Flight of the Outcast

Copyright © 2010 by Brad Strickland
Cover and internal design © 2010 by Sourcebooks, Inc.
Cover design by Gothamhaus Design

Cover images © snez_4eva/iStockphoto.com; Emin Ozkan/Shutterstock.com; Tim Paterson/Flickr.com

Sourcebooks and the colophon are registered trademarks of Sourcebooks, Inc.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems— except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews—without permission in writing from its publisher, Sourcebooks, Inc.

The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious or are used fictitiously. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental and not intended by the author.

Published by Sourcebooks Jabberwocky, an imprint of Sourcebooks, Inc.
P.O. Box 4410, Naperville, Illinois 60567-4410
(630) 961-3900
Fax: (630) 961-2168
www.jabberwockykids.com

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Strickland, Brad. Flight of the Outcast : the Academy, year 1 / by Brad Strickland.

   p. cm. Summary: When thirteen-year-old Asteria's family is killed by space raiders, she leaves their farm on the fringe planet Theron and uses her desire for revenge as motivation at the Royal Military Academy, where she is treated as a second-class citizen because of her father's unfairly stained reputation.

(pbk. : alk. paper) [1. Science fiction. 2. Schools—Fiction. 3. Social classes—Fiction.

4. Revenge—Fiction. 5. Orphans—Fiction.] I. Title. PZ7.S9166Fli 2010 [Fic]—dc22

2009049924

Source of Production: Versa Press, East Peoria, Illinois, USA
Date of Production: April 2010
Run Number: 12242

A
steria Locke's world ended quite suddenly one noon in the

      early summer of her thirteenth Standard year. Before that hour, she had been the daughter of a farmer on the fringe planet of Theron. Before that day, she had no brothers or sisters, but she did have a cousin who—how she envied him—had been destined to travel offworld, to study at the most prestigious school in the Empyrion. She also had a father who had once served in the Royal Empyrean Space Fleet, though her mother had been dead for a long time.

    After that day, she had no one.

    Yet after that day—after that hour—she set out on the long path to becoming a legend.

    It all ended, and it all started, on her father's Upland farm on Frejaland, the northernmost continent of Theron. Asteria thought of it as a crowded land. It held nearly seventy thousand humans in all, counting the three who lived on the farm.

    The farm perched on the high plateau called Keleran. The soil there was fertile. Carlson Locke had always told his daughter they were lucky the Empyrion had given them forty thousand hectares of such land to farm. There he had built a home, raised biodomes, become a prosperous farmer—and had married a

Who was currently bored out of her mind.

   Asteria Locke wondered for the thousandth time why her father refused to purchase Cybots to help on the farm. Or why he would not trust the Artificial Intelligence machinery to do its job on its own. Instead he insisted that she and her cousin, Andre, help him with the crops. So here she sat in the cockpit of a massive crawling crop tender, wishing she were somewhere else. Or at least wishing for a surprise visit from her dad, spanking new Cybot in tow, to run the AI. Her wrist transceiver chirped, and she said, "Yes, Dad?"

   Carlson Locke's crisp voice asked, "Where are you, Star?"

   
Star.
Asteria wrinkled her nose at the babyish nickname. "I'm in Dome Seven. Where else would I—"

   The connection broke.

   "Checking up on me," muttered Asteria. You'd think he'd know that a thirteen-year-old was responsible enough to do the job without his constant micromanagement. But no. Probably came of his experience in the Royal Space Fleet. Everything had to be shipshape and military style.

   The crop tender slowly rolled along, its tires (taller than she was) sticking precisely in the furrows between the plants. The pliant, flexible green blades of the coffera crop—the grain so nutritious that it made colonization of nearly barren worlds possible—folded forward under the rollers of the machine, to be scanned, evaluated, checked for parasites, and then fertilized and watered to exact specifications.

   Asteria gazed up at the vast expanse of glass above her. She might as well have been fifty kilometers away…or fifty light years, for that matter. Her brain was meant for more than farming.

   The high agridome was necessary, because on the Keleran Plateau, the growing season otherwise would have been short and brutally cool. The structure was so huge that she could see a drift of cloud just below the far-off ceiling. When the crops were nearing harvest, the domes became humid, and occasionally, the clouds produced a thin indoor rain, drifting down lazily in the low gravity of this world. Outside the domes waist-deep fangrass waved in chilly breezes, flashing silver and scarlet. Outside the sky overhead was deep blue, etched with streaky ice clouds. Inside, though, the air felt almost muggy.

   All the readouts continued to be nominal. Hoping her father wasn't monitoring her too closely, Asteria plugged in a pulsebook. She shivered as the neural connection sent first a cold, then a warm feeling flooding down her spine. Then the book took over, and she let herself relax into the near-trance state that she loved so much. In a burst, the pulsebook planted the new chapter in her mind. It would flower not only in words but in sights, sounds, smells, and tastes. The book would become as real in her mind as a memory. It was a history book. She was up to Chapter 11, which told of the Empyrion's first encounter with the Tetras, the alien race that still posed a threat somewhere out there in the vastness of the galaxy.

   
In the two-thousand-and-first year of the Empyrion, under
the rule of the Dantor Dynasty, the Royal Military Academy
received as its priority mission the discovery and settling of
additional colony worlds. The first of these were the Varrian
Cluster planets, the seven worlds most like the lost home
planet of Earth, with the correct balance of oxygen and water.
Tolerable temperature ranges permitted—

   With her eyes closed, Asteria skipped ahead. She knew all the dry background stuff already. She wanted to see the battle.

   
…as the Third Exploratory Fleet dropped into normal space
just outside the Vigan System, for the first time humans came
under attack.

   In her mind's eye the massacre unreeled: The human ships were enormous, six craft in all, each carrying a complement of more than a thousand people. They looked like scale-model planets, dully gleaming silver spheres bristling with instruments and weapons.

   The Tetraploid ships that assaulted them were tiny slivers by comparison: silvery spearheads so small that not even a tiny human could fit inside them. They darted in at incredible speeds, fired their weapons mercilessly—and when the human crafts' shields held, they rammed the much larger vessels. The first few impacted the shields and exploded. The following alien craft slowed until they were able to penetrate the force barrier. Whoever controlled them seemed to realize that projectiles and missiles moving at top speed were held back, but anything going slower than a thousand kilometers a second could break through.

   When the small alien ships came in contact with the hulls, they exploded. The tiny, fiery eruptions made Asteria wince as the human ships—the
Cancarra, Apex, Strigia,
and
Hosmer—blaste
d apart silently, one by one. The remaining two human vessels, the
Concord
and the
Svestia,
attempted to escape into translight space. Only the
Svestia
made it. She limped back to port with a third of her crew dead or wounded to report that for the very first time in history, humanity had encountered hostile aliens.

   
The Space Fleet immediately began to create a counter
strike force—

   Asteria's communicator chirped again, rousing her from her reverie. "Yes, Dad?"

   "Home. Now. Raiders."

   
Raiders.

   Asteria's initial reaction upon hearing the word was numb shock. Then she felt as if an ice-cold hand had suddenly grasped her insides. Her mother had died in a Raider attack. Raiders were why Carlson Locke had insisted on building weapons towers, never once used—until now. "What do we—?"

   "Home. I've alerted Andre. Run!"

   Asteria swung out of the cockpit, kicked wide, and dropped down into the green shadows of the plants. She landed lightly and ran toward the air lock at racing speed—a small advantage of living on a planet with .88 normal gravity but training in a gym adjusted to 1.02 normal. The drooping blades whipped against her cheeks. Before she had run the half-kilometer to the triple air lock, her chest was heaving. She grimaced, knowing what waited for her.

    She took a deep breath and hurried outside. The air, thin and cold at this altitude, burned her lungs. Midsummer, and the temperature outside the domes was only eleven degrees. A flicker of bitter resentment mingled with her fear. Showed you how grateful the Empyrion was: give a hero a huge spread of land on the cold and barren heights of a third-rate planet on the far edge of civilization—

   Asteria gasped, hoping for her second wind. The farm now had nine domes, having added the newest one at the end of the last growing season, and she was far from the house. It was a long run. At least it was downhill—the fall line lay only a few kilometers south of the house, and then the land dropped dramatically down to sea level. There, the nearest town, Sanctal, clustered along the narrow flatlands at the mouth of a fjord.

   She caught a glimpse of a figure, lean and lanky, running too. "Andre!" Asteria gasped, and her cousin drew up short.

   "I've got to get to the defensive tower," he choked out, his eyes wide.

   "Has Dad called Sanctal for help?"

   "Sanctal?" he spat. "You know what they call us: Unbelievers. No help from them, not against Raiders. I've got to go!"

   He ran like a gazelle in the low gravity. Asteria, winded, all but stumbled to the house air lock. Her father waited for her, his face hard as though chiseled from stone. "Hurry. They'll be here within minutes." His cybernetic left eye glared red at her. His cybernetic left hand reached out, seized her arm, and dragged her into the lock. "I want you to go to the shelter. Andre's manning the north defensive tower. I'll take the south. I'll call you when it's all clear." His scarred face was grim below the mop of shaggy brown hair. In Sanctal, his stitched-together face, with its artificial eye, attracted shocked stares. But Asteria had never known anything different. He looked the way a dad should look—even when his red eye gazed balefully at her.

   "I'll fight," gasped Asteria as the warmer, pressurized air inside the house filled her lungs. "I can take the particle cannon—"

   Carlson Locke shook his head, jerking his square chin to the side in curt refusal. "No. I want you in the shelter."

   "Dad, I won't go!" The volume of her own voice surprised her.

"I'm sorry, Star."

   She didn't register the weapon in his hand until he had thumbed the trigger. She tried to yell a protest, but the stasis beam hit her, and she felt her muscles seize. Awareness dimmed as her father easily lifted her and carried her down a flight of steps through a long, arched corridor, with the lights overhead flicking on. At the far end, he paused as the vault door's AI recognized him and opened up.

   The shelter was the only shielded room on the farmstead— shielding was a costly energy sink—and it was not only the theoretical retreat in case of attack, but where Carlson stored anything valuable. He laid Asteria down on a cot that folded out of the wall and stroked her hair. "I'll come back when it's all clear." His voice was gruff but tender.

   That was the last she heard from him. It was the last time she felt his touch.

   She sank into unconsciousness. The pulsebook chapter reactivated in her dreaming mind, and she saw the horrific First Battle of the Varrian Cluster unreeling in her dreams. The destruction overwhelmed her.