Dark beneath the moon, p.1
Dark Beneath the Moon, page 1
Dark Beneath the Moon
Published by Tyche Books Ltd.
www.TycheBooks.com
Copyright © 2015 Sherry D. Ramsey
First Tyche Books Ltd Edition 2015
Print ISBN: 978-1-928025-31-3
Ebook ISBN: 978-1-928025-32-0
Cover Art by Ashley Walters
Cover Layout by Lucia Starkey
Interior Layout by Ryah Deines
Editorial by M. L. D. Curelas
Author photograph: John Ratchford
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage & retrieval system, without written permission from the copyright holder, except for the inclusion of brief quotations in a review.
The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third party websites or their content.
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations and events portrayed in this story are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
Any resemblance to persons living or dead would be really cool, but is purely coincidental.
This book was funded in part by a grant from the Alberta Media Fund.
Dedication
For Emily and Mark
because it’s not always easy to have a mom
who spends almost as much time with her characters
as she does with you.
Away! the moor is dark beneath the moon,
Rapid clouds have drunk the last pale beam of even:
Away! the gathering winds will call the darkness soon,
And profoundest midnight shroud the serene lights of heaven.
~ “Remorse,” Percy Bysshe Shelley
Prologue – Jahelia
Planet Quma, 2276
THE SMALL, DINGY room where my father lay had taken on the cloying scent of death. It clung to the yellowed lampshade on the night table, to the blue and green embroidered coverlet my mother had once smoothed so meticulously, to the curtains he’d insisted on keeping closed for weeks now. He would not leave this room alive, and he and the room—and I—knew it.
He’d been dying by inches for months. The tiny machines that had toiled vigorously inside his body for decades had finally begun to fail, and there was no-one in Nearspace who could fix them.
At least, that was what he had told me. I’d asked him over and over, and his answer was always the same. Until the last time.
“It’s my own damn fault,” he wheezed as I held the glass of water close to his lips, waiting for him to take a sip. It wasn’t cold any longer, but he preferred it this way. It might calm the cough and it might make it worse: every swallow was a toss-up.
“Shhh, patro. Just take a little drink, now.”
He pushed the glass away with a hand that shook more every day, but was still strong enough to make his will known. His mind had flown into the past, still retracing old regrets. “I should have waited until we were further along. Until we knew for sure that we had it right. I jumped the gun. But PrimeCorp—”
He launched into a fit of coughing that wracked his entire body, from his sunken chest right down to the thin, mottled sticks his legs had become beneath the coverlet. I rubbed his back, feeling the bones sharp through his thin pyjamas and fragile skin. When the cough released him, he dropped against the pillows and lay still, panting.
“There’s no-one else from your old team who might know something? Anything that might help?” I prodded again, although I was convinced by now that it was useless. He hadn’t contacted anyone for help when Mamma was dying—he wouldn’t do it for himself. But I had to ask. I was sure he was holding out on me, and equally sure that he would take his secrets to the grave with him.
He lay staring at the ceiling, unmoving for so long that I was tempted to put my ear to his chest to make sure his heart still beat. If I watched closely, though, I could make out the shallow rise and fall of his breathing.
“How are you feeling, Lia?” he asked finally. The change of subject, and the sudden use of my childhood nickname, threw me for a moment.
“Me? I’m fine, Dad.”
He turned his gaze to me, his rheumy eyes red-rimmed and watery from the coughing fit, yet still piercing. He nodded. “You’ve got the next generation. Not the same as mine. Not the same as your mother’s. You should be fine. I don’t want you worrying.”
I shifted uncomfortably on the hard wooden chair next to the bed. “I know. It’s okej.”
His eyes found the ceiling again, focused as if he were trying to count every crack in the aging plaster. His next words were barely louder than a whisper. “But I don’t know for sure. Not for sure.”
I tried to keep my voice light. “Well, no-one knows much for sure, right? We all have to take it one day at a time. We’ve already had more than most. And anyway, once you feel better—”
He shook his head, slowly. “We should have known for sure.”
I patted his hand, my unlined one a stark contrast to his newly age-spotted skin and deeply grooved lines. The changes had come on suddenly, alarmingly. “I’ve had a good run so far. I’ve got no complaints.”
He twitched his hand out from under mine as if my touch were hot. “I made a promise,” he said, his voice stronger than I’d heard it in days. “I made a promise and I kept it, goddamn it, but I’m not taking it to my grave. I’ve done some things I’m not proud of, but they don’t matter now.”
I wondered if he was starting to ramble, and bit my lip. I itched to get up and open the curtains, let some light in to the stifling room. Instead I straightened the things on the night-table. His water glass and datapad and glasses. He’d only started wearing them two months ago and resented them heartily.
“At least your mother never knew.” His voice was lazy, distant.
I’d been worried for weeks now that his mind would start to break, not sure how I would handle that. “Shhh, Dad,” I tried. “It’s okej. You should rest, not worry yourself about the past.”
He reached out and grabbed my hand again, squeezing it. “But this does matter. It matters to you, and your future. It will matter if your bioscavs ever start to fail, too.”
His hand squeezed mine painfully, but I didn’t pull away. If your bioscavs ever start to fail. The one thing I feared the most, now. Now that I’d seen it happen to both my parents.
“There is someone. One person in all of Nearspace who could help. A woman. My old team leader. In spite of—in spite of me, she’d help you, I think.”
Something dark clutched at my heart. “What? I’ve asked and asked you this! Why didn’t you say—”
“I wouldn’t ask. Not for myself.” He shook his head vehemently.
“She might have been able to help you!”
“No. She doesn’t even know—but for you . . . she had a daughter, too. She’d understand.”
“Could she still be alive?”
He laughed, a short sharp bark that held no humour. “Oh, she’s still alive, I’m sure. She’d have used the bioscavs, no doubt—probably better, newer ones than mine.”
“What’s her name? I’ll get in touch with her. I’ll ask her to help you, if you won’t ask yourself.”
He shook his head mutely again, and I snatched my hand away from his. I stood, knocking the chair over. It hit the floor with a dull thud. “I’ll get her here. I’ll make her help you—”
He’d closed his eyes and eased back against the pillows again. “No, Jahelia. Not for me. But I’ll make sure you know . . . if you need her. Only if you need her . . .”
His voice trailed away as he fell asleep, quickly, in mid-thought, as he was prone to do lately. I stood staring down at him for a few long moments, shaking, damping down the anger. He didn’t have to be dying! He’d lied to me! There was someone out there—somewhere in Nearspace—who might have been able to help him. But he’d been too stubborn to ask. Not for Mamma, either.
I ran a hand through my hair and blew out a long breath. That was him all over.
Slowly I righted the chair and took the glass of water to freshen it up for when he woke later. My eyes strayed to his datapad, dust-covered on the nightstand since he hadn’t bothered with it for weeks now. I picked it up, glancing over to make sure he hadn’t woken up as suddenly as he’d fallen asleep. He wouldn’t like me snooping around in his data. But his eyes were still closed, the thin, blue-veined lids twitching slightly.
I weighed the datapad in my hand, considering. There might be nothing on it, no clues to this woman he’d mentioned. I licked my lips. But if there was a chance . . . I’d risk his anger. Tech was my thing, and I doubted the old man could have a pass-encryption on his data that I couldn’t break. I was going crazy sitting in this tiny walk-up, anyway.
I took the datapad with me out to the pallid kitchen and set to work.
I’D UNDERESTIMATED MY father. He must have paid some techdog a pile of credits to pass-encrypt that datapad. He could have simply asked me to do it, but then I’d know the way in. It was obvious that I was one of the people he’d been keeping secrets from for a long, long time. I cracked it, ironically, the day he died, and later found the key scrawled on a paper he’d hidden under his mattress for me to find. That assuaged my guilt at breaking into his datapad.
There was no news for me in the fact that he’d worked for PrimeCorp as a genetics researcher, searching for ways to exten
That my father had been blackmailed, a coercion that dictated how he and my mother and I had lived the rest of our lives together. That the woman responsible had also made herself the self-appointed gatekeeper of immortality for the entire human race, and shut down the project. I realized now, as I read the files, hands trembling with repressed anger, that if the project had been allowed to continue, my parents would probably still be alive. The name of the woman responsible was there, too. And the way that everything circled back to PrimeCorp, and ethics, and money, the way that everything always comes down to the money.
That even now, my father had died when he could have been saved.
Those were the things he’d kept from me.
Those were the things I vowed to do something about.
Chapter 1 – Luta
Homecoming Delayed
Nearspace, 2284
I WAS ALONE on the bridge, enjoying a mug of hot, sweet double caff and a few minutes of uncommon solitude, when the comm signaled a message from my brother the Admiralo. My far trader, the Tane Ikai, plied the spacelanes about halfway between Mars and Earth. It had been a long and difficult few weeks since Lanar and I had left our mother behind again on Kiando after an all-too-brief reunion, and I hadn’t expected to hear from him at least until we’d arrived Earthside.
“Salut, Kapitano,” he said in Esper, grey eyes twinkling as I opened the comm screen. “How are things aboard my favourite far trader?”
“Don’t even ask,” I told him, shaking my head. But I smiled at him. “It’s good to see you again, little brother.”
His eyes narrowed immediately. “What’s wrong?”
I sighed and shrugged. “How long have you got?”
He sat back in his chair and folded his arms across his steel-blue Protectorate uniform. Behind him, a viewport opened to an endless starfield, so he was certainly aboard his own ship, the Nearspace Protectorate vessel S. Cheswick. The Cheswick was a Pegasus-class ship, with a hundred and seventy-five crew aboard, but Lanar seemed to manage them with ease. “I’ve got time, Luta. Spill it.”
Well, with such a large crew under him, maybe he could give me some pointers. I relaxed in my own chair, ticking items off on my fingers. “I’ll give you the condensed version. Viss won’t speak to Yuskeya, and he’s grimly overhauling every system on board to keep busy. Yuskeya, or Commander Blue to you, hardly pokes her nose out of her quarters unless she has a duty shift.” I gave Lanar a look to remind him that I still hadn’t entirely forgiven him for secretly installing an undercover Protectorate officer on my bridge, then went on.
“Rei got a message the other day that she refuses to talk about, even to me, and she’s spending every off-duty minute practicing some kind of Erian martial art down in an empty cargo pod. It seems to involve considerable amounts of screaming.” I rubbed my temples. My nanobioscavengers were probably the only thing keeping my blood pressure from spiking merely talking about it.
“And Hirin has decided that he hates PrimeCorp so much, he’s planning to research everything they’ve ever done until he uncovers enough dirt to bury them. The only ones who aren’t miserable are Baden and Maja, and watching them gaze at each other all starry-eyed is making everyone else crankier. Is that enough?”
I took a sip of the smooth, creamy liquid, hoping Lanar wouldn’t notice I was leaving something out–the tension between my husband, Hirin, and me. Or what had been bothering me ever since Lanar and I had finally found our long-lost mother. Sisters have to keep some secrets, after all.
Lanar raised his eyebrows. “Well, everyone hates PrimeCorp, so I can’t fault Hirin for that. But it does sound like you’ve got your hands full.” A slight frown creased his smooth forehead. “I’d wondered why Commander Blue’s reports were slow, but I thought things were just—quiet.”
I chuckled mirthlessly. “Oh, they’re quiet, all right. Unless you go down to the cargo pod with Rei. Frankly, I can’t wait to get Earthside for a little shore leave.”
Lanar broke eye contact with me, glancing down at his desk. “Um, about that, Luta . . .”
“Dio, Lanar, don’t tell me there’s some reason we can’t go to Earth now?”
It was his turn to sigh, and he glanced up, grey eyes apologetic. “Remember when we were on Vele, and you wondered how long Yuskeya would be staying on board your ship?”
“Yes,” I said cautiously.
“I said there was something I’d talk to you about when you got back to Sol system.”
“I thought it would be when we got Earthside, and that it actually had something to do with Yuskeya,” I said, “but go on.”
He leaned toward his comm screen. “How’s your encryption level?”
“If I know Baden, better than yours,” I told him with a grin. My comm officer was a techdog, and he liked to have the latest—everything. “He upgraded it when we were on Kiando.”
Lanar quirked a half-smile. “Maybe I should borrow him sometime. Anyone there with you?”
I started to shake my head, but footsteps sounded in the corridor outside the bridge and I turned to see Yuskeya crossing toward me, carrying a steaming mug and a plate of cinnamon pano. It was still early morning, shiptime, and her duty shift wasn’t set to start for a while yet, but her long dark hair was neatly plaited and her shipsuit fresh and crisp. Only the creases at the top of the suit’s legs betrayed the fact that she’d been up and dressed and probably sitting and reading for a while now. We’d all taken refuge in something to ease the tension aboard the ship, and Yuskeya’s escape, like mine, was books.
She halted far enough away that she couldn’t see the comm screen and raised her eyebrows.
“Yuskeya just came in,” I told Lanar. “I think everyone else is still asleep.”
“Well, actually, that’s perfekta,” he said. “It will save me briefing her later. Ask her to sit in, would you, Luta?”
“Your boss,” I told Yuskeya, tilting my head toward the comm screen. “He wants to talk to both of us. Extra encryption level, so I’m sure we can both guess what that means.”
“Trouble?” Yuskeya said, grinning. She set the mugs down with the plate of pano between us, and pulled an extra skimchair over before saluting Lanar and sitting down.
I took a slice of cinnamon bread as Lanar and Yuskeya exchanged greetings. It was crumbly and delicious, as I knew it would be; Yuskeya had been pampering me a little on this trip. Her way of making up for keeping the secret of her identity as a Protectorate officer from me for the last year or so.
“So what’s happening to keep us from Earth?” I asked, before they could get too involved in Protectorate gossip and forget all about me.
Lanar held up a hand. “Now, it’s only a favour. You’re not under any obligation to act for the Protectorate if you’d rather not.”
I waved that away, the cinnamon bread sprinkling crumbs across the comm panel. “Sure. But I know you wouldn’t be asking if you didn’t really need help, and if you really need help you know I’ll do it. So tell me.”
He grinned again, and I knew he’d been counting on that. “Okej, here’s the situation. A new wormhole’s been discovered in the Delta Pavonis system.”
“Really?” Yuskeya narrowed her eyes. “I hadn’t heard that.” As navigator, she made it her business to keep informed about new wormhole discoveries.
