The phone rang, but she ignored it.
Three planets in this system were terraformed first. They were lazily named ‘One’, ‘Two’, and ‘Three’. Nova scrolled through the pages of her book. Planet Two and Three were successful with their terraforming projects. Temperature normalized and plants grew quickly. Planet One wasn’t as lucky. Almost one hundred thousand people settled and the terraforming accident killed enough plants that they had only enough left to feed a few hundred. Crime, chaos, and cannibalism erupted throughout the settlements. Soon, all their communication equipment was destroyed, cutting them off from Two and Three, and they were left to fend for themselves. Later on, ‘One’ would be repopulated once the terraforming stabilized and they’d rename it ‘Nau Cedik’, and then Nova would try to destroy it.
Another ring.
Nova was fidgeting as she read. It was exciting back then. People had struggles, and fear, and conflict. Oh, what a beautiful time for the system. The Union snuffed that out. Total control meant peace, but at what cost? People playing games and working meaningless jobs. What a joke. Nova despised the inner planets for their structure and laws. Despised them for vegetating people. What was life without struggle, and what was struggle without chaos. When people aren’t comfortable, that’s when they realize what’s important.
The phone rang once more, pushing Nova past the edge of annoyance. She got up and turned on the communicator, not even bothering to get dressed as the video feed appeared on her wall. “What is it?”
“We—” the communications officer swallowed as he saw Nova standing undressed in front of him. “A ship managed to get onto our frequency. They want to board.”
“Who the hell is it?” Nova asked, arms crossed and growing impatient.
“A Guy named Kendal.”
“Jack?” she said, a smile growing on her face.
“That’s right, miss.”
“Let him board in dock A,” she said. “Give him anything he needs. He has my full authorization.”
“Are you su—”
Nova cut the feed and started to get dressed.
He’s here, she thought as she slipped on her white sleeveless shirt and put on her comm-watch. He came back for me. She slipped on trousers held them up by a belt. They were older clothes, from before she’d lost most of her weight. They hung off her shoulders and belt, and were two times bigger than her tiny frame.
She opened her bedroom door and saw Tayla standing outside between two of Nova’s guards with her hand up and ready to knock. Tayla’s eyes widened and she took a step back.
“Miss Nova,” she said, stumbling over her words. “How did you know I was here?”
“I didn’t,” Nova said. “What do you want?”
Tayla shook her head to gain back her nerve. She looked at Nova with a grin that reached her eyes. Something about it made Nova’s stomach turn. Tayla was usually calm and timid, yet this smile looked on the edge of sadistic.
The ring of her phone broke her thoughts. She groaned and went back into her room to answer it. “Damn thing never shuts up,” she whispered and connected the call to her window screen. It was one of the boys from the bridge, and he looked nervous. “What is it?”
“We’ll be within shot range of the main transport ship within five minutes,” he said over the speaker. They had entered the thick of Union space earlier that day, and their fleet was approaching their main military holdings outside of U4.
Nova rolled her tongue in mouth while she thought. The main Union transport ship had over ten thousand marines and generals, as well as doctors, nurses, cooks, pilots and engineers, aboard. A hit that large could cripple the Union forces for years, giving her more than enough time to grab hold of a chunk of the system.
“Just think of just how much it would make the Union hurt,” she said, then looked to Tayla for reassurance.
“You’re right” Tayla said, voice strong and steady. “We have enough resources for the attack while staying on course to U4.”
What’s wrong with her? Nova thought and looked at Tayla closely. Her posture had changed, less perky and straighter and more confident. She had a stance that reminded her of a fighter. Her eyes had sharpened and her expression was wrong.
Tayla took out her communicator and started typing into it. No hesitation, or looking for Nova for reassurance, just started typing and then submitted a command.
“What are you doing?” Nova asked. She approached Tayla, but stopped as she heard a shot from outside the door. One of her guards had shot the other. Nova’s heart lurched and reached for her weapon, only to felt only the loose fabric of her clothes. “Shit,” she muttered and took a step back, away from Tayla and the approaching guard.
Tayla wasn’t smiling anymore, but she looked proud and stood with a confidence that made Nova’s skin crawl. The guard had his kinetic, the same one he’s shot the other guard with, pointed at Nova with his finger held over the trigger.
“How long?” Nova asked, taking slow steps back and inching her way to the kinetic stashed at her bedside.
“I’m not sure what you mean,” Tayla said.
“How long have you been planning this?”
“You’re such a smart girl,” Tayla said. “But you’ll trust anyone who will smile and do what you ask. You really didn’t piece together that I showed up just after the Union got word of your fleet? Or how eager I was to know all the details of your plans? You were so desperate to have someone to talk to that you let your guard down and that is truly pathetic.”
Nova tightened her fists. “You don’t have the power to do this,” she said. “These people follow me because—”
“They follow you because they’re desperate,” Tayla said. “The Union has no control over many of the Ven star planets and they are suffering. They’ll follow anyone with enough charisma to convince them of their own importance, and once the Union offers them a spot in the central system they won’t hesitate a second. True power is the ability to take care of people, and that’s something you will never be able to do. Just ask poor Jack Kendal when he arrives.”
“Don’t you touch him,” Nova hissed.
“Don’t worry,” Tayla said. “My hands won’t go anywhere near him.”
“You bitch,” Nova said. Tayla motioned at the guard, and he took a pair of handcuffs from his belt as he walked towards Nova.
Nova took a dash for her bedside. She had a loaded kinetic between the wall and the mattress. Only two bullets and this would all be over.
Nova was only inches from the kinetic, and could practically feel it in her hand, when the guard grabbed her by the fabric of her shirt and yanked her away.
He threw Nova to the floor and pulled her hands behind her back. Nova was pushed hard against the ground, her chest pushed flat and her back stinging from his knee pinning her down while he fumbled with the restraints. She growled when the metal cuffs clamped tight around her wrists, and she hissed when he put his hands under her shoulders to lift her to her feet.
A second guard came in and joined the first. Nova had no doubt he was Union as well.
“They’ll never let you lead,” Nova said. “I recruited them and they’ll fight you.”
“Half of your crew is already Union,” Tayla said “I’ve already told the fleet that you’ve been compromised and that I’m offering a peaceful settlement with the Union. You spent so much time worrying about the Union overthrowing this army you created that you never considered your army becoming the Union and phasing you out. Most will comply, but those who rebel will be imprisoned along with you.”
“You traitorous cunt,” Nova said, trying to spit at her but only managing to get her own chin.”
“The worst part is that you’ll leave this room thinking I’m the only reason you were caught. That if it wasn’t for me, you would have control by now. But you’re wrong. You weren’t anything special. Just another extremist who underestimated the Union and now you’ll be locked up until you go gray and die.” Tayla lo
oked to the guard. “Take her to the holding deck and use the express halls. That way everyone will see what she’s become. And if she speaks, please shut her up.”
“Stop this!” Nova said. One of the guards punched her in the stomach. She collapsed to the ground and struggled to take in a breath.
The two guards dragged Nova to the exit, fighting against her as she thrashed and struggled.
“I’ll kill you!” Nova screamed. “I’ll kill you with my own fucking hands!”
Tayla laughed. “No you won’t.”
The doors shut and the guards marched Nova down the hall. One had a kinetic pointed to her shoulder and the other held her bicep tight as he could. The halls weren’t empty. Nova had to watch the eyes of her former supports scan over her as she was held hostage by the army she’d built. Tayla must have had everyone with any authority replaced with Union troops. Or maybe they’d always been with the Union. Nova would never know.
They stopped at the gravshafts. One of the guards put his hand on the scanner and typed in the floor he wanted. The gun was still pressed to her shoulder, and that guards’ attention was fully on Nova. She wasn’t one to hire guards who let their prisoners go unattended, which meant Nova couldn’t sneak away even if she could got loose.
“What’s the floor?” One asked the other. He kept the gun to Nova, and his hands on her arm, but switched attention.
Nova wasn’t armed, and she was only wearing simple clothes, but she had a backup. Not a weapon, but a communicator. It was on her wrist and had a screen-based interface. She’d used it enough to navigate from feeling alone.
The few precious seconds the guard gave her let Nova signal a shutdown to the gravshafts on this sector. All nova had to do was sign it with Tayla’s rank code and they’d think it was her who sent it.
Prisoner Nova Ross escaped. Shut down all gravshafts and lock access to munition supplies.
“Damn thing’s not working,” he said. The gravshafts weren’t moving, making them resort to walking the long way, and finding the emergency ladders. “Pain in the ass it is.”
Chapter 25
Mira had her seat spun around, her arms and legs crossed. She was looking at Kendal instead of the controls. “Tell me.”
“Tell you what?” Kendal said. They were approaching the Union fleet and inching towards one of Nova’s ships. They’d been given the coordinates to land and now it was just a matter of waiting until the ship carried them out.
“Tell me how in all hell you convinced them to let you board and how you knew what frequency you needed to get talking to them,” Mira said.
On the monitor, he saw that both fleets were coming together. Not fighting, but merging. It looked nothing like a battle to him and he wished Mira would pay attention to what was happening on screen instead of asking pointless questions.
“You should really be—”
“You ain’t getting’ out of his,” she said. “I needa know just what we’re flyin’ into, and you got about five minutes before we start landing and when that happens you’ll want me at them controls.”
Kendal almost laughed, but caught himself before he pissed Mira off too much. “Nova tracked me down on Alice,” he said. “We met for a few hours and she gave me the coordinates.”
“She tracked you down, and yet neither one of you are dead?”
“It’s because she loves me,” Kendal said. “Or thinks she does. Or it’s because she used to and now she wants that feeling back. I don’t know which, but she wants me around again and she’s desperate enough to open the front door and let us in.”
“What in gods’ name did you do with a psychotic, genocidal terrorist for a few hours?” Mira said, then shook her head. “On second thought, I don’t gotta know.”
There was something about Mira’s look that put Kendal off. Something about her eyes and the way she frowned that he hadn’t seen from her before.
“All that’s important is that Nova’s desperate to see me,” he said. “If we can get onto her ship, she can get us clear of the Union fleet.”
The ship rocked and threw Kendal off balance. Mira spun around and looked at the screen with her hands on the controls. “They’re firing at us,” she said.
So much for trust, Kendal thought.
Mira tried to push the ship out of the way for the next blast. The thrusters swiveled and shot them away from the weapon’s trajectory, but it scrapped the side of the engine and knocked the ship off course.
“Damn it!” Mira slammed the controls. The ship instantly became mobile and shot into a corkscrew as it dodged the next blast. “I’m on manual so you better hold on!”
The ship pushed past the safe acceleration limit and Kendal flew towards the back of the room. He landed on the wall back-first. They were speeding up too fast for the grav-panels to negate, and he felt like he was being crushed by his own skin. His ribs were pushing back on his chest and his vision tunneled.
They decelerated enough that he the grav-panels caught up and he could stand again. On the radar he saw four projectiles scattered around them, minutes from impact. Kendal walked over to the console, holding his chest and breathing through the pain.
“How close are we?” he asked, blinking to focus his eyes. Too much gravity can kill you if exposed too long. Kendal felt like he’d been seconds away from dying and his body was having trouble recovering.
“Look at the screen,” she said.
His sight was still blurry, but he focused and saw an approaching ship on the monitor. A square-like vessel with no obvious front or back, only a heavy thruster on one end to give a hint of which way you might point it. None of the parts matched each other. A ship that had been assembled rather than designed.
She was crazy enough to build her own ships, Kendal thought. Something from scratch would take years.
The docking bay was open and ready to intercept. The projectiles were farther than Nova’s ship, and moving slower. If they landed properly, they wouldn’t get hit.
“Gonna be alright?” Mira asked.
“I’m fine,” he said. “Why?”
“You look just about ready to hurl is all.”
The ship swooped down and Kendal lifted an inch off the ground before the gravity kicked back in. Mira looked as if in a trance, eyes at the screen and the only part of her that moved were her hands. The ship went down in a start and stop motion, trying to keep its speed relative to Nova’s ship.
Mira landed it corner first, with the rest of the ship slamming down and skidding to a stop.
He expected Mira to be excited, but instead she got up and rushed past him to the entryway. He followed after, checking quick to make sure his kinetic was loaded before rushing out.
The docking bay was more spacious than on the Morana. Tall ceilings and a wide platform. Brushed metal on all surfaces and not a hint of decoration. It was like being inside a perfect cube, only built of rust with a docking bay door on one side and a single person airlock on the other. The lights were lined along the corners and barely lit the room, casting tall and thick shadows over everything.
Shadows meant people could hide.
Kendal climbed down the ladder and drew his kinetic. Not the one Desmond had given him, that was back in the common room, but a Union issued one he’d stole from the Bachman. The room was quiet aside from the sound of Mira climbing down the ladder and jumping off. “No one here to say ‘hi?’,” Mira said.
“Guess not,” Kendal said. I thought she would have come herself, or at least sent someone to greet me. I don’t like this.
He didn’t risk holstering his weapon as he opened the airlock and walked through to the main halls of Nova’s ship. Mira stayed close to him as looked down both ends of the long hallway. No one was here.
They walked down, listening carefully for any signs of movement. The ship seemed deserted. No crew, or passengers, or soldiers.
This isn’t right, Kendal thought, walking by rows of airlocks labeled with crudely painted letters going from
A to F.
Every sound echoed.
Aside from their footsteps, he heard the dripping of water in the walls and the unstable hum of the engine. The ship felt like a living creature. Breathing and sweating as they crawled around inside of it.
“This ain’t a good idea,” Mira said. He hadn’t noticed until then that she had drawn her EG-pack. “I think we oughta turn ‘round.”
“We don’t have much of a choice,” Kendal said. “You said yourself that we couldn’t outrun Union ships without Dess. Nova’s our best shot.”
“I hate it when you’re right,” Mira said. “But that don’t mean I’m happy ‘bout it.”
The hall ended at a gravshaft. No detours, no doorways aside from the airlocks, no other way to go. A single lift with no other choice than to take it. He pushed the button and waited, hearing the mechanism grind.
“You really think she’ll help us?” Mira asked.
“I might have to convince her to, but yes.”
The gravshaft opened and Kendal went in first. There weren’t any lights inside, and once the door closed they were in darkness.
The room shook and he braced himself on the wall as it went up. The ship only had two floors, and the gravshaft only knew to go from one floor to the next. There were no controls on the inside, the direction decided by outside presses.
“I never got to ask,” Mira said. “But, what you think of her? You said she’s got something for you, but I ain’t ever been told what you got with her.”
Kendal looked away. He didn’t want to answer, but knew he’d have to. Back in Alice, he’d opened up about her and told her all about their past, but he never told her about how he felt about Nova now. The truth was, that Kendal wasn’t sure how he felt. He hated her, yet seeing her made him happy. He wanted her dead, yet wanted her back into his life.
Cast of Nova Page 18
