Strangers (Stars Edge: Nel Bently Book 3) Read online

  A red light pulsed on the screen next to the “Incoming” folder. When it opened up Nel's jaw dropped. Two folders, one for each year she had been in cryosleep. A bold-texted subject for almost every week since she left Earth.

  “Good morning Annelise. It's the first morning you're gone. Honestly I was a bit angry about your text. Bill had to talk me out of the tree at least three times. I recall threatening to call the president and demanding he bring you home. I didn't actually call him, if you're wondering.

  “I don't know why you're in space. I don't know what use space has for an archaeologist, save for the obvious reason, which I'm frankly trying to ignore. I'm terrified. And I don't know what to tell people. What to say that they'll believe. I want to know why you're doing this, what changed, but I think I know. Honestly, I'm mostly just focusing on what I know of you. And you're right, it doesn't matter.

  “I trust you. I love you. We raised you to explore, to run, to question. We raised you to dig. To discover whatever story you were searching for. So go.” Her eyes burned blue, as dear to Nel as the faint memory of the marble of Earth. “And I hope you find what you're searching for.”

  The next was harder, “They told me I can send you messages, though you won't get them until you arrive, I guess. Or until you wake up. They told me you'd be gone for a long time, and no news was good news, so I'm clinging to that, but I remember when your father was in the military and that was pretty impossible to believe when the person you loved most in the world was thousands of miles—lightyears—away. So instead, I'll make up for your forced radio silence. For every week you're gone, I'll send you another message. Don't listen to them all at once or you'll run out.”

  Nel's laugh bubbled through her tears. Her mother knew her so well. “I won't,” she whispered to the screen. “I promise.”

  “Don't promise, baby, just do.” Mindi's voice dipped low from the threat of weeping. “By the time you come home you'll be so sick of my voice you won't even visit. But I'll send things anyways, when it's a good day, or a bad day, when it's raining and I have to rake the leaves. I'll even try to get Bill to send something, just so you don't miss our dinners where you both get trashed and gripe at one another. I'll send it all.”

  Nel couldn't help herself, she tapped next.

  “Annelise, what did I tell you? Don't watch this yet. Not until it's sunk in about where you are, and how far you're going to go.” Her mother glared through the screen, billions of miles of starlight and two years away. “I'll talk to you later.”

  Nel switched it off and sat back. She had years worth of messages, of love and anger and her mother's grieving process. Her own anger was different now, raw and old and tired, mixed with grief for Mikey and the frustration of always wanting to be okay. Part of her wanted to call Lin back. It was easier to have someone there than drown in her own thoughts. But sometimes we're the only ones who get it. As much as she wanted Lin to understand, the other woman was too familiar with this world.

  TWO

  Despite the blackness outside Nel’s bedroom window, she couldn’t sleep. She tossed onto her back, blinking at the plain ceiling. Who knew starlight could be so bright?

  Cold air drew goosebumps from her skin when she rose. She pulled on one set of space-tech track suits and pressed her palm to the door. It opened. Her brows rose. Half of her expected to be locked in. She paused in the doorway.

  The hall was empty. Dim, ethereal lines of blue-green wound along the seams between the walls and floor and ceiling. She slipped from the room, glancing back to remind herself of the room number. Pouring over the maps of the ship had been fun, but her mind worked better when the three-dimensional world didn’t rotate. Left to the gym and observation. Right to additional rooms. She grinned. And in to the control decks and engine rooms.

  Half of her expected broad windows along the corridor, which she realized, belatedly, was not the most exterior layer of the spinning ship. Instead, it could have been a fancy hospital. Though she never knew a hospital to shut down so thoroughly at night.

  She broke into a jog, hoping exertion would clear her head enough for sleep. Encountering two larger doors shut across the hall, she stopped. Like her bedroom, a panel blinked in the center. She pressed her palm to it, waiting for the welcoming beep.

  Nothing happened.

  Faint crackling, like a TV turned on static, bloomed above her. “No entry.”

  Nel glanced up. “Marisa?”

  “Good morning, Dr. Bently.” Even the computer’s voice was pitched to a murmur.

  “I can hear you out here too? Do you follow me?”

  The eerie chuckle filled the otherwise deserted hallway. “I’m not your personal home device, Dr. Bently. I’m the ship’s computer. I run everything from the air in your room to the engines.”

  “I see.” Nel tapped the door in front of her. “Why can’t I open this door?”

  “You don’t have your suit on, so the ship doesn’t register that you’re a person. My override capabilities are limited during pre-docking and launch.”

  The implications of that sent fear shooting down Nel’s limbs. “Right. Isn’t that kind of a bad design? What if someone’s naked in an emergency?”

  “You are to wear your suit at all times, Dr. Bently.”

  Feeling decidedly scolded, Nel slumped against the stubborn doors. Even sitting in a deserted hall arguing with a computer was better than staring at her ceiling, she supposed. She snorted. “Look at me Mikey—I traveled 117.3 trillion kilometers just to sit, alone in another corridor.”

  “And look at me—I traveled just as far to still talk sense into you.”

  Her heart clenched. She knew it wasn’t true, that whatever he was now, wherever he had gone, it was beyond space or consciousness. Still, it was a nice delusion. “I’m glad you’re here.” It was frustrating, having such an incredible experience shadowed by Lin’s lies. She should have been racing through the ship’s halls, exploring every inch. She grinned and elbowed the door. I would be, if the doors were half as advanced as the automatic ones at Aldi’s.

  As if spurred by her jab, the doors slid up.

  “Shit!” Nel fell back into the suddenly open doorway.

  “Ma’am are you alright?” A man peered through from the other hallway, dark brows raised.

  “Yeah,” she grumbled, straightening and patting invisible space dust from herself. “I was just sitting and thinking.”

  He peered at her face in the soft blue glow and smiled. “You’re the archaeologist—Dr. Tetley?”

  “Bently. Nel.” She held out her hand, belatedly wondering if people shook hands here.

  Apparently, they did. He took her hand in a firm grip then glanced at her clothes. “Got trapped behind the door without your suit, eh?”

  “Something like that. I was taking a walk and didn’t realize doors wouldn’t work.”

  He chuckled and twirled a lock of his long dark hair. “Well if you want to check out the ship you can follow me on my rounds.”

  “Rounds? You security?”

  He gestured for her to follow him down the newly opened hall. It looked identical to the one she just left, but it curved, faintly, farther right. He moved with the unconscious grand movements of someone who had always been tall and strong. “Just a stroll. I get antsy during docking. There are so many smaller systems on ships this size and the switch from light speed to orbit can be rough. It’s like switching from shore power to generator.”

  “I don’t mind. We had a generator for ice storms and my dad rigged it to our panel so the minute the power went down the generator would kick on. Pretty cool.” It was strange to talk about something so innocuous to her life on Earth, yet so foreign to this place. Was Lin this disoriented when she first came to Earth?

  Her new friend lit up. “Where in the U. S. were you from?”

  “Southern New England—western Mass, actually.”

  “Oh, fantastic! I’m from upstate
New York. A bit west of Rochester.” He held out his hand to shake again, “Zachariah.”

  She laughed and shook it, resisting the urge to introduce herself a second time. “How long have you been here?”

  “Oh, a couple years, circadial.”

  There was that word again. “Circadial—that’s how long you’ve been conscious for? Minus the time you spent in cryo?”

  “Exactly. It’s hard, but I love this world—all the augmentations and tech are just badass.”

  Nel hummed and fell into silence. She didn’t get it. Objectively, she got that for people like Zachariah this was some giant version of getting a state of the art computer or an elaborate role playing game. Except this time the computer is a disembodied voice and connected to your body with circuit-suits. “I’m not a sci-fi person.” She confessed.

  He glanced at her with sympathy. “I did the same, you know. When I first came out here.”

  “What do you mean? You hated the alien-ness?”

  “Well, no, I always thought that part was cool. I couldn’t sleep. I wandered halls—and, apparently, I still do—ran into doors, forgot to clip in oxygen hoses. It’s a steep learning curve. But then, once day, when I finally saw Odyssey, I got it. I got why God’s plan for me was here, among his stars, and not on Earth.”

  Nel winced at the mention of a god. “I’m an atheist,” she quickly explained.

  Zachariah smiled. “I’m not going to convert you. I’m sure you do beautiful work and live a full life regardless. My beliefs are personal. But I hope when you get to Odyssey you’ll see what I did. We’re not so different from them.”

  She laughed and shrugged. “I’ll believe that when I see it.”

  “Well, when you have the time, check out the station’s core.”

  “Cool science?”

  He shrugged, muscled arms akimbo. “It's a lot more than that. I won't tell you, I don't want to spoil it.”

  The blue lights brightened, turning green, then almost white. She blinked against the sting in her eyes. “Morning?”

  “Essentially.” He jerked his head back the way they came. “You ought to get a proper tour if you have a chance. If not of the ship, then surely the space station. It helps understand them better. I’ll walk you back.”

  “I’d like to see more than uniform, sterile halls.”

  “They’re less sterile and more symbiotic,” he tapped the lighting tube. “Phosphorescence. Bently?”

  “Yes?”

  He laughed. “I was reading your door’s tag to remind myself. Here you are.”

  She glanced at the door. They really did all look alike. “Oh, thanks for the talk.”

  “Anytime. I’ll be going planet-side with you, so we’ll have more time to chat for sure. Happy landing!” He strode back down the hall with the same easy paces, unhurried, unhindered.

  She watched him go, perplexed. Maybe humans were just alien to her, whether they were born among the stars, or not. Her room was the same as she had left it. Grey. Bleak. Not hers. What does he see? Stripping off her clothes, she found the suit and pulled it on, making sure the circuitry lined up before closing it around her throat. She pressed one hand to the glass between her and space. Which star is mine?

  •

  The knock came an hour later. Lin’s face shone from the door panel and Nel scowled. “Hey, Nel, I know you're still mad at me, and I don't blame you. This must all be really strange. But I thought you might want to see something.”

  Low beeping from the intercom interrupted her. “APPROACHING SPACE STATION ODYSSEY OF EARTH. PLEASE REMAIN IN YOUR CABINS OR BUCKLED UNTIL FURTHER INSTRUCTION.”

  “C'mon, Nel. You're up—your light's on. Come check out the view.”

  Nel sat on the edge of the bed, glaring at the ground. As much as she wanted to see the space station, a stubborn bit wanted to tell Lin to fuck off. It's a space station, idiot. How many times are you going to see this?

  Lin was leaving when she tugged open the door. Her round face lit up.

  “I'm still pissed. I just want to see the space station,” Nel ground out.

  “That’s fine.” Lin's grin didn’t fade as she turned down the same hall Nel explored before. “It's worth it, I promise.”

  Nel found it took longer for each step to land. “Gravity?”

  “We're stopping our spin so we can dock. Then we'll get the artificial gravity of the space station’s spin once inside. Until then—” She jumped, close to weightless, a graceful leap that arched through the hall before she touched her toes down, “—we can fly.”

  Nel mimicked her and couldn't stop a smile from blooming. “I like you better than Peter Pan. Even if I'm still mad.”

  “I don't know who Peter is, but I'll take that as a compliment.”

  “Your cross-section of Earth pop culture knowledge is really weird,” Nel pushed off again. “C’mon, I don't want to miss it.”

  Lin grabbed her hand and tugged her farther. “It's hard to miss. But I know the best viewing spot.” They wound through the ship, each turn taking them farther from the axis. Most exterior levels were deserted, save for flight personnel. Here, blocky hatches hung from the ceiling, though Nel realized, floating several inches from it, concepts like ceiling and floor were irrelevant in 0-G.

  The hatch swung up and she followed Lin inside. It was a glass dome, four controls bolted to the floor. Each had what looked like a padded dentist chair. Lin climbed into the first, tucking herself belly-down against the fabric. It adjusted with a whir. “This is technically a pod for EVA, but I like to use it to watch—best view in the ship, really.” She jerked her head at the seat next to her. “Sit down. We'll have to be buckled in if we're going to stay here the whole time.”

  Nel settled herself against the shape of the seat, glancing back as belts snapped across her body. Her hands fit into the two controls, but didn't respond when she squeezed.

  “They won't respond unless we activate the panel at the door. Don't worry.”

  Nel snorted. “I was hoping this was an elaborate game of space invaders. Pew pew.”

  Lin frowned. “Pew?”

  “This is going to be a really long project.”

  “DOCKING ON ODYSSEY IN T-29 minutes.”

  “Where is it?” Nel peered through the dark window. A dark planet turned above. A blinking ship orbited, lights flashing from green to white to red. “Oh, there. What side are we docking at?”

  Lin's eyes lit up. “No, Nel. That's a coms satellite.” She pointed at the planet. “That's Headquarters.”

  Nel's perspective tipped. Two metal rings spun perpendicular to one another. A thick cylinder crossed the center. They glided closer. It was bigger than Beijing, bigger than the Bay of Fundy. Roaring filled her ears. She expected General Organa's ship, not a manufactured planet. For once Nel had no words, no descriptions, not even a curse. With every second, the size became more obvious.

  “How fast are we moving?” Nel finally choked out.

  “24,000 kilometers per hour.”

  The space station seemed no closer. The metal ring around the equator, however, grew at a frightening rate. Silence reigned, broken by whirring mechanisms and rumbling metal.

  “Lin?”

  “Yeah?”

  “How many are you?”

  “At Headquarters?”

  “In general. Ball park.” Wonder warred with fear, dropping her words to a whisper.

  “187,000 on board. 1.3 billion at last census.”

  “Fuck.”

  “PREPARE FOR DOCKING IN T-1 MINUTES.”

  She remembered a story from her middle grade U. S. History. “When European explorers first saw the Grand Canyon they thought it was a small ravine with a tiny stream at the bottom. Their minds couldn't comprehend something could be so deep, so large, that the distance would make such a large river look so small.”

  Lin smiled. “I like that story.”

  Rumbling engines chan
ged, the pitch rising as air brakes engaged. Their spin ceased completely, now. Nel’s stomach lurched with the lack of gravity. The station loomed overhead, visible only by the brightly lit crescent edge and blackness darker than the surrounding space for lack of stars.

  “ENGAGING DOORLOCKS.”

  There was silence, a mechanical thunk-whir that shook the ship, not with its violence, but its certainty.

  “DOCKING SUCCESSFUL.”

  Cheers interrupted the intercom for a moment, then the P. A. crackled back into life. Nel barely heard the instructions on where to report. Her eyes were fixed on the expense of metal arcing into the sky through the window. Nerves ignited through her limbs and it took Lin’s firm hand on her belts to draw her back to the present.

  “Come on, we’ve got to get suited up. Briefing in an hour.”

  Nel nodded, not really caring. She supposed, whatever memories she still lacked from their initial arrival at the ISS two years ago were more dramatic than these. Without them, though, this was her first time aboard a space station.

  Lin’s thin hand was soft under the tight grip of her calloused fingers.

  “WE'VE ARRIVED AT ODYSSEY OF EARTH. FROM THEIR CREW: WELCOME ABOARD.”

  THREE

  “How?” Nel asked, locking her helmet into place. She shook her head. “How did you get all that into space? The manufacturing alone—we can’t get our city council to build a new walking bridge over I-90.”

  Lin’s laugh reverberated inside the glass bubble. “It's easy when we mine asteroids—the raw material is already in zero-G. Technically it doesn't weigh anything. We find a lot of the other necessary elements for living in space that way—water, iron, hydrogen....”

  Nel ignored the rest of the list. Close to a hundred people clustered around them, suited and carrying their personal cases like business people waiting for a train. Silent thuds buzzed up her legs and her boots snapped against the floor. “Magnets?”

  “They’ll keep you from spinning away.”

  Nel didn’t need that thought.

  “DEPRESSURIZING. BAY DOORS OPEN.”