Bridge Across the Stars: A Sci-Fi Bridge Original Anthology

by Rhett C. Bruno

  “No.” I caught a glimpse of the surging mob out of the corner of my eye. “But we can keep our humanity.”

  Mr. Drayton took a measured breath. “You built this whole thing to save our species, Director. Isn’t that enough?”

  “I did what I had to.”

  “So did I.” He released his daughter and rose to his full height, no longer afraid. She wrapped her tiny arms around his leg and hid her face against him. “I wasn’t going to let her go like that. Not while there was a chance.” He gestured into the ship’s interior. “And I know you wouldn’t either.”

  I pride myself on my quick mind, but for once I had no idea what to say. There was no denying Mr. Drayton was right. I looked inside and saw Kara, and I couldn’t help but picture her as a nervous ten-year-old girl without a place to go. Just seeing the fresh scrapes on her legs made me uneasy.

  “Let my daughter take my place,” Mr. Drayton implored. “I know the risks of sending her this young, but it’s got to be better than her staying here, right? She can learn from the other horticulturalists. She’s smart. Smarter than I was at her age.”

  I remained silent. Beyond Kara, hundreds scurried about preparing the sleep-chambers, moving up and down the central lift. In spite of my stringent requirements, each of the people inside them was unique. Many of them could be considered true geniuses, while others were merely the hardest workers on my staff from a peaceful time. The only thing they all visibly had in common was that they were young. Young enough to flourish on our new world.

  Everyone but me.

  I looked in the opposite direction, over the shoulders of the security officers crowding the ramp. Each livid individual in the mob at the gate was someone I’d decided was less worthy of propagating our species. My criteria. My interviews. My decisions. I was to remember their faces forever, so that nobody else had to. But years of focusing on work had led me to ignore the simple fact that I belonged with them.

  The scraping of metal over dirt made the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end. The gate wouldn’t last much longer, and if the people on the other side reached the ship we’d all be torn to pieces.

  Suddenly, I knew what I had to do. I had one last gift to give.

  “Kara,” I mouthed. I moved in front of her and gripped her gently by the arms to try and gain her attention. “Kara, I need you to do something for me.”

  Her teary gaze snapped toward me. “Anything, dad—I mean, Director,” she stuttered.

  “I need you to go to the command deck and prepare the ship for launch while I manage the situation out here. This vessel was built to withstand entry through the thick atmosphere of Titan, but I don’t know how long we can endure the fury of humankind’s will to survive.”

  “It’s your design. I’m … I’m not sure if I know the ignition sequence well enough without you.”

  I held her at arm’s length. “Like you said, you’ve been with me since the beginning. You know everything that I do. Just stay focused and ignore what’s out there. I believe in you, Kara. Your people need you.”

  “Okay,” she said. She gritted her teeth and nodded. “I can handle it.”

  “I know you can.” I smiled as I patted her on the shoulder and turned her around. My heart sank as I watched her run toward the lift. I wanted to holler, “I’ll see you soon,” just so she’d glance back over her shoulder, but I couldn’t get the words out. I didn’t want to lie. Not to her.

  “Mr. Drayton,” I said, spinning around. My gaze darted between him and his daughter. “Are you sure you want this?”

  “It’s wha—” A thunderous crash cut him off. One half of the compound’s gate slammed against the wall, and the mob started pouring through, tumbling over each other and screaming. The officers at the base of the ramp tightened their stance and readied their rifles. “It’s what any father would do,” he finished.

  “I think I understand.” I leaned in close so that I could whisper in his ear. “First, have your daughter loaded into the chamber meant for you. Then, I need you to follow Kara. There’s no time to get everybody hooked up. Tell the staff to have everyone get into their chambers themselves and worry about hooking up when the ship reaches space. Once everybody is safely restrained, initiate the launch. Kara will have it ready, but she’ll be waiting for me. Don’t.”

  Mr. Drayton eyelids went wide as he realized what I was planning. “There has to be another way,” he said.

  “Another body on the ship means someone else must be left behind. It’s as simple as that.”

  “Then let it be me! These people need you.”

  I smirked. “Not anymore. I’ll be dead in a decade. One old man isn’t going to make a difference on Titan. You have an entire lifetime to make it feel like home.” I regarded his daughter and wondered what Kara might’ve looked like at her age. “It starts with her.”

  “Director Trass, I don’t—”

  “This is an order, Mr. Drayton!” I cut him off. “Now, there are two chambers in the command deck. You might have to force her into hers, but make sure she gets in. You tell her…” The words got stuck in my throat. I could picture her beautiful smile. “Tell her she’s the only Trass who matters now.”

  He stood motionless. “Thank you,” he muttered, hardly able to get the words out. “For everything,”

  Our gazes met one last time. “Thank me when you’re there,” I replied. He was the only chosen candidate willing to risk everything on a lie. It was because of that I knew he wouldn’t fail me.

  He wrapped his arm around his daughter and turned to a member of my staff. Once he began communicating the orders I’d told him to, I hurried to my head of security at the ramp.

  “Move everybody inside!” I told him.

  “Director Trass, what’s going on?” he questioned. He fired off a few rounds to slow the rapidly approaching mob, but they were growing bolder. In minutes, I knew the guards I hired for protection were going to have to do whatever it took to survive. I couldn’t allow my candidate’s final memory of Earth to be having to slaughter members of their own species.

  “It’s time,” I said. “Nobody gets in or out after me.” I keyed the ramp controls and set it to start closing. Then I sprinted out across my compound before any of the officers could stop me. The head of security shouted something, but he wasn’t foolish enough to follow.

  “That’s him!” a member of the mob screamed.

  I lowered my head and made a break for the compound’s office building. The throng abandoned the Titan Project to chase after me, just like I knew they would, but the angle I’d taken allowed me to stay ahead of them. They shouted all manner of obscenities. Debris rained down around me.

  A quarter-mile later, I busted through the doors of the lobby just before a slew of rocks peppered the glass. For once, there were no candidates at the front desk blocking the etching on it that read, TITAN’S COLD EMBRACE AWAITS US.

  I wasn’t far enough ahead of the mob to take the elevator, so I entered the emergency stairwell. My legs felt like jelly by the time I reached the hallway six stories up. My office glowed at the other end of it like a beacon. Apparently, I’d left my lights on. The rest of the floor was dark.

  I sprinted toward my office, and locked the door as soon as I made it inside. A few seconds later, the mob was pounding on it. I wasn’t worried. The door was installed by the company that I’d started from nothing, and our products always worked. It would hold long enough for Mr. Drayton to complete his task.

  “You can’t hide!” someone hollered.

  I ignored him and strolled over to my desk to sit. My foot knocked over a bottle of whiskey underneath. Enough remained inside to fix a glass. I grabbed a tumbler off the window sill and cleaned it with the bottom of my shirt. As I held it up to the moonlight to see if I’d gotten out all of the smudges, I saw a series of bright lights along the bottom of the Titan Project come on. A siren began blaring throughout the entire facility.

  I poured myself a drink and leaned b
ack. The floor began to shake violently, causing the golden liquid to slosh over the rim of my glass. The shouting and banging at my door stopped. Seconds later, a blinding flash filled the sky which was swiftly drowned out by smoke and dust. I could feel the heat radiating through the glass.

  The shaking grew so intense that my bones rattled, and then it was gone. The faint light grew steadily smaller, and even though I couldn’t yet see the Titan Project through the fog, I knew liftoff was a success. Kara and Mr. Drayton had done it. They, his daughter, and two thousand, nine hundred and ninety-seven others were going to live. Humanity’s best hope.

  As the dust and smoke began to part, the moon was revealed. On one side of it, the flaming engines of the Titan Project glimmered. On the other, the asteroid shone. I raised my glass to the instrument of Earth’s destruction and took a sip.

  About Rhett C. Bruno

  Rhett Bruno is the author of the Amazon-bestselling space-opera series The Circuit, as well the Sci-Fi thriller Titanborn series. If you enjoyed this story, continue reading about the fate of humanity and the Trass family in the rest of the Titanborn Universe Series, which includes The Collector, Titanborn, From Ice to Ashes, and Titan’s Wrath.

  By night he is an author for Random House Hydra and Diversion Books. By day he is a Syracuse graduate working at an architecture firm in Connecticut. He’s also recently earned a certificate in screenwriting from the New School in NYC, in the hopes of one day writing for TV or video games.

  You can find out more about his work at www.rhettbruno.com. If you’d like exclusive access to updates about his work and the opportunity to receive limited content, ARCs and more, please subscribe to his newsletter.

  If you’d simply like to be notified of Rhett’s new releases, follow his Amazon Page.

  Rhett resides in Stamford, Connecticut, with his wife and their dog, Raven.

  Night Shift

  by Steve Beaulieu

  THE WORST PART ABOUT SPACE is that every shift feels like a night shift.

  I’d just dropped off my first fare of the day. A regular. Good kid with a taste for some weird stuff. But hey, who am I to judge?

  I heard the door of my cab open and the swish of polyester on vinyl. The smell of cigarettes and cheap booze punched my nose like a right hook.

  “Where can I take you?” I asked, coughing into my fist.

  There weren’t a whole lot of upstanding citizens calling me for a ride these days, but this guy looked extra shady. I could always tell when someone was really up to no good, and his next words proved my instincts right.

  “Blistenbfhmen,” he said too quickly for me to understand.

  “Come again?”

  His eyes shifted back and forth like he was strung out on something strong.

  “Geez, man, come on,” he said. “Don’t make me say it again.”

  I left the ship in park and stared at him through the rearview mirror.

  “Fine,” he blustered, jerking his jacket. “Blissformine.”

  I smirked and I knew he saw me. He lowered his head.

  Blissformine ... that told me vaguely what kind of business he was up to. Although the pleasure planet wasn’t explicitly illegal, decent people turned their noses up at it. Luckily for my new friend in the back seat, I wasn’t what anyone would call a decent person. Maybe in another life, back when I’d been enlisted in the Star-System Elite Guard—the S-SEG. I was just a stupid kid. I didn’t have a clue what life was actually about. Maybe I still don’t.

  “Crazy night planned?” I asked, my attempt at customer banter. The cabbie manual claims it ups the chances for a decent tip.

  “It’s nothing like that, man. Not what you think.”

  “Sure, sure. Listen, friend, there’s a reason we’re called Confidential Cabs. We don’t care what you do, long as you pay up when the night is through.” That was our unofficial motto, by the way. It was usually followed by a smirk or two in the breakroom between shifts.

  “I said it’s not like that.”

  I figured the man was entitled to his secrets and started the fare. I tapped the pedal, and my ship lurched forward at full speed. Space debris zipped past, some burning up as it struck my windshield.

  “What’s your name?” I asked.

  He huffed but kept his mouth shut. He pulled something from his coat pocket—an inhaler—and drew a deep breath of calm out of it.

  “Okay, it’s like that. I’m Maturo. You can call me Mat. It’s gonna be a bit of a ride, so I’ll call you ... Pete. Sound good?” No answer.

  We spent most of the way riding in relative silence. Occasionally, I spoke up to see if sneaky Pete was comfortable. If the temperature in the backseat was too hot or too cold. Beyond the occasional nod, he worked on perfecting his impression of a clam.

  “People can’t just do whatever they want you know,” he said, finally.

  Oh, that’s what his voice sounded like. It’d been so long, I’d almost forgotten. After nearly an hour of silence, I didn’t know if he was commenting on the CC motto or something else I’d said.

  “We don’t care what you do,” I repeated, with a glance in the mirror. “Long as you pay up when the night is through.”

  “It’s that kind of piss-poor attitude that got me in this position.”

  Pete slammed his fist into the glass partition between us.

  “Whoa, hey! Watch the glass.” I didn’t really mind. The stuff was basically unbreakable, by human hands at least.

  “He started this. I’m gonna end it. Me. I will.”

  I let him have the last word. I really did believe in that motto. I didn’t give the shortest piss in a Delterian toilet what he did. A trip all the way to Blissformine was worth every second ticking by on the meter.

  “We’re just a few minutes out. What part of Blissformine are we heading to? Gambling district? The Den? Maybe the Cathouse?” I laughed, trying to keep it light.

  “Just take me to the biz center, please.”

  Huh. He didn’t seem the type. The biz center was for the big players. The bosses and the decision makers worked and lived there. The guy wore a dark grey, hooded shirt and even darker pants. I wondered if he’d even get through the front door to mingle with the Quilians and Sucre.

  “What kind of business you got there?” I said, eyeing him in the mirror.

  “What’s it to you? You’re a freaking driver and—for a confidential service—you ask a crapload of questions.”

  “I’m not just a driver, I own the company. You’re asking me to take you to a place few have any business being in, especially dressed like that. I have a reputation to keep, and the type of guys hanging out there are reputation builders and breakers. So, unless you wanna find yourself floating, you better start telling me something, Pete.”

  “I thought you don’t care what I do?”

  “Trust me, I don’t. But if I learned anything from my past life it was never to step foot in a place like the biz center while in the dark.”

  He rummaged around in a duffle bag I hadn’t noticed before. I got a little nervous, even with the glass between us. It was rated against bullets, but I didn’t want to have to file a warranty complaint from beyond the grave. A moment later, he slipped something through the payment cutout in the partition. It barely fit, since the slot was only designed to receive unit cards.

  “This should be enough for your cooperation and subsequent silence,” he said.

  I reached down, picking up a brick of an envelope. Whistling, I opened it to find several thousand times my usual fare for a long jaunt to Blissformine. Money’s always had a way of helping me ignore my soldierly instincts.

  “All right,” I said. “Biz center it is.”

  * * *

  We entered Blissformine atmosphere and passed over the various districts until we finally reached the biz center. Skyscrapers clawed at the dark sky, stretching like long fingers. In the distance I could make out the mansions resting like beacons on hilltops, houses bigger than whole neigh
borhoods on other planets, and earned in ways that probably left other planets rotting.

  “Here we are,” I said. “Anywhere specific?”

  “The warehouses by the docks.”

  I’d been to Roy Harbor once before. The acidic waters contained no life. I knew what the bosses used them for. Disposal. Roy Harbor was like a liquid graveyard. I glanced at the thick brick of credits on the passenger seat and wondered if it was enough to cover an elaborate funeral. Mine.

  I pulled up along a neat series of identical buildings; tan with green correlated metal roofs.

  “I’m not gonna need a ride back,” Pete said. “Enjoy the units.”

  Sneaky Pete stepped out of the cab carrying his large duffle. Something told me I should follow his advice and bolt. That unit-brick was sitting there, and maybe it should’ve been my reason for leaving. But the trip back was a long one and it would be easier to stomach with a paying fare riding along.

  I peered out my window at a group of shadowy figures conducting business in a steam-filled alley nearby. I reached under my seat and pulled out my old S-SEG pulse blaster, making sure it was still charged. Better safe than sorry.

  I took out my hand terminal and set the Confidential Cabs App to broadcast that I was open for a ride. On most planets it never took long to find a fare, but on Blissformine it was a crapshoot. There were no standard work hours, and the people wanting to leave couldn’t afford to. Everyone else was happy to stay where TSS laws were guidelines nobody followed.

  I’d been searching for a new fare for only a few minutes when I heard the first explosion. Three more followed in quick succession. I glanced down again at the brick on the seat next to me.

  Crazy things happened on Blissformine all the time. Could be anything, I lied to myself. Just drive away, Mat. Take a few weeks off in the Fortuitous System. Easy money. No need to concern yourself here.

  As my luck would have it, though, just as I’d convinced myself to scram, children came pouring out of one of the warehouse doors. They looked terrified.