The Star Bell (The Cendrillon Cycle Book 3)

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The Star Bell (The Cendrillon Cycle Book 3) Page 22

by Stephanie Ricker


  “Of course.” She could hear the sympathy in his voice, even though she knew he had no love for the planet himself. It occurred to her that he probably didn’t feel as though he had a homeworld at all. The Sovereign was his home the way Anser was hers—perhaps would always be hers.

  The blinding whiteness of the snowfields dropped away. She imagined she saw a dark spot that could have been the mammut herd, but the skiff’s outgoing speed was so great, she couldn’t be sure.

  Too quickly, the planet had shrunk to just another world, no longer the world, the place where she had grown up and first learned that other worlds existed.

  She sighed quietly without realizing she was doing it. She glanced at Karl to discover that he was already watching her.

  “It’ll be almost a day before we meet up with the Strelka,” he said, glancing at the course heading he had set before putting the skiff on autopilot. “But right now I’m going to tend to that arm of yours.”

  “I think we’ll be seeing the Strelka sooner than you think,” Elsa murmured. Volkova should have received her message by now, and if she took it seriously, the Strelka might already be on its way to them.

  She unstrapped herself from her seat and moved to the back where there was more room to unbind her gloves. Her fingers were still stiff, and she finally gave up and let Karl unlace them for her.

  “All right, talk. What happened to you?” she asked. “I thought Cilla had killed you. How did you get hold of another Strelka skiff?”

  Karl winced as he unwound the bindings from her injured arm, but Elsa hardly felt the movement. “I didn’t. This is the same one we flew down to the planet.”

  Elsa frowned. “You don’t have to be that gentle; my arm isn’t going to fall off. How can it be? I saw it fall into the ice.”

  “I want to be gentle,” Karl replied, frowning in concentration at his work. “I know, I was in it.”

  She stared. “You were in Cilla’s skiff?”

  “Volkova’s skiff,” he corrected, “but yes. We left you at Gahmuret and headed to Atticora, which didn’t take long by skiff. On the way, she asked to use the co-pilot’s station to look up some accommodations in Atticora. I agreed, of course; I’d bought her story completely,” he muttered.

  “So did I,” Elsa interjected. “It was compelling.”

  He nodded. “Darn straight, it was. I wasn’t watching her carefully, and somehow she used the co-pilot’s station to overload the whole navigation console. The surge gave me enough of a shock to knock me out, which I suppose was her goal.”

  He eased Elsa out of her parka but quickly wrapped her in a blanket, leaving her injured arm exposed. She tried not to shiver, but there was nothing she could do about the goosebumps.

  He clucked his tongue. “You’re cold as ice, Elsa.” He nipped over to the skiff controls again and adjusted the life support settings. Elsa felt warm air fan against her face and arm, the only parts of her exposed to the ambient temperature.

  “So then what happened?” she prompted. She had been avoiding looking at her wound—she might not want to know how bad it was. But curiosity finally got the better of her, and she risked a quick glance.

  The cut was deep, but clean. Perhaps it had been too cold for any serious infection to gain a toehold. Karl gently began disinfecting the cut as he continued his story. “I woke up because I was being tossed around like a zalin ball. I presume that was when the skiff fell through the ice. Inertial dampeners were not on,” he said emphatically. Elsa hid a smile in spite of the pain in her arm. That explained the bruising on his face, then.

  “She had done a marvelous job of tying me up,” he grumbled. “I won’t even tell you how long it took me to get free, but by the time I did, the sun had set. I checked the sensor history, trying to figure out where I was. Cilla had been scanning for life forms, and I knew that if I wasn’t her target, you had to be.”

  “As soon as I pieced it together, I wanted to go look for you, but when I opened the hatch I quickly realized I needed to stay put or I’d need rescuing from my rescue attempt.” He looked up at her. “I have no idea how you survived out there,” he said earnestly.

  She smiled. “Anser-born. I knew what to do.”

  He used the synth-flesh gun to lay a thick strip of the pseudo-biomaterial along the seam of her wound. “I’m glad of it,” he said with a fervency that made her smile again. “Before I could fly out of the hole, I had to fix the console Cilla had overloaded. She had locked her side, and she wasn’t lying about being an insanely good hacker. I tried breaking in, but it was pretty clear that fixing the damage on my side would take less time.”

  He looked critically at his work. The synth-flesh had dried nicely, and apparently he thought so too. He put the synth-flesh gun away in its kit. “It took me all night to repair it, half-expecting Cilla to bang on the hatch any moment, which I’d sealed as soon as I was free. I took off about half an hour after daybreak, after a few false starts as I tried to wiggle my way out of that narrow crevasse.” He made a face. “Put a few new dents in the skiff.”

  “How did you find me?” she asked.

  He still looked down at her wound, even though there was nothing else for him to do to it. “I didn’t think there was any chance that you were still alive,” he said softly. “But I had to look. I knew Cilla couldn’t have made it very far on foot, so I started my search from where the skiff broke through. I saw the remains of a sled and a dead hund and figured they must have been yours, or Cilla wouldn’t have stopped where she did. I’m ashamed to say, only then did it occur to me to search for your commlink’s beacon.” He cleared his throat. “I thought I could at least recover your body.”

  He finally looked up at her. “It was a terrible feeling. I don’t know how to describe it.”

  “I know it,” she said softly, thinking of last night. “I was feeling the same.”

  “Tell me your story,” he said, moving to the seat beside her and taking her hand. “We have time.”

  She told it swiftly, unwilling to dwell on some parts. She realized she was clutching his hand tight enough to hurt as she relayed what happened to Cilla, but he didn’t complain. He clutched her hand in return as she described what she had done to stay alive.

  When she was finished, he frowned. “You said you did two things before charging to my rescue behind a hund team. Buying the survival kit was the first. What was the second?”

  Her expression hardened. “Transmitting the contents of my father’s recording to the Strelka, care of Captain Volkova, to pass to Bruno. If something happened to you and me, I wanted to make sure someone else would know the truth about what the mining company had done.”

  Karl smiled. “Smart girl. What’s your plan now? You know this will cause some major upheaval when it gets out.”

  “I hope so. I want the whole galaxy to know what the mining company did to my father,” she said with a grim light in her eyes. She was glad he had said “when,” not “if.” It was clear to her that the truth had to be exposed regardless of the cost, but she could understand some hesitation on his part, given the possible repercussions for the Fleet. Knowing he sided with her lit a warm glow inside of her that chased away Anser’s lingering chill.

  “The mining company will try to keep it from becoming known,” he warned. “And I’m not certain regular Common Union channels will be much better. How will we make sure this gets out?”

  She smiled. “I have an idea.”

  The skiff commline activated, startling both of them. “Skiff number two, this is the Strelka. Please respond.”

  Karl stepped over Elsa’s fallen parka to reach the controls. “Strelka, this is skiff number two.”

  “Elsa Vogel’s transmission has been received, and we’re coming to pick you up and proceed to the Sovereign. Please send your coordinates as soon as possible so we shave some time off your trip.”

  Elsa sat upright.

  “Acknowledged, Strelka,” Karl answered the other ship. “Sending coordi
nates now.”

  “Received,” said the Strelka crewman. “We can reach your position in approximately five hours.”

  “Thanks for the lift, Strelka.” Karl terminated the commline and turned back to Elsa. “Tell me about this idea.”

  They met in the Sovereign’s conference room for a council of war: Tsarevich, Volkova, Elsa, Karl, Bruno, and Marraine. The light of the star bell pulsed gently into the room through the windows, alternately casting shadows on the faces around the discussion table and illuminating them brilliantly. The contrast mirrored the differing viewpoints of the individuals involved as they tried to reconcile opposing opinions.

  “The Fleet simply requires internal reform,” Captain Tsarevich insisted doggedly. “You can’t chuck the engine out with the synth-oil. Sending the information to the proper people in the Fleet is a drastic course of action in and of itself.”

  “What makes us so sure the Fleet will repent of its misdeeds and not cover up the mining company’s involvement in the war the way they did in the first place?” Bruno asked.

  “We aren’t sure,” Volkova said bluntly.

  “Which is why we need to upload the information to the star bell,” Elsa interjected, her voice tight with passion. Karl nodded his approval of the plan she had outlined to him in the skiff. “Going through proper channels means the Common Union would have their hands on this info—and that means that the Tremaine Mining Company has its hands on it too. They’re not going to sit idly by and let this information get out. They’ve proven their complete lack of morality,” she spat, knowing she was getting carried away by her anger. “If we don’t take stronger action, they’ll take this chance away from us.” She could feel her frustration mounting, and she swallowed hard. “Please don’t let my father’s death go unpunished.”

  She glanced at Marraine, who had been quiet throughout the meeting. The fay had been invited to join as a representative of her people since Helias Vogel’s recording had shed light on the origins of the attack near the fay world all those years ago, and of the mining company’s subsequent desire to enslave the fay. She had not spoken since Helias’ recording had been played for all of them to hear.

  “Even if the death of one man is insufficient motivation,” Elsa said, mouth twisting, “think of the fay people. They were innocent bystanders, caught in the crossfire because the Common Union couldn’t be bothered to conduct their war provocation in unoccupied space.”

  She turned back to Tsarevich. “And if that isn’t enough, think of the Cendrillon Wars. So much blood and destruction, sparked by the Tremaine Mining Company to further their own power. You were there at the Battle of Castle Nebula,” she accused. “Nearly all of us were. You know what it was like.” The image of the Wilhelm crashing to the snowfields filled her mind, and a tear threatened to escape down her cheek. “We have to do something.”

  Tsarevich listened quietly during her diatribe, and at its conclusion, he nodded simply. “We must take action. None of us disagree on that. But how do we know distributing the information through the star bell won’t end in the same result? Can’t the Tremaine Mining Company—or the Common Union—still pull the transmission?”

  “No,” Karl said. “They can’t. Elsa and I researched this on our journey back from Anser aboard the Strelka. The star bell is older than the Fleet and the Tremaine Mining Company, and it’s outside of both of their networks, meaning its signal relay to other star bells can’t be blocked.”

  “Can’t stop the signal once it’s out,” Bruno muttered.

  Tsarevich sighed and rubbed his temples with both hands. “Okay,” he said, dropping his hands to rest them on the table. “So we send our full report—the recording, Elsa’s and Karl’s recent experience, and all of the evidence we have—out through the star bell to the entire network and let the information settle where it wills. Popular opinion will turn against the Tremaine Mining Company, and I imagine there will be a considerable shake-up amongst Common Union leadership as well when it’s discovered which officials permitted the company to gain such control.”

  Volkova shook her head. “You vastly underestimate the importance of cendrillon. However much people may disapprove, they cannot afford to boycott the mining company. We need more decisive action.”

  Tsarevich threw his hands in the air. “More decisive than this? This could already incite uprisings against the Common Union, especially on worlds like Atthis or Anser that were ravaged by the war.”

  “We need more than uprisings,” Volkova said. “We need a full-scale revolution.”

  Tsarevich stared at her. “Just what do you suggest?”

  Volkova lifted her chin. “Mutiny. We send out the information to everyone and anyone, but especially to all Fleet personnel. I will make it clear that I’m rebelling against the Fleet until the Fleet dissolves its connection with the Common Union, and I’ll invite any Fleet officers who feel similarly to join me.” She glanced at Bruno.

  Stunned silence met this statement.

  “Doesn’t that seem a little drastic?” Karl asked finally, shocked.

  “That’s the end of your career,” Tsarevich warned.

  Volkova grinned. “What’ll they do? Take away my ship? How, when the captain of the Fleet’s flagship is my friend and ally?” She looked at the other captain expectantly.

  “You put me in a difficult position,” he said. “If I’m ordered to bring you in and I refuse, I become a mutineer right alongside you.”

  She grinned again.

  “Damn you, Ruby,” Tsarevich growled. “I won’t choose between our friendship and my loyalty to the Fleet.”

  Bruno shifted in his chair. “With respect, sir, you’re not choosing between a personal friendship and your loyalty to the Fleet. Our loyalty to the Fleet demands this course of action. If we truly want what’s best for the Fleet, we have to distance ourselves from this corruption. If the Common Union feels threatened, the very first thing it will do is call in the Fleet to defend the Union.” He looked across at the captain of the Strelka. “I stand with Volkova on this.”

  Elsa blinked, stunned by Bruno’s wholehearted acceptance of the plan. Of all the ex-cinders, he had most desperately desired to join the Fleet. He had thrived aboard the Sovereign, and he was ending his Fleet career for the second time—this time irrevocably. She knew this had to have been a tough decision for him.

  Was mutiny the right action? They were throwing their Fleet careers away, and with it the galaxy’s chance for new exploration.

  Her expression hardened. Aye. It was a fair price to pay. Much as she believed in the Sovereign’s exploratory mission, bringing the Tremaine Mining Company to justice and exposing the rampant corruption in the Common Union was her mission now.

  But Tsarevich couldn’t quite let go of his dream of exploration, not with his long-desired mission finally within his grasp. “And if I take her into uncharted space?” he asked quietly. It took Elsa a second to realize he was talking about the Sovereign. “What if I go beyond the star bell before the mutiny starts and simply don’t return for a year? We could still conduct our exploration, return when the dust settles.” His voice was wistful, but he must surely know such a thing wasn’t really feasible. Eventually the message recalling him would reach his ship, and he would be faced with the same conundrum: obey or mutiny.

  “A non-decision is still a decision,” Elsa murmured. “Running will tell the rest of the Fleet that the flagship wasn’t willing to reject the Tremaine Mining Company.”

  Tsarevich looked at his son. “What do you think?”

  Karl glanced up sharply at him, surprised. Jacob Tsarevich wasn’t one to ask his son for advice. “I think,” he said slowly, “that regardless of our wishes, it’s our duty to fix the Fleet. There can be no exploration unless we first expose the corruption at our core.” He looked at his father and spoke the next words gently. “We can’t run away, Dad.”

  It was hard to see a dream die in someone else’s eyes, especially when it was one yo
u shared. Elsa looked away from Captain Tsarevich, unwilling to see the pain in his gaze. Karl was watching his father stoically, as if he felt he must bear witness.

  “Okay,” the captain said. His voice was tired. He had become an old man in the last few minutes, it seemed to Elsa. “We mutiny.” He looked at Volkova, eyes bleak. “Prepare your statement. When it’s ready, I’ll add mine.” He stared down at his hands, still resting on the table. “Heaven help the galaxy.” He gestured around the table. “Dismissed.”

  The room cleared quickly. Elsa hovered at the door, watching Karl. He hesitated a moment by his father’s side before following her out.

  The door slid closed behind them. Bruno and Volkova were already halfway down the corridor toward the airlock, talking animatedly. Marraine had disappeared. She still hadn’t said a word since the news broke. Elsa needed to talk to her and find out what she was thinking; she worried about how this had affected the fay.

  She was worried about Captain Tsarevich too.

  “Will he be all right?” she asked Karl.

  He nodded. “Yes. I think so.” He lingered by the door for a moment. “I want to console him somehow,” he said, frustration thick in his voice, “but I don’t know what to say to him. He grieves alone. There’s no room for anyone else in it.” He fell silent, and Elsa knew he was remembering the captain’s grief many years ago when his wife died.

  She reached out a hand, touching his sleeve. “I’m sorry. But he’s doing the right thing. That must be some consolation. You did a good job in there, convincing him to act.”

  Karl barked a laugh. “I did a good job?” He shook his head. “Your impassioned plea primed the audience. And believe me, that was a tough crowd. My father isn’t usually one to be persuaded.” He exhaled in an almost-sigh. “I have to get a message ready for the crew. Everyone aboard the Sovereign and the Strelka will need to make their own decision on what to do. We can’t force anyone to rebel, I suppose.” He gazed off into space for a moment, lost in thought, before giving himself a shake. “I better get started. See you soon, though?”

 

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