The Unsound Theory (STAR Academy Book 1)

by Emilia Zeeland

  “No...” she moaned in denial. The commander couldn’t know. He couldn’t have kept her past from her.

  “Please, try to understand that I would have told you as soon as I met you if I thought it was going to change something for you,” he said, probably becoming aware of the bitterness she felt. “The truth is, Yalena, that the Fians couldn’t possibly know anything about you. The ship you were found on had only made a very short local trip, and you had been cared for, right up to the point when people found you.”

  Air felt trapped in Yalena’s lungs. She felt exposed and so unprepared to hear the rest of this story that her hands were shaking.

  “So, you know what happened, then?” she asked in a whisper. “You know the whole truth?”

  “I don’t, Yalena, but please listen.” O’Donnell’s voice was urgent, while everyone else in the room hardly dared to make a sound. “We don’t know who abandoned you, and we may never find out. The only thing we know for sure is your name, and it is not Troian.”

  Yalena tried to think, but nothing made sende. She had always assumed Adeline had come up with her name on her own, not that she had inherited it.

  “We know your name because it was printed on your baby blanket,” O’Donnell said, and a few people gasped. “The delivery rooms on all of the twelve moon areas have identical baby blankets with the baby’s name engraved. It’s a present—a memory for the new family. Since you had one with you, it’s certain that you were born on the Moon, in one of those stations’ delivery rooms.”

  Yalena made a small howl-like sound, and her hands flew up to her mouth, covering it. There was so little she understood about her life at that point that her eyes swam with tears. O’Donnell’s explanation triggered parallels to what Adeline had told Yalena before she joined the Academy. Her legal guardian had never mentioned a name, but now, it was clear—the officer that had placed Yalena in Adeline’s arms was the commander himself.

  “I personally ran the search for your parents, but apart from giving you your name, they left no trace behind.”

  She shook her head in denial. If she was delivered in a regular space clinic, how come she was lost? How come she’d been separated from her parents? As if guessing her questions, the commander spoke again.

  “The point is that you were not listed in any delivery room records, and even the announcement made to all the mothers who had stayed at the delivery rooms did not make your parents come forward. After that, there was nothing we could do.”

  It pained him to tell her that; it showed. Still, O’Donnell spoke quickly and directly, perhaps out of fear she would crumble completely before she could hear the rest.

  “I am truly sorry, Yalena,” the commander paused for only a second, “but this blanket is undeniable proof that your story has nothing to do with the Fians. My best guess is that you were someone’s twin in a family that could only afford to raise one child in space.”

  Yalena’s insides twisted painfully at the thought that somewhere on the Moon, there might exist a girl who looked exactly like her, who had grown up with the love and support of her real parents. It was sickening and surreal, and Yalena lowered her gaze, unable to face anyone after hearing that. With all the rich students she’d met from the Moon, financial constraints would never be enough to excuse her parents. The image of them in her mind fell into a black hole of hatred—one they’d never be able to climb out of.

  “We couldn’t DNA-test any of the mothers due to legal reasons, and with your missing records, we had no claim. We would have had to test hundreds of people to identify your parents, and the investigators wouldn’t allow a budget or a permit for that kind of project. Moreover, it seems your birth parents had help on the inside, from the delivery room staff themselves, because no one had registered your birth. Thus, I doubt that any DNA testing would have gone through without further tampering.”

  Yalena breathed in and out heavily, while tears kept stinging in her eyes. Despite everything the commander had just said, she couldn’t believe this was her true story. It simply hurt too much to believe that.

  “So, I urge you, Yalena, please, do not live with the hope of finding out the truth. You may not have known this, but we did try back then. I tried my best, and I failed to find answers because...”

  “Dad, don’t!” Eric interrupted as his father seemed ready to deliver a final piece of bad news.

  “...because it seems that your parents put conscious effort into hiding the link between you and them. It seems they didn’t want to be found.”

  The words hit Yalena’s heart like arrows, striking mercilessly at the bullseye. She could neither breathe nor think nor hold it together, not for a second longer. With a quiet whimper and her back pressing against the wall behind her, Yalena crumbled down to the floor. Clutching her stomach and curling into a ball, she felt hot tears fall down the sides of her face.

  “Dad, stop,” Eric raised his voice.

  Perhaps the commander had been ready to say something more, but he didn’t. In the dead silence, Yalena couldn’t help the dry heaves, and she no longer cared. After the emotional roller coaster that had been their mission, she had made it out alive, but in the end, she had broken down completely anyway. It felt like the news had ripped her heart out, torn it into tiny pieces, and then tried to stuff it back in. She wasn’t hearing or seeing anyone or anything in the room until two hands shook hers, forcing her eyes open.

  “Listen to me, Yalena. Look at me!”

  It was Eric. Perhaps he had been saying something to her for a while, but it just registered with her now. She gazed into his clear eyes, feeling as lost and insignificant as no other time in her life. What could he possibly say to make her feel better? Would he say it didn’t matter? Would he say it was better this way?

  “Look around you,” he whispered softly. “You make your own family as you go through life. And we are yours.”

  A sound got caught in Yalena’s throat, but despite the tears still running down her cheeks, she looked around. Apart from Eric, crouched down in front of her, Jen was quietly sitting next to her on the floor. Her eyes were glossy with tears, too, and the moment they looked at each other, Yalena saw true compassion in them. It was like Jen knew exactly how she felt, and she wasn’t going to sugar-coat the situation or dismiss Yalena’s feelings, not ever.

  Standing next to Jen was Heidi, who somewhat clumsily opened and closed her mouth in a failed attempt to say something. Nonetheless, she had a reassuring expression on her face, as if to say, “You were there when I broke down, and I am not going anywhere now.”

  And then a little behind Eric was Alec—the funny guy, the flawless pilot, who had seen her at her worst in more than one way, and just in a week. In a strange way, he understood. He tuned in on the right frequency, and with a readiness native to no one else, as Yalena was now realizing, he could accept and deal with whatever jumped his way. And right now, he looked at her not with pity, not with fake compassion or awkward politeness, but with a strength that made her want to pick herself up.

  Something moved her as Yalena faced Alec, and her heart felt trapped in a different way. She was somehow grateful when his gaze slowly moved from her to Eric, and Alec kept his eyes on him as Eric held onto Yalena’s hands tightly. With the slightest nod, Alec meant to show her he agreed with what Eric had said.

  Yalena felt Eric’s hands wiping the tears from her face, and she let her head fall onto his shoulder. He held her tightly and just repeated, “We are your family,” as he slowly tried to get her back on her feet.

  “Yalena,” Commander O’Donnell said with a voice much more cautious than before. He sounded uncomfortable after putting her through this pain, but he nonetheless seemed set on adding something else. “I urge you, regardless of how much you wish to solve the mystery of your past, and regardless of how much it may seem like you’re on to something, do not go investigating. If you do, you may just lose yourself...”

  The ominous atmosphere this small speech l
eft in the room was quickly broken by a somewhat nervous outburst from Cooper.

  “She isn’t going to, Marcus. She’s not Norma,” Cooper said, and something clicked in Yalena’s mind. Where had she heard that name before?

  “Eric’s mom?” Yalena guessed, peeping over at Cooper.

  He gave a small nod, and a whole new kind of awkward settled in the room. Yalena vaguely remembered Eric had said she reminded his father of someone. She had always taken it to mean physically, but perhaps it was in her stubbornness and her inability to let go of a riddle that she resembled Norma. She would ask Eric about it sometime after the storm passed, but for now, Yalena was happy to be able to calm her breathing. Now, it was time to return the favor and warn the commander of something that was surely going to haunt her in her sleep just as much as the horrors she’d been told today.

  “There is one more thing, commander. On Nova Fia, they...they had weapons, and they were not afraid to use them.”

  O’Donnell’s eyes fixed on hers, and she could almost see him making a mental note to find a way to deal with this piece of information as soon as he could.

  “Thank you, Yalena,” he said.

  “Something ought to change around here,” she said, trembling at the thought of STAR Academy students turned into sitting ducks on Nova Fia. “Because we were not prepared for guns,” she added, leaving the room in breathless silence.

  Chapter 29. See Me Fall

  YALENA SAT BETWEEN Alec and Jen in the third row in the announcement hall, hunching down to remain out of sight of the camera trained on the students while the commander took his place at the podium. How he’d managed to dodge this announcement for days remained a mystery to her, given the massive push from all media to find out why the freshman mission had dragged out. What final version of the truth he’d settled on sharing with the public now was even more of a mystery. His stoic face didn’t give her so much as a hint.

  “Thank you for gathering here today,” he addressed the media and glanced over at the screens with video connections to other bases. “I am pleased to confirm that the STAR Academy freshmen are all back with us and unharmed.”

  No one clapped. No one so much as whispered in the back. They all know, Yalena thought. They know something big happened.

  “As you have probably guessed on your own, something didn’t go as planned on this mission. At STAR Academy, we pride ourselves on the transparency we give the press, so they can witness the students’ professional development in the making. Students, on the other hand, feel accountable for their actions, knowing they’ll have to face the broader public. This is why we cannot hide from you that the STAR Academy freshmen worked on a mission of their own. Instead of competing in two teams, they worked together. Their dedication and fresh new perspective led them to burst with daring optimism, to hurl themselves after what they believed was an unsolved mystery.”

  Yalena took a deep breath. Was he really going to tell the world of a mystical, still far-from-explained signal that had somehow triggered her into going after the coordinates?

  “Instead of their assigned mission in Jupiter’s orbit, they took their Eagles all the way to the last-known coordinates of the Farsight Migration vessel,” the commander said, his eyes finding Yalena in the crowd. Of course, he wasn’t going to tell them. He had a reputation to maintain. “While highly irresponsible and dangerous, this daring action revealed something we never thought possible. In all the time that has elapsed since losing contact with Farsight, we’d hypothesized multiple technical explanations, but it seems none were true.”

  “Here we go,” Jen whispered at Yalena’s side, lacing her fingers into hers.

  “Farsight didn’t malfunction, nor did it leave our solar system, accelerating for their long trip ahead, the way we always assumed. The truth is that it stumbled into a wormhole.”

  In a heartbeat, the room was alive with tremors and gasps. Yalena wondered how people would react if he’d served them up with the whole story—signal, satellite, and black-market antimatter fuel all bundled up into a scandal. But O’Donnell had to pace himself. The worst was yet to come. The commander paused to let the buzz settle, and when he spoke again, a vein on his temple pulsed.

  “Against their better judgment, the students traveled through this wormhole to a distant two-sun solar system. The new system we now call Gallatrax hosts a planet with the conditions to support human life.”

  This type of announcement would normally elicit an eruption of applause, but Yalena knew why none followed. They were waiting for O’Donnell’s confirmation that Farsight was out there, that the Migration mission had beaten the odds and survived.

  “We’re relieved and thrilled to confirm that descendants of the Farsight mission are alive and well on a planet they call Nova Fia.”

  Then the room broke into applause as people stood up, clapping, celebrating the conclusion of century-old efforts to preserve the human species. Yalena felt a little nauseated as she watched the commander smile kindly, nodding, like all was going to be fine. This joyful attitude felt surreal to her. Perhaps she was the only one still fighting the shock of the Fian attack in her sleep, but no, that wasn’t it. Commander O’Donnell was playing a different game here. She tensed in her seat. How he would paint the next part of the story was a make-or-break moment.

  Signaling with a raised hand for the applause to quiet, the commander continued. “Our students, overwhelmed by jubilation, hurried to greet the descendants of the Farsight crew, to witness this remarkable miracle.” A fairytale, by the sound of it. “What they did not expect to find was a people that had sacrificed more than we thought imaginable for their survival. We’ve since communicated with their leader, Felix Francis, who explained the impossible choices their ancestors were forced to make. While it appeared livable, the Nova Fia environment did not support human life in the long run. With their numbers dwindling, the Farsight crew resorted to what they deemed the only way to survive—adapting to the new environment by inducing a genetic mutation.”

  Yalena glanced at Alec, only to see his mouth in a flat line as he suppressed the same storm she felt raging inside her. So, that was the reason for the delay. They’d sent a message through the wormhole and, working with Felix, they’d patched up a cute logical sequence for the public. No panic, no hunches, no vibes, no clash, and, most of all, no severed hand that required illegal DNA testing. A win-win in the eyes of everyone who hadn’t seen what the Fians would very readily do to humans.

  “With their permission, we’d one day like to learn more about the Farsight descendants, who call themselves Fians. We’d like to learn from them and to hear their survival story. But above all, what we need to do now is welcome them. As we established in our initial communications with them, the Fians have been living in secret all this time because being different hasn’t always been appreciated by humanity. It is imperative that, at the dawn of this discovery, we trust one another. We must come together once more, like we did during the times of the Quakes. We must rediscover our ability to connect, to collaborate, and to welcome each other.

  “I believe that the first step in doing so is to allow the leaders of Nova Fia to come to us and share their history, to give us the whole truth. For being different is not a crime, and, unfortunately, humanity has had a long and persistent habit of acting out of sync with this simple truth. With honesty and collaboration, we can defeat this harmful habit and build a more sustainable future together. This is why, as we speak, an unmanned satellite is making its way to the coordinates of the wormhole. It will cross over and transmit our message to the inhabitants of Nova Fia.

  “It is worth mentioning that at the time the Academy students traveled through the wormhole, they exhibited no time dilation effects. This, however, may not continue to be the case in the future. As we begin our study on the properties of the wormhole, we need to refrain from sending humans through again until it can be proven that the connection is stable, and passing through the wormhole does not
pose a risk for the crew. I urge all of you to remain calm, patient, and understanding while we wait for a thorough reply from Nova Fia. Thank you very much for your cooperation.”

  FELIX’S RESPONSE SPEECH took only a few hours to reach Unifier, and soon, Yalena found herself in the front row of the same announcement hall. A wall of screens showed TV channels across the near worlds, and some journalists had even managed to get to Unifier in person, no doubt to make it harder for O’Donnell to avoid uncomfortable questions after the announcement.

  “Greetings from the savior planet,” Felix began his speech. Despite the poor quality of the video, the Fian mutation was clearly visible and caused a shiver to pass through the audience. In the dead silence, Felix’s voice was clear and calm.

  “We feel truly blessed to have received Commander O’Donnell’s message and to see the open and welcoming way he addressed us. Looking back into humankind’s history, in which the different have been persecuted, chased, killed, and tortured, we simply didn’t feel safe revealing our mutation to the near worlds. Our perspective was never one of dishonesty or annihilation. No, it was always driven by the instinct for self-preservation. After everything we have been through to make the Fian society work, we did not feel safe exposing it. However, now that the truth has come to light and we see a willingness for collaboration and mutual trust from your side, we are prepared to write the first chapter of a new history—one we build as of today.

  “As a sign of goodwill, we will make available the audio diaries of Cara White, one of the first researchers who reached Nova Fia and one of the first to experience and document our mutation. We do not wish to hide anymore. We wish only to be a part of a better world, together. Thank you.”

  Yalena watched the screen without blinking, feeling a lump in her throat. How could Felix stand there and pretend he wanted peace and communication, trust and harmony, when he had attempted to take her, when he had had his men shoot at Apollo?