Captives in Obscurity: Sons of the Starfarers, Book V

by Joe Vasicek

  Nations can only be born in blood, Reva remembered from Gulchina’s lecture. And that was what they were now: a new nation, a collective gestalt of human and alien.

  She took a deep breath and gazed upon the antique fixtures of Gulchina’s personal quarters, now her own. The antique wooden table and intricately woven floor rug were undeniably rich, but they offered no warmth or comfort. On the contrary, the place felt more like a museum than a place Reva could call her own. The vintage décor and trappings of old wealth were constant reminders of Gulchina’s cruel austerity and obsession with power.

  Elsewhere on the Temujin, the men busied themselves with preparations for the long voyage ahead. The damage sustained in the battle had been fairly severe, especially on deck three, but the breached segment had been sealed off and the vital systems were all in working order. They might not survive another fight against Gulchina, but once they were back in the Outworlds, that would be less of a problem.

  Still, it would take them a long time to get anywhere. They were at least a year’s journey away from the nearest Outworld colony, even with the Temujin’s substantial FTL augments. Their food stores would only last for two months, so everyone except a bare skeleton crew would have to go down in cryo.

  What level of battle readiness do we need to maintain? Isaac asked her telepathically.

  He was on the bridge, directing the repairs and preparations of the crew. Ever since the Battle of Star’s End, the men seemed to naturally accept him as their new XO. Some of them were more than a little surprised that their former prisoner had risen so far so quickly, but Wolf’s death had left a power vacuum in the command structure and Isaac plugged it quite effectively.

  “The automated defenses should be sufficient in deep space,” she answered him aloud. “Even with the jump beacons, space is wide enough that Gulchina will never find us.”

  And when do we want to start putting the men into cryo?

  He was understandably anxious. The crew had more or less unified after Gulchina had betrayed them, but there were still a host of unresolved tensions. Reva could never rule over them the same way Gulchina had, and the only real way to keep things from spiraling out of control was to put them under as quickly as possible.

  Besides, she still needed time to figure out exactly what they were going to do, now that they were all telepathically bound to each other.

  “Let those who wish to sleep through the long voyage be allowed to go into the ice as soon as possible,” she answered, speaking as much to the entire collective as to Isaac. “We will wake you when we return to human space.”

  One by one, the men paused what they were doing to listen to her. Questions began to arise in their hearts.

  What will we do once we get there?

  Yeah. What’s in it for us?

  Are we going to start a new pirate fleet like the Marauders?

  “No,” Reva answered. “We are going to mingle with the humans in a way that they will not be able to recognize us. We will spread ourselves out across all of their colony worlds, keeping ourselves secret except to a trusted few whom we will invite to join us.”

  In this way, I will take your children to the stars.

  She could tell that Isaac didn’t like the idea. What about the unstable ones? he asked her secretly. Most of these men are sociopaths—they wouldn’t last five days in civilization.

  “We will start new lives together,” she explained. “Whatever your faults or handicaps, I will do all I can to help you start over with a clean slate. When you wake up, you will be new men.”

  Several of the men approved of her plan, but others were confused. They missed the structure that Gulchina’s rigid discipline had given to their lives.

  Reva sighed and rubbed her forehead. Her self-doubts were as bare to the men as her henna-tattooed skin, which in some ways made it impossible for her to be the leader that they wanted. At the same time, though, they could see her perfectly for who she was: the sole survivor of a forgotten people, lost in a time that was not her own. And she could tell that they respected her for her strength in the face of her challenges.

  “It will be okay,” she promised. “Everything will be all right.”

  Somehow, that was enough. Those who still had doubts were willing to suspend them long enough to go down in the ice. Unlike Gulchina, whose face had been a cold, impassive wall, they could see into Reva’s soul and knew that she was being truthful. They would never follow her into battle, but they trusted her to keep her promise.

  She leaned back on the couch and stared out the single porthole in Gulchina’s former quarters. The stars were jumbled in unfamiliar constellations, the clouds of the Good Hope Nebula twisted into unrecognizable shapes. But even though their light was cold, it was also peaceful. And even though the alien consciousness was gone, its final request echoed on:

  Take our children to the stars.

  * * * * *

  Isaac dismissed the officers to the cryo chamber and oversaw the last of the preparations himself. The Temujin was much larger than his old ship, the Medea, but the systems operated along the same principles. The bridge felt empty with just one person, but then again, so had the Medea.

  Aaron, he thought. Where are you now?

  Whatever else had happened over the past few days, Isaac was no longer Gulchina’s prisoner. That period of his life was over. A lot had changed, but his desire to be reunited with his younger brother was no less diminished. If there was any chance that Aaron had survived the Battle of Colkhia, Isaac would not rest until he’d tracked him down.

  So you want to find your brother? Tomas whispered to him telepathically.

  Isaac bit his lip and stared at the deep space starfield outside the forward window.

  Yes.

  There isn’t much time. When I joined Gulchina’s Marauders, the Outworlders were forming a massive battle fleet to prepare for an impending invasion. It may have already happened.

  His words made Isaac’s gut clench. What can we do?

  If we fly on our own jump drives, we’re more than a year away from the nearest Outworld colony. But if we can find the jump beacons that Gulchina dropped between here and there, we can get there much faster.

  Are you sure that’s a good idea?

  You have anything better in mind? Tomas asked.

  Isaac had to admit that he had a point.

  What do you propose?

  Only Gulchina knows the location of all the beacons, right? But many of the officers were with her on the bridge when she navigated us through them. By piecing together their memories, I can recreate the voyage and perhaps find a way to bring us through.

  Isaac checked to see if Reva was getting any of this, but she wasn’t. Tomas had figured out how to block her from overhearing telepathic conversations. The men were learning to hide more and more of their minds from each other, increasingly keeping their thoughts and feelings to themselves. Without the sheer power of the alien collective, there were limits to what Reva could do to control them.

  You want me to keep you awake for the voyage? he asked Tomas.

  Surely you trust me more than the rest of these pirates. And even for a skeleton crew, you’re going to need a third person.

  Fair enough. I’ll run it by Reva.

  Don’t tell her about our plan to find the jump beacons just yet, said Tomas. Let me reach out to each of the men myself. If there’s a way to do it, I’ll put it together.

  Isaac frowned. Just what did Tomas have in mind, exactly? He didn’t like keeping secrets from Reva, but his trust for her had certainly fallen. Not that he thought she was lying to them, of course—he could see into her mind well enough to know that she wasn’t—but she’d raped him once before. How did he know she wouldn’t do something similar again?

  The prospect of spending a year alone with her didn’t exactly appeal to him, so he’d be happy to keep Tomas out of cryo. And if they could cut that year down to months or even weeks, so much the better.

&
nbsp; Deal.

  Good, Tomas whispered to him. I’ll get on it right away.

  Isaac nodded and brushed his fingers absent-mindedly across the control console at the helm. The purple-blue clouds of the Good Hope Nebula stared down at him, far brighter here in deep space than they were in close proximity to a system sun. He and his brother had often stared out at those clouds as they’d navigated their way across the stars.

  I’m coming for you, Aaron, Isaac swore to himself as he clenched his fists. I’m not going to let you go.

  Author’s Note

  In some ways, this was the most difficult book in the Sons of the Starfarers series to write so far. In other ways, it practically wrote itself.

  The storyline for Captives in Obscurity first came to me while I was writing the second book in the series, Comrades in Hope. It was also during this time that I worked out most of the series arc, including the conclusion in book nine. Without giving away any spoilers, the events in Captives are going to prove pivotal, not only for Sons of the Starfarers but for the Gaia Nova books set in this universe as well.

  That wasn’t what made this book so difficult to write, though. It was the fallout after the rape scene between Isaac and Reva. In a lot of ways, Isaac is the character that I can relate to the most: the dependable older brother who always does the responsible thing and tends to blame himself when things go wrong.

  In 2012, I wrote a blog post deconstructing the “A Man is Not a Virgin” trope that got some traction on Reddit and quickly racked up more than 2,000 views. In some ways, I think that Captives in Obscurity was an answer to that discussion. We seem to have this idea in our culture that it isn’t rape if a woman does it, which of course is absolutely wrong. There are so many double standards when it comes to sex and waiting until marriage that I guess I felt compelled to write about it.

  It’s not like Reva was trying to hurt him, but they come from such different cultures and belief systems that the potential for conflict was too great to be ignored. The rape scene was absolutely essential to the wider story arc for the series, as I think you’ll see in later books. That didn’t make it easy, though. It also didn’t make it easy that I like Reva as a character almost as much as Isaac. For all she did to hurt him, she isn’t a depraved monster or an obvious bad guy. That’s part of what made things so complicated.

  It wasn’t easy, but I hope I managed to pull it off and still make for an interesting story. The part that wrote itself was basically everything else, and I think it all came together quite nicely. The idea for the telepathic alien consciousness originally came from the Trill in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, but quickly morphed into something else. From a purely craft perspective, the point of view changes within the collective consciousness were a lot of fun to write. The idea for the execution scene in the first chapter came to me back in 2014 when I wrote Strangers in Flight, which is why in that book Gulchina holds Isaac prisoner in an airlock.

  Gulchina is another fascinating character who was a lot of fun to write. If you’ve read any of the Gaia Nova books, which take place in this same universe 1,000 years later, you probably made the connection between Gulchina and the Hameji. One of the things I wanted to do with Sons of the Starfarers was bridge the gap between Star Wanderers and Gaia Nova, telling the origin story of the Hameji in the process. The next four books will, among other things, flesh out that story.

  If you’ve enjoyed this book, I hope you’ll take the time to post an honest review. Not only does that help me out as an indie writer, but it also helps other readers to find what may be their new favorite book. You can also check out, One Thousand and One Parsecs, where you can sign up for my email list, which is the best way to be informed whenever I have a new release. As of this writing, I don’t know when the Sons of the Starfarers series will be complete, but I do know that there will be no more than nine books, and that the next one, Patriots in Retreat, will almost certainly come out before the end of 2016.

  Thanks for reading!

  Acknowledgments

  Thanks to my first readers, Benjamin Keeley and Logan Kearsley, for their feedback on this book, and also to Erin Kearsley and Scott Bascom for being a sounding board for some of my ideas with this book. We have a lot of interesting conversations, so it’s hard to tell which ones were the most influential in the writing of this book, but there definitely were quite a few. Thanks also to Josh Leavitt for his editing services and Karen O’Donnell for the cover design.

  The war for the Outworlds continues in Patriots in Retreat!

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