Starborn Odyssey: Voyage of the Lost (The Starborn Odyssey Trilogy Book 3) Read online

  STARBORN ODYSSEY:

  VOYAGE OF

  THE LOST

  by

  Haines Sigurdsson

  Copyright © 2016 by Haines Sigurdsson

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission.

  First Edition: April, 2016

  Published in the United States of America

  eBook ISBN: 978-1-5323-0284-8

  Cover Design by Amanda Coffey

  Cover Imagery from Shutterstock.com

  www.starbornodyssey.com

  “Limitless undying love, which

  Shines around me like a million suns,

  it calls me on and on across the universe.”

  ― John Lennon

  This book is dedicated to my children, my inspiration.

  And to the scientists and explorers whose tireless quest to uncover the mysteries of the universe will make the dream of a beautiful future a reality.

  —H. Sigurdsson

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  Goodbyes

  If You Can Imagine It

  Pixie

  First Contact

  Untra

  Recoveries

  Branching Out

  Home, Elusive Home

  Hope

  Mysteries

  The Journey of the Curiosity

  Trials and Errors

  Communication and Encryption

  Epilogue

  About the Author

  Goodbyes

  Colin!

  Colin awoke with a start at the sound of his name, heart thumping. “Gemma?” he asked into the darkness, dreading whatever emergency would require her to wake him. There was no answer from Gemma. At his side, Melli murmured and rolled over, but did not wake. Colin sat up, feeling disoriented, and willed his eyes to adjust to the darkness of the room, questioning his own senses. Had he really heard something? Or was it a dream? The world was silent, other than the gentle, almost imperceptible hum of the matter compressor system, whirring away far below in the center of the asteroid. Colin touched the panel by his bed and turned on the wall lights to the lowest level, so the outlines of his small room came into view in the pale blue glow. He gently extricated himself from bed and walked quietly over to the door of Tatiana’s room, running his hand along the smooth stone wall as he did. His daughter was sleeping soundly.

  “Gemma?” he asked into the air, again, still puzzled. She didn’t listen in on everything happening in the ship, but if she had called Colin, she’d be monitoring his room for his reply. She did not answer.

  Colin felt uneasy. He had definitely heard something. Or thought he had; a woman’s voice. But now everything was silent, still. Colin returned to bed, careful not to wake Melli. But the moment he sat down, the world shifted. His ears popped. And then, shockingly, he began floating away from the bed. He looked down in alarm. Melli, and the blankets, and the items on the end table, were all slowly lifting off into the center of the room. Melli woke up and shouted in alarm and surprise; she tried to turn and sent herself tumbling slowly toward the ceiling.

  “What is happening?” she gasped.

  Tatiana cried out from the other room, with a startled, “Daddy!”

  “It’s alright, we’ve just lost gravity for a moment,” Colin said, forcing his voice to be calm and steady. But inside, his heart was racing madly. This was not alright. There was no precedent for the Prometheus ever losing gravity before. Something was seriously wrong.

  Colin pressed his Link, and called out to Petya. “Petya, you alright? What’s going on with the Old Miss?”

  Petya’s voice came over the Link, harried and tense. “I don’t know. Everything is running within parameters; this shouldn’t be happening.”

  And just like that, the gravity returned. Colin crashed onto the bed; Melli fell to the floor with a gasp. Tatiana let out a small shriek as she tumbled out of the sky.

  “Everyone alright?” Colin called out.

  “Yes!” Tatiana called back immediately. “Just bumped!”

  Melli stood up and turned toward Colin, eyes wide with alarm. “I’m okay. But what in the world happened?” She clasped her hands to keep them from shaking.

  “I don’t know,” Colin said, rushing to throw on his clothes. “I’m going to meet Petya right now.” Into his Link, he said, “I want my main advisors to meet me down in Engineering immediately. Shana, you too. Gemma, get me as many reports as you can, immediately.”

  “On my way,” Shana’s voice replied immediately.

  “Acknowledged,” Gemma chimed in.

  “Why weren’t there alarms?” Tom’s voice over the Link was raspy; he’d clearly been sleeping when they lost gravity.

  “We’ll discuss that as soon as we’re together. Now get a move on,” Colin ordered.

  He grabbed Melli by the shoulders, kissed her, and said, “I’ll be back soon.” Then he dashed out into the hall. Other members of the crew and colonists were poking their heads out of their doors, looking dazed and worried.

  Colin didn’t know why, or how, this was happening. But he did, somehow, know what it meant. It meant Prometheus was finally breaking down. And there was not a star system with a habitable planet within sixty years of them. This was very, very bad.

  ****

  Shana gazed up at the Hydrop ceiling and wondered vaguely if she would miss it. She pushed the idea around in her head but it didn’t find any traction. She was having trouble imagining missing any of it; but perhaps that was because it was still too abstract. Whether she would miss it or not was immaterial at this point. She was going. She and Colin and his friends, who all had worked so hard to prepare the saucer ship, had discussed more than once the importance of a stable crew who were unafraid of the risk, and willing to leave everyone behind. Shana had found, to her own surprise, that she was ready to do just that.

  Not that she wouldn’t miss her family, of course—but that her purpose was beyond the walls of the asteroid, and that took precedence over any worry about leaving home. Colin was both proud and saddened by this, Shana knew, even though he was the same way. Of course, none of them had expected the mission to come upon them quite as quickly as it had. The strange loss of gravity had not repeated itself in the hectic six months since, but it was clear to anyone paying attention that Colin was afraid it would. The saucer ship mission had been moved up three whole years, and Shana, initially only one of thirty trainees in competition for the journey, had been named its captain, to the extent that it would have one.

  Two days from now, Shana’s crew of six would board the Wanderer and disappear from the world they knew, probably forever. Shana closed her eyes and imagined the Wanderer’s control panel, walking herself mentally through the launch, for the hundredth time. She heard the sound of someone approaching; from the confident gait she knew that it was Kelsan. The footfalls stopped as they reached her.

  Something nudged her foot. She kept her eyes closed, ignoring him. He kicked her again when she didn’t respond, and she sighed, opening her eyes to squint up at him “What?”

  He grinned. “I wanted to see if you want to spar. I’m getting antsy and could use a fight.” He flexed his muscles and hopped side to side to demonstrate his pent-up energy.

  Shana groaned. “No, thank you very much. Go beat up Elton, if you must beat on someone. I’m still sore from last time.” She rubbed her ribs for emphasis.

  Kelsan raised an eyebrow. “But I distinctly remember you vowing, on our first day of training,
that you would beat me at sparring before our departure. And here we are, two years later, and I remain the ruling champion.”

  Shana pushed herself up to sitting, vaguely annoyed. “Well, my timeline got cut short, first of all. And the point of the training isn’t to compete against each other, Kelsan.”

  He laughed gruffly. “Quite right. And yet, it still really gets under your skin, doesn’t it?”

  “I don’t need to be able to beat you at sparring to push you out an airlock,” Shana suggested. She envisioned the airlock by the old launch bay, where her brother’s ship Detrepid was still docked, and Kelsan’s startled face as he somersaulted into space. She stopped this line of thought before it could make her grin, chiding herself to behave.

  “Now, now,” Kelsan put up his hands in surrender. “What would Gemma think of that? We need three pairs; it would be no good to have two couples, and you as the fifth wheel, on our new home world.”

  “What makes you think I would be the fifth wheel?” Shana asked archly. She was unusually edgy. It was because the trip was close, she knew; but knowing didn’t make it easier to control her growing annoyance with his teasing.

  “Didn’t you hear? Pixie and Zak got married.”

  “What?” Shana jumped up, shocked. “You’re kidding!”

  “Cross my heart,” Kelsan said.

  “But there was no requirement that we marry; I made sure of that!” Colin and Gemma had both suggested that three married couples would be much more stable than six young singles in a small starship, but Shana had argued relentlessly against it, and Colin had finally given up and allowed that the six could form whatever romantic or family alliances they chose, when they chose, once on their own. And now Pixie had gone and done it anyway! After all those late night quarrels, insisting that the Wanderer’s crew had to have self-determination about their social structure when they started a new colony! What was she thinking?

  “I know,” Kelsan said, “but you must have seen them the last few months, ogling each other. Well, I saw it coming.” He smirked.

  “Ugh,” Shana said, groaning both at Kelsan’s arrogance and at the idea of Pixie’s new arrangement.

  Kelsan reassured her, “Don’t worry, you still have the opportunity to fight Tanya over me. Of course, with your fighting skills . . .” he gave a little shrug and grimace, implying that Shana could not beat Tanya if Tanya was determined to fight her.

  “I don’t even want to think about it!” Shana cut him off before he could further compare her to Tanya, who was, admittedly, fiercer than she was. “We should be focused on the mission, not on romance.”

  “Agreed, Captain!” Kelsan mocked a salute, clicking his heels together.

  “Oh, knock it off,” Shana snapped, now annoyed. “I’m not the captain.” Although Colin had named Shana captain, she and her team had decided privately, among the six of them that it would make more sense for a small group to be democratic, with no single leader.

  “Yeah, I know,” Kelsan grumbled.

  She liked Kelsan, most of the time. He was smart and ambitious, and generally more reserved and taciturn than today. He probably really did need to spar, Shana thought; he must be just as nervous as she was. Colin had never favored Kelsan for the trip, saying that he was too unreadable, unpredictable. Gemma had overruled him, as only Gemma could, stating that Kelsan’s logic and boldness would be instrumental to the mission—which was funny to Shana since Kelsan distrusted Gemma so much. Gemma even knew Kelsan’s feelings about her, and still pushed for his inclusion. A testament to Gemma’s practical nature.

  “I’m going to go find Pixie.” Shana said, and abruptly turned and stomped off, not letting Kelsan have the last word. He called after her anyway:

  “Come on, come spar! I’ll give you a handicap. Ten points!”

  Shana almost turned around to exclaim that she did not need a handicap, but fought the urge and walked faster toward Pixie’s quarters. Pixie wasn’t there, of course. Her mother said she and Zak were having a very short honeymoon, down in one of the rooms in the older sector, which was mostly empty and afforded a little privacy. Her mother looked tired and worried, as all of their families did, to varying degrees.

  The Wanderer’s mission was a shot in the dark—almost literally—to find a way to save Prometheus, and, should that be impossible, to carry on the human line on a new colony planet.

  Shana turned more slowly and thoughtfully toward home. Only two more evenings with her father and her stepmother Winnie, her wild younger brother Ira, her niece Tatiana. Then Shana would disappear from their lives. Strange thought. Shana shied away from the idea that was trying hard to take precedence in her mind: that she would also be leaving her brother Colin behind. He was her closest friend and it was difficult to think that in a few days, they would be parted forever. It was a risk she took willingly, of course, for the sake of exploration and the good of the colony, but she still wished there was another way, that he could come with her. She would not miss the Hydrop; but she would miss Colin. Her eyes began to fill with tears, belying her confidence in her own lack of sentimentality, and she blinked them back, forcing herself to think rationally. At least Gemma and Cap would be accompanying her; something familiar from home. And she planned to figure out a way to control her saucer ship, and communicate with Prometheus, so there was no need to be so gloomy.

  Such musings made Shana feel nostalgic, and she took a detour to say farewell to her mother. The Narcissus memorial grotto, which had been created and expanded over the years in the old quarantine room that Colin had once used as a hideout, was deserted. The room was full of pictures and video screens showing those who had lost their lives in the attempt to colonize Narcissus—victims of both technology and the Scorpions. The smoothed stone walls around each picture were barely visible behind painted messages, tributes, and handprints. Potted flowers and trees were spaced around the room, with long, low benches in several places, as in a park.

  Shana sat before her mother’s picture and activated the video. It was only a brief segment, taken from a Link message recorded before they’d landed on Narcissus. In it, her mother is laughing, eyes bright. “Colin, when you get this, call me on the phone!” She pantomimed holding up an old fashioned phone to her ear, and laughed again. She was teasing Colin. It was around the time Colin and his friends had started using 20th-century Earth slang as a sort of secret code, and she knew Colin would hate to have adults co-opting his language. Shana’s father had picked this silly video for the memorial for two reasons. First, it showed Julia Argon laughing, which she had done often, and it made her beautiful. The second reason was the symbolism of the “phone” she pantomimed. Julia had once expressed wistfulness about ancient phone devices, as a primitive version of a Link, but with one sole and pure purpose: communication. That so much of human technology had evolved from that simple instinct, to reach out and speak to others even over great distances, appealed to her. And to her family, who wished they could reach over the divide of death to talk to Julia once more, the phone seemed as apt a symbol as any to remember her by.

  Shana folded her hands in her lap and closed her eyes, remembering, despite herself, being called out of school all those years ago—eleven years, almost to the day—and learning that her mother had been killed by one of the great Scorpions while working in the field. That first planet home, Narcissus, had become a nightmare. But Shana was going to find a planet that would allow her family, and everyone on Prometheus, to stop wandering. To have a home with a real sky. But she’d have to wander far, on her own, first.

  ****

  Colin stopped in the entryway to the grotto when he caught sight of his sister. She looked small, her pale pink hair spilling long down her back, her head bowed slightly. She looked too fragile to captain a shuttle pod, let alone a saucer ship.

  “This is private,” Gemma chided Colin gently from his elbow. She had appeared suddenly from nothing, but Colin was used to this behavior by now and didn’t startle.
/>   He retorted, “Nothing is private to you, Gemma.” But he said it gently.

  “You know that’s not true. I do not monitor any of the ship’s internal cameras or crew logs unless there is some necessity. I have too much to do, in any case, to spend any time on idle spying. You’re not all that interesting.”

  Colin grinned. “I know, I know.” He glanced again at Shana and then stepped back, so he could see her, but he and Gemma could talk without being overheard.

  After a moment, he asked softly, “Gemma, is this the right thing to do? She is so young. We haven’t heard from Earth in far too long, you and Petya still haven’t been able to figure out how to properly navigate the saucer ship, and we still don’t know what’s happening to the asteroid—it just seems like everything is too uncertain. I wonder if we should delay the mission.”

  It wasn’t the first time they had had this discussion. Colin continuously doubted the decision to send the saucer ship out, particularly with his sister aboard. Gemma, however, did not change her mind to placate Colin, as she would have when they were younger—when she was still human.

  Gemma shook her head. “Shana is sensitive, but she is also tough. She is like you. And I will be there to help her—just as I have been there to help you,” she shot Colin a sly sideways glance.

  He laughed. “Yes, you’re very helpful,” he agreed, pretending to patronize her. Then, more seriously, he said, “I am glad you’ll be going with the crew.” A replica of the Gemma and Captain Duncan programs, Prometheus’ artificial intelligence constructs, had been made to accompany Wanderer; the version of Gemma talking to Colin now would stay with Prometheus. Colin couldn’t imagine life on the asteroid without Gemma, so he was glad he didn’t have to choose between keeping her to himself, or sending her with Shana.

  “You still don’t seem convinced,” Gemma prompted, when Colin paused in his conversation.