The Stars are Red Tonight: The Paradisi Chronicles

by Ashley Angelly

  Stars Are Red Tonight: Paradisi Chronicles

  Canestro Series Book One

  Ashley Angelly

  Louisa Locke

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Copyright © 2016 by Ashley Angelly and Mary Louisa Locke

  All rights reserved.

  Cover design © 2016 Berkley Baum

  All rights reserved.

  Contents

  Preface

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Other Works in the Paradisi Chronicles

  About the Authors

  Acknowledgments

  Preface

  In the last decades of the twenty-first century, ten families seeking to escape an increasingly devastated Earth focus their power and wealth on constructing spaceships that will allow a select few to leave Earth and colonize the world they call New Eden. Their stories make up the Paradisi Chronicles, a science fiction adventure through time, space and generations, brought to life through the creativity of multiple authors.

  The Stars are Red Tonight is the first book in the Canistro series of the Paradisi Chronicles that follows the journey of the Kuttners, one of the ten founding families. For additional information about the Paradisi Chronicles, go to https://paradisichronicles.wordpress.com

  Chapter One

  Seattle, Washington

  February 2092 AD

  Trevor loved the way her hair smelled when she walked by—clean and fresh, like the smell of waking up next to someone you love. It wasn’t the after-a-shower smell, although that was nice too. No, she smelled of sleepy mornings and sunlight on a white pillow. Of skin mixed with eyelashes and smiles. He pictured her smile now. The brilliant flash of white teeth, and her eyes, oh God, her blue eyes.

  A blinking red light flashed on his console and jerked him out of his daydream. Back to work, back to the job, back to real life. He pressed the blinking light, and it stopped. A 3D picture popped up with a customer’s face, and he tapped the switch that activated the wireless sound-linked headphone curled around his ear. The company was too cheap to spring for the modern sub-vocal version for its workers.

  “Thank you for calling WelCo. This is Trevor. What is your first and last name, please?”

  The 3D-vid showed old withered skin wearing a pair of glasses with a thin floral doily for a dress. “What?” Her voice creaked and cracked with age.

  He swore he saw a moth fly out from somewhere. Dusty oldies. They couldn’t hear or see most of the time. He didn’t know why they even bothered getting a WelCo Personal-Health-Bracelet. They never used it right and ended up calling the ambulance when they wanted to call their daughter and calling their daughter when they really needed an ambulance.

  “What is your first and last name, please?” he repeated.

  “What… my name?”

  After he spent fifty grueling minutes repeating the same questions and instructions a gazillion times, the old lady finally got her PHB set up and online. She was part of the system now. Her heart rate, cholesterol levels, even how many calories she burned when she brushed her teeth, all of it would now be monitored and recorded on the Net. It’s the wave of the future. You’re welcome, Grandma.

  “Thank you for choosing WelCo. Have a nice day.” They’ve got you now.

  Click. End. Finally. He hoped another call wouldn’t come right away. Sighing heavily, he put his hands over his eyes. Trevor hated this job, but at least he had work, and in Seattle at that! A city that wasn’t a complete hellhole like Detroit or the shrunken remnants of the cities that remained in SoCal. And having a job was the only way you got citizen status in the good old US of A, in the year 2092.

  “Psst Trev, wanna go on break?” It was Bobby, the guy working at the station next to his. He was a nice kid, scrawny with wild wiry black hair. Not more than nineteen years old. Some kind of computer genius who dropped out of school thinking he’d get snapped up by some tech firm––make a shit-load of money. Instead, he ended up working for WelCo.

  “I haven’t even been here an hour yet, dude. I literally have taken only one call,” Trevor whined through his fingers.

  “I know, man, but I got something to show you.”

  Trevor took his hands off his face, noticing that Bobby’s eyes were darting back and forth and his left knee was bobbing up and down so fast it was like his leg was going to come right off.

  “What’s up?” He sat up, interested but wary. If Bobby was antsy about something, it probably meant he’d forgotten to take his mood stabilizer meds. If so, Trevor was in for a very long day.

  “Come on, man; let’s go.”

  “All right.” He unhooked his headphone, marked his console as “off-line,” and followed Bobby. They had to go the long way around to avoid passing by Carmen, their section lead. She would make them go back if she saw them off-line, but there wasn’t a whole lot she could do if they just weren’t at their stations. Employees were supposed to have only three ten-minute breaks in every ten-hour shift, but nobody was strict about it. A person would go insane working those kinds of hours. Trevor thought the leads knew that. So as long as they were sneaky and didn’t do it too often, they could go grab an energy drink and hide in the bathroom, and no one said anything. He knew they were lucky for that. He’d had other jobs that hadn’t been so lax about the rules.

  Trevor and Bobby walked past rows of tables, all with consoles and all with 3D-vid screens, with faces of customers and red and green lights blinking on and off. Each station was separated by flimsy temporary-looking partitions. This was to give the customer privacy. But it did little to hide the vid screen and nothing to block the murmur of a hundred conversations going on at once.

  Bobby and he managed to get out and down the hall without Carmen noticing. After grabbing two cans of pure caffeinated adrenaline from the vending machine in the hall, they snuck into the men’s room. Trevor jammed a dented, grey-green trashcan against the doorknob so they wouldn’t be surprised by one of the leads coming in to take a leak.

  By this time, Bobby was practically coming out of his skin. He kept wiping the palms of his hands on his pants, and his eyes couldn’t stop looking around for some invisible foe. Yep, must be out of his meds, damn it. Trevor really wanted a good day. Popping the top of his can and taking a sip, he watched as Bobby fumbled to get his drink up to his mouth. A layer of sweat shone on his co-worker’s forehead, and he drank half the can in two gulps, his right hand fingering an object in his jacket pocket the whole time. Nervous. Nervous. But what was he so nervous about?

  Finally, Trevor said, “Did you get some bad news, man? Why are you wigging out?”

  “I found something.”

  “Oh yeah, like what?” It wasn’t like Bobby to be so melodramatic.

  “This is serious,” he said.

  When Trevor looked into Bobby’s eyes, he saw fear, paralyzing terror, just staring back at him, and a cold chill went down his spine. He couldn’t
help but shiver.

  Thankfully, Bobby broke the stare and looked at his hands. “I took an extra shift so I’ve been on since four yesterday.”

  His words were heavy with guilt, but guilt over what, working so hard? Trevor didn’t get it. “Four in the afternoon? Dude, you’re on a fifteen-hour stretch. You got to get some rest.”

  “Just stop talking. That’s not important. What I’m telling you is important.”

  Bobby’s voice had a depth and urgency in it that Trevor had never heard before. He stopped talking.

  “It was really slow between two and four in the morning, and nobody else was here.” He was staring blankly, seemingly at nothing, as he spoke. “I got bored. So I started messing around on the cloud server. You know, just seeing where some of the root files would take me.”

  Trevor was good with computers, but Bobby was a genius. No wonder he was bored. It really was a shame he’d chosen to work at WelCo instead of going to college to get an advanced degree. Although it had been decades since a degree actually ensured a decent job.

  “I think I found something. And I think it’s big.”

  “Like about the company?”

  “No, even bigger than that. What I found… I don’t even know if I can say it. I don’t even want to say what I think it is. God, I hope I am wrong.”

  “Bobby, what the…? What could you possibly have found that is making you freak out like this? You’re starting to freak me out.”

  Bobby’s hands shook as he pulled a small greyish-black flash drive out of his thin jacket pocket. “Here, I put it on this, everything I found. I need you to put it somewhere for me. Somewhere safe. If this is really as big as I think it is, then I might be in danger. I didn’t know what I found until…” Then he just trailed off.

  “Until what? What is it? What did you find?”

  Just as Bobby opened his mouth to speak, an alarm split open the air between them.

  “NEE-eu NEE-eu,” it rang out. They instinctively put their hands over their ears.

  “WHAT WERE YOU GOING TO SAY?” he screamed at Bobby over the alarm.

  “WAIT, I CAN’T TELL YOU HERE.”

  “WHAT? WHY?” But Bobby was moving the trashcan and opening the men’s room door. Trevor looked at the flash drive in his hand.

  “NEE-eu NEE-eu,” pounded in his head as he came out of the bathroom. People were already pouring out into the hallway from every door. He looked for his co-worker but didn’t see him.

  “Bob?” he called out. “Bobby?” The crowd was getting thicker by the minute. Everyone was moving towards the exits, and he went along. Hard to believe so many people worked for WelCo. He saw Tom, Carmen, and that creepy lead Andy, but no Bobby.

  Trevor had reached the parking lot with all the other employees, still searching for Bobby, when he came upon Saya, the girl with morning-sunshine hair. Fortunately, by then, someone had managed to shut the alarm off, but they still weren’t letting anyone back in or letting them leave work, and it still got plenty cold in Seattle in February.

  “Hey, Trevor.” Saya smiled lazily at him, her baby blue eyes looking bored. “What a pain in the ass, huh?”

  He felt light headed and dizzy the longer he looked at her, so he looked down at his feet. Keep it cool, Trev. “Have you seen Bobby?” he managed to ask, looking past her towards the building.

  “Bobby Fulner? Yeah, I saw him this morning. He looked a little rough, though. Wouldn’t talk to me and kept looking over his shoulder.” Her eyes went big. “Why, you don’t think he called in the bomb threat, do you?”

  “No, no.” He laughed. “Is that’s what the alarm was about? No, nothing like that. I was just talking to him, and now I can’t find him anywhere. He had something he wanted to show me but didn’t want the company to find out.” He whispered the last words as if it was classified information. The boredom had completely left her eyes now, points for him.

  “What did he want to show you?” She moved closer.

  He knew he shouldn’t show her. If Bobby was so worried about––whatever it was he was so worried about––he certainly didn’t want gossip spreading around WelCo about him or the flash drive. But she looked up at him with those big blue saucers, and before he knew it, he had the flash drive out and was telling her all about Bobby’s hacking excursion the night before.

  “Whoa, so what do you think it is?” She turned the mini disk over in her hands. As if something on the outside would give a clue to the contents within.

  “I have no idea. But I’m gonna find out. Maybe after work.” Trevor took the drive back from her. If it was dangerous information on the company, he should be the one caught with it.

  “Hey, maybe they will give us the rest of the day off cuz of all this.” She smiled playfully. “Are you sure Bobby didn’t call in the bomb threat?”

  Trevor laughed at the image of skinny red-faced Bobby, with a trench coat and sunglasses, calling in the bomb scare like a geeky James Bond. He replied, “Bobby does like a good joke.”

  “Well, I can help you look for him if you want.” She touched his arm.

  Trevor wanted her to help him, so bad. But he tried to act cool, like he didn’t care, saying casually, “Whatever. I guess, if you want.”

  “Well, never mind then. I just wanted to help.” She flipped that beautiful cascade of brown ringlets and walked off. This afternoon she smelled like vanilla.

  Damn it. Damn it. Damn it. Go after her. Tell her you want her to help. Tell her something! But she’d already disappeared into the crowd. Trevor continued to swear silently for letting that chance get away.

  He didn’t normally have this much trouble with girls. All in all, he knew he wasn’t a bad-looking guy. Standing at about 6’ 1” and weighing 190 pounds, he had long lanky arms and long lanky legs, short spikey reddish brown hair. His mother was Puerto Rican and his dad Irish, which gave him brown skin and green eyes, which some girls said they really liked. It was just that Saya and her damn crazy-good-smelling hair messed up his head. Everything would start to look warm and fuzzy around the edges, and he’d forget what he was saying.

  Focus Trev. Forget Saya and deal with Bobby and find out what’s on the flash drive. He went back to hunting through the crowd for his friend.

  An hour later, Saya shuffled through the report files on her screen again. He is so infuriating sometimes. Whenever she had an interaction with Trevor, she was always left frustrated and irritated. She couldn’t quite understand why, or why she kept bothering to talk to him. He was always blowing hot and cold. And fidgeting, like he couldn’t keep still. She considered it a sign he was distracted by something else, and that angered her. She didn’t know why. But nevertheless, here she was; instead of taking calls, she was sitting at her station, opening and closing reports and not doing any work.

  Most guys, when they talked to her, she didn’t have to guess what was on their minds. Seeing how their eyes moved over her body, hungry, she was never in the dark about what they wanted. But Trevor, he kept bouncing around, and his green eyes never looked at her directly for long. Sneaky, that is what he looks like. He is being sneaky about something, and I want to know what it is. I’ve seen him talking to that girl in accounting. He doesn’t avoid her gaze, and he isn’t constantly fidgeting with his hands. So I know he can act normal; he just doesn’t act normal around me.

  Saya sighed loudly and closed the file on her screen without updating it.

  “Hard call?” Her lead was suddenly right behind her, his spindly arms on either side of the back of her chair. Saya jumped a little and regretted it immediately.

  “Oh, did I startle you?” He chuckled. Saya spun her chair around, forcing him to take his hands off it. Now she could see his wide, crooked smile. His breath was hot, and she could smell what he had for breakfast. Her stomach lurched.

  “I was just getting settled back in, Andy.” She tried to smile to hide her gag reflex.

  “Good, good. Glad to see you are working hard. You know you are my best
girl.” He patted her on her shoulder, leaving his hot, sweaty hand there.

  They had come in half an hour ago, and Saya hadn’t taken a single call yet. If any other employee had done that, he would be chewing their ass out, but not Saya.

  “Thanks, Andy. It means a lot. I really should get back to it now, though.” She gestured to her the screen. Putting her headphone back on, she hoped he would get the hint and move on.

  “Of course, don’t let me stop you.” He held up his hands and took a step back, his smile growing wider.

  “Thanks again.” She started to turn back to her desk, but she kept one eye on Andy to be sure he was leaving. He just stood there. A few feet back, but still remaining right behind her, watching. “Andy, do you mind not standing behind me like that when I take a call? It makes me nervous, and I forget what I am supposed to say.” She had told him that before, but he still tried to do it from time to time.

  “Oh right, sorry.” Now he finally began to shuffle away, his smile fading.

  Saya was relieved not to have his hot breath and creepy eyes on her anymore. At least for now.

  She was about to get back to work when she noticed a very large man moving briskly towards her from across the room. Her heartbeat quickened. He was well over six feet tall, and his jacket looked as if it was about to bust open from the strain of holding in all his over-developed muscles. His brow was furrowed and angry and his eyes dark and menacing. With only a few long strides, he had made it across the room and was almost on top of her, bringing a strong metallic odor with him. What could he want with me? She held her breath and froze. But then he walked right past her and approached Andy, who was now lurking over another caller’s shoulder.