Liberty

by Annie Laurie Cechini

  “Liberty is the kind of sci-fi I crave, full of adventure, wit, and mayhem. Suit up and strap in—Dix and Berrett are about to take you on a flarking good ride.”

  Lydia Sharp, author of Twin Sense

  “Totally fun! Like a YA version of Firefly.”

  Adam Heine, author of Pawn’s Gambit

  Rhemalda Publishing

  Rhemalda Publishing, Inc. (USA)

  P.O. Box 1790 Moses Lake, WA 98837 USA

  First American Paperback Edition

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, dialogues, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

  Copyright ©2012 by Annie Laurie Cechini

  Edited by Diane Dalton

  Text design by Rhemalda Publishing

  Cover art by Melissa Williams of M. W. Cover Designs http://mwcoverdesign.blogspot.com/

  Author photo by Ashley Johansen

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

  ISBN: 978-1-936850-57-0 (print)

  ISBN: 978-1-936850-80-8 (epub)

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2012952983 (print)

  Annie Laurie Cechini’s author website is www.annielauriecechini.com

  QED stands for Quality, Excellence and Design. The QED seal of approval shown here verifies that this eBook has passed a rigorous quality assurance process and will render well in most eBook reading platforms.

  For more information please click here.

  Acknowledgments

  SOMEWHERE ON MY PUBLISHER’S HARD DRIVE IS A VERY light-hearted, silly version of the acknowledgments. I fall back on silly when I feel anything serious, because otherwise I tend to get a bit weepy. I have decided that considering this is my only first book, a few tears are okay (and it’s late enough at night that no one is awake to see me sniffling while I type).

  There is one statement from my goofier version that I’m keeping. That is my sincere gratitude for the poor, sweet person (or people) I will, inevitably, forget to thank. You know me, and you know it’s not that I don’t love you, so I am going to assume you will not hate me forever and will understand.

  Heartfelt thanks go to:

  Every single teacher I’ve ever had. I’d name you all, but I was in school for a long time, so there are a lot of you. I want each one of you to know that while I will always be grateful to your dedication to the noble profession of education, I value the kindness and patience each one of you consistently extended to me even more.

  Ed, who first believed I could publish a novel and read multiple drafts of my first feeble attempts at writing (for which you should really be awarded some kind of medal of honor).

  Sarah Mosny Belt, A.L. Johansen, D.B. Smyth, S.J. Gardner, A.C. Abram, Kathleen Jarboe, and Eve S. Nicholson, without whom Dix would have died under a falling piece of the Misfit (or the withering glance of the Grammar Goddess, whichever came first).

  Heidi, for quick and clever edits, insightful counsel, and a sense of humor rivaled only by the cast of MST3K.

  Mariah, Genevieve, Erin, Katie, Brittany, Stephen, Bethany, and Alissa. Their teen insights and perspectives were truly invaluable.

  Diane Dalton, who not only saw a diamond in the manuscriptorial (is that even a word? It is now! I love English) rough, but also went on to beat the ever-loving daylights out of it until it was sparkly and shiny.

  The Rhemalda Publishing team, for making the process of becoming an author infinitely less terrifying. Their commitment to excellence is rivaled only by their desire to help writers create novels without losing what little sanity most of us start our careers with.

  Michelle, for being the most approachable author on the planet, a mentor, and a friend.

  Lydia, who, in the middle of one of the most difficult periods of my life, gave me the extra push of encouragement I needed to soldier on with a book I never thought I could pick up again.

  My brilliant and wonderful friends, for helping me work things out, challenging my point of view, and always being ready with a smile and a kind word.

  My extended and immediate family, for teaching me faith, love, and the fine art of not taking things too seriously.

  My parents, who assured me that I could do anything if I put in the effort and gave me opportunities to succeed. I love you dearly, parentses.

  Matt Cechini, for making me laugh, giggling at my melodramatic flailing, and taking care of all the little details that seem to escape me. “Everything” seems a little too broad and a little too vague to really do justice to the sentiment, but I mean it when I say, thank you for everything. Have a code, my lovely: 25-26-8-7-18-12-13-8 23-2218-20-13

  You, dear sweet reader! There are no words for how much it means to me that you read my story. *HUGS* Thank you so much!

  XOXO,

  Annie Laurie

  To William Harry Jenks

  A high school English teacher

  Who never had quite enough

  Time to read and write

  Because he was so busy

  Helping others to live.

  LIBERTY

  by

  Annie Laurie Cechini

  Rhemalda Publishing

  Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter 1: Dust to Dust

  Chapter 2: Family of Misfits

  Chapter 3: Fired Up

  Chapter 4: Infernal Boy

  Chapter 5: Parked

  Chapter 6: Nasty Old Bars and Other Grossness

  Chapter 7: Getting Better

  Chapter 8: In Which Tabitha is Renamed. Again.

  Chapter 9: Hiding Out

  Chapter 10: Master and Apprentice

  Chapter 11: Blatant Thievery

  Chapter 12: Massacre

  Chapter 13: Picking Up the Kids

  Chapter 14: Diversion

  Chapter 15: Maxwell

  Chapter 16: Cue Sparks

  Chapter 17: In Which Things Are Awkward

  Chapter 18: City of Lights

  Chapter 19: Lost and Found

  Chapter 20: Reunited

  Chapter 21: Escape Artists

  Chapter 22: Return of the Eyeroll

  Chapter 23: Ripping Off the Band-Aid

  Chapter 24: Taken

  Chapter 25: Shattered

  Chapter 26: Gone But Not Forgotten

  Chapter 27: Unexpected Ally

  Chapter 28: Justice: Check

  Chapter 29: Freedom

  About the Author

  From The Unauthorized History of the Third War:

  AT THE HEIGHT OF THE DIGITAL REVOLUTION, A COMPANY called Galileo Space Pioneering (GSP) announced they had developed terraforming technology. Amory Ninge, President of GSP, unveiled images of newly terraformed Mars at a press conference in Los Angeles. Terraforming a planet without authorization was in direct violation of the Outer Space Treaty of 1967, and within days of the announcement a second space race had begun. In less than a year, the entire planet was at war with itself.

  Twenty years later, as the dust began to settle, the surviving nations established an alliance. The terraformed planets were divided into colonies. These colonies were required to “temporarily” ship a large percentage of everything they produced back to Earth to aid reconstruction.

  However, as the goods and staples came to Earth, distribution was far from fair, hardly us
ed for reconstruction, and nowhere near temporary. Those who had risen to power created the Settlements, havens of prosperity and technological advancement. The rest of Earth—and the entire solar system—languished under the burden of supporting the Settlements.

  Over time, the alliance evolved into a totalitarian government called the System of United Nations. Largely made up of Settlement residents from around the planet Earth, the SUN ruled the system with ultimate authority. Through an aggressive drafting campaign, the SUN created a military force that was both feared and hated across the solar system.

  Though it had been relegated to a ship building company during the Third War, GSP slowly began to gain ground under the new regime. Amory Ninge, Jr. inherited the company from his father. Being a shrewd businessman, Amory Jr. kept his nose down and worked hard during the war. When the SUN was established, Amory Jr. married Anna Forsythe, daughter of the first SUN president, Ethan Forsythe, as a means to return GSP to its former glory. In System Year 5, Anna gave birth to their daughter, Eira Ninge.

  DUST TO DUST 1

  I KNEW THE MINUTE I WOKE UP THE DEAL WAS GOING TO GO bad. I had that sense in the base of my gut, the hairs rising on my neck, all the signs that point to impending danger—or paranoia. I usually attribute it to the latter, barrel through, hunker down, and it all works out.

  I knew this was not one of those times.

  I knew it, and I ignored it anyway. Captains should know better, and I had already been a captain for over a year. I shoved the sense of foreboding back into the pit of my stomach as my first mate, Elizabeth Bell, and I walked away from the hangar where my ship was docked.

  “You ’ad the nightmare again, didn’t you?” Bell asked in her soft French accent.

  Her question distracted me from my jitters. Bell stared into my face as we turned the corner and headed toward the tavern where our crew was still asleep, her brown eyes evaluating the purple bags beneath mine.

  “Nothing new,” I lied. “I have the stupid nightmare all the time.”

  “You’re lying. Something was different this time.”

  I laughed. “Remind me to never play poker with you.”

  “You can talk to me, you know.”

  “I know.”

  The truth was, the nightmare hadn’t changed all that much. I still took a small glass vial from a woman who looked just like me, only older. I still stared at the swirling silver liquid inside, still ran up the stairs of my family’s house to hide it, and in the end ... everyone died.

  A gray mist whisked them away, one by one, a haze that carried with it the same metallic squeal I had heard the night of the accident. The mist surrounded my parents, my brother, everyone I loved, and destroyed them in an instant before dissipating in a sudden blast of wind.

  This time there had been one key difference. Instead of standing in my childhood home, I wandered in a crowd, surrounded by strangers. I couldn’t help bumping into them. Every person that I touched disappeared in a flash of squealing mist.

  And then I saw my crew walking toward me through the crowd.

  They thought I was in danger. They were reaching out to me. I screamed for them to back off, but they wouldn’t listen. Their fingertips were nearly touching me when I woke up with a start, my knife drawn and sweat running into my eyes.

  Fortunately for my reputation, I managed to sneak to the bathroom before my crew woke up. I splashed cold water on my face and inspected my current disguise. Blue contacts, false fingertips, the usual tricks to get around security scanners. In the cracked and dirty mirror I could see my brown roots starting to show through the bleach blonde dye.

  Flark.

  I made a mental note to fix the hair as soon as we were airborne.

  “Captain? Captain Loveless! ’Ello, are you in there, Trudy?”

  M y thoughts snapped back to the present as Bell knocked me on the head.

  “Hey! What gives?”

  She put a hand on my shoulder and stopped me in my tracks. “What are you not telling me?”

  “Oh, so much.” I grinned at her and broke into a run, my boots kicking up the dust behind me. With a spring, I landed on the creaking metal planks surrounding Williamson’s Dive, the tavern where my crew and I always stayed when we came to Mars. The planks, like most of the buildings on Mars, were painted to look like wood, but the desert had scoured away large sections of the finish. As I walked around to the back of the tavern, I could hear the rusted planks groan beneath my feet. I leaned on a post, examining the strange visual interplay between the shine of metal and the softness of the fake wood finish while I waited for Bell to catch up. People had cared about Mars once, but that was years before I came along.

  So nice of the SUN to invest in civil upkeep.

  The Martian sunlight beat down on me and beads of sweat formed on my forehead as I entertained melodramatic thoughts of how I would rain down angry sunshine too if I had the chance.

  “It is too early in the morning to run,” said Bell. “Next time, make ‘Obson check the cargo with you.”

  “Should I make Hobson first mate too?” I asked.

  She glared at me. “Vous prétenti—”

  “I love you too, mawn cherry.” I held in a laugh as Bell shot me her best look of death. “Let’s go wake up the crew.”

  I made my way up the precarious stairs at the back entrance of the tavern and paused on the landing halfway up.

  “Careful, Bell, the next step after the landing is almost rusted through,” I yelled.

  “Wait! I need ... air!” wheezed Bell as she scampered up behind me.

  “Wimp.”

  “Maniac!”

  I nodded. “That’s fair.”

  Just as Bell stepped on the landing, we heard a sickening crack. We turned our heads to see the stairs behind us collapsing in rapid succession, sending clouds of dust into the air as each piece of metal hit the ground.

  “Run!” I yelled. Bell and I tore up the remaining steps. I leapt onto the upper landing and whirled around just in time to catch Bell’s hand as the final hunk of metal disintegrated with a high-pitched squeal.

  “Next time,” I grumbled as I helped her to safety, “no breaks.”

  Bell panted as she looked at me, then back at where the stairs had been. We both started to laugh, then threw our arms around each other.

  “Well, that was fun,” I said.

  “Yes, ‘ow about we avoid that kind of fun in the future?” asked Bell.

  “I make no guarantees,” I said. “We really need to talk to Jake about fixing this place up a little.”

  Bell snorted. “And by a little, you mean a complete over’aul.”

  “Preseeeso, mawn amee.”

  “Oh, for the love of all that is ‘oly, please stop attempting to speak my language. You wound my ears.”

  I chuckled as I placed my finger over the scanner next to our bedroom door and leaned down toward the retinal scanner. The door unlocked with a pop and slowly creaked open. Bell and I picked our way over my zonked out crew.

  Bell snorted. “Uh, Cap?”

  “What?”

  “Your ‘air looks a bit like a pile of ‘ay after a ‘urricane.”

  I gave her my best scowl. “I’m not gonna dignify that with a response. Give me a minute?” I whispered.

  “Aye, Cap.”

  “Thanks.”

  I ignored her muffled giggles, grabbed my knapsack off the floor, and let myself into the tiny bathroom. I splashed tepid water on my face and toweled off. Pale light streaked in through a narrow window above the cracked, decaying shower. The early morning rays made the chain around my neck glisten. I pulled at it until the vial attached to the chain was dangling in front of me. The silver liquid inside sparkled, just like in my nightmares.

  Anxiety prickled through me as I watched the shimmering fluid in the glass. It was called Eternigen, a drug capable of temporarily altering the chemistry of my body. It would allow me to travel beyond the solar system. Nothing moved me as much as my de
sire to be truly free of the world that stole my family from me. The drug in the vial was the key.

  It was also the cause.

  Guilt swept over me, and I dropped the vial back down my shirt.

  I ran my fingers through the wild mayhem of my bobbed hair in a futile attempt to settle it, swearing under my breath when my mother’s diamond ring got snagged in the tangles. Giving up, I knelt down on the floor, rummaged around in my bag, and pulled out my copy of The Unauthorized History of the Third War. It seemed a little obvious to be using for coded messages, but the Underground had already gone through most of the classics.

  I pulled out the sequin-infested bookmark Bell had made me and sat on the floor to decode my latest letter. Hand delivered letters were the only way to guarantee safe communication unmonitored by the System of United Nations. Even then, if you were caught, you were dead, or worse, never heard from again. Everything on a Cuff was online, and everything online could be watched. Paper was safe, but it was scarce—and incredibly expensive.

  I had been saving this particular letter for a while, waiting for a moment when I could be completely alone. It’s hard to be alone when you captain a tiny cargo ship with halls only large enough for one person to walk through at a time.

  I ripped open my letter and began decoding my message. The first set of numbers was 1:14. Page one, word fourteen ... My.

  Page five, word thirty-six ... girl.

  I flipped through the pages and counted out words, ravenously devouring every decoded sentence.

  My girl,

  I hope business continues to go well. I hear news of the dangers of running cargo from the merchants. I pray you are safe. Remember to use your head. In your last letter you mentioned Mars. Take the opportunity to visit the Governor’s mansion there. It has quite a history. Some of our earliest adventures in terraforming are recorded in the paintings hanging in the gallery.

  Things here on Titan continue to go well, despite unfavorable circumstances. So many children are forced to leave before graduation. Primary school is out and my summer is filled to capacity with activities. There are opportunities to help all around.