The Star Bell (The Cendrillon Cycle Book 3)

by Stephanie Ricker

  Guilt stung her again. She had no choice but to leave—she truly believed that, certainly at the time—but every now and again her refusal to give up on being a cinder had felt as though she had given up on something else, her father’s work to rebuild Anser into a thriving planet again. No one had taken up the gauntlet after his death; she was grieved to hear that Anser’s prosperity had become a lost cause.

  “Have you ever thought of going back?” Godfrey asked, scrutinizing her face.

  Elsa hesitated, then shook her head. “Not seriously. I don’t want to leave my crew. My family is here now.”

  Godfrey’s face did not register comprehension. “But they’re just your coworkers,” he replied. “I don’t get it. And besides,” he added, “anyone who gave your father trouble is long gone now. The mining company has no dealings whatsoever with Anser.”

  Elsa’s brow furrowed, bothered by several things in those words. “Now I don’t understand you. You work in a rigger crew, yes? Don’t you have close friends you rely on? Like family?”

  But Godfrey’s face told her he still couldn’t relate. “We’re a team, yeah,” he said. “They aren’t family, though. It’s just a job.”

  Frustrated, Elsa didn’t know how to articulate the difference—how with her team, they were all such close friends, had worked together for so long, that they could almost read each other’s thoughts. They ate together, worked together, relaxed together, squabbled together, just like a family. But something else was worrying at the edge of her mind like a hund worrying a toy. “What do you mean, about someone giving my father trouble on Anser? I never heard anything about that.” Her heart was beating faster, and she couldn’t tell why.

  Godfrey looked at her strangely. “The grant your father was expecting, from the Tremaine Mining Company. You remember that?” It was more of a statement than a question.

  “Obviously,” Elsa snapped, then tamped down her impatience. The blasted grant was the cause of most of her debt. Her father had purchased food and fuel transports for the community with the promise that the grant was on its way to pay for them. Her father believed that the Tremaine Mining Company should be required to make reparations since they had reaped the profits of the war. But the promised grant had never appeared, and Helias Vogel—and, after his death, his daughter—had been left to pay the bill. “What of it?”

  “It was rejected because the Tremaine Mining Company took issue with the community representative who made the proposal,” Godfrey explained.

  But that was no explanation at all. “But my father made the proposal,” Elsa said, uncomprehending.

  “Exactly.”

  “That makes no sense. All he ever wanted was to put our world back together—”

  Godfrey lifted a hand. “I know, I know. But I remember him telling my dad that the grant was rejected because he was the one to make it. He wanted my mom to run for representative the next season so that she could make her own proposal. There was some kind of prejudice against Helias Vogel on the part of the Tremaine Mining Company.”

  “But…why did I never hear about this?” Elsa asked, baffled. “What could have been their reason for such a prejudice? My father had no connections to the company whatsoever!”

  Godfrey shrugged, not unsympathetically. “Maybe he did have, and you just didn’t know.”

  Elsa tried not to feel stung by that. After her mother’s death, she and her father had been so close. She didn’t think they had any secrets from each other. Maybe she had been wrong. Coming so soon after her discussion with Karl about her father’s death, she had the feeling she didn’t know nearly as much about her father as she thought she did.

  Elsa left dinner earlier than she had planned, the desire to catch up with Godfrey diminished by her desire to be alone and think about her father’s life and death.

  When she reached her cabin, she put on her Fleet-issued headset and settled in for some research, mouth set in a thin line. The light from the star bell pulsed gently, an oddly comforting presence in the otherwise empty cabin. The Sovereign was far enough out that the information web transfers would take a little time, but she could at least begin the process; the star bell would serve as an information relay for the more far-flung downloads from Anser. The headset projected a screen in front of her, allowing her to search for copies of her father’s medical records, his death certificate, and anything else in his official record that she could find. She cross-referenced it all with the Tremaine Mining Company, and searched for any records of the grant proposal that Helias Vogel had made on Anser. While she was at it, she pulled her mother’s records, the records of her parents’ marriage and her own birth, and anything else she could think of that might possibly mention her father. With a flick of her fingers, she dumped all of the files—which turned out to be quite a few—into her download queue, browsing them as they came in and storing the files in her commlink.

  Most of the files contained information she already knew. She skimmed through them quickly, seeking anything that might provide answers to her recent questions. Her father’s birth record finished downloading, and she brought that file up on the projected screen next.

  Elsa’s eyes widened. The name on her father’s birth record was Helias Tremaine.

  Bruno’s door chime jerked him violently from sleep. He jumped out of bed before he was fully awake and stood there in the middle of his cabin, puzzled by what he was doing there. His door chimed again, and he exhaled, blinking sleep-bleary eyes.

  He slapped the door controls, feeling quarrelsome. This better be important. His annoyance fled when the door slid open to reveal Elsa standing in the corridor, wild-eyed. “Whoa. What happened?”

  “Can I talk to you?” she asked, voice oddly restrained.

  “Of course,” he said, stepping back to let her in. He eyed her disheveled state. “Did you even sleep?” He gestured for her to take a seat on the couch and settled onto the other end himself, his left foot propped on his opposite knee.

  “What? No.” She looked around his cabin, noting the unmade bed and finally registering his t-shirt and pajama pants. “Oh! What time is it?” she asked in bewilderment.

  He squinted at his bedside clock, which was just a little too far away to read easily. His vision wasn’t quite what it used to be, but he wouldn’t admit it. “About two in the morning, by ship’s time.”

  She winced. “I’m so sorry; you probably have work tomorrow. Today.”

  He waved her apology aside. “Clearly something’s wrong. Out with it.”

  She sat. “I learned something today,” she said, hands carefully on her knees as if she were afraid of what they would do if she let them go. “There’s no one I trust more than you, so I want to tell you. Maybe you can figure out what to make of it.”

  Bruno sat up a little straighter, touched that he was the one she came to in the middle of the night with her worries.

  “I think my father might have been murdered,” she said, holding her breath as if she half-expected him to ridicule the idea.

  The foot propped up on his knee hit the floor with a thump. “What? How? What gave you that idea?”

  “I started looking into his death. Something Godfrey mentioned on top of something Karl said made me start digging through his records. I wasn’t in a place to think clearly, when the accident first happened, and that was what we all thought it was—an accident.” She paused. “Here, let me show you.” She brought out her commlink and scooted closer to Bruno on the couch, opening file after file on the screen.

  “Here’s the marriage record between Lies Brabant—that was my mother—and Helias Vogel, my father. Place of residence: the town of Gahmuret on Anser. But this is the first document with the name Helias Vogel on it. There isn’t any earlier record with that name, and believe me, I looked.”

  She pulled up another file. “Here’s the birth record listed for Helias Vogel. But look at the name.”

  “Helias Tremaine,” Bruno read out loud. He remembered Elsa
saying her father hated the mining company. “He just happened to have that last name, and he changed it so he wouldn’t be associated with the Tremaine Mining Company?”

  “That’s what I thought at first,” Elsa said, growing more animated, “but now I don’t think so.” She hunted for another file. “It took some digging; for some reason this part of his birth record wasn’t accessible even with Karl’s upper-level access, but I got in touch with Priscilla and Camilla on Aschen who were able to bypass the security codes. They say hello, by the way,” she said absently as she opened up the file. “Look at the names of his parents.”

  Bruno read them, and whistled long and low. “Illefort and Beatrix Tremaine. Oh, girl. You’re in it now.” Illefort was the son of Kagan Tremaine, one of the founders of the Tremaine Mining Company—and possibly the most powerful man in the Common Union. The Tremaine Mining Company had existed before Kagan, but it might as well not have, so much did it change under his leadership. He forged it into a powerful force, economically and politically, one that essentially dictated how and where the Common Union—and by extension, the Fleet—took action within Union space. Everything from commerce to space travel depended on the cendrillon, and cendrillon required the Tremaine Mining Company. The Tremaine Mining Company had gone from a small cendrillon mining operation among many to the sole mining company in the Common Union due to Kagan’s genius for business and absolute lack of moral scruples.

  The Tremaines, for all of their power and influence, were very private people, and they mostly kept their family out of the public eye. Bruno dimly recalled a scandal when their oldest grandson renounced his family’s fortune and fell off the grid entirely; that had only made the news because Kagan Tremaine publically disowned the grandson and appointed another grandson, Solon, as heir to his cendrillon empire. The old man never did retire, though, and kept amassing more power and wealth until he finally died, long after his children. Solon made Kagan look moderate by comparison; the Tremaines were not to be meddled with lightly.

  Elsa continued, “My father rejected his family completely, refused to follow the career path that had been laid out for him, and instead became an astroglaciologist. He formally renounced all connection with his family, changed his name, and went to work on Anser, which is where he met my mother.”

  Bruno ran a hand over his jaw, which was sandpapery with nearly a day’s beard growth. “Can’t blame him. They’re not exactly a cuddly bunch of folks, by all accounts. This would explain his distaste for cendrillon that you’ve mentioned. But—you think they killed him off? Why?”

  “My father requested grant money from the Tremaine Mining Company to pay for supplies on Anser during the war, and the grant was promised, but Godfrey told me the grant was rejected once the company realized my father was the one to make it. This was right before he died. I never thought about it before, but it was also right after Kagan Tremaine died.”

  Elsa scooted closer, voice rising in excitement. “What if someone at the Tremaine Mining Company misinterpreted his request? I read over the grant proposal—Dad says he’s seeking reparations for Anser. But couldn’t that have looked like a power bid? With Kagan dead, my father could have tried to get a piece of his old inheritance: a disgraced heir trying to retake the throne, so to speak. He wasn’t, of course,” she added. “But that’s how people like the Tremaines would think. I think they sent someone to confront him, and there was some kind of struggle.”

  Bruno grimaced. “That’s a big stretch. You don’t have any evidence of that, do you?”

  Elsa held up an old, massive commlink triumphantly. “I’ve always kept this. I found it in the snow near where my father died. It still has his old files on it. See?” She showed Bruno a projected map of Anser, blue-white and wild. Bruno tried not to flinch. He hadn’t seen that world since the aftermath of the Battle of Castle Nebula, and that was not a good memory.

  Elsa continued, unaware of his discomfort. “Dad would leave me a map of his projected route every time he went out on the snowfields, and they’re all still here. He used to talk to himself, to the hunds, it didn’t really matter—but he would leave himself voice recordings, especially notes about his work. I listen to them every now and again; I love to hear his voice. Everything is still here,” she repeated more quietly.

  Her expression made her look so young and vulnerable that Bruno softened in spite of himself.

  But she quickly became all business again. “I checked the deletion records on his commlink for the first time—it never occurred to me to do so before; I was convinced his death was an accident. His skills were excellent, but accidents like that do happen on Anser, no matter how good you are. It’s a hard place to live. But I don’t think his death was an accident anymore. There was a voice record deleted from his commlink on the day he died.”

  She made this last statement as triumphantly as though it clarified everything, but Bruno didn’t see the significance. “So? He deleted a file that day. That’s not unusual.”

  Elsa smiled. “You didn’t know my father. He never deleted anything, never threw anything away. My mom—and later I—would come along behind him and throw out old socks and t-shirts, because he never would.” She raised the old, heavy commlink. “He kept this old hunk of junk for years instead of getting a newer model. I think there was something in that voice recording that incriminated whoever was there that day with my father, so they deleted it. What they didn’t know, however, was that because my father did hoard files, he had to upload them to storage often so his commlink didn’t fill up. He had his commlink set to do that automatically every day, and I think that same deleted file is still in his file storage back on Anser.”

  Bruno raised a finger to slow her down. “But why didn’t this assailant just take the commlink if it had damning evidence on it? Why leave it to be found by you?”

  Elsa’s face brightened. “I’m glad you asked! They had to leave it somewhere near him. Taking the commlink would’ve planted more suspicion. I knew my father had it on him when he left home, and the ruling of an accidental death depended on the fact that he was completely alone—as far as anyone knew—out there.”

  Bruno found himself beginning to believe in spite of himself. “Were you able to access his file storage account?”

  Elsa shook her head. “Unfortunately not. Anser’s data satellite system was notoriously patchy when I lived there—it’s probably even worse now—and uploads frequently aborted; I couldn’t get into the account from here. I’d need to be close to the Anser satellites to access his storage.”

  Bruno thought. “So there’s nothing you can do, then. Even with the altered plans to return to the star bell after our first mission, there won’t be an opportunity for you to get anywhere near Anser for at least a year.”

  She fidgeted, clearly unhappy with the idea. “I know.” She looked up at him, torn. “I want to go on the one-year voyage, but I hate to leave this investigation alone for so long. And then there’s the issue of the Tremaine Mining Company’s involvement with the Fleet.”

  Bruno frowned, tilting his head. “What do you mean?”

  She hesitated. “Well, now that I know of the bad blood between my father and the rest of the Tremaines—and that they might have had something to do with his death—I feel uncomfortable supporting them in any way. I know, I know,” she said, holding up a hand to forestall his protest, “I worked for the Tremaine Mining Company for years. But that was before I knew better. I’m certainly glad that I’m not a cinder anymore, working directly for the mining company. But the Fleet is essentially at the beck and call of the mining company. The Common Union has become the pawn of the Tremaines, and I don’t think I want any part of that.” She set her jaw. “Maybe it’s time the Fleet disassociated itself from both the mining company and the Common Union.”

  “Hang on just a minute,” Bruno protested. “That’s ridiculous. You’re talking about reversing decades upon decades of political decisions based on something as insubstantial
as a deleted file in your dad’s commlink. You can’t separate the Fleet from the Common Union. You can’t separate the Common Union from the Tremaine Mining Company. Don’t be daft.”

  Elsa bristled. “The Fleet wasn’t always subservient to the Common Union. Karl told me the Fleet is older than the Union; it originated solely as a force for exploration and scientific research.”

  Bruno huffed. “Yeah, the better part of a century ago. What exploration would there be today, without the cendrillon? You can’t untie these relationships. They’re all dependent on one another.”

  “That’s the justification that was used to start the Cendrillon Wars almost two decades ago,” Elsa argued.

  “This is how it is,” Bruno spat out. “Stars, I don’t like it either. I turned my back on the Fleet because I had nothing but contempt for how events were handled leading up the Battle of Castle Nebula.” He remembered his own disbelief when Katrin warned him that she thought the Common Union was aware of the precipitating attacks in the Avis system but did nothing to stop them—even brought them on by an unprovoked attack of their own against Demesne forces near the fay homeworld. “I was bitter towards the Common Union for years, and as a result I didn’t seek reinstatement in the Fleet after the battle.”

  He had never told Elsa that part, and the new information mollified her anger somewhat. Only somewhat. “What changed?” she demanded.

  “We made peace!” he said in exasperation, throwing his hands up in the air. “The Common Union and the Demesne—or the Tremaine Mining Company and the Demesne mining companies, if you prefer to see it that way—share mining rights now.”

  “Supposedly,” Elsa scoffed. “Each new discovery of a chthonian planet is cause for endless wrangling as they sort out who gets the rights to each world, while the pirates grow bolder and the black market grows more pervasive.”

  “But even that, civilized debate between the two mining forces, is something that hasn’t happened before in my lifetime.” He looked at her imploringly. “See it? This is progress. The years since the peace accords have been better than life has been in decades. I refused to be a part of a war between cendrillon companies, but now the Fleet plays a big role in keeping the peace. The way I see it, I’m strengthening that peace by serving in the Fleet again.”