Bringing Stella Home Read online

  As Stella and Ben hurried out of the room to catch their shuttle, James opened the ballot, quickly scanned the measure, and hit “yea.” With that done, he made room for his father to cast his vote and transmit the ballots to their home, over one hundred million kilometers away.

  * * * * *

  Twenty minutes later, James watched from the bridge as the ferry shuttle undocked and left the station, carrying Ben and Stella with it. The gray hull of the small, winged craft shimmered in the sunlight as it drifted away, suspended peacefully above the clouds and plains of Kardunash IV. As he watched, the spacecraft fired its engines and took off toward the glow of the curved horizon.

  James sighed and returned his attention to the array in front of him. He knew every instrument, screen, panel, and keyboard at his station—all too well. His main screen displayed the live video feed from the cargo bays, where his father operated the unloading arm.

  The bay door, which stretched almost the whole length of the underside of the ship, lay wide open, revealing a stunning vista of the world below. The cargo—massive cylindrical drums of processed, refined steel—hung from berths on the ceiling. With the bay open, it seemed as if they were in danger of falling down to the world, but James knew that wasn’t the case. While the upper decks on the Llewellyn had full artificial gravity, the cargo bays did not. For that reason, the steel drums had to be maneuvered one by one out of the hold by the Lewellyn’s unloading claw—a painfully tedious process. Once out of the ship, automated tugboats from the station would pick them up. Because of the massive inertial resistance of each drum, maximum unloading speed was an excruciating quarter meter per minute. At that rate, it was an open question whether James would finish in time. Even if the job was done before the next shuttle left, his father certainly wouldn’t let him go early.

  James leaned back in his chair and stared out the forward window at the planet, glancing only occasionally at the indicators on his screen. A robot could do his job more effectively—if their family could afford a robot. Even then, his father would probably make him work just to ‘build his character.’ He could hear him now: “When your grandfather was your age, the Colony was corporate-owned and the Karduna system was still under the mandate of the New Gaian Empire…”

  In an attempt to fight his growing boredom, he opened a browser on one of the side monitors and brought up the latest news updates from the K-4 planetnet. He’d already viewed all the newscasts on the war situation out on the frontier, so that left nothing but local news. Gubernatorial elections were ongoing in one of the central arcologies, and a labor dispute had temporarily shut down one of the minor spaceports. Most of the news wasn’t too interesting, though. He skimmed the major sites for any updates from the Colony, but other than trade reports and economic indicators, he found nothing.

  Of course, he could always access the servers at Kardunash III directly—but the long distance from the planet would kill the load time. He didn’t feel like waiting five minutes every time he clicked a link, so he didn’t even try.

  He had just found an update on Gaian Imperial military operations in the New Pleiades when an unusual beeping noise sounded to his right. An alarm was signaling an urgent transmission from the port authority over the public channel. Curious, he closed his browser and brought it up.

  “Hey, Son?” came his father’s voice, garbled slightly over the cheap headset. “My console shows that you just received an urgent message from the port authority?”

  “Yeah,” said James. “I’m opening it now.”

  It was an emergency broadcast. The message was only two lines, repeated indefinitely across the screen. James frowned as he read it.

  Attention: A Hameji battle fleet has entered the system. KDF personnel preparing to engage. Starlane closure imminent. All civilian stations ordered to evacuate.

  Another beeping noise came from the astrogation monitor. James held his breath as he brought up the latest data from the Llewellyn’s scanners.

  What he saw made his face pale.

  Twenty-seven newly arrived ships showed up on the scanners, not fifty thousand kilometers from the night side of the planet. How many more were waiting in the blind spot opposite their current orbital position, he had no way of knowing—but he wouldn’t be surprised if it was twice that number.

  “James? Son? Can you hear me?”

  A cold sweat broke out across the back of James’s neck. The people of Kardunash IV didn’t have a chance.

  Everyone on that world was going to die.

  Chapter 2

  “Did you feel something?” asked Stella. “It feels like we pulled up all of a sudden.”

  Ben frowned. “Yeah, I felt it.”

  He stuck his head out into the aisle and stared down the rows of narrow seats. The soft fluorescent lights overhead mingled with the hard yellow sunlight shining in through the port-side windows of the cabin as they approached the night side of Kardunash IV. Several of the other passengers on the crowded shuttle had started to glance nervously around at each other. They’d felt it, too, apparently.

  “Does it seem like we’re rising?” the young man in front of them asked the woman to his right in an obnoxiously loud voice. “It feels like we’re rising.”

  “It does,” Stella whispered to Ben. “But why?”

  Be shrugged. “I don’t know.” He leaned over her lap to glance out the window; around them, several other passengers did the same.

  The blue haze of Kardunash IV’s atmosphere had already turned the rusty red color of twilight, but the ground didn’t seem much closer than it had from the station. Besides, if they were making their descent, the orange re-entry flames should have been visible by now. A lurch in his stomach told him this was more than a mere course correction.

  “It seems like we’re aborting our descent,” he said.

  “Aborting our descent?” said the man in front of them, turning around in his chair. “What the hell for?”

  Ben ignored him and turned to Stella. She seemed worried.

  “What’s going on?” she asked. “Engine failure? Technical difficulties?”

  “They’d have announced that over the speaker by now.”

  “Then what?” She bit her lip and glanced down at her wrist console.

  “We’re probably too far from the Llewellyn to connect with the ship’s network,” he said, as if reading her mind. “Still, it’s worth a shot.”

  Stella was already busy accessing her console, keying in the commands with her right pointer finger as she held the tiny screen up to her face. Ben brought up his own while across the aisle, three blond teenage girls started talking rapidly amongst themselves in half-whispered tones.

  After about ten seconds, an Error in Connection message popped up on his LCD screen. “I can’t get it,” he said. “How about you?”

  “Almost there,” said Stella, totally absorbed.

  He tried again. The loading bar gradually filled, but before it reached one hundred percent, the same error message flashed on. He cursed under his breath, low enough that Stella couldn’t hear him.

  “Got it,” she said.

  “Quick, access the Lewellyn’s comm system. See if there are any new messages from the port authority.”

  “Loading,” she said. “The connection’s weak.”

  Come on, Ben thought to himself. The middle-aged man and woman in the seats behind them started talking in concerned tones, just soft enough that Ben could tune them out.

  “There,” said Stella, sounding quite pleased with herself. “It says ‘A Hameji battle fleet has entered the system. KDF personnel preparing to—’” she stopped in mid-sentence and froze, her cheeks paling.

  “What?” said the obnoxious passenger, still facing them. “The Hameji—here, at Karduna?”

  “Shh!” hissed Ben. “Not so loud—you’ll upset the others.”

  But the damage was already done. All across the cabin, heads began to turn their way, while the noise level rose sharply. Look wha
t you’ve done! Ben wanted to shout at the man, but it was too late.

  “What did you say?” asked one of the girls from across the aisle, her eyes wide and frightened.

  “Nothing,” Ben said quickly—too quickly. “Nothing at all.”

  “It sounded like ‘Hameji,’” came the middle-aged woman’s voice from behind them. Her husband gasped.

  “I’m sorry,” said Stella, “I didn’t mean—”

  “Never mind about that,” said Ben, glancing quickly around the cabin as he moved to shield her from any kind of mass hysteria. Fortunately, though the people around them seemed surprised and frightened, they remained in their seats. Panic hadn’t broken out—yet.

  He turned to her and leaned in close. “We still have a chance,” he said, speaking softly so the other passengers wouldn’t hear. “If the captain can find a ship willing to take us, we might be able to escape.”

  “But what about Dad and James?”

  Ben clenched his teeth and took in a breath. “We’ll just have to hope for the best for them. Anyway, if we’re lucky, the Hameji jumped in on the other side of the planet, meaning—”

  A sudden flash of light out the window near the horizon cut him off. A collective gasp arose from the passengers, followed by an eerie hush. The three girls across the aisle peered over towards the window next to Stella’s seat, their faces white.

  “What was that?”

  “That was nothing,” said Ben. “Just an opening volley—too far away to do us any damage.” But they’re on this side of the planet, he thought silently to himself. That’s bad—very bad.

  “We’re screwed,” said the man in front of him, panic quickly rising in his voice. “Oh, God! We’re all screwed!”

  “Attention, passengers,” came the stewardess’s voice over the loudspeaker. “Please remain calm. The captain and crew have just been informed of a dangerous situation developing in our local sector, but we are doing everything we can to ensure your safety. There is no need to fear. Please remain in your seats and stay calm.”

  “What’s going on?” Stella asked, frowning. “Ben, what can you tell me?”

  “The Hameji will probably move to attack this planet first,” Ben said, his mind racing over the strategic analysis he’d read of previous Hameji battles. “Then they’ll probably try to slag K-4 the same way they did Tajjur V and Belarius III—”

  “You mean, bring in the mass accelerators?” Stella asked, her eyes growing wide. “Completely obliter—”

  “Yes,” hissed Ben, cutting her off to keep the others from overhearing. “Since they jumped in from deep space, though, their forces are scattered all over this local sector. I’m guessing they came in from at least a light-year out, and at that distance, jump precision isn’t very good. It’s going to take them a while to regroup, and that might give the KDF time to scramble something together.”

  “So we might be able to beat them?”

  No.

  “Yeah,” he said, avoiding her eyes. “Maybe.”

  Maybe if the entire Gaian Imperial Navy shows up in the next ten minutes. He drew in a long breath, trying to relax—he didn’t want Stella to see through his lie.

  The Hameji had always fascinated him. Descended from the explorers and frontiersmen in the early days of space exploration, they had developed a culture entirely independent from the rest of humanity. As spacefaring nomads, they spent their entire lives on their battleships, never setting foot on any inhabited world. Without any government to keep them in line, warfare was the only law they knew—total, unrestrained warfare.

  For generations, they had kept to themselves, clan fighting against clan in the far reaches beyond the old Imperial frontiers. In the last few years, however, something or someone had united them as a single force, turning them away from their myriad vendettas and blood feuds to rise up against the armies and navies of civilized space. The frontier worlds on the far side of the Good Hope Nebula had been the first to fall, but the Hameji soon sought worthier prey. With the fall of the Tajjur system only a few months ago, a bare handful of systems now stood between them and the very heart of the New Gaian Empire—Gaia Nova itself.

  Karduna was one of those systems.

  A bright, soundless flash through the windows on the opposite side of the aisle cast irregular shadows against the seats and bulkheads. Screams filled the cabin, and Ben quickly closed his eyes and shielded them with his arm. His hands, he noted with some dismay, had started to shake uncontrollably.

  “What was that?” cried Stella. The flash slowly faded, but the passengers continued to scream in panic.

  “A nuclear blast,” said Ben. “Much closer this time.”

  “Did it hit anyone? Did it kill anyone?”

  “I don’t know,” he said, his voice cracking for the first time since puberty. “Probably not. The Hameji are jumping nukes at our battleships, but our beacons are probably interdicting—”

  Another intense flash of silent light filled the shuttle, this time much brighter. Without thinking, Ben grabbed his sister and pulled her close, shielding his eyes with his arm. Adrenaline surged through his body as the nuclear blast bathed them in impossibly brilliant light.

  “My eyes!” the man in front of them wailed, his voice joining a dozen others. “Oh God! My eyes!”

  One one thousand, two one thousand, three one thousand… Stella trembled in Ben’s arms but still held onto him. When he reached five, he opened his eyes for a peek. Outside, the pink afterglow of the blast was subsiding. He let go of his sister and took a deep, uneven breath.

  The situation in the cabin was quickly deteriorating. Screams filled the air, and several of the passengers were starting to panic. The man in front of them rose to his feet and staggered down the aisle, covering his eyes with his hand. Three stewardesses quickly tried to placate him, but when he refused to return to his seat, one of them pulled out a short metal stick and prodded him in the stomach. His scream jumped up an octave, and his body went limp; two stewardesses caught him and returned him to his seat.

  “Wow,” Ben muttered. Overhead, the Fasten Seat Restraints sign flashed on.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, please remain calm,” came the captain’s voice over the loudspeakers. “You may have noticed the emergency situation outside, but I assure you, we are doing our best to get you all to safety. I’ve been in contact with several evacuating freighters, and one of them, the Sierra Vista, will be picking us up soon. Again, please remain in your seats with your restraints securely strapped. Do not panic.”

  Ben felt his stomach lurch and his body fall back against his chair as the shuttle accelerated. He reached up and pulled his seat restraints down over his shoulders as they turned hard to port. To his right, Stella did the same. He glanced at her; she seemed tense, scared.

  “We’re going to be all right,” he told her. “Just stay with me, whatever happens.”

  She nodded mutely. Around them, the screaming subsided, replaced with a tension so thick that Ben could practically taste it.

  A minute passed. Ben stared at the ceiling and counted the seconds, squeezing his armrests until his fingers were numb. The shuttle turned hard to starboard, but his seat restraints caught him. A few passengers shrieked, but most of them kept quiet. When he glanced across the aisle, he saw that the girls were on edge, eyes wide and arms tightly folded.

  “What are we going to do when we get to the freighter?” Stella asked.

  How should I know? Ben thought to himself.

  “Stay together,” he said. “Ride it out with them.”

  “Will we make it to the Llewellyn?”

  “I don’t think so. Not right away.”

  “Where will they go? Will they be all right?”

  “I hope so.”

  Stella’s eyes widened in fear. “What about Lars? Will he make it out too?”

  Not if he’s already planetside.

  The shuttle’s acceleration slowed. Ben turned his head and glanced out the window. They were
on the night side of the planet now—the horizon showed up as a fading crescent, a line between the stars and the glowing light of city domes. Stella glanced up at him, then out the window.

  “I don’t see the battle,” she said. “Are we clear?”

  As if in response, a series of small, soundless explosions puffed out among the backdrop of the stars. The targets were nowhere in sight—probably too distant to be visible, or obscured by the planet’s shadow.

  “Oh no,” said Stella, “was that another—”

  “I don’t think so,” said Ben. “Standard Kardunasian battle cruisers carry at least two dozen jump beacons each, and they almost certainly launched them as soon as the Hameji attacked. If they try to nuke us across space with a jumped warhead, the beacons will draw their fire. Those explosions are harmless.”

  Probably harmless. He hoped they were harmless.

  “So we’re going to make it?”

  Before he could answer, a series of brilliant flashes illuminated the entire sky, searing the interior of the shuttle with light. Stella and the other passengers screamed; Ben hurriedly grabbed her again and covered his eyes. One one thousand, two one thousand…

  After about ten seconds, he peeked out. The interior lights had all died, but the afterglow of the explosions was bright enough to illuminate the cabin, casting eerie shadows across the aisle. Ignoring the screams of the other passengers, Ben stared out the window.

  As he did, his eyes opened wide with horror.