Impact Velocity (The Physics of Falling)

by Leah Petersen

  Praise for Fighting Gravity

  and Cascade Effect

  “...a deep look at what love is, and that it doesn’t really matter who or what the person you love is, or is not.”

  – Chris Jackson, award-winning author

  of the Scimitar Seas series.

  “Cascade Effect is a beautiful novel, a worthy sequel that’s profound on multiple levels.”

  – #sffwrtcht YA Report

  (Science Fiction and Fantasy Writer’s Chat)

  “Fighting Gravity is like if Ursula K. Le Guin and Orson Scott Card could co-author a book without exploding. On the one hand you have the liberal and social science aspects of Ursula K. Le Guin, and on the other hand you have a character-driven story that isn’t afraid to be entertaining.”

  – author Bryan Thomas Schmidt

  “...a unique perspective on the interaction of the public and private spheres and the experience of “Othered” individuals cautiously guarding their sexuality with what little social capital they might hold.”

  – Science Fiction Research Association’s

  SFRA Review, issue 304

  “...a character study of one man’s journey from crushing poverty to the rarest heights of scientific achievement, from obscurity to notoriety, but it also includes themes of love, passion, and dangerous/dysfunctional relationships that form the story of Jacob’s life.”

  –Left Hand of Dorkness

  “Would that I was only going to say one thing about this book, it would be to praise it for getting me, a wholly unromantic heterosexual male, invested in a narrative which convincingly puts the Prince and the Pauper in bed together.”

  –Adam Shaftoe, reviewer; PageOfReviews.com

  “Ms. Petersen has penned a riveting story that will take you on an emotional roller coaster ride and leave you breathless at the end.”

  – Readers Roundtable (recommended read)

  “The science fiction is merely a backdrop for a wonderful story that becomes a wonderful love story. Ms. Petersen introduced me to a new universe and left me wanting more.”

  – Dana Gunn, reviewer; Unleaded: Fuel for Writers

  “IMPACT VELOCITY lives up to its title in the best way possible...turning what you think you knew from the previous books on edge before giving the characters a spin.”

  – K.D. McEntire, author of Lightbringer

  “Fighting Gravity is a sweet...love story; a fantasy for science geeks rounded out by the preciousness of an honest attraction and a careful courtship, and stuffed with the thrill of illicit encounters, and the horror of a world where serious social missteps come with serious consequences.”

  –Lambda Literary Review

  Impact

  Velocity

  Leah Petersen

  6 December 303, 5:30 Imperial Standard Time, 7 lbs 9 oz, Marquilla Sophie Cho Ayana Helen Dawes-Killearn

  Ummm, yes. I was there.

  I know. I was just looking at the record again.

  You’re such a sap.

  So are you.

  Me?

  You don’t hide it as well as you think you do.

  iv1

  I always was better at math than I was at life.

  Yet, somewhere in the year or two following Blaine’s conviction and “execution,” for all he had done to Pete and me, I found a peace with my life that I’d never expected. A lot of that time fogs and runs together in my brain, but I have a vague sense of how it happened. Not just one moment or choice, but a cascade of the events of my life, toppling to their inevitable conclusion. Chance, circumstance, choice, and just plain dumb luck, good and bad. I might have understood it better if there were a formula I could have used to confirm the results.

  She came to us on a crisp winter morning. For the empire, a princess had been born, an imperial heir, a figurehead and symbol, a future sovereign. But, cocooned in the nursery, Pete and I met our daughter for the first time. The empire knew her as Princess Marquilla Sophie Cho Ayana Helen Dawes-Killearn, Heir to the Imperial Throne. We called her Molly.

  We’d had a year of practice at parenting. Owen Blaine was two years old when he became my ward and moved into the Family rooms. Two was not an easy age, and I’d thought I was prepared for Molly, but the reality of parenting a newborn made my head spin.

  She was tired, yet she didn’t sleep, she wanted to eat, then she didn’t, instead she threw up, and pooped more than should be possible for such a tiny body. Then she did it all again. Those days hazed into long hours of sleeplessness and confusion, the keen edge of despair when you realized you were powerless to make her happy, the utter frustration of matching wits or engaging in a battle of wills with someone who was three days old, and losing.

  But there was something magical in her tiny perfection, the astonishing phenomenon of her contented little sighs, the way her mouth screwed up and then opened in a wide yawn from that little mouth. The utter bliss of realizing you’d figured it out, or just gotten lucky, and she was sleeping in your arms, a tiny bundle of the most important atoms in the universe.

  I remember Owen, sitting in Pete’s lap, his chubby little arms still dimpled at the elbows, cradling “his baby.” He would stare at her so seriously sometimes, as if trying to puzzle out this mystery the universe had thrown into his family.

  There were nights I was beyond exhausted but sat up long after it was my turn to sleep, just to watch the way Pete would look at her as he held her, brushing a worshipful finger over her chin and nose, smoothing her little eyebrows when she’d scrunch up her face in sleep. I knew I made Pete happy, that he treasured our marriage. But Pete with his daughter was another thing entirely. I couldn’t have been jealous if I tried.

  And thus for a while I had a family, and happiness, and peace. I tried to remember the last time I’d felt so content, so hopeful. Besides snatches of time in between the crises that defined our lives, I could only compare it to the three years Pete and I had been together when we were teenagers. So stupidly confident, so invincible, before the disaster that was my treason and the years we both paid for it afterward. For those first years, though, Pete had been quietly happy, and I had too. I had also been determinedly blind to anything I didn’t want to see, believing that was the same as Pete’s clean, uncomplicated optimism and hope.

  I was no longer a child to believe something simply because I wanted it to be true. I had children of my own, and I had to be better than that for them.

  I tried.

  Did you want anything from the store?

  What?

  Did you want anything from the store?

  You’re not going to a store. You’ve never been to a store in your life.

  I know, but normal people ask each other stuff like that. I wanted to try it.

  iv2

  Daddy?”

  It took no more than Molly’s soft whisper to wake me, as if I’d never been asleep. She stood by my side in her nightgown and little bare feet.

  “Owen’s crying again.”

  I nodded and slid out of bed as quietly as I could, so I wouldn’t wake Pete. Pete and I shared parenting duties as equally as we could, but Owen’s bad dreams were my purview. He and I shared a lot of the same nightmares.

  Molly took my hand and steered me out of the huge imperial apartment to her own room. This was part of the ritual, just as much as the fact that it was Molly who listened for the sound of Owen’s cries, and came to get me, rather than allowing a servant to do it.

  She never failed to hear him
.

  We walked in silence through her room, our feet making no sound on the deep carpet. Molly’s room and Owen’s opened into a shared playroom, and it was through there that she led me.

  Owen was still asleep, but tossing and fretful, whimpers escaping his lips, his face damp with sweat and tears. Molly slid into the bed beside him, wrapping her arms around him, watching his face anxiously. I sat down beside her and put my hand on Owen’s shoulder, squeezing gently.

  “Owen?”

  He jerked awake, his eyes wide and frightened before he focused on Molly’s face, then mine, the tension draining from his rigid frame in increments of recognition and awareness.

  “What was it this time, buddy?” I asked, quiet in the solemn dark.

  His eyes filled with tears. “He was trying to take me away.”

  My hand tightened on his shoulder. “Who?” But I knew who haunted his dreams.

  “Duke Blaine,” he whispered, as if afraid that speaking the name too loud would summon him, like a genie in a fairy tale. His eyes darted back and forth, studying my face, begging for reassurance that his father really was dead, even though he refused to call him that. My heart ached. I knew the feeling only too well.

  I stroked his damp hair. “It’s okay,” I said. “You’re safe here. No one can take you. You belong with us now, and we’re not going to let anything happen to you.”

  “That’s right,” Molly insisted. “He’s dead and he’s not your father anymore.” I winced, grateful that he was looking at her. Aliana once told me I was a terrible liar. I wondered sometimes if that was the reason Owen asked this question again and again. Did he see the lies on my face when I talked about Blaine?

  Because Owen’s father was no more dead than mine had been when I was his age. Unlike Owen, no one ever told me my father was dead, I simply assumed and believed and never questioned. Owen questioned all the time, in the face of “proof” and reassurances on all sides. His doubts were a weight of guilt in my gut.

  I’d told Blaine I’d be a good father to his son, and at the time I said it to needle him, to take a petty jab at the man who had done so much to hurt me. But I had meant it. Owen was the son of my worst enemy, but he was also Hera’s son. She had been one of the best people I’d ever known. Her son would have a family.

  “You’re safe, Owen,” I said, rubbing his back gently. “Go back to sleep. No more dreams tonight.” Molly stroked his cheek with her little hand.

  His eyes were already drifting closed. A past he didn’t remember may have haunted his dreams, but he was remarkably trusting. When Owen’s breathing returned to the even cadence of sleep, I stood and gestured to Molly to follow. She shook her head.

  “Come on, Mol,” I whispered. “Back to bed.”

  “I can sleep here,” she insisted.

  “He’s fine, sweetie.”

  She just shook her head, watching me. Finally she whispered, “Please?”

  I sighed, tucking the covers around both of them. I stooped to kiss her, and then kissed Owen’s cheek as well.

  “Goodnight.”

  ***

  “He okay?” Pete mumbled sleepily when I slid back into bed beside him.

  “Yeah.”

  “His father again?”

  I lay still, looking up into the darkness. “Did we do the right thing?”

  Pete turned to face me.

  “With Owen?”

  “With Blaine. Maybe you should have just executed him. Maybe it’s not fair to Owen for it to be like this. So...unsettled.”

  Pete was quiet. “Unsettled for him, or for you?”

  “I think he knows. Why would he keep asking otherwise?”

  “He’s only seven. It’s not like it was with your father. Owen’s father is a shadow that follows him everywhere he goes. There is no one in the empire who doesn’t know who he is and what his father did. Of course he keeps asking. The man is too much a part of his life, and he still would be, even if he was really dead.”

  “He’s eight in a few days.” That was an important distinction to me. I’d lost my own father at six, and had been happy to see him go, but at eight I’d lost the rest of my family. Pete had already pointed out that my losses at eight were what put me where I’d been at fifteen, when he’d met me. But, illogical or not, eight frightened me. And there was a lot of time between eight and fifteen. I had a bad track record with childhood in general.

  He was right, and yet it took a while for me to sleep again. Years ago Pete had faked Blaine’s execution and sent him to a secret labor camp. He did it for me, because I’d asked him to. I thought it was justice, sending Blaine to the same hell he’d once arranged for me. Sometimes I could acknowledge to myself that it probably wasn’t justice, but revenge. And I discovered I wasn’t proud of that at all.

  Laudley should be here tomorrow.

  I thought he wasn’t coming until Thursday.

  He’s arriving earlier than planned.

  Lovely. Can’t wait.

  iv3

  Among the many things Blaine’s treason had accomplished was a sort of renewed breach disguised as a reconciliation between the Grand Duke Laudley and the emperor. Decades past, the Grand Duke, who was the most powerful man on Torrea other than its king, had fallen out with the then-emperor, Pete’s grandfather, over the emperor’s choice of wife for his only son.

  Pete’s father married a young duchess from one of the oldest noble lines on Earth rather than Grand Duke Laudley’s sister. The Grand Duke had sworn not to speak to the emperor again, and so he hadn’t. Not that emperor, or the next, or even Pete, until Blaine was convicted of treason and Owen was given to me.

  Hera had been Laudley’s daughter and Owen was his grandson. If he wanted a relationship with the boy, he had to deal with us. I resented his presence in our lives, but there was no good reason to restrict his access to Owen, other than our complicated history with his family. Laudley was a stubborn, spiteful bastard, but then, so was I.

  It was sunny the morning Laudley arrived, ahead of Owen’s eighth birthday. He was presented to Pete and the royal family in a private garden in our wing of the palace. The children had been chasing each other, squealing with laughter, but they went abruptly quiet when he entered, sidling up beside us and watching him with solemn eyes.

  Laudley bowed to Pete. “Your Excellence.” He faced Molly, her hand clutching Owen’s as if the Grand Duke meant to take him from her. “Your Highness.” He bowed and Your-Highnessed me as well, and then faced his grandson.

  “Hello, Owen.”

  “He’s Your Highness, too,” Molly said.

  I hid my smile. “Molly, this is Owen’s grandfather. He doesn’t have to do that.”

  “Well he has to do it for me, and I’m Owen’s sister.”

  “Enough, Molly,” Pete said, mild and calm but allowing no argument. She glared at Laudley.

  The Grand Duke only laughed. “Suspicion serves her well, Your Excellence. In her position, it is valuable. It might protect her from cultivating unsuitable companions.”

  A long, stunned silence followed. “Perhaps she will learn to guard her tongue, as well,” Pete said, “as some still have not.”

  No one moved. Owen was watching the faces, Pete then Laudley, back and forth.

  I turned to Molly. “We’re going to have a picnic in the woods today. Why don’t you pick the path?”

  She flashed me a grin and, with one last scowl at the Grand Duke, pulled Owen along with her into the hallway. We followed; the silence was deafening.

  ***

  We took Molly’s favorite path through the woods in a private preserve kept only for the nobility. Pete preferred to keep our outings with Laudley to semi-public areas, rather than in the exclusively Imperial sections of the palace and Imperial City. For him, I suppose, it was pragmatism and setting precedent. I was simply
happy about the reminder that Grand Duke Laudley, for all his connection to Owen, was not part of our family.

  Not counting our constant compliment of guards, Pete and Molly took the lead, Owen and Laudley behind, and I trailed at the end. I wanted to be able to watch Laudley and Owen. I told myself it wasn’t jealousy, and that was probably somewhat true. I didn’t feel like Laudley was competition for Owen’s affection. Owen never seemed comfortable around his grandfather, but that too was its own burden of guilt. I didn’t want to be the one to alienate him from what family he had. Most of Owen’s relatives were dead because of me in one way or another.

  When a pair of squirrels sped out of the trees and down the path ahead of us, Molly and Owen took off together at a run, paced by their guards. Pete sped up a bit, keeping them in view as much he could, and I would have too, but the trail here was narrow and Laudley was ahead of me. As Pete and the children drew farther away, Laudley slowed, until I was forced to slow down myself or come level with him.

  That seemed to be his intent, because he paused. Unless I stopped, I’d run right into him. I approached as slowly as I could, hoping he wasn’t trying to walk with me. I had no such luck.

  “It is a lovely day,” Laudley remarked.

  “Yes. Perfect for a picnic.” I picked up my pace. Maybe he only wanted to let me go ahead, so he could keep an eye on me.

  “I understand you are going to have Owen tested on his eighth birthday,” he said.

  “Like all the other children, yes.”

  Laudley made a rude noise. “The common children.”

  “Noble children take the year-eight tests as well.”

  He waved that away. “The lesser nobles. Perhaps that is the misunderstanding. The truly noble families are not subjected to such—” he seemed to search for the word, “classification. The imperial family certainly is not. Nor any royal family. No one in my line has been tested in the three hundred years since the empire was established.”

  “That’s probably for the best,” I muttered, but not quietly enough. Laudley sniffed.