Starshine by G. S. Jennsen

by Discover Sci-Fi Special Edition

  Caleb hadn’t specified precisely why he needed access to Alex’s ship. Most likely there wasn’t any precise reason at all; he would merely be preparing for multiple possibilities. She did have a good idea why he didn’t simply ask for access. The possessiveness—and protectiveness—Alex exhibited regarding her ship had been blindingly obvious within thirty seconds of meeting her.

  Mr. Marano now enjoys authorized access, should he provide the ship his fingerprints and the key.

  “Thank you, Meno. Open the hatch, would you? We’re going to need to get him usage of the flight systems, too.”

  PANDORA

  Independent Colony

  * * *

  “What? Dude, I can’t hear you.”

  Noah leaned in closer to Dylan, to no avail. Between the strobing prism beams dancing across the sky and the synchronous musical and visual performance, he could hardly hear himself think, much less hear anyone else speak. Then again, the point of the circus wasn’t to think, but rather to experience. To feel. To get wasted.

  I said do you want another drink? I’m heading to the bar.

  A beer, man—but a good one.

  He leaned against the railing and drew in a deep breath, enjoying the warm night air and the smoothness of the sensory deluge.

  Yet his thoughts inevitably drifted. He had caught the news of the destruction of the Surno facility on Aquila. His father must be so pissed. It wasn’t his sole interest by far; Surno accounted for maybe ten percent of his holdings at most. But it would definitely sting.

  When he realized what he was doing he groaned and dropped his head back to stare at the art painting the night sky. Don’t even think about getting involved, Noah. Not your problem—not the business, not the war. Just keep the party going.

  He accepted the beer from Dylan with a wry smile and greedily turned it up.

  At that moment Ella lurched out of the crowd and fell into him. He held the bottle out to the side with one hand to avoid sloshing it all over him and grasped onto her with the other. “Hey baby, careful there.”

  She gazed up at him, eyes unfocused and blurry. “Noah, hi…. Whatcha doin?”

  He chuckled. “Not what you are, apparently.” He steadied her and tried to position her on the railing next to him, but she draped her arms clumsily around his shoulders. “You’re hot, you know that righ…?”

  Ella was pretty enough. But she was unstable when sober, which was an increasingly rare occurrence, and nuts when she was high. And if there was one rule he lived by on this mad planet, it was never stick your dick in crazy.

  He eased her off him. “Yeah, baby, I know that.”

  “You wanna—” She reached for him again, missed and tumbled to the floor.

  He squeezed his eyes shut, muttered a curse under his breath and crouched to pick her up. Sometimes having a conscience goddamn sucked. “Come on, Ella, I’m taking you home.”

  “Don’t wanna—”

  “Yes, you do.” He rolled his eyes at Dylan and began guiding her through the reveling crowd to the lift. It wasn’t terribly late; if he got her tucked into bed reasonably quickly, perhaps he’d return.

  The lift circled the building as it descended, and she swayed unsteadily against him. He willed patience. She didn’t…‘live’ was a strong word. She wasn’t staying far from the club.

  The lift settled to the street level and he maneuvered her in the proper direction. They walked slowly down the street, then veered onto a narrower thruway. The entrance to the residences where she stayed was located about a hundred meters farther on the left.

  “Oops!” Ella tripped and stumbled forward.

  Noah leaned over to try to save her from sprawling upon the ground—

  —the brilliant white stream of a laser pulse sliced centimeters above his head.

  “Ella, get down!”

  “Wha—?”

  He grabbed her arm and dragged her along the thruway, trying to stay low and near the wall. They came to a door, and he shoved her into the alcove. He slammed on the door but it appeared hard-locked. “Dammit! Okay, I need you to stay here, stay hidden. I’m going to—”

  “But I wan—” She pulled away from him and staggered into the thruway.

  “Ella, get back here!” He reached for her at the same instant the laser sliced through her neck and she crumbled lifelessly to the ground.

  “Motherfu—” The shot had come from close range. He yanked the small kinetic blade he carried from the narrow pocket in his pants and lunged toward the shadow he saw moving against darker shadows.

  He plowed into a body and they both crashed to the ground, each grappling for an advantage. He swung blindly in the dark and connected with bone, at least if the loud crack was any indication. Before he could do further damage a knee came up and rammed him in the nuts, sending a wave of nausea up his chest into his throat. He fought it back and stabbed wildly while struggling to hold the flailing gun away from his body.

  Abruptly his knife met pliant, sluggish resistance. When the man’s grip on him fell away, he decided the knife had found the man’s gut. He wrenched the gun out of the attacker’s hand, climbed to his feet and pointed it at the attacker’s head.

  “Who do you work for?”

  The man writhed on the ground, clutching at his stomach in the darkness. “Fuck you. They’ll send more. You won’t last the day.”

  “I’ll take that bet.” He pulled the trigger.

  It took twenty seconds of banging on the door for Brian to open it. Music wafted from the living room, punctuated by high-pitched laughter.

  “You need somethi—?”

  Noah grabbed his shirt by the collar. “Why is somebody trying to kill me?”

  “What? Hey, let go! I don’t know!”

  “Is it because of the explosives job? They were for the Vancouver bombing that just happened, weren’t they?”

  “I told you, I don’t know! Give me a break, man….”

  He tightened his grip instead. “Why did you offer the job to me? Did Nguyen tell you to?”

  “No, man. Calm down, okay?”

  “I am not going to calm down. I got shot at and an innocent girl is dead!”

  Brian’s eyes widened into saucers. “Shit. Look, the request came from higher. They didn’t tell me how much higher.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know.”

  His grip clenched to the point it began choking off Brian’s air.

  “Okay, okay….” Noah loosened his hold a miniscule amount, and Brian gasped in a breath. “I did overhear one thing—I got no idea what it means though.”

  “What.”

  “Something about you needing to do the job cause you’d worked with some guy named Marano.”

  “Caleb? What the hell does Caleb have to do with this?”

  “I got no idea! That’s all I heard, I swear. I didn’t know they would try to take you out, man, I swear.”

  “Fuck.” He let go of the shirt and shoved Brian into the apartment. “Don’t come looking for me, you understand?”

  He spun and stormed down the hallway, pausing once to punch the wall in frustration. He had no choice. He was going to have to bail, and bail now.

  Noah scanned the travel schedule from the relative safety of a group of tourists. It was the middle of the night, but there were always tourists at the spaceport. He wore a cap he’d bought on the way pulled low over his face.

  He’d sent Caleb a brief message a few minutes earlier. Watch your back. Something screwy is up. He’d expand on it later, if he was still alive.

  He couldn’t go where they would expect him to. Aquila was out, as was New Babel and Atlantis. Hell, if it was Zelones after him all the independent worlds were out. Even Romane, tempting though it was.

  No, he needed to go somewhere random. Somewhere which also offered him some cover and the opportunity to make a few credits until things settled down.

  He scanned the list again.

  Messium. Boring as shit and hom
e to more military than he’d like, but it boasted a healthy population to hide in and a robust tech industry to service. And he was technically an Alliance citizen.

  With a sigh he slid away from the crowd and headed for the boarding platform. So much for the party….

  65

  SPACE, NORTH-CENTRAL QUADRANT

  Senecan Federation Space

  * * *

  Alex watched him sleep.

  She lay against him, her injured side facing up and unhindered. His arms were wrapped gently around her in slumber. Despite his best efforts otherwise he had dozed off, albeit only after going to prodigious lengths to ensure she was comfortable in the bed and not in pain and had everything she needed. It had been overprotective and unnecessary and rather adorable.

  She had insisted on getting downstairs under her own power, much to his frustration. ‘Bullheaded stubborn,’ he had called her; she hadn’t disputed the point. Her wounds still ached, but she felt as if she had her bearings again. By morning she should be functional. Not one hundred percent by a long shot…but functional.

  He must be beyond exhausted. She knew enough about military-grade cybernetics enhancements to recognize both what they empowered the body to do and the toll they inflicted in the aftermath. Human physiology was being pushed to its very limits. Thus far it was keeping up, but barely.

  She probably should be asleep as well…even if three hours of unconsciousness really should count.

  Instead she watched him sleep. She allowed her gaze to trace the line of his jaw, the curves of his exquisite and talented lips and the angular path of his nose.

  Her brow furrowed up a little. Something about the set of his mouth, the relaxed muscles in his cheeks and neck, the way…

  …then she realized. This was how he looked when it was the two of them—when they were talking or working or not doing much of anything and the mood was easy and comfortable. He appeared more serene and peaceful in slumber of course, but it was unquestionably the same aspect.

  He truly wasn’t manipulating her.

  Endorphins flooded through her body; it was all she could do not to laugh out loud.

  Though she had allowed him into her bed, had shared secrets with him, risked arrest and even her ship for him…a part of her had still assumed he was deceiving her. Whether for some purpose or because it was his nature and he didn’t know any other way to be, when he had no further need of her a switch would flip in his eyes and he would be gone.

  His words and especially his actions told her over and over again he was genuine, yet she couldn’t bring herself to foreclose the possibility the persona he showed to her only represented another face of the chameleon—a chameleon he readily admitted existed.

  A mere hour ago she had thought her fears confirmed, thought the day a part of her had assumed would come had done so earlier than expected. Then, when he had fallen to his knees before her, raw and exposed, every sense she possessed had screamed at her to give in and believe the truth of him.

  But now…why now? Was it simply that now she was ready to trust and searching for a reason to do so?

  In the end it didn’t matter, for it was already done.

  She leaned in and kissed him lightly then settled on the pillow to watch him wake. She shouldn’t have done it; he needed the rest…but she needed him.

  He stirred and shifted. After a few seconds he blinked a couple of times to reveal blurry, unfocused irises; warmth flooded them even before they grew clearer. “Hi….”

  Her perception hadn’t deceived her: the set of his mouth, the line of his jaw, the impression his visage conveyed remained unaltered, enhanced solely by the addition of dazzling irises. She matched his smile. “Hi.”

  “I fell asleep?”

  “Just for a little while.”

  He reached up to stroke her cheek. “You should sleep.”

  “I did, remember? Most of the evening I believe.”

  “I’m not certain that counts.”

  “Well….” Her smile broadened. “I’ll sleep in a bit.”

  His eyes narrowed. “What?”

  She tried her best to look innocent. “Nothing.”

  He drew her closer against him. “It’s not nothing…but since you’re smiling, I’ll just go with it.”

  She responded by kissing the corner of his mouth and snuggling into the crook of his arm.

  They lay there in silence for several minutes, and in truth she might have begun to drift off when he shifted beneath her. She blinked awake and covered any drowsiness by dancing fingertips along the curly hair trailing down his abdomen to his navel.

  He raised an eyebrow at her. “Since we’re hanging out here not sleeping, mind if I ask you something random?”

  “Hmm? Sure.” She propped her chin on his chest to be able to catch his gaze.

  “The name of your ship. I’ve run it through every Russian dialect and half a dozen other languages and encyclopedia compendiums, but no matches. And I was…wondering.”

  She laughed and scooted up onto one elbow. “It wouldn’t match anything.”

  One side of her mouth curled up of its own volition. “So the story goes—I was three years old, far too young to remember it with any clarity—my dad and I were stargazing in the backyard one night. I babbled away, asking dozens of wacky questions only a child could think of about the stars and ships and what space was like. He was humoring me, like he always did.

  “And I uttered some nonsensical proclamation like, ‘One day I’m gonna be a star.’ And he…he hugged me and said, ‘Na den’ vy siyat’ s snova siyaniye chem vse svetilo v nebesnyy nebesa,’ which roughly means, ‘One day you will shine with more radiance than every star in the celestial heavens.’”

  He chuckled. “Quite a mouthful for a little girl.”

  “I know, right? He had a definite flair for the dramatic. I understood ‘na den’ vy,’ common words and all, but I’d never heard the rest before and didn’t yet have a full eVi with a translator. I looked up at him, my face scrunched up in a child’s perplexity, and tried to repeat it. But I stumbled over the ‘vs’ and ‘sv’ phonetics, since English doesn’t often use them. I garbled out ‘siya…ssn…niye…v nebe…ne…,’ stopped, went back and tried again and still totally mangled it.

  “Finally I stared at him in desperation and whispered, ‘siya-…ne-…?’ then waited for him to fill in the rest. He laughed, hugged me tighter and said, ‘Siyane is perfect, sweetheart. My little star shining brightly.’”

  She swallowed away the lump in her throat. “And it sort of became his pet name for me. He didn’t use it a lot, but whenever he was acting particularly affectionate or melodramatic he’d whip it out for added impact.”

  She shrugged in his arms. “So I guess the best way to put it is…the name represents an affirmation that I’m trying to live up to his belief in what I could be.”

  He pulled her yet closer, careful not to press on her wounds, and kissed the top of her head. She wished she was able to see his expression, but he held her securely against him.

  “I’d wager if he were here, he’d say you’re doing a hell of a lot more than trying.”

  “In fact…” his embrace loosened “…that’s what it is, isn’t it?”

  “What’s what?”

  “What you do.”

  She regarded him curiously. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  “How you find things others cannot. How you somehow knew the TLF wave wasn’t coming from the pulsar, and discovered its origin point. How you stared into space and saw where to find a tiny, cold, silent star buried deep within nebular clouds.”

  She bit her lower lip, her gaze drifting away from him. After a moment she rested her head on his chest. “It’s not magic or anything. It’s simply…the universe has rules. Even the exceptions obey the rules. Though so immensely complex it appears to most like chaos, in truth the universe is ordered and structured and perfect.

  “More than that, I understand the struc
ture. It makes sense to me. I look out into the void and I see the interconnections and relationships—the gravitational pull of a supergiant subtly tugging at a stellar system kiloparsecs away, the excess glow along the edges of ionized gas as it collides with an H I region, the absence which marks a dark star or a gray hole.”

  His hand wound leisurely through her hair, reassuring her she wasn’t crazy, encouraging her to continue. “And since I understand the way things must be, when something seems out of place, wrong or merely odd…I can recognize the reality of it. The hidden object or event or force which brings space back into alignment with the rules of the universe.”

  She lifted her head to crinkle her nose up at him. “But I don’t get what any of this has to do with the name of my ship.”

  He brushed a strand of hair out of her eyes. “When we were at the center of Metis and you were looking for the pulsar’s companion, you stared out the viewport and whispered, ‘Come on you little star, shine for me.’”

  “No, I didn’t.”

  “Yes, you did.”

  “I don’t…. Well, I suppose it does kind of feel as though that’s what happens, but…. Even if it’s true, the stars do the shining. Not me.”

  He drew her up his body until his lips met hers. They were soft and gentle, like the ocean breeze on a rare warm Pacifica summer afternoon. She’d never imagined a man capable of such violence, of such intensity, could also be capable of the extraordinary tenderness he showed toward her.

  He pulled back a fraction to meet her eyes and gaze into her soul. “Are you sure?”

  66

  EARTH

  Vancouver, EASC Headquarters

  * * *

  Miriam did all her staring in disbelieving horror at the unimaginable landscape of destruction from the transport as it circled twice overhead.

  She had seen destruction before. During the First Crux War she had witnessed firsthand the aftermath of more than one battle. But that war had never come close to reaching Earth. To reaching home. This, though…she had spent the last fourteen years of her life working in the building which now lay crumbled in smoldering ruins.