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

  “I’m just getting ready,” she said as he set her down on her feet. “The Trials are only a few weeks away.”

  “No one would ever accuse you of being overconfident,” he said with a chuckle and sat back at his console. “You didn’t come here just to visit an old has-been Chosen, did you?”

  “Not really,” she admitted. She reached out and rubbed the two golden stars on his black jumpsuit cuffs, just like she always did, and he patted a knee. She smiled and dropped onto it. “I’m eager to hear from father.” Only her father wore one star. Most wore four or five.

  “Should be any day now,” he said as he surveyed the instruments, “your father’s team went off world almost two weeks ago.”

  “I know; they’re overdue.”

  “Only by a few days. There’s no such thing as a firm schedule in our business.” Jovich carefully lifted her off his knee and pulled out a chair for her. “You’re too much of a woman to be sitting in an old man’s lap.” His eyes took in her growing bosom without lingering.

  “Even an old has-been like you?”

  “Touché,” he chuckled.

  They chatted about nothing in particular for a few minutes until the portal flashed brightly, and his console displays came alive in response. Minu sat upright as he read the incoming transmission. “Sorry girl, just a merchant from Beezer.” Her shoulders fell, and she looked up to watch the delegation come through the portal. “Besides, he’ll be coming back through the portal at Steven’s Pass,” he reminded her.

  “I know, I know,” she grumbled, still hoping for a surprise. Out in the portal room, huge forms began to appear.

  Two of the great hairy bipeds, easily four times her size, shambled through the portal from a world light years away. They bore a slight resemblance to bison from Earth, only when they rose onto their hind feet after clearing the portal, they were almost three meters tall. The Beezers bowed slightly toward Jovich and Minu, who sat safely on the other side of a thick transparent moliplas barrier. They seemed to waiver slightly, and Minu knew that Jovich had activated the containment shield for safety. Not every being who came through the portal was friendly to the humans on Bellatrix.

  They regarded Jovich with dark, black-on-black eyes, their mouths hanging slightly open to reveal rows of blunt, chisel-like teeth. Each possessed a pair of ram-like horns that curled back over their heads, ornately decorated with alien script inlaid with rare and precious gems. These were almost certainly merchants, and quite successful ones, she guessed.

  “Greetings, beings,” Jovich said as he rose and performed a bow the exact equal to the one the guests offered. “To what do we owe the honor of your visit?” Minu could just make out the grunting sounds of the Beezer language echoing on the other side of the barrier before the portal’s operating system translated it.

  “We are here to meet with Malovich, of your species, to discuss trade,” said in a series of grunts. Jovich consulted his computer before replying.

  “I most humbly apologize for the misunderstanding; there are no trade delegations scheduled today.”

  The huge alien regarded Jovich for a long second before speaking again. This time the grunts and barks seemed less hostile. “You do your patrons well in being so diligent with your leasehold. You are correct; the timetable has changed for our meetings. Kindly contact Malovich of your species, and this will be explained.”

  “Understood, kind being. You will await my response in the chamber as offered by the Law?”

  “We shall,” was the simple reply.

  Jovich nodded and darkened the window to almost black. “Damn, I hate kissing their asses,” he grumbled in a voice that sounded like rocks rolling around inside a wooden drawer.

  “Then why do you? The Beezer have the same status we do, though they are a bit farther through their indenture than we are.”

  “Because we are babes in the woods, young girl.” Jovich finished keying a message into the computer and turned to her. “The Law states that each species’ patrons must provide a portal, but not that they have control of it. Allowing us to operate our own portal without supervision is a big thing. We Chosen take the responsibility very seriously.”

  “Is that why they place an old has-been like you in charge?”

  He chuckled and nodded his head. “Not everyone can kiss an ass like your Uncle Jovich,” he cocked a thumb toward the waiting Beezer, “especially an ass that hairy.”

  “You’re disgusting,” she squealed and slapped him on the shoulder. His muscles were like steel, despite his age. He grinned widely and turned to read the message that had just arrived.

  “Old Malovich is indeed in the city proper,” he said as he read the communiqué.

  “I could have told you that; I ran into the jerk and his wastrel son on the trolley while heading this way.”

  “Thanks for letting me in on the secret.” Jovich dialed the window back to translucent and stood to address the aliens. “Gentle beings, we welcome you to Bellatrix. Our code of customs and laws is available on a data chip in the bin by the door. We grant you free access within the boundaries of the city of Tranquility. Enjoy your stay.” He bowed and flipped a safety release. The shield flickered out, and she saw the exit door slide silently into the wall. A second later, the two Beezer shuffled by without looking at them. Their smell soon followed.

  “I never get used to the stench either,” Jovich said when he saw her expression, “and I’ve been around the great beasties for almost three decades.”

  “Why do aliens always have to stink?” Minu gasped, trying not to breathe through her nose as the filtration system struggled to clear the air.

  “I’m sure they say the same about us.” Minu gave him a skeptical look but held her tongue. As a Chosen, he’d seen more aliens in person than she had on TV. In a minute, they were alone in the building.

  “Thank goodness,” Jovich said and turned back to his screens. Minu sat with her old family friend for more than an hour, hoping her father would appear, or word would come through the off-world network as to his ETA. Finally, Jovich spoke up again. “Hadn’t you better be getting home?” It was more of an order than a hint.

  “Yeah, it is getting late.” Minu shouldered her small pack and headed for the door, but Jovich wasn’t finished.

  “You still set on taking the Trials?”

  “What do you think?” she asked, brushing hair dirty from sweat away from her eyes. “It’s lucky to be between 14 and 16 when the Trials come.”

  “You don’t think I know that? I’ve been a Chosen through ten Choosings you know.”

  “Really? You don’t say? I’d never have guessed more than nine!” He started to smile, then saw the look on her face. He suddenly growled in mock anger and jumped up to run after her. She squealed and quickly ducked through the door. Jovich didn’t pursue, and she was soon jogging across the quad toward the Chosen Tower.

  The elevator opened on the top floor, and she walked down the short hall to her apartment. The door recognized her bioprint and opened as she approached. It was a rather large apartment, having once held three.

  Minu dropped her bag by the door and went into the kitchen. With the punch of a couple buttons, dinner began cooking, and she headed for her room. She shed her clothes along the way and was naked by the time she reached the shower. She wouldn’t have done that with her father here; having the place to herself did have its advantages. The shower sensed her presence and came on, automatically setting the temperature to her preference. The high-pressure water spray was almost scalding. She luxuriated in the heat and steam for a scandalously long time.

  Her body and hair clean, she stepped from the shower to towel herself dry. The mirror wall was free of steam, and she surveyed herself. In her mind, she still expected to see a little girl in the mirror. When she looked at the woman staring back, she was slightly bewildered. Gracefully sweeping hips, compact and well-formed breasts, thin but well-muscled arms, and red hair that fell almost to her wasp-thin wais
t.

  “I don’t feel like a woman,” she mumbled as she fished a fresh pair of sweats from the automated cleaner. Minu decided she’d clean up the discarded clothes later and headed for the kitchen. The smell of roasted meat and vegetables lured her like bait, and she allowed it to reel her in. She dished up a big plate from the server then sat at the table. The apartment always felt the emptiest at times like this. As she ate, she glanced at the empty seat across from her and wished things had turned out differently. Even when her father was gone for weeks on end, halfway across the galaxy on some dangerous task, the apartment had never truly felt empty. Until last year.

  After she finished her meal and dumped her plate in the sink, she retreated to her bedroom. Inside, she accessed the Concordian-manufactured computer terminal and checked her email. The normal fare was messages from friends and updates on grades. Instead, what she found was an encrypted message from the Chosen office. Her heart raced as she opened it.

  To: Minu Alma

  From: Office of the Chosen - Department of Trials

  Re: Testing

  We have received your data packet with the required application testing, and we wish to congratulate you on obtaining a passing score. We hereby invite you to the Chosen Trials, which commence on the 5th day of Julast next. There is no opportunity for retesting. The next test will be in four years, at which time you will be ineligible based upon your age.

  Yours sincerely,

  Chosen Testing System

  Minu re-read the message twice, so there was no question about what it said. She’d passed the entrance test. Only one in a thousand made it that far. She jumped up and ran halfway to her father’s room, before she remembered he wasn’t there. Her frail form came to a stop, the letter dangling from her hand in disappointment. With a sigh, she returned to her room and got ready for bed. She didn’t doubt Jovich had already known about her success when she’d been with him earlier, the sneaky old bastard. Other than her father, there was no one to tell about her accomplishment. None of her friends had taken the test. She thought back to her father’s comment about the lack of boyfriends in her life. Maybe he’d had a point, albeit a small one. Loneliness enveloped her as sleep took over. Some minutes later, the apartment sensed its sole occupant was asleep and dutifully began shutting off lights and powering down other systems.

  * * * * *

  Chapter 3

  June 29th, 514 AE

  Frontier Space, Unknown Star System

  Where the hell was P’ing? Chriso glanced at his tablet and quietly cursed. He’d never say anything about the Tog leader in front of the other Chosen, but he thought it often enough. The ten men in his squad looked at their leader, and, like him, said nothing. They didn’t have to; he could tell they were as worried as he was. Who wouldn’t be worried? They were more than a million light years from home with no way back, stuck on a long-abandoned alien space station, and hunted by insanely-powerful beings bent on their deaths.

  “All in a day’s work.”

  “What was that, Eric?” Chriso asked, wondering how the crewman had read his thoughts.

  “I was just thinking that this is all in a day’s work. You know, flitting around the universe, stealing stuff.”

  Chriso laughed and shook his head. “We’re not stealing,” he said and glanced at the reinforced, dualloy backpack resting nearby, “you can’t steal what someone has thrown away.” There were five other such packs, each stuffed with invaluable castoffs from an ancient and powerful species. One man’s garbage is another’s treasure. Still, he hadn’t found what he was looking for. Salvage was just a side job, an excuse to come far into the frontier. He’d been trying to collect details on the world below while waiting for the Tog to bring them home. The planet was on his special list; powerful enemies of the Tog also claimed it.

  “I think the T’Chillen disagree,” Eric said.

  “The snakes have an overdeveloped sense of ownership,” Chriso said dryly, causing a few of the nearby Chosen to mumble curses. And now the snakes were here, and his plan was going off the tracks. “How long you been a Chosen?”

  “Almost a year, sir,” Eric said and looked self-conscious.

  “You’re part of the reserve group, aren’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Nothing to be embarrassed about, son. Lots of kids don’t make the final cut. You were close, or you wouldn’t have undergone primary training.”

  “Missed the cut by one percentage point.”

  Chriso nodded his head and patted Eric on the arm. “I, for one, am glad you took the reserve training. We need good men like you. As you know, this is a dangerous job.” Eric nodded his head and turned to look at the other end of the chamber. A massive wall a hundred meters high and a kilometer long stretched into the distance. Because of its shape, the station appeared to angle toward them as it narrowed to a point far away. On the other side was a vista of stars and the small curve of the planet below. There was more moliplas in that one window than on all of Bellatrix.

  “Dangerous it might be, but I love the scenery.” None of them laughed at that. The boy was right; it was the best view in the universe.

  “Activity!” yelled Vance, the Chosen Chriso had left to monitor the portal. Chriso jumped to his feet, slinging the armored pack over his shoulder, and ran toward him. The rest of the squad followed.

  “Can you tell who it is, yet?” he asked Vance.

  “No sir, not yet. They don’t have this specific portal address.” The man worked with their team’s portal control rod, a very valuable piece of equipment the Tog rarely entrusted to them, except for important missions.

  “They’re trying to lock in this system?”

  “No doubt about it,” Vance agreed. “They’re probably tracing us from the last stop. It’s only a matter of time.”

  Chriso nodded. The other nine members of his squad joined them in a rough circle and waited for their leader to speak. “We have inbound,” he told them and began preparing his weapon. Most of them had worked with him for years and needed no further prodding, except for the young Eric.

  “How do we know it isn’t the Tog?” he asked, his worry obvious upon seeing the weapons.

  “The Tog know the identification code for this portal,” Chriso told him as he assembled his weapon. “Whoever is trying to find this portal only knows that there’s an active destination, not the specific one. They’re querying each portal nearby for activity until they find the one we came through.”

  “Maybe they won’t find the code.” Chriso reached over, unsnapped the flap on Eric’s pack, and removed the gun inside. He asked Eric for a tool and finally got him involved in the process. Eventually the young Chosen took over the assembly of his own weapon, and Chriso moved on to check the others.

  The weapons were embarrassingly simple, but that’s what they had available. In his travels around the massive Concordian Empire, he’d seen an incredible variety of fantastic weaponry, unimaginable ways of killing and destroying entire cities, and perhaps even laying waste to a world. He’d armed his Chosen with chemically-propelled firearms, nearly identical to what the survivors of Earth had brought with them.

  They had Concordian-made technological improvements to their ancient technology, though. The bullets they fired were many times more lethal than anything ever made on Earth. Chriso understood the principles behind EPC bullets and programmable trajectories, and he’d designed many of the improvements personally. They weren’t beamcasters, but at least they gave them a fighting chance.

  “What information do we have on this station?” he keyed into his computer.

  “No information is available on this specific station,” was the reply.

  “Extrapolate based on information available,” he typed. The device was often obstinate and purposely evasive when asked seemingly obvious questions. The database was a gift from the Tog and contained a vast amount of knowledge.

  “The Concordia abandoned space travel more than 100,000 years
ago in favor of the much more efficient portals.”

  “I don’t need a damn history lesson!” Obstinate was an understatement sometimes.

  “This station has been abandoned for 1,000 centuries, and information is limited. Based on the curvature of the viewing portal on this promenade, I surmise this was a Beta Class orbital transfer station, commonly used in this section of the Empire. They were used mostly to transfer passengers and cargo from orbit to the planet’s surface, via short-range portal networks.”

  “So, there should be other portals on this station?” he asked, looking around at the rubble of the station’s interior.

  “That is reasonable to assume, however, those portals will only be linked with the planet’s surface. This station’s presence speaks of a time prior to large-scale, intergalactic portal travel. In the antiquity of the Concordian chronology, planetary portals were kept on stations such as this to better facilitate defense of a world.”

  Okay, that’s fine, he said to himself, cutting off the computer with a cancel key before it spouted off a couple hundred pages of crap. The database might be miserly with information, but once it got going on a subject, it was hard to stop. “Link with our portal control rod,” he instructed and quickly rose to address his team. Then a thought occurred to him. “Access file titled ‘da Vinci.’ Is it possible the target in question is on the planet’s surface?”

  “Working. You are requesting pure extrapolation.”

  “Perform action.”

  “It is possible. No further extrapolation is feasible.”

  Chriso stared out the window for a second, thinking hard about the decision he had to make. “All right, folks,” Chriso called to his men, “we’re moving out. Leave several thermal decoys and pack everything else.” Eric looked at him hopefully as Chriso accessed his tablet again. “Attempt to link with any nearby portals though our rod.”

  “Link established with three other functioning portals. They range between 100 meters and five kilometers distant.”