Brothers in Exile

by Vasicek, Joe

  Isaac swallowed and nodded. For Aaron, though, it was too much to handle. He pushed their father away and turned to face the bulkhead, burying his face in his hands.

  “I can’t believe this is happening. You want me to leave everything behind? Just go and never see you or Mom or Mariya ever again?”

  “You won’t be leaving everything,” Isaac tried to reassure him. “Whatever happens, we’ll be in it together. We’ll still have each other.”

  “Yeah. Right.”

  “Like I said, the choice is yours,” said their father. “If you want to stay, you can take back your things and return to the apartment. I’m not going to force you.”

  “But Aaron, do you really want to?”

  The words left Isaac’s mouth before he could hardly think about it. If Aaron decided not to go, that would leave him entirely alone out there, and even though he’d been steeling himself for this moment his entire life, now that it was there, he realized he was terrified of going it alone.

  Aaron turned and wiped his face with the back of his hand. “You’re going for sure, then?”

  “Of course. Dad was younger than me when he left, wasn’t he?”

  “But you’re the oldest. It’s expected of you.”

  “Perhaps,” said their father. “That’s the tradition, but there’s nothing to say that the both of you can’t go together. The traditions exist to bring new blood to the remotest settlements and keep the Outworlds strong. There’s space on the Medea for both of you, so as long as you can get along with each other and work together, I don’t see anything wrong with sending you both out.”

  Aaron nodded. He took a long breath, and his eyes began to clear.

  “Think of it as an adventure,” Isaac told him. “You don’t want to spend the rest of your life at Alpha Oriana, do you? Ten standard years from now, what are you going to regret more?”

  “I don’t know,” Aaron muttered. “It’s just so heavy …”

  “You’ve got to make a decision one way or another. This isn’t the sort of thing to let drift away.”

  “Am I really never going to see you again?” he asked, looking back at their father.

  “Only God knows,” he said softly. “But you probably won’t.”

  “And Mom? Mariya?”

  He shook his head.

  “But, but how can I leave them without saying goodbye?”

  “We can record a message and send it to them over the planetnet before we jump out,” said Isaac.

  “I can’t say goodbye in person?”

  “Your mother will do everything to stop you if you do. Trust me. It’s better this way.”

  But that doesn’t make it easy.

  “Is the cargo hold full?” Isaac asked.

  “Yes,” said their father, sighing a little. “I had it loaded this morning. The inventory should be in the computer.”

  “Great. Where’s the best place to sell electronics?”

  “Damned if I know, son. It’s been almost twenty standard years since my last trade run. Just keep your ears open and check the prices wherever you go, and you’ll be fine.”

  “This is really happening, isn’t it?” Aaron asked. He wasn’t as shocked or emotional as before, though his gaze was distant and he looked a bit dazed.

  “Only if you want it to,” Isaac said softly. Please don’t let me do this alone.

  For a soul-wracking moment, Aaron said nothing. It seemed in that moment as if their future tottered on the point of a blade and could fall to either side. But then, to Isaac’s immense relief, he nodded.

  “Right. You’re leaving now?”

  “As soon as I can. Are you coming?”

  “I’m coming,” said Aaron, his voice low but firm.

  Isaac smiled and slapped him on the back. “Then welcome aboard, brother.”

  The memory played out in Isaac’s mind as clearly as if it were only yesterday. He stared up at the underside of his brother’s bunk, his heart hammering in his chest, and wondered if Aaron regretted his decision. Everything he’d said about Isaac controlling him and making all of his decisions for him—it stung, but only because Isaac knew he was right.

  But what if he puts himself in danger? Isaac thought. What if he gets himself killed?

  His own words came back to him. Whatever happens, we’ll be in it together. We’ll still have each other.

  He clenched his fist and sat up. “Aaron? You there?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Got a moment?”

  His brother didn’t answer, but considering that they were alone in deep space with nothing to do until the jump drive recharged, the question was moot.

  He rose to his feet and walked into the cockpit, taking a deep breath as he did so. Aaron stared straight ahead, pretending like he didn’t notice him.

  “Hey,” he said, taking a seat in the pilot’s chair. “I’ve been thinking.”

  “Oh yeah?”

  Isaac nodded. “Yeah. What you said is right. I can be a bit too controlling sometimes, and for that, I’m sorry.”

  “I’m still going to go get her back. You’re not going to change my mind on that.”

  “I know I’m not.”

  Aaron cocked his head and frowned. “What do you mean, ‘you know’?”

  “I mean it’s your choice, and you’re free to make it. If you really want to join Argo and fight in this war, I’m not going to try to stand in your way.”

  “But … ?”

  “But what?”

  “There’s always a ‘but,’” said Aaron. “Come on, what’s the catch? Just a minute ago, you were dead-set on keeping me out of this. Now you’re suddenly okay with it?”

  “There’s no catch,” Isaac said softly. “It’s just, wherever you go, I want to go, too. We’re brothers. We shouldn’t let anything come between us. If that means joining up with Argo and the rebellion here in the New Pleiades, then so be it.”

  “You really mean that?”

  “Of course I do.”

  Aaron narrowed his eyes. “What if I don’t want you to come with me? What if I want to strike out on my own?”

  “That’s fine, totally fine. If you want to leave the Medea, you have my full support. But that doesn’t mean we have to part ways forever, does it?”

  For a gut-wrenching moment, Aaron hesitated. But then, to Isaac’s immense relief, he shook his head.

  “No, I guess it doesn’t.”

  “When we set out on this starship, we said that we’d stick together. Our home is gone, our friends and family have been scattered. The only thing we have left is each other.”

  Aaron nodded slowly. “You’re right.”

  “I know I’ve been hard on you in the past, and I’m sorry. I’ll let you do more on your own now, take more responsibility, even strike out on your own, if that’s what you want. I’ll do my best to let you make your own decisions, because I’m not the only one who should be running things. It’s about the both of us.”

  “Brothers.”

  Isaac smiled. “Yeah. Brothers.”

  As if by unspoken agreement, they stood up and gave each other a hug. Isaac held on a little longer than his brother, but it was clear that whatever else had been said, they were going to stick together.

  “You know, she’s in the same situation that we are,” Aaron said.

  “Who?”

  “The henna girl. No home, no family. She’s lost everyone she’s ever known. The thing is, where we have each other, she’s totally alone.”

  Isaac took a deep breath. “You really want to get her back, don’t you?”

  “Yeah. I do.”

  “Well, I don’t know if it’s possible—I seriously doubt that it is—but if you really want to rescue her, I’ve got your back.”

  Aaron smiled and put a hand on his shoulder. “Thanks, man. That means a lot to me.”

  And I’m not going to let you get yourself killed doing it, Isaac added silently. But his brother didn’t need to hear that—not now. Not
yet.

  “All right, then. Let’s set a course for that recruiting post.”

  “Yeah. Let’s do it!”

  With that, they took their seats again in the cockpit of their father’s starship, bound as brothers to the very last.

  Author’s Note

  When I first got the story idea that became Brothers in Exile, I was finishing up parts VII and VIII of my Star Wanderers series and getting ready to move on to the next big thing. It was the summer of 2013, on vacation with my parents at Cape Cod, where I thought I would just keep writing like I normally do, except at a different place. Instead, this awesome idea for a new series in the Star Wanderers universe unfolded in my mind, and I knew almost immediately what I was going to write.

  Most of the groundwork and world-building for the Sons of the Starfarers series was laid by the Star Wanderers books. The two main characters, Isaac and Aaron, are both sons of Jakob, the main viewpoint character for Star Wanderers: Benefactor (Part VI). I wrote that book as a sort of node, fully expecting to expand into other storylines (kind of like how Star Trek: Voyager grew out of Deep Space Nine). At the time, though, I had no idea where I would take things. I knew I had to return to Mariya’s point of view and resolve some of the things that weren’t fully wrapped up in the first four books, but other than that, I only had a vague idea of the story possibilities.

  Earlier that summer, I had watched the movie Gettysburg for the first time since my childhood and was very powerfully affected by it. I’d read the novel The Killer Angels by Michael Shaara in 2012 while living overseas, but I didn’t get around to seeing the movie until five or six months after I’d gotten back. I was already familiar with the story of Colonel Lawrence Chamberlain and the charge of the 20th Maine at Little Round Top, but the portrayal of those events in the movie was just soul-stirring. Later, at the Cape, I watched the Ken Burns Civil War documentary, which really expanded my appreciation for this amazing historical figure.

  In Gettysburg, though, it was the relationship between Lawrence and his younger brother Tom that stood out to me as a sort of prototype for the relationship between Isaac and Aaron Deltana. I grew up as the oldest son in my family, so in a lot of ways I could relate to Isaac, even though I never had any brothers. Because of that, it was natural for me to tell Brothers in Exile from his perspective—the responsible sibling trying to keep the foolish sibling from doing anything stupid or rash.

  I started Brothers in Exile in September and soon got really into it. From the start, it was clear that the story was going to go longer than any of the Star Wanderers books, though I still intended to keep it at a short and intimate novella length. Other projects came up on the publishing side of things, taking time away from writing, but I kept steadily at it until I finished the first draft in late November. From there, I set it aside and focused on other projects so that I could look at it later with fresh eyes.

  In January, I made a New Year’s resolution to publish something every 6 weeks. When you’re a self-published career writer, new releases are the life blood of pretty much all you do—without them, it’s harder to gain new fans and very easy for your other books to fall off. Fortunately, I was able to land a good temp job in late January with a subcontractor for Google, installing Google Fiber in Provo, Utah. The job not only gave me lots of time to write, it also helped me to save up enough money to go for a few months without having to take another job. That, combined with increasing sales of Star Wanderers, helped me to support myself while I worked on the other Sons of the Starfarers books.

  When I finished Brothers in Exile, I wasn’t sure if I wanted to send it out to my first readers right away. I wasn’t sure how good it was, or whether I wanted to make any changes first. After a few months, though, I figured I’d just send it to them as it was and get their reactions. To my surprise, the response was quite positive. A few of them pointed out some inconsistencies and other things that needed to change, but overall the story seemed quite solid. I realized that I was a lot closer to publication than I’d thought I was, and started to get things moving in that direction.

  My plan was to publish the first three books of Sons of the Starfarers (Brothers in Exile, Comrades in Hope, and Strangers in Flight) all within six weeks of each other. That meant finishing up Comrades in Hope before getting ready to publish Brothers in Exile, and finishing Strangers in Flight shortly after that in order to give enough time for my first readers to vet everything. It’s a fairly grueling schedule, one that I’m not used to, but I’ve actually found it quite invigorating so far. The story is taking off in all sorts of directions, but the deadline pressure and the strict novella triad format helps a lot to keep the structure in line. As of the publication of Brothers in Exile, the second book, Comrades in Hope, is already finished and should be out exactly on schedule. My first readers really got into that one, most of them finishing it in one sitting, so if you liked Brothers in Exile I think you’re really going to enjoy the next one.

  If you’d like to follow me online, you can find me on Twitter (@onelowerlight), Wattpad, and Goodreads but the best place to find me is my blog, One Thousand and One Parsecs (onelowerlight.com/writing). There, you can find links to most of my books, as well as regular updates on what I’m writing, what I’m reading, and any general thoughts or observations that happen to strike me. If all you want is an update whenever I have a new book out, you can sign up for my mailing list either here or from the sidebar of my blog. If you’re on Wattpad, I’m posting the Star Wanderers books one scene at a time, so that’s a good way to read them for free if you haven’t read them yet. If your local library has signed up for Smashword’s Library Direct, you should be able to read all my ebooks that way as well—I make them all available to libraries for free through the Library Direct service.

  Thank you so much for giving this book a try! If you enjoyed it, please rate or review it so that someone else can enjoy it too. One of the awesomest things about being a writer is getting feedback from fans, so I definitely appreciate all that you guys do, even though I make it a general policy not to respond to reviews. Without you guys, I certainly wouldn’t be able to make a career out of this, since there’s no way I could get the word out without readers recommending my books to their friends. My job is to get more books out for you to enjoy, and I am definitely hard at work on that right now!

  That just about does it for this one. Take care, and as always, thanks for reading!

  Acknowledgments

  First of all, a big thanks to all of my first readers who helped out with this one: Aisla Lillywhite, Amber Carlson, Ben Keeley, Logan Kearsley, and Stephen Dethloff. Thanks also to Josh Leavitt for the editing and Kalen O’Donnell for the fantastic cover art. I know I didn’t give you guys a whole lot of time, but you all really came through in a big way. Thanks so much!

  The war for the Outwords continues in Comrades in Hope!

  WAR BROUGHT THEM TOGETHER, BUT ONLY HOPE CAN UNITE THEM.

  War has come to the Outworlds. An Imperial expeditionary force has taken the frontier systems and threatens to strike at the heart of the New Pleiades. The only thing standing in their way is a ragtag flotilla of starfarers and merchanters, their motives as varied as the stars from which they hail.

  Aaron Deltana can barely speak the same language as his Outworld comrades, but he isn't about to let that stop him. Though he has no military training or combat experience, he's determined to prove his valor. Besides, the Imperials have taken something very dear to him—something that he has sworn to take back.

  He isn't the only one with a score to settle. Mara Soladze, the only other Deltan in the Flotilla, has vowed revenge on the Imperials for killing her father. Where Aaron hopes to prove himself, though, Mara fully expects to die—and her fate is tied to his.

  Aaron isn't prepared to make the ultimate sacrifice, but when the war turns against them, it looks as if he may not have a choice. Only one hope stands between him and death in

  SONS OF THE STARFARERS
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  HE WANDERS THE STARS IN SEARCH OF A HOME. INSTEAD, HE GOT A GIRL WITHOUT ONE.

  When Jeremiah arrived at Megiddo Station, all he wanted was to make some trades and resupply his starship. He never thought he'd come away with a wife.

  Before he knows it, he's back on his ship, alone with his accidental bride. Since neither of them speak the same language, he has no way to tell her there's been a terrible mistake. And because of the deadly famine ravaging her home, there's no going back. She's entirely at his mercy, and that terrifies him more than anything.

  Jeremiah isn't ready to take responsibility for anyone. He's a star wanderer, roaming the Outworld frontier in search of his fortune. Someday he'll settle down, but for now, he just wants to drop the girl off at the next port and move on.

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  WAR TAKES ALL FROM SOME PEOPLE. OTHERS GIVE ALL TO SAVE THE ONES THEY LOVE.

  The war has arrived at home. James McCoy, the youngest son of a starfaring merchanter family, never thought he would face an invasion. But when an undefeated enemy slags his homeworld and carries off his brother and sister, nothing in the universe will stop him from getting them back.

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