Sideris Gate: A Paradisi Chronicles novella (Paradisi Exodus Book 2)

by Cheri Lasota

  “Yes, mother.”

  She glared at him and shoved him forward. Despite the urgency, Vida couldn’t help glancing at Earth, knowing this would be the last time she’d ever see it on an EVA. She had contemplated that thought hundreds of times before, but now she was shaking all over. Because this truly was the last time. She thought of her grandmother and wished the old woman could see this.

  She switched off her comms, not wanting Kasen to hear her sappy words.

  “Wish I could take a picture for you, abue Malena. You would have loved the view.” Somehow she knew her grandmother was looking up through the Earth-sky into the blanket of stars where she floated, wishing she was up here with her. “Only the best people are the ones who get left behind,” she whispered.

  Something slammed into her from behind and an arm came around to grab her. When she used her thruster to help her twist around, she came face to face with Commander Dickson Edge himself. She gasped as he grinned at her and yanked at the module pack strapped to her back. It took her a moment to register that he was trying to rip the thruster module out of its locked position, which made no sense whatsoever. As she struggled against him, trying to twist all the way around, it finally dawned on her his thruster must not be working so he was trying to steal hers.

  “Over my dead body!” she shouted.

  The sneer on his face made it clear that’s exactly what he had in mind.

  Solomon pounded his fist against the fenestella in Conference Compartment 1B, his knuckles turning pale with effort. He wanted to fall right through the glass and go out to her.

  “No, Vida!” he yelled. “Turn around!” But she couldn’t hear him, and nothing would stop Commander Edge from his trajectory. He slammed into Vida, pushing her off-course.

  “Fight him, Vida. Fight.” With both hands now pressed to the glass, he watched in agony as Vida struggled against Edge, who was attempting to rip her thruster right off her back.

  “What the hell is he doing? Leave her alone, you bastard.”

  She fought hard, but he had her in a solid grip from behind. She tried to use the thruster to force him to release her, but he floated to the side to avoid her thruster’s exhaust. They tumbled through space, drifting farther and farther away.

  Solomon shouted at Kasen to turn around and help her, but he never wavered from his path, never looked back.

  None of the other astronauts floating by stopped to help Vida. They hurried on, thrusting past her as if she meant nothing.

  Commander Edge finally yanked the thruster from her module pack, and the force of it pushed them toward the trajectory of an oncoming trafero. Edge cruelly pushed against her with his feet, using her as a launch while he awkwardly held the thruster in his arms, but it backfired on him. Edge lost control of the thruster, and it slipped from his grasp.

  Vida spiraled out of control, and Edge followed after her. She had no way to stop herself without her thruster. She slammed into the trafero’s nose, and immediately began to tumble across the top, her arms flailing for any handholds she could find. But there was nothing, only a surface as smooth as glass. Commander Edge slid off the opposite side of the trafero and disappeared from Solomon’s view.

  “Grab a hold, Vida,” Solomon whispered to nobody but himself. Watching her body skid across that cold metal with no ability to help her was agonizing. “Anything. A bolt, the tail wing...”

  But then she slipped off the back, her body powerless to stop her momentum.

  “Fuck it all,” Solomon whispered as he watched her tumble backward. He glanced wildly around, looking for the compartment’s comm unit.

  Finally spotting it, he gave it a voice command. “Emergency contact, open comms.”

  “Emergency override code, please,” came the unit’s robot-like voice.

  “Eight-nine-three-one,” Solomon shouted, his voice breaking with the force of his words. “Vida, Vida, can you hear me?” He ignored the other voices on the open channel, the shouts, the chaos... he was waiting to hear the one voice that mattered.

  “Solomon? Solomon, where are you?”

  “I’m so sorry, Vida. I can’t get to you.”

  “Kasen Vokos, if you can hear me, I command you to return for Vida. She is heading into deep space.”

  “No, Solomon! Don’t ask him to do that. He’s almost out of oxygen. He wouldn’t make it.”

  “Vida? My God.” Kasen’s unmistakable accent burst through the comms. “What happened? I can’t see you!”

  “Kasen, it’s too late. Edge took my thruster. But you’ve got to keep going.”

  “Fuck.” Kasen’s voice came out in a growl. “I only have a minute left of oxygen, Vida.”

  “I know. I know you want to help me, baby. But you can’t. Live for me. Go now. There’s no sense in losing both our lives.”

  “No—”

  “I’m too far gone. I’ll hate you forever if you don’t go.”

  “Oh, God, Vida. Why’d you have to take so long?”

  “Because I had a job to do. I needed to save your life. We all knew the risks. I’m going to die today knowing I saved the lives of three thousand people. Not many people can put that on their resume.”

  “Vida...” Solomon didn’t know what else to say. What could he say to console her? To console Kasen? This whole disastrous plan was his idea. It was his idea to send her to Nautilus.

  “I know, Sol. It’s okay. It’s the luck of the draw. Don’t blame yourself. You’ve got to focus on surviving. I’m going to focus on taking in the sights. It’s a lovely view out here. Say hi to the freaky aliens on New Eden for me, eh, Solomon?”

  “Vida, I’m sorry. I wish I could stop this. I wish I could—”

  “Get the Reachers to safety, Chief. They still need you. You’re a good man, Solomon Reach, but you’ve got to let me go.”

  “I love you, Vida. Thank you for saving all of our lives.”

  “You’re the one who did that, Sol. I only came along for the ride. Tell Tavian... to ask out that girl in the Paradise Bar. He’ll know which one I mean.”

  “Dammit, Vida. I wish I could save you.”

  “I know. But it’ll be rather nice to go out a hero. Now let me say my goodbyes to Kasen and my grandmother. I love you. Godspeed you on your way to Paradise.”

  Solomon slammed his head against the glass as the comms went dead. Soon, Vida Rosado, his best friend and his best crewmate would be dead, and all she would have left in this galaxy to mourn her were the stars.

  ***

  Mads Graversen burst into the conference room, shouting obscenities, his usually cool demeanor already shattering into a near madness.

  “How? How do we stop it, Reach? Stop it, or I’ll kill you.”

  “I already told you.” Solomon didn’t turn. He kept his fist to the glass, struggling with an overwhelming desire to kill this man. “You’re far too late.”

  Mads didn’t even approach Solomon. He strode directly to the fenestella and stood next to him, his eyes wildly scanning the windows. Solomon glanced back toward Nautilus and gasped as hundreds of people from the Serica group stormed into Nautilus-11’s Command Bridge, not far from where Daniela Marcks’s had initiated the emergency launch sequence.

  Solomon felt a shudder beneath his feet, and he felt his heart shudder along with it. The SS Challenge was finally pulling away from the station.

  Chaos erupted on the Command Bridge. Hundreds of people pounded against the windows, their mouths open in soundless screams, as they watched the ship undock and move away.

  Graversen must have eventually spotted his wife, because his whole expression changed. His body went rigid, his hand went to the glass, and he stared open-mouthed. Solomon had long since lost sight of both Edge and Vida. They floated off in opposite directions, and he was grateful at least that Vida wouldn’t have to lay eyes on her murderer.

  “Too late to save your wife, Mads.”

  Mads turned to him. And the look in his eyes made Solomon wince and lean back. It wa
s the torture he felt only a moment ago for Vida. It was what he still felt and could not shake.

  “Would you be able to do that, Solomon?” Mads asked him without turning from the window. “Could you walk away from the woman you love, knowing with certainty you were leaving her to her death?”

  Solomon grabbed him by the collar and pointed toward the void. “I am! Right now. Vida Rosada is out there and she is going to die today because Commander Edge ripped the thruster right off her back. What kind of monsters are you people?”

  “I’m not a monster. I was trying to save Jessia’s life.”

  Solomon shoved him back and paced the room. “At the expense of everyone else. Vida was innocent. She didn’t deserve to die for your selfishness.”

  “Jessia begged me to leave her. She said at least one of us should live.”

  “She’s a smart woman.”

  “She was my responsibility.”

  “You were responsible for a lot more than one woman. What of the three thousand Reachers you’d be sentencing to death in a dying world? Reachers who built this ship for you and everyone here?”

  “You don’t think I considered the consequences of that choice every day?”

  “I think you considered it but not objectively.”

  “Ah, yes. Solomon, the wise one. The logical engineer who always makes the right decisions.”

  “I did what you taught me, remember?”

  Mads scoffed at that. “You never listened to a word I said.”

  “The moment I chose to save my crew I knew I was simultaneously condemning the Serica group to die. It was Challenge Command—you—who forced me to make that decision. You think I want their deaths on my conscience? Do you think I want Vida Rosado’s death on my head?

  Mads’s mouth drew into an ever harder line, his eyes never wavering from his wife.

  “Cold logic was what you taught me back at MIT, and I employed it well. Reachers are far more useful alive than dead. We have skill sets unlike any in the world. We’ll be the ones building your new cities and running your utilities. We’ll be the productive citizens your Serica group could never be.”

  “This isn’t a business deal involving money and politics. Lives are at stake.”

  “How did you convince Justice and Edge to go along with this?”

  Mads was quiet for a moment. Then he finally spoke. “It was Edge’s son in exchange for the Reachers.”

  “Let me ask you something, Mads. If you had to do it all over again, would you have made the same choice?”

  Mads considered his question, and then he finally looked Solomon in the eye.

  “Yes. I would.”

  “I suppose we were always meant to be enemies, then. Because I would choose to protect the Reachers again and again.”

  “At any cost?”

  “No. And that’s where we’re different. You were contractually obligated to honor our agreement. And I had an obligation to ensure my crew retained that right.”

  “And what of the obligation I have toward my wife?”

  “Remember what you said to me back at the hospital when you turned me away from my dying sister? No? I’ll remind you. ‘One girl versus the lives of so many others. Is it even a choice?’”

  The expression on Mads’s face turned to the pure rage of a man who’s had his words thrown back in his face. He did not respond, only turned on his heel and strode out of the conference room without looking back.

  Solomon finally picked out Mads’s wife in the massive crowd. She pressed her hand to the glass and stood ramrod still amid the screams and cries Solomon knew were erupting around her. He raised his hand to the glass himself, as if he could reach through it to touch her hand.

  She was beautiful. He shook his head at the thought. Was. As if she were already dead. As if he had walked her straight out into the void and let her go as he had Vida. Just the thought of Vida pricked his eyes with tears, and he let them course down his face unchecked. He hadn’t wept the day he walked away from his sister Nisolda lying so still in her hospital bed. Was he a monster back then? Or was he the monster now? He did not move to wipe the tears from his face as he stared at the woman pressing her own hand to the Nautilus’s glass. She stared at him, as did all the others surrounding her that he had condemned to die.

  With an agonizing pain in the center of his chest, he realized it had all begun this way. It seemed he was always looking out through a pane of glass at those he could not save: Vida, Nisolda, the innocents who would die aboard the Nautilus, a dying Earth. And all their deaths lay on his head. He fell to his knees, unable to look any longer. He wept for them, and left no tears for himself.

  “Solomon!” Dextra shouted from behind him. He turned around immediately, hoping she wasn’t surrounded by angry Taser-wielding Founder crew or worse: Mads Graversen again.

  Solomon’s shoulders dropped with relief. Dextra was surrounded but this time it was loyal JCorp Security Guards, including the intense Scandinavian-looking woman Katya from his earlier impromptu meeting. She and her team scanned the area and quickly spread out looking for enemies, but upon realizing the room was clear, they parted to let Dextra through to Solomon.

  Without hesitation, she rushed over to him and moved directly into his embrace, whispering, “Did Vida and Kasen make it back to the ship?”

  Still reeling from the news himself, his emotions caught somewhere between his chest and his throat, he could only shake his head and say, “Kasen made it.”

  “Vida?”

  Solomon shook his head and blew out a breath, trying not to picture Vida spinning forever surrounded by an endless black void.

  He glanced up at Katya. “What is your plan now?”

  “That’s up to you, Chief Reach.”

  “Commander Edge is dead,” Solomon said, unable to keep the anger from his voice.

  She gave one curt nod to acknowledge she was aware of this recent development and studied his expression. “Do you want to take his place?”

  Solomon’s jaw dropped. “What do you mean, take his place?”

  There was bound to be a hierarchy for these kinds of things. Maybe Mads Graversen or Alexandra Justice or even Docking Commander Marcks, if she had made it aboard.

  “Do you want to be the new commander of the SS Challenge, Chief Reach?”

  He stared at her with no idea what to say. He was still trying to grasp that he had just lost his best crewmate and the ship lost its commander.

  “I don’t think so,” he stammered out, glancing down at Dextra. He half-expected her to start spouting the rules against such a thing, but she only looked up at him expectantly. “There’s bound to be a set protocol—”

  “Good. Then that means the job is yours,” Katya stated flatly.

  “Now hang on,” Dextra started in, “this has to go through the Joint Procedural—”

  Ah, now there was his Dextra. Rather than annoying him, it made him want to kiss her and gather her even closer into his arms.

  “Time is past for rules and procedures.” Katya’s tone was clipped.

  Solomon stared at Katya, thinking hard. With Mads or Alexandra in charge of the ship, he’d surely find himself out on a long spacewalk in short order. And now that he’d saved his crew, he probably needed to consider how he might save himself.

  But to take over command of the entire ship, which was no less than a mutiny of the highest order? Did he have the balls to do that? On the flip side, he was qualified in many regards. He knew this ship backward and forward; he had security clearance; he had the loyalty of at least half, if not more, of the combined crews.

  “Solomon?” Dextra whispered.

  He waited for her to give him all the reasons why he should surrender himself to Challenge Command.

  “I think you should take it.”

  “What? You’re serious?” He couldn’t hide the surprise from his face.

  “Katya’s right.”

  “Frankly, I’m well aware that if your mother or Gravers
en gain control, they’ll either throw me in lockdown or walk me. Neither sounds appealing. And given the circumstances, I’m probably the most qualified to take the position since I’m so familiar with the systems aboard this ship.”

  Dextra held his gaze, mulling over his words, it seemed. After an interminable moment, she finally nodded. “Take it.” Her mouth curled up into a smile. “But just remember: I don’t like it.”

  He flashed her a crooked grin. “I’d be disappointed if you did.”

  Solomon glanced around at the rest of the crew surrounding Katya, taking stock. A JCorp team of five stood alert, ready for anything. A stern-faced dark-haired woman he’d never seen before kept her un-blinking stare on Solomon, watching his every move. Two men of Middle-Eastern descent stood to the right, hands at their Lewies. And another woman with long blonde hair methodically tapped a shockstick against her leg. One guard with an ugly red scar across his forehead stood slightly apart from the others and kept his eyes and Taser trained toward the group’s rear out in the corridor.

  “All of you would accept my leadership? Janus Corp and the Reachers have always had a good relationship, if strained at times. But this is something altogether different.”

  Slow nods came from everyone except Scarface in the back. He had his eyes on something out in the corridor. At that moment, Angel, Janus, and Peter strode through the open slider.

  “Are you ready to take control of the SS Challenge, Chief Reach?” Angel asked, her tone even.

  “This was your idea, wasn’t it?” Solomon countered.

  The barest smile hinted at her answer.

  He nodded in acknowledgement. “Thank you for your assistance today.”

  “The day isn’t over yet,” she replied.

  “True. There’s one thing I have to ask first, Angel.”

  She waited with no visible signs of impatience for him to finish.

  “Is all of JCorp loyal to you? Because I recently had an uncomfortable run-in with several of your crew in the Olympia Vivarium.”