Starshine: Aurora Rising Book One Read online

  “Don’t know. Haven’t spoken to him since the night he walked out.”

  Her eyes creased at the corners as she regarded him over the rim of her glass. “I’m sorry.”

  She sounded like she meant it, but he supposed he carried a bit of parental baggage himself. “I’m not. He showed his worth when he left.”

  Upon first being given the advice to ‘never have anything you can’t walk away from,’ he had been skeptical. After all, wasn’t it the very thing he hated his father for? He had resolved the matter by developing a corollary rule: Never let someone get close enough to depend on you. That way they don’t get hurt when you walk away.

  He didn’t share any of those thoughts aloud, of course, and they fell silent again. He watched her without watching her. It was evident she struggled with something. Her gaze drifted around but failed to focus on anything while she absently twirled the stem of her glass between two fingers. Her lips pursed together as if to prevent words from spilling forth without prior approval.

  He hoped she viewed his confession for what it was: an honest, unpremeditated sharing of a less-than-pleasant part of his life—because apparently he intended to spill forth his entire damn life story to her—rather than a manipulative feigning of vulnerability to get her to open up in return. He had done such on more than one occasion; this wasn’t one of them.

  She refilled her glass and appeared to come to a conclusion. Her gaze finally settled on him.

  “The answer to your question yesterday is yes. My father and I were very close. He taught me to fly, he taught me to love the stars. Work took him away a lot, but he always came home with some new adventure for us to embark on. He was….” Her voice drifted off, but then she blinked and straightened her posture.

  “After he died, my mother shut down emotionally. She had never been a particularly affectionate or doting mom, but she became a robot, a cold automaton throwing herself into her work for eighteen hours a day. At a minimum.”

  She took a deliberate sip of wine. “Looking back, I realize she was grieving and it was the only way she knew how to deal with the pain. But I was thirteen years old and I was grieving, too, and she wasn’t there to comfort me, to tell me it would be okay. She wasn’t even there to silently dry my tears. She wasn’t there at all.”

  Her shoulders raised in a half-hearted shrug. “I rebelled. She reacted harshly. I rebelled more. She tried to exert military-style control over my life, and did not succeed.

  “And that’s it. We tolerate one another, but we never really made up. We never talked about it. And we most certainly never talked about my father.”

  “Maybe it’s not too late.”

  The laugh she gave rippled with cynicism. “I tried once. Before I left for the job on Erisen, I took her to lunch one day. I apologized for some of my more…extreme behavior in the wake of Dad’s death. I told her I understood now she had been grieving as well. And though I was only a child, it had been selfish of me to act as I did, and I was sorry if I had made her life more difficult at an already difficult time.”

  She stared into her glass, but her gaze seemed focused on someplace very far away. “She responded by saying I was still a child—note, I was twenty-five at this point—and I should never presume to believe I was capable of understanding anything she had gone through or anything she had or had not felt.” A quick gulp of her wine. “And as for my behavior, while it was disappointing as she had expected better from me, it amounted to nothing of real consequence.”

  “No…” her head shook with an air of finality “…I’m afraid it is much, much too late. Whatever emotions the woman may have once possessed, they departed the premises long ago.”

  “I’m sorry. You didn’t deserve such a reaction.”

  “Maybe, maybe not. I was quite the recalcitrant teenager.” She took a deep breath and slid her chair out, leaving the nearly full glass of wine on the table. “And on that lovely downer, I’m going to call it a night. But….”

  Her eyes found his. “Thank you.”

  He met her gaze with his full attention. “For?”

  She gave him an almost wistful half-smile. “Being honest.”

  He had told her she probably couldn’t tell the difference, but perhaps she truly could. He didn’t know whether the possibility comforted or terrified him.

  He instinctively leaned forward, his hand moving toward hers. It paused halfway to its destination.

  She hesitated halfway to standing, her expression now completely unreadable to him. “What?”

  Stay.

  He withdrew his hand and eased back in the chair, though his attention didn’t leave her. “Nothing. Good night, Alex.”

  25

  SENECA

  CAVARE, INTELLIGENCE DIVISION HEADQUARTERS

  * * *

  IT WAS ONE-THIRTY IN THE MORNING when Michael, freshly showered and wearing pressed khakis and a crisp forest green shirt, walked in the incident command center at Division HQ. His wife was a saint, and as soon as this crisis passed—if it passed—he owed her a nice dinner out, if not a weekend getaway.

  He smiled at an agent who handed him a steaming mug of coffee and let his gaze run calmly across the room. Most of the Summit delegation had been brought directly here from the spaceport upon their arrival; a few lower-level staffers cleared of involvement or knowledge were allowed to go home for now.

  The agents tasked to Atlantis having exhausted their avenues of interrogation during the nineteen hour trip to Seneca, his best interrogators had taken over upon the delegation’s arrival. Several of the senior Trade Division officials were, shall we say, displeased about being detained. They shouldn’t have hired an assassin as an employee, then.

  Karin Pitrone, the team lead on Atlantis, spotted him and came over. Her stride appeared purposeful and her shoulders rigid, though she must have been awake for going on fifty hours now. He gave her a sympathetic smile, which she acknowledged only by a tight nod.

  “You asked to speak to Assistant Director Nythal, sir? He’s in Interview Room 3 whenever you’re ready.”

  “Thank you, Karin. No time like the present.” He was kept apprised of events via a constant stream of updates over the last two days and didn’t need further briefing.

  Jaron Nythal sat on the edge of his chair, his hands drumming a rapid rhythm on the table while his eyes darted around the empty room, then up to Michael as he entered. A half-empty cup of coffee sat to his right, a crumb-filled plate to his left. Dark irises almost masked the dilated pupils.

  Michael recognized it had been a long few days for everyone and would understand if the man was running on caffeine and adrenaline, but he just wasn’t sure it had been the best idea for him to take amps before the interview. He recalled Delavasi’s warning regarding Nythal; he already understood what Delavasi had been getting at.

  He made certain none of those thoughts tainted his expression as he smiled professionally. “Mr. Nythal, I’m Director Michael Volosk with the Division of Intelligence. Thank you for agreeing to meet with me. I realize the situation is far from ideal for everyone involved, so I appreciate it.”

  Nythal cracked his neck. “It’s fine…Volosk, is it? I’m still in shock over what happened. I can hardly believe it. We all had high hopes for the Summit, and it’s a shame it went down this way. It truly is.” He dragged a hand through sleek black hair. “So what do you need from me?”

  “Merely a bit of information.” Michael cleared his throat and sat down opposite his ‘guest.’ “I won’t take any more of your time than is necessary. What can you tell me about Christopher Candela?”

  Nythal shrugged. “I didn’t really know him.”

  “I understand if you didn’t know him socially, but he served as a staffer in your department, and you oversaw administration and coordination for the Summit. You approved his attendance, correct?”

  “Well, yes. But you must realize, there were thirty-seven people in the delegation. I can’t be expected to know each of the
m individually. I can tell you Mr. Candela’s record was clean. He wouldn’t have been permitted to go were it not.”

  “I’m sure.” He really wished the man hadn’t doped himself up, as it made it difficult to judge and interpret his body language. He considered putting the man on ice until he’d returned to a baseline state…but there was a lot to do and little time to do it in. “Do you have any personal impressions of him you can share?”

  Another shrug. “He was…young. Eager to please. Seemed intelligent enough, but we hadn’t asked anything of him yet. My impression of him is he didn’t make much of an impression.”

  “What about during the Summit? Any out-of-character behavior?”

  Nythal leaned into the table and clasped his hands together. His thumbs continued to dance erratically. “Look, Mr. Volosk. I stayed busy two ways from Sunday during the Summit. I barely noticed what my personal secretary did, much less some no-name lackey.”

  Michael maintained perfect composure, offering no hint of annoyance. “Of course you did. Do you remember the last time you saw him?”

  Nythal blew out an exaggerated breath and crashed back in the chair. “Uh, I think I saw him at the dinner Tuesday night. Wednesday though? I attended meetings all day.”

  “And around the time of the incident?”

  His gaze drifted around the small room as if deep in thought. “No, I don’t think so. I mean I was in the ballroom, so I suppose my eyes might have drifted across him, but….”

  Now Michael did show annoyance, with deliberate intent. He’d let the man play out his routine. Now to remind him he wasn’t actually in control of his situation. Nythal was a government official of moderate stature, certainly, but one didn’t get far in the intelligence business without learning to disregard political niceties. Granted, once you rose to a department directorship you needed to begin to practice them again, but not in this particular circumstance.

  “Fine. Did he have a reason to be in the receiving line? He doesn’t sound like the type of person who would want to glad-hand dignitaries.”

  “Maybe it was a secret dream of his. I don’t even know if he’d ever met Kouris—”

  “What was his job at the Summit? It doesn’t appear as though he did much of anything.”

  “He was an attaché, he…got shit for us. Ran errands. Made notes, whatever.”

  “How many attachés did you have serving you?”

  “Um, four, five? I don’t…remember….” The lines had begun to deepen around his sagging eyelids. The amps were wearing off.

  “Seems like a little too much bureaucratic padding to me—this isn’t the Alliance. What about the following individuals: Alice Terre, Gerald Michaels, Treyson Rivers, Brandon Chao?”

  “Wha—what’s special about them?”

  “They also participated in the receiving line and greeted Minister Santiagar prior to his collapse. We’ll need to review their files and activities as well.”

  Michael sat at his desk, the door closed. A few moments’ respite. His hands rested at his chin in a thoughtful pose. And he was thoughtful.

  He’d conducted half a dozen interviews at the request of his agents, spent hours reviewing summaries of three dozen more interviews and viewed the footage of the incident from every angle and the cams of the pursuing agents. He’d confirmed the logs of every exit and patrol on Atlantis.

  The man in the receiving line was Chris Candela. Scans of both Kouris’ and Santiagar’s hands minutes after the incident recovered trace DNA. Yet the man pursued into the service corridors displayed evasion and subterfuge skills which nothing in Candela’s life history indicated he should possess.

  Worse, he was gone. Despite an ironclad lockdown on the facility in under two minutes—due as much to quick-moving Alliance security as anyone else’s actions—and a meter-level grid search, no trace could be found of the man.

  The exit logs stared back at him from the screen above his desk. Eventually they had been forced to allow the uninvolved guests and bystanders to depart. The official Summit attendees were accounted for, save Candela. The nine attendees not present at the final dinner—an Alliance staffer, three reporters and five corporate executives—were interviewed on-scene and provided viable reasons for their absence. After follow-up they had been cleared and allowed to depart as well.

  He exhaled softly, feeling every gram of the weight though it didn’t show in his posture or the bearing of his shoulders. Diplomatic relations with the Alliance hung by a dangling strand of a thread. If they could provide hard evidence of this being the act of a lone crazy, they stood a chance of at least regaining an uneasy détente. Otherwise, their claims of non-involvement came off as weak and impotent. But damned if he could find any such evidence.

  He traded the exit logs for the rapidly growing file on the life and times of Chris Candela.

  He had seen many criminals in his years in Division. Dangerous men and even more dangerous women. Small-time hucksters and savvy crime lords. Spies, gangsters, assassins, insurgents and wannabe-revolutionaries. True believers and soulless mercs willing to kill children for the right price.

  Candela was none of these things. While the possibility continued that something in the man’s past, some event they had yet to uncover would open a Pandora’s box of secrets, it became increasingly unlikely with each passing hour. Even if—

  His eVi blinked red, and a second later a brief message flashed into his vision.

  We found him.

  The body had floated onto a beach filled with frolicking children mid-morning Atlantis time. Once the children were corralled for counseling and the scene secured, a thorough forensic investigation was conducted onsite before moving the body to a medical facility.

  The examination indicated a time of death between late afternoon on Wednesday and mid-morning Thursday; two-plus days in the water made a more precise TOD impossible. The cause of death was determined to be drowning. All evidence indicated that upon escaping the convention facility, however he accomplished it, he had simply dived off a walkway and let himself drown.

  Oceans did not constitute a significant feature of Senecan topology. They existed of course, but were shallow and unexceptional, and generally far too cold to frolic in. It was conceivable Candela didn’t know how to swim. Unlikely, but conceivable.

  It remained a mystery how he escaped the lockdown. But he clearly had—after which, by all indications, he committed suicide.

  The evidence at this point was near to irrefutable. And despite herculean efforts and their most earnest protestations, they had nothing they would be able to show to the Alliance government to prove the assassination was anything other than a premeditated act on behalf of the Senecan Federation.

  26

  PALLUDA

  SENECAN FEDERATION COLONY

  * * *

  THAD YUE LED THE FIGHTERS into Senecan Federation space. He had swung down a bit to the south so should they be tracked, they would appear to be approaching from the nearest Alliance military base on Arcadia. They were unlikely to be picked up until they reached Palluda however, as other than one tiny Alliance colony the region to the south of western Federation space was a desolate wasteland devoid of life.

  At 0.2 AU out from Palluda they dropped out of superluminal. He signaled the other fighters to move into a tight standard Alliance approach formation, one they had practiced several times in the last week in the skies above Cosenti.

  From here on out, everything needed to proceed according to the script.

  “Activate transponders.”

  Acknowledged.

  “Switching to Alliance encrypted communications protocol. Confirm.”

  Confirmed.

  He consciously added a crisp abruptness to his tone. “This is Vengeance Alpha. Operation Vengeance is a go. Initiate jamming of orbital sensors on my mark. And…mark.”

  Palluda became visible in the viewport moments later. It was a smallish planet, two-thirds the size of Mars, and the lone habitable wor
ld in the system. Nevertheless with a location solidly in the goldilocks zone and a stable orbit, it was a bountiful if ordinary garden world.

  The colony had been founded ten years earlier as an agricultural outpost. It supported a population of under thirty thousand, for bots did most of the work tending the vast kilometers of farmland. A single town sat in the center of the cultivated land. Thankfully the first atmosphere corridors had begun operation six months earlier—corridors which helpfully included transponder monitoring, though no connected security measures.

  “Bravo, Charlie, Delta, on me. Prepare for corridor transit.”

  The corridor ended to the southwest of and outside town. Only the most basic defense system protected the colony, consisting of two surface-to-air turret lasers and a single patrol drone. He planned to knock out the drone immediately, and custom jamming ware would disrupt the STA turrets.

  His ship emerged from the corridor and the distant outline of the town came into view. The other three fighters followed him out as he banked east.

  “Vengeance, you have your targets. We are weapons heavy.”

  Thomas Harnal was deeply engrossed in watching Ava Loumas saunter across the street. As such, he didn’t see the patrol drone until it crashed to the ground three meters in front of him.

  “Ah shit!” His arms cartwheeled in the air as he was thrown backward to land on his ass on the sidewalk. He looked up to discover Ava staring wide-eyed at the scattered wreckage of the drone and the deep crater it had created.

  He laughed gamely and climbed to his feet. “Well, there’s my brush with death for the day, eh?”

  She glanced over at him, a perplexed frown animating her pretty features. “Oh…Norm…Tom? That’s your name, right? Are you okay?”

  She didn’t even know his name. His shoulders sagged. “Yeah, I’m fine.” He looked back at the crater marring the park grass. “I wonder what happened to make it fail? Maybe the—”

  A sonic boom reverberated, so close the ground trembled beneath him. His eyes jerked up to see two fighter jets zoom overhead. The distinctive navy Earth Alliance emblem was clearly discernable—they were flying that low.