by Smith, S. E.
“This is an emergency. All citizens, denizens and nonessential service personnel should seek reinforced safety zones immediately. All passengers should proceed to the Terminal. A mandatory evacuation of passengers is ordered to begin immediately. Repeat, there is a mandatory and immediate evacuation of all passengers.”
Danyel cursed. Then he scooped Star up and ran.
* * *
The fish-school movement of the passengers in Gate Seven changed. There was a collective hesitation, then jerky motion like a school of fish that had seen a predator. Consternation spread through the gate area. Nikka went alert.
Then her notebook demanded her attention. It didn’t chime or chirp. It exploded with a shrill open-me-now alarm.
ALL PILOTS REPORT TO THEIR RESPECTIVE STARLINERS FOR MANDATORY AND IMMEDIATE EVACUATION OF PASSENGERS IN STARWAY.
With one look at that directive, she gulped and threw on her clothes. The notebook added that a bomb had gone off in the star station. It didn’t say where.
Where was Danyel? He hadn’t told her where he was going!
Running toward Starcross Explorer, she cursed and cried at the same time, then tamped the feelings down. She was a pilot, and she had work to do.
* * *
Gate Seven—and every other Gate in the Terminal—was near pandemonium with confused and frightened passengers and Port Authority staff trying to direct them to their starliners. Into the mix Danyel put one small white dog.
Star raced around the perimeter of the Gate, creating a wave of amusement, with Danyel in hot pursuit. Star yapped excitedly to add to the effect.
On Danyel’s command she darted into the passenger boarding door of the starliner. Danyel ran after her, eeling between the passengers standing in line. He gasped to the flight attendant who was trying to board the passengers in an orderly fashion, “My employer’s dog ran away!”
Merdis, not the kind of person to keep a yapdog, would have been very insulted.
“Valuable dog! Bad dog!” He ran after Star into the liner.
Like a furry white arrow, Star streaked up the spiral stair to the First Class section.
He recognized everything Nikka had described when she told him about it last night. The locker that had been secured to her palm print without her knowledge still gapped open. It must have a good, stable hinge mechanism. Star suspiciously sniffed the locker.
“Good dog.” Danyel ostentatiously scooped Star up. As he did, he tucked the package he’d assembled in the Pavilion kitchen into the locker and pressed the door shut.
Having planted the dummy package, he plopped into a First Class seat and watched the passengers threading their way into this section. They were not in a good mood. The flight attendants coped with them. The attendants had been woken up as early and as rudely as the passengers—some of their uniforms looked askew—but they were professional and efficient. None of them spared the secure storage lockers a glance.
Two Port Customs officers barged into the First Class Section. They zeroed in on the locker where the Obsidian had been planted, opened it with their override key, and seized Danyel’s package.
Star looked like a perfect yapdog with her ears pointed in different directions. Danyel tried to look harmless. The Customs officers ignored him and left, bulling their way past incoming and indignant First Class passengers.
Evidently the damning tip had gone to the Customs Department where at least two officials were motivated enough to look for the contraband even in the pressure of an evacuation. Oblivion was that bad. Or somebody in Customs was that crooked. In any event, there wasn’t an incriminating absence of a package, but somebody would eventually find out that it was Oblivion faked with blue sugar.
It was amazing what skills Faxen surveyors could pick up—skills that included faking Oblivion. Running across an illegal Oblivion factory had been a dangerous but edifying episode in Danyel’s Survey career.
Star seemed pleased with herself, as well she might. Danyel scratched behind her ears. He wondered what made Koi think that Star would not be safe staying in Starway. According to panicky rumors a powerful bomb had exploded. Koi had been very wrong about the Disunion terrorists being powerless in Starway, if they’d accomplished a bombing. Or . . . maybe the Oblivion in the starliner, SECINTAG in Starway, and Koi’s reference to a thread leading to a larger raveled fabric implied that SECINTAG had planted the bomb for some nefarious purpose.
For that matter, he had heard rumors of Telal enforcement actions where the Cartel sent in biological eliminators—devices that destroyed vermin including rats, cats and all other small animals. With Telal implicated in SECINTAG’s dirty work in Starway, no wonder Koi took the precaution of sending Star away.
Danyel wished he and Star could stay on this liner. This was Nikka’s ship. She wasn’t far away at all by now, just in the—unfortunately highly secured and inaccessible—starbridge of the ship.
If Merdis sent people after him, they’d discover his ticket on the later liner. They wouldn’t find him here. Exhaustion, though, found him unerringly. He sagged in the luxurious seat. It had been a day of tumult and a night made short by glorious, unexpected lovemaking. Within less than twenty-four hours his life had rocked on its axis and spun away in very a different direction.
Danyel didn’t notice the First Class passenger whose seat he had taken approaching until she loomed over him, with a harried flight attendant at her side.
Danyel vacated the seat and fought his way against the press of boarding passengers. It hurt so much to leave Nikka’s starliner that he might as well have been forcing his way through the electric vegetation of Faxe.
* * *
Captain Vargo flew the departure. Nikka backed him up. The Starcross Explorer was one of a buzzing, shining hive of starships fleeing Starway.
Stars flowed across Nikka’s visualization screen while the liner’s Intelligence painted the more elusive and variable points of constellation space on the navigation screen. The familiarity of the work felt wonderful even under these unusual circumstances. “We’re clear of Starway traffic,” she told Vargo.
“Being scheduled to leave first thing in the morning, we were readier than the liners leaving early under evacuation.”
Nikka knew that Vargo’s conscientious late-night inspection had helped too.
The Captain shook his head. “These are sorry times.”
The SECINTAG-orchestrated misdirections she’d experienced in the last twenty hours reverberated in her mind. “There really was a bomb?”
“Affirmative, an explosion without casualties, but with a credible threat of more bombs in places that will do real deadly damage—including the Terminal.”
What about Danyel? Would he get out in time? Starflight had the odd property that messages could go no faster than starships. Messages skipped across the stars in bubbles. News from Starway wouldn’t make it to Goya any faster than the Starcross Explorer herself. Bubbles would follow to tell what had happened behind them.
The Starcross Explorer took a complicated path rendered simply, as though the Nebula flowed around them. When they were clear of the Nebula, pure bright stars in black space streaked by. Nikka worried about Danyel, and others, including Koi. “What about everyone who lives and works in Starway?”
Vardo said, “The station has heavily reinforced safety zones. Wendis was once hit by an asteroid and doesn’t take that kind of thing lightly. The safety zones should protect people from any bomb that isn’t on top of them.”
By now the backup crew—only a few hours off another long hard flight—were sleeping the sleep of the exhausted in the bunks in the crew deck. Only she and Vardo were on the starbridge. It was possible to speak confidentially. He said, “The Wendisans take care of their own. That’s more than you can say for the Company any more. I’m at the end of my career, but you’re not. Since we’re going to Goya, you might think about applying to the Alliance Rangefleet. I hear the Alliance is recruiting star pilots. Not great pay, but othe
r rewards.”
Like not being snatched by SECINTAG for its covert operations. “Do you think they’d recruit sky pilots? My fiancé is a sky pilot.” She blinked. Did I just say that? Could it be true?
Vardo smiled. “I have a daughter who’s a sky pilot with the Alliance exploring the Faraway. They need more sky pilots. There’s thought to be a new world back there in the Starcross Nebula. Rather, it’s an old colony world, complete with an ecosystem and an atmosphere, but it’s been lost in unknown space for centuries. Some old records name it Mosaic. A pilot with your talent could find the constellation points to get there, if anyone can. My daughter could put in a good word for you and your fiancé,” he added.
His gaze swept the instruments. Satisfied, he scanned an update of the passengers actually aboard compared to those ticketed for this flight. “We have a few missing passengers—they didn’t make it, but their places were taken. We also have a small unticketed dog. No matter, the extra weight of the dog is less than the mathematical error in the calculation of the passengers’ combined weight. It’s a Chivvier. Is your friend from last night going to Goya?”
Nikka gulped. “She—gave her dog to my fiancé. But he wasn’t supposed to be on this liner.”
“Under the evacuation order he might be. Want to go check?”
She all but raced through the Starcross Explorer. Finally she found them on a Third Class bench. Seeing her uniform, everyone moved over to make room for her at the end of the bench and smiled when she embraced Danyel. “How did you get on?”
“Star ran aboard.” He took a long slow breath, giving her the impression that he was leaving something out. “When I got back to the boarding door with Star, saying I’d had to chase my employer’s yapdog, a Wendisan Port Authority official asked me what my destination was. When I said Goya, he said I should stay aboard this liner under evacuation rules. He also said, ‘What dog’?”
Sitting on his lap with bright eyes and the tips of her ears folded, Star looked like anything but a silly yapdog.
Nikka felt so relieved, so happy, that she was almost delirious. “The Captain says the Alliance is definitely recruiting star pilots for Faraway exploration,” she whispered.
He gave her a ragged yet luminous smile. She searched his face. He looked older than yesterday, as though he had grown up a lot in the last hours. He told her, “Your old dream will come true, Nikka Steel.”
“He says they need sky pilots too, for a mysterious new world.”
“Flying in the sky again—back to exploration, and having nothing to do with exploitation—I’d like that. I knew a surveyor who fled into the electric jungle of Faxe to get away from trouble, but he ended up marrying a biophysicist he met in the field. They were very happy together.”
“We’ll be happy too, Danyel. Can I call you Dun? I like that name for you. It’s the color of a wild horse.” Remembering last night, she felt an electric surge of attraction to him. “That’s a good name for you. It fits you so well. Some day we’ll thank Koi for everything!”
He laughed. This time his laugh didn’t have pain in it. “Thank Star too. She found what we were both missing—each other.”
They praised and petted Star, and she reveled in it.
Also by Alexis Glynn Latner
The Aeon’s Legacy Series
Hurricane Moon
Downfall Tide
Star Crossing
Helldive
About Alexis Glynn Latner
Alexis Glynn Latner writes speculative fiction and nonfiction. Her science fiction and fantasy stories have appeared in Analog Science Fiction and Fact, Amazing Stories, and various print and online anthologies, including Pets in Space. Her science fiction novel Hurricane Moon was published by Pyr (Prometheus Books) in 2007 and again by Avendis Press in 2014, followed by sequels Downfall Tide, Star Crossing, and now Helldive.
She also does editing, teaches and mentors creative writing, and works at Rice University’s Fondren Library in Houston, Texas. For fun and real-life adventure, she is a sailplane pilot. Find Alexis online here.
The Bajo Cats of Anteros XII
Zandro alienated the love of his life years ago with one giant mistake. Consumed by his animal rescue work, he didn’t realize what he had given up until she was gone. Now, his work to save two alien kittens with dangerous pheromones will reunite him with his old flame – and hopefully give him a second chance.
Aliette’s work as a space captain keeps her mind off of what she lost – Zandro – or it did until she receives his desperate plea for help. She reluctantly agrees to assist him for old time’s sake. But the simple transport mission quickly escalates into a fight for survival. The local drug cartel has discovered the unusual kittens and will do anything to obtain them.
With dangerous events and concern for the vulnerable kittens drawing them close again, Aliette will have to decide if being with Zandro is worth sacrificing everything for – even her life.
For my own Bajos
The Bajo Cats of Anteros XII
Zandro’s com gave an insistent chime on its charging station, pulling him out of a restless sleep. His window was still dark so it had to be late. Scrubbing at his face, trying to wake himself up, he hit the button to accept the call. Calls this late were never good news, so he trooped to his small kitchen and hit the coffee button on the food replicator. “This is Zandro Casillas.”
“Hi, I’m Ari Illeyn. I’m sheriff on Anteros XII, and we need your help…”
Zandro didn’t know this Ari on the other end of the line but, after a quick back and forth, he determined the sheriff was a friend of a friend from two star systems over who knew about Zandro’s rescue work.
Zandro prepped his coffee as he listened to the sheriff. “Which one is Anteros XII?”
“It’s a small moon. A quick jump over from your colony.” The sheriff’s voice was high and tense. “We just busted some rich druggies, and they had two bajo kittens among their stash. We’ve never had to deal with this before—”
Dread lumped in Zandro’s stomach, and he set his coffee down hard enough to spill on the countertop. “I can be there by the end of the day.”
Ari on the other end of the line sputtered. “No, no, you don’t have to do that. We can handle kittens. I just wanted some tips—”
Zandro took a deep breath in and held it, trying to likewise hold on to his temper. “Sheriff, bajo cats secrete one of the most powerful psychotropic substances ever discovered in known space, and they secrete it basically unchecked when they’re newborns. How many of the people in your office handled the kittens with their bare hands?”
“Um…almost all of us?”
Get ready for the high of your life, sheriff. Zandro swallowed a small, heartfelt curse, and kept his voice low and calm. “OK, you’re going to need to call some medical staff in to help your team. If anyone needs to handle the kittens before I arrive, please wear gloves. I’ll get there as soon as I can.”
“Maybe…maybe we should put the animals down? If they’re that dangerous?”
Zandro’s gut went ice cold. “There are only a few hundred bajo cats left in the galaxy that we know of. Please, please just wait for me to get there.”
A long silence followed, and Zandro gritted his back teeth. “All right,” the sheriff said at last. “But if you can’t make it today—”
“I will. Now tell me where to go.” Zandro got details for the sheriff station and cut the call. He swallowed as he contemplated his communicator. He had to get to that moon fast. The kittens would be dehydrated, maybe in shock. Cold. And then there were all the complications that went along with just handling the poor things. The longer he left the kittens with inexperienced caretakers the greater the chance that someone was going to get badly hurt.
And never mind if the drug dealers’ friends came looking for their missing cats.
He raked his fingers through his hair and twirled his com device in his hands over and over and over. He didn't know who to call.
So he didn't know who to call.
The moon was a quick jump by spaceferry if only he could wait a few hours until mid-morning. But, if he did, the two kittens might be dead, and the whole police station might be convulsing on the floor in aftershocks from the creatures’ powerful pheromones.
Chanting expletives under his breath, Zandro keyed in a once familiar comcode. He hadn't dialed it in long time. Her profile picture was years out of date, and he didn't know what she looked like now. He'd certainly grown more lined and grizzled in five years. Surely she didn't look peach fresh and pretty anymore either.
He tapped her picture then winced as he noticed the time. It was really late. Or really early. Depended on whether you were coming or going. I’m such a jerk. As the com chimed his stomach knotted, and he almost hung up. It was 3 a.m. Space freighters ran on standard time. If she was on her ship it was the middle of the night, and if she was earthbound somewhere then who the hell knew what time it was.
3 a.m. Who might she be with? What might she be doing?
Stop thinking, Zandro.
The line clicked and a raspy voice answered. The vid feed snapped into focus a minute later, and his chest went tight seeing her. Tousled hair, sleepy eyes, lips pursed and soft with sleep. Her brow furrowed, and her gaze sharpened as she shook her head. “Zandro, what the hell?”
An ache started in his gut at her familiar sleep-roughened voice, a squeeze that made him nearly breathless. “Hi, Aliette.”
She pulled her unruly red hair away from her eyes. “Zandro. What. The. Hell.”
He cleared his throat. “I, um, I need a favor.”