Starbound: Eleven Tales of Interstellar Adventure

by SM Reine

  Starbound

  Eleven Tales of Interstellar Adventure

  Sara Reine

  Christine Pope

  Anthea Sharp

  Nathan Lowell

  Debra Dunbar

  Audrey Faye

  C. Gockel

  Phaedra M. Weldon

  LJ Cohen

  Colleen Vanderlinden

  Shawntelle Madison

  Contents

  Copyright

  Welcome!

  Anthea Sharp

  Passage Out

  Christine Pope

  Blood Ties

  Sara Reine

  Raising a Dragon

  Nathan Lowell

  Exile

  Debra Dunbar

  Arcturus 5

  Audrey Faye

  A Tale of Two Ships

  C. Gockel

  Carl Sagan’s Hunt for Intelligent Life in the Universe

  Phaedra M. Weldon

  Blue Light

  LJ Cohen

  Treason’s Course

  Colleen Vanderlinden

  Silent Witness

  Shawntelle Madison

  The Final Sunrise

  Copyright

  Copyright © 2016 for each individual story by Sara Reine, Christine Pope, Anthea Sharp, Nathan Lowell, Debra Dunbar, Audrey Faye, C. Gockel, Phaedra M. Weldon, LJ Cohen, Colleen Vanderlinden, and Shawntelle Madison.

  Welcome!

  I love anthologies like this—putting them together as much as reading them. There is such talent in the writer world right now, and so many people telling stories that are a little (or a lot!) outside the norm.

  This collection is mostly prequel short stories to science fiction series with strong female characters, which was my main requirement when I went gathering contributions.

  I definitely got those. I also got dragons, smugglers, vampires, aliens, a street-ruffian mathematical genius, a princess desperate to save Earth, and more. It’s amazing what’s out there traveling the stars.

  You likely picked up this anthology because there’s a story in here by an author you love. Absolutely go read it—but also graze a little. Try a story from someone new to you. In the end, if this anthology doesn’t help you discover new lands to read in, then I haven’t really done my job. However, given the number of new books on my Kindle, I’m pretty sure that’s not going to be a problem!

  Thanks for reading,

  Audrey Faye

  Passage Out

  Anthea Sharp

  Passage Out

  Author’s note: Steampunk with a twist! Enter a fantastical world filled with alien spacecraft and Victorian sensibilities, ball gowns and travel to the stars. Passage Out is one of several stories set in the alt-history universe of Victoria Eternal; a world where a constantly cloned Queen Victoria rules for centuries over a British Empire spanning the stars.

  The roar and shake of spacecraft blasting off from Southampton had long since ceased to wake Diana Smythe from her ragged slumber. The door alcove she called home was scant shelter from the elements, but she’d learned to catch what rest she could. A stealthy approach or a whisper of malice, however, would bring her awake in an instant, hand tight around the hilt of her makeshift dagger.

  She’d had a gun, once, a light-pistol that could slice a man’s arm off, or put a smoking hole in his chest at fifty paces.

  Long gone, now, along with the rest of the remnants of her former life. Diana didn’t even have a gold locket with her parent’s picture, or a pocket watch with a loving inscription, or any of the tokens common to novels about abandoned girls seeking their long lost homes and families.

  Her life was not a storyvid. She knew well enough that parents didn’t miraculously come back to life after a flaming carriage crash, and lost fortunes never magically re-appeared.

  And the dream of the spaceport had long since become a grimy reality, measured in take-offs and landings, in the ebb and flow of her small store of coins. Not enough. Never enough to buy passage out, not even a berth to the moon.

  “Di, get up.”

  A toe in her ribs made her roll away and open her eyes. Dawn feathered the sky in blue and pink, and made the grungy corner she called home almost pretty. Silhouetted against the sky stood a young boy with matted brown hair and a chipped-tooth smile.

  “Go away, Tipper.”

  “Can’t.” The boy squatted down next to her and poked her shoulder with a grimy finger. “Found something.”

  That woke her up. Diana sat, her holey woolen blanket wrapped tight around her shoulders. The nights were still chilly, but at least spring had finally come. She’d made it through another winter on the streets.

  “What did—” She broke off, waited for the roar of the blast-off to fade.

  Both she and Tipper looked up. From the sound of that lift, it was one of the bigger ships; a Fauntleroy 220, she guessed. The gleaming silver shape arced overhead, catching the light that hadn’t yet reached the alleyways and streets. It was a Fauntleroy, just as she’d guessed. A year after she’d arrived in Southampton, hopeful and starving, she’d found she had a talent for identifying the ships, scanning the arc of their flights in a heartbeat, gauging velocity and lift, and guessing at their destinations.

  If she couldn’t get to the stars, she could image others traveling there, and watch them go.

  Tipper stared at the ship, the longing on his face so clear Diana had to look away. Sure, she probably had the same look in her eyes, but she’d had a few extra years to hide it. Tipper was still a kid, for all his cockiness. Still dreaming the child’s dream of space—the blackness full of stars and possibility. A million futures to choose from.

  Diana swallowed and ignored the tight clutch of hunger in her belly. When the sky was empty, she asked again.

  “What did you find?”

  Tipper darted a glance down the alley, then shook his head and motioned her to follow.

  “If this is some kind of joke…” She gave him her best hard-eyed stare as she rolled up her blanket and shoved it into the satchel holding her possessions. The ones that mattered, anyway.

  “Isn’t,” he said.

  “Tally-ho, then.”

  She brushed off her trousers, scooped up her bag, and grabbed the parasol she’d nicked from a highborn chit. It was battered and stained, but if she held it just right, wore her salvaged satin skirt, and did her hair up in style (fastened with string and bits of charred metal, not that anyone would get close enough to notice), she could pass for gentry. For a brief time, anyway.

  Her accent helped, of course. At least, when she was in the better part of the city. Down here, in the rookeries by the spaceport, she pulled a covering of Cockney over the smoothly articulated syllables she’d grown up speaking.

  Darting like a mongoose, Tipper led her through the twists of the alleys, through derelict buildings, and at last to the sheer, shiny wall of the spaceport itself. It rose a dozen meters into the air, silvery and impermeable, and so clean.

  Diana went and laid her hand against the surface, the alien material faintly cool against her palm. There was no need for a stun current—the Yxleti-made wall was impervious to any human effort. No knife or gun, laser or explosive could even mar it, let alone break through.

  There were only two ways into the oval-shaped spaceport district. Passengers and those with official business used the front entrance at one end of the oval. Cargo and employees went through the Spaceport Auth
ority processing area on the other end. Between the two, nothing but sheer walls.

  “Psst.” Tipper waved at her from a shadowy ruin ahead.

  When Diana joined him beside the crumbling wall, he gave her a grin full of mischief.

  “Lookit this.” He nudged a crumbling piece of pressboard aside with his foot to reveal a dark shaft disappearing into the ground.

  She leaned over and peered into the blackness. The edges were perfectly straight, the hole just big enough to admit a body. Provided that a person was not afraid of closed-in, dark places. She shivered.

  “Where does it go?”

  “I waited for you, to find out.”

  Diana shot Tipper a look. It wasn’t just the rough fondness of the streets that had made him wait, but the sense of self-preservation every alley rat needed to survive. It would be sheer foolishness to disappear down that black shaft without anyone knowing where you’d gone, or waiting up above to pull you back up if necessary.

  “You’ve got a rope?” She glanced around the ruin, the two partially-standing walls not providing nearly enough cover for what they were about to do.

  “Sure. And lights. And water and some brat bars, just in case.”

  He went to the corner and rummaged beneath a piss-scented tarp, emerging with the described items.

  “Here.” He handed one of the foil-wrapped bars to her.

  “I don’t want that.”

  B-rations, brats for short, were the lowest-level foodstuffs. Even at her hungriest, she could barely choke down a mouthful of the gluey substance.

  “Toff,” Tipper said.

  “Ain’t.”

  Despite hazy memories of silky dresses and mathematics lessons and a pony of her own. That was half a lifetime ago, or more. It didn’t matter now. She tucked the brat bar into her trouser pocket, planning to give it back to Tipper after they… well. After they found whatever it was they were going to find down there.

  “Probably just leads to the sewers,” she said, taking a sniff of the air over the shaft.

  It wasn’t as foul as she expected. Dry, not rank, with a whiff of fuel. A jagged shard of hope sawed at her. Could this possibly be a tunnel into the spaceport?

  Rumor was the Yxleti had used a network of tunnels when constructing the port. But they had all been filled up again. Even if this was a former passage to the spaceport, it surely ended in an impassable wall of rubble.

  Still, her heartbeat pumped up with possibility.

  She helped Tipper secure the rope to the sturdiest beam they could find. He wrapped it around his chest and under his arms, then donned a pair of stained leather gloves two sizes too big.

  “Are you sure you want to go first?” She glanced into the hole. “It looks deep.”

  “I found it, I get to explore it. And I dropped a lightstick down there yesterday. Bottom’s not too far.”

  He grinned at her. She had the feeling “not too far” had a different meaning, once you were dangling at the end of a rope.

  “Speaking of light…” He held a battered lightstick out to her, then tucked a second one into a makeshift headband and settled it over his filthy hair.

  Before she could wish him luck, he scrambled over the edge of the shaft and let himself down.

  Diana knelt and watched him go down. The shaft was small enough that he could brace his legs and back on opposite sides and control his descent. Once, he slipped, and she swallowed back a cry of dismay as he slid a full meter down the hole before catching himself.

  Sooner than she would have liked, all she could see was the lightstick attached to his head. It bobbed up and down, sparking dull reflections from the sides of the shaft. After a while, the light stopped, and the rope jiggled wildly.

  “Tipper?” She leaned over the hole, fear clenching her gut.

  Something was down there, and had eaten him. The rope went slack.

  Dammit. Without com devices—which no alley rat could ever afford—she had to guess at what was happening.

  Hands shaking, she pulled the rope back up and inspected the end. No blood, no fraying.

  “Di.” Tipper’s voice echoed softly up.

  She blew the stale air of fear out of her lungs. “Now what?” she hissed down into the hole.

  “Going to explore. Sit tight.”

  The roar of lift washed over the silvery spaceport walls. Diana glanced up as the Volux V-class freighter lumbered up into the lower atmosphere. Bound in-system, she’d guess; one of the outlying Jupiterean moons, or maybe just Mars.

  “Tipper?” She leaned forward at the flicker of light from below.

  “Di! Come down—it’s a passage through.”

  She didn’t believe it, though Tipper had never been a practical joker like some of the other alley rats.

  “Who’ll guard the rope?”

  “I don’t care.” His voice was jubilant. “Hurry.”

  She pulled the rope back up, and tied it around herself. Unlike Tipper, she hadn’t brought gloves to protect her hands. It wasn’t so far down that she’d burn her hands terribly—unless she fell.

  Diana gave the rope a couple tugs, testing the beam. Solid enough. Gritting her teeth, she lowered herself into the shaft. The coarse rope bit her palms, and the metal wall was cool against her back. Slowly, she inched down, the pale blue sky overhead becoming a smaller rectangle as the dark swallowed her. Only knowing that Tipper was waiting for her with his lightstick made it bearable.

  At last she saw the glow from below.

  “The shaft ends,” Tipper said. “There’s a drop of a few meters to the floor.”

  Jaw aching from clenching her teeth, Diana’s feet hit empty air. She kicked out, the rope slipping too quickly between her hands, and landed painfully on the hard surface below.

  “All right?” Tipper gave her a hand up.

  “Well enough.”

  She straightened and gave an experimental stretch. Other than what would probably be a spectacular bruise on her tailbone, and the rope burns on her palms, she was uninjured. She pulled the extra lightstick out of her pocket and flicked it on.

  The straight, dim corridor was nothing special—except for the immense possibility it represented. Feeling a smile stretch her face, she nodded at Tipper.

  “Lead on, sir.”

  They walked quickly, excitement pushing their steps. They reached the spot that Diana calculated corresponded to the boundary wall of the spaceport overhead.

  “Wait.” She held out her hand. “Did you come this far, earlier?”

  “No.” Tipper stopped. “Just far enough to see the passage was open.”

  She studied the corridor ahead. It appeared safe, but stun currents were invisible until triggered. No alley rat traveled without an assortment of useful items in their pockets. Never knew when one might need a bit of string or graphite piece. Or, in this case, a pebble.

  Diana tossed the stone a few meters ahead of them. It passed the potential hazard point and kept going to clatter down on the floor. Nothing flared or buzzed.

  “Safe enough.” She hoped.

  “Milady.” Tipper swept out his hand in a move worthy of a gentleman.

  “Coward,” she murmured as she strode past him, winking to show she didn’t truly mean it. He’d been first down into the darkness, after all.

  She flinched, just a little, as she passed the place the boundary wall stood, but like the pebble, she passed through untouched. Tipper came up behind her, and their twin lightsticks reflected eerily off the silvery walls, the pale yellow glow barely pushing back the blackness. They walked ten paces beyond the wall, then twenty.

  “Why do you think they built this tunnel?” Tipper whispered.

  She shrugged. Who knew why the enigmatic Yxleti did anything? A hundred years earlier they had appeared from the sky, crowned Victoria Queen Eternal, then stood back. They had allowed humans to use their strange technology to reach the stars, and they never interfered—only watched.

  “Well.” Tipper held his light
up, illuminating the sheer wall in front of them, blocking their way. “Now what?”

  “Go back for the rope?” She leaned back, lifting her lightstick high. “I think there’s a trapdoor overhead.”

  “That won’t work. There must be a way to access the hatches. Hidden ladders or something.”

  Made sense. The workers who used this tunnel in the past wouldn’t want to be carrying around ladders as they went about their business.

  “Take that side.” She nodded to the left, then moved to the right and started running her hands over the smooth wall. Soon, her fingers found an irregularity—a long seam running vertically up from the floor.

  “Here,” she said, pulling out her blade.

  Tipper hurried to her side, and together they pried and pulled at the metal. Diana levered it up, then Tipper wedged his gloved hand in the space and yanked. Finally, with a loud creak, the seam parted to reveal a ladder built against the wall.

  She jumped back, dropping her lightstick, but Tipper just stood there, grinning.

  She made him go first, then followed. As they neared the ceiling of the corridor, strange, thumping vibrations filled the air. At first she thought it was drums, but the rhythm was too uneven.

  “Footsteps.” She tapped Tipper on the leg. “I think this opens onto a walkway.”

  That complicated matters. Spaceport travelers would not stand idly by as two alley rats clambered from a shaft in the floor. Especially not two individuals as soiled and dirt-stained as herself and Tipper. She hadn’t bathed in at least a month. He’d gone twice that long, judging by his rank boy-sweat and matted hair.

  “Let’s get closer,” he said. “I think I see a bolt across.”

  Despite her doubts that the hatch was secured by anything so mundane as a bolt, Tipper was right. She gripped the metal rungs of the ladder tightly as he slid the bolt back in slow, screeching increments. Hopefully the people tromping above would pay little mind to the noise, or think it just another bit of spaceport ambiance.