Sideris Gate: A Paradisi Chronicles novella (Paradisi Exodus Book 2)

by Cheri Lasota

  Table of Contents

  Sideris Gate

  Sic itur ad astra

  The Fenestella

  The Trek

  The Lacuna

  The Aura

  The Vivarium

  The Dog

  The Angel

  The Boy

  The Director

  The Walk

  The Glass

  The Uprising

  The Paradise

  The Gate

  The Jump

  Tenebra Sojourn

  About the Author

  Acknowledgements

  Copyright

  Sideris Gate

  A Novella By

  Cheri Lasota

  SIC ITUR AD ASTRA

  (THUS, YOU SHALL GO TO THE STARS)

  In the last decades of the twenty-first century, ten founding families seeking to escape an increasingly apocalyptic Earth focused their attention on constructing spaceships that would allow a select few to leave Earth and colonize the planet New Eden in the Paradisi System of Andromeda galaxy.

  In 2035, these Founders commissioned Reach Corp to design and build the near-Earth infrastructure required to meet their ambitious goals. Reach Corp agreed with one critical condition: upon the stipulation that they successfully retrofitted the original prototype ship, the Asteria-class SS Challenge, they would have full authorization to follow the Founding Families to the Paradisi System and settle peaceably in New Eden.

  —Preface

  The Interstellar Histories, Volume 1

  The Paradisi Missions, 2025 to 2094

  Nautilus-11 Space Station

  Earth-Moon Lagrange Point 1

  “We can’t wait in here all day for the world to end.” Daniela Marcks glared at Vida, straining against the restraints holding her to the conference room chair.

  Drive Ops Chief Vida Rosado rubbed at the stress building in her neck muscles. “Considering how soon that’s about to happen, I’d say we can.” She pressed the stun gun against the docking commander’s throat to drive the point home. “It’s all quite simple, Marcks. We wait. We watch. And we listen for my boss’s call. That’s it.”

  Vida circled back around the table, and glanced out of the fenestella. The glimpse of Earth still took Vida’s breath away, even at this far distance of over 300,000 kilometers, this no-man’s land where the Nautilus-11 Space Station orbited between the Earth and the Moon. From the station’s location at Earth-Moon Lagrange Point 1, her home planet looked twice the size of the Moon when viewed from Earth.

  For an instant, she wanted to pretend all was well, that this wasn’t a true good-bye, that someday she’d make it back to Argentina, and her whole family would be there to greet her.

  But she knew this time was real. This time was forever. Most of her family was long gone now, swept away amid the gang wars and quakes and eruptions down on the surface. And now, she supposed, the nuclear winter would take the rest of them. Even her beloved grandmother would soon be gone.

  She had never gotten used to the guilt. She felt it even now as she tried to breathe through the tightness in her chest and the pain in the back of her throat. The Reach Corp crew called it the Paradisi Penitence; the psychologists called it something else. Even the most hardened astronauts among them experienced it. But the doctors had no magic pill to drown out the voices of the soon-to-be dead.

  This was unlike anything humans had ever experienced before. The passengers and crew of the SS Challenge, the eleventh and final spaceship to leave, were not only escaping the Solar System, they were abandoning eleven billion souls to certain death.

  Vida’s thoughts turned again to her grandmother while she waited for word from her boss, Reach Corp Chief Solomon Reach, to move ahead with their plan. Vida ran the cross she wore at her neck along its chain as she remembered the last time she had spoken with her beloved abue. In their last communication, she weaseled out of the feisty old woman that she was still quite ill from the spread of a super bug ravaging Vida’s old childhood home in Villa Epecuén, Argentina. As far as Vida knew, her grandmother was still alive and daring death to take her.

  The cross was the last gift she ever received before her family scattered to terrorist-infested cities, seeking safety where none could be found. She could have been one of them. But her father had been indulgent. He noticed her keen interest in all things mechanical when she was a little girl, and so he let her help him fix old cars in his shop back in Argentina. She had defied her overly protective mother when she took a scholarship at Georgia Tech, where she majored in Electrical and Aeronautical Engineering.

  Even there, the universe was looking after her. If she hadn’t been switched into the advanced aeronautics class, she never would have met and subsequently had an inconsolable crush on Solomon Reach. And there again, he never would have sought her out for the Paradisi Mission years later if she hadn’t asked him out on a date, which he summarily refused, citing a busy schedule. Of course, if he had accepted the date, he wouldn’t have been allowed to offer her the job.

  But accepting the position of drive ops chief aboard the SS Challenge did mean she had to leave her entire family behind. She had gone with their blessing, of course, but it didn’t matter. The Paradisi Penitence visited her every night anyway.

  “Challenge Command is going to throw you in lockdown if you don’t let me out of here.” The irritated voice behind her jolted Vida back to the present.

  “Oh, I’m sure they’ll do worse than that. But it’ll be worth it.” With a grim smile, she glanced back at Docking Commander Daniela Marcks. The woman’s riot of red curly hair stood out in sharp contrast to her pale face and navy blue uniform.

  Vida scanned the data on the wall screen wirelessly displaying Marcks’s HUD from her wrist comm unit. No new messages. They’d been waiting two hours for word from Chief Reach. Once he made contact, she was to ensure Docking Commander Marcks made it back to her station on the Nautilus-11 Command Bridge so she could start the SS Challenge’s undocking procedure at Solomon’s command.

  “Dammit, Vida. I don’t have time for this. I have to go through the protocol checks. Or is your purpose in keeping me here to force us to miss our very tight launch window?”

  “Wasn’t my fault you Founders wasted your precious launch time stowing away illegals from Earth on this station.”

  Marcks hesitated at that, since it was the first time Vida had openly admitted she was aware of the thousands of people Challenge Command had hidden in Nautilus-11’s Serica Sector, people they had hoped to replace the Reacher crew with before her boss had caught wind of their plans.

  Hours ago, Vida had tried to keep her curiosity at bay as she worked to disable the Serica Sector’s locking system and trap the Serica group in. She was keenly aware that if Marcks and the rest of Challenge Command crew had their way, the majority of the Reachers would be kicked off the ship and replaced with the Serica group. But as she had worked on the code panel far above the expansive main compartment, she opened a small access panel and peered down below.

  Thousands upon thousands of them milled about, some napping on cots along the walls, others talking in small groups. Some children cried in their parents’ arms while others played quietly with tiny, lightweight toys. She even saw a baby no older than six months old being nursed by its mother. To bring babies aboard a ship with cryo beds meant only for adults—it was sheer madness.

  One old woman reminded Vida of her grandmother. She had the same beautiful bronzed skin, the same frizzy grey-white hair. She thought back to her grandmother’s final words before she ship
ped out the final time for the long journey ahead to the Andromeda galaxy.

  “I told your mother to call you Vida because I knew you would carry all our lives with you to the stars. I knew it before they did. You were always my little estrella girl.” She had nodded her head vehemently, as if Vida had disagreed with her.

  “I know, Abue. I know.”

  Vida had begun wiping the old woman’s face with a fresh, cool cloth to try to calm her, but her grandmother leaned up on an elbow and grabbed her arm.

  “Vida, listen to me. When you go up there, I want you to take this with you.” Her frail fingers grasped the tiny cross sitting on the bedside table and pressed it into her palm. It wasn’t until Vida curled her own fingers around the cross that her grandmother leaned her grey-haired head against the pillow and relaxed.

  “When you’re in space, I will close my eyes and picture myself floating beside you, free of this mad Earth and its unholy wars. I’ll be with you among the stars and God.”

  Vida wished her old abuelita could be with her now. She looked out at Earth again. Rarely did she take the time to look back anymore. There was always more work in the queue, more launch prep to do before they made their way toward the wormhole and on to the planet New Eden. And everything depended on today. She would either be on her way to the Paradisi System with her crewmates aboard the SS Challenge, or she’d be left behind—something her grandmother would heartily disapprove of.

  Vida had bitten her lip and tried to steel herself against her instinct to save the people in Serica. They weren’t her responsibility. She had to do whatever it took to protect her fellow Reachers from getting kicked off the ship and sent back down to Earth. It was their right, under contract, and she would help her boss to force the Founders to honor their agreement. She had every confidence he would save his crew. He had never once failed them, and he wasn’t about to start now.

  She hadn’t told Solomon what she had seen in Serica Sector. How could she? It would only have made his decision to choose between his Reacher crew and the Serica group even harder. No, it was better he never knew who he was leaving behind. While she loved her partner Kasen Vokos with every breath in her body, she knew beyond a doubt Solomon Reach was the most honorable man she had ever met. And if he knew there were children and infants in Serica Sector... He would still do as honor dictated, but he would forever feel responsible for their innocent deaths.

  “The Serica group... They are Founder family members, aren’t they?” Vida asked Marcks quietly. “Those too young and diseased to make the cut?”

  Marcks glared at her but didn’t respond. Vida saw the answer in the way the woman swallowed. The painful truth was stuck like a rock in a pipe in the woman’s throat.

  “I was there, Daniela, when your deciding vote in that super secret joint board meeting sold the Reachers out.”

  “What? How did you get into the board room?” Marcks’s tone rose to a louder pitch with every word, her expression of shock turning to anger.

  Vida shimmied up onto the table next to her, and leaned down to whisper in her ear. “Who’s in there for you, Daniela? A husband? A lover? Three illegitimate children you had stashed away in Bavaria?”

  Marcks winced. She wouldn’t look at Vida. Instead, she stared hard out of the fenestella, which looked down on the disk-shaped Serica and Challenge Sectors. These were joined to Nautilus’s Main Hub by long, thin modules. Beyond that, the massive SS Challenge, the last of the eleven Asteria-class ships Reach Corp had built, remained connected via a sizable docking module.

  “Come on, Daniela. You had to have some legitimate reason to sell out three thousand people—no, let’s call it what it is: condemning us to death in a nuclear winter.”

  Daniela locked eyes with her, then, a challenge giving depth to her stare. And then she began to talk. “There’s no one for me in Serica. My son, Zander, is all I have left.” She strained against the straps holding her arms to the chair, as if she wanted to gesture with her hands. “No, this was all for them, those cowards in Challenge Command. Wives, children, aunts—they’ve even got grandmothers and babies in there!”

  Vida was surprised to hear irritation in the docking commander’s voice. Apparently, the woman wasn’t always an advocate of Challenge Command’s insane plan.

  “You know when the Reachers get wind of this they’ll mutiny.” Vida kept her tone even. Anyone who knew her well would be aware this was a clear indication of the rising level of her anger.

  “I know it,” Marcks spit out.

  “And still you made the dishonorable choice?”

  “There are children in there, Vida.”

  “And the Reachers—the ones who earned this ride—don’t have children worth saving?”

  “You don’t know—”

  “I do. I know what kind of woman you are now.”

  “Don’t preach to me, Vida. This is the end of the world.”

  “Yes, and we take our honor with us when we pass out of this galaxy.” She swiped a hand through the air with Argentinian emphasis, but the docking commander glanced away toward the SS Challenge, her lips pursed into a rigid line. Perhaps she was longing to be out there and long gone from this station, but Vida wanted to drive the point home. She jumped down from the table and leaned over her, so she could not look away.

  “Know this, Daniela, and do not doubt me. The Founders will never be rid of the Reachers. I swear it.”

  Marcks’s DOT finally buzzed with a message notification. Vida glanced up and read it.

  “VIDA, YOU ARE A GO. HEAD TO THE BRIDGE AND AWAIT FURTHER INSTRUCTIONS.”

  The message came from her UiComm, so she could only assume it was Solomon and not some Founder trying to trick her. She figured she’d double check to be sure.

  Vida grabbed hold of Marcks’s arm because she started muttering obscenities under her breath while simultaneously attempting to wriggle out of the straps Vida had bound tightly around her limbs.

  She flipped through the screens and typed out a question only Solomon would know the answer to.

  SECURITY QUESTION: WHAT DID I ASK YOU AFTER AERONAUTICS CLASS THAT ONE TIME?

  After a pause, he messaged back.

  YOU ASKED ME OUT, AND I SHOULD HAVE SAID YES.

  Vida smiled.

  “INDEED. HEADED THERE NOW.”

  The Cavitran Compartment

  Two Hours Earlier

  Solomon, Tavian, and Dextra piled up next to the SS Challenge’s Cavitran Drive Compartment’s slider. Solomon listened, his ear pressed to the metal. He couldn’t hear anything.

  No help for it, though. They had to traverse the length of the ship’s Lab Sector in order to make it to the Astro Lab in time to nab the docking commander’s kid before he came in from his spacewalk. Oh, and they had to do all of that without getting caught by any of the Founders looking for him.

  “No problem,” Solomon mumbled to himself.

  “So, boss, since I took a righteous beating from Mads Graversen... I’m getting a raise for this, right?” Cavitran Drive Ops Specialist Tavian Hunt scrubbed at his bloodied face with a dirty rag as he glanced back at Solomon Reach.

  Solomon flashed him a wide grin. “If you don’t die first.”

  “No worries there,” Tavian said with a wink toward Dextra Justice, who was now pressing her synth-leather black cloche hat more firmly over her near-black bobbed hair. “I’m a professional at not dying.”

  “That may be your only professional designation,” Solomon retorted, glancing back to address his other two crew members. “Baern and Jonesy, double check Mads’s restraints. We don’t want our dear Director Graversen getting loose and wagging his tongue.”

  “Dude is a total robot. I can’t picture him wagging anything at anyone,” Baern said, though he was already halfway across the room to check on him. He’d been blessedly unconscious since Solomon had knocked him out only minutes ago.

  “He’s Danish, Baern.” Jonesy’s voice was as deadpan as his raised eyebrow.
r />   “Same difference,” Baern protested.

  “Oh, he’ll wave his credentials at anyone who’ll listen,” Solomon muttered, immediately receiving a reproving glance from Dextra. Oddly, it immediately made him want to kiss her again. “Oh, you know it’s true.”

  “Yes, but you’ve been breaking protocol for two days now. Challenge Command isn’t going to let that slide. Especially Graversen when he wakes up.”

  Solomon shrugged. “I don’t doubt it. But it can’t be helped. My crew needs me. And if I have to take a bullet for them, I will.”

  “Uh, boss? Pretty sure guns aren’t allowed in space. They’d just make you take a nice long walk among the constellations.”

  Solomon chuckled. “Right you are. Well, I always did like a good EVA.”

  “I’m serious, Solomon.” Dextra reached up to put her hands on his shoulders and implored him with her eyes. “We need to be careful out there.”

  “And we will be. Do you think I’d let any harm come to you?” he said, touching her cheek briefly. And he meant what he said. He hadn’t had a woman in years. He wasn’t going to screw this up.

  “I don’t know, Solomon. But the lives of thousands are at stake. We need to—”

  “Excuse the interruption, Miss Justice, but I can reassure you of one thing: my boss won’t stop until everyone is safely aboard and accounted for. He doesn’t know how to fail.”

  Solomon opened his mouth to speak, but Tavian’s admission made him speechless. It seemed Dextra had lost her voice as well. A pregnant pause ensued until Tavian finally spoke up again.

  “On that awkward note, we’d best get going.”

  Dextra and Solomon nodded in unison, not knowing what else to say. He could see the color in Dextra’s cheeks had risen, and he could feel his own warming.

  Solomon cleared his throat. “Ahem. All right, Jonesy.” Solomon held up his hand to signal for quiet and to recover his equanimity. “Remember, no one enters the Cavitran Drive Room except Vida or Tavian. Got it? Hold tight until you hear the alarm sound. We’ve only got a few hours before Zander comes in from his spacewalk, so I’ve got to intercept him before that.”