Chapter 31

Stellar One

Suz headed toward the shuttle port along the top layer of Ring Four. The induced gravity of the spinning Ring was a little lighter this close to the core. She nodded to the people she passed, but didn’t really see them. She’d tried to talk with the new security officer of the starship, but Ri had no words to offer her.

And she had none in return. How could she apologize for her failure? Had she grabbed a pocket torch, Tinnai might have survived. Such a simple tool, hanging safely in the flitter’s supply racks. Was there some way she could have not killed Ri’s sister of the heart, the fragile Ninka? Had she sent the girl up the ramp first, they might all be alive today. Ninka had been too slow, too injured to keep up at the last moment.

But Ri had said nothing until Suz’s attempts at conversation had stumbled into silence. Then finally, without raising her head, the girl had spoken.

“Excuse me, Suz Jeffers. I have a training session with the sub-commander.” Then Ri turned and was gone, leaving her to contemplate her actions and her plans while waiting for transport back to Earthside. The Angel-lady had failed and had fallen from the firmament.

“Suzie?”

She glanced at the woman. Tall, red-headed, with one of those copious chests that always drew the men.

“Yes? Do I know you?”

The woman’s eyes widened abruptly and she glanced up and down the corridor. Suz wondered if the mad woman would run or stay.

“I shouldn’t have said anything,” the woman whispered. “I wasn’t thinking. Didn’t expect to see you here. Please don’t tell.” Tears were welling up in the eyes even as she spoke.

“What are you so afraid…” There was something familiar about the voice. Very familiar.

“Celia?”

The woman raised a frantic hand and covered the cry that escaped her lips. Tears broke free to run down her cheeks.

Suz glanced up and down the corridor, it was still empty at the moment. She dragged the woman through a door that led to someone’s apartment. A Cécile Brünner rose climbed up a lattice that covered one wall of the main room. The small pink blossoms were bright and cheery, filling the room with a gentle sweetness.

Celia still hadn’t removed the hand from her mouth as tears ran over the back of her hand. Suz sat beside her on a green sofa that contrasted nicely with fresh leaves and the pale yellow walls. She held the woman’s other hand until the silent sobs subsided.

“What are you doing here?”

Celia lowered her hand slightly and pleaded, “You won’t tell, will you? Please don’t Suz, it’s my last chance.”

There was no need to ask who. “Not a word.”

“You promise?”

“I promise.” Suz tried to picture the self-assured beauty who had entered her father’s office and won her life even as her husband had died just four years ago. It was hard to imagine that someone could change so much.

The woman didn’t even trust her.

“Your name will no longer exist for me as soon as we leave this room.”

A faint light of hope glimmered in her streaming eyes.

“I promise.”

The force of the hug would have knocked Suz right off the sofa if not for the tightness of Celia’s grasp.

She broke off and wiped at her eyes as her cheeks colored with embarrassment. “The moment I heard you tell…tell…him about this spacecraft, I saw my last chance. If I could change, reshape myself, change my fingerprints, change my looks,” she flapped hands toward her hair, breasts, and face. There were alterations to eyebrow and cheekbone, even jawline that shifted her appearance a startling amount. No longer fine-featured, she was still a great beauty.

“But I couldn’t change my DNA. I haven’t coded in since Earth, but it’s hard. I thought perhaps I could hide here until we left orbit. Maybe then I’d be safe.

“But I didn’t expect to see someone I knew, I just blurted it out like a complete idiot when I saw you. You won’t tell?” The pleading look returned, though the tears didn’t, quite.

“I swear on my love for my son.”

Celia nodded several times. “He’s a nice boy. I only met him a few times, but he was always a nice boy.”

They smiled together for a moment.

“I have a shuttle to catch. Will you be okay?”

Celia crossed to their anonymous host’s sink and laved her face in cool water. She nodded her head but looked only a little better.

Suz moved up beside her and they looked into the mirror together.

“Stand straight, Celia.”

“Em… Emilia. That way it’s different, but I still think to answer to it.”

“Good. Better.” She pointed at their reflections, her own image pointing right back at her.

“Look, Emilia. Look closely.”

She leaned in to study her own image more closely. How strange to look in a mirror and not see yourself. How could she give the reflection back to the woman?

“Do you know what I see?”

“What?” A touch of wonder brushed Emilia’s voice

“I see two survivors.”

The reflection twisted to look down at her, but Suz watched the golden-haired woman who was no longer the Angel-lady. What price had she paid for that survival?

Slowly, the redhead’s reflection moved to look out at herself once again. But now, instead of studying her own features, she was seeing the bigger picture, and a tentative smile touched her lips.

Suz turned the woman to face her and pulled her face down, kissing her on each cheek and briefly on the lips.

“The past is done, Emilia. By this time tomorrow, they can test anything they want from your DNA to your dental record. Your records will show that your name is Emilia. I’ll even knock ten years off your registered age, that should cheer you up.”

“You can do that?” The woman’s eyes glittered, this time with an evil smile.

“Consider it done.”

“You can just wipe out the past? That’s incredible.”

If only it were that easy. If only she could wipe out the last fateful trip to Nara. If only she could have lived her life with the son she loved rather than the evil parent she both feared and despised. If…

“No, Celia. The past does not go away so easily.”

Celia/Emilia nodded slowly. Of course, she of all women knew that.

“That was one of my mistakes. I always let Bryce and James deal with the systems, they were so good at it. I was a better strategist, though they rarely used me for that after they got started. I let myself be manipulated and controlled like some plaything. Men. They’re all bastards.”

Suz could only nod her head in agreement. Though when she thought of her father on one side of the scale, and Perry, Levan, Davidson, and Brycie on the other.… Some men.

The woman’s smile and natural flair were returning. Anyone who knew Celia Wirden, might well recognize the air that shaped itself happily about her. But the change in age was good. Emilia had a lightness, a quickness, that had always been smooth and feline in Celia.

A quick hug and they exited into the corridor together. A mouthed thank you and they turned in opposite directions each toward their own futures.

And hers was a shuttle, if it hadn’t left without her. She trotted toward the port, feeling lighter than she had since Nara. A tall, broad-shouldered man awaited her at the hatchway, clearly watching for the arrival of their belated passenger.

She was nearly upon him, when she recognized the boy in the man who stood before her.

“Mom?”

She threw herself into his arms and felt her feet leave the deck as he lifted her high and held her tight.

“Brycie! Oh god, you look great. What are you doing here?”

He wrapped her tighter for a long moment before returning her to her feet. “I was about to ask you the same.”

“Waiting for this transport to leave for Earth.”

“Well, we just finished delivering a final load of soil. Packed a crazy man’s jungle full of it.”

Suz stepped back and drank him in. He looked fit and happy. His hair cascaded in loose disarray down to his shoulders. His dark eyes were no longer haunted with such deep circles.

“You look great.”

“Just hopping up and down orbit. And if you’re waiting for Earth transport, we’re your only ticket today. We’re headed to Hanoi for a quick checkup before we go off to our next project.”

She took his hand, reveling in the warmth and hard strength of it, and followed him through the hatch. A port in the docking arm revealed the long shuttle perched neatly on the inside of Ring Four.

“You? You’ve been delivering the jungle?”

“Yeah. We’re the only ones who’ve figured out how to park inside a moving ring. And we’re not telling. Tomorrow we start installing a micro-Arctic Ocean. Really just a couple million liters of seawater, they built everything else. And I think someone else is bringing up the animals. Got to be easier than all those damn trees, the cargo bay is still a mess of leaves and crap. And the Arctic lady is way more rational than that crazy parrot man.”

Suz smiled as they crossed over the threshold and moved into the passenger quarters. A few dozen deep, blue chairs were spread in a broad semi-circle of three rows against a bulkhead that must be the head of the cargo bay. A command console with four positions huddled about the forward viewscreen. They were occupied by people busy about their preparations.

The viewscreen held a stabilized image of Earth, no evidence that the shuttle was spinning rapidly about on the inside edge of a ring. A side image showed Stellar One from some vantage lower in orbit. Ring Five’s structure was nearly complete, they’d be spinning it up for first tests in three weeks, about three days after the Wanderer slid by ahead of their orbit on its way sunward. Still a long way from done, but another six months would see her on her way, with Ri and Emilia safely aboard. One memory of pain balanced by one of joy.

A beeper chimed from the hatch, a light flashing above as it slid shut.

“No one else going down?”

“Nope, just us. And all I have to do is watch Melissa there.” He aimed a finger at a young woman with a hard face and close-cropped blond hair. “A bit too serious, but training up nicely.”

“Fuck you, Bryce.”

“Later, Melissa. Watch the Number Three, it’s building faster than the others.”

“I see it. I see it.”

“Then do something about it.”

Bryce grinned at Suz. He’d finally found a place. Not glamorous, but important. And clearly he was good at what he did. And enjoyed it. She couldn’t wish for more.

“I’d give you the grand tour, Suzie, but unless you want to suit up to see the hold or the engines, you’ve already had it.”

Suzie. He’d always called her Suzie. So had others. Herself. Her father. It was little better than Angel-lady, SJ, or even Suz for that matter. Maybe it was time she figured out who she was and accepted it.

She settled, momentarily nameless, into one of the front row of seats, the only passenger aboard. Brycie strapped in beside her and she could tell that, despite appearances, he was busy keeping an eye on his trainee and his precious engines.

“Are you going to ride that beast to the stars?” His question was directed at her though his eyes never strayed from what he could see over Melissa’s shoulder except to check a complex readout on the jotter pad in his hands.

She looked at the two images: Earth and Stellar One. The cradle of humanity or the gateway to the stars. Two paths and too many names.

Suzie was the parent to a little boy and also the cowed daughter of a casually cruel father.

SJ was a patron.

Angel-lady was elevated above and beyond humanity. Worshipped—until she’d fallen.

Suz had been born of great hopes and the drive to make dreams come true. And Suz had killed. She’d killed with her own hands. Killed the hearts of many more. She couldn’t help looking at the image of the spaceship. Was Ri watching her from her new place at the security desk in Ring One? Making sure she left? Or wishing she hadn’t?

Fears and hopes wrapped together in the same unknown. Lost in the same words that neither of them could speak. But there was time. Somehow in the six months before Stellar One left, she’d find a way to reach over that pain and heal the gaping wound that had severed their life paths from one another.

On the main viewer, the billions waited. From World Premier in Bermuda to lover in Hanoi, they all waited for what was next. Their next meal. Their next day. What would they survive to see? Did they live as she did in daily fear?

The screen changed from stable Earth to a ring arcing upward from beneath their nose. What few stars could be seen beside the glare of sunlit rings were now sliding rapidly away beneath them. For a moment, the sun flashed by then a long slice of the Earth’s horizon, before once again the washed-out stars slid by.

And she still hadn’t found a way to block Bryce Senior’s superhumans-to-the-stars campaign. Yes, the applications had flooded in. And yes, every single one submitted to a DNA test. How many of those became contenders for the ten thousand seats on the starship? And how many were quietly targeted for removal? The legacy of the genetic cleansing still ticked its way through society. Humanity would be better off if they just sent her on her way as is, with the core command and systems’ crews and ten thousand construction workers. But that wasn’t likely to happen.

She could certainly use a different Premier. Someone less dangerous in the seat of power would suit her well. Did the people wait as well? Wait for a their new leader? Just trying to get through until someone more benevolent took the seat of power? Did they even care what was happening to them?

She’d swum in the Orinoco River, climbed the greatest of mountains, and run along the dark streets of Nara, killing in the night. And every person she met cared. They cared very much.

Stellar One or Earth? Which way did her path lie? Would a change in leadership change her decision?

The Earth loomed larger in her gaze, growing until it filled the viewscreen and overflowed onto the walls and into her thoughts. The Earth shown in full light, sunset racing across the Atlantic, rapidly consuming its ruling island kingdom of the Bahamas in a deep dark maw of the beast.

But the sunrise would soon be reaching her inquisitive tendrils over the South China Sea and Vietnam. The future lay upward, into the stars, if only her father didn’t destroy everything first. A single, fragile ark bound for an unexplored solar system was not enough to secure humanity’s future.

Yes, Bryce Sr. had supported this effort. And now she knew why. Superman-to-the-Stars. But how to save and heal the bleeding Earth?

“Hang on.” Brycie’s warning just gave her time to grab the chair arms before being thrown against the straps.

The pilot fired the right wing engines and the shuttle flipped sideways off the ring in a single flash and was thrown free of the space station before she even had a moment to gasp.

“Whoo! Go Lazy Jane.” A round of applause lit out from the crew.

“Great job as always, Cappy.” Someone slapped the pilot’s shoulder.

“Good girl.” Cappy patted the shuttle’s console affectionately as the Earth now glided across the screen and Stellar One shrank in the viewer.

Brycie was smiling and applauding along with the others. A good team. A good team with a good leader, which clearly this Cappy was.

The stars beckoned to her. They pulled at her dreams in the night. They weren’t far from her thoughts whether she was working on the meadow and forest biome or lying safe in Davidson’s arms in his quarters at Hanoi launch.

It wasn’t enough.

Suzie Jeffers had always quailed, even in the sight of the obvious.

SJ had used stealth to survive.

Angel-lady just a myth now, shorn of her wings and banished from the sky.

Suz Jeffers was a take aim-and-splat kinda gal, damage everywhere around. But there was someone. Someone she was just starting to know, who might indeed be able to walk the path she could only glimpse with her peripheral vision.

Her father had done more damage than should be allowed for any one person, or any thousand.

Humanity needed a shift in the balance of power. They were ready.

In a starlit moment of clarity, as Lazy Jane rolled lazily into reentry orbit revealing the shining Earth below, she knew she wasn’t going to the stars. Her destiny lay along a different path.

Susan Jeffers had found her future.

It was time to stage a coup.