A Handful of Stars (Star Svensdotter #2)

by Dana Stabenow

  “Strangled them in their sleep,” I said.

  “This from the woman who insisted on incorporating The Complete Works of William Shakespeare into Archy’s data base before we kicked off from Terranova.”

  “I guess.” I yawned.

  She was watching me. “Sleepy?”

  “Not really. Just tired.”

  “Star—”

  “Star,” Helen said, coming in. “Just the person I wanted to see.”

  “What’s up?”

  She poured herself a cup of coffee and sat down across from me. “You know Natasha still wants to go to Mars.”

  “What’s the problem? Put her on a ship.”

  “Seriously, Star, I’ve got an idea.”

  “Do you?”

  She and Charlie exchanged glances. “Don’t you want to know what kind of idea?”

  “What kind of idea?” I said obediently.

  “Transportation.”

  I made a noncommittal noise only because Helen clearly expected some response.

  “Transportation where?” Charlie asked finally.

  “Everywhere,” Helen said. I was watching out the viewport. A solarsled parked and a p-suited figure wearing a Star Guard badge embarked and began the hand-over-hand journey to the lock.

  “Between planets,” Helen continued.

  “Sounds interesting,” Charlie said.

  I got up and went to the lock.

  “Crossing the system,” Helen said, raising her voice. “On a regular schedule.”

  I cycled the lock and popped the hatch. It was Kleng Qvist. He looked a little surprised to see me. “How was your patrol?” I said.

  “All right,” he said. I helped him out of his suit.

  “Just all right?” Perry said from behind me.

  “Mostly,” Kleng said. “Jacques Honfleur’s the only holdout for the archaeological survey on my route. He threatened to shoot at me yesterday, so I didn’t stick around to try to convince him otherwise.”

  “You tell him we won’t buy his ore without the survey?”

  “I told him,” Kleng said. “He said fine with him; he’d just sell to T-LM or SOS.”

  “Jacques Honfleur?” I asked.

  “6111Voyageur,” Kleng said. “He’s sitting on a big seam of gadolinium, after five years of chipping samples from rocks scattered over eleven degrees worth of Belt.” He shrugged. “Hell, I don’t blame him. You go try to tell one of those old-timers he has to tear down his sluice and pack up his shaker table and kiss his dream of living out the rest of his life in the Presidential Suite in the Luna Hilton good-bye. Tell him it’s all because there’s a marginal chance he’s staked a claim on what could be the second rock in fifty thousand that may bear the remains of what might have been a civilization on what was possibly a planet, or planets, maybe. Try saying all that with a straight face, and make him believe it.” Kleng shook his head. “I don’t half believe it myself and I’ve seen the evidence with my own eyes.”

  “You tell him he’d be losing money if he sold anywhere but here?”

  “That’s when he started shooting.”

  I was remembering the surprise on Kleng’s face. “I’ll go talk to him,” I said. Their heads whipped around. It might have been funny, once. “I’m going,” I said. “It’s about time I got in some travel time.”

  Perry started to say something. I stopped her with a single look. “Take the twins this evening? Sean’s with Roger, Paddy’s with Sam.” Charlie nodded. Helen started to say something. Charlie touched her arm. Helen shut up, but she looked annoyed. Or worried. Or something; lately I hadn’t been that good at reading people’s facial expressions. Simon and Leif came into the galley as I left it. “Where’s she going?” I heard, and walked faster.

  An hour later I was suited up and shoving off in a solarsled. “Archy, off line,” I said.

  “I don’t think that’s such a good idea, boss,” he said.

  “Nobody asked you,” I snapped. “Off line. Now.”

  Silence inside my helmet was my reply.

  6111Voyageur wasn’t far from our present position; I was there in two hours. It would have taken half that if I hadn’t let my piloting skills deteriorate over the last months. Or maybe I was just tired.

  Mars was a cold and dour red ball over my left shoulder when I arrived. I braked and hailed Honfleur on Channel 9. No answer. “Come on, Jacques,” I said. “This is Star Svensdotter of Outpost. I’m not armed, I’m not selling anything, I just want to talk. Give me a signal to follow in.”

  I waited. Up close, 6111Voyageur looked like a diseased potato with a big chunk gnawed out of one side. Its albedo was high, and I was leaning forward to adjust the polarizer on my porthole when I heard a ping slightly aft of where I was sitting.

  I don’t like pings of any kind when there’s only the thin, unpressurized shell of a solarsled between me and vacuum, especially when I’m coasting down the home stretch of fifty thousand rocks, all with ragged edges and half of whom I am convinced have my name written on them. My exhaustion vanished, and I came fully awake for the first time in weeks. I started slapping the rudimentary control panel in front of me. I shut down the drive, I shut down the transmitter, I shut down everything I could reach. And then I sat back and listened hard.

  Time passes slowly when all you’re doing is listening. It was only a few moments later when I heard a kind of splang, which seemed to carom off the sled’s nose. I squinted out the port to see what was caroming. I flinched back out of the way of a rock about a foot across that narrowly missed the bubble of my cockpit. My elbow hit the volume control on the transmitter and suddenly the cockpit was filled with yelling.

  “Allez vous en, garce! I tell your chien the same yesterday!”

  “Honfleur! Listen to me!” Chink, crack, zing! It was the crack that really scared me, and I yelled, “Honfleur, all we want is a visual survey and one core sample, a one-time test only, we’re not trying to—Christ! Stop doing that!”

  “I listen to merde! I hear what happens to Lavoliere when you go to survey Tomorrow! That you don’t do to Jacques Honfleur! Ici, he is my rock, my aure, I sell him where I wish! And no putain—”

  There was another crack and his transmission cut off. By then I’d managed to get the drive fired up and I was history in that neighborhood, I was out of there, I was long gone, I was out in back of that solarsled and I was pushing it down the Belt. I didn’t care what direction I was going in, I wanted away and I wanted away now.

  I was in such a tearing hurry that ten minutes passed before I tried to take a bearing.

  I couldn’t get one.

  One of Honfleur’s missiles must have impacted squarely on the IMU’s antennae. My space compass was dead. And for all practical purposes, so was my sled.

  I punched in the code for Outpost. “Archy? Archy, you there?”

  The transmitter was as dead as my space compass. ‘Two for two, Jacques,” I said. “Not bad.” My mouth was dry. I took a nervous pull at the water nozzle inside my helmet. I stilled, holding the water in my mouth, thinking. I swallowed and chinned for an update on my visor.

  When I’d left Outpost, I’d had enough oh-two in my suit for twenty-four hours. I had emergency tanks in the sled for an additional twenty-four. I swiveled around to check the tank rack.

  Correction.

  I had enough oh-two in my suit for twenty-four hours.

  I couldn’t even begin to figure out how I’d forgotten to check for those spare tanks before I’d left Outpost.

  I’d topped off my rations; the dispensers read full, and I had additional rations tucked away in the sled’s single locker. Didn’t I? Yes, they were there, but I wasn’t looking forward to feeding them one at a time through the chin valve on my helmet and then trying to lip them up into my mouth. It was too much like a hen in a neck brace trying to peck up corn. I’d had to do it once before during the 1996 solar flare, when we’d had to stay buttoned up in our suits for thirty-five hours.

  I
’d topped my water tank off before I’d left, and I had drunk very little en route. The green-lettered update on my visor listed my tank as full. I had two whole gallons, plus whatever my overworked suit cycler could treat and return.

  I felt dizzy. Probably my imagination. I made a conscious effort not to sweat. It didn’t work. I took another swallow of water—what the hell, I was going to run out of air in twenty-four hours, I wouldn’t need anything to drink after that. I reached up and tripped my ELB. The trouble with the emergency locator beacons, they broadcast away from the sled, and unless you had something to bounce them off of back toward you, you couldn’t be absolutely sure that they were working, no matter what the go-light said.

  Of course, if I’d had something to bounce the ELB signal off of, I wouldn’t have been in this fix. I flipped on the transmitter and sent a Mayday. Who knew? Maybe the transmitter wasn’t dead. Maybe Archy was dead. Archy’d been dead before. In between Maydays I recited poetry. I’d always liked poetry. Gardens of bright images. Ever hear the Frost poem about the man who burned down his farm for the insurance and spent the proceeds on a telescope? Now there’s a man who had his priorities straight. “The best thing that we’re put here for’s to see,” he said, and he was right. Otherwise, why’d the bear go ’round the mountain?

  I sent another Mayday. So Honfleur had heard about Lavoliere. Who hadn’t? Who hadn’t heard of Star Svensdotter’s homicidal burst of grief, the berserker Svensdotter, the hand for hand and burning for burning Svensdotter? Three teeth, a fractured femur, and a concussion for a kiss? “He that smiteth a man, so that he die, shall be surely put to death,” I said. “Hear that, Arch? All that religion Mother crammed down my throat when I was too young to resist? Some of it seems to have took after all.”

  “You’d do the same for any member of your crew,” I heard Leif say. What would I do? I’d chew their ass out is what I’d do. Two wrongs never make a right. One wrong had led to another, and another, and another. I’d forced entry into the Conestoga. Caleb had died for it. I’d allowed grief to cloud my judgment and blunt my initiative in deciding on a course of action after the discovery of a Belt civilization. I’d almost killed Whitney Burkette for making a mild pass, nothing I hadn’t fended off more or less gracefully, and far less bloodily, a thousand times in years gone by. I’d allowed my piloting skills to deteriorate to the point where I’d neglected to checklist my emergency rations before a flight. Caleb had grounded miners at Piazzi City for far less. I’d ignored the advice of my own appointed experts in making this field trip. Instead of approaching Voyageur with standard caution, I’d barged up without so much as a hello and demanded entrance.

  I’d have thrown rocks at me, too, given half a chance.

  The solarsled was still moving because I had yet to figure out a way to stop it. It seemed one of Honfleur’s hardballs had damaged the drive in some way. “Three for three, Jacques old buddy.” I couldn’t shut the damn thing down, short of getting out and yanking it off the hull. The throttle was wide open. Mars was growing redder and colder and more dour on my left. I sent another Mayday. I recited some Shakespeare. “ ‘How like a winter hath my absence been from thee’—no.” I shook myself. “Archy, Archy, Archy.” No answer. Computers are like cops and whores; they’re never around when you really need them.

  I played with the controls, thumbing buttons, triggering switches, hoping one would jog another loose, the way the siren had worked to kick the starter over on Dad’s old crabber. Nothing worked. “ ‘By night on my bed I sought him whom my soul loveth: I sought him, but I found him not.’ The Song of Solomon, Arch. Any serious study of Christianity begins there.”

  I took a star sighting, humming a little. “Star sighting. ‘Star’ sighting. Get it, Archy?” I giggled a little, and caught myself. Hypoxia already? Couldn’t be, so soon, I wasn’t anywhere near out of oh-two. I sat back and permitted myself the luxury of a deep, calming breath. I knew pretty well where I was; I just couldn’t get back to where I’d started. And I was headed somewhere I’d never been. “ ‘I will rise now, and go about the city in the streets, and in the broad ways I will seek him whom my soul loveth: I sought him, but I found him not.’ ”

  I sent another Mayday. And another, without waiting the prescribed fifteen minutes. “I don’t feel so invincible, Charlie,” I said out loud. “You happy now?” I tried the throttle again. Still no response. The reversers. Nothing. “ ‘I opened to my beloved; but my beloved had withdrawn himself, and was gone: my soul failed when he spake: I sought him, but I could not find him; I called him, but he gave me no answer.’ The prick.”

  I felt wetness on my cheeks. I reached up and my gloved hand banged into my visor. Still, I knew. “Gotta stop this, Archy,” I said, “I don’t have the water to waste on it.”

  Something clanged against the hull and I was so out of it by then that I didn’t even jump. Other noises followed. “Probably should see what that is, Arch,” I said. “Probably Honfleur trying to finish the job. Don’t blame him.”

  Somebody started hammering aft. “That’s right,” I said encouragingly. “Knock off the cell drive. Very neat. Burial at space is so messy. Remember J. Moore, Arch? Were you alive then? Or you were and weren’t saying.”

  There was a crunch. The craft shuddered. A pause. Noises, as if someone was clambering forward. More banging, it sounded like on the hatch. “Undoubtedly Honfleur, Archy,” I said. “See you in the hereafter.”

  The hatch opened outward. A cool red light spilled into the interior of the craft. A figure in a bulbous white pressure suit stood silhouetted against Mars’s surly glower. I didn’t move.

  “It’s me, Star,” someone said over the commlink.

  His voice sounded so terribly familiar. A trembling began down deep in my bones and radiated out over me in a debilitating flood. “Grays?” I said, my voice high and shaky. I peered at him. “Grays, is that you?”

  The p-suited figure leaned forward and clicked visors with me, and I found myself staring into anxious blue eyes. Looking into them was like looking into a mirror. “No, it’s me. It’s okay, Star. I’ve got you.”

  It was Leif.

  “Leif?” I said stupidly.

  “Yes. Hold still, I’ll have you out in a minute.”

  I watched his pressure suit fill up the tiny cockpit. I watched his hand moving toward my harness release. “No.” I slapped his hand away.

  His p-suited form stilled. “Star,” his young voice came over the commlink, speaking slowly and carefully, “all that’s left of this bucket is a bunch of spare parts flying in formation. It’s still moving at a pretty good clip. We’ve got to get out and get out now before the damn thing disintegrates around our ears.”

  Again he reached for me, and again I slapped him away. “No.”

  “Dammit, Star—”

  “No!” I shouted. “You go.”

  “You go,” I repeated. “You go.”

  I don’t know how long we stayed like that. I do know that when he moved he moved fast, one hand smacking my harness release open and the other knotting in the collar of my p-suit. He braced himself against the frame of the hatch and yanked, hard. I flailed at him, my helmet banging against the hatchway, but he was too fast for me, and then I was out of my broken craft and dangling over the edge of a black, inimical universe. He steadied us against the safety line stretched between our ships and then reached down to feel for the safety shackle at my belt I flailed around some more, trying to kick myself free.

  “Star!” Leif shouted. “Star, what about Paddy?”

  The name caught at me. “Paddy?” I said, puzzled. I stopped trying to pull away from him.

  “You remember, your daughter? She’s barely five? She’s got a twin brother named Sean?” His voice thickened and with a faint ripple of returning awareness I realized he was crying. “They both have an older brother named Leif?”

  His voice broke. “Mother, please.”

  The ripple grew into a deluge and all the old crippling
pain was back, rolling over me like a colossal wave tossing a grain of sand farther up a beach, only to have the undertow threaten to pull it back out to sea. Oh how I wanted a place above the high water mark, safely out of reach of wind and tide, high and dry, at rest. “Leave me alone,” I cried. I think I was begging. “Please, just leave me alone.”

  “I can’t.”

  I fought it, but it was no use. By then the young, accusing faces of Paddy and Sean were fixed firmly before me, demanding my presence. As was the tall young man with the breaking voice dangling precariously from the safety line next to me, clutching so desperately at the scruff of my neck.

  If it were just me.

  If only.

  “All right,” I said, drearily. “All right, Leif.

  “Take us home.”

  Excerpt

  Now available as an e-book, Dana Stabenow’s Red Planet Run is the third Star Svensdotter novel.

  Red Planet Run

  “WHAT ARE YOU DOING HERE, HELEN? You’re supposed to be chiseling money out of the First Bank of Terranova to finance the next World. And where is Frank?”

  “I left him holding the fort at Terranova.”

  “So, what, you just came out for a friendly visit?” I drained my glass.

  Helen watched me refill it a third time. “You’re pouring that stuff down like it tastes good. Take it easy.”

  “Judging is dry work.”

  “So it seems, but I’d prefer you sober to hear what I came here to say.”

  “And what’s that?”

  “I want you to go to Mars.”

  Helen Ricadonna had always been a past master of the non sequitur but this was going a bit far, even for her. “You want me to go to Mars.”

  “Yes.”

  There was a pause while I listened to the babble around me and looked at Helen, her hair, completely white now, standing up as usual in a corona all around her head. I wondered, not for the first time, if she cultivated the likeness to Einstein. Her ego was certainly up to the task. I drained my glass and signaled Birdie for another pitcher. “You may not want me drunk, but I’ve got the feeling I need to be to listen to what comes next.” The pitcher arrived and I poured. “You want me to go to Mars,” I repeated.