loved making up games to play with him, from memorization to word play, but strategy games, especially this one which she insisted be played in their heads, always tripped him up. But why is she making this one so hard? Usually she gave him a chance.
Frustrated, he picked at the peeling rubber on his shoe. “It’s impossible.”
“No, think it through,” Kara said, calm and intent.
I can’t do it. He dug his fingernails into the worn bottoms of his shoes as the seconds ticked by. Every time he failed to think of the winning move, he felt like he failed her, embarrassed himself, falling short of whatever expectation she had for him.
Then it struck him. She’s a strategist, I’m not.
She expected some kind of coordinated attack with his mage and his hawk to draw out her forces, surround them, and strike down her pieces in one swoop. He couldn’t do that, or at least he couldn’t see how. But I can play her.
“Hawk, b2 to g5.”
She countered, bringing her knights to attack formation.
“Hawk to b2.”
She followed, her queen protecting the rear.
“Hawk to f5.”
Puzzled, she sent out her paladin, dividing her forces, leaving an opening that—if he were smarter—he might have been able to exploit.
“Hawk to h3.”
“Are you thinking this through?” she asked, frustration in her voice as she diverted her attention to his mage.
He sent his mage on the run, letting his hawk continue in a random flight pattern.
After five minutes of his nonsensical moves, she crossed her arms and scowled. “For real, Cam?”
He continued on. “Mage to h3.”
“You’re just running away.”
Another five minutes passed as she chased him around the board, bombs thumping away, shaking the dust from the ceiling.
“Alright, I’m calling it,” Kara said, throwing up her arms.
“Great, I win.”
“You didn’t win—you ran away.”
“You gave up. That’s elimination, isn’t it?”
Kara’s expression went from frustration to amusement. “So that was your strategy?”
Cam diverted his eyes. “I’m not smart enough to beat you on the board. All I could do was stall and hope you got annoyed enough to quit.”
“But you are smart,” Kara said, leaning forward and tousling his hair. “You identified the real threat—me, not the game pieces. And you figured out your opponent’s weakness.”
“Pesky little brothers?”
“You got that right,” she laughed. Taking one of his hands in both of hers, she whispered, “remember something for me, okay?”
“Huh?” he said, not understanding the sudden serious shift in her tone.
“This place. This war, this misery; it can bring out the worst in people, Cam-cam.” She glanced over to their mother but returned her gaze with an extra squeeze of his hand. “I love you; there is love in your heart. Don’t let anybody—anything—take that away, make you forget who you really are.”
He tilted his head, confused, trying to understand what she meant.
“Kara.”
A handsome man with blondish hair, blue eyes, and serious expression called to her from underneath the rectangular window. He stood there expectantly, canvas backpack slung over his shoulder, holding the one of the straps with a fingerless glove. Kara let go of Cam’s hand, but gave him another pat on the head before joining the man.
Cam didn’t like him. Something about his clothes didn’t fit, even though they looked like any of the other rags and second-hand-shop attire the rest of them wore. Maybe it was his posture—perfectly erect, with muscular shoulders that filled out his soiled jacket. Or the way he looked at his sister, the directness of his focus, as he whispered whatever he didn’t want overheard.
Standing on her tip-toes, Kara gazed out the dirty window, said a few words to the man, and then returned to Cam.
“Cam—the bombings have stopped. I’m going to go check if it’s safe. Stay here.”
“No,” Cam said, scrambling to his feet as she followed the blonde man to the door. Not after what happened last time. There could be ground troops, drones, a second bombing run—
“Give me a second,” Kara whispered to the man. Cam narrowed his eyes at him as he gave his sister the hand signal to make her exchange quick.
“Don’t leave,” Cam said, grabbing on to her jacket.
“I need to make sure it’s safe.”
“Let someone else go,” he said, knowing the futility of his argument.
“Who?” she said, nodding at the handful of adults. Cam didn’t look, not wanting to see their poor conditions, debilitated by disease, neglect, or malnutrition, especially their mother.
“Let someone else go,” he insisted.
“But this is how I can help.”
“Help who?”
“Anyone I can,” she said, holding on to his grip.
“How?”
“Look at these people, Cam.”
Cam glanced again over his shoulder, seeing their lowered gazes, shaking hands; hearing their whimpers and muffled sobs of the children.
“Maybe I can’t win this war, but I can be brave for these people. Even the smallest gesture can mean so much, like checking for an all-clear.” Kara nodded toward their mother, slumped over and mumbling into her bottle. “Without hope, there is no tomorrow.”
Cam let her go.
Sliding down to a sitting position, Cam sat against the utility room door, waiting and listening for any sound to indicate Kara’s return. The twins wandered back over to him, opening and closing their hands, asking for any remnant of food from his previous day’s search. When he turned out his pockets, showing them nothing but lint and crumbs, they both curled up next to him, too exhausted to put up a fight.
“Those chakking leeches will kill us all!”
Cam made himself smaller, hoping that no one else would associate his mother’s drunken exclamations against telepaths with his presence, or that of his sisters. But no one stirred, not even throwing so much as a casual glance her way.
“They killed him—they killed my Yashin,” she sobbed, covering her eyes and shrinking into herself. “Chakkin
g leeches. Death of this world. Death of this galaxy. Kill them all!”
“Pssst, Cam.”
Colin, the boy from the floor above them, snuck over on his hands and knees to sit by him. Any other time, Cam would have distanced himself from their overly friendly neighbor, but at that moment, he welcomed any distraction to get his mind off of his raving mother and the mention of their dead father.
“You hungry?”
Cam looked around, careful that their interaction wouldn’t be overheard. With the war between the United Starways Coalition and Cerka, his homeworld, in its third year, not many went to bed each night with a full belly, and any mention of food tested even the strongest bonds between people in a starving population.
Colin, a bright boy who would have excelled in school if it hadn’t been blown away two years ago, understood the protocol just as well as Cam. Turning his back to the rest of the refugees, he produced two blue mints from the flap of his ragged overalls. Something that, long ago, Cam would have taken out of a restaurant bowl in handfuls and tossed at his sisters on the hovercar ride home. Now, despite the dirtied plastic wrapping and age cracks splitting the blue discs, he salivated, anticipating the sweet treat that would tease his empty stomach.
“Where’d you get those?” Cam asked.
“That guy that was talking to your sister. He had more.”
“Candy?”
“No, military rations.”
Cam frowned. It didn’t make sense. Military rations, as opposed to the less caloric, nutrient-deprived civilian rations handed out by the relief organizations, were hard to come by, even for the bigger street rubs and the organized gangs.
“Share?”
Cam accepted the candy, but put it in his pocket as Colin popped it in his mouth.
“What’s wrong? You should eat it.”
“I’ll wait,” he said, stomach gurgling as he thought about how he’d split it four ways. “Thanks.”
Still turned away from the rest of the group, Colin rested his forehead against the faded brick wall, his cheeks sucked in as he savored the mint.