She turned to the planet again, deliberately looking away from Iain. Her jaw fell open as they got closer to the planet and the base. There were many similarities to Ixion, such as the massive scale of the planet. It reduced her, dwarfing her desires, needs, loves, and fears until they were the merest speck of dust. That was always the case, wasn’t it? To be reminded of how puny she was in the face of such majesty and grandeur? There was nothing that could compare to coming up next to a planet the size of Shakti. The surface, as well, silenced her—the colors were brilliant. Such a defined blue and green, layered like sediments in an ancient rock formation. Occasionally a spidery flash of lightning laced across the surface in massive nets that defied reason. The scope of the power held in those displays stole her breath and made her drop to her knees in her mind, bowing to the superior nature of the planet.
“What the hell?” Charly cursed, interrupting Holly’s awe at the size of Shakti. She really hadn’t been expecting to be floored by the size of of the gas giant. It was just that the size was something incomprehensible to her—she thought she’d seen a massive planet in Ixion. But Shakti was insane.
Charly’s outrage wasn’t for the size of the planet, however. She was pointing at the station and not the planet. Something hanging off an external port. Holly squinted. It was a massive ship. Larger than any Holly had ever seen before. And it emanated a frightening ferocity unlike anything she was familiar with.
“What is it?” Holly asked in a whisper.
“A warship,” Iain answered, his voice leaden with bitterness.
“Are we at war?” Holly asked.
“Surly not,” Shiro said.
“Why do we need a warship of that size, Iain Grant?” Odeon asked in his song tones.
The crew seemed irate about the revelation that there were warships of such a size out near the edge of the solar system. What was the point? The Yol system was safe. Protected. Why did they need ships for war?
“You all knew there were ships like this out there. Didn’t you?” Iain asked. “And you know that we’ve had a few wars?”
“Nah, it’s not something I think about regularly, you know?” Charly said. “Er, who are we at war against?”
There was a murmur as others agreed with Charly’s question.
“You’ve heard of the Acallaris Star System conflict? In the Achelois Nebula?” Iain asked, resting his hand on the console in front of him, the only indication that he was taken aback by their ignorance. At least, that was how it seemed to Holly. Iain wasn’t expecting such naïveté.
Holly watched him squirm under the stares of her crew as well as Trip’s crew. Trip, for her part, didn’t seem shocked about the warship and the notion of being at war.
The rest of them, it seemed, had heard never of the Acallaris Star System conflict, or the Achelois Nebula.
Iain shrugged. “Well those are two issues. Two places there have been wars. Sometimes the conflicts fade, sometimes they come back in full force.”
Iain and Trip took the ship into the landing bay, and Jamie readied himself to do whatever he was planning: a handoff, a meeting, a pick up, or a drop off. One of those things—it had to be. They still had no idea what the man was planning.
Once they were clear to exit the ship, Holly gave Jamie some directions on how to handle himself out there—those she suspected he might know better than she did—and she gave him a departure time to be back where he could be easily found by them, or on the ship.
Charly and Shiro volunteered to tail the “the doctor” before he got too far to follow him. Doctor. Holly shook her head, thinking about it. When Holly had asked Jamie about it, he claimed that he was a doctor of philosophy in engineering and space applications. Not a medical doctor.
“Stay together,” Holly said, smiling at Shiro and Charly. “It’s pointless to have to send a rescue team after my surveillance team.”
“You’re staying on board?” Iain asked when Charly, Shiro, and Jamie had all left the ship. Trip went along too, to get supplies. Otherwise, those left on the ship were essentially a skeleton crew to keep their ship safe.
“Haven’t decided. If I want to get more insight into what’s maybe going on back on Kota, I might need to sneak around out there. You ready for that?”
“It’s a military base, so I think we know that the ship is going to be OK. If not, it’ll be in danger from, well, basically someone we can’t really ever fight against. So what’s the point of staying behind? I can be your sidekick for a minute.”
“Oh, can you? Who’s my sidekick normally?” Holly asked, leading the way down the gangway, which deposited them beneath the ship. Holly wove between the landing gear onto the marked pathways that led deeper into the station. Larger ships than the Olavia Apollo filled other landing pads, though the majority of them could be grouped into the cruiser class. From what Holly had already seen, the bigger ships docked in bays outside the base. Ship mechanics and other support staff filled the pathways, restocking the cruisers with food and fuel.
Iain followed her, his expression giving away that he was on high alert. “Either Odeon or Shiro. My money is on Odeon, though. They both follow you about with a kind of blind devotion.”
“But not Charly?”
“Charly’s around to keep your feet on the ground. And to pummel anyone who crosses or threatens you.”
“Is that why you stay in line?”
“Of course. I’m afraid to be soundly beaten by Charly.”
They laughed together. A massive cart trundled along the path with a logo on the side indicating some kind of catering company. Some uniformed Constellations followed along behind it, ignoring other pedestrians. Holly and Iain narrowly avoided getting clipped by the cart as it came rolling past. Holly lagged so that Iain would take the lead through the station. She didn’t know what she was looking for, but Iain seemed familiar enough with the place to be her guide. It was self-contained like the mining outpost Holly was familiar with at Ixion. Soon they found a corridor that went around the inner perimeter of the first level of the base and followed it. Holly tried not to gape, but it was difficult. There were armed soldiers everywhere.
“Why are they standing there, armed, as though an enemy could even get on the station in the first place?” Holly asked in a whisper, leaning close to Iain to say it.
“We got on, didn’t we?” he answered, never taking his eyes from the guards.
That brought her up short. He was right. But Holly would never attack the base, especially not after entering it, so it still perplexed her.
Soon they found a bar that was open to the walkway, where they could sit at an empty table, drink slowly, and watch the passersby. It was still unclear what Jamie was doing on the station, and Holly hadn’t pieced together anything about the disappearing kids on Kota by agreeing to the job in the first place.
Iain seemed absorbed in watching the armed and uniformed people walking by, on their way to their quarters or to a day job. Holly still felt out of her league when she considered where she was—on a base orbiting Shakti, pretending to be part of the military. Not that she was attempting to pull off being an actual soldier, simply using the transponder as a means to give the illusion that they were a military vessel that needed to board.
She took a long drink of her ale, training her gaze on Iain where he sat across from her. He seemed tense. She’d never known him to be so ill at ease.
“Does it bring back a lot of memories?” She asked, watching his expression. Her goal hadn’t been to take him down a pathway to uncomfortable memories, but that might be where his mind had gone.
He shifted in his seat. Took a long drink of his beer. Paused, then guzzled down another long drink.
Holly raised an eyebrow. “You’re beginning to make me feel guilty for insisting that you come,” she said. The bar pathway seating area was loud with the sound of music coming from within the bar and the cacophony of conversations of the other patrons seated at their own tables around the place. T
he location of the bar was a crossroads, so the corridor itself was busy. There were other small shops around the bar as well, and people in military and civilian dress haggled with the shop owners, raising the overall noise to a pitch that almost required Holly to shout to be heard over it.
Iain gave her a sharp look, his eyes softening when he focused on her. “Oh yes. Very much, this is your fault, Holly.” He only allowed the smallest of smiles to touch his lips. “It’s very mean of you, you know?”
She cocked her head. “Alright, I get it. I shouldn’t blame myself for your decisions.”
He flashed her a fuller smile, but there was something shy in it.
He looked at his thumbs, his fingers, then he spoke as softly as he could and still be heard. “I left the military for a reason. I just don’t like being back here, seeing how things are being run. You know, you can live for a long time believing something is completely right. You fool yourself into the conviction, meanwhile feeling maybe a misgiving here or there. Somehow you deal with them. But when you finally get outside it, you can see what a lie it all was. That’s what this was, to me. The facade eventually crumbled, and I realized that how we were being directed wasn’t meant to be part of my life.”
“I know what it’s like to believe in something so much, then watch it turn to dust in your hands.”
His look became more intense. There was a desire in them, burning brightly to be understood. “I know, Holly Drake. I know you do. I value what I did in the military. But it was more because I’d connected with so many other people through working as a team with them. We had each other’s backs. That was real. I wouldn’t trade that. But that was more than just the things they made us do.”
Holly wanted to listen to him and excavate whatever was going on in his mind. But before the moment got away from them and they were back on the ship, waving goodbye to the station, she needed to use her time wisely. “Life is complicated—it’s normal, to have contradictory emotions about an event. Especially such a complex one like war and taking orders from superiors.”
He looked away from the rumination and study of his hands and stared out into the corridors where people passed by almost in a blur. Life was spiraling away from them. Iain was lost somewhere at the edge of the solar system, spinning deeper into a mood that Holly knew she couldn’t touch. At least not right now.
It was just like life to come between them. He never sank into a depression when they were safely sequestered within the walls of his beautiful, cozy home in Analogue Alley, when there were hours to spend dissecting some concept that disturbed them like thoughts on governments and military operations that violated a person’s integrity. It came up here. Now. When the future of dozens of children rested on solving a mystery.
She couldn’t walk into this fire with him right now. It broke her heart to admit it. But moving on was what she had to do. Holly cleared her throat. “What do you think Xadrian could possibly want out here?”
Iain shrugged. “Haven’t you learned more about it?”
“No.”
“Well, the only thing I can tell you is that almost nothing comes here that doesn’t have something to do with the military and the Yol system defense.”
“So it would have to do with the military defense out near the heliopause?”
“I wouldn’t bet money on it, but yes. Most likely”
Holly bit her lip. Xadrian and Dave. Mixed up with military defense. What could that even mean?
16
The return journey was always faster than a journey out into the unknown. No matter that the distance is the same, the journey home marks the decline in excitement, the burnt out end of the thrill of embarking on something unusual or something uniquely set apart from daily living.
The adrenaline surges had all been used up on the travel out to Shakti. And so Holly Drake slept through the larger portion of the return trip, worn from the high alert of fending off utter panic and letting Odeon manipulate her mood. It was one of the surprising elements of his calm song, that it not only depleted him, but her as well.
Holly woke after a short nap, startled about where she was, then remembered that she was aboard the Olavia Apollo. She sighed in relief, and settled back into the thin mattress of her bunk. She could hear Odeon snoring from the bunk above her. He was as spent as she was, possibly more. There was something completely satisfying and pleasant about sleeping near Odeon, of hearing the sounds of Life that he unconsciously emitted—the light snores, the soft muttering, the crinkle of the bedding as he shifted—simply existing through no specific doing of his own, there, alive, and willing to stay near her without demanding her devotion or fealty. He was, in some way, perfection. He always had her back, and she tried to have his.
But she knew that she often fell short. Did Odeon Starlight ever fall short? She couldn’t remember a time when Odeon had underperformed or failed to do what he set out to do.
“That can’t be right,” she whispered to herself, thinking about how Odeon never failed. She sat up in surprise and conked her head on the underside of the bunk above her. She cursed and flopped back into the bed.
Despite accidentally hurting herself, the bunk was a wonderful, if cramped spot to sleep. It was encircled with blackout curtains, making her feel like she was in a fort of her own making. It maximized snug and safe, two feelings she’d always looked for as a child, when making a fort with Meg.
And just like that, she remembered that she was on a spaceship, screaming through space on a highway made of aether that could be stalked by leviathans or behemoths right then. She was too exposed.
Odeon was asleep, and Holly felt the fear closing in around her.
She couldn’t stay in the bed. Panic was closing in on her. She tore the curtains aside and stood up, feeling shaky on her legs. Waking Odeon was out of the question. He’d already done more than his share of being her sherpa through the situation.
She quietly rummaged through her backpack and found the bottle of ale that Odeon had convinced her to not drink on the journey to Shakti station. She wasn’t sure if the other bunks were full, so she crept quietly through the room and out through the hatch. In the passageway, she relaxed and headed to the galley where she could drink the ale without Odeon stopping her.
But of course the galley wasn’t empty. Shiro and Jamie had spread out at the table, playing cards and conversing animatedly when she entered the galley.
“Ms. Drake!” Shiro said, rising and doffing his bowler.
She stared at him, feeling ancient for some reason at his treatment—the Ms. Drake, the taking his hat off, the fact that she couldn’t stand space flight. Her cheeks went hot. “That’s really not necessary, Shiro. Thanks.”
Shiro laughed and sat back down. “Alright, well, anyway, Jaime was just telling me that whatever he went to Shakti Station for wasn’t there.”
“What?” Holly asked, beginning to regret leaving the bunk.
“My apologies, you seem like perhaps you haven’t woken up all the way. I said that what Jamie—”
“No, I heard, Shiro.” Holly focused on Jamie. “So you’re telling me that we flew you across the solar system only to not get what you went there for?”
Jamie returned her gaze without flinching. “Unfortunately, yes. I’m as annoyed about it as you appear to be.”
“Then what was the point? We could have been killed. My crew could have been killed by that behemoth. People that I love and asked to come would have been killed.”
“Well, that’s often how life is, isn’t it?” Jamie said, shuffling the deck. “Should I deal you in, Holly?”
She shook her head and opened the ale. “No chance. I’ll be in no state to play cards. Odeon needs to rest and I’ll need to finish this journey without exploding or crumbling from the stress.”
She sat down next to Shiro and took a long draw from the bottle.
“Ms. Drake, you’ve never really told me what happened to make you so frightened of space travel.”
Holly noticed Jamie’s dark gaze on her as Shiro spoke. He dealt the cards, but his attention was focused on the conversation. “It was just an attack on the zeppelin.” She paused. It wasn’t the time to open up about it. “Even though whatever you were after wasn’t there, Xadrian’s going to pay us for this trip.”
“I’m sure Xadrian wouldn’t try to retract.”
“Then you don’t know Xadrian,” Holly said, smiling around the neck of the bottle.
* * *
She knew that if Xadrian felt that he could get away with it, he would have thrown the novas at her and spit on them when he paid her.
Or maybe not. That would have been a fairly harsh reaction to something that was in fact not her fault. Holly had done her best. It wasn’t as though she’d wanted to go out to Shakti in the first place.
“Well, HD, regardless of what Jamie has told you, he’s not altogether right. He did get something from that ‘pointless journey’ as you’ve taken to calling it. And now, I’m afraid my employer and I have need of your services once more.”
Holly squinted against the bright light of the day. “I’ll save you the frustration: no.”
“Come now, that’s what I’m explaining, HD. No matter what Jamie said, he did return with something valuable.” They’d met on top of a spire, near a Spireway platform that was the least likely to shuttle in someone neither of them wanted to see, in the heart of the Green Jade district. It was a clear day. Holly breathed the cold air, feeling invigorated. Having her feet back on solid ground and relatively safe had restored her confidence that she could handle whatever twisted plots the universe threw at her.
“Really? And what was that?” she asked, referring to whatever Jamie had brought back.
The Colossus Collection : A Space Opera Adventure (Books 1-7 + Bonus Material) Page 96
