Starburst (Stealing the Sun Book 2)

by Ron Collins

  “Yes, exactly,” Casmir said.

  “Why wouldn’t they just say it like that?” She held her hands up in mock confusion.

  He shrugged.

  The conversation was settling into a familiar flow, him laying out facts and letting her come to her own conclusions or ask her own questions, then pointing those conclusions or questions in directions he thought they were best pointed.

  He had built Universe Three using this technique.

  It was like a verbal martial art, using the conversation’s momentum to shape itself into positions that were intuitive and natural. He was comfortable with it, and he enjoyed the sense of control that came from its practice. He liked helping people see things in new ways. Being persuasive like this was, perhaps, the only thing he was really good at.

  “I don’t know why people don’t say what they mean, Deidra,” he replied. “But that is how most people, and all politicians, speak. They tell you only the parts they think you need to know, so you must learn how to be careful when you listen to them.”

  He could imagine her chewing the inside of her cheek.

  “Including you?”

  “Yes, I suppose so. I’m a politician, so I’m dangerous. But I’m also your father, so that’s different.”

  “Why?”

  He heard the grin on her voice.

  “Because it is,” he said. “Suppose you tell me why this Contraction was so dangerous?”

  “Because it meant there was only one way?”

  “That’s right—at least partially, anyway. It also meant that when they adjusted the rules—which they did often—they were able to adjust them in their own favor.”

  “But doesn’t everyone vote?”

  “Of course. The UG is still something of a democracy, but you, of all people, know exactly how easy it is to connive and twist things to get your own way, right?”

  “I don’t know what you mean,” Deidra replied, her voice giving her away. His daughter had her brothers tied around her little finger, and everyone in the command center, including Deidra, knew it.

  “I’m sure you don’t,” Casmir said, patting her knee. “But you, my lovely and intelligent daughter, get away with it because your brothers love you.” He paused for effect. “The UG gets away with it because they play a majority-rules game, and they’ve learned that most people don’t mind being told what to think as long as they believe they are getting what they want.”

  “Is that what you meant when you said it’s easier to lead a person who thinks they’re free than to tell that same person they’re actually wearing chains?”

  “You’ve been reading my talks.”

  “Maybe,” she replied. “Is that what you meant?”

  “Yes, that’s what I meant. Politicians, and companies for that matter, learned long ago that the public is generally happy to go along with about anything as long as most of them don’t feel threatened.”

  Casmir coughed.

  He was getting tired. They would have to be going soon.

  “It’s important to understand that when a group controls something, they own it.” He pointed to the vapor hanging over the UG’s complex. “Take, for example, that power grid. The UG knows energy is the most important thing we need to survive. They can’t cut us off or the press would destroy them. So, instead, they tell us how much we can use.”

  “That’s why the lights go out at nine?”

  “That’s why the lights go out at nine on our side of the divide. They never go out on their side.”

  “That’s not fair.” Her voice gained an edge of anger. They were getting into fresh ground. This was the first time she understood that the Hive was under artificial rationing.

  “No,” he replied. “It’s not fair.”

  “Why would they do that?”

  “Because we don’t blindly follow their wishes.”

  Deidra’s sigh was calculating. “I don’t understand.”

  “Let me tell you the rest of the story—the real story about how and when Universe Three was fully created—and see if it helps.”

  “All right.”

  Casmir began to speak, and as he put word against word, his mind faded back to the day when it began. The emotions, despite their age, felt fresh. The images of the events came back to him in crisp detail.

  As it was when he first told Wallace, and again as he told Cash, telling his daughter the story of Perigee made him feel as if he was living it all over again.

  CHAPTER 4

  Perigee Hill: Mars Colony Divide

  Local Solar Date: February 12, 2206

  Local Solar Time: 0910 Hours

  Deidra listened with an intensity that told Casmir she felt the story’s importance.

  She chuckled when he described the idea of the human pyramid.

  “Sounds silly,” she said.

  “We were young,” Casmir replied. “It meant something to us then.”

  She gasped when he described the attack, and the UG clipper crashing into the pyramid.

  “That’s, what, forty-five meters? Fifty? That’s like the people at the top fell almost three stories on the Earth,” she said. “Maybe six here on Mars.”

  “I didn’t realize you were so adroit with numbers,” he replied.

  “Well,” Deidra said primly. “You travel too much.”

  He nodded.

  “The final count was forty-three dead. Several hundred more hurt. Being on the second row I was lucky. My suit was hardly damaged. But Perigee…even in the moon’s gravity…I remember seeing her body,” he said. “The crimson of her blood as it spread over the regolith, how it became nearly pink at the edges.”

  “Tell me about her,” Deidra said after a moment. “Tell me about Ellyn Parker.”

  He liked that. Neither Wallace nor Cash had asked about her, but he had known Deidra would.

  “She called herself Perigee because she said people spent their lives circling around what was real, and she wanted to be as close to that truth as she could possibly get.”

  “A perigee is when a moon comes closest to its planet,” Deidra said.

  “Exactly,” Casmir said. “She was brilliant. Very strong. Her parents were not good with her, but she learned how to live on her own when she was young. She was one of the first people I met who ever treated me like a regular person.”

  “Was she your girlfriend?”

  “No,” Casmir responded. “Everyone loved her, of course. But she was her own woman.”

  “Why did the UG clipper crash into the pyramid? Was it a mistake?”

  “No, Deidra. It was no mistake. That’s what they will want you to believe, though. Always. Every time something like this happens, they will say it was some kind of terrible mistake—a renegade officer gone wrong or a single person who made a terribly regrettable error in judgment. But it was no coincidence that the clippers waited until Ellyn was at her apex. They learned of our plans and they designed their attack. We all knew it, and we all knew why.”

  “Why?”

  “Because one of her strongest ideas was that the government should keep its mitts off anyone unless that person was impeding someone else’s ability to live their life well.”

  “Everyone should be free to do what they want as long as they aren’t hurting anyone else,” Deidra snapped.

  Casmir patted her knee. “That should be true,” he said. “But it isn’t. Or, it can’t be. People can’t help but hurt other people, almost no matter what they do. Ellyn’s view was actually quite different because she argued the flipside to that discussion was that when a person did impede someone else’s life in a way that was ‘inappropriate,’ it was the government’s job to see there were penalties, and she ran into trouble because she was talking about how all the companies that ran the government through their strawman connections were violating that basic principle merely by managing that ‘money pump,’ as you called it, to their own interests.”

  “She was attacking the companies?”


  He grunted agreement. “Ellyn had been protesting their lockdown on private space exploration and their strict commandeering of resources at the time of the pyramid.”

  “Like the power systems?” Deidra said, staring at the complex.

  “Exactly like the power systems,” Casmir said.

  “Ellyn cost them money.”

  “We didn’t see it as clearly at the time, but she was telling the government they had to crack down on the companies’ ability to dictate the flow of money. And by the time the event happened, people were listening too much. She had to be stopped.”

  Deidra thought about that, but didn’t say anything.

  “In retrospect, that day was the turning point of my life—as well, then, of yours.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Because Universe Three didn’t die when the government killed Ellyn. Instead, when news of the attack happened we brought in more people. We got stronger.”

  “How?”

  He told her then about how he had taken the reins.

  How he took Ellyn’s framework, a system of three spheres—the Solar System, their galaxy, and the universe that consisted of all galaxies—and developed Universe Three beyond anything she would have envisioned. How he used Ellyn’s views to keep Universe Three focused on keeping human beings free to roam them all. He explained his views of how greed and conglomerations were suppressive and would always be so. He talked about meeting Gregor Anderson who became his second in command, about fighting the UG on Luna before leapfrogging to Mars, and then Europa, and eventually to Io and the asteroid belt. He told Deidra about meeting her mother and how Yvonne advocated for all the real work that happened in the mines on Europa. He described successes and failures. He explained he had been put in prison for three weeks on Io when the UG was first creating a post there, and he finished by describing the months of effort it took to build the Hive.

  When he was done, he took a drink of water and watched the clippers circle the UG complex. Was it his imagination, or were they growing in number?

  He pressed his lips together.

  “So, you’re the leader?” Deidra said. “You decide what Universe Three is going to do?”

  “I coordinate our plans. But yes, I drive decisions.”

  “Holy…” Deidra turned back to look at the UG complex. It wasn’t often he could stand Deidra on her ear. “That’s jab,” she said.

  “Very jab.”

  “I want to be like Perigee.”

  “That doesn’t surprise me.”

  “I can’t believe they killed her.”

  “I’ve told you and your brothers this story because I want you to understand who the United Government is. I want you to know they aren’t actually evil so much as…limited. They believe in themselves and they believe in order. They will do what it takes to keep the system stable even if that stability means a third of the people in the Solar System can’t live well, and they succeed because most people would rather not deal with facts that make them uncomfortable.”

  Deidra was silent for a long time. Just sat there, swaying with agreement.

  “Why do you do it?” she said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Perigee wanted to change how civilization worked.”

  “Yes.”

  “Is that what you want?”

  Casmir turned to her, examining the lines of her jaw and cheekbones under her faceplate as closely as he could. Yes, he thought. Deidra is the one. She had absorbed the story. She understood the relationship between Universe Three and the United Government—or at least that there was one.

  “I used to think exactly like Ellyn thought.”

  “And now you don’t.”

  “I used to think that exposing hypocrisy alone would drive people to make changes themselves. But now I think the system is like this disease I carry around inside me: Once you have it, you can’t get rid of it. So the best thing is to never get the disease in the first place.”

  “Hmmmm.”

  “So…” He searched for words. “We fight the UG on the fringes now. We spend time on the frontier moons like Io and Europa, and we have people in the scatterings of the asteroid belt. Sure, we do what we can on Earth and Luna, and even the colonists here on Mars. But it’s the frontiers where we can create the kinds of worlds we want to live in.”

  “So you want to keep the Uglies from growing?”

  “We want to create new worlds where people can grow up without commercial oppression.” He put his hands on his knees. “There is too much suffering, Deidra. Too much pain in the people who are not in the circle. I do this because I can’t abide to live where people can’t all have what they need.”

  She nodded.

  “So, we still want exactly what Ellyn wanted, but you are right to sense that we’ve broken from her tactics. That’s another reason I’m telling you this story. I want you to know that the changes your mother and I work for are not always about words.”

  “Not about words?”

  “By that I mean we are more active than Ellyn would have been. We’ve given up trying to sway public opinion of the masses, and now we bring people to our side by deeds. And that means—if we are not very careful—we can put ourselves at great risk.”

  “I see,” Deidra said. “So, does the UG know the Hive is your command post?”

  He smiled.

  “They know we are often here,” he said, grabbing his walking stick and rising to stretch his cranky knees. He scanned the complex and saw that, yes, the clippers were gathering. It was time to get home. “But that is a discussion we can have later. Right now we have birthday cake to eat.”

  “And presents to open,” Deidra said, also standing. “Don’t forget the presents.”

  “No, no,” Casmir said. “We mustn’t forget the presents.”

  CHAPTER 5

  Perigee Hill: Mars Colony Divide

  Local Solar Date: February 12, 2206

  Local Solar Time: 0945 Hours

  The rover-sled was just as they left it, doors winged open, seat belts dangling across the running board.

  “I’ll drive again?” Deidra said as they approached. She had stayed closer to Casmir this time, helping him with his footing as he made it down the slope, a task that was always harder than climbing.

  “Of course,” he replied.

  He was tired anyway. The EVA had taken more out of him than he wanted to admit, and now all he really wanted to do was to get home, sit down, and slap about twenty C-Pak doses onto his arm. Not that Yvonne would be happy with anything short of a trip to sick bay. He leaned against his walking stick, feeling the grind in his left knee the most.

  He didn’t notice the problem until they were almost upon it.

  Footsteps.

  Hastily erased.

  But now that he saw them, Casmir saw they led to, or from, a rocky break in the mounded hills, coming from around a break where he was now certain he would find a parked clipper.

  “Stop,” he said to Deidra as she stepped around the front of the rover-sled toward the driver’s entry.

  But it was too late.

  Two figures rose from where they had been hidden in the storage compartment. They were UG officers, their suits dark orange and blue and their antiradiation face screens glowing with an electrified golden sheen. They were armed and shielded, their plasma rifles short and stubby against their hips but pointed directly at Deidra and Casmir. Upon their appearance, two more came from around the point where Casmir assumed their clipper was docked.

  To her credit, Deidra stopped and dropped her radio to the public frequencies, just as his operatives were trained to do. She stood still, her eyes growing wide as two officers detained her.

  “We have visitors,” Casmir said through his encrypted channel, then also dropped to the public.

  One of the officers, a male, large, came toward him and waved his gun in the normal gung-ho style of a man too big for his gravity shoes. Utilities hung from his sui
t, and his arms ran with readout from what Casmir assumed was a network of communications sensors.

  Casmir toggled a suppressor feature that would randomly alter the tonal aspect of his voice in case the officers were attempting to establish ID by vocal pattern matching.

  Rule 4: Talk your way out if at all possible.

  “What can we do for you?” he said. He stood taller and held onto his walking staff, knowing exactly how useless it would be in this kind of fight.

  “ID?”

  “My daughter and I are with the Hive, officer. Just out visiting the hill.” He held one hand out to her. There was no way that letting these officers know who he was would end well. “You can see we’re unarmed. We hold no false intentions here.” Code in his suit activated, registering the frequency of the officer’s communication and scanning Casmir’s optical input at a resolution that his own eyes could never really pick out. The code flashed a series of lights and symbols as it traced and then acquired the networked paths between the four officers.

  “I said, ID.” The officer held up an arm with a datapad interface on it and waited for Casmir to proffer his.

  Casmir nodded and sighed. “All right,” he said. “Give it a moment to respond.”

  Rule 6: Act quickly.

  Code loaded the protocol driver as he turned his inner arm to the officer.

  The UG man held the plasma rifle close as he brought his reader in contact with the interface.

  The instant he felt pressure, Casmir cracked his staff hard against the officer’s knee. The man went down before he could fire a shot, then his entire body went slack.

  The others, too.

  “Get in,” he said to Deidra without taking time to change the frequency.

  She stood frozen in place, gazing at the two comatose officers now lying as motionless on the ground before her as the two that had been detaining Casmir. The code had worked, flashing its way into the direct links between the four to enable an injection of the emergency dose of anesthesia that officers and soldiers carried to kill pain in case of traumatic injury. The officers were conscious, but unable to function.