A Planet Too Far: Beyond the Stars, #1

by Nick Webb

  “I need a drink,” I said, cracking a smile.

  Golovanov’s face darkened. “You know that’s not an option,” he said, and then without elaboration, turned and left.

  “Happy New Year,” I said to his back, and then I settled back into my bed, picking up a glass of water and taking a sip.

  Mission complete.

  Q&A with David Adams

  What a creepy, fun story! Did you know what was in that ship before you got to that point?

  Oh yeah, totally. :D I’ve had this story kicking around in my head for about a year and a half, probably more‌—‌I knew all the beats, all the characters and the plots, and I just had to find the right venue for it. Beyond The Stars is perfect for this piece.

  How does this story fit in with the rest of the world you’ve created?

  It’s a prequel, kind of, told from a side character from Symphony of War. The Myriad are the primary antagonists of the Symphony of War series, and I wanted to show how they got to Polema. I also wanted to show, or at least hint that, they had the ability to “create” humans by blending their DNA together. Another short story of mine, Demon and Emily, gave insight into what Polema used to be like before the Myriad arrived. The Immortals: Anchorage shows something different.

  That’s what I love about the various short stories and novellas set in the same universe as my novels -- I can show the side stories that “fill in the gaps” of the novels. Symphony of War doesn’t talk about how the Myriad came to Polema, only that they were there. It’s not relevant to that story.

  What I want to tell, eventually, is why. But that’s a story for another day. ;)

  What’s up next for you in terms of new books?

  Wow. So many things...

  My next two projects are my two novels being written together, Ren of Atikala: The Empire of Dust, the third book in that series, and Lacuna: The Requiem of Steel, which is the sixth Lacuna book. I’m working my butt off on both of them, but I also have other novels and short stories kicking around; there’s Symphony of War 2: The Eris Campaign, which I’ve got a lot of ideas for, and also The Immortals: Southport, which follows up where The Immortals: Anchorage left off.

  Where can readers find you?

  A few places! I have a Facebook page at: http://www.facebook.com/lacunaverse

  Or my webpage here: www.lacunaverse.com

  I send out a notification for my new books here: http://eepurl.com/toBf9

  Or if you just want to talk to me directly, my email is: dave@lacunaverse.com

  Pele’s Bee-keeper

  by Annie Bellet

  THE WORLD WAS pain and light. Jackie didn’t want to go back to that, but a voice insisted.

  “Gensh, amik gensh,” the voice said.

  “I don’t,” Jackie started to say, then her mind woke up and the language came to her. “I’m here,” she said in rough Farrakhani. She licked her lips, tasting bitter ash and metallic blood. Jackie opened her eyes and blinked against the warm sunlight. A shadow crossed over her and after a moment she realized it was a face.

  Her rescuer was covered in a bright purple robe, complete with a veil over her face so that only a small swatch of golden skin surrounding large hazel eyes was revealed. A woman perhaps, Jackie thought, judging by the long lashes and the soft, light tone of her voice.

  “Drink this, it will help with the pain,” the woman said, her words clipped and accented, making Jackie wonder if the language wasn’t her native one.

  She obeyed, hissing as she lifted her head and disturbed her shoulder. Damn, that’s gotta be my collarbone. That’s six weeks or more out for me, Miles will whine to no end about the fetch and carry. She started to chuckle until she remembered. Crash. Miles. His gurgling screams and that horrible warm wetness.

  Whatever was in the water, which tasted slightly sweet, started working immediately. Warm relief shoved away the pain and she laid her head back onto the soft thing beneath her body. A blanket maybe? She wasn’t sure.

  “Miles, my pilot,” Jackie asked as the woman’s head reappeared above her, “he’s injured, too, I think. Did the others get him out?”

  “Others?” The woman shook her head and a shadow passed through her green-gold eyes. “There are no others here, only I.”

  “And Miles?” Jackie was annoyed. Why wouldn’t this woman just say? She started to fade again and fought it, reaching with her left hand to grab at the woman. The medication refused to let her win and the dark claimed her again.

  * * *

  When she awoke she was inside. The lights had multi-colored paper shades and gave the large room a warm glow. Jackie struggled to sit up and leaned against the headboard of the soft bed she’d been placed in. The room had shelves and cabinets along the edges with neat labels on them in a language that she couldn’t make out. Opaque jars lined many of the shelves and Jackie smelled fresh brewing coffee. There was no sign of Miles.

  A curtain twitched aside and her rescuer entered, carrying a tray. The woman was tall, Jackie thought they’d look eye to eye when standing. Her robe swirled around her body, making her shape impossible to determine, but Jackie guessed she was fit enough to be living out here alone.

  “How do you feel?” The woman set the tray down and knelt beside the low bed.

  I’m injured, alone, and you won’t tell me what the hell happened to Miles. How do you think I feel? Jackie took a deep breath. “Floaty,” she said. “The pain isn’t so bad. Miles is dead, isn’t he?” She forced out the last, making herself look at the possibility head on.

  The woman was very still for a moment and then slowly nodded. “If Miles is the red-haired one, yes. He’s dead. I stopped the fire in your shuttle.”

  Grief threatened to shred the bandages the pain medication had laid over her mind. Dead. Nothing she could do there. She took a deep breath and regretted it.

  “Careful. Your collarbone is broken, here.” The woman touched her right shoulder to demonstrate. “Your arm, too, I had to cast it. Your head just took a little glue, no concussion. I am Darya.”

  Jackie almost smiled at the quick, clinical delivery of this information. Not a woman used to company, she guessed. A woman in veils with no surname. Curious.

  “I’m Jackie, Jackie Banner. Captain of the IOU. I need to contact my crew, get the other shuttle down here. Also, figure out what happened on my ship.” What had happened to her crew? Why hadn’t the other shuttle come down here yet?

  “They are in orbit around the Jewel. Contact from here can’t happen for another thirteen standard hours. You need to rest. After you drink this.”

  “I smell coffee,” Jackie said, her mind peeling away again. She did want to rest, wanted to sink into the soft quilts on this strange bed and leave everything behind forever.

  “No coffee for you yet. Meds, then sleep.”

  Jackie obeyed, sliding down into the covers.

  * * *

  “I went back to your shuttle. To get my cargo.” Darya’s soft voice broke Jackie out of her dark thoughts.

  As soon as she awoke, Darya had made Jackie take more medication and then presented her with a tiny feast of fresh fruit and nuts and smashed, cooked yams. Chewing hurt, but no more than breathing. She forced herself to eat, if only to keep up her strength and pass the time until her ship could be contacted.

  “Is, I mean, Miles. His body.” She bit her lip.

  “I laid him out and put a sheet over him, inside. He is safe.” Darya studied her for a moment. “He was more than your pilot? Your lover?”

  Is it so obvious? “Sometimes. He’s been a friend a long, long time. Was.” Another wave of grief slammed into her and she choked on a piece of starfruit.

  “I did not mention the ship because of him. I mention because I think you were bombed.” Darya set down her water glass and folded her hands in her lap.

  Jackie’s head snapped up and she raised her left hand to touch her sore head in reflex as it protested the sharp movement. Her braids were crusted and rough above
the cut on her forehead. “Bombed? What do you mean?” She wondered if the language barrier were playing tricks with her.

  “Your console, it exploded, yes? I looked at it, after moving your pilot. I think it was deliberate, not a malfunction.”

  “Why would someone want to rig my shuttle?” Jackie glared at Darya. This was a headache she didn’t need. It had been weeks since they’d docked anywhere, and no one had been on the ship but her crew. Their cargo was the stuff for this moon, and some bulk plastics for a new Chen Zho station out past Centarus. And those Mudhemedi documents. Jackie shoved that thought aside. Not even her crew knew about those.

  “You would know better than I,” Darya said.

  Jackie shook her head, but her thoughts churned with the possibilities.

  Laine barely left the engine room and had little interest in the shuttles unless something mechanical was wrong, Carsten had been learning the helm lately, and Aitor always did whatever his cousin, Carsten, told him to. She’d taken Aitor on mostly as muscle for using the lifts and moving cargo.

  A bomb. That could have gotten anyone. It made no sense.

  “How would you know what a rigged explosion as opposed to a malfunction looks like, anyway?” Jackie asked, dark eyes narrowing.

  Darya’s expression was impossible to read behind her veil. “I do.”

  There was no response to that. Jackie looked away. Laine had been buried in manuals when she and Miles had departed. Jackie was going to stay on the ship, but Aitor didn’t feel well, and Carsten and Miles had always been at best coldly civil to each other, so she didn’t want to send them down together for the drop. So she’d gone with Miles.

  Had Aitor’s eyes slid away from her when he told her he was sick? Where had Carsten been then, behind her? Had Aitor glanced at his cousin? Why? She tried to replay the events in her mind but it was hazy.

  “No,” Jackie said. “I’m sorry, you have to be wrong. That explosion could have killed both of us, and without me no one can fly my ship. I’ve got the codes; I’m the only one with the codes.”

  She had to keep the codes close, and not just because you could never be sure of anyone, not in space, not out here on the edge. Can’t risk someone finding out about the other missions, the ones that don’t pay. Can’t risk losing my ship, not now, now when the resistance needs help so badly.

  “Don’t trust your crew so much then?” Darya said and her tone stated clearly that she felt Jackie wasn’t thinking it through.

  “Take me back to my shuttle. I have to see for myself.”

  Darya looked as though she might protest, her shoulders hunching under the bright fabric. Then she nodded.

  “When it is light out, we’ll go.”

  Jackie sank back and sighed. More waiting.

  “What was in those cargo crates anyway?” she asked, wondering if perhaps someone had wanted to destroy that cargo. The manifest had said only “agricultural supplies, organic.”

  “Seeds, and my beehives,” Darya said, motioning to the shelves and cabinets.

  Abruptly a memory came to Jackie. A large black insect with glinting blue wings resting on her arm in the smoke-filled shuttle. Her arm. Bones all wrong under the dark skin. She glanced down at it in the sling, but the cast covered everything now.

  “So that was a bee,” Jackie murmured. “Did some get out in the crash?”

  “One hive was destroyed, despite the wrappings.” There was a hard catch in Darya’s voice at this, as though she were stricken with sorrow about it. “Two made it; the bees are waking up now. They must acclimate in the greenhouse, then I’ll move the hives outside.”

  Bees. I lost my best friend and she lost some bees. Thinking about him conjured Miles’ laughing freckled face. Bees and a mysterious woman. Miles would have been thrilled about this adventure. If you hadn’t died, it would be an adventure. A deep shiver went through Jackie and she realized she’d been quiet a long time. Darya just sat, silent and still, watching her.

  “Why bees? Why are you here?” Think about something else. Anything else.

  “Do you feel you can stand? I can show you.” Darya rose in a smooth, graceful motion.

  Jackie shifted and swung her legs out of the bed, using her left hand to pull away the covers. Her undershirt was still on, though missing the right sleeve now, but she lacked pants with her jumpsuit removed.

  Her thighs and knees were mottled with reddish bruising. Jackie was impressed since it took a lot for her dark skin to show damage like that. She knew it should hurt more, but the meds created a squishy barrier against that reality.

  She stood. “Pants would be nice.” She looked down and realized her ankle holster was missing as well, though she still had socks on. She guessed her sidearm was still in its locker in the shuttle.

  “Your jumpsuit is ruined, but your boots and gun are fine. I will find you pants. Please wait.” Darya slipped out through one of the three curtained doorways.

  She returned and helped Jackie pull on a pair of wrap pants that were soft and smelled herbal, but clean. The boots were harder to get on, but the two women managed. Jackie made no comment as Darya strapped the ankle holster to Jackie’s left leg, but she smiled to herself as at least a small piece of the mystery was solved. Darya’s long, calloused fingers knew exactly how to fit the holster on, the strange woman barely looking at what her hands were doing as she snugged the gun into place. Definitely not what she seems.

  The robes, the veil. Her knowledge of guns and explosives. The mysterious woman had seen war, Jackie was sure of that. But which faction? Which war?

  Clothed and more or less steady, Jackie followed Darya through another curtain into a dim hallway. Darya hit a code into a solid door panel and it slid aside. Warmth and heady scents of growing things rushed out to greet them. The lights flicked on, revealing an immense greenhouse. Trees, some six feet or more in height, bore heavy fruits while tables full of leafy plants filled the expanse. Flowers of numerous colors and shapes overflowed their pots. The place brimmed with life, a lush paradise enclosed in glass.

  Jackie stood just inside for a moment, taking breaths of the humid, earthy air, as deep as her injuries would allow. Slowly the pieces fell into place.

  She looked at Darya with a little awe on her face. “You’re terraforming. That’s what you need the bees for. Right? You’re trying to single-handedly transform a barren moon into what? This?” She waved her left arm about and regretted it as her shoulders shifted and the pain stabbed through the medicine blockade.

  Darya laughed, low and soft. “Yes. And I will. Pele is not barren or we wouldn’t be breathing. The seas are teeming with phytoplankton, and a few other organisms. The land masses are volcanic, the soil here is rich and ripe, a womb awaiting its seed. I am just the sower.” Her hazel eyes turned more gold than green under the lights and burned with deep passion.

  She’s a fanatic. With plants. Weird. Jackie smiled despite herself. It was an ambitious idea. She could admire that. Plenty of people thought running a skeleton crew and dragging all sorts of strange cargo along the galactic rim was crazy too. Those people died old and boring in their beds.

  Not screaming and burning and alone. Again the wave, and again she forced it back.

  A light touch on her arm drew Jackie’s attention. Darya had moved up close enough she could see the veil move as the other woman breathed. Understanding filled those lovely hazel eyes and somehow it was more painful to see than pity would have been.

  “Come, Jackie,” Darya said, “Come see the bees you brought me.”

  The hives were two large boxes, almost cone-shaped near the tops, with large slats that turned out to be vertical drawers. The bees were still sluggish from cold storage, but some took flight around the women as they approached. They were black with bluish wings and as long and thick as the first joint of Jackie’s thumb.

  “Those are honeybees? I thought they were supposed to be yellow and black, and well, smaller.”

  Darya laughed again. “Some
are. These aren’t. The gravity here is a little less than standard, the oxygen a little more. These should do well on Pele.”

  “Pele? My star charts just have a designation and number. Did you name it that?”

  “No, not I.” Darya turned away so Jackie could not read her face as she added, “It was named by others, long before I came here.”

  A bee landed on Jackie’s arm and she froze, all her questions slipping away. “Is it, do they sting?”

  “Yes, but they are nonaggressive. Nasty sting if provoked, however.” Darya turned back. “Just lift your hand gently and it should take off.”

  Jackie did, and the bee vibrated its wings, lifting away and disappearing among the thick, waxy leaves of a breadfruit tree.

  The remaining hours until daylight passed quickly. Darya deftly avoided any personal questions and instead distracted Jackie from both her curiosity about the woman and her own problems by explaining the ecology she was trying to produce. It was, as Jackie had suspected, an ambitious project.

  The valley they were in was just her test ground; Darya had hope that once she’d unleashed the plants and bees into the environment, nature would take her course and begin working all on its own. If the bees survived, Darya planned to bring in other insects, and maybe bats as well. All Jackie managed to learn was that a settler’s conglomerate paid the strange woman to do this.

  “Aren’t you lonely here, though? Why don’t you have assistants?” Jackie asked.

  Tension vibrated through the other woman and she turned her face toward the ceiling. “It’s daylight now, we should go to your shuttle. If you still want to, that is.” Darya said. “Do you need more meds?”

  The meds were fading, the pain getting sharper. Jackie shook her head. She wanted the pain. The meds deadened her brain, fogging things over. She needed to think clearly. “Let’s go.”