Brothers in Exile_Sons of the Starfarers Read online

  “Someone else will come eventually. If she’s still alive, she’s frozen in stasis, so it won’t matter how long it takes for someone else to find her.”

  “And what if those people are slavers?” Aaron asked. “You really want to take that chance—to have that on your conscience?”

  “No,” Isaac admitted.

  “Then let’s bring her out. There’s a freight airlock not too far from here—it won’t be difficult to load her up with the rest of the cargo.”

  “Do we have the space, though? Our hold is still full from Nova Minitak.”

  “If we don’t, we’ll just dump enough to make room. Saving this girl is a lot more important than our next trade anyway. Besides, we’ve built up enough credit in this sector that we can afford to eat the loss.”

  Isaac nodded slowly and took a deep breath. “Right. I’ll get a mag-lift from the maintenance room, then.”

  “No need—she’s already loaded up on one. All we’ve got to do is take her out.”

  Right again, he thought, checking the underside of the cryotank. They really did want someone to take her. It was as if the girl was the last hope of a long-forgotten people, a precious artifact lost across space and time. How long had she lain here, waiting to be brought back to the realm of the living? He traced the intricate henna patterns with his eyes and wondered why she’d had them done. Perhaps someday he’d be able to ask her.

  That certainly wasn’t the only question about this place that begged for answers, though. Not by all the hidden stars of Earth.

  Rumors of War

  “Greetings Medea,” came the controller’s voice over the comms. “Your signal we have. Trajectory good. Flight plans we transmit.”

  “Copy, orbital control,” said Isaac. “Maintaining course. We look forward to seeing you on station.”

  “Is good. Welcome to Esperanzia.”

  Isaac ended the transmission while his brother leaned back with his hands behind his head. “I take it they’re sending us the flight plans?”

  “That’s right,” said Isaac. His brother’s Gaian was spotty, and the creole in the south second quadrant was nothing like the dialects back home in the Oriana Cluster. Isaac still had trouble from time to time, though Gaian was more common toward the New Pleiades. The empire had a lot more interest in maintaining trade ties with the resource rich star cluster.

  The orange-yellow sun shone dimly through the Medea’s cockpit window, even without the autotint turned on. Alahambara Station was located at the trailing Lagrange point of the eighth planet, a major gas giant with thousands of asteroids in tow. Further in toward the system’s habitable zone, a rocky super-Earth planet called Elienta boasted a thick atmosphere with a complex alien ecosystem in the higher altitudes. Most of the system’s colonists made their home on floating platforms on that world, but Isaac had never been there. The asteroid fields were rich in trade goods, and for that reason, most of the interstellar trade went through Alahambara Station.

  “It’s damn good to hear another human voice,” Aaron muttered. “Ever since Nova Alnilam, everything’s felt a little ghostly. Don’t you think?”

  “Yeah,” Isaac agreed. He knew exactly what his brother was talking about. He’d felt it, too.

  “Well, hopefully that’ll change soon. You want to check out Elienta this time? I’ll bet we can find a hauling company willing to outsource a load.”

  “I don’t know. It depends how much we can get for our Minitakan grain.”

  “I’ll bet we can get better prices in the inner system than at Alahambara. Besides, there’s more to starfaring than trade routes and interstellar economics. You’ve got to live a little—meet new people and see the sights. When was the last time you had a girl waiting for you?”

  An indicator at Isaac’s control panel blinked, cutting the conversation short.

  “Looks like they just transmitted those flight plans. Plug them into the nav-computer and let’s be on our way.”

  “You sure?”

  “Yes.”

  Seeing his brother’s disappointment, Isaac looked at him and smiled. “Don’t worry. Mathusael’s there, and things are never boring with him. Besides, we’re a lot more likely at Alahambara Station to find someone who knows how we can thaw out that girl we rescued.”

  “You think they can revive her?”

  “If they can’t, I’m sure they can tell us where to find someone who can. You know what they say: The Outworlds may be vast, but it’s a small universe outside the Coreward Stars.”

  “Yeah. A small universe.”

  Small enough for two boys from Delta Oriana to make it out this far, Isaac thought. As for the people of Nova Alnilam, perhaps the vastness had been too much for them.

  * * * * *

  “Isaac, Aaron! It’s so good to see you. Come here!”

  Mathusael embraced each of them warmly, kissing them on the cheek in the old Deltan manner. He was a wide, stocky man with a thick black beard and long, stringy hair. Isaac smiled as he returned the greeting. Even though it had only been a few months since their last visit, it was good to see a familiar face—especially after the horrors of the last voyage.

  “Hello, Mathusael,” said Aaron, speaking in Deltan. “It sure is good to see you again.”

  “What’s the matter, boys? You look as if you’ve seen a ghost.”

  “Maybe we have,” Isaac muttered.

  A cloud fell across Mathusael’s face, and he squinted at them. “Well, let’s get some refreshments then—my treat. You can tell me all about it over a good stiff round of tonberry cocktails.”

  He led them through the drab, utilitarian corridors of Alahambara Station’s tiny spaceport, past the haphazard loading docks and the bustling market stalls that had spread like mold in the unfrequented passageways. Asteroid miners wandered in groups of two and three, their faces haggard and their bodies gaunt from long exposure to microgravity. No doubt they were looking for some of the station’s overworked prostitutes to make the most of their time off. Isaac accidentally bumped shoulders with one of them and nearly choked from the stench of alcohol on his breath.

  We’d better be careful to keep the girl a secret, Isaac thought to himself. Places like this weren’t safe for young women, especially ones without a home.

  “How’s Esperanzia treating you?” Aaron asked, his eyes wandering as they passed a crowded bar.

  “Not bad,” said Mathusael. “Not bad at all. My wife’s expecting another child—our fourth. Found out she was pregnant just a month after my last leave, so the chances are pretty good it’s mine.” He chuckled good-naturedly.

  “How often do you see her?” Isaac asked.

  “About six months every two standard years. It isn’t cheap getting passage sunward, what with all the freight our boys are hauling these days. Elienta’s expanding, and they need all the raw material they can get. Turning the planet into a proper homeworld.”

  He turned down a narrow side passage and palmed the first door. It hissed open, revealing a small room that was bare except for a tiny kitchenette and a mattress in the corner. Mathusael ushered them in and pulled out three woven mats from one of the wall compartments. After spreading them out on the bare tile floor, he took out a folding table and set it down in the center of the room. Isaac and Aaron took their seats and waited as Mathusael went into the kitchenette.

  “How would you like your drinks?” he asked.

  “I’ll take mine virgin,” said Isaac.

  “Spike mine with the strongest stuff you’ve got,” said Aaron.

  Isaac shook his head and sighed. At least they weren’t anywhere Aaron could make a fool of himself. Sometimes, it felt like he needed to keep his younger brother on a leash.

  “Have you heard anything from the homeworld?” he asked.

  “Actually, yes,” said Mathusael as the food synthesizer began to hum. “A starfarer by the name of Samson came through not long ago. Said he met a friend at Alpha Oriana who had just come off a trade run to
Megiddo Station.”

  “Really?” said Aaron, perking up at once. “What did he say? What’s the news?”

  The look on Mathusael’s face said more than words ever could. Isaac’s stomach sank.

  “Not good, I’m afraid.”

  “What do you mean?” said Aaron, his face quickly falling.

  “The famine ran its course,” said Mathusael. “By now, everyone back home is either gone or dead.”

  Aaron’s face reddened, and he clenched his fists. “How do you know that? They’ve been saying that for years. Even before our family left, people were saying it was the end, that everyone was doomed. How do you know?”

  “Aaron, please—”

  “No, Isaac. Let me speak. How do we know they’re all dead now? Maybe the Thetans finally came through, or someone else rescued them. What’s that we always say about it being a small universe or whatever? And yet everyone just assumes that they’re all—they’re all—”

  Isaac put a hand on his brother’s shoulder. A moment of silence fell over all three of them as Aaron quietly broke down. His eyes red, his lip quivering, he took a deep breath and buried his face in his hands.

  “Sorry, kid,” said Mathusael as he set the tray of drinks on the table. He sat down on his mat without a word.

  “The thing that makes it hard is that we just came from a colony where everyone died.”

  Mathusael frowned. “What do you mean?”

  Isaac told him about their voyage to Nova Alnilam, on the fringes of the Far Outworlds. He recounted what they’d seen as they boarded in their EVA suits: the dust and broken lights, the mold infestations, and the dead bodies with dried, stretched skin and fragile bones.

  “Damn,” said Mathusael. “That’s some heavy shit.”

  “I know.”

  “They can’t all be dead, though,” said Aaron. “Back home, I mean. I can’t believe that it ended for us like it ended for them.”

  “It didn’t,” said Isaac. “We’re still alive, aren’t we? Father, mother, Mariya—they all made it safely to Alpha Oriana with the rest of the family. Lots of others made it out too.”

  “Yeah. As refugees.”

  “Better to be alive and a refugee than dead with everyone else.”

  “Friends,” said Mathusael, lifting his glass. It took the brothers a moment to realize he was calling for a toast. As they lifted their glasses, Mathusael bowed his head.

  “To the hidden stars of Earth. May the God of our fathers watch over us, strangers and wanderers far from our celestial home.”

  A somber silence fell over the room. Isaac and Aaron watched each other uncertainly as they drank.

  “I didn’t realize you were so religious,” said Isaac.

  Mathusael chuckled, breaking the tension. “You know, I didn’t used to be. And I’m certainly no saint—my wife will tell you that.”

  “Neither are we,” said Aaron. “Sainthood is overrated anyway.”

  “Words to live by. Still, I’ve seen things that would make any man religious, even a wild young man like me.”

  Isaac frowned. Growing up, he’d known Mathusael as the shaggy-haired bachelor that everyone always whispered about. Their mothers had been close friends, but Mathusael had evaded every attempt to marry him off. When he finally left on a passing starship in his early thirties, Isaac had always assumed it was a backlash against the religion of their homeworld that put so much emphasis on family and marriage. Clearly, though, he’d held onto some shred of spirituality to get him through the hard times.

  “Have you heard anything from the refugee community at Alpha Oriana?” Isaac asked.

  Mathusael sighed and shook his shaggy head. “Nothing but bad news coming out of the Oriana Cluster, I’m afraid. So much bigotry and planetism. That’s why I came out here, you know. Even with all the time I spend out here just to see my wife for a few months, it’s better than the life I would have had back there.”

  “So what’s the news?” Aaron asked.

  “Bad news. Very bad. The Gaian Imperials sent a full expeditionary force to Alpha Oriana, and plan to annex the whole star cluster into the empire.”

  “What’s so bad about that?”

  “I’ll tell you what’s bad about it,” Mathusael said, swinging his heavy frame around to face him. “The Gaians just fought one of the worst interstellar wars we’ve ever seen. Rogue AIs, vector viruses, colonies dropped from orbit—it was horrific. And now that it’s over, rumor has it that they’ve set their sights on the Outworlds.”

  Isaac frowned. “What do you mean, ‘set their sights’?”

  “Expand the empire, push the boundaries as far as they possibly can. What’s happening in the Oriana Cluster is just the beginning. The real prize is the New Pleiades. Not much longer, and their war fleets will be headed our way.”

  “That’s—that’s horrible,” said Aaron, his face paling. “Can’t we do something to stop it? Like, warn somebody?”

  Mathusael snorted. “You think the outworlders will ever pull together? Fat chance of that. If the Thetans and the Alphans wouldn’t do a thing—a damn thing—to save our people, how do you expect them to unite against the largest empire the galaxy has ever seen?” He sighed and shook his head. “I don’t know, boys. Maybe the people of the New Pleiades have the will to stand up to this threat, but the rest of us…”

  “Who said anything about war?” Isaac interjected. “Perhaps this can be resolved peacefully. Surely the Gaians must be tired of fighting.”

  “If you think they’re coming to look for peace, you’re fooling yourself. Our traditions, our way of life—it’s all anathema to them. Once they’ve conquered us, they’ll make the Outworlds no different than the Coreward Stars. Are you ready to spend your whole life living under a planetary dome? To have your fathers’ starship bought out or confiscated? Right now, we take most of our freedoms for granted, but that won’t last much longer.”

  “Oh, come on,” said Isaac. “They can’t be that bad. And besides, who could possibly tame the Outworlds?”

  Mathusael drained his glass and set it down forcefully on the table. “You’re right, of course. No one can tame the Outworlds. But they can push us off of every arable world and out of every habitable system. When there’s nothing left but ice and empty stars, where are we supposed to go? Further out into the vastness, until we’ve stretched ourselves into irrelevance?”

  Stretched ourselves like the people of Nova Alnilam, Isaac thought, memories of dried skin and brittle bones coming readily to his mind. We can’t keep venturing into the void forever.

  “How do you know all this?” he asked.

  “Because I’ve been there,” said Mathusael. “When I left Delta Oriana, I headed straight for the Coreward Stars. Spent five standard years out there, traveling to places that most outworlders only hear about. The Temple of a Thousand Suns, for example. I’ve seen it with my own eyes.”

  “What does any of that have to do with us?”

  “Absolutely nothing. Point is, here in the Outworlds, we don’t have the faintest idea what the Gaians are truly up to. It’s like a gamma ray burst just went off on the other side of the galaxy: all of us are dead, but none of us knows it yet. Those Alphans probably think that it’s going to be business as usual, just under the Gaian flag. They’re in for a violent surprise.”

  Aaron glanced at Isaac, his eyes wide. “We need to go back—warn Mom and Dad.”

  “It’s too late for that,” said Mathusael. “By now, Alpha Oriana is firmly within their grasp. Go there, and you’ll never come back to the Outworlds again.”

  Isaac was skeptical, but goosebumps pricked up across his arm all the same.. The passion was so thick in Mathusael’s voice that it was difficult not to believe him.

  “If that’s true, how did you come back?” he asked.

  “I left the Coreward Stars while the Gaians were still fighting each other. The frontiers of the empire weren’t patrolled nearly as much as they are today. Slipped out with a band
of smugglers and ended up here. But I got lucky. I could never do it again now.”

  He’s exaggerating, Isaac decided. There’s no way things could be that bad. The line between the Outworlds and the Coreward Stars had always been fuzzy. Trade ties had always bound them together—take it all away, and they might all end like Nova Alnilam. There was no way the empire would cut themselves off like that.

  Though, come to think of it, he and Aaron had spent the better part of the last eighteen months wandering the Far Outworlds. A lot could have changed in that time.

  “Listen,” he said. “Let’s not get too upset over this. We actually came to see you for a reason.”

  Mathusael grinned “You mean you didn’t just come to enjoy my company?”

  “Well, that too, of course. But there’s something we were hoping you could help us with.”

  “And what might that be?”

  Isaac took a sip of his drink while his brother finished his. “We found something at Nova Alnilam. In a side room next to the station master’s office, we found—”

  “A girl!” Aaron interjected with all the enthusiasm of someone who’s had a little too much to drink. “We found a girl there, the most beautiful girl you’ve ever seen!”

  “A girl? You mean, her bones?”

  “No,” said Isaac. “She was frozen in cryo. We’re not sure if she’s alive or not, but—”

  “Can you thaw her?” asked Aaron. He grabbed Mathusael by the arm and gave him a desperate look. “Can you wake her up? Help us save her?”

  Isaac leaned forward to pry them apart, but Mathusael brushed off Aaron’s grip before he could intervene. “I’ll do my best,” he reassured them. “I can’t promise anything, of course, but if you’ll let me take a look at her, I’ll see what I can do.”

  “Right,” said Isaac, resisting the urge to elbow his brother in the side. “Of course, we’d rather keep things a bit hush-hush, not let anyone else know.”

  Mathusael laughed. “What, you think that the station authorities are going to treat her like contraband?”

  “We just don’t want any trouble.”