Bringing Stella Home (3 page)

What he saw made his face
pale.

Twenty-seven newly arrived ships
showed up on the scanners, not fifty thousand kilometers from the
night side of the planet. How many more were waiting in the blind
spot opposite their current orbital position, he had no way of
knowing—but he wouldn’t be surprised if it was twice that
number.

“
James? Son? Can you hear
me?”

A cold sweat broke out
across the back of James’s neck. The people of
Kardunash IV
didn’t have a
chance.

Everyone on that world was going to
die.

Chapter 2

“
Did you feel something?”
asked Stella. “It feels like we pulled up all of a
sudden.”

Ben frowned. “Yeah, I felt
it.”

He stuck his head out into
the aisle and stared down the rows of narrow seats. The soft
fluorescent lights overhead mingled with the hard yellow sunlight
shining in through the port-side windows of the cabin as they
approached the night side of
Kardunash
IV
. Several of the other passengers on the
crowded shuttle had started to glance nervously around at each
other. They’d felt it, too, apparently.

“
Does it seem like we’re
rising?” the young man in front of them asked the woman to his
right in an obnoxiously loud voice. “It feels like we’re
rising.”

“
It does,” Stella whispered
to Ben. “But why?”

Be shrugged. “I don’t know.” He leaned
over her lap to glance out the window; around them, several other
passengers did the same.

The blue haze of Kardunash IV’s
atmosphere had already turned the rusty red color of twilight, but
the ground didn’t seem much closer than it had from the station.
Besides, if they were making their descent, the orange re-entry
flames should have been visible by now. A lurch in his stomach told
him this was more than a mere course correction.

“
It seems like we’re
aborting our descent,” he said.

“
Aborting our descent?”
said the man in front of them, turning around in his chair. “What
the hell for?”

Ben ignored him and turned to Stella.
She seemed worried.

“
What’s going on?” she
asked. “Engine failure? Technical difficulties?”

“
They’d have announced that
over the speaker by now.”

“
Then what?” She bit her
lip and glanced down at her wrist console.

“
We’re probably too far
from the
Llewellyn
to connect with the ship’s network,” he said, as if reading
her mind. “Still, it’s worth a shot.”

Stella was already busy accessing her
console, keying in the commands with her right pointer finger as
she held the tiny screen up to her face. Ben brought up his own
while across the aisle, three blond teenage girls started talking
rapidly amongst themselves in half-whispered tones.

After about ten seconds,
an
Error in Connection
message popped up on his LCD screen. “I can’t get it,” he
said. “How about you?”

“
Almost there,” said
Stella, totally absorbed.

He tried again. The loading bar
gradually filled, but before it reached one hundred percent, the
same error message flashed on. He cursed under his breath, low
enough that Stella couldn’t hear him.

“
Got it,” she
said.

“
Quick, access the
Lewellyn
’s comm system.
See if there are any new messages from the port
authority.”

“
Loading,” she said. “The
connection’s weak.”

Come on,
Ben thought to himself. The middle-aged man and
woman in the seats behind them started talking in concerned tones,
just soft enough that Ben could tune them out.

“
There,” said Stella,
sounding quite pleased with herself. “It says ‘
A Hameji battle fleet has entered the system. KDF personnel
preparing to
—’” she stopped in mid-sentence
and froze, her cheeks paling.

“
What?” said the obnoxious
passenger, still facing them. “The Hameji—here, at
Karduna?”

“
Shh!” hissed Ben. “Not so
loud—you’ll upset the others.”

But the damage was already
done. All across the cabin, heads began to turn their way, while
the noise level rose sharply.
Look what
you’ve done!
Ben wanted to shout at the
man, but it was too late.

“
What did you say?” asked
one of the girls from across the aisle, her eyes wide and
frightened.

“
Nothing,” Ben said
quickly—too quickly. “Nothing at all.”

“
It sounded like ‘Hameji,’”
came the middle-aged woman’s voice from behind them. Her husband
gasped.

“
I’m sorry,” said Stella,
“I didn’t mean—”

“
Never mind about that,”
said Ben, glancing quickly around the cabin as he moved to shield
her from any kind of mass hysteria. Fortunately, though the people
around them seemed surprised and frightened, they remained in their
seats. Panic hadn’t broken out—yet.

He turned to her and leaned in close.
“We still have a chance,” he said, speaking softly so the other
passengers wouldn’t hear. “If the captain can find a ship willing
to take us, we might be able to escape.”

“
But what about Dad and
James?”

Ben clenched his teeth and took in a
breath. “We’ll just have to hope for the best for them. Anyway, if
we’re lucky, the Hameji jumped in on the other side of the planet,
meaning—”

A sudden flash of light out the window
near the horizon cut him off. A collective gasp arose from the
passengers, followed by an eerie hush. The three girls across the
aisle peered over towards the window next to Stella’s seat, their
faces white.

“
What was that?”

“
That was nothing,” said
Ben. “Just an opening volley—too far away to do us any
damage.”
But they’re on this side of the
planet,
he thought silently to
himself.
That’s bad—very bad.

“
We’re screwed,” said the
man in front of him, panic quickly rising in his voice. “Oh, God!
We’re all screwed!”

“
Attention, passengers,”
came the stewardess’s voice over the loudspeaker. “Please remain
calm. The captain and crew have just been informed of a dangerous
situation developing in our local sector, but we are doing
everything we can to ensure your safety. There is no need to fear.
Please remain in your seats and stay calm.”

“
What’s going on?” Stella
asked, frowning. “Ben, what can you tell me?”

“
The Hameji will probably
move to attack this planet first,” Ben said, his mind racing over
the strategic analysis he’d read of previous Hameji battles. “Then
they’ll probably try to slag K-4 the same way they did Tajjur V and
Belarius III—”

“
You mean, bring in the
mass accelerators?” Stella asked, her eyes growing wide.
“Completely obliter—”

“
Yes,” hissed Ben, cutting
her off to keep the others from overhearing. “Since they jumped in
from deep space, though, their forces are scattered all over this
local sector. I’m guessing they came in from at least a light-year
out, and at that distance, jump precision isn’t very good. It’s
going to take them a while to regroup, and that might give the KDF
time to scramble something together.”

“
So we might be able to
beat them?”

No.

“
Yeah,” he said, avoiding
her eyes. “Maybe.”

Maybe if the entire Gaian
Imperial Navy shows up in the next ten minutes.
He drew in a long breath, trying to relax—he didn’t want
Stella to see through his lie.

The Hameji had always fascinated him.
Descended from the explorers and frontiersmen in the early days of
space exploration, they had developed a culture entirely
independent from the rest of humanity. As spacefaring nomads, they
spent their entire lives on their battleships, never setting foot
on any inhabited world. Without any government to keep them in
line, warfare was the only law they knew—total, unrestrained
warfare.

For generations, they had kept to
themselves, clan fighting against clan in the far reaches beyond
the old Imperial frontiers. In the last few years, however,
something or someone had united them as a single force, turning
them away from their myriad vendettas and blood feuds to rise up
against the armies and navies of civilized space. The frontier
worlds on the far side of the Good Hope Nebula had been the first
to fall, but the Hameji soon sought worthier prey. With the fall of
the Tajjur system only a few months ago, a bare handful of systems
now stood between them and the very heart of the New Gaian
Empire—Gaia Nova itself.

Karduna was one of those
systems.

A bright, soundless flash through the
windows on the opposite side of the aisle cast irregular shadows
against the seats and bulkheads. Screams filled the cabin, and Ben
quickly closed his eyes and shielded them with his arm. His hands,
he noted with some dismay, had started to shake
uncontrollably.

“
What was that?” cried
Stella. The flash slowly faded, but the passengers continued to
scream in panic.

“
A nuclear blast,” said
Ben. “Much closer this time.”

“
Did it hit anyone? Did it
kill anyone?”

“
I don’t know,” he said,
his voice cracking for the first time since puberty. “Probably not.
The Hameji are jumping nukes at our battleships, but our beacons
are probably interdicting—”

Another intense flash of silent light
filled the shuttle, this time much brighter. Without thinking, Ben
grabbed his sister and pulled her close, shielding his eyes with
his arm. Adrenaline surged through his body as the nuclear blast
bathed them in impossibly brilliant light.

“
My eyes!” the man in front
of them wailed, his voice joining a dozen others. “Oh God! My
eyes!”

One one thousand, two one
thousand, three one thousand
… Stella
trembled in Ben’s arms but still held onto him. When he reached
five, he opened his eyes for a peek. Outside, the pink afterglow of
the blast was subsiding. He let go of his sister and took a deep,
uneven breath.

The situation in the cabin was quickly
deteriorating. Screams filled the air, and several of the
passengers were starting to panic. The man in front of them rose to
his feet and staggered down the aisle, covering his eyes with his
hand. Three stewardesses quickly tried to placate him, but when he
refused to return to his seat, one of them pulled out a short metal
stick and prodded him in the stomach. His scream jumped up an
octave, and his body went limp; two stewardesses caught him and
returned him to his seat.

“
Wow,” Ben muttered.
Overhead, the
Fasten Seat
Restraints
sign flashed on.

“
Ladies and gentlemen,
please remain calm,” came the captain’s voice over the
loudspeakers. “You may have noticed the emergency situation
outside, but I assure you, we are doing our best to get you all to
safety. I’ve been in contact with several evacuating freighters,
and one of them, the
Sierra
Vista
, will be picking us up soon. Again,
please remain in your seats with your restraints securely strapped.
Do not panic.”

Ben felt his stomach lurch and his
body fall back against his chair as the shuttle accelerated. He
reached up and pulled his seat restraints down over his shoulders
as they turned hard to port. To his right, Stella did the same. He
glanced at her; she seemed tense, scared.

“
We’re going to be all
right,” he told her. “Just stay with me, whatever
happens.”

She nodded mutely. Around them, the
screaming subsided, replaced with a tension so thick that Ben could
practically taste it.

A minute passed. Ben stared at the
ceiling and counted the seconds, squeezing his armrests until his
fingers were numb. The shuttle turned hard to starboard, but his
seat restraints caught him. A few passengers shrieked, but most of
them kept quiet. When he glanced across the aisle, he saw that the
girls were on edge, eyes wide and arms tightly folded.

“
What are we going to do
when we get to the freighter?” Stella asked.

How should I know?
Ben thought to himself.

“
Stay together,” he said.
“Ride it out with them.”

“
Will we make it to
the
Llewellyn?
”

“
I don’t think so. Not
right away.”

“
Where will they go? Will
they be all right?”

“
I hope so.”

Stella’s eyes widened in fear. “What
about Lars? Will he make it out too?”

Not if he’s already
planetside.

The shuttle’s acceleration slowed. Ben
turned his head and glanced out the window. They were on the night
side of the planet now—the horizon showed up as a fading crescent,
a line between the stars and the glowing light of city domes.
Stella glanced up at him, then out the window.