The Star Bell (The Cendrillon Cycle Book 3)

by Stephanie Ricker

  She wrapped the bindings of her gloves around her arms, eliminating any avenue for cold to seep in between glove and parka. She would be far too warm in the skiff for the next few minutes, but that feeling of being extra toasty before going outside into the cold was a comfortable, familiar one for her. It reminded her of being bundled into her parka by her parents, waiting in the foyer until they were all ready to go outside together. That first bite of cold upon stepping outside always felt so good against her warm face.

  Cilla fiddled with her own gloves for a moment, then came to Elsa. “I like how you did that. Can you help me with mine?”

  Elsa paused for a beat as Cilla looked at her expectantly. “Oh, of course. Let me show you.”

  She finished the job quickly and strode over to Karl. He was plotting out his course for Atticora and hadn’t zipped up his parka yet.

  Quick as thought, she stepped into his personal space, moved one side of his parka out of the way, and pulled his sidearm from the holster. She thumbed the safety off, spun, and aimed the weapon at Cilla in one fluid motion, grateful for her recent experience with the pistols. She noted that the pistol wasn’t full charged, but it certainly had enough power to take Cilla out.

  Cilla’s eyes widened in fear, and she immediately raised her hands in surrender.

  “Whoa, what the hell?” Karl exclaimed. “Elsa, what are you doing?”

  “She’s lying to us,” Elsa snapped.

  “Elsa, calm down.” Karl raised his own hands and edged himself around Elsa. He looked as though he were going to move between her and Cilla.

  “Stay back, Karl,” Elsa warned. “She’s not who she claims to be.”

  “And how do you know that?” he asked, the same enforced calm in his voice that she had heard when they were exploring the new planet.

  “She’s not Anser-born,” Elsa said bluntly. “You slipped up once too often,” she accused Cilla. “I might’ve bought your reason for not knowing an Anser joke as old as the settlements, but every Anser-born child learns how to wrap their gloves before they’re ever allowed outside to play.” Survival in frigid conditions required a strong respect—from a very young age—for how fast the climate could kill you if you weren’t careful. Anyone who had lived on the planet knew that. Cilla couldn’t possibly be from Anser.

  “When I told the story about mining on Rhodophis, you said you had never encountered magma rain,” Elsa continued. “Almost every chthonian planet has magma rain at some point. At the time I just figured that your experience had been limited to only one mining world, but you were never a cinder at all, were you?” She glared at the other woman, pistol rock-steady in her hand.

  Karl lowered his hands and turned to Cilla as well, waiting for her answer.

  Cilla shook her head slowly, eyes tear-filled once more. “You’re right, I didn’t grow up here—although I did visit once, years ago. I always remembered it because it seemed so perfectly desolate. Just what I wanted.”

  She took a shaky breath. “And no. I was never a cinder. I had to come up with a plausible story. The truth…the truth is that I’m lucky…” Her mouth twisted in bitterness. “I’m one of the lucky few with DNA that can be cloned.”

  Elsa sucked in a breath, and Karl cursed.

  Cloning human beings had been done for decades, but the legality of it was constantly in dispute. Not because people believed humans shouldn’t be replicated in the first place, but because of the incredible difficulty of finding a suitable egg donor. In the early days of cloning, scientists had quickly discovered that only certain human beings had consistently replicable DNA. The eggs of women who fell into this category were in high demand, and Elsa had heard horror stories of the lengths unscrupulous scientists would go to in order to obtain cloneable eggs.

  “I was recruited fairly late compared to most women,” Cilla said. “At first the scientists made it sound like an attractive choice. The testing is rough, but the pay is good. Only after I became involved did I realize that I had no choice at all anymore. They wouldn’t let me leave.” Tears spilled down her cheeks. “I knew I wouldn’t be permitted to leave until I was no longer fertile, and that was still years away due to the fertility treatments they gave me for so long.” She raised her chin. “So I escaped.”

  “How?” Karl asked.

  Cilla smiled grimly. “I was being transferred to a new cloning facility. I planned my escape for months, and when the ship I was on passed near the star bell, I stole a skiff and flew it to the star bell. I was very good with computers in my former life, so it wasn’t hard to hack the skiff’s controls and send it back out to space on autopilot, leaving me on the star bell with what supplies I could scrounge. When I thought the skiff was far enough away, I remotely detonated the skiff’s self-destruct. I hoped that the transfer ship would assume I had killed myself.”

  “You almost did,” Karl retorted. “What if we hadn’t come along when we did and you’d been marooned on the star bell for longer than your supplies lasted?”

  She shrugged. “I would’ve died. It wouldn’t have been the worst thing.”

  Elsa lowered the gun to her side. A memory pulled at the corner of her mind, and the déjà vu she had experienced earlier made sense. “I know some of your clones,” she said suddenly. She glanced at Karl. “Camilla and Priscilla from Aschen. They’re great at hacking too, and something you said earlier reminded me of them. You look a little like them, now that I think about it, though not as much as I’d think a clone donor would.”

  Cilla nodded. “They usually mix my DNA with that of others to get specific traits. The clones’ growth is accelerated, of course, so the ones you met were probably younger than they looked.”

  Elsa frowned, struck by a thought. The clones had firmly believed in reincarnation and had always related their tales of past lives with utter conviction in their accuracy. Elsa didn’t know much about the cloning process, but perhaps there was some way that those stories had been true, shared memories with different versions of the clones. She shivered, recalling some of the Aschen clones’ grislier tales.

  “Who were the scientists who were exploiting you?” Karl asked, restrained anger layered underneath his outward calm. “By the stars, I’ll find a way to bring them down.”

  Cilla’s face hardened. “They’re a research association funded by the Tremaine Mining Company, of all things.”

  Blood drained from Elsa’s face as Cilla continued. “You think they’re just mining cendrillon,” she said earnestly, “but they have their fingers in everything.”

  She looked imploringly at Elsa. “This is my only chance to get away and get off the grid. Nobody will look for me on Anser. Give me this chance, and I’ll disappear forever.” She swallowed hard. “I just want to be left alone.”

  Elsa moved forward slowly. She hugged the other woman. “I am so sorry this has happened to you,” she said. “Of course we’ll help you. But why didn’t you just tell us all of this from the start?”

  “I almost did,” Cilla admitted, “but when I learned there were so many cinders aboard the Sovereign, I thought they might feel as though their loyalty to the mining company would require them to turn me in.”

  “Quite the opposite,” Elsa assured her. “I have reason to hate the Tremaine Mining Company too, and there’s just a chance that we’ll find proof of some of their wrongdoing here on Anser. Even if we don’t, Karl is right. We’ll find a way to stop the people who hurt you for so long.”

  “Thank you,” Cilla whispered, hugging Elsa close. “But I don’t want to be involved in taking them down. I can’t face them again. I just want to be left alone,” she repeated, voice shaky with tears.

  Elsa nodded. “I understand.” She pulled back and looked at Cilla’s tearstained face. She smiled. “I’m sorry I pulled a gun on you.”

  Cilla laughed through her tears. “No worries. I can see now how it must have looked to you. I’m not a very good liar, evidently.”

  “A lack of skill that does you cred
it,” Karl assured her.

  Elsa hesitated. She hated to leave the other woman so soon after hearing her story, but she knew their mission on Anser hadn’t even begun yet.

  Karl detected her ambivalence. “You should get going, Elsa. I’ll find a safe place for Cilla in Atticora, and then you and I will still plan to rendezvous.”

  She felt a wave of gratitude for his level-headed calmness. “Thank you,” she told him, grateful to him for so much more than his simple comment. She handed him his pistol.

  “Goodbye, Cilla,” she told the other woman. “Please don’t cry anymore,” she said with a smile. “You’re in good hands.”

  Cilla nodded. “Thank you, Elsa.”

  Karl opened the hatch and walked with Elsa to the opening as a frigid breeze blew into the skiff. Elsa closed her eyes and breathed in the cold, clean air of Anser, letting her adrenaline ebb. The wind ruffled the fur on her hood, and the cold bit at her nose. It felt deliciously wonderful.

  “Welcome home,” Karl murmured. Elsa opened her eyes. He was looking at her with concern, trying to read her expression. “I wish I could be with you when you conduct this investigation. I’ll come back to you as soon as I can.”

  He looked so worried that it made Elsa smile. “Don’t trouble yourself so. I’ll be fine. I’m…happy to be back.” She found that she meant it. She kissed him on the cheek and turned away before he could react. She jumped down from the skiff, relishing the altogether satisfying crunch of the snow under her boots. “Be safe, Karl,” she called back.

  “Only if you do the same,” he retorted.

  She grinned, unable to contain the joy bubbling up inside her. “It’s a deal.”

  The hatch closed, and a moment later the skiff lifted off once more. Elsa waved an arm in farewell as it set course for Atticora.

  She inhaled deeply again, savoring the clean scent of snow. She cleared thoughts of Cilla’s plight from her mind in order to concentrate on the job at hand. On the long skiff ride over, she had had plenty of time to think about her course of action. She wanted to question the coroner and speak with the wardens who had pulled her father from the crevasse, but first she needed to see what was on Helias Vogel’s commlink.

  The landing area wasn’t far from the library, and that was as good a place as any to set up camp. She had toyed with the idea of seeing if some old friends still lived in town, but socialization had to wait until she knew the truth about her dad’s death.

  She walked to the library, marveling at how familiar the route felt. She might as well have never left; the town seemed caught in the same moment that she left it.

  At first, that is. The more she looked around, the more she realized the town was even more sparsely populated than it had been when she lived there. Several of the houses and shops were empty, and only a few people were walking around town. She didn’t recognize anyone she knew, which saddened her.

  She reached the library and knocked the snow from her boots in an easy, habitual motion without thinking about it before entering.

  She looked around eagerly; here, at least, there were a few modern changes. The projection headset terminals were newer and more numerous. She wasn’t surprised. In a community as isolated as this, connections to the rest of the galaxy were prized. She headed for the nearest unoccupied study alcove, wanting to talk to the librarians but simultaneously unwilling to delay her mission a moment longer.

  She shucked her gloves and parka, put on the headset sitting in the alcove, and plugged in her father’s old commlink. The headset projected the visual contents of the files in the space in front of her, and any audio would play for her ears only.

  She flicked through the files impatiently, sifting for useful information. She found her father’s planned route for the expedition from which he would never return and tucked it to the side: she would need that when she went to the wardens. But what interested her most was the download from her father’s storage account with its mysterious deleted file. The problem, of course, was that the storage account had been full to bursting with files of all kinds, but after some digging, she found the one she was seeking.

  The file was audio only, which wasn’t unusual; her father recorded audio notes all the time. With fingers that wouldn’t cease their trembling, she played the file.

  At first, the audio was jumbled and hard to decipher. After a moment, she realized she was hearing what it sounded like to be in her father’s pocket. Her heart sank. Stars above, if this whole goose chase turned out to be because of an accidental pocket recording—

  Her father spoke in an undertone, and tears leapt to her eyes instantly. He rattled off the date, one she would always remember: the day he died. He spoke so quickly and softly that she had to listen hard to understand him. “This is Helias Vogel, formerly Helias Tremaine. In the event of my demise, please send this recording to my daughter, Elsa Vogel—”

  “Who are you talking to?” asked a second, more distant voice, belonging to a woman.

  “The hunds back at the camp. They say they don’t think much of your clothes,” he said, his voice light and humor-filled. Elsa knew every nuance of that beloved voice; Helias was scared.

  The woman laughed, the sound utterly absent of mirth. “You made an agreement, Helias. It’s too late to change the deal now.” The woman’s voice sounded familiar to Elsa, but she couldn’t place where she had heard it—or one like it.

  “I’m not trying to change the deal.” Her father sounded exasperated now. “I stand by my decision. You’ve been around Kagan too long; it’s made you suspicious when you have no reason to be. Or maybe all of your experimentation has finally caught up with you. I’m surprised you have two brain cells to rub together, after what you’ve put yourself through.”

  “What I’ve put myself through?” the woman hissed. “None of it was my idea.”

  “You didn’t fight the idea very hard. No wonder they wanted copies of you. Most people would have a few qualms about becoming the family’s pet assassin. You seem to have taken to your role quite well.”

  There was a pause. “That’s why you’re here, am I right? I’m next on the list? I’m not dangerous. Look at me. I’m the father of a teenage girl, and I spend most of my days with a bunch of dogs. I have no ambitions.”

  An edge of desperation entered his voice. “Isn’t it enough that the family scuppered the grant that Anser was promised? I’m already doomed to a lifetime of debt, thanks to them. I just want to live my life and be left alone. I don’t want back into the Tremaine family, and I wouldn’t touch their blood money to save my life.”

  “Not even to save your life?” the woman asked. Elsa couldn’t identify her tone. Wistful? Angry? Perhaps a combination of the two.

  “I—what? No.” Her father sounded thoroughly confused. “I could never be a party to the Tremaine Mining Company’s actions.”

  “That’s unfortunate.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “The family isn’t as unified as you think, not as it once was. There are some who think Solon is bad for business and it’s time for a change in leadership, at least in name. The company needs someone ruthless, but not so ambitious that we overreach ourselves. The Common Union needs us, but that won’t stop them from slapping us with heavy penalties if we overstep our bounds again as we did with instigating the Cendrillon War.”

  Helias made a strangled sound. “The Tremaines weren’t responsible for that.” He stated it as if trying to convince himself of the statement’s veracity.

  “It would’ve happened anyway,” the woman said dismissively. “We needed access to the cendrillon, and we knew we’d get it if the Demesne could be provoked into a fight. The Common Union was too timid, sitting back and waiting for the Demesne to be the aggressors. The family has connections in the Common Union council, as you may know—”

  “Only too well,” Helias interjected bitterly.

  “—and they were able to convince some loose cannons in the Fleet to attack on the Periphe
ry. The Demesne retaliated here in the Avis system, and the war began.”

  “So the Tremaines destroyed my home and reaped the profits.” Helias’ voice was so thick with anger that Elsa had trouble deciphering his words.

  “As I said, we overreached ourselves; we don’t dare pull a stunt like that again. The Common Union won’t allow it, and they’ll smash us. That’s what Solon doesn’t understand. He looks at recent history and sees that as proof of the family’s power; his arrogance whispers that he can do even greater things. He wants the fay.”

  “For what?” Helias asked in surprise. “What do the fay have to do with anything?”

  She scoffed. “You’ve been on this ice cube for too long; your brain is frozen. He wants them for mining, what else? The fay have a higher radiation resistance that will enable the company to use cheaper shielding for the mining coaches, and Solon thinks he has enough power to take control of the fay and ask forgiveness of the Common Union later. The fay aren’t Common Union citizens.”

  Helias spluttered, but the woman interrupted whatever he’d been about to say. “He’s wrong, obviously. The agreement after the war that both sides would leave the fay alone cannot be breached without causing another war, and the Common Union won’t tolerate Tremaine interference like that again. His delusions will wreck the business. That’s why we need you. Solon needs to go, before he pulls the whole company down around our ears.” The woman’s voice softened, but her words made Elsa shiver. “We want you back, Helias. We will have you back.”

  “I can’t believe what I’m hearing,” Helias said, sounding dazed. “When I left, I was told they’d send you to kill me if I ever exposed the Tremaine family for what it was. I’ve kept silent, knowing how skilled and efficient”—his voice twisted around those words—“you are. And now you’re saying a faction of the family wants to welcome me back with open arms?”

  The woman laughed again. “No. Not at all. You have a plausible claim to the family inheritance. That’s what we want. You’ll do as the faction tells you, or you’ll be dead. And if you refuse this offer,” she added, “you’ll be dead. We’ll have you for our own, or no one will. If you refuse the offer and we have to dethrone Solon, we can’t have any other factions trying to use you as a pawn in the ensuing power struggle.”