“Let me be in a damn coma!” she yelled and then cradled her pounding head. “I don’t care if I have a seizure right in front of you and start bleeding from the ears. Never, ever call for help! Do you understand me?”
“Yes ma’am, I guess, I just thought…”
“No, you didn’t think. You didn’t think about what is going to happen now. How long before the entire station knows I fainted? Knows that I needed medical attention?”
“They are from our ship, the Great Republic, and I told them to be discreet.”
“You told them. Well good, I am glad you have it under control.” She looked up to see if her sarcasm was hitting its mark.
Marchell hung his head and stared at his fidgeting hands.
“You know how fragile my position is within the Kuttner family. I’m not blood. My husband is dead. It was one thing when we were talking about running the company on Earth. The board knew I was the best person for the job. But the Paradisi Project is different. It is the Counsel of Ten that makes the decisions, and it represents the ten families. I serve as the Kuttner family representative, and my brother-in-law would love nothing more than to find a way to declare me incompetent so he can take control.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“What do you think he would do with information like this? And what will the heads of the other families think? Most of them are men like Lewis Yu who still think women are only good for procreating. And what about the Gunthers? As far as we know, this whole fiasco with this stolen disk is all part of a plot against me. And all the medical personnel on all the ships, including ours, are basically employees of the Gunther’s. You don’t think those two techs aren’t going to report this to them? And do you think they’ll give me a break and send me a get well card?”
“No, ma’am.”
“No, they won’t. They will use this as leverage. I’ve long suspected they have been cooperating with my enemies in the family.”
“Yes, ma’am. I am sorry, ma’am. It won’t happen again.”
“Better not. Because if I lose power, you lose your ticket off this dying planet. Now I need you to go deal with those two technicians before they tell everyone what they saw.”
“Deal with them?”
“Yes. Tell them that there is a special Kuttner family member coming into the Darwin Transit Station that might need medical attention. Then set up the arrangements for them to be shipped down to the surface on the next shuttle and kept in seclusion. The Counsel has moved up the launch target by forty-eight hours, so we will be gone before they even know it. And once the ships are on their way to the Sideris Station, it won’t matter who they tell. All those people on earth are the walking dead anyway.”
“Ma’am?”
“Yes, go now. Make the arrangements and send some guards to escort them to the shuttle.”
“Yes, ma’am,” he said, but he hesitated, looking at her with concern.
“I’m fine. I will be fine. I just need some water. Dehydrated.”
She waved him away, and he finally scuttled out the door.
Once she was alone, Caroline collapsed back onto the couch.
If they were all right, Frank would have contacted me by now.
She curled up in the fetal position, clutching a pillow tightly to her chest as she began to sob. She felt as if her heart had actually broken, the blood draining out of the resulting hole, leaving nothing but an empty space in her chest … an empty space in her life. She’d never felt this way before. Not when her husband died. Not even when her young son was taken from her so many years ago. This was somehow worse because it came just when she’d been about to be reunited with her daughter.
Three years ago, when Sarah left home, going who knew where, Caroline had suffered. Initially, she didn’t take her disappearance seriously. Just a tantrum. She’d be back. Then, as the days stretched to weeks, she’d started to get angry. How could Sarah be so selfish? Worry her so? But one day the realization hit her. This could be forever. And she’d hid in her bathroom, where no one could hear her crying, and imagined every terrible thing that could be happening to a young girl alone in the world. What it would be like if she never saw her only remaining child again.
But Caroline was a practical person. She’d not made her way from poverty to the pinnacle of power by spending useless energy on what might be or what might have been. After an hour of despair, she’d washed the tears away, put on fresh make up, smoothed her dress, and left the anguish behind as she took action to locate and then protect her daughter. Within a week, her private investigators had located Sarah in Seattle, where Frank, one of her most effective undercover operatives, worked. He hacked into her daughter’s computer to make sure she saw the WelCo ad with requirements that fit her educational background. It was easy for Caroline to use her Gunther contacts to get Sarah the job. After that, Frank was able to set up the shop and get Sarah to work for him and steer her into safe housing.
And Caroline had convinced herself that getting the frequent reports from Frank, knowing her daughter was healthy and happy, was enough. She told herself the timing was perfect because preparing for the launch of the ten ships was requiring her to come up to the Nautilus space station more frequently. It would have been hard to keep the secret of the Paradisi Project and colonization of New Eden from Sarah if she and her daughter still had contact with each other. The plan was for Frank to bring Sarah to her just a few days before launch, not giving her daughter time to object or run away again.
But less than twenty-four hours ago, all of her plans were upended. And the irony was that today, after she heard Sarah’s voice on the phone, she’d finally accepted how much she’d missed her daughter. Missed speaking to her, hearing her trials and triumphs firsthand, not filtered through Frank’s dry reports. How much she’d been denying the anguish she felt being apart from her.
If there was a god, she was sure he hated humanity, because why else would he have permitted human kind to destroy the Earth? But today she was sure he must hate her, personally, to finally promise her the return of her one and only daughter, only to rip her from her once again. And this time there was nothing Caroline could do. She couldn’t fix this, and she couldn’t solve it; she couldn’t send investigators to follow Sarah into wherever death took her. No reports back from the afterlife.
Caroline sobbed into the pillow until her eyes ran dry and her voice was gone. She lay there, silent and alone, with no expectation of ever finding the strength to rise again.
And then, she heard her mobile softly begin to buzz.
Chapter Ten
“Saya?” The sound barely registered on her consciousness, like a nagging grain of sand caught in the corner of her eye.
“Saya?” There it was again, this time a bit louder and more irritating. In the dark pool of her mind, she searched for its meaning.
“Saya?”
This time the word floated like a liquid bubble up to the surface, and she answered, “I’m here.” Softly at first, and then a second time with more urgency. “I’m here.” Her voice cracked like breaking glass on stone.
She swallowed and tried again. “I’M HERE.” Then she opened her eyes.
“Saya! Are you ok? Do you hurt anywhere?” Trevor crouched over where she lay on her side, cradled in something that felt like a plastic quilt.
“Everywhere,” she replied. And she was telling the truth. She felt as if she’d been trapped in the spin cycle of a washing machine. But nothing really hurt more than anything else. It was disorienting, lying on her side, gravity holding her down. She tried to push herself up but couldn’t, causing her a moment of panic.
“Take it easy. Let’s get the seatbelt off of you,” Trevor said, feeling along her hip.
She heard a click and the belt began to retract, freeing her. Trevor helped her sit upright next to him on what she now realized was the deflated passenger door airbag. The Chandler’s overhead light was on, throwing everything into stark relief.
&nb
sp; “Trevor, you’re bleeding.” She reached over and lightly touched his forehead where she could see a trickle of blood. “How long was I out?”
“I don’t know. I also lost consciousness at some point, and I don’t know for how long.”
She started to remember. When the wall of water hit, the car began to turn end over end, slamming her first against the seatbelt and then against the back of the seat, over and over and over. Trevor had put his arms around her and tried to buffer her. But the front of the car hit something, and the Chandler flipped onto its side, jerking Trevor away from her and leaving her hanging in midair as the car surfed along. That was the last thing she recalled.
“Come. I need to get you out of the car,” he said, standing up and punching a button on the computer screen. The passenger door retracted automatically, letting in cold air. “Can you believe that the electronics on this car are still working? And that there doesn’t seem to have been a drop of water that got in or even a crack in a window? It’s like we were in a submarine.”
Struggling awkwardly so his feet wouldn’t hit her, he pulled himself out of the car and briefly disappeared. Saya stifled the impulse to cry out when she couldn’t see him, but within moments his head reappeared.
Reaching his arms down to her, he said, “Here, grab my shoulders. Go gently, because if you feel anything like I do, this is going to hurt.”
The next few minutes hurt a lot. But the sight that met her eyes when she was finally standing outside the Chandler hurt ever more. Dawn’s early light revealed devastation everywhere. As if the world had become one gigantic junkyard. Bits of houses, splintered trees, upended boats, smashed trailers, upside down cars, twisted playground equipment and useless appliances and furniture. Mountains of things that just a few hours earlier had been people’s belongings. Things they’d held dear and important to them in their lives. And now the horizon was littered with the tombstones of what had been. And littered with bodies that were draped over and under the debris, bodies that weren’t moving.
Saya turned and hid her head in Trevor’s chest, whispering, “It’s too much.”
He held her close then sighed and said, “Saya, I’m sorry, but there is more … Frank didn’t make it. He’s dead.”
She wrenched herself from his arms. “What … how?”
“He’s still belted in the front seat, but it looks like his neck snapped. It was probably quick so he didn’t feel anything.”
Anger swept through her. She was furious all over again. Furious that Frank had lied to her all that time, but even more furious now that he was dead, she would never be able to understand why he’d lied or make peace with him. She started to turn towards the Chandler, but Trevor prevented her, pulling her to his chest again.
“No, don’t look, Saya. From the little I knew of Frank, he’d hate for you to see him that way. He saved our lives tonight, by taking care of those men and getting us away from the city. We owe him that level of respect.”
And just like that, all her anger vanished, and she began to sob. Time passed, and the tears finally stopped. Trevor still held her, but she noticed that he was trembling, and she looked up to see his face was dead white, with the streak of dried blood highlighting his pallor. His eyes looked bruised, and his lips were blue with the cold. No wonder, it was a cold February morning and she was still wearing his hoodie.
“Trevor, here, you need your jacket back.” She started to search for the zipper.
“No, what we need is to find a way to get to the jetport and get up to that space station where those ten ships are waiting so we can find a new life. There is nothing left for us here.”
“But how?”
He stooped down, and she saw that her computer bag was at his feet.
“This is one last thing Frank did for us; he stashed this under the front dash. I don’t know if the computer still works, but the mobile should be ok.” He pulled the mobile out and handed it to her.
Saya stared at him, a man she had barely known twenty-four hours ago, and then she looked around at a world destroyed beyond recognition, and she took a deep breath and punched in the number to call her mom.
The End
The sequel to The Stars are Red Tonight will be out in the winter of 2017-18. But if you want to read the short story about the descendants of Saya Kuttner hundreds of years later on New Eden, please check out the short story by Ashley Angelly, “Aderyn Tanllynd,” in the anthology, Chronicle Worlds: Paradisi.
Louisa Locke’s stories about a different New Eden Founding Family, the Yus, can be found in this anthology and in Between Mountain and Sea, Under Two Moons, and Through Ddaera’s Touch, books 1-3 of Locke’s Caelestis Series.
If you want to be notified of the exact date of the publication of the sequel to The Stars are Red Tonight or be notified of any other new publications or promotions of works in the Paradisi Chronicles, please subscribe to the Paradisi Newsletter.
Other Works in the Paradisi Chronicles
Go to https://paradisichronicles.wordpress.com to find details on these works.
Ashley Angelly
The Stars are Red Tonight: Canestro Series Book One
*“Aderyn Tanllynd,” in Chronicle Worlds: Paradisi
David Bruns
“A Touch of Deceit,” in Chronicle Worlds: Paradisi
Andy Bunch
Saber and Science
Claire Davon
“Solar Crossroads,” Chronicle Worlds: Paradisi
Lindsay Edmunds
“Happiness,” Chronicle Worlds: Paradisi
Cheri Lasota
“The Fall of Seren,” Chronicle Worlds: Paradisi
Paradisi Escape: Paradisi Exodus Book One
Sideris Gate: Paradisi Exodus Book Two
Joseph Robert Lewis
“Truth is Stranger,” Chronicle Worlds: Paradisi
Louisa Locke
“Aelwyd: Home,” Chronicle Worlds: Paradisi
Between Mountain and Sea: Caelestis Series Book One
Under Two Moons: Caelestis Series Book Two
Through Ddaera’s Touch: Caelestis Series Book Three
The Stars are Red Tonight: Canestro Series Book One
S. J. Mayesky
“Unbreakable,” Chronicle Worlds: Paradisi
Roselyn McFarland
Light the Way: Love’s Light Book One
Andy McKell
Faces of Janis: Janus Paradisi Trilogy Book One
Janis Challenge: Paradisi Trilogy Book Two
Bill Patterson
God’s Sandbox: A Paradisi Short
Live Wire: A Paradisi Novella
Eye of the Needle: A Paradisi Short
Nuking the Noomies: A Paradisi Short
Felix Savage
“Down and Out in Caprinet,” Chronicle Worlds: Paradisi
Auburn Seal
First Watch: A Watcher Bay Adventure
Jeff Seymour
“Cold, Angels, Paradise,” Chronicle Worlds: Paradisi
Sarah Woodbury
Erase Me Not
About the Authors
Ashley Angelly is a co-founder of the Paradisi Chronicles, the joint science fiction series that is set in the future on New Eden, a distant planet where only a small portion of humanity has escaped from a dying Earth. The Stars are Red Tonight is the first novella in the Canistro series about the Kuttner Founding Family, and she also has a short story, “Aderyn Tanllyd” in the anthology, Chronicle Worlds: Paradisi. Ashley grew up in Southern California and now lives in Northern Washington. She loves tattoos and taking care of her kids, and when she isn’t writing, she is nerding out watching horror movies and science fiction shows. You can learn more about Ashley’s work on her website or follow her on Facebook, twitter and instagram.
Louisa Locke is a retired professor of U.S. and Women’s history, and writing as M. Louisa Locke, she is the author of the best-selling Victorian San Francisco Mystery series. Not content with just writing about the past, Locke is a co-founder
of the open-source collaborative project, the Paradisi Project. In addition to co-writing The Stars are Red Tonight, she has written a short story, “Aelwyd: Home”, for the anthology Chronicle Worlds: Paradisi, and three novels in the Caelestis series of the Paradisi Chronicles about the Yu founding Family. Locke is also an active member of the Historical Fiction Authors Cooperative. For more about M. Louisa Locke and her work, go to her website or follow her on facebook, twitter, pinterest, or instagram.
Acknowledgments
The Stars are Red Tonight would not have been possible without the earlier work done by the other co-founders of the Paradisi Chronicles: Amanda Allen, Andy Bunch, Cheri Lasota, Roslyn McFarland, Auburn Seal, and Sarah Woodbury. In addition, we would like to thank the beta readers who helped improve this story: Suzy Bates, Robin Harsh, Casey Jones, Rene Siracusa, and Sarah Woodbury, and our copy editor, Jessica Meigs, and cover designer, Berkley Baum. Finally, our greatest appreciation goes to James Jacobs (Louisa’s husband and Ashley’s father) for his never-ending support.
The Stars are Red Tonight: The Paradisi Chronicles Page 9