Aurora Rising: The Complete Collection (2 page)

…or they will be, in about 8 years.
Restless
is a short story prequel to
Starshine
, Book One of the
Aurora Rising
trilogy.

Before Alex Solovy was a successful interstellar scout, she was building starships and planning for the day when she would fly one she called her own. Before Caleb Marano was wiping out the terrorist group who murdered his mentor, he was…wiping out terrorist groups who murdered shopkeepers and threatened his friends.

Catch a glimpse of
Aurora Rising’s
heroes while they were still becoming the individuals they will need to be in order to face the galactic threat which, for now, waits silently in the void.

2314

(
E
IGHT
Y
EARS
B
EFORE THE
E
VENTS OF
S
TARSHINE)

EARTH

S
AN
F
RANCISCO

I
QUIT.

Alex Solovy rolled the words around in her mind, trying out different inflections and intonations and generally letting her brain grow comfortable with the notion. Not so much the words themselves as what they signified.

Freedom, in all its wondrous and terrifying splendor.

She was on pleasant terms with her boss at Pacifica Aerodynamics—if not necessarily her coworkers—and bore him and the enterprise he operated no particular ill will. The opposite in fact; it was a decent company as companies went, inasmuch as it hadn’t allowed two centuries worth of ship fabrication to weigh it down or stifle an innovative spirit.

No, unlike so many legions of corporate drones she wasn’t quitting because she hated her job. She was quitting because the job had always been nothing more than a means to an end—a way to gain a fulsome understanding of and skill in operating every conceivable system to be found on a starship, plus each one’s variations, quirks and maintenance requirements.

Two years before, she had left IS Design on Erisen because she had learned everything they had to teach her. Now she would leave Pacifica Aerodynamics for the same reason.

Seeing as they were the two premiere civilian starship manufacturers in the Earth Alliance, the only place where she could learn the remaining—and the most important—lessons was space itself.

She had also spent the previous four years of gainful employment saving every spare credit to pass through her account. Never one to spend frivolously on consumer trappings, she had trimmed her expenses to the bone by sharing a flat with Kennedy while on Erisen and, upon returning to San Francisco, renting a modest one-bedroom apartment in a once-and-not-yet-again-trendy neighborhood.

The savings had built up quickly, albeit not so quickly as her innate restlessness might have liked. And now ninety-five percent of those savings had been spent on a ship of her own.

Her ship.

She let
those
words roll around exquisitely in her mind as she went to break the good news to her boss.

SENECA

C
AVARE,
C
APITAL OF THE
S
ENECAN
F
EDERATION

Caleb Marano flattened himself against the wall and readied the Daemon at his hip.

From the other side of the entrance Samuel counted down the seconds with his fingers. When the last finger dropped Samuel activated the door and they stormed into the room.

A makeshift office containing only a collapsible desk sitting askew and cartons stacked along both walls, the setting carried all the hallmarks of shady and transient criminal activity.

“Pascal Abelli, you are under arrest for blackmail and extortion of a government official. You may—”

“I don’t think so.” Abelli drew his own Daemon as footsteps pounded down the hallway behind them.

The investigation had fallen to the Division of Intelligence because there was some question as to whether a government official, Interior Director Orsi De Campo, had in truth engaged in the crime Abelli was blackmailing him to keep secret—selling Federation secrets to the Triene cartel. If the Director had not done so, the pertinent question became how classified material had found its way into Pascal Abelli’s hands.

Samuel shot Abelli before the gun made it halfway up. Caleb stayed by the entrance, waited a beat, then threw an elbow backwards to smash the face of the guard who burst through the doorway, knocking the man flat on his back as blood gushed from a crushed nasal septum.

He spun and fired as the guard tried to get up, confiscated the man’s gun and tossed it to Samuel. Next he crouched to search the now unconscious form for other weapons.

Laser fire streaked above his head. He lunged forward to tackle the second guard at the knees when the opposite wall turned red in a spray of blood propelled out of the hole burned through the man’s chest. The body collapsed to the floor.

After Caleb checked to confirm the hallway harbored no further attackers, he climbed to his feet and found Samuel lowering the gun Caleb had tossed to him, his personal shield sparking with residual energy dissipation.

“Guess
his
gun wasn’t set to stun. And I thought I might actually get to finish this op without having to kill anyone.”

“When was the last time that happened?”

“Too long ago to remember, seems like.” Samuel flipped Abelli’s prone body onto his stomach and secured his arms in wrist restraints. “This guy’s a lard-ass. Help me drag him out?”

Caleb wiped stray blood off his cheek using his shirt before grabbing hold of the unconscious man’s left arm. Together they hauled him past the two guards and down the hallway.

“Thanks for tagging along with me tonight—turns out I did need the backup. Logistics ought to be here by the time we get outside. I’d invite you to go get a beer or four, but I suspect I’m going to be ass-deep in red tape for hours. Killing politicians, their friends or even their enemies always means mountains of bureaucracy.”

A beer or four
would
serve well to calm the adrenaline still coursing hot through Caleb’s veins and the agitated energy which inevitably lingered longer than it should after such confrontations.

But there was more than one way to appease the restlessness.

“It’s all good. I’ve got plans on Romane later.” ‘Plans’ was perhaps a strong word, but Samuel didn’t need to know that. “Next time?”

Samuel grunted as they lugged Abelli around another corner. “Next time it is.”

ERISEN

E
ARTH
A
LLIANCE
C
OLONY

“Are you ready?”

“For fuck’s sake, Ken, I’ve been waiting a month for the ship to be finished. I am beyond ready.”

Kennedy Rossi rolled her eyes as they approached one of the hangar bays at IS Design’s production facility. “I just don’t want you to faint when you see it or anything.”

“I’ve never fainted in my life. Why on Earth would I faint now?”

“Well….” Kennedy entered a code on the panel beside the interior bay entrance and let the door slide open.

Alex crossed the threshold, at which point all other thoughts vacated her mind as her perception narrowed, transfixed by the vision exposed before her.

The ship gleamed a charcoal two shades from black. All curves and edges, the broad midsection flared out to expansive wings which housed—or would soon house—a plethora of instruments and sensors. From an aesthetic viewpoint, the silhouette resembled an Indian Black Eagle preparing to swoop upon its prey.

Her gaze ran bow to stern and back again. Though a small vessel by any objective measure, here in the hangar it loomed large and powerful to dominate its environs.

“You’re blocking the door, Alex.”

“I know I’m blocking the door. Give me a minute.”

She had to credit the engineers. She had provided them a design, and they had brought it to life more vividly than it had ever existed in her imagination. A grin spread across her face as she at last approached the ship.

“You would not believe how much grumbling I caught from, well, everyone on the project. ‘Nobody makes ships like this,’ ‘We’ll never fit slots for so many instruments on the frame,’ ‘I’ve never even heard of this material’…on and on it went.”

Alex ignored her to run a hand along the hull, following it all the way to the sLume drive suspended beneath a gracefully tapered tail section. Though faster than eighty percent of civilian drives, it was a previous-generation model and the most she could afford right now.

Everything was designed with an affinity toward continual iterative transformation, though, and if all went according to plan she’d be able to upgrade it soon enough. This was the case for many of the on-board components: solid, quality last-gen equipment she intended would one day be replaced by the state of the art.

But the ship…the ship holding them was one of a kind.

She traced the hull to the hatch. Already keyed to her, it opened at her touch. She was vaguely cognizant of Kennedy trailing her up the ramp, then rather more cognizant of it when she halted at the top and Kennedy bumped into her and sent her skidding into the cabin.

She stood silently in the center of the cabin for several seconds…then she was laughing and twirling around in the cavernous open space like a carefree child. “Ken,
look
. This is amazing!”

Her best friend leaned against the cabin wall to watch the rare display of exuberance in amusement. “So it’s what you wanted?”

“Well, I’ll need to run diagnostics on the mechanical systems and confirm the HUD layout and test all the modules against my specs and I hope like hell the engineering core’s wiring isn’t a complete disaster…” she glanced at Kennedy to find her wearing a mock glare “…but yes. It’s exactly what I wanted. It’s—it’s everything I wanted. Thank you.”

“You are most welcome. But we hardly worked gratis. You paid my company bucket-loads of credits for it.”

“True, but those bucket-loads were a scintilla above cost, so I’ll double-down on the ‘thank you.’ I could not have commissioned this ship if it had included a retail markup.”

“You’ve given the designers here some clever ideas to pursue. I predict we will soon recoup the initial loss in profit.”

“Hmm.” Alex scrutinized the main cabin once more before arching an eyebrow. “Want to go somewhere? Take her for a test run?”

Kennedy made a show of considering the question. “Only if we go somewhere with top-shelf shopping. I need new shoes. Lots of new shoes.”

“Well I’m broke now, so I’ll be a poor shopping partner.”

“That’s fine, I don’t require an enabler. I’ll do plenty of buying for both of us.”

Alex pondered it a moment. “Romane?”

Kennedy’s face lit up. “Romane.”