Sonata in Orionis (Earth Song Cycle Book 2) Read online

  Her friends found her near the stadium’s main exit, standing among people mingling and chatting about the changes taking place. They offered their condolences, using the trite expressions everyone uses in those situations. They were sorry for her loss. Did she need anything? Of them all, only Pip was different.

  “Don’t give up hope,” he said and looked her in the eye. The intensity in his brown eyes momentarily set her back.

  “It’s been over a year, Pip,” she said, “what do I have left?”

  “Hope,” he said again. “You ever wonder how a little wimp like me could make it through the Trials?”

  “Determination,” she said.

  Pip shrugged. “Some, sure. Determination probably carried me through to the end. But, by itself, determination wasn’t enough. I studied the Chosen in every minute detail, read everything about them I could get my hands on. I spoke to quite a few retired Chosen, and I learned from their stories. And I prepared myself mentally to face the Trials. In between, I worked out and trained my body as best I could.”

  Behind him, Gregg looked at Aaron and mouthed silently, “He trained?” Aaron chuckled a little, but Minu ignored them. She remembered Pip struggling with the physical parts of the trial. How did his story relate to his belief that Chriso Alma was still alive? She asked him.

  “My studies taught me a lot about your father. As First, he oversaw a lot of modernization on Bellatrix. During his tenure, the first automated factory went online. The switchover from domestic power to the Concordian grid began. Students started using modern computers in school. Licensing of aerocars became mandatory. Successful negotiations resulted in civilian contracts with Concordian species other than the Tog and Beezer. The list is nearly endless.”

  “I always knew dad was big into Concordian technology.”

  “He was more than big into it. Some say it was his obsession. Most Chosen leaders push projects to try to help the common citizen, but he was driven.”

  “I appreciate the insight, but what does this have to do with him surviving his last mission?”

  “Chriso not only drove the expansion in our planetary technology, he facilitated it. We don’t make a lot of money on this world. Sure our economy is strong, and there’s no real poverty. But step off this planet, and we’re as poor as can be. We don’t manufacture anything to speak of, so we can’t make real Concordian money, credits. Chriso made all this happen by salvage, by his own hand. He found most of what we enjoy, or he traded or sold what he found to buy what we needed.”

  “I thought what we found belonged to the Tog, by right.”

  “Popular misconception,” Pip said with a wink. “What we find when they send us out belongs to them. Otherwise, if it’s not nailed down, we can keep it. A client needs to make a living. In the Concordia, they encourage it. It makes the kids more independent, and sometimes they find really good stuff. Early in his career as Chosen, your father must have had an epiphany, because he spent most of his adult life scrounging around the galaxy and hauling back a fortune! Anyway, his mission logs, though edited for the public, are fascinating reading. You need a higher security clearance than I have to get the full details. And he didn’t let anything stop him, ever. I must have read a hundred accounts of him coming across alien species who wanted nothing more than to kill him, or worse.” He didn’t have to elaborate on worse; memories of William were still fresh. “He disappeared without a trace? I don’t believe it.”

  “Thanks Pip, I’ll remember what you said. I just don’t know how long I can continue to hope.”

  “I understand.” Pip turned to leave, then stopped when he remembered something. “Do you recall when, at the end of the mission, you asked if anything like that had ever happened before?” Minu didn’t want to admit she remembered, but she nodded. “Our people have been food twice before. This was the third time. The first time was a hundred years ago. Supposedly, the aliens didn’t know humans were sentient. The second time was twenty-seven years ago.”

  “Under Jovich,” Minu said. A short distance away, Jovich spoke with the new First, Jacob. Jovich seemed very animated. Jacob was scowling and shaking his head, apparently not liking whatever Jovich was saying. Dram and a two-star Chosen stood nearby, listening and observing.

  “A friend of mine in Science says not everyone is thrilled with Jacob ascending to First,” Pip said. Minu looked at him, and he shrugged.

  “I hate being so new no one will talk to me,” Minu grumbled. “Or at least, no one who knows what’s going on.”

  “That’s the way it goes. You know I’m in your command, right?”

  “I figured, but I haven’t seen the posting yet.”

  “They gave you an entire team.”

  “How many is that?”

  “Including civilians, probably five or six.”

  “Is that unusual?”

  “Very. From what I’ve seen, science only has a handful of command staff. Usually a couple of three-stars running a project or two, with a half dozen four-stars as their assistants.”

  “Now that this is over, I’m going to go get my stuff. I’ll see you in the science center.”

  Pip nodded and headed for the exit. Minu looked at the podium one last time before joining the throng. As she moved along, she heard a chillingly familiar voice whisper in her ear.

  “Hello, daughter of the dead First.”

  “Fuck off, Ivan,” Minu said without looking.

  “Careful, I might be First someday myself, and I wouldn’t take your insubordination very well.”

  She rounded on him, her anger building like an eruption of red hot lava. “Little chance of that happening, Five-star.” she snarled. Ivan opened his mouth to say something, then glanced at her sleeve. When he saw the four gold stars, the veins on his neck stood out, and his eyes grew big. Minu smiled.

  “How dare they promote a woman over me?!” he growled.

  “Insubordinate behavior? Not very becoming of a prospective commander. I’ll have to report this. Oh, and I’ve already got my first command! Farewell, son of an idiot.” Without another word, she turned and walked off, leaving him spluttering. At least one good thing had happened that day. Behind her, departing Chosen avoided Ivan, who stood frozen in place, seething with impotent rage.

  * * *

  When Minu entered the lift in the Chosen Tower, she looked at the button for the top floor, instinctively wanting to push it and go up to her old home. Months had passed since she’d asked to have her family’s things moved to a storage locker in the basement. Jacob would be moving into the once familiar apartment, if he hadn’t already. He wasn’t married, so he’d have a lot of spare room.

  She exited the lift in the basement and followed the signs. Quite a few Chosen lived in the tower from time to time and took advantage of the storage room to keep personal effects. It took her a few minutes to find her stuff. Ten uniform plastic bins stacked inside a painted square on the ceramic concrete basement floor contained all her family’s experiences and memories. Minu used one of the bins as a stool as she started going through the others.

  An hour earlier, she’d left the reading of her father’s will, the last step in the process of a legal declaration of death. Minu had never considered her father might have one. A city judge, two lawyers, and half an hour of legal bullshit later, her bank account was considerably fatter than before. And she now owned some real estate.

  “It is my wish that my daughter, Minu Alma, take possession of all my worldly goods, intellectual property, and other products of my person.” Unlike the rest of the legal will, that part was simple and straight forward. “There is only one condition to the will,” the lawyer explained, before she signed the legal papers. “Your father has decreed that the family estate of Harper Island can never be sold. It can only be reverted in trust to the Plateau Historical Society or passed onto your own heirs.”

  “I would never sell it,” Minu assured them as she signed the many forms. Who knew dying required so much paper
work?

  “You know,” the judge said, as they processed the forms, “that cabin is where Mindy Harper lived at the end of her life. You could turn it into a quite lucrative tourist spot…if you were so inclined.”

  Minu finished going through a box of clothes, marked it for charity, and moved onto another. “A fucking tourist spot?!” she said, her voice echoing in the abandoned basement. “What an asshole!” She quickly realized trying to work through her family’s possessions now had been a mistake. The second box was from her father’s closet. On the very top, carefully rolled into a towel, was her parents’ wedding picture. The ghosts whispered in her ear, distant laughs and moments of intermittent joy. Hot tears rolled off her cheeks and splattered the glass of the picture frame. She set the picture aside and picked up her father’s winter jacket. It still smelled of his cologne. The thick wool caught and soaked up the torrent of tears.

  Her father had never forgiven himself for being gone when her mother died. The torment had been clear on his face at her funeral, and for many months afterwards as he’d thrown himself into his work with single-minded determination. It was as if he’d hoped the fatigue of endless hours of duty would somehow scour away the anguish of losing the love of his life. Now she understood a little of that pain. Her dad had supposedly died a million light years away. Not only was she unable to say goodbye, she also lacked the closure he’d gotten when they lowered her mother into the sacred earth of Plateau. There was no casket to lower into the ground and no grave marking his final resting place.

  Minu replaced the picture and spent a harried few minutes going through the remaining boxes, until she found hers. The two bins were just small enough for her to stack and carry. She rode the lift to the lobby, then set the bins next to the main door.

  In the lobby there was a wall of solid granite, displaying the names of the Chosen who’d given their lives in service, as a collective monument to their sacrifice. Though the floor-to-ceiling memorial was thirty meters long and four meters tall, she’d hardly paid any attention to it in all her years walking past it. Stars, indicating rank, followed each name. Some names had no stars; they would be added later, after the Chosen retired or died. Minu found her father’s name, almost at eye level. With typical Chosen efficiency, someone had already carved a single star next to his name; it was resplendent, with gold leaf rubbed in.

  With a sigh, she picked up her bins and headed toward the door. Just before she passed the end of the monument, she stopped and looked at the newly added names. She read the alphabetical list of her classmates, from Alphonso to Yates. She cocked her head; something was off. Her name was there, but it was last, after Yates. That was weird. Someone must have screwed up. Alma came before Alphonso, so why was her name last?

  She started to leave, her arms aching from holding the bins, when she noticed three of the newest hundred already had stars next to their names. ‘Higgens, William,’ in gold with five stars, caught her attention. It seemed like such a simple footnote for a life lost in such a horrific manner. A little further down the list was ‘Johnson, Harry.’ Minu remembered hearing he’d died during a training accident. And finally, there was ‘Krum, Alexis,’ also in gold with five stars. A candidate who’d died in the Trials became a full Chosen posthumously. With one more sweeping glance over the wall, she walked out of the tower.

  * * * * *

  Chapter 9

  Octember 1st, 515 AE

  Chosen Headquarters, Steven’s Pass

  The flight to Steven’s Pass was very different from her first one. The Chosen ran regular flights between their installations, so she only needed to wait an hour before a capsule-shaped transport buzzed in for a landing. Minu felt a small thrill of importance as she walked across the ceramic concrete landing pad, in full view of the large picture window crowded with passengers waiting for scheduled dirigible flights. A woman stood holding the hands of her two children, who watched her pass by in wide-eyed wonder. Her daughter, a girl of about ten, stared with open-mouthed amazement at the female Chosen. Minu caught the girl’s eye and winked, making her cry out in joy. She felt like a giant striding across the pad in her jet-black Chosen jumpsuit. As she approached the transport, the door was already opening.

  The Chosen pilot was talking to a passenger in the only occupied seat as she climbed inside. “Welcome aboard, Chosen,” he said as she entered, automatically noting her stars to ensure he didn’t breach protocol. The Chosen didn’t salute or employ all the pomp of a true military, but addressing someone of superior rank as ‘sir’ was a basic courtesy not easily ignored.

  “Thank you,” she said, noting his rank of four green stars. The passenger wore three green stars. The green indicated they were both from logistics. “Good afternoon, sir,” she greeted the passenger. “Chosen,” he said simply and returned to his conversation.

  Minu took a seat two rows back and secured her harness, a hard-won habit from the Trials. She tried not to listen in on the conversation. However, the nature of the craft made it almost impossible. Even as the gravitic impellers spun up, and the vehicle jumped into the sky, the noise level remained low enough for her to hear every word.

  “What happened to the new transports we were supposed to be getting?” the pilot asked the three-star.

  “We have a deal in hand, but the funding is an issue.”

  “Isn’t it always?”

  Both chuckled and shook their heads before the three-star continued. “Between the planetary modernization plan, funding and equipping the Chosen, and the Tog keeping our scouts so busy they don’t have time to scrounge, we hardly have a credit to spare.”

  “Those transports are so sweet,” the pilot gushed. Now that his craft was airborne, and he’d programmed the autopilot, he swiveled his seat around to continue the conversation. “I test flew one last year,” he said, the lust in his voice almost sexual. “It was fully programmable for multiple destinations, voice-activated, had massive cargo capacity…”

  “I know,” the older man said. “I sat in on the presentation to the Chosen Council. Don’t forget the supersonic flight speed. They’d put those clunky old dirigibles out of business overnight. Of course, that’s part of the problem. The owner of one of the biggest freight lines, a guy named Malovich, is none too thrilled with the idea of new transports. He’s been heavily lobbying against the plan to the civilian Leadership Council. ‘An unnecessarily drastic modernization’ he called it.” The pilot blew a raspberry, and his passenger laughed. “Yeah, I hear he flies around in the personal aerocar he recently bought. That doesn’t seem too modern for his liking.”

  “I’m sorry,” Minu spoke up, hoping she wasn’t going to regret it. “I couldn’t help but overhear your conversation.”

  “No problem, Chosen,” the older man said. “You have something to add?”

  “Why would anyone be against modernization? I mean, the transports would be sold or leased to private companies anyway, right?”

  “That’s correct. But since moving freight would become much more efficient, he’d have to lower his fees considerably, or his competitors would underbid him. And of course, there’s the cost of leasing the transports. Domestically-manufactured dirigibles are cheap and readily available, and most cargo dirigibles are just old passenger models.”

  Minu shook her head in consternation. “So, for personal gain, he’s slowing the growth of our entire planet.”

  “Pretty much, yep. And he’s not the only one with that attitude.”

  Knowing the Malovich family, Minu wasn’t a bit surprised. “Maybe the Chosen should buy and operate the transports. Everyone would benefit, except the credit-pinching dirigible owners.”

  “That’s a good idea!” the pilot said.

  “It is,” the three-star agreed. “The problem is the Charter.”

  “The Chosen Charter?” Minu asked. She remembered studying it, first in school, then in Chosen training. The complex hundred-year-old legal document created the Chosen. It set forth their powers, pr
ovided for basic funding, and limited the scope of their influence.

  “Correct. It states the Chosen cannot profit from business endeavors on Bellatrix.”

  “Kind of counterproductive in this case, isn’t it?”

  “In many cases, but that’s how it is. We’re mostly above the law, except when it comes to property and profit. It’s a vague document, and when it’s interpreted by the courts, we usually come out the losers. Politicians and legal types don’t much like us; we follow our own path and they can’t really do anything about it.”

  “So that’s why we permanently lease our facilities from the tribal councils?”

  “Exactly.”

  Minu thanked him for the information, and he told her it was his pleasure. This was a clear example of one branch of Chosen having knowledge that another didn’t. She guessed Cherise would already know most of what she’d learned. Logistics was the most business-savvy of the Chosen branches and apparently had a solid handle on legal matters, as well.

  For the remainder of the flight, the pilot and passenger chatted about mundane issues like purchasing power off-world and the challenges of finding buyers for salvage. She noted the profit exclusion in the Charter extended to Chosen selling salvage to private companies on Bellatrix. It forced them to sell to the central government, who then resold the goods in a bidding process. They could also sell to other Concordian species, but they often paid low-ball prices. It didn’t seem very efficient to her. But what would a woman who’d never held a real job know about economics?

  The transport landed at the Steven’s Pass pad, and she stepped from the perfectly-controlled climate of the transport onto hard-packed snow. A couple of bored civilians walked over to unload cargo. She handed one of them her bins and gave him instructions on where to take them. He nodded and left, while the other man began hooking the transport to ground lines. The three-star departed the craft and headed inside to tend to his own business. Minu followed.