Starbound (Shadows of the Void Space Opera Serial Book 0) Read online

  Starbound

  Shadows of the Void Prequel

  J.J. Green

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  Table of Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter One

  Jas Harrington gripped the handlebars of her snow mobile and pressed the throttle. The machine pulled away beneath her, sending up sprays of powder snow on either side. She grinned.

  It had snowed the day before. The first snow that year, though winter was almost over. Maybe the last snowfall at low altitude on Earth forever, some said. Over the last few decades, Antarctica had changed almost beyond recognition as raised global temperatures melted its massive ice sheets, calving icebergs as large as countries to melt into the ocean.

  At that moment, Jas didn’t care what humans had done to their home planet. She didn’t feel as though Earth was her home anyway. She’d grown up on Mars until she was twelve and already weak-boned from the low gravity. When the paperwork came through from the Martian colonial government, she left the home for cared-for children and traveled to the mother planet to complete her adolescence at a second institution.

  After months of aching muscles and headaches, her body had finally adjusted, but the policy of separating the Martian children for better 'integration’ meant she’d been lonely. No one had told the Earth children they were supposed to let the newcomers integrate.

  Sergei was riding his snowmobile parallel to hers as she powered over the ice, the roar of the engines making speaking impossible. A fellow student from the training college, his black hair streamed out from beneath his hat. Like hers, his eyes were hidden behind dark snow goggles. He waved at her and pointed in the direction they were heading. They had to be nearly at their destination, though she couldn’t make it out against the snowy white landscape and the bright clouds.

  She nodded in reply, and her heart surged. She didn’t think she’d ever been this happy.

  They were almost upon the igloo before she saw it. A crude lump of slightly dirty white became visible in the landscape. Sergei was already slowing down, and Jas did the same.

  As they stopped and she stepped down from her vehicle, she smiled. The igloo was very clumsily put together, as if the builders had been drunk when they made it. Roughly cut blocks of ice balanced precariously upon one another, creating a haphazard wall. It looked like it would have fallen down if not for the freezing temperatures that seemed to be holding it together.

  “This is it?” she asked.

  Sergei was taking off his goggles. “Of course. How many other igloos do you think there are around here?”

  Jas pulled off her goggles too, along with her hat and gloves. “But I thought you said it took you and Aaron two whole days to build it?”

  “More than two days, if you include cutting the blocks.” He took off his gloves. “Do I detect a tone of disbelief? I get it. It’s hard to credit that we could construct such a magnificent edifice in such a short time.”

  “You’re right.” Jas tilted her head to take in the detail of the structure. “I...can’t quite believe it.” She couldn’t hold in her laughter any longer. She burst into giggles and found she couldn’t stop. She bent over, nursing her aching stomach. Pulling off her goggles to wipe her eyes, she finally began to catch her breath. “So this is what you meant by your Love Palace?”

  Sergei frowned. “You dare to insult my Mansion of Delight? Be careful. You’re treading on dangerous ground. I might have to remind you of something pretty important, now that we’re out here in the snowy wastes, far from civilization and...” He went to the compartment of his snowmobile and reached inside. He pulled out a small battery-powered heater. “...warmth.”

  It was unusually cold that day, even for Antarctica. Jas’ tears of mirth were already freezing on her cheeks. An icy wind had penetrated her snowsuit as they’d driven over, and she was chilled through. “Oh, come on. I was only kidding. It’s a beautiful igloo. You and Aaron have some real talent. Let’s go inside and warm the place up.”

  Sergei slowly shook his head. “I don’t think so. I think I’ll just go in by myself and get toasty, seeing as my Chateau of Sensation isn’t good enough for your refined tastes. You can head on back to your dorm and cuddle up with your roomie instead. Maybe she’s more your type.” He winked at her.

  “Don’t be an idiot. Your Love Palace looks great. It really does. I don’t know what I was thinking. I can hardly believe it only took you forty-eight hours to put it together. It would have taken me at least...I don’t know...” She cast her gaze over the comical building. “Forty-eight minutes.”

  Sergei’s fake frown had begun to disappear at Jas’ apparent effort at reconciliation, and he’d raised the heater to hand it over, but upon hearing the end of her sentence he snatched it back. Jas made a lunge for the appliance, but Sergei sidestepped her, and she slipped and stumbled.

  Laughing, Sergei ran to the other side of his snowmobile and dangled the heater invitingly. Jas scrambled to her feet, slipping again twice, and reached across the vehicle. Sergei turned and sped away. Jas followed, and soon she was right behind him, her long legs carrying her quickly closer. He wasn’t running fast, as if he wanted her to catch him. When she was almost there, Sergei skidded and tumbled down. Jas tripped over him.

  The heater skittered across the ground, coming to rest a few meters away. Laughing, they crawled after it, grabbing at each other to slow the other down. Their breath plumed in the frigid air. Both were gasping as they fought to be the first to reach the heater. Jas lunged, and her fingertips brushed the appliance’s edge where it lay upside down.

  Sergei grasped her waist and dragged her backward, pulling her underneath him on the slippery surface. He tried to climb over her, but she turned on to her back and pulled him down. As they came face to face, they stopped struggling and their chuckles faded. Their warm, condensing breath intermingled.

  Sergei’s intense blue eyes were very close to Jas’. She felt herself disappearing into them. Sergei’s muscles relaxed under her hands as they gazed at each other.

  “That’s my heater,” she said softly.

  “No, it isn’t,” he murmured. He leaned down to kiss her.

  A few moments later, Jas wasn’t cold any longer. The snow at the back of her head was melting and soaking her scalp in icy water, but she hardly noticed.

  Sergei drew away from her. “Shall we go inside?”

  Jas reached up and pulled his head down to hers again. “In a minute.”

  For many years, she remembered that day as the happiest day of her life.

  Chapter Two

  Four months earlier, Jas had arrived at the McMurdo Sound Training Institute fresh from her Earth children’s home. The journey had been long—the meager amount of money she’d received when, at eighteen, she’d 'graduated’ her care program hadn’t stretched to a shuttle flight to the southern continent. She’d had to travel by old-fashioned airplane, and by the time she’d arrived she was exhausted.

  When the autobus drew to a stop outside the two-story college,
she was dozing. She only caught a glimpse of the prefab buildings before the bus pulled up. She disembarked, yawning, with the rest of the new students and collected her luggage from the compartment under the bus. Passing through opaque plexiglass doors, she went into the lobby.

  The college wasn’t much warmer inside than outside. Jas rubbed her arms as she stood in line waiting to register her arrival. The place was poorly lit and dank. It looked as though it hadn’t been refurbished in the last thirty years, much like the areas of McMurdo Sound they’d passed through on the bus ride.

  Jas was already regretting her decision to do the security training course, or at least her choice to do it at this remote location. She couldn’t remember why she’d picked this college at the end of the world. The thought that she’d be spending the next three years here made her heart sink.

  The line shuffled forward and Jas went along with it. The other students had their heads down, too tired or disinterested to begin making friends just then. Jas’ nose was beginning to drip. She fished in a pocket for a tissue.

  Her hand brushed a circle of plastic, and she pulled out the familiar object. It was a picdisk displaying rotating images of the friends she’d left behind when she came to Earth. Like her, the children were olive-skinned and their hair and eyes were reddish-brown. The coloring was common to all Martians—the gene therapy colonists received to help them survive the radiation altered skin and hair pigmentation. The effects were passed on to their offspring.

  A feeling of nostalgia hit Jas, and she remembered what it had been about Antarctica that had appealed to her. She’d thought its climate and remoteness might be something like Mars, and she’d been right. Gnawing cold, low sunlight, and what seemed to be a grinding, survival nature to everyday life, did make the place like another planet. Antarctica already reminded her of her early childhood in the nearest thing she had to a home.

  The line moved forward. Jas wondered why they hadn’t automated the registration process. Did they want to see each student face to face? The others in the line were giving her glances. As always, her height and tell-tale skin and hair color betrayed her origins and attracted curiosity. The attention bothered her, though she’d grown a little used to it in the last six years. At least it prevented the necessity of answering questions about where she was from. Such questions always led to the awkward revelation that, as a young baby, she’d been the sole survivor of an infamous colony disaster.

  The fact was a conversation killer, and as she had no memory of the incident and didn’t like to even think about it, the information was something she preferred to keep quiet.

  Another new student in the line was staring at her. The girl’s curly brown locks were bulging out from under a thick hat she was still wearing even though they were now inside. Her face was round. She smiled at Jas, and deep dimples appeared on her cheeks.

  Bemused by the girl’s friendliness, Jas smiled back, a little half-heartedly.

  The girl pointed at the line and rolled her eyes.

  Jas wondered if she was making an embarrassing mistake, and that the girl was actually looking at someone behind her. She glanced over her shoulder, but the rest of those in the line were mostly engrossed in their hand held interfaces, reading, texting, or playing games. She was definitely the object of the strange girl’s attention. Hesitantly, she smiled again.

  A gap had opened up in front of her new acquaintance. Jas gestured at it, and the girl turned and moved up. She was almost at the desk, where three administrators sat, and in another moment she was in front of one and giving her details.

  Jas took a final look at the picdisk displaying images of her old Martian friends before returning it to her pocket. She pushed her wheeled luggage forward with her toe as the line moved again.

  ***

  Jas’ roommate was a long-haired, quiet girl called Aggy. When they met after registration, they said hello and put their things away. Aggy gave monosyllabic responses to Jas’ efforts to be friendly. At dinner, she sat away from Jas and read her interface as she ate. Jas rolled her eyes and contented herself with filling her cold, empty stomach.

  Classes started the following day. Jas’ program was full. Combat training, fitness drills, weapons instruction and discipline, target practice, and survival training were compulsory. Battle tactics and leadership skills were two of the optional extras, and they were intended for students who wanted to make security a lifelong career, rather than use it as a cheap stepping stone to becoming a new world colonist. Working security aboard a colony starship was one way to avoid paying the fare, which cost many their life savings and more.

  Other options included extraterrestrial life forms and zero and high gravity combat. Jas was taking all these and the career options. Though she wasn’t eager to lead, she knew she would be bored if base-level security work turned out to be repetitive and undemanding.

  After the first day, Jas flopped into an armchair in the shared living room of her dorm. She was physically tired but not exhausted. Though the training had been challenging, she’d exercised regularly for as long as she could remember—it was a mandatory aspect of Martian life to avoid some of the effects of low gravity—and her height gave her an advantage in hand-to-hand combat that made things easier for her.

  She had half an hour to kill before dinner, and she wasn’t sure what to do. She didn’t want to go to the room she shared with Aggy. Her roommate was in a long-distance relationship, and maintaining it took up every spare moment she had. Whenever Jas saw her, she was having intense conversations with her far-away boyfriend, and at Jas’ appearance she would drop her voice to a whisper, sometimes harsh, sometimes loving.

  A door to another bedroom opened, and the girl who had stared at Jas in the line the previous day came into the living room. She’d finally taken off her hat. A near-Afro of brown curls framed her head. Her dimples reappeared.

  “Hey, are you in room 239?” she asked.

  “Yeah, that’s right.”

  “I was wondering if it was empty. I didn’t see you or your roomie at the dorm get-together last night.”

  “I didn’t know there was one.”

  “Really? I put a note under everyone’s door.”

  Jas wondered if Aggy had seen the note and not told her about it. “I didn’t see it.”

  “And you didn’t hear us?”

  “I’d had a long flight, and I sleep pretty sound.”

  The girl held out her hand. “Tamara.”

  “Jas.” They shook, and Tamara sat down.

  “Sorry for staring at you in the line yesterday. It was a little rude of me. I was interested to see a Martian in real life.”

  “That’s okay,” Jas replied, tensing as she prepared for the inevitable personal questions.

  But Tamara went on, “I’m studying colonial adaptation biology. You know, adaptive gene therapies and physiological and metabolic responses to extraterrestrial environments.” Jas must have looked wary because she laughed and added, “Don’t worry, I won’t treat you like a test subject. I was just interested to meet you, that’s all.”

  Jas relaxed a little. “I’m doing security training.”

  “Deep space program?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Extraterrestrials?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Sweet. I’ll wanna hear all about it. Hey, have you eaten yet?”

  “No, it’s too early.” Jas winced a little as her words gave away that she had to eat in the cafeteria, which implied that she was a low-income scholarship student.

  “It’s never too early for my chili and rice. It’s a secret family recipe. I invited some of the other girls, and you’re welcome too.”

  “Thanks, I’d love to.”

  “How about your roomie?”

  “I think she might have other plans.”

  Chapter Three

  Jas’ opponent hit the mat with a thump, his eyes wide. For a moment, he lay there in shock, his exceptionally hairy arms and legs sp
layed out. Jas supposed that, at nearly the same height as her and a minimum of fifteen kilos heavier, he’d taken his victory in their sparring for granted. Over-confidence was a mistake only inexperienced fighters made. Jas’ years of practice fighting bullies at her Earth children’s home meant that she was far from inexperienced.

  After a month of hand-to-hand combat training, Jas had sparred with all of her classmates, and the result had been the same every time. Each of them had ended up on the mat at her feet. After she’d worked her way through half the class, some didn’t even try to fight. They threw half-hearted punches and slow kicks, as if only passing time while waiting for the inevitable conclusion.

  “Get up,” their instructor shouted at the defeated student. The young man got to his feet, but the instructor’s eyes were on Jas. His name was Trankle, and he looked annoyed, though she had no idea why.

  From his attitude and demeanor, it was obvious that Trankle was ex-military. He was bull-necked and strong-jawed, and his stance was awkward due to over-large muscles in his arms and legs. Jas had attracted more and more of the man’s attention as the class went on. She guessed it was something to do with her beating everyone, but what was she supposed to do? Lose so that the others could feel good about themselves?

  A movement to her side caught her eye, and she raised her arm just in time to parry a blow from her defeated opponent. Her forearm smashed into his, and the blow went wide, just missing the side of her head. Instead of leaving the mat, he’d tried to sucker punch her, only he hadn’t gotten quite out of her range of vision.

  Years of play yard fights and sneaky attacks from the worst of the Earth children’s home inmates had honed Jas’ reactions to muscle reflexes. Without thinking, she swung round with a fist, hitting the student square on the side of his face.

  His head snapped around, and he staggered backward, dazed.