by J. J. Green
“Not really.”
The woman he was with looked between them. “I’m finished here. The bomb’s disarmed. I’ll take it and get out of your way.” She lifted a device from the floor.
“Do you need a hand, Rosa?” asked Bryce.
“No, thanks. I can manage.”
Carina stood in silence, looking down, waiting for the woman to leave. After hearing the door close, she went to speak.
“Wait,” Bryce said, raising a hand. “Before you say anything, look at this.”
He reached out to a sensor on the wall and swiped across it.
The lamps overhead blinked out.
Immediately, the stars shone down, brilliant, filling the space with ethereal light.
“Isn’t it beautiful?” he asked. “It’s different from looking at the night sky, right? The stars are brighter, and they’re steady. They don’t twinkle. There’s something majestic about them, something sublime. Takes my breath away.”
He moved behind Carina and wrapped his arms around her, hugging her tightly. Leaning down, he pressed the side of his face against her neck. “We should come back here sometime soon,” he murmured. “Alone. When the kids have settled in.”
He paused, and then went on, barely whispering, “We don’t have to get married if you don’t want to. I realized I was going too fast for you. I’d thought you were thinking the same as me, but I made a mistake. It’s fine. I’ll wait until you’re ready, and if you’re never ready, that’s okay too.”
She breathed in deeply. The feeling of his arms around her, his chest pressed against her back, and the soft bristles of his jaw crushed against her neck, was wonderful. She drank in his scent.
Gently, she took his arms and pulled them apart. She stepped away and turned around to face him. The starlight lit up his young features.
His expression broke her heart.
He’d guessed what was coming.
Touching his cheek, she said, “I can’t do this. Not ever. I’m not the person you think I am. I’m not the person I thought I was. It wouldn’t work, and I would hurt you. That’s what I do.”
She paused to press the edge of her sleeve against her eyes, stemming her tears.
“I’m so sorry. I’m sorry for dragging you all this way and making you a part of my fantasy. You’ve given up so much for me, risked so much, and I didn’t deserve it. I didn’t deserve you.”
She swallowed hard. “It’s still not too late for you to leave. I can tell Cadwallader to make a detour to the nearest inhabited planet and I’ll give you enough money to pay for your passage back to Ithiya. It’ll take a year or longer to get home, I guess, but you’ll make it eventually.”
Bryce’s gaze searched hers, his eyes shadow-black under the stars.
He leaned forward, took her face in his hands, and kissed her forehead. “I don’t want to go back to Ithiya. I’ve gotten attached to your little family, Carina Lin. I’m coming with you to Earth.”
She looked to one side, unable to meet his gaze.
Then she walked away, navigating the dark obstacles in the room carefully. When she reached the exit, she halted and turned. Bryce had sat down. Whether he was watching her or not, she couldn’t tell.
She left him alone in the dark.
Chapter Fourteen
Three days later, Carina was helping to make the final preparations for their epic journey. Her misgivings about her plan to return to Earth had only grown since her meeting with Cadwallader and Jace, yet she had continued to not voice them. She felt as though the expedition was a boulder she’d levered, with great effort, from the top of a hill and now it was careering downward at a force and pace that was unstoppable.
She was putting the mage documents into a safe in a storage room aboard the Bathsheba, along with other precious items, carefully rolling up the brittle papers and tying thread around the scrolls before placing them inside the metal receptacle. She’d made copies of all the papers and stored the images on databases on the Bathsheba and the Duchess, which had been secured to the former vessel.
Mezban’s destroyer, the Peregrine, had also been fixed to the inter-sector ship, and her troops were already in stasis. Carina hadn’t been present at the time they had been made to go into the capsules, but she’d heard they’d been reluctant and fearful.
Somewhere out in the black was the ship they’d traveled in from Geriel Sector, which held its own Deep Sleep facilities. Apparently, around three percent of the men and women Mezban had brought from her sector hadn’t survived stasis. Whether the capsules on the other ship had been faulty or a three-percent failure rate in such systems was normal, Carina didn’t know. However, it was no wonder the enemy troops had been afraid.
In a month or two, she would also be entering Deep Sleep. It was either that or live out years in space. But the report of the reaction of Mezban’s soldiers had served to erode her convictions about the journey even further. If one of her siblings were to die in transit, she would never forgive herself.
She sighed and shook her head slightly as she tied the knot in a thread around the final document. After placing the scroll into the safe she closed it and set the lock. She wished she knew how to Cast a Lock that would last thousands of years and require detailed knowledge to Open, as the mages on Ostillon had, but the ability was beyond her. Perhaps Darius might be able to do it one day.
Though she’d had weeks to study the information the papers contained she still felt she’d only scratched the surface of it. Items like unfamiliar Characters and their related Casts, and details about the mages’ mountain home on Earth had intrigued her but she hadn’t been able to fully understand them.
She stood up and stretched her arms and back. There was still plenty more to do before their journey began.
As she relaxed and exhaled Parthenia walked in.
Her sister voiced a small Oh!, and halted. She turned, about to leave.
“Were you looking for something?” asked Carina.
“It’s fine, it isn’t important.”
“Don’t be silly. You obviously came here for something. What do you want?”
“It doesn’t matter.” Parthenia was almost out the door.
“For stars’ sake, this is ridiculous!” Carina exclaimed. “Come back!” She marched over to her sister.
Parthenia halted. “What?” she spat. “What are you going to do? Grab me? Force me to stay and tell you why I’m here?”
Carina paused, taken aback by the girl’s intense reaction. “No, I-I just think it’s stupid for us to avoid each other.”
“You aren’t avoiding me, I’m avoiding you.”
“Whatever. Look, I’m sorry for insisting that you left the battle in the Deep Sleep chamber, but it was for your own good.” She reached out to touch her sister’s arm, but Parthenia shrugged off the gesture.
“I care about you,” said Carina, undeterred. She desperately wanted to put things right between them. “I know I have a strange way of showing it sometimes, but I do.”
“That’s right,” said Parthenia. “You sure do have a strange way of showing it. But don’t worry, I’m not going to let you ‘care about me’ any longer. And I’ve told the kids they don’t have to mind you anymore. From now on, we’re going to stick together and run our own lives.” She poked Carina in the chest. “You can do whatever the hell you want.”
She stalked away.
Carina’s mouth dropped open. Suddenly, the coldness of her siblings toward her over the last few days made sense.
The day after the battle for the Bathsheba, Cadwallader had called another meeting to iron out the finer details of their forthcoming epic journey. Carina turned up a little early to the Duchess’s mission room—the transfer of personnel and their effects to the Bathsheba had been due to begin the following day—and found the lieutenant colonel and Jace already there. The ancient mages’ records remained on the table.
She nodded a greeting to them. “Right, where do we begin?” she asked as she sa
t down.
“We aren’t starting yet,” Cadwallader replied. “I took the liberty of inviting some others along. I’d like to create a council of sorts. By my rough calculations we have twenty-four years of travel ahead of us, perhaps longer, through a largely unknown region of space. I want to bring together our best minds, and open out the decision-making process. We need to get our planning right, or perhaps suffer terrible consequences.”
“Who?” Carina’s gaze moved to Jace. Had he had some input into Cadwallader’s decision? Why hadn’t the lieutenant colonel asked her about this? “Who have you invited?”
As the words left her lips, Atoi walked through the doorway.
“Hey, Car,” she said, raising a hand in greeting. “Hey, everyone. Thanks for the invite, sir.”
She threw herself into a seat and reclined into its back, straightening out one of her long legs. “Who else is coming?”
“That’s what I’d like to know,” Carina muttered.
Voices could be heard chatting outside the room, drawing nearer.
Her heart fluttered in recognition.
Bryce and Parthenia entered.
Carina’s lips drew to a thin line. She could understand Cadwallader’s reasoning in including Bryce in the council, but Parthenia? She was a child. A smart, resourceful child, to be sure, but still a kid. Carina couldn’t deny her sister had a valuable contribution to make, but how would she deal with the potentially disastrous fall-out from a decision she’d helped to make? Could she cope with the guilt and remorse when things didn’t go to plan? The sleepless nights? The regret?
Parthenia was watching Carina as she sat down, a mixture of defiance and wariness on her face.
“We’re all here,” Cadwallader said. “Let’s begin.”
“Wait,” said Carina.
The lieutenant colonel barely disguised a sigh. “Yes?”
“I’d like to know by whose authority you’re ‘opening out the decision-making process’? You certainly didn’t speak to me about it.” Her gaze turned to Jace. “Did he ask you?”
He coughed and looked uncomfortable. “No, but I agree with the principle.”
“I don’t understand what gives you the right to act unilaterally,” Carina said tersely to Cadwallader.
He tapped his fingernails on the table. “We’ve been over this—”
“We have, and I told you I don’t like you involving other people!”
“Look,” said Bryce, “if my presence is going to be a problem, I’ll leave.”
“Me too,” Atoi added. “To be honest, I hate sitting around talking, and I trust you guys to think up a good plan.”
“This isn’t about you two,” Parthenia said. “It’s about me. That’s right, isn’t it, sis?”
Carina doggedly maintained her focus on Cadwallader, but she saw her sister in her peripheral vision, glaring.
“You would prefer a more democratic process?” the lieutenant colonel asked in a tone dripping acid. “Very well. Jace has stated he agrees we should create a council to manage our journey to Earth, and I’m obviously of the same mind. You disagree. That makes it two against one. You’re outvoted.” He steepled his fingers. “Now we may continue.”
Carina slammed the table with an open hand, making everyone jump. She felt like sweeping the documents off the table, upending it, and telling them all to get out.
But she fought her impulse to give further vent to her feelings, knowing she’d recently crossed the line with Parthenia for the second time. She said and did nothing else except clench her jaw.
After several moments of awkward silence, the lieutenant colonel said quietly, “Let’s continue.”
He pulled a piece of paper from the top of the pile and passed it to Atoi, who was sitting nearest to him. “Assuming these are the true original galactic coordinates of Earth, as I said, we’re looking at a journey of roughly twenty-four years and two months. Fortunately, we’ll be spending most of the voyage in Deep Sleep. Unfortunately, despite the information from the mages, we aren’t exactly sure where we’re going. Though they recorded their time of departure from Earth, that doesn’t seem to relate to current time measurements. They appear to have been using their local frame of temporal reference, not Standard Time. So, for our purposes, the date they give is useless, which makes adjusting our calculations to allow for the time that’s passed since their departure difficult.”
“I can tell you the number of mage generations born since leaving Earth, according to our lore,” said Jace.
“You can?” Cadwallader’s eyebrows lifted. “That may help.”
Atoi passed the paper she was holding to Bryce.
“It’s two hundred and forty-one,” Jace said.
The lieutenant colonel’s eyes moved up and left as he worked out the arithmetic. “That’s well over seven thousand Standard years!”
Atoi whistled. “That’s a heck of a long time to be away from home.”
“I heard that human existence in this part of the galaxy is reckoned to date back about six and a half thousand years,” Bryce said. “Jace’s information fits in with mage history, which states they were the first human colonists of deep space.”
“Interesting,” said Cadwallader, “but a subject for another day. If mage lore is accurate, that means we can increase the reliability of our estimation of Earth’s current location. Good. Now we need to hash out a rotation for individuals in stasis, among other things. How many should crew the ship while the rest sleep, and for how long?”
Bryce offered a suggestion, and then Jace offered another, and after a while the meeting had moved into a detailed discussion on the voyage. Carina didn’t speak much, preferring to allow the others to make the decisions. Cadwallader had been a mastermind of organization, as always, and the people present mostly agreed with his proposals. She’d begun to see that he didn’t really need their input; that his purpose in inviting the rest had been to make them feel included, that their opinion mattered.
Parthenia had made some intelligent, thoughtful contributions, and Carina felt proud of her, but whenever she’d tried to catch her sister’s eye, Parthenia had purposefully ignored her.
It was no surprise that the girl was upset after their altercation at the battle, but as the discussion wore on, it had occurred to Carina that all her siblings had recently shown the same enmity. Ever since the taking of the Bathsheba, they’d been reserved and silent around her. Even little Darius had stopped climbing onto her lap.
Parthenia’s announcement in the storage room, that her brothers and sisters were now going it alone without her input, made it clear to Carina that they’d decided to shun her.
She watched her sister walk away, the new understanding piercing her deeply. She’d pushed Bryce away, and now she’d lost her brothers and sisters too.
She heaved a deep sigh.
Parthenia turned a corner and disappeared.
Carina set her jaw.
She was alone again, but it was probably for the best.
Chapter Fifteen
“The rota’s out!” said Ferne excitedly.
“It is?” Oriana jumped up from her seat and ran to him. “Show me!”
“Wait a minute,” her brother replied, scanning the interface screen he was holding. “Let me look up our names.”
Oriana pouted.
“Okaaay,” drawled Ferne. “You can look us up.” He handed her the screen.
His sister clutched it and squeezed in beside him on the armchair, pushing him aside with her butt.
Their two heads bent over the interface.
Parthenia had chosen a family suite on the Bathsheba for herself and her siblings. The habitation contained three bedrooms, and there had been some disagreement over who would sleep where. Oriana and Ferne had wanted to continue sharing a room, but Parthenia had pointed out that it might be better for the younger children to share with older siblings of the same sex.
The twins had agreed to her suggestion, though somewhat reluctan
tly, and now Ferne shared with Darius and Oriana shared with Nahla. The twins seemed to be getting along better as a consequence. They were certainly bickering less.
She’d taken the third bedroom for herself, where she slept in blissful solitude, with no one’s feet poking in her face.
Family life since moving out of the Duchess and into the inter-sector vessel had generally been more peaceful. As well as having far more room to sleep, they also had the lounge where they were currently sitting, two bathrooms that they didn’t have to share with less-than-hygienic soldiers, and access to printers that could create just about anything they wanted.
Not having Carina around anymore helped, too. Life was so much more pleasant without someone controlling your every move. It was true that their eldest sister—half-sister, Parthenia reminded herself—had helped them a lot in the early days, but those days were gone now. They were all older and much more experienced. They’d earned the right to be respected and trusted, but Carina hadn’t or wouldn’t accept it. They’d grown and matured in ways that their sister refused to acknowledge.
It was a shame that they’d been forced to push her out, but it had been inevitable, and there was only one person to blame.
“Does that rota thing say when we’ll sleep and when we’ll be awake?” asked Darius.
He’d found a printer that made paper and colored pencils, and he was busy drawing at the table. His efforts were heavily influenced by the hand-drawn pictures in the ancient mage documents: verdant mountains, high castles, stylized trees and flowers, and animal characters.
“Yeah, of course,” Ferne replied. “It’s the thing we’ve been talking about for days, remember?” he added in a tone that sounded as if he wanted to add dummy to the end of his sentence, but his gaze shifted to Parthenia and he stopped there.
Darius looked up at Nahla, who was sitting opposite him, also drawing, and rolled his eyes.
Nahla giggled.
“I’ve found our names!” blurted Oriana. “Let’s see what we’re doing.” Her gaze tracked across the screen. When she registered what she was looking for, her mouth turned down at the corners. “Urgh, we’re on the list of the first to remain awake.” She looked more closely. “For eight months!”
