Starflight (Stealing the Sun Book 1)

by Ron Collins

  “Of course you don’t understand!” He stood straighter and gestured wildly as he raged, yelling now. “You can’t understand. But you could trust me anyway!”

  “I do trust you.”

  He clenched his jaw.

  “Not if you’re telling me I’m wrong.”

  He turned to leave.

  “They’re just data files, Torrance.”

  His reaction happened on its own. He twisted back to her, his hand cocked with an open palm prepared to strike her.

  Her expression froze.

  And he stopped himself.

  In time.

  Barely in time.

  Marisa’s cheeks turned an embarrassed scarlet.

  Torrance dropped his hand in shame. He had lost control. It had been only one instant, one horrible instant, but he had lost it.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m really—”

  Rather than reply, she stood up and left.

  CHAPTER 22

  UGIS Everguard

  Ship Local Date: January 13, 2205

  Ship Local Time: 2307

  It was late, nearing the end of second shift, and it had been a very long day.

  Torrance felt the stares as he headed back to his quarters. Support crews were exchanging glances in the crossing time between shifts, people he recognized but didn’t work with. Traffic was high. He was tired. His head hurt, and his brain felt waterlogged.

  Which of them knew he had threatened Marisa? Who did he have to be ashamed around?

  He knew the answer, though. People talked. Everyone could know. Every glance could be an indictment, every cautious nod an accusation. He had to be ashamed around everyone.

  He rubbed his eyes.

  If fatigue made him lightheaded, the idea of facing Marisa now made him deeply uncomfortable. He would have to apologize, of course. But he wasn’t sure he would be able to do it right. He was blithering idiot, and she would be mad—naturally. And hurt. He felt her anger from hours away.

  She hadn’t stopped by in the afternoon like she usually did.

  She hadn’t returned his pages.

  He didn’t blame her for either of those things. But she also hadn’t been at her station or in the ship’s library like he had anticipated. He hadn’t, in fact, seen her at all since their fight—which scared him in some elemental way that went all the way to the bone. It was like she was avoiding him.

  When he came to his quarters, he paused outside the door to gather his thoughts.

  His apology had better be a good one.

  Then he pressed the security lock.

  The door slid back with a rasping sound that was loud in the late-shift silence of the hall, revealing only darkness.

  He frowned.

  It wasn’t so late that Marisa would be sleeping.

  He pressed on a light.

  The table was cluttered with printout of code from the heating system’s control loop—another problem he had let slip over the past few days. His dirty glass from this morning sat on the utility counter he had left pulled from the wall. His shirt from last night lay wadded on the floor where he had left it.

  The bed remained unmade.

  Everything was still and silent.

  Marisa wasn’t here.

  And her stuff was gone.

  He found her in the mess just as she had found him some twelve hours earlier—sitting in a corner booth and nursing a coffee. A plate of half-eaten scrambled eggs, bell peppers, and rice sat in front of her.

  The pavilion was nearly empty, which made sound echo.

  Third-shifters worked in the kitchen amid the sounds of clattering trays and cups that were moving through the washing conveyor. Cleaning bots scoured the floor and gave the area an aroma of cleanser. As the screws of fate would have it, Security Officer Casey was standing alongside two other officers in front of the observation window. The coincidence crawled under his skin.

  Marisa stared out the observation panel as Torrance approached. Her blue work jacket was zipped to her throat, and the corners of the collar jutted up to make severe points at her jawline. Her bloodless lips tightened into a thin line that would have been screaming if it had a voice.

  “Go home,” she said when he arrived.

  “I’m sorry.”

  He slid into the bench across from her, feeling sadness leak from her.

  “I didn’t invite you to sit.”

  “I will leave in a minute if you want me to.”

  “What do you want me to say, Torrance?”

  “I’m sorry. I don’t know what happened to me, but I’m sorry. I want you to say you’ll come back.”

  Marisa steeled herself. Her lips set in that matter-of-fact way that said her mind was made up. Her fingers wrapped around her cup like it was a life vest.

  “My first boyfriend hit me, Torrance. I never told you that before, because…well…it never seemed to matter.”

  “I’m sorry,” he said again.

  “I can’t be with you anymore.”

  “Yes, you can. I’ve never, ever done anything like that. I was embarrassed and angry. I can promise it will never happen again.”

  “I don’t trust you. But it’s more than that.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “We want different things.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Don’t make me do all this by myself, Torrance.”

  “I honestly don’t know what you mean.”

  She drank from her cup. “I like you. You’re sweet, you know? And you’re good at what you do. You’re better than you think you are. Most men are the opposite—so full of themselves they don’t see they’re assholes, you know? So I like that.”

  He waited.

  “I want a career, Torrance.”

  “So do I.”

  “No.” She shook her head. “You don’t.”

  The fact that the accusation didn’t sting told him she was right, but he didn’t know what to say.

  “I’ve been in the command for a lot of years, Marisa.”

  “Don’t pretend, Torrance. Maybe you wanted a career once, when you joined up, or whatever. But you don’t even know what having a career means now. You think you want one, and sometimes you even act like it, but mostly you just want to know how things work—and when the two conflict, it’s the ‘figuring out how things work’ side that wins.”

  Torrance reached to take her hand.

  She pulled it away.

  “I want this life, Torrance. I need it. And I’ll do whatever I need to do to make it work.”

  “I can change, Marisa.”

  She laughed out loud. “You can’t change who you are, Torrance.”

  “I can,” he pleaded. “For you, I can.”

  She raised her hand and Torrance became quiet.

  “Don’t do it this way, Torrance. Please. Just don’t.”

  He swallowed down his emotion. She was right. He knew she was.

  “Okay,” he finally said. “Okay.”

  She drank coffee and stared out into space beyond the observation dome.

  He stood and left.

  CHAPTER 23

  UGIS Everguard

  Ship Local Date: January 14, 2205

  Ship Local Time: 1503

  The next day was as hard as any Torrance could remember. The aura of Marisa’s departure clung to him like a second skin, and he was certain he was catching sideways glances from everyone he ran into. It felt like he had an electric field built up around him. By 1500 the pressure got to be too much to bear, and he slipped into his office.

  It was silent here.

  Three boxes of broken-down equipment sat in the far corner. A gutted refrigeration assembly sat just outside the door. His computer display flashed cold notifications in green and blue, one buzzing in a low frequency that demanded attention. Outside, pulsing lights detailed the status of each system on the ship.

  “Abke, please set my message service off-line,” he said as he sat down heavily. “Le
ave a note that says I’m on a high-priority task, and will return calls as soon as practical.”

  “Note set.”

  “Thank you.”

  He put his hand to his throbbing temple and sat in silence as the ventilation system pushed a flow of cool air over him.

  Maybe he would be better off just going to his quarters.

  No, he thought, going to his quarters at this time of day wasn’t his norm, so that might set off Romanov’s sensors. The idea of being passively monitored had never really bothered him before, but now he shivered with the understanding that the ship could track the inherent electrical signature his body put out, and that his body heat and e-lint could be used to follow him almost anywhere. It made him feel defenseless.

  Of course, he didn’t know if Romanov was actually doing anything of the sort. Or Casey, for that matter. But the sense of paranoia that swept over him now made everything different. He felt weak.

  They were less than a year into the return flight. How bad could this get?

  The duty roster was flashing yellow.

  Shit.

  The refrigerant system on C Deck had been off-line for over an hour. He checked the status of the work ticket and saw Kitchell was on it.

  He sat back, knowing it would be taken care of.

  Kitchell had only been working with them for six months, but adding the kid to the team might have been the best thing Torrance had done all flight—outside of saving off the data files, anyway. Yes, Thomas Kitchell was a hard worker when assigned the right tasks and given enough instruction to be successful. And, yes, he may well prove to be brilliant. But he still needed approval to feel good about himself. Once Torrance hit on that knowledge, they had gotten along more than fine. The kid was going to be a damned fine engineer one day.

  He didn’t care about that, though.

  Marisa was gone, and he had no career. If he had a set of displays showing his own personal status, he wondered what shade of red they would be flashing in. But, Torrance also knew that in darkness is sometimes opportunity. He couldn’t pretend that he didn’t feel a new sense of purpose tugging at the back of his mind, or at least a stronger one.

  “LC?”

  Torrance looked up to find Thomas Kitchell leaning into the office. “What is it?”

  “Are you all right?” the kid said.

  “Yeah, I’m just tired.”

  Kitchell shrugged as if that wasn’t really an acceptable answer but he wasn’t going to dig any deeper.

  “What can I do for you, Thomas?”

  “I wanted to tell you I got the Air Quality network up and running again. And I reprogrammed the filter purge cycle a little, so I thought you would want to…” He shrugged again. “You know…take a look.”

  “Okay. Yeah, good. I’ll check it out before I leave.”

  “Thanks.”

  Kitchell got an expression Torrance had come to know as a grin, even though it had nothing to do with his lips.

  “Thanks for hopping on the C Deck thing, too,” Torrance said. “You saved my backside.”

  Kitchell gave an actual smile then. “No problem,” he said.

  Torrance waited.

  The kid hesitated. His expression made Torrance think of a rookie cadet prepping for his first open air leap in survival school.

  “What is it?” Torrance said.

  “Can I ask you a question?”

  “Sure. Have a seat?”

  He motioned to an open chair, and Kitchell came in to take it.

  “It might make you mad.”

  “Tell me more.”

  “I, uh, I saw Security Officer Casey poking around in here earlier today.”

  “Really?” He sat up. This was news, and not good news.

  “I know he was talking to some people, and I was wondering who it was about.” Kitchell squirmed in his seat, trying to get comfortable.

  “Do you have any reason to be concerned?”

  “No.”

  Torrance waited.

  “Well…maybe.” The kid’s voice got faster, and rose as he spoke. “But I didn’t mean to do anything bad, and I got out as soon as I thought something was screwed up.”

  “Go on.”

  “I was working in the system a couple nights ago, you know, looking at cals and checking out how the ship’s backup power system kicks on—we should switch up the collectors, by the way, it’s like they were coded by some idiot on pico-zone. Totally whacked, you know? Anyway, in the process I found some things there that maybe shouldn’t be there.”

  Torrance gripped the end of his chair arm, hoping his concern didn’t show otherwise.

  “What were they?”

  “I don’t really know.” Kitchell’s face got red. “Honestly, I don’t. Some data files. Things that looked like noise studies, or information traces. I saw a log of events, too, and a bunch of other stuff that had obviously been wiped. When I did a full scan for residuals, I saw someone with big-balls security clearance had gone in and erased a bunch of stuff in the access logs, too.”

  “You’re worried that Casey was after you?”

  “Wouldn’t you be?”

  Torrance smirked.

  “I swear I didn’t do anything,” Kitchell said.

  “I’m sure you didn’t,” Torrance said, as much to calm the kid as to say he believed him.

  He looked at Kitchell and tried to decide how to react.

  It was clear the boy had seen the data files, and that he understood how to identify the fact that someone had deleted traces of their work—but he obviously didn’t understand that in this case that someone was Torrance himself. It had always been possible that someone could do a root atomic scan of the crystals and find evidence of his deletion, but only someone like Kitchell would have thought to do it.

  “I’m impressed you knew how to do an atomic level scan.”

  “Just something I was playing with.”

  Torrance hesitated. “Abke,” he said to the computer. “Please close the doorway.”

  The door slid shut with a finalistic whoosh.

  Kitchell’s face drained of blood.

  “This puts me in a difficult position,” Torrance said.

  “I know I wasn’t supposed to be in there, but I swear I didn’t do anything. I’m telling you this, aren’t I? I’m being honest. Please don’t throw me out.”

  “That’s not the problem I’m struggling with, Thomas.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  Torrance nodded. “I know. That’s my problem.”

  He hesitated. Kitchell didn’t know who had done the work, but he knew about the files and knew about Torrance’s cleanup process. That meant the kid was a loose end.

  The fact that the government security officer was poking around Systems Command could be just coincidence, but he doubted it. Casey may well be a bureaucratic ass, but he was an effective one as far as bureaucratic asses go. Romanov was clearly working on his own, so Torrance figured the captain wouldn’t have reported anything to Casey about their conversation—too much of a chance for Casey to discover Romanov’s own shortcomings, and Torrance thought it was a safe bet that senior officers could be trusted to avoid exposing themselves to the scrutiny of government security officers unless there’s no alternative. However, Casey would certainly have heard about his outburst with Marisa. He guessed that meant Casey was taking advantage of the moment to put some pressure on him.

  “The way I see it here,” Torrance said to Kitchell, “I can either give you the full scoop or I can shut you out totally. Either way, since I know you’ve seen them, I need to tell you that those data files are important. And I need you to promise me you’ll be quiet about what you’ve found.”

  “That shit is yours?” Kitchell said, his eyes growing wide. “I thought—”

  “Yes, you thought it was Casey’s. I know. But, yes, that ‘shit’ is mine, and I need you to promise to keep your mouth shut about it.”

  “I will. I promise.”

 
Torrance gave him an appraising stare.

  “What is it?” Kitchell said.

  “That’s the hundred-billion-solar question, isn’t it? And the problem here is that I know you well enough by now to know you’re going to tell me you’ll never get into that space again, and that you’re going to mean it…only you won’t be able to stay out of it because that’s not how you’re wired.”

  “That’s not true,” Kitchell said, though his gaze told Torrance it most certainly was true.

  Torrance laughed.

  “Kid, don’t even pretend. You and I are so much alike in that department that we might as well be father and son. I know you’ll promise to stay away, but then the questions will get to building up inside you, and your fingers will get itchy, and next thing you know you’ll be in for just a quick look.”

  Kitchell actually nodded. “Yeah, I’m edge with your whole thing, I guess. I mean, I think I’m a lot like you there.”

  Torrance took in the moment. “Hey, take a chance, right?”

  Kitchell gave an embarrassed grin.

  “If I take a chance here and tell you everything, I know I can be fairly sure you won’t go blabbing because even you will see what a huge ball of crap I’m exposing you to if people find out. My problem is that if I tell you the details, I put you in a potentially dangerous position.”

  “What if you don’t?”

  Torrance chewed his lip.

  What if?

  “Screw the problems,” Kitchell said. “They were from the planet, weren’t they? The files? They were from the launch?”

  Torrance laughed.

  The kid was already ahead of him. His eyes were lit up like new stars, and his posture said he was ready to go. Torrance had to make a decision. If he didn’t bring Kitchell into the fold it would piss him off, and then who knew what could happen. But how far could he trust this kid who was so much like him, but who was also prone to youthful exuberance that could get them both in serious trouble?

  “I want to know, man,” Kitchell said. “If they’re from the launch, it’ll be edge.”

  “All right,” he said, making his decision. “Abke, please access my system, file 1.”

  The ship clock read 1740 when they were finished.