Jane and the Exodus (Stargazer Series Book 1)

by T. R. Woodman

  “You’re really not worried, Tate?”

  “No, not even a little bit, Jane. I have been out of the public view for almost a decade. Very few people even know I exist, and those who do don’t know what I have inside. Plus, I have an escape plan if anyone comes looking for me.”

  Jane heard the video stop. Her eyes welled up with tears—but more out of anger and frustration than because she was feeling sorry for herself.

  “I … I don’t know how that happened. I don’t understand. Was there a camera in the church somewhere?”

  “No, Jane. It was on your clothes. It flew in from the back of the chapel and landed on your shoulder when you were sitting down in the back during Mass. It was obviously too small for you to notice.”

  “I just can’t imagine where it came from, Evelyn,” Jane said, stumped. She wiped a tear from her eye, and then it struck her.

  “A mosquito was buzzing around me,” Jane said, sitting up straighter at the revelation.

  “Jane?”

  “It was a mosquito, Evelyn. I remember being annoyed at the fact that there was a mosquito in church, bugging me. Could a camera be so small that it fits inside a mosquito?”

  “Jane, you’re about to travel light-years away from here in the blink of an eye. Your brother was crippled and now is almost superhuman. Putting a camera inside of something the size of a mosquito is child’s play. Even you could figure out how to do it.”

  Jane stood up, ignoring the jab, and was getting more furious by the moment. “It was Kline,” she said, now clenching her fists. “That … that … that … jerk! And now Tate is in trouble too. Kline did this.”

  She paused for a moment, relaxing her fists. Her arms went limp and her shoulders went weak. She could still see her reflection in the mirror from where she stood.

  “I did this.”

  Evelyn didn’t respond.

  “If I hadn’t left Vista, they never would have tracked me to Ironhead—to see Tate … I did this … I’m the reason why Dad and Tate are in prison.”

  “You’re getting awfully full of yourself, Jane,” Evelyn finally responded. “There are a whole lot of I’s in there.”

  “Well, how can you see it any other way, Evelyn?” Jane asked. “If you can show me how I’m not responsible for all this, I’m all ears.”

  “First of all, I’m not saying you’re not at least partially responsible, but Agent Kline is clearly an intelligent guy—from what I can tell—and he would have found your brother—and you, for that matter—eventually. Second, there was obviously something he uncovered about you in particular, whether it was in that video or otherwise, that caused him to not want to bring you in. Because of that, you are still here, out of harm’s way. Third, if you had come straight back to the space station—like I wanted you to—we may have left and you never would have known that the government was after your brother—and never would have known if he was captured.”

  Jane sat quietly and listened to Evelyn. “So what you’re saying is that it’s a good thing I made a mess of everything?”

  “Not at all, Jane. You’re saying that. What I’m saying is that as unfortunate as all this seems, it’s providential.”

  “So what you’re saying,” Jane said with the hint of a smirk, “is that because everyone else has been captured, I am the only one left who can rescue my dad and my brother?”

  “Once again, Jane, rational thought is totally lost on you. You have it completely wrong. You need to stay on the space station. Have you seen your face? You’re not rescuing anyone.”

  Jane’s expression turned serious again.

  “Do you know where Agent Kline is headed with my dad and Tate?”

  “Yes,” Evelyn replied. “They are headed to a detainment facility—DF-23—in Colorado.”

  “Twenty-three?” Jane asked, surprised. “My God, how many of those places do they have?”

  Evelyn was silent for a moment.

  “Evelyn?” Jane asked, wondering at the pause.

  “You may not want to hear this, Jane,” Evelyn began, “but DF-23 is the only one ever mentioned. From what I can tell from all the communications I have tapped, and all of the satellite footage I have reviewed, DF-23 is the only detainment facility they have.”

  Jane’s head swiveled, again looking to question someone who wasn’t there. She smirked in disbelief. “So … what? They just gave it the number twenty-three?”

  “Perhaps. Twenty-three sounds a lot more intimidating than one, and it shouldn’t matter anyway, because DF-23 is sitting on the site of what was once a super-max prison. It’s surrounded by boulders, mountains, wasteland, and high desert. The whole area is a natural deterrent to trespassers, and there is no reason for anyone to want to go there. There haven’t been any public records maintained that I can find about the prison in the last twenty years, but from the history, nobody escaped and nobody was ever released.”

  Jane’s smirk faded. She wasn’t sure she wanted an answer to her next question, suspecting she already knew what it was. “So where do they put all the people they arrest, Evelyn? The ones who disappear? They can’t all fit in one facility.”

  Evelyn was quiet for moment.

  “I don’t have evidence to support it, but I can only conclude that they are executed, Jane. I can’t find any trace of prisons that could handle that number of incarcerations each year.”

  Jane shook her head, thinking again of the emaciated girl in the woods and the girl’s father who attacked her for her truck. It really was a matter of life or death for them. Jane couldn’t imagine the little girl, starving and just trying to survive, being put to death for being a scavenger, for running away with her father. Parents are supposed to take care of their children, she thought, but how are they supposed to do that when people are executed for leaving their communities?

  “I have to do something, Evelyn. I can’t just let my family stay in that place.”

  “Jane, it’s not such a bad thing that they are there.”

  “How do you figure that? It’s a prison!”

  “I haven’t found any records yet about how many people are currently imprisoned at DF-23. It may only be a few hundred or it could be thousands. There are millions of people arrested every year, however, which means a person’s odds for surviving aren’t good if they are arrested. I suspect that only those people who are worth something to the government are taken there. The fact that they are headed to DF-23 suggests that the government wants something from them.”

  “Yeah, we know that,” Jane interjected. “They want Dad to hand over you, and they obviously want the technology in Tate’s head too. I can’t let that happen. You’re really smart, Evelyn, but you can’t expect to outsmart them forever. We need to do something, and we need to do something fast.”

  “What do you have in mind, Jane?”

  “Well,” Jane started, putting a hand to her chin, “if you can pinpoint where Tate is, based on the beacon in his head, then you could drop an empty shuttle from space onto the grounds outside of the prison, and in the explosion and the chaos, we could swoop in on another shuttle, run in, grab Dad and Tate, and fly off. How about that?”

  “That may be the worst rescue plan ever, Jane. First of all, a shuttle falling from outer space, hitting anywhere near the prison, would hit with the impact of a nuclear bomb. It would annihilate all life within a mile of the impact site. But even if I just crashed a shuttle near the prison—something more controlled—there’s no telling how many people might be hurt, and there’s no guarantee that your dad will be with your brother to save.”

  Jane shrugged her shoulders and flipped her hands up, exasperated. “Well, what do you suggest, Evelyn?”

  “I suggest you stay put, Jane.”

  Jane shook her head and walked over to her closet in silence. She opened the door and started rummaging through her wardrobe, looking for anything dark. Frustrated, Jane started tossing her clothing, most of which was pastel colors, onto the bed. All she found th
at she thought might work was a pair of semi-dark jeans, some workout clothes, a few black T-shirts, and a black sweater.

  “What are you doing, Jane?”

  Jane didn’t reply and stood over her pile of unhelpful clothing.

  “Jane?”

  “It’s clear you don’t want to help me, Evelyn, so I’m going to figure this out on my own. Except for the shuttle. You will fly the shuttle, and that’s an order,” Jane added, getting angry at the opposition she was feeling.

  Jane fumed for a minute more, trying to think of how she was going to break into a maximum-security prison. She hadn’t a clue, but she knew she couldn’t do anything while she was “out of harm’s way” on the space station.

  “I’ll help you, Jane,” Evelyn replied a moment later. “It’s obvious you are going to go anyway. Frankly, I don’t blame you.”

  Jane felt a small sense of relief, which left quickly when she remembered the task at hand. “I have to go get them. If something happens to either one of them … I just don’t know what I’ll do. I can’t wait around knowing that I had something to do with them being in there. I don’t want to go without them, and I don’t think I could live with myself if I didn’t try to do something.”

  “I understand,” Evelyn replied. “So the first thing you have to do is go to the armory for some gear.”

  Jane put her hands on her hips. “We have an armory?”

  “Of course. You didn’t think we were going exploring without at least a few things for self-defense, did you?”

  “No. I guess not. I just don’t remember ever having seen it before.”

  “Not many people on Vista have. This is a research station, so weapons have little use. But as a vessel full of colonists, certain protections are necessary. One of the rooms near the bay where we docked your shuttle was converted into the armory about a year ago.”

  Jane dropped the black sweatshirt she was holding and turned toward the door. “Well, what are we waiting for?”

  “Not so fast, Jane. You aren’t going anywhere yet. You haven’t slept but four hours in the last forty-eight, your face is fractured, and I don’t know when you ate last.”

  She thought for a second and couldn’t remember eating either, other than the half of a protein bar she had earlier that day. Within seconds of being reminded she hadn’t slept, she felt the exhaustion and weight of the past two days settle onto her body, almost like a whole other person had just climbed up onto her shoulders.

  “You need to eat something, and you need some rest, Jane. I have a plan. We can go tomorrow.”

  Jane walked over to the refrigerator in her quarters. She grabbed the only thing inside. Biting into the apple, she flopped into the chair.

  “Fine,” Jane said, swallowing hard. “Good idea.”

  Jane said nothing and chewed the apple, which seemed almost too sweet to her taste buds, having had nothing to eat for hours.

  She finished her apple and climbed onto the pile of clothes on her bed, not bothering to change out of what she had on.

  “Wake me up early, Evelyn,” Jane exhaled through her barely moving lips. Her eyes were already closed, and a second later, she was nearly asleep.

  “Sure, Jane, I will. We still have a lot to talk about.”

  TESTED

  Jane awoke feeling as if she had been knocked unconscious again and had a nagging pinching pain in her stomach to boot. She hadn’t moved from her spot in the pile of clothes, and she couldn’t see. She lifted her head up, tried to look around the room, and glanced at the clock on her nightstand. It read a few minutes past three o’clock.

  Jane sat up, still bothered by the pain in her stomach, but quickly realized it was hunger pain, which went nicely with the other aches and pains she felt throughout her body.

  Even in the dark, with her eyes adjusting, Jane started to make out the furnishings in the room and realized where she was—a revelation that wasn’t entirely apparent to her sluggish brain when she first awoke.

  “I guess I didn’t sleep all that long, did I, Evelyn?”

  “Oh, I don’t know—sixteen hours is pretty long for anyone older than six months. I think you did okay.”

  “What?” Jane asked, her mind unable to catch up. “It’s only three in the morning.”

  “No, it’s three in the afternoon.”

  Jane sat on the edge of the bed and rested her head in the palms of her hands. “Afternoon? Why didn’t you wake me? We have to go.”

  “It’s okay, Jane. We can’t leave for a little while anyway, and you needed the rest. Now get yourself cleaned up.”

  Jane stood and felt her wobbly legs stiffen as she stretched. She walked slowly, leaving a trail of clothing on the floor as she peeled them off on her way to a shower she knew might feel better than any other she had ever had.

  Not twenty minutes later, Jane was dressed, and even though the fractured side of her face was more swollen than it had been, she could already see through her puffy eye—something she couldn’t do when she woke up.

  Jane fumbled around in the clothing on the bed, looking for a jacket, but didn’t find anything she thought would pass for being stealthy.

  “Any suggestions on what a girl ought to wear to a jailbreak, Evelyn?” Jane asked, trying to keep her thoughts light, although her stomach was already starting to knot. Doubts about her ability to handle rescuing her dad and brother kept swirling through her mind, and it was all she could do to push them out.

  “Don’t worry about that, Jane. Everything you need is in the armory. Just try to get down there without drawing much attention to yourself. The more people who know you are on board, the more likely it’ll be that you are detained by the government agents.”

  “Right,” Jane replied, trying to work up her nerves.

  “If you go now, you should be able to get down there without running into anyone. The corridors are clear. Just make sure you have your earbud.”

  Though Evelyn had just said the corridor was clear, Jane still cautiously looked out of the door to her quarters and peered down the hallway. Seeing that it was empty, she stepped into the hallway and walked quickly, carefully glancing around corners as she went. Minutes later, she was standing in front of the door Evelyn had described as being the armory.

  The outside of the door was nondescript, not even having a label or marker on it to distinguish it as special or different from any other room. As Jane stepped close, the door quickly slid open, allowing her to step inside, and just as quickly as it opened, it slid closed behind her.

  Given her life on a space station, Jane had grown accustomed to living in small, cramped spaces. This room was anything but. The size of the room was astonishing. It looked to be at least a hundred feet long, maybe thirty feet wide, and the entire length of the wall on her right was glass plate. Jane walked slowly, looking through glass. She had never seen so many guns. Some she recognized as being a rifle or a pistol, or a shotgun, but most of them had such odd shapes or characteristics she couldn’t discern if they were weapons or some other form of technical equipment.

  “It looks like we’re preparing for an invasion, Evelyn,” Jane said with awe. “It’s hard to imagine what some of these things are for.”

  “Well, your dad wants to be prepared. Some of it is weaponry, for defense purposes or for hunting, but some of it is for scouting, information gathering, and exploration.”

  Jane continued to wander down the glass. Some sections and compartments had people’s names over them. “So some of the passengers already have gear assigned to them,” Jane said.

  “They do, but not many. It’s hard to know what people will want to do when they are confronted with something as new as exploring and settling a new area, let alone a new planet.”

  Walking a little further, Jane stopped in her tracks. The name above the compartment she saw through the glass read: Philips, J.

  “I have my own gear?” Jane asked.

  “You do, but we’ll get to that in a minute. Turn aroun
d and walk into the women’s locker room, near the front.”

  “How is it that I have gear, Evelyn?”

  “Your dad figured you’d want to be on one of the exploration teams when you get to the new planet. That’s probably correct, isn’t it?”

  Jane remembered the conversation she had with Adam just a couple days before. “Yeah, probably,” she said, smiling at the fact that her dad seemed to know her better than she knew herself. She did want to be an explorer, but after all that had happened just trying to get to see Tate, she wasn’t completely sure she was up for the challenge. “It’s nice to know he believes in me.”

  She walked through the door into the locker room. Immediately on her left was a counter full of energy drinks, bars, fruit, and vacuum-sealed sandwiches. Jane was too hungry to be picky. She grabbed another apple, a red drink of some sort, and something that resembled a ham sandwich. Tearing into her sandwich, she kept moving.

  Not a few steps from the energy counter, Jane found the aisle that contained her name. Other than her name on the door of the locker, there was nothing—not even a handle to open it—but as soon as Jane touched the door, she heard the latch click and the door glided open.

  “So the lockers are opened by touch?”

  “No, they’re opened by me. The door to the armory, the glass partitions, the locks on the weapons and gear—even the lockers—can only be opened by me. It’s for safety purposes.”

  Jane looked inside her locker and saw a variety of different outfits in assorted colors.

  “It’s nice to be able to travel to another world and still be fashionable,” Jane commented, smirking and flipping her fingers along the different outfits.

  “Right, well, a girl’s got to look good, even when she’s conquering a new world.”

  Jane laughed. “If this prison is in Colorado, I probably ought to wear the browns.”

  “Now you’re thinking like an explorer, Jane.”

  Jane grabbed the brown camouflaged fatigues, shirt, and jacket, and quickly changed out of her casual clothes, alternating stuffing the ham-ish sandwich and the apple into her mouth and guzzling the energy drink.