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

by Cheri Lasota

“Vida’s death is on your head.”

  “I know it.” Solomon nodded. “I know—”

  “She trusted you. I trusted you.” Kasen’s voice was hard as iron, and he wiped the remnants of beer and spittle from his mouth as he stared Solomon down.

  “If I could trade her life for mine, I would do it.”

  “Kasen,” Tavian said, rising unsteadily to his feet, “Let’s you and I head to Deck 16. We can drink some more and—”

  “No!” Kasen shouted. He shoved Solomon’s chair aside, knocking it to the ground. Tavian came around the table to stand closer to Kasen while Brooker walked up behind him and made a movement to restrain him. But Solomon shook his head, motioning them both back.

  “Kasen, I am your commander aboard this ship.” Solomon kept his voice as low and even as he could. “Beyond this night, you must control your anger in a way you’ve never had to do before. I know Vida was always there to bring you back from the edge, and you’ve lost that—you’ve lost her. I know more than anyone else here how profound your loss is because I feel that same loss.”

  “You have no idea how I feel.” Kasen’s words were clipped with rage.

  Solomon felt his own anger rising. “I do, because I loved her too. Always have, always will.” And he meant it. It wasn’t that long ago he had missed his chance with her back at university. But then he glanced at Dextra and remembered that life would go on because it had to. And because he had someone in his life worth living for.

  “She told me. Told me you had a thing for her. Well, now it’s all too late, isn’t it?”

  “Kasen, you want to take a shot at me? Then do it.” Solomon stood, legs apart, waiting.

  “Solomon, no,” Dextra said, touching his arm, but he pressed her behind his back when he saw Kasen was going to take him up on his offer. He barely had the time to get Dextra behind him before Kasen’s right hook landed a solid punch to his eye.

  Solomon shook his head to clear the spinning lights in his vision, and squinted out at Kasen. The look in his eyes was one of belligerent and raging grief, and he was winding up for another shot. Solomon might have let him keep going but Tavian and Brooker weren’t having any of that. They grabbed Kasen by the arms while he erupted into a slew of obscenities that would have made Vida slap him upside the head.

  Dextra came around to examine his eye, but he stayed her hand as she reached up to his face.

  “I’d let you keep going, Kasen, but this ship needs a functioning commander to get her through that wormhole.”

  “Coward!” Kasen shouted, straining against Brooker and Tavian. “I could kill you.”

  “Tavian and Brooker, take him back to his berth and make sure he sleeps this off.”

  “Boss, you gotta throw him in lockdown.” Tavian spoke quietly, since all eyes were on them.

  Solomon didn’t respond. It wasn’t like Tavian to defy his orders, but he understood. Solomon needed to assert his authority so that everyone looking on would see him as a strong leader willing and able to carry out justice. But there were other kinds of justice that had nothing to do with saving face.

  Solomon just shook his head at Tavian and motioned them off. Kasen never let up on the obscenities as they walked him out, but his shouts were lost now in all the talking that erupted in every corner of the bar.

  “Solomon, what the hell were you thinking?” Dextra was there again at his side, touching at his eyelid to inspect the damage. He waved her away, so he could pick up the chair Kasen had knocked over.

  “It may sound strange, but the pain feels good.”

  “What on Earth are you talking about?” She shook her head in disgust. “You should have had him go straight to the lockdown. Protocol dictates it.”

  “Feels like a just punishment, you know? Like I gave Kasen a little bit more control of a situation that he has no control over.”

  “No, I don’t.”

  Solomon wrinkled his nose, and groaned as his eye smarted. “I know how he feels, because I watched it all. I saw Commander Edge go after Vida from the safety of that Command conference room. And I couldn’t do anything to stop it. That feeling... well, it’s worse than getting punched in the face. Do you see?”

  “Sometimes you just make no sense to me, Solomon.”

  “I know, but maybe when I take you on a real date, you can uncover all my secrets and figure me out.”

  She raised an eyebrow. “A date?”

  “Anything against that in your eight-thousand page protocol manual?”

  She rolled her eyes at him. “It isn’t eight thousand pages, Commander Reach.”

  “Oh, so now it’s commander again, is it?” He smiled and pulled her to him, kissing her right there in front of everyone. He closed his eyes, and listened to all the gasps swirling around him. “My name is Solomon Reach, Miss Justice,” he murmured in her ear as he pulled back to look at the reddening glow on her pale cheeks. “And I’m pretty sure that just by existing, I render your rule book obsolete.”

  She was about to protest, but he clanked together their shot glasses loudly and jumped up on top of his chair.

  “Crew of the SS Challenge, may I have your attention? I would like to ask you to raise your glasses in a toast to one of our fallen: Drive Ops Chief Vida Rosado.”

  Around the bar, crew members stood up and held their glasses high, including Dextra beside him. He smiled at her, and tears welled in her eyes.

  “Vida lost her life in order to save all of us. I will tell you the truth—a truth I saw with my own eyes: it was Commander Dickson Edge who took her life in an attempt to save his own.

  “But Vida would not want her death to divide us. Founder or Reacher crew made no matter to Vida. She died for all of you. So we honor her sacrifice today and always. Life will always be her legacy. To Vida!”

  Six Months Later

  Nearing Sideris Station

  Sun-Jupiter Lagrange Point 4

  “Solomon?”

  “Hmm...?”

  “Do it again.”

  Solomon, his heart still pounding from their recent exertions, opened one eye and squinted over at Dextra lying naked next to him in the semi-darkness.

  “You better be good, or I’ll drag you into the infamous G-Room and make love to you on the ceiling.”

  “Yes, please...” She tucked in her chin and looked up at him with those impossibly dark eyes that had always made him weak all over. “Come to think of it, you haven’t taken me in there yet.”

  With a laugh, he pulled her beneath him and ran his hand from her thigh to her lips.

  “You know the G-Room is off limits to anyone not involved in the human reproduction experiments, right?”

  She grinned impishly and didn’t say a word.

  “Ah, I see. Since when are you a rule breaker, Mizz Justice?”

  “Since I met you.”

  “No longer living up to your name, then,” he teased, planting a playful kiss on her forehead and sliding over to lie closer to her.

  “Ha ha,” she said, her tone mocking. “Think I haven’t heard that one before?”

  He studied her face. “Is that why?”

  “Why what?” She shivered and pulled the sheet up to hug her body.

  “Why you went into the procedural group when the crews were mobilizing.”

  “No, it was my mother.”

  “What do you mean?” Solomon reached for her under the sheet, and rested his hand on her hip.

  “My father was the one with the irreproachable honesty and ethics. I admired that most about him. Everyone did. But my mother was... well, you’ve seen her.”

  Solomon nodded. “Swayed by the lure of power more than anyone I’ve ever met—and that’s saying something.”

  Dextra sighed and glanced away. “Yes, which is why I’m glad she’s still in lockdown, so she can’t be swayed by anyone else. But in any case, her lack of ethics made me all the more interested in the subject. Besides, I needed to make myself useful on this ship, or they would have kicke
d me out long ago.”

  “A good thing too. Who else would keep me on the straight and narrow?”

  “Who, indeed?” She kissed his shoulder as she snuggled closer.

  “At this juncture, I feel it necessary to point out I didn’t turn into a criminal until your bosses went rogue.”

  “Excuses, excuses.” Her laugh was soft, and the smell of her lilac-scented hair filled his senses with memories of earth and flower gardens. As he threaded his fingers through her glossy black hair, he wondered if they had lilacs on the new planet.

  Dextra turned his face toward her, toward the meager light afforded by his bedside table lamp.

  “Solomon?” Concern etched deep into her face, as she ran gentle fingers across his cheek. “Why won’t you have Kasen put in lockdown?”

  Solomon sighed. “Not this again. Dextra, I told you. I owe him. He’s lost the love of his life. And I was the only reason Vida was over on the Nautilus-11. Her death was my fault.”

  “That was six months ago, and he’s still as volatile as ever. He isn’t getting better. He has it out for you, which makes him a danger to everyone aboard this ship. And you’re wrong, you know. Challenge Command was the only reason Vida Rosado was over there. Because they were the ones who breached protocol.”

  “It isn’t that simple. I broke protocol, too—or don’t you remember?”

  “Sometimes the rules have to be broken in order to set things to rights—even if I don’t like it. Chief Solomon Reach taught me that.”

  “It’s Commander now, you know...” he murmured into her hair as he ran a hand over her bare stomach.

  “You were still a chief back then, Commander.”

  He couldn’t stop the smile from forming on his lips. “It always comes back to the greater good, doesn’t it?”

  She contemplated this pearl of wisdom, and then broke into a grin.

  “The greater good dictates that you do that again.”

  “What?”

  “That thing you did with your tongue earlier.”

  “Ah, yes. Pretty sure that one isn’t in your rule book.”

  “The rules don’t apply when I’m off duty.”

  That was all the invitation he needed. “This time, I’m starting from the top,” he whispered into her ear, the touch of his tongue on her neck eliciting a gasp from her lips. He had to admit that for an awkward engineer, he was getting rather good at this.

  Solomon’s UiComm buzzed loudly. He let out a profound sigh and rolled his eyes at an exasperated Dextra.

  “Ignore them,” she said, biting at his chest. “It can wait.”

  He shook his head, knowing already what the call was about.

  “Yes,” he responded.

  “Commander, the SS Challenge will be docking at Sideris Station in approximately one hour.”

  “All right, all right. Heading to the Command Bridge now.”

  “You owe me one, Commander Reach,” Dextra whispered.

  “I owe you my life, Mizz Justice.” He leaned back down to kiss her one last time.

  “Damn right you do.”

  “How about I make it up to you right now?”

  “Yes?” she asked, brightening.

  “Want to see Jupiter up close and personal with me?”

  Her bright smile took a nosedive. “Depends.”

  Solomon raised an eyebrow. “On what?”

  “Do you use that line on all the girls?”

  He burst out with a loud laugh. “Definitely not. But now that you mention it... it is a very good line.”

  ***

  “Docking sequence initiated, Zeiss at Sideris Station on stand-by?” Solomon asked the Command Group at large, as he and Dextra walked side by side onto the SS Challenge’s Command Bridge. Everyone was at their stations, save for the noticeably absent Docking Commander Daniela Marcks, who had not made it aboard the ship in time.

  During the six months of travel time between Nautilus-11 Space Station and Sideris Station, which orbited Jupiter from within Jupiter-Sun Lagrange Point 4, Solomon had tried to talk to her son, Zander Marcks, several times. But the boy had wanted nothing to do with him. Solomon didn’t blame him. He, alone, was directly responsible for the loss of the boy’s mother.

  “Yes, Commander. We’re ready for docking. Zeiss on the other hand...” The new docking commander, Fen Rhodes, flashed him a look of frustration and ran his hand up his ruddy face to rub his bloodshot eyes. Rhodes, a notoriously irritable American from somewhere out west, got along with only one person: XO Alexandra Justice. There was much speculation they had a relationship, but Solomon doubted it. Edge had always been her target: in the bed or on the Command Bridge, she had always sought his power.

  “Is she or is she not ready for us?” Solomon pressed.

  “Oh, she’s ready all right. Rolling out the red carpet.” The man had been stroking his dirty blond goatee and suddenly flung up his hands in disbelief. “Said she’s been ready for three days and gave me an earful on proper docking procedure.”

  “Yes, well, that’s protocol.” Solomon smirked at Dextra.

  Rhodes didn’t respond; he whirled around in his chair, mumbled obscenities to himself, and got on with his work.

  “Dextra, come take a look with me?” Solomon asked, his voice softened by the very recent memory of her silky skin as she lay next to him in the dark.

  She smiled as they descended down into the main brains of the operation, where they happened to have the best view in the house. The fenestellas here on the bridge were broad and substantially higher than those throughout the rest of the ship. There was also a great deal more radiation protection inside the glass.

  Set up near one of them was a state-of-the-art telescope. The command crew had had it trained on Jupiter of late, considering how close they were to Sideris Station now.

  “Here, take a look,” Solomon said, motioning Dextra forward. “Jupiter is about two years out from where we are now in Sun-Jupiter L4.”

  “Wow,” Dextra whispered with a gasp. He knew what she was seeing without having to look: the breathtaking view of a jaw-dropping Jupiter, its moons orbiting in a silent dance around its magnificent body for millennia.

  “I know Jupiter’s not full at this angle—maybe eighty percent at most—but at least you get to see the Great Red Spot.”

  She glanced up at him, wonder making her eyes nearly glow. “Thank you for showing me this.”

  Solomon grinned. “Did Jupiter win me a date?”

  Dextra smirked and punched his arm. “No, but the moon Io did. She’s gorgeous!”

  “Excellent. I’ll take you somewhere fancy. Would a new galaxy suit?”

  She feigned a bored look. “Well enough, I suppose.”

  “You’re tough to impress.”

  “I’m not going to make it easy for you, Commander.”

  He walked her over to the fenestella revealing a full view of the rapidly looming Sideris Station, which was attached to a massive asteroid. He hadn’t been out to this remote station since before the ten other Asteria-class ships had left for the Andromeda galaxy. It had held up well thanks to Alarica Zeiss’s iron-fisted management.

  Reach Corp had built Sideris Station in stages, with the process taking several painstaking years of design and construction. They first lassoed the well-known 243 Ida Trojan asteroid along with its moon Dactyl and hauled them to a relatively uncluttered area of L4, the forward-most Lagrange Point in the Jupiter-Sun System.

  They mined the iron from Dactyl and began hollowing out asteroid Ida to make room for some of the station’s inner facilities as well as the quadrant 1 bay leading into the asteroid and toward the Sideris Gate, a concentric Ford-Svaiter mirror array at the far end of the asteroid’s quadrant 2.

  From this vantage point of two-dozen kilometers out from the station, they could see the various towers constructed into the Ida’s surface, most of them research facilities built for Founder astrophysicists to study the Sideris Cavum among other things. Those Founders
were a galaxy away now. Only the station’s eccentric commander remained.

  “You’ve met Commander Alarica Zeiss?” Dextra asked.

  “Yes, a few times. She runs a tight ship, so to speak. You’ll meet her soon. Best advice? Try not to piss her off.”

  “Self-sufficient, then?”

  “That’s one way of putting it.”

  ***

  “You lot have everything in order?” an annoyed Alarica Zeiss said after the Sideris Station’s Main Hatch slid open.

  Solomon smiled. “Commander.”

  The commander tucked her jet-black bobbed hair behind her ear and attempted a smile. It didn’t work out. She had been out here for two years on her own with minimal systems running and rare communication to and from Nautilus-11. She had probably forgotten how to smile.

  “This better be your entire boarding party.” Zeiss glanced sternly at Dextra, and the four other Founder crew members who stood behind them, waiting to enter. “I don’t want a bunch of idiots running about making messes on my station.”

  He was itching to remind her they would shortly be leaving this station—and the galaxy for that matter—forever, and it wouldn’t matter, but he kept his mouth shut.

  “Yes, indeed. Any issues with the station we need to be aware of before we open the gate, Commander Zeiss?”

  “Does it look like it?” She scrunched up her face, and slid her boxy glasses up the bridge of her nose with her middle finger and stuck her thumb in the air indicating the spotless corridor behind her. She narrowed her eyes at him. “I don’t recognize any of you. Where is Commander Edge, eh?”

  “We had some issues at the undocking. Commander Edge is dead.”

  She took in this information without flinching. “Didn’t like that bastard anyway.”

  Solomon couldn’t help his smile. “We have that in common.”

  She took one more long moment to look him over, and then waved them on to follow her.

  “You better not be tracking any Earth microbes onto my station floors. Wipe your boots on the mat.”

  Solomon glanced down, already knowing what it would say: “Touch me. I want to feel dirty.”

  He exchanged a stifled laugh with Dextra and followed Zeiss deeper into the station. Sideris had a darker feel to it than its counterpart, Nautilus-11, due to the mined iron making up the majority of its bulkheads and floors. That rough-hewn aesthetic was carried into the furniture of the living quarters and mess hall, which made the station the perfect environment for Zeiss but not so much for the rest of the space population who inevitably craved a more Earth-like feel. Rarely had anyone volunteered for a rotation out here, even to perform the fascinating experiments needed to develop the wormhole. Of the hundreds employed here over the years, almost all were assigned begrudgingly.