Starburst (Stealing the Sun Book 2)

by Ron Collins

  “Momma and Daddy been gone a long time, buddy.”

  “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have pressed my luck.”

  “That’s your problem, Deuce,” Nimchura said. “That’s all your all’s problems. You’re always sorry. Sorry for this. Sorry for that. Sorry for being in charge. Sorry for what the hell ever your ass is sorry for. You’re all smart as hell out of a book, but you think everything you do will always wind up just fine, and if it doesn’t you’re just sorry as all hell that someone else got squashed in the process. You’re a rich kid from a rich family who grew up thinking you can’t do nothing wrong, or that there’s no problem that a little money in the right pocket won’t buy you out of.”

  “You don’t like me because my grandfather made money?” Jarboe gave a wry smile.

  “I don’t care about that.”

  “Not my fault he made a jillion solars on Io. I wasn’t even alive then.”

  “I said I don’t care about that.”

  “That’s bullshit. It’s fine with me if you’re an asshole, but don’t go off on the moron trail or I’m cutting you off.”

  Nimchura shrugged. “Really, Deuce. I don’t care about your granddaddy’s money.”

  “Then what do you care about, Yules?”

  “I care about flying.”

  “That’s it?”

  “That’s it.”

  Jarboe waited.

  “All I want is to be the best. I know you don’t give a shit about that. You’re a mission man. Follow the plan, do the job. Hip-hip, tally-ho, and a stiff upper lip. Stay in your box. Do that crisp barrel roll on command. But I say screw that. And that’s why I don’t like you. You don’t press yourself. You don’t take the chance. Who the hell knows, Deuce, you might actually be better than me, but you don’t care about that so you’ll never know. You don’t even try. So stay in the system. Fly in your box. Stay at nine-tenths to keep control. That’s your thing. But to be blunt, wing leader o’ mine, when a time comes that I need someone covering my ass, I want to know they’ll go ten-tenths to keep me safe.”

  Nimchura sat back and pursed his lips.

  “So, yeah,” he finished. “I don’t like you.”

  Jarboe drew a deep breath. His wingman hadn’t said that many words in a row since they had been assigned to each other.

  “Why do you think they assigned you as my wing, Yules?”

  “We’re on the same side? Is that your point, Number One?”

  “Seriously. Why are you my wingman?”

  The silence between them stretched out.

  “I would have to guess it’s so I can learn from the best mission man in the system,” Nimchura said, his tone dripping with an exaggerated southern drawl.

  Jarboe downed his tea, then placed the mug back on the table. He was down to the dregs and the liquid was gritty against his throat. The cup gave a hollow sound as he put it on the table.

  “Yules,” he said. “I agree, you are the best pure flier I have ever seen. I mean that from right here.” He pressed his closed fist against his chest. “No bullshit, pure or otherwise. Whether I take risks or not, I know you’re better than me. But you’re my wingman because Captain Galloway specifically asked me to help you get your act in gear so you can actually function as part of the group.”

  “Well, crap my pants,” Nimchura said, giving an exasperated sigh. “If that ain’t a major-assed surprise.”

  “There’s an example.”

  Nimchura edged forward, putting his elbow on the table and looking up to Jarboe with eyes that grew an exaggerated softness. “I’m sorry, Lieutenant Number One. I’m sorry I’m a better goddamned pilot than you are. And I’m sorry you have to carry me along as your wingman. You have it pretty goddamned hard.”

  Jarboe tapped a silent fingertip on the tabletop.

  This conversation was just making things worse.

  Across the way, a group of fliers sat at the bar, drinking. Another pair sat together going over their mission profiles. A collection of fliers stood at a vid table, playing a game of Kingmaker for a solar a country.

  Jarboe clicked off the projector unit and slipped it into a slot in his flight jacket. Then he slid calmly out of his seat and rose up, straightening his jacket at the hem. He looked down at Todias Nimchura, who had an uninterpretable expression on his face, then twisted his body to face the entire collection of pilots in the lounge and raised his arms, palms up.

  “That’s right, Lieutenant Number Two,” he said in a booming voice that rose in a singsong tone that echoed around the room.

  Heads turned. Glasses were held in mid swig.

  “I,” he said, gesturing to himself, “am a crap flier—the purest of sheep’s dung when I’m behind the joystick.” He grew a toothy grin that was as comical as he could make it. “But I, Alex ‘Deuce’ Jarboe, am the chosen one!” His voice rose another notch and his fingers pointed upward as if he was a conductor. “I am the man because I bought my seat! Or, even better, because my granddad did! But you should pity me, pity me, I say! Because being Number One is a goddamned lonely job! There can be only one of us, after all, and that one is me!” He jabbed his thumb into his chest, feeling himself on a roll. “Me, I say! Me-me-me-me-me!” He pointed a finger at Nimchura. “You! Should love me for being such a crap pilot that the entire command structure can see how fantastic you are!” Then he scanned the room, pointing his finger as if it were a gun and jabbing it at every face he saw. “You and you and you! Every one of you! You should all love me for making you look like aces, my friends! Aces! Given that, I now so deign that you are each allowed to grovel in my vapor trails and pay homage…to me!”

  He clenched his fists in victory, threw his arms out to his sides and his head back as if he was prepared to receive some kind of communion.

  “Yes!” he called to the ceiling. “Yes!”

  There was a pause, a beat of pure silence as the room decided whether Alex Jarboe was insane, an idiot, or both.

  He straightened, then bowed to his audience.

  “Thank you,” he said. “Thank you very much.” Then Jarboe adjusted his jacket again and sat down.

  The room broke out in laughter, followed by applause.

  Nimchura, too, was laughing.

  “I never thought of it that way, Deuce. I’ll have to start a benefit in your honor the minute we get back from the mission.”

  “I accept all donations.”

  “I’ll ask them to be sent to SpaceJock.bank.”

  “Don’t you think it should be SilverSpoon.bank, instead?”

  “What an asshole you are,” Nimchura said.

  “Singularity, meet black hole,” Jarboe replied.

  Flight Colonel Meeds drew near with a tray of food in one hand, her Active Mission Control Protocol Indicator flaring green light down the shoulder of her jacket. If that shoulder ever turned red, the mission would be on.

  “What’s going on?” the colonel said.

  Nimchura answered. “Number One here was just explaining the finer points of cosmology, Colonel.”

  The colonel stood there, her lips twitching.

  “Great,” she said. “I’ve got transports to protect, and all I’ve got to do it with are a couple space jocks with as much sophistication as school kids.”

  Jarboe straightened up. “We’re sorry.”

  The colonel raised her eyebrows, but went on to find a seat.

  As she walked away, grins spread across both fliers’ faces.

  CHAPTER 21

  U3 Ship Icarus

  Eta Cassiopeia Arrival: Standard Day 8 (ECA 8)

  Local Ship Time: 1540 Hours

  Who would have thought that the most difficult thing about creating their outpost would be merely to get everyone to agree on where they should start?

  Casmir rubbed his eyes and listened harder as the Universe Three brain trust talked over each other. They were meeting in the biggest conference center the spacecraft, a room just outside the bridge itself and just big enough to se
at most of the group’s better thinkers—Casmir, Gregor, and Yvonne, plus twelve staffers and three others. It was a sanitized oval space, with a white-topped table of composite material, and chairs all around, as well as a few standing podiums, which some of the members had chosen to use.

  A projector system displayed a holo image of Atropos over the center of the wide table, its topography translucent but marked with data flags and colored in places that indicated more advantageous locations. Flyaway panels of data showed the computer’s assessment of the availability of water, density of possible plant life, soil quality, and a hundred other different elements that the team was arguing over. The data grid was deep and intense, able to be resized to different resolutions at the wave of a hand.

  The image also had hundreds of notes that had been added over the past four hours.

  At first Casmir thought the goal was to prioritize landing sites.

  Now he thought it was just to come out of the meeting alive.

  The conversation had gone beyond the point of being testy thirty minutes ago. The conference room, which originally seemed so spacious, was now as stuffy as Casmir could ever have envisioned a session of the UG Interstellar Congress would be.

  Kyleen Lian was talking. She was a biotech engineer by degree, with an agricultural family. She had spent years working with mold farms in the Hive and was clearly enjoying the idea of working on the surface for the first time in her professional life.

  “The planet’s southern hemisphere is in late winter,” she said. “So by the time we can get settled there, it will be perfect for getting crops going and learning about the local flora. And the river basin at node six-twenty-three seems as ideal as we can get right now—plentiful water, reasonable grassland with some forestation nearby. It’s also going to be easy to get landers in and out of. Yes, some of the soil quality measures are not where we would want them, particularly the estimates on slaking and enzymatic content. But neither of them are so worrisome that they should cause any real concern in the near term, and they could be wrong anyway. This is where we should go.”

  Several people around the table agreed with her.

  Matt Anderson, who was participating in these conversations for the first time, spoke up. “The bigger continent has better plains lands, though,” he said, motioning to a plot within the northern hemisphere. “We can plant there, too. Even you said that earlier. But the plains will be best for long-term expansion.”

  It was clear he was gathering support, though Casmir was now convinced that some of the room had come to back his opinion due to his last name and the fact that Gregor had been relatively quiet while his son did more talking.

  Lian actually grimaced.

  “Just because I see value in a location, doesn’t mean it’s the best idea,” she replied. “Maybe we could look at putting an outpost there in the springtime. But if we use that zone now, we’ll be fighting the teeth of winter before we can get seed in the ground.”

  It had been like this for hours.

  Site by site.

  Issue by issue.

  Locations were graded for shelter, weather projections, potential for food sources, and a hundred other categories. The goal was a detailed plan, no later than next week. The team’s preparation had been extensive, but was based on theoretical data projections. Now that they had arrived at Atropos and had real data, every topic had to be hashed out again, and as they were haggling Casmir saw interesting things happening in his team. They saw a future here. They saw lives changing. They saw opportunity. Reputations would change here, and Casmir watched them jockey for position in ways that he hadn’t seen before.

  He wasn’t sure if this was good or bad news, but it made him uncomfortable. It felt too much like individual politics.

  “You know what I think?” Casmir finally said, scanning around the conference room.

  Conversation lurched to a halt, and faces turned to him.

  “I think that this is a remarkable moment in our history.”

  He stood and stepped around the table until he approached the globe, where he stood and stared at the projection.

  Its biosphere was so much like Earth’s, filled with wild lands and water, oxygenated atmosphere, and almost certainly some form of animal biology. It was covered with rolling hills and thick forests. A huge lake lay in the middle of the planet’s biggest continent. He could almost hear the water lapping at the shores.

  “Isn’t it beautiful?” he said. “Look at these islands.” He used his staff to outline a series of islands that ran along the planet’s equator. “I am old, and I am sick. Thirty years from now, I will probably be gone. Maybe fifty or a hundred years from now a majority of us will be gone, too. Maybe only Matt here will remain, eh?”

  Light laughter filtered through the group.

  “We have been working so hard for so long, and now here we are, talking about how Universe Three is going to settle the place where our families will be building their lives. And now that we’re here, I think we’re missing the chance to see this place for what it is. These islands, I don’t think they would be a good place to start, but I admit I want see them some day.”

  He kept his eyes on the planet, but felt the pressure of gazes as he traced the islands again.

  “I think some of the things we decide today will set the course of our history.”

  Finally, he turned away from the globe.

  “That’s no reason to feel any pressure, though.”

  The group reacted with humor, as he had wanted them to.

  “I think it’s best to remember these are not either-or decisions. We have time. Matt here, and many of you, and my own children will see a different world than we see today, that is for sure. Given a few years, we will put our boots down on any part of Atropos that we care to see.”

  He faced the group.

  “I do not want to be a dictator. My voice is not meant to be the only voice. So along with this choice of what we do today, we need to decide how we actually make decisions as a whole going forward. Isn’t this an amazing thing? For the first time ever, we can decide how to make decisions together rather than have to live in a world where companies and their puppet government set the course.”

  They were watching him now, glancing at each other in that way people have when they’re seeing something remarkable.

  “It will be difficult to figure out, but today we have only ourselves and our ability to compromise or argue. Today we need to drive to one point. So overrule me if you feel the need. But I think that now is the time to get safely on the ground before all other goals. I agree with Kyleen. I suggest we establish a place now where we can get entrenched quickly, and then I suggest we decide how we want to expand as the summer progresses.”

  Kyleen Lian beamed.

  “Matt is right that we need to consider long-term farming arrangements,” she replied, obviously trying to bring him into the fold but also helping ease the tension. “Agriculture is what will make us self-sustaining in the end.”

  The conversation raged on, but by this point everyone knew where it was headed.

  Casmir returned to his seat and listened, still deciding if he should be ecstatic or if he should be worried.

  CHAPTER 22

  UGIS Orion

  Local Solar Date: March 23, 2206

  Local Solar Time: 0743 Hours

  Nimchura checked the instruments as the XB-25 Firebrand came online around him, giving the signature shimmy and shake it was known for within the squadron. Graphs and figures flashed over his HUD. He clenched his fists and breathed deeply through his nose as the muscles of his back grew tight. He pushed down the edge of anger he felt every time he saw Jarboe in his Number One seat, and worked to inspect his wing leader’s machine.

  It looked fine.

  He filed the visual report, then tried to filter out the rest of his animosity while he waited. Despite the fact that Jarboe was clearly trying, it was hard to sit in the Number Two seat and not feel at leas
t a little pissed. In fact, knowing Jarboe was actively trying to be friendly just pissed him off more.

  They were sitting in the launch platform.

  Einstein had been reported loitering on the far side of the asteroid belt. Orion was going Star Drive in under a minute. She would loop across the solar dome at multiples of the speed of light to come at Einstein from galactic north. It would be some hairy-assed flying as best as he could tell. No room for error. But flying a Star Drive sounded like it wasn’t his kind of thing anyway. More like pushing a cargo run than anything else, and who the hell cared about cargo runs.

  Give him a Firebrand any day.

  The launch window would open as soon as Orion arrived on site.

  Anxious to do something, Nimchura toggled the mission profile.

  “Star Drive engaged,” the controller said. “Two minutes to launch.”

  Nimchura wrapped his hand around the joystick. “Star Drive engaged” meant Orion was superluminal right now, but since they were locked in the semidarkness of the launch port, it didn’t feel any different to him.

  “Roger that, Control,” Jarboe replied, looking across the way at him.

  He checked the blue and green readout that lined the edges of his faceplate, then the system parameters on Firebrand. All were Go, so he gave a thumbs-up.

  “You’ve got two greens for launch from Red Squad,” Jarboe replied.

  Other teams checked off over the radio. The attack consisted of five transports and their Firebrand escort squads, but Nimchura tried to focus on his own machine and that of his wing mate.

  He was used to people looking down on him.

  That chip on his shoulder helped him compete. Knowing you gotta be better than most anyone else if you gonna win means you gotta always push, his aunt had told him one night before she died. She had lived a tough life, but she managed to get by and raise a bunch of kids, including, for the most part, him. That was the edge that had formed him. He was a winner. That’s what he did. He had always won before, and he should have won this time, too. Jarboe could fly a Firebrand, but Nimchura was better, and everyone who watched them knew it.