Bringing Stella Home Read online

  “That’s right. Feel the potential—feed on it. Thrilling, no? You want it for yourself, don’t you?”

  Ben blinked and nodded. It had been so long since he had felt any real power.

  “I can give you what you’ve lost. I can give you the power you so crave. The only question is whether you want it.”

  Ben hesitated for only a moment.

  “Yes.”

  The officer smiled. “Then welcome, soldier.”

  Part II: Ben

  Chapter 8

  “Two Gaian Imperial battlegroups are arrived this morning, Captain,” said Sergeant Roman Krikoryan in his heavy Tajji accent. “I am thinking it is mistake to stay at this place.”

  Captain Danica Nova nodded and sighed. The spineless Imperials were swarming to the end of the Karduna starlane like flies to a dying bitch in heat. It was almost as if they were at war with the refugees, not the Hameji. She certainly wouldn’t put it past them.

  “We stay until we’ve met with our client, Roman,” she said, glancing up from her instruments to face her chief NCO. “After that, we’ll consider our options.”

  Roman fingered the grizzled silvery hair of his goatee. “And what if the client is Imperial agent?”

  “Leave that to me.”

  Danica turned and looked out the forward window at the massive spherical bulk of the starlane station. Built as a relay point for traffic between the Gaia Nova and Karduna systems, it housed more than a dozen peta-watt power generators and a whole network of jump drives. The redundancy ensured that starships spent at most only a few minutes here before passing to the Karduna system nearly half a light-year away.

  With the fall of Karduna to the unstoppable Hameji, however, traffic had come to a complete stop. A flood of hundreds of thousands of refugees now inundated this deep space outpost. Their ships swarmed the station, clustering around the already overcrowded docking node. The Imperials, bastards that they were, had refused to give anyone entry into the New Gaian Empire without proper immigration papers, so here the disenfranchised Kardunasians languished.

  Danica sympathized with the refugees, but she was glad for the growing humanitarian crisis that allowed her and her men to slip by unnoticed. Not that the Imperials weren’t hiring; at the going rate for mercenaries, a couple solid jobs could make every last soldier on her crew a millionaire. Be that as it may, however, it still didn’t top the reward the Imperials had put on their heads. Although the higher-ups might be desperate enough to do it anyway, she wouldn’t put it past some lower officer to stab them all in the back.

  Besides, she’d sooner die than work for the Empire.

  “Sikorsky,” she said, “What do you gather from the fleet’s movements?”

  Lieutenant Anya Sikorsky, pilot of the Tajji Flame, quickly scanned the data on her screen. A young blonde only twenty-six standard years of age, she cut an attractive figure in her form-fitting jumpsuit. Some might wonder why Danica had chosen this young woman to be her pilot—or why Anya hadn’t pursued a lucrative career as a fashion model instead. Danica knew full well why not: Models couldn’t expect to keep their jobs when they left a trail of bodies wherever they went.

  “They seem to be reinforcing the defensive perimeter,” said Anya. “I don’t think they’ll give us any trouble—not right now, at least.”

  “Have you located our contact?”

  “Yes, Captain. The Catriona is two-point-four k-clicks out, closing on our position. At her current velocity, we should be docked in ten minutes.”

  “Good work, Sikorsky. Keep me apprised of any changes in Gaian fleet movements.”

  Danica turned to face her cybernetics officer. “Ayvazyan,” she said, “give me a status update.”

  If Anya was an unlikely military officer, Lieutenant Ilya Ayvazyan was a positive delinquent—the last kind of person anyone would expect to find on a private military crew. Scrawny and unkempt, with greasy black hair and a perpetually smug look on his face, he didn’t mix well with the other officers—or with the general public, either. Danica had never had reason to regret taking him on, however. Though Ilya was barely twenty-two, dressed like a grungy civilian, and often smoked in public areas of the ship (much to Roman’s frustration), the kid was a genius hacker. More than once, he’d gotten them out of trouble—and thrown the enemy into a whole world of hurt.

  Ilya casually leaned back in his chair. “Our client’s ship has some pretty pathetic security systems, I can tell you that,” he said. “I’ve already cracked the ice and should have complete access to his data in a couple of minutes.”

  “What have you found?”

  “So far, he checks out. Kardunasian born and bred, privately owned ship with no record in the Imperial database, clean slate all around. Either the Imperials are getting really good at covering their agents, or this guy’s legit.”

  “Good,” said Danica. “Let me know the moment you find anything fishy.”

  “You got it.”

  Danica glanced down at the clock on her wrist console and shook her head. Their contact was late.

  “Our jump reserves are running hot, Captain,” said Anya. “Should I bleed off the batteries and recharge once we’ve docked?”

  “No,” said Danica. “Keep our jump drive at the ready. I want to be able to run the instant the Imperials so much as sneeze in our direction.”

  “And take the client with us?” asked Roman from behind her.

  “Yes,” said Danica. If all else fails, at least we’ll come out with a hostage.

  Four weeks since their arrival at Karduna, and everything had gone to hell in a ruptured escape pod. They’d barely escaped the Hameji with their lives, and now their only potential client in weeks was some kid by the name of James McCoy. Danica wasn’t in the habit of taking jobs from boys too young to shave, but lately things had gotten desperate. The Hameji had ruthlessly crushed every military force within a hundred parsecs—everyone except the New Gaian Empire, which seemed to be next. While the Imperials were desperate to take on as many hired guns as they could find, the Hameji weren’t. With their funds and supply stores running low, Danica couldn’t afford to turn any private job down.

  A blinking light on her display screen brought her out of her thoughts. It was an incoming message.

  “Captain,” said Anya, “the Catriona is within range and wishes to dock with us.”

  “Proceed,” said Danica. She turned to Roman. “Considering the circumstances, I don’t think it’s prudent for me to leave my post on the bridge. Send a few men to bring him here.”

  “Yes, Captain,” said Roman. He rose and left the bridge, the door hissing shut behind him.

  Of course, a face-to-face meeting was not strictly necessary—they could easily conduct their business over the KG-1 localnet via the Tajji Flame’s secure servers. Something about this contract seemed suspicious, though, and Danica didn’t feel safe conducting business on the grid. Ilya was good, but the Imperials had a lot more resources to draw on. If they cut through his ice and infiltrated her network, they could shut down the Flame’s systems before any of them had time to react. Danica wasn’t about to put her men in that kind of danger.

  She watched in silence as the Catriona flew into position overhead. It was a small ship, little more than a light transport shuttle retrofitted with a jump drive. From the cosmic weathering on the hull, Danica guessed she was going on three or four decades of use. Definitely obsolete.

  “Any hidden gun emplacements?” she asked.

  “No,” said Anya. “I’ve scanned her twice, Captain. I don’t think she’s armed.”

  “Good. Scan her a third time, and keep your finger on the jump drive.”

  A distant groaning noise came through the walls of the ship as they docked. Half a minute later, an indicator blinked, showing that the main airlock was open.

  No incident. Not yet.

  Moments later, the door to the bridge hissed open. Danica stood with her hands clasped smartly behind her back and nodded a
t her men as they stepped through. Behind Roman and flanked by Peter and Nicholas, two of her huskiest soldiers, the young boy stepped onto the bridge.

  Danica frowned; ‘boy’ was certainly an apt term for him. His cheeks were pale and soft, his bowl-cut hair knotty and uncombed. He barely came up to Roman’s chin, and his arms were as scrawny as Danica’s had been at his age.

  “Welcome to the Tajji Flame, Mister—”

  “McCoy. James McCoy.”

  “Ah.”

  She extended her hand. The boy took it and gave her a surprisingly firm handshake.

  “You’re Danica Nova, right?” he asked, his voice a bit too eager. “Pleased to meet you.”

  “Yes,” said Danica. She gave her soldiers a curt nod. “Wait for us outside.”

  They turned and left. Roman took his customary seat and watched her with an amused expression on his face.

  “I assume you got my message,” the boy said. “I wanted to talk about, er, hiring your services.”

  “I see,” said Danica. “And exactly what services were you looking to hire?”

  “I need some help with a rescue operation. My brother and sister were, uh, taken by the Hameji.”

  Behind them, Ilya snorted. Danica ignored him and stared at the boy without saying a word.

  “I’ve got proof of it,” he said. “At least, proof they were alive when the invasion started. They can’t be far—”

  “Are you planning to pay in cash, gold, or diamonds, kid?”

  The boy floundered. “Well, I have a couple hundred in cash—”

  “And?”

  “And, uh, I have my ship.”

  “Numbers, kid. Give me a number.”

  James bit his lip and swayed back and forth on his feet for several long moments. “I don’t know.”

  Who is this kid? Danica wondered. Too stupid to be an Imperial agent—but are they tracking him?

  “So let me get this straight,” she said. “You’re—what? Fifteen? Fourteen?”

  “Nineteen.”

  “Bullshit.”

  James blushed deep red. “Fifteen,” he admitted.

  “Right. And you lost some of your family to the Hameji.”

  “That’s right.”

  “And you want us to rescue them for you.”

  “Yeah.”

  “But you have no idea where they are.”

  “Uh—”

  “And you can only pay us with that obsolete shuttle, which you probably stole.”

  James’s eyes lit up with anger. “I didn’t steal that ship,” he said. “It belongs to my family. I took it out as—as part of my inheritance.”

  “Even so, it is small vessel,” said Roman. “It is not going for more than six million Gaian credits, even as new.”

  “It’ll sell for more at Karduna,” said the boy. “Any ship with jump capacity is going to sell really well—”

  “How well?” Danica asked.

  “I—I don’t know. A lot.”

  “If we’re going to do business,” said Danica, letting her annoyance bleeding into her voice, “‘really well’ isn’t going to cut it.”

  “It’s all I have,” said James, his composure breaking apart. “Please—I need your help.”

  Danica folded her arms and sighed inwardly. The boy was right to come to them for help—the Imperials certainly wouldn’t help him with a petty rescue operation. His proposal was absolutely crazy, but still, he had lot of guts to come this far. Danica admired that.

  Besides, something seemed strangely familiar about him. Had they met before? Of course it was impossible, but for some odd reason she couldn’t shake the notion from her head.

  “You know,” said Ilya, “we could just take the Catriona for ourselves—the station registry has no record of him.”

  “What?” shouted James. “No—you wouldn’t!”

  Danica turned and gave Ilya a sharp, reprimanding look. He shrugged in response. “It was only a suggestion.”

  “Thank you, Lieutenant Ayvazyan. When I want your suggestion, I’ll ask for it. Is that clear?”

  “Yes, Captain.”

  Danica turned back to the boy. “I hope you realize the magnitude of what you’re asking. No one has ever conducted a successful rescue operation against the Hameji. For me to put my men in a situation like that—”

  “I know,” said James, “but just because no one’s ever done it doesn’t mean it can’t be done.” The look he gave Danica was nothing short of desperate pleading, but she saw a determined resolution in his eye. He wasn’t going to give this thing up.

  All at once, it came to her. The hair, the eyes, the shape of his face—in every way, he was the spitting image of her brother Karen. Her breath caught in her throat, and it took every last shred of her discipline not to cry out in shock. How long had her brother been dead? Too long—far too long.

  “And where will you be while we carry out this job?” Danica asked, quickly regaining her composure.

  “I was, uh, planning on coming with you,” he said. “I want to be there when we rescue them.”

  Danica broke her stoic expression to raise an eyebrow. “You want to join us?”

  “Yes,” he said. “I—I want to join for the mission. I’m not afraid.”

  The kid’s got spirit, Danica thought to herself. She drew in a deep breath.

  “Let me think about it,” she said. “My men will escort you to the lounge. I’ll call you when I’ve made my decision.”

  “Yes, of course,” he said. “Thank you.”

  Roman stood and showed him to the door, where Peter and Nicholas led him away. Anya and Ilya watched silently from their posts.

  “Well,” said Danica, facing her officers as she sorted out her thoughts, “what do you think?”

  “The boy’s probably right about selling his ship,” said Anya. “The Catriona’s not much to look at, but from what I can gather from the chatter on the civilian bands, thousands of people are desperate to escape the system. I wouldn’t be surprised if we could get a hundred million credits, or more.”

  One hundred million credits would be enough to carry us to the New Pleiades, Danica thought to herself. Not much further, but far enough.

  “We should just take the ship and leave the kid,” said Ilya. “I mean, come on—there’s no one to stop us. He isn’t registered anywhere, and so far as I can tell, no one else knows he’s here. If we—”

  “We’re a private military unit, Ayvazyan, not a band of pirates.”

  “Yeah, but still, why take his contract? It’s suicide.”

  Danica looked off, deep in thought. The others drew silent.

  “Sikorsky,” said Danica, “I need to step out for a moment. If you see any suspicious movement in the Imperial fleet—and I mean anything—get us the hell out of here. Am I clear?”

  “Yes, Captain.”

  A nod was all it took for Roman to leave with her. In the hallway outside the bridge, they were alone.

  “Well, Sergeant,” she asked, “what do you think?”

  “The boy is crazy,” said Roman. “This ‘rescue operation’ against the Hameji is strange way to commit suicide.”

  “I know,” said Danica. “Still, it’s the only offer we’ve received since our arrival.”

  “Pff,” said Roman, throwing up his hands. “Perhaps this is true. Does it matter?”

  “I hate to admit it, but we need to take this mission. With the Imperials swarming this position, who else is going to approach us with work? Besides, if the boy wants to join our crew for a while, maybe I can talk him out of it.”

  “Talk him out of rescuing his sister and brother? I am not thinking you can do this.”

  “Perhaps, but who knows? Maybe he’s right—just because no one has ever done it doesn’t mean that it can’t be done. If we did pull it off, it would certainly boost our reputation.”

  “Reputation is for the living, not the dead. And this boy’s promised price is no good.”

  “We don’
t know that, and Sikorsky has good reason to believe otherwise.”

  “Still, I do not believe it is so. Fifty million, perhaps, but hundred million?” He pursed his lips and shook his head.

  “Are those your only misgivings about this job?”

  Roman nodded. “Yes.”

  “Thank you,” said Danica. “And if I decided to take this mission in spite of your misgivings, would you follow my orders?”

  Roman snorted indignantly. “Why do you ask question if you already know answer?”

  * * * * *

  James paced nervously across the floor of the empty lounge. A hundred doubts assailed him—that the mercenaries wouldn’t take his job, that they thought he was crazy, that they’d steal his ship and leave him stranded. He could imagine the lecture his father would give him if he were here. Dealing in the black market with crooks and criminals—what was he thinking?

  Just when he decided that he’d made a huge mistake, the door hissed open and a man in battle fatigues stepped through. “Mister McCoy,” he said, “Captain Nova will see you now.”

  James swallowed and nodded. He followed the soldier up a narrow ladder and down a long, dim corridor to the ship’s bridge.

  To his surprise, he found the place packed with half a dozen men and women, most of them in varying styles of military dress. Captain Nova stood at the front of them.

  “Congratulations,” she said, extending her hand. “We’ve reviewed your offer and found your terms acceptable. Welcome aboard the Tajji Flame.”

  James’s heart leaped in his chest, and an eager smile spread across his face. I knew it! he told himself, taking Danica’s hand in both of his own.

  “Thank you so much,” he said. “I—”

  “Allow me to introduce my officers,” she said, stepping aside and waving him in. The curt gesture caught him off guard.

  “This is Master Sergeant Roman Krikoryan,” she said, pointing to the older man James had seen before. “Roman is my senior NCO and has been with us since the beginning. He’s career military and knows how to run a ship better than anyone on this crew, including myself.”