Heart's Refuge

by M. L. Buchman

  Heart’s Refuge

  M. L. Buchman

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  If you enjoyed this, you might also enjoy:

  Target of the Heart (excerpt)

  About the Author

  Also by M. L. Buchman

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  Chapter 1

  Brody Jones worked his way around the Mod18 ship, checking her over in case there was a rescue mission today. Fifty meters of spacecraft that had seen too many flights but, like a beater truck in the old vids, was always game for another round. He liked its tenacity even if he felt sorry for it sitting in this particular hangar.

  His ship was parked in a narrow space at the end of the Number Four hangar—thankfully inside Brit Habitat One rather than out on an umbilical space-dock on the outer hull. It let him do inspection and service without a spacesuit which was a major plus. However, it also meant that his old Mod18 was parked alongside five sleek, military Stinger-60s that belonged to the Night Stalkers. They were beautiful, lethal craft.

  The white finish on his Mod18 was tinged from a partial reentry burn which she’d never been designed for. The massive NAS logo—Non-Aligned Ship—was nearly obliterated with solar bleaching. In space, paint cheap enough to afford didn’t last long. He and a few likemindeds had scraped together enough to run the one ship and keep her maintained. “Pretty” was outside their budget.

  Non-Aligned Ship, as if his old Mod18 was somehow crooked. Lifter Rescue wasn’t associated with any government. In fact, if they hadn’t been given hangar space at Brit Habitat One—parked out at the Lagrange 2 point beyond Luna—there wouldn’t be any Lifter Rescue operation at all. However, with the Brits’ stamp of approval, the other remaining governments of deep space were forced to cooperate as well.

  The thruster nozzles showed no signs of cracking. The primary and secondary cooling fins weren’t so fortunate, but they were still serviceable—for a few more flights at least. He came around the nose cone and spotted a woman leaning against the closed airlock.

  It wasn’t Felice, his Number Two. She never hauled herself out of her rack this early unless there was a rescue alarm.

  When he saw who waited for him, with her arms crossed and her glorious dark hair flowing to her shoulders, he was torn between irritation and being seriously pleased.

  “Hey there, Karina.” Night Stalker Captain of Stinger-60 Number One-Four-Alpha—the toughest bitch in space, by her own proclamation. That was the irritating part about her.

  “Hi, asshole,” but over the years her standard greeting had almost become affectionate…or at least kind of friendly.

  “Well, at least some things never change.” She was also one of the best pilots in the entire system; only the very top ones made the Night Stalkers. A challenge that he’d never even wanted to try. Still, he had liked piloting beside Karina in flight school and still missed that, five years later.

  “Some things never do,” she sounded particularly grumpy. “Like you going out again in this flying hazard.” The seriously pleased part was that she actually spoke to him, listened to him, occasionally drank with him—though they’d hardly gone past that. There’d only ever been one night between them. Not a night actually, really just a moment, but he’d never forgotten it. No matter who he’d bedded over the years, and there’d been some incredible women, it wasn’t enough to erase that memory.

  He also appreciated the contact because almost everyone else socially plas-walled the people who flew for Lifter Rescue, as if what he did was worthy of contempt. She was perhaps his sole champion among the most powerful military in space—even if there wasn’t much she could do for him there. At least she didn’t revile his chosen career in public, only to his face.

  Brody shrugged. It was an old argument. They’d agreed to disagree long ago and even that hadn’t stopped it entirely. He leaned back against her Stinger-60, garaged by some weird fate next to his Mod18. There were twenty of these ships stationed at Brit Habitat One all the time, in addition to an equal number on upsystem patrols. The likelihood of his ending up beside her craft seemed beyond chance. For whatever reason it had happened and he liked the opportunity to see her more often—even when they exchanged little more than friendly snarls.

  Lift Rescue had been a point of contention between them, ever since graduation day from flight school. She hadn’t spoken to him for at least a year after that. There were fewer missions every year, but he didn’t care.

  Earth still had the occasional Lifters, people so desperate to leave that they built their own ships to climb the gravity well. And almost every one needed some help to make it out. That’s where he and his Mod18 came in—a role that hadn’t even existed in the first three phases of humankind’s climb to space.

  First had come The Exploration—brave lunatics atop chemical-filled bombs.

  The Expansion had been far safer—mag-lev rail launches that had delivered settlements from the Senegalese on Mercury to the Swiss out on Pluto. There were rumors of some settlements all of the way out in the deep Kuiper Belt, but if they survived, they weren’t talking. No surprise really as it would take a serious dose of paranoia to climb so far.

  Even during The Exodus, most of the craft had been purpose-built or were salvaged from Expansion-era craft.

  But toward the end of the Exodus, they began running out of ships and Lifters had gotten creative. They’d even salvaged the ancient chemical rockets from The Exploration. Nobody had the power or the skills to climb out to Luna anymore—most didn’t make it into orbit. Lifter Rescue tried to help those who didn’t disintegrate at launch or punch a brief hole into the ocean after a failed lift.

  “One of these days, I’m not going to come down and save your ass,” Karina didn’t move from where she leaned against his closed airlock in her space-black jumpsuit. She’d looked incredible in flight school. She looked even better now. His brain went there, even though experience had taught him not to bother hoping.

  “Never asked you to.” Besides, there’d only been the two times. One, when he got in beyond his ship’s abilities—the reason he’d replaced his first copilot with Felice. And the other when he’d faked an emergency because, in a rare, massive lift, there were more people to rescue than his one ship could handle.

  No one could agree on what to call this latest phase. The official term was The Aftermath. Felice’s vote had been The Exhaustion—as the last of free Earth tried to climb the gravity well. His personal favorite was The Expectoration, the last of humankind being spit out of the planet with nowhere to go except up.

  Brody sighed.

  Everything seemed to be a battle with Karina. A challenge to be faced down or a tally to be accounted for. Other than their ships being berthed side by side, he wasn’t even sure why she kept talking to him.

  “So, your new plan is to block my airlock for the rest of your life?” Yet he wasn’t sure he’d mind. His life would be far less if she wasn’t a part of it—no matter how small a part that was. Over the years he’d tried for a bigger part, but the answer had consistently been an evasive no—as if she hadn’t even heard him.

  “Maybe it is, at least until I figure out what to do about you.” Karina Rostov was a tough-as-plas pilot and had a dark-eyed beauty that he could never ignore.

  She was also a fifth-gener
ation Expansionist. Her people had spaced long before the Russo-German-Turk War had erased all three countries in one bloody week, along with most of Europe. Back when humanity’s entire future hung beyond the sky.

  His family hadn’t been so fortunate. When he was a kid, they’d spaced aboard an old Minuteman VI missile they’d found in a Montana silo and converted for The Lift. Three families, four years of work, and he’d never forget the raw terror—or the man who had plucked the few survivors out of the sky before the missile ballistically reentered Earth’s atmo. He was retired now from his cargo hauling business, but still one of Lift Rescue’s main benefactors.

  With Karina’s pre-Exodus heritage and his family being just…Aftermathers (Expectorants sounded a little vile even for him), there were even higher barriers between them.

  “What are you doing here, Karina?” He couldn’t enter his ship until she moved away from his airlock and she didn’t appear to be in any mood to do so. While he’d be glad to look at her all day, she always had an agenda. It wasn’t like her not to state it and move on.

  “I don’t even know why I’d care if you died rescuing the useless,” like he was an idiot for doing so.

  “You mean the hopeful?”

  She shrugged uncomfortably.

  Maybe he finally needed to let go of his Karina Rostov fantasies. How could she think about people that way? It was hope that drove them aloft despite the horrific odds.

  Chapter 2

  Useless. There were times Karina would like to cut out her tongue.

  Her parents were old-school Ukrainians—a distinction that had been meaningless even before her great-great-grandparents had lifted during The Expansion. It was an isolationist distinction that Mom and Pop had brought back to life in reaction to The Aftermath. It made her first responses dour and the ones after that worse.

  And for some reason, Brody Jones brought out the truly horrid in her. But she couldn’t seem to stay away from him either. He was everything she wasn’t: blond, blue-eyed, and popular despite his chosen profession, a choice she’d never understood.

  Her own Night Stalkers commanders and crew only tolerated her because she could outfly any of them. She’d been born to fly a Stinger-60; it was in her blood. Yet her one great weakness, she couldn’t resist poking at this particular Mod18 pilot.

  “What is it about you?”

  “Me? What about me?”

  Karina tried to formulate some kind of a rational answer. Her mind was excellent at analysis—of everything except Brody Jones. She could master the most complex operation: deliver troops to Saturn’s Titan and extract another team off Jupiter’s Europa all with a minimum fuel burn rate and exact timing.

  But understanding Brody was completely beyond her.

  Launch detection! The alert blared out of both of the sleevepads in their flightsuits. It echoed around the hangar as well as over the PA system.

  They tapped in unison and a quick holo of Earth formed above each of their raised arms with a first-approximation orbital track rising from the surface.

  “Kourou, French Guiana,” Brody identified it faster than she could. Northeastern South America. “The old European Space Agency site.”

  “Threat or Lifters?”

  “Lifters,” Brody declared without hesitation. “Minimal military there before The Exodus. Most of it is underwater since The Melt and the sea-level rise, but someone found a way to lift.”

  No threat. Stand down alert, her sleevepad announced. For a decision to be made that fast, the launch must not have been big enough to escape Earth’s orbit. If it couldn’t reach them, it was no longer her concern.

  “Out of my way, Karina. I’ve got to fly.” But it most certainly was Brody’s.

  For reasons that eluded her, she didn’t move, forcing him to push her aside. The globe projecting above his sleevepad came straight at her head and she flinched away.

  “Oh, sorry,” Brody pulled back, tapped his sleeve, and the globe went away. He tapped again, “Felice where are you? We have a run.”

  This time a big red cross projected above his arm for a moment before it switched to her face. “Hey, Brody! How are you, buddy?”

  She sounded toasted. Actually, the hospital logo flash said drugged not drunk.

  Felice raised a bound arm into the image area. “The Skyball game last night rocked. Too bad I’m sidelined until the bone reknits. You shoulda been there. Where were you? Probably off doing your usual: getting drunk and mooning over Queen Bitch Rosto—” Jones slapped the disconnect.

  “Crap!” He looked about the hanger helplessly.

  Karina could only blink in surprise. Not about the “Queen Bitch”—that one she’d heard a thousand variations on. But Brody Jones was attracted to her? Really? How had she missed that?

  Before she could collect her thoughts into a question, the other two members of his crew came racing down the hangar past the long line of Stinger spacecraft.

  “I need a copilot,” he declared to no one in particular. His arriving crew shrugged—Vetch and Warwick were a med and a gearhead, not flyers.

  Was Brody too hyped to react to the end of Felice’s comment? No, he was blushing. First time for everything.

  His eyes swung to her. His blush slowly turned into a smile.

  “No way, Brody.”

  “Are you on the first-call list?”

  She wasn’t. Though a Night Stalker was always ready, she wasn’t on the alpha-alert team today. “There’s no way I’m going to copilot your crap Mod18 to go help a bunch of suicidal Aftermathers.”

  Even as she complained, Brody wrapped a big hand around her arm and was easing her aside.

  “But…” he ignored her protests, punched in the airlock code, and hustled her past the outer and inner hatches.

  Once they were both resealed, he let go of her to tap his sleevepad. Moments later, a copilot’s pre-flight checklist popped up on her own.

  “I’m not flying with you.”

  “Sure you are,” his easy grin was infectious. “Do you have something better to do on a Thursday morning than go flying?”

  “On a Mod18? Sure!” She hadn’t flown a Mod18 since basic training, and hadn’t flown copilot since very early in her career.

  “Go,” he gave her a shove toward the engine inspection port.

  For reasons she couldn’t unravel, rather than flattening him and departing back through the airlock, she went. It was only as she was signing off on the last items on the list that she spotted the date—it was Sunday, not Thursday—technically her day off, as much as a Night Stalker ever had one.

  Karina watched Brody as he slid into the command chair and began systems startup. Thursday? Why had he said that? He had to know the day. Then she almost laughed. Brody had always been the one with the sense of humor—a skill she totally lacked. He’d said Thursday because it was the most boring-sounding day of the week—not mid-week and still too far from the weekend. Anything was more interesting than a Thursday and he was using everything he could to coax her into going along.

  Well, Jones was right about one thing: there wasn’t anything better than flying.

  Chapter 3

  “NAS-LR1 entering LEO. This is NAS-LR1 entering LEO.” Brody made sure that the transmission was on automatic repeat. “Non-Aligned Ship, Lifter Rescue One entering Low Earth Orbit.” They were only halfway down from Luna, but it was always best to give a clear warning to prevent a preemptive strike from the surface.

  “That and a Stinger-60 gunship will keep us in business,” Karina muttered. “Except we don’t have a Stinger do we, Brody?”

  “No, we’ve got a group of civilians in trouble. Find them, Karina.” Felice was good, but the whole ship felt different with Karina beside him. There was a sudden rightness to his world that he wished he had more time to enjoy.

  “This part of space give me the creeps,” but she started working the problem while he focused on finding a safe orbit.

  “Creeps me out, too. No matter how oft
en I fly into it.” Most of Low Earth Orbit was a blind spot courtesy of the IndiaBeam. Coming anywhere near the I-Beam Zone was bad news, really bad news.

  There were only a few groups remaining in any semblance of power down on the dirt. The biggest was India. They hadn’t joined The Exodus. Instead, they lofted a satellite that had opened into a big mirror. Using a ground-based destructive beam, they’d laid down scorched earth for a thousand kilometers around their borders—which just happened to include Pakistan, a swath of China, and several other irritant nations. After that was done, they’d proved their willingness to burn anything out of the sky that they could spot, which had included all the eyes-in-the-sky above the Eastern Hemisphere.

  Even doing an overflight at two hundred kilometers in an NAS-declared ship on a rescue mission was a dicey proposition. Bottom line: if an Earther lifted anywhere within the I-Beam’s range, they were on their own. Very few who did ever crossed out of it. In Low Earth Orbit, India’s range was two-thousand kilometers in every direction. Basically overflights anywhere between Saudi Arabia, the Philippines, and Mongolia were screwed.

  “Got them!” Karina put up a projection.

  Brody saw that it would take three orbits to match speed. And it was going to happen directly over the I-Beam.

  Chapter 4

  “No! I didn’t come out here to die, Brody Jones. Not for you. Definitely not for—” Karina could feel her parents’ bitter epithet striving to surface, Aftermathers. By sheer will, she managed to suppress it. “—people I’ve never met.”

  She wasn’t her parents—who were parochial even by modern isolationist standards. She refused to hold their system-view. But she wasn’t going to die for unknown Lifters either.

  “I’ve followed your missions. Since when did you, a Night Stalker, shy away from risk?”