Infinity to the Rescue

Escape of the Space Rebels

Celeste Sterling Space Opera Book 1

(3-Chapter Preview)

By Tracy Falbe

No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except as permitted by U.S. copyright law. For permission requests, contact Tracy Falbe via her website at Falbepublishing.com.

The story, all names, characters, and incidents portrayed in this production are fictitious. No identification with actual persons (living or deceased), places, buildings, and products is intended or should be inferred.

Book Cover by GetCovers.com

Chapter 1. Last Day of School

Celeste Sterling was ready for the exam. She always did well on tests. School was easy for her because she had come of age in the real world of hands-on work, far away from the University of Isis campus.

The privileged world of school would soon be behind her. This was her last exam. A passing grade in Advanced Communication Strategies would complete her course work. Her political science degree would be hers in a matter of days after the formality of the graduation ceremony.

The crowd of students in line with her buzzed with anticipation on this last day of exams. Most of those queuing with her were going to graduate this season. Eye bags and disheveled hair attested to the early celebrations that some of her peers had indulged in the night before.

The proctor standing by the door to the testing room scowled at the students as they tapped their ID rings to enter. Her precise haircut and artful eye makeup advertised her devotion to protocol. She seemed to feel it was her mission to inflict one last moment of authoritarian perfection upon the mostly youthful test takers.

Celeste did not bother to fake a smile for the proctor when she reached the front of the line. Completing this exam would launch the life that she had been working toward for four years since her father had sent her to university at the tender age of seventeen.

At first, leaving the rough and tumble life of working on her father’s deep space rescue ship, the Infinity, had been difficult. She had felt uncomfortable around her fellow students. They seemed vapid and entitled, but she had realized that taking a superior attitude would not win her any friends. And she knew that she would have been just as silly as any of them if she had not grown up aboard the Infinity. Her peers knew the thrill of space travel, but not like her. She knew about working and living in space. She had seen things that most residents of Prime Worlds were ignorant of or chose to ignore.

Celeste raised her ID ring and ran it across the sensory surface of the door lock to the testing room. The reader groused a negative sound, and the red light puzzled Celeste. She imagined that her ID ring must have worn out. She had been using it for four years because she rarely lost or broke her things.

She tapped again. The same red-lighted grunt of denial resulted and summoned the proctor.

“I think my chip must have died,” Celeste said helpfully, but the proctor was immune to her cheer. ID ring malfunctions were not her concern. The admittance of test takers with the appropriate academic clearance to the testing chamber was her duty.

As the proctor opened her mouth to tell Celeste to step aside, Celeste scrambled mentally for a way to fix the situation. This was the only time that the exam was offered. It was her responsibility to arrive on time and take it. Her damn ID ring had worked less than an hour ago when she had gotten breakfast.

“Let me try it again. Three’s a charm,” Celeste said, and the proctor grudgingly granted a third try.

The doors at the opposite end of the hall banged open with excessive force. Two men in dark blue jumpsuits marched through the doorway. Their shining boots clomped on the tile floor, and the queue of students moved aside for the duo.

Celeste quickly realized that she was their target because they focused on her with a singular purpose. She connected her ID ring to the lock again. The defiant chirp and bitter red light flashed next to her hand as the men laid hands on her.

“Don’t touch me!” Celeste snarled and jerked away.

The men grabbed her upper arms. As she slapped at them, she wondered how this could be happening. Campus security guards rarely manhandled anyone, but these fellows possessed the iron grip of dangerous men accustomed to violence. One of them hit her behind a knee to make her crumple while the other pulled her arms back.

The assembled students watched in horror. Their mouths hung open in identical ovals of speechless shock.

Celeste clenched her teeth and threw her shoulder into the man holding her. She unbalanced him a bit. One of his hands slipped loose. She took full advantage, whirled loose, and aimed a kick at his groin. He deflected her foot with a rocky fist, and his partner pressed a control wand against her throat.

Electrochemical disarray rampaged through her nervous system. She twitched but could manage no coordinated movements. The men reasserted their hold and marched her toward the door. Her feet dragged along the floor like a decommissioned puppet.

The other students recoiled against the gleaming white wall. Some of them were her classmates. A few she counted as friends, but no one stepped forward to challenge her brazen removal. The hope of avoiding whatever trouble afflicted her held them in silent stillness.

As Celeste approached the exit helplessly, she felt some gratitude that she had retained control of her bladder. She recalled that the manufacturer of control wands had done extensive testing to produce an electrical jolt that disabled a victim but did not interrupt basic bodily controls. Early models had displeased law enforcement with continuous messes.

The sack-like status of her body made the sensation of her thudding heart even more alarming. Celeste squirmed feebly against her captors as they hustled through the doors and conveyed her into the mid morning sun. Isiseans boasted that the sunshine on their planet possessed a splendor unmatched among human habitable worlds. Its soothing rays caressed the skin and invited lush plant growth across a planet blessed with many mild climatic zones. Celeste was inclined to agree. The balmy sunshine never seemed too bright nor obscured by clouds too often. Isis was a queen among Prime planets. In such places, the elite offspring attending universities never knew the rough hands of authority.

Until today.

Celeste commanded herself to rise above her panic and think. She might have a chance to escape. The effects of a control wand were known to last 15 to 20 minutes.

When she considered why this was happening, she immediately thought of her father. Simon Sterling led a daring double life. He must have done something.

A firm hand that felt capable of crushing rocks grasped her skull and lowered her head through a vehicle door. The tinted windows blunted the sublime sunshine as one brute secured her next to him in the backseat and his comrade slid behind the steering wheel. The doors shut and removed her visible presence from the campus. Students continued to stroll the walkways, unaware of her capture. A facade of normalcy remained firmly in place around the testing center, and Celeste felt the double fangs of invisibility and vulnerability bite into her soul.

The vehicle’s motor hummed quietly to life and traveled smoothly along the immaculate lanes of the campus. The familiar trees, benches, buildings, and sculptures slipped by as if she were watching a slideshow of her life from the past four years. The vehicle approached the central administrative plaza. She saw the fountain where Sinclair had first spoken to her. He had followed her out of a class and asked her for a study date. The most eligible bachelor in the galaxy had pursued her, and they had been together ever since.

But she could not distract herself with lovely memories of better moments. Sinclair would not know what was happening to her yet, and he might never know unless she could find an advantage.

Celeste felt mentally out of shape for dealing with a crisis. Privilege could make one weak, and her easy years on Isis had softened her. But she knew how to take care of herself even if she was out of practice. Every member of the Infinity crew was wise to the ways of the galaxy and not prone to wilt under pressure.

She shifted her gaze discreetly toward the guard next to her. He was thickly muscled. No scuffs marred his gleaming boots. He obviously had an above average level of discipline for a campus security guard. She looked at the back of the driver’s head. His haircut was so fresh and precise he might have gotten it that morning. Celeste noticed how pale his neck was. The sun of Isis had not had a chance to tan it with radiant kisses, and she suspected that he was fresh from space. Time in space inevitably paled the skin in a specific way. These goons were off-world, and that meant that her situation was dire.

The vehicle stopped behind the campus administrative headquarters, and the guards took her through a service entrance. Her legs were starting to work again as they trundled her into an elevator.

The elevator took them to the top, and they stepped out in the lobby of the university president’s office. A thick carpet depicted the university seal with the ancient Earth goddess Isis spreading her wings. Uncomfortable looking furniture flanked both walls. Framed images of past university presidents stood at attention along the walls in homogeneous rows of men and women.

At the opposite end of the lobby, a sleek desk where a secretary would normally guard the gate stood empty.

One of the guards tapped once on the office door.

A mechanical click communicated permission to enter, and his meaty hand turned the knob. They entered a sumptuous office. Pedestals presented rare archaeological specimens from the president’s private collection. Beautiful works of art from throughout the Milky Way crafted by races lost to time provided something for the greedy to covet and the curious to ponder.

Celeste had not had any personal interactions with the university president, but she recognized President Vestez from campus media and his habit of hanging portraits of himself in campus buildings. He definitely looked heavier in person, sporting the bulge of a successful man who gets a good meal served to him every night.

She did not recognize the second man. He stood up from where he was sitting in front of the president’s desk. He was abnormally lean but cut a pleasing silhouette all the same. He wore very polished dress shoes that matched his black hair. The guards shoved her in a chair.

“Why is she stumbling?” the president asked.

“Control wand. It’ll wear off soon,” a goon answered, but he looked at the lean man when he spoke.

“What?” the president fumed. “You can’t attack students with control wands. They’re not even legal on Isis.”

“She resisted. Our orders were to be swift,” the man explained without a trace of contrition.

President Vestez scowled but appeared reluctant to protest further.

The lean man gave the guards an approving nod and gestured for them to wait outside. Celeste felt some tiny relief to see them withdraw. She scanned the room for other doors. She saw two. One probably went to a washroom, but the other might connect to a hall and provide an alternative exit.

The lean man came over to her. He took her wrist gently. His fingers were warm. She wanted to resist, but she still remained weak from the effects of the control wand. He pressed a small scanner against the soft skin on the underside of her wrist. She stole a glance at the screen before he lifted it out of her view. It looked like he had done a genetic scan. He avoided her eyes as she looked up at him questioningly. She saw PSS embroidered in glossy black thread upon his deep blue jacket collar. Prescott Security Service.

What had her father done? PSS enforced President Prescott’s permanent authority. For over six decades, he had ruled human society from the planet Treneter as a de facto dictator despite the veneer of a representative republic maintained by Prime Worlds. Life Extension Technology (LET) had preserved his health and stamina and granted him decades to entrench his control of multiple political and economic institutions.

The PSS man slid the cover into place on his scanner. “It’s her,” he said.

“I told you it was her,” Vestez said irritably.

Celeste wet her lips and assessed her ability to speak. She felt able. “What is going on?” she said.

“Ms. Sterling, I have some bad news,” Vestez said. “Your father has died.”

She stared back at the president as her mind replayed his words in an attempt to find a different meaning.

“How?” she gasped with shock pulsing through her nervous system.

Vestez looked to the PSS man. “Colonel Darcy?” the president said.

“Those details are not known,” Colonel Darcy said unconvincingly. “What matters is that Ms. Sterling does her duty to President Prescott.”

“Duty?” Celeste snarled. If her literal abduction from the testing center had not raised her suspicions sufficiently, then the mention of duty to the Prescott regime certainly did. Her father had done more than simply died. PSS agents must have killed him, but why did they want her so badly? She had not been present for any of her father’s correctionist missions since coming to school. And why the genetic scan? Such things never boded well.

Darcy took her hostility in stride and said, “As you well know, the Infinity is a valuable asset within the human fleet. Your assistance is required to return it to its duty as a deep space rescue ship.”

Celeste grappled mentally with her deepening shock and rising grief. She was not understanding anything this colonel was talking about.

She looked pleadingly upon the president and demanded, “Why have I been treated so? Is this how you break the news of tragedy to students?”

The president frowned, apparently ashamed of what he had allowed to happen to her. “Colonel Darcy’s interplanetary authority supersedes mine,” he explained weakly. “I encourage you to cooperate fully.”

“Was my father killed?” Celeste asked boldly.

Darcy said, “I’m sure you know that Simon Sterling’s choices made him enemies.”

“Oh, so you know the details of that,” Celeste observed and dared to lock eyes with him. She recognized immediately that he was a killer but could not imagine why he might wish to kill her unless the Prescott regime was now driven to wipe out the seed of all of its opponents. She found the thought uncomfortably plausible.

“There’s no need to discuss any of this here,” Darcy said. “President Vestez thought it important to observe this protocol when turning a student over to my custody.”

“This is more than a formality,” Vestez complained. “I’m not satisfied that I should release this student now that I see how heavy handedly you have treated her.”

“I have no intention of harming Ms. Sterling,” Darcy said. He looked upon her with abnormally greedy eyes as if he really needed something very important from her.

What could it be? How had her father died? These questions dismayed her, but she fought against the mindless grief that naturally wanted to afflict her. She had loved her father and been very close to him. She understood his political motivations, but she had also thought that nothing might ever come of his personal quests to reform a corrupt society.

“I’ve taken up enough of your valuable time, President Vestez, and I thank you for your assistance today,” Darcy said.

“Would you give us a moment?” Vestez said.

Darcy narrowed his eyes at the president, silently warning him not to try flexing his administrative power and complicate the situation.

“Of course,” Darcy said with false pleasantness and withdrew to the lobby.

“Is my father really dead?” Celeste asked.

“I believe so,” Vestez said sympathetically. He pulled up a chair next to Celeste and sat close to her. He put a gentle hand on her shoulder. “I’m sorry I had to break the news so abruptly. I’ve found that it’s best to just say such things.”

“What does he want with me?” she said and glanced fearfully toward the door.

“I don’t really know, but he presented me with a PSS acquisition warrant for you this morning. Once that was downloaded to the Isis criminal database, it shut off your university access clearance.” She glanced at her ID ring that had apparently been deactivated automatically while she was at the testing center.

Vestez’s hand moved down her arm until he took her hand. She guessed that he was trying to console her, but the contact felt intrusive. He proposed, “I could file an emergency petition with the Isis authorities to review your warrant. This might delay your removal by a few hours, maybe a day.”

Celeste swam mentally upstream against her shock and tried to focus on the major facts. PSS had likely assassinated her father, and she was a prisoner.

“Help me get out of here,” she said.

The youthful plea of an attractive young woman naturally had some pull upon the president, but he had not achieved his powerful and obscenely overpaid position by not taking advantage of people when they were vulnerable. Helping her somehow slip away from his office could have serious consequences for him, but he was not without allies and favors to call in. He let go of her hand and touched her knee. His fingers tickled suggestively up her thigh. “I’d want to get to know you better before I took such a risk on your behalf,” he said.

Her revulsion was immediate. Did he really intend to molest her right here in his office in exchange for escape? Vestez leaned forward and came at her with both hands. She clumsily pushed him away and fell out of the chair.

Vestez said, “Your diploma is at stake here too. You haven’t taken your last exam.”

Celeste’s disgust overwhelmed her shock. She got to her feet clumsily. “You know university policy grants me a bereavement pass in the event of a close family member’s death. You can’t keep my diploma from me,” she said.

Undeterred, Vestez embraced her. Although he was no athlete, his bulk lent him much strength, and she struggled against his advances.

Amused, he whispered, “Let me file a petition so we have more time to discuss your education.”

Celeste slapped him and bolted for what she hoped was the back exit from the office. Darcy and his two goons burst through the main door and intercepted her.

“I didn’t say you could come in here!” Vestez protested, but Darcy paid him no attention. His men grabbed Celeste again.

“I need to tag her,” Darcy ordered, and a man grabbed Celeste’s brown hair and yanked her head downward. Her hair fell aside and exposed the back of her neck where Darcy pressed a device.

Celeste cried out. Darcy pulled away his device. A pink square of broken capillaries had been left behind. The colonel tapped his device to activate her subcutaneous tracker.

The men pulled Celeste straight and marched her toward the door.

Vestez blocked the exit. “This is outrageous. I am going to file a warrant review petition,” he said.

Blandly, Darcy observed, “You know, if you were to be shot dead in your driveway tomorrow morning, I don’t think many people would care.”

The president needed a moment to process the threat, but remembered his priorities and stepped aside.

“I’m sure you won’t have to look too hard for a different vulnerable female to grope,” Darcy said on his way out with his prisoner.

Pure panic afflicted Celeste by the time they shoved her into the elevator. Darcy pulled off her ring ID and stashed it in a pocket. She wondered how she might get away. The men possessed sufficient strength to overpower her, and the control wand would always keep things in their favor. She would need to surprise them and act fast before they put her back in the vehicle.

The gentle vibration of the descending elevator contrasted with the thud of her heart.

“Where are you taking me?” she asked.

“The Infinity is orbiting Queboria,” Darcy said.

Celeste knew Queboria, also known as Slum Planet 6. Its large space station served industrial traffic mostly. Queboria was a familiar port of call for the Infinity as it traveled the galaxy aiding disabled ships.

The elevator opened, and she was hustled toward the car.

“I need to pack a few things if I’m going to Queboria,” she said.

“I’ll see to your needs on the way,” Darcy said.

The vehicle was only a few steps away. Once they put her in there, she would be powerless against them.

When one of the men let go of her to reach for the door handle, she made her move. She threw herself to the ground, forcing the other man who still held her to bend over to keep a hold of her. She lashed out with a fist and hit him on the jaw. Although the blow was not enough to disable him, he did not like it either and was made vulnerable for an instant. As his grip loosened, she grabbed him behind the knee and forced his leg to bend. He pitched backward, and she scooted away from him on the ground.

Darcy came swiftly to intervene, but she dodged him with the speed of a desperate animal and ran for all that she was worth. The two men raced after her.

Her only advantage was that she knew the campus very well. She cut around the corner of the building and ran straight for a crowded sidewalk. The two men were almost upon her when she dodged between two other people. The clueless students had no idea why two stout men shoved them aside. Celeste darted around several people who were looking up to see what was happening. She ran across a bit of grass and reached a low wall that protected a service stair to the lower level of a science building. She vaulted the wall and grabbed the handrail on the stairs to slow her descent. She somehow avoided breaking an ankle as she landed halfway down the stairs. She burst into the building. A short hall split off into what was a labyrinth-like array of corridors and rooms that she knew pretty well. She turned down one hall and then another as her pursuers entered the building.

She grabbed the back of her neck. The tracker in there made escape impossible, but at least the men did not have eyes on her anymore. She took the steps two at a time as she went up a service stair on the other side of the building. A heavily wooded landscape occupied this side of the building, and she ran into the cover of trees and shrubs. The sloping land propelled her forward.

The small woodland ended at a stone retaining wall along a sidewalk and street. She dropped down onto the sidewalk and ran as fast as she could toward Sinclair’s house. Her terrible panic contrasted with the festive atmosphere on the streets in the student neighborhood alongside the campus. This enclave for the wealthiest students had homes with large yards and verandas that suited the open-air parties favored by students.

Sinclair, as the scion of the Rambeau family, had the nicest house on the block. He could have easily lived alone with servants, but chose to live like his collegiate peers with three roommates. They were out front prepping a party along with a few friends who had already completed their exams. Smoke rose from a barbecue, and jovial music blasted from floating speakers.

Celeste was a wild-haired, sweaty mess gasping for air when she reached the front yard.

As always, the sight of her brightened Sinclair’s face. Smiles came to him easily. His features that only betrayed a tasteful bit of genetic engineering were symmetrical and pleasing to all who looked upon him.

“Celeste!” he said happily.

“Sinclair,” she sobbed and stumbled into his arms.

Her ragged state sobered his carefree mood. “What has happened?”

Gasping, she tugged on him insistently toward the porch steps.

“No time. Get inside,” she managed and fled through the open front door. She staggered through the foyer and down the hall to the back kitchen. She grabbed a cup off the counter without knowing or caring if it was clean and filled it at the sink. She gulped the water crazily as if she had been stuck in a desert all day. She wiped her mouth and resumed catching her breath.

Sinclair caught up to her. “What is going on?” he said more firmly.

She held the back of her neck and envisioned Darcy and his goons staring at a screen that revealed her exact position.

“I have to get out of here. Can you give me some money? They took my ID ring,” she said.

Baffled, Sinclair said, “Money? Who’s they?”

“PSS. They put a tracker on me.” She turned and lifted her hair to reveal the faint wound.

The pinkish square appalled Sinclair. “What’s happening?”

“Some colonel tried to take me prisoner. He said my father is dead. I have to get to Queboria,” Celeste said, deciding that her father’s ship represented her only sanctuary. His crew could tell her the truth about what had happened, and she realized painfully that it was her duty to make arrangements for his remains. She fell against his chest where she had often found comfort and pleasure. “There’s no time, Sinclair. Do you have some money so I can get off the planet?”

“Simon’s dead?” he asked, truly unhappy to hear the news. He knew her father was a reckless yet brave man who advocated for massive reform. He had liked him.

Celeste clutched her forehead. “I don’t know what’s happened,” she said.

A disturbance outside distracted her from her frantic grief. Shouting and then screaming alerted her to the arrival of Darcy. She pushed out of Sinclair’s arms and glanced around wildly.

“They’re here,” she moaned.

Darcy and his two henchmen stomped down the hall toward the kitchen. Sinclair boldly confronted them. “You can’t come into my home!” he cried and slapped a hand on the chest of the first man to reach him. The man whipped out a control wand and put him on his knees.

“No!” Celeste screamed.

Her genuine horror for his sake touched Sinclair’s heart as he flopped to the floor. He watched helplessly as Celeste grappled with a tall, lean man wearing PSS insignia. He had never seen this intense side of her personality. She definitely had taken a few lessons in martial arts but had no real chance against three men. A deep wrath overtook him as he saw them press her face against a wall and snap cuffs over her wrists. His nervous system raged at his body to move, but he could do nothing as his half-numb limbs only trembled. The leader, who Sinclair presumed to be the mysterious colonel Celeste had just mentioned, wrapped a hand around her throat and throttled her into submission.

“Walk with us or you get the control wand again,” he warned.

She growled defiantly but eventually nodded. He loosened his grip, and his two men hustled her out the front door.

Chapter 2. A Bad Date

Colonel Darcy piloted the orbiter himself. Celeste admired Isis through the small craft’s window as they lifted away. Outside the city of Hemlane, green fields and forests embraced gentle mountains. She was still close enough to the surface to see the curving terraces of lush orchards and fields. A meandering water system supported the abundant agriculture.

Wild areas, horticultural areas, and human habitations synced together in an artful arrangement of pieces that complemented and supported each other. Prime planets were always cultivated according to permaculture design principles tailored to each planet. All prime worlds functioned sustainably, fed their local population, and produced agricultural exports.

Isis truly deserved its reputation as Heaven among the stars. Plains bloomed so thoroughly in some seasons that the colors could be seen from orbit. The waters were advertised as promoting greater health, and Celeste could attest to their cleansing purity.

The luxurious Isis biosphere had always touched her spirit, but today her father’s death shoved broken glass into her heart. The rising grief challenged her fear over the abduction. She was in trouble. If these people could kill her father, then they would likely dispose of her after they got what they wanted, whatever that was.

She could not guess what they valued so urgently about her. She needed to gather up the scraps of her intellect and figure out what was going on. She needed to cry, but the shoulders of Darcy’s henchmen strapped in next to her were devoid of sympathy.

Once the orbiter gained sufficient altitude, Darcy initiated escape velocity. They endured G-forces until they entered the low-gravity relief of high orbit. This orbiter was too small to be outfitted with gravity generators, but the seat harnesses kept everyone in place.

She reasoned that they would switch to an interstellar transport at Isis Station for the journey to Queboria. Perhaps she might escape during the transition. Maybe she could stow away on a different ship. The prospect of flinging herself toward a random destination with no ID ring had more appeal than staying in Darcy’s custody.

She glanced at her guards. She had already embarrassed them once by slipping away, and they eyed her with renewed vigilance. The probability of eluding them a second time was approaching zero.

Celeste thought of Sinclair. The image of him suffering a good zap from a control wand added to her misery. She should not have involved him although his willingness to defend her had been endearing.

She looked through the cockpit windows above Darcy’s head and saw the line where the glistening atmosphere of Isis gave way to space. Despite her current turmoil, Celeste could not discard all hope as she looked upon the limitless expanse.

Gravity slipped away from her body like the weak hand of a dying relative letting go. Her hair floated, and the sudden weightlessness released tension from her body. A little knot in her shoulder that had been bothering her melted away, and she cracked her neck.

Celeste felt the orbiter go through some course adjustments, and Isis Station became visible through the windows. Darcy murmured into his headset and then an ominous silence hung in the filtered air as the ship approached the station.

Many different vessels docked at the station. Sleek yachts belonging to the wealthy were a common site at any Prime planet station, and doubly so at Isis Station. Bulky and decidedly unsexy looking cargo freighters occupied half of the docking terminals radiating from the central station core. Robotic arms loaded and unloaded containers, and a few freighters were queued in orbit awaiting a space to dock.

Celeste recognized a PSS vessel hogging an entire terminal. PSS functioned not only as a spy agency against the human population but also as a military organization. Although human society had no external enemies due to living peacefully with the Bevetians and Iosolans within the Trio Alliance of Galactic Space-Faring Civilizations, President Prescott and his loyalists had no shortage of enemies within human society.

She studied the PSS ship warily. It was a DSAPH-T, or deep space all-purpose heavy transport. Prescott’s government used them as military vessels despite Unlotto lease agreements that forbade outfitting space ships with weapons. PSS danced through the contractual loopholes and were technically compliant because they only transported personnel and equipment for military purposes. The ships themselves had no weapons.

Docking a deep-space capable craft at a station was unusual. Most ships fitted with GAC, or galactic access conduit, established their own planetary orbits farther out than docking stations. Any people wishing to visit a station or planet typically traveled in short-range ships.

Large GAC ships generally only docked at stations for maintenance purposes or when someone had a pressing need to limit time spent on orbital travel.

Celeste watched the ship navigate into the terminal alongside the DSAPH-T. She had hoped that the colonel would dock at the station. That might have given her a tiny chance to slip away. But Darcy obviously had no intention of letting her set foot outside of PSS-controlled areas. A cargo hold door opened on the DSAPH-T to receive his orbiter. Celeste felt the big ship’s gravity core grip her body as the craft settled on the deck. The knot in her shoulder returned, and a painful queasiness jiggled her stomach lining as she swallowed her anxiety.

Darcy flipped his harness straps off his shoulders, got up, and moved toward the hatch. His hand hovered over the button to open the hatch as he regarded Celeste with a calculating look. She could not guess what he was thinking about.

His hand smacked the hatch control, and the door descended as a ramp. A half dozen uniformed soldiers saluted the colonel.

“Take her to solitary,” he said simply and stalked away.

The men next to Celeste unstrapped her and handed her off to her new guards. They escorted her through a maze of corridors deep into the bowels of the ship. Her room was not going to have a view of the stars.

They deposited her in a stark metal closet with only a toilet. The light coming through the small clear panel above the door amounted to only a pittance of photons.

Celeste slid down the wall onto her butt. She stared at the shadowy toilet. She supposed this was a good time to break down and cry, but only a bland numbness took hold of her. She was too exhausted and disoriented to react in any way. She slumped into a corner and shut her eyes.

She drifted within a tormented doze until the DSAPH-T vibrated. It was a deep quaking that indicated that it was leaving the station. She pushed herself upright and rubbed her face. The ship would spend at least a few hours traveling to a position sufficiently far enough from Isis to use the GAC and present-shift to Queboria, where she could not entirely guess what was to become of her.

Celeste thought back on what Darcy had said in the university president’s office. He needed her to restore the Infinity to the human fleet. She surmised that her father had disabled the ship somehow. That would be an impressive feat on its own considering that the Unlotto who built the ship had full control over transferring the Captaincy.

Celeste wondered if her father and his allies and sympathizers had finally initiated a serious action against the ruling order. Her father had evidently done something to put the Prescott regime into a state of urgent distress. During her adolescence, she had picked up on his politics and seen a seditious thing or two. Her father’s activities might have escalated while she was at school on Isis. In retrospect, she realized that he had taken care to sever her from knowledge of his doings.

Although she could not fathom exactly what PSS expected of her, Celeste had a better idea of what would come after she satisfied their demands. She thought of her mother and wondered what she had been like before patriotism therapy ended her relationship with her father forever.

The hard floor and walls of Celeste’s cell were clearly communicating her state of imprisonment. Her sense of helplessness settled into her gut like freezing sewage. She had never felt so utterly vulnerable. Every kilometer that the ship moved farther into space added to her crushing despair. She wallowed in misery for a time, wiping at her tears.

Eventually, she could no longer deny that she had to urinate. The thought of pulling down her pants in a cell that surely had video monitoring threatened to demoralize her completely. She imagined some creep hovering over her security camera waiting for the inevitable call of Nature so that he could watch her and indulge his perverted delights.

A heavy sigh announced her resignation to the indignity. At least the lighting was bad. Some stranger seeing her pee really was not high on her list of her problems at the moment. Celeste completed the toilet maneuver quickly, yanked her pants up, and allowed herself to be thankful for the physical relief. Now she had to wonder if she was going to get any food or water.

She stared at the dark corner listlessly until footsteps approached the door. She got to her feet just as it slid open. Two men gestured for her to exit, which she gladly did. One man led the way while the ominous other walked behind her. They traveled quite a distance through the big ship, and she judged that they exited the elevator on the top level.

The men took her to a section that appeared to quarter senior officers.

The door slid open to an apartment. The generic furnishing and lack of personal possessions indicated that this was probably a guest quarters. Colonel Darcy rose from a chair at a table set with dinner for two.

“Enter, Ms. Sterling,” he said. Her guards stood aside, and she gathered her courage for this dinner interview. She remembered the pain of Darcy’s hand on her throat and poor Sinclair on the floor of his own house. She saw no reason to curb her visceral hatred of the colonel, but she did not want to go back to her cell either. This guest room was a tactically superior setting compared to her cell.

She collected herself and went to the table. She sat down and greedily quaffed a glass of water. Space water, recycled and purified from urine and gray water who knew how many thousands of times, quenched her thirst. The benign yet tired taste of the water that knew no world welcomed her back to space.

Darcy dismissed the guards and settled into a seat. She grabbed a water carafe and refilled her glass. Hydration was important for survival. She glanced at the food and told herself that she would have to eat it to keep her strength up no matter what her stomach felt like.

“I’m not going to poison you,” the colonel said.

Celeste cast a skeptical look toward him and reached reluctantly for a platter.

Darcy continued, “I wanted us to have a chance to talk in more pleasant surroundings.”

She slapped some food on her plate. The serving spoon rang against the crockery. She dabbed her fork into the fluffy starch paste that might be whipped up from any number of tuber varieties that grew throughout the galaxy. “You know, if you’re going to do the good cop bad cop thing, it would help if you were a different person,” she said and ate a mouthful of food.

Darcy weathered her snarkiness stoically. He nudged the platter of meat toward her. “It’s pomma. Frozen, of course, but still tasty. It’s just for the officer corps,” he said.

Celeste stabbed a fork into a slice of meat. She liked pomma well enough. A prisoner could do far worse.

She continued to eat, refusing to initiate conversation. She intended to get some food in her unhappy belly for the sake of nutrition. Father had given her basic security training, particularly in the event of abduction. She wished what she had considered paternal paranoia when she was fourteen had not transformed into a practical education.

Darcy said, “In consideration of your pedigree, I decided that we should start over.”

Celeste swallowed some food. “Worried my mother won’t be happy about what you did to me?” she asked dispassionately. She knew her mother only concerned herself about Celeste’s well-being because the privileged classes required defense at all times, even if it included the daughter of a former flame.

Now dead flame, Celeste thought. The nutrition starting to circulate in her bloodstream was giving her the strength to contemplate her grief again.

“My duty includes extending proper respect to the political class,” Darcy said. “I’ll admit that your escape attempt startled me. I have a schedule to keep.”

Celeste studied him. His admission told her that great urgency drove him. His eyes looked a little bloodshot, and she was willing to bet that he spent a good portion of his life amped up on stimulants. It would explain his lean build and the flash of volatile temper that had subdued her.

“Was that an apology?” Celeste asked.

His lips pressed into a narrow line. “You needed some time in a cell as punishment for your escape attempt.”

“You could have contacted me directly instead of sending two goons to arrest me,” she added. “Who wouldn’t try to escape such a situation?”

He ignored her question and removed an ID ring, presumably hers, from a pocket inside his deep blue jacket. He slid the slender crystal into a handheld scanner and silently swiped through her data files and communication history. Celeste kept eating while he rummaged through her private life.

“A very clean data profile indeed,” he finally commented. “Suspiciously clean.”

“Do you even hear yourself?” she complained.

“I know that you’re no innocent babe,” he said.

“I’m really not interested in your private fantasies about me,” she retorted and felt a tiny flutter of victory to see that her flippant attitude annoyed him.

“Ms. Sterling, you must accept that you are in a serious situation,” Darcy said.

She rolled her eyes and shoved another piece of pomma into her mouth.

As if Darcy recognized that things were getting awkward on a bad date, he took some food for himself. A single slice and dollop of military mystery starch. They ate in silence for a time until Celeste decided that she might as well try to get answers.

“How did my father die?” she asked.

“I don’t know,” Darcy said without looking up.

“Did you kill him?” she demanded.

His eyes shot up this time. They were dark brown and intense, like a muddy river swollen by flood. “I told you I don’t know how he died,” Darcy said.

Celeste doubted that he was ignorant of what had happened. She leaned back into her chair, visibly dejected. The news of her father’s death was still so new that each time her brain acknowledged the fact it felt like the first time.

“Is his body on the Infinity? I’ll need to make arrangements. I suppose such a thing falls to the next of kin,” she said.

“Simon Sterling has already been cremated,” Darcy said.

Celeste gasped. Not only was her father suddenly deceased, she was robbed of the duty of attending to his remains. The cavern of her grief deepened. She set down her fork and knife and stared at her plate.

Darcy finished his small meal and wiped his mouth. He went back to scanning her ID ring data.

“Can I have my ID ring back?” Celeste asked.

His reproachful look scolded her audacity. He detached the ID ring from the scanner and put it back into his pocket. “No,” he said simply.

“I’m really going to need it. Everyone needs ID,” she argued.

“In due time,” he said evasively. “You need to prove your loyalty to the Prescott Government first.”

“But I’ve not been disloyal,” she insisted.

“That remains to be seen,” Darcy said.

Maybe it does, Celeste thought angrily and assumed that her dead father’s spirit would be proud of her distaste for this PSS tool.

“You’ve been to the Unlotto homeworld,” the colonel said.

“Have you?” she said, knowing that only the privileged few experienced that world.

Two beats of silence passed before he responded, “What was your impression of them?”

Celeste shrugged. “What can any human say in the face of such a superior species? They are the technocrats of the Givers. They make machines that travel the stars. We’re just ignorant mammals next to them.”

“So you admire them?” Darcy pressed.

“Of course. Don’t you?”

His fingers tapped alongside his plate. He had not imagined that this college girl would be so artful in conversation under extreme circumstances.

“What happened when you went to the Unlotto world when you were sixteen?” Darcy said.

“Lots of things happened. We went out to dinner, caught a show,” she said.

A tremor of anger pushed the throttle on Darcy’s blood pressure, but he eased back from the urge to slap his prisoner.

“Technology. You were shopping for technology,” Darcy prompted testily.

She recalled that the Infinity had docked at the space station. Large ships, like a deep space rescue ship, needed regular inspections by Unlotto mechanics. Gravity cores needed calibration or neutron cell replacement, and so forth.

But her father had been shopping for technology. Thinking back to her last visit to Unlotto, she realized that Simon had mentioned something about some custom work that he was having done. Unlotto mechanics had fabricated special items and shipped them into orbit. As a teenager, Celeste had not dwelled on what was being built for the ship. Such things were routine to her, and she had not noticed anything new or altered after that trip.

Celeste remembered undergoing some biological scans. Father had said that he wanted her health checked out. The Unlotto medical technicians had been very pleasant and intrigued by her bodily systems. They had ultimately supplemented her with what the translation device called “micronutrients” and declared her superbly healthy. Father had undergone a similar health exam and received treatments although he had not disclosed the nature of the medical procedures. When she had asked about them, he had said that he was fine. She had accepted his assurances because nothing had appeared amiss with him.

“I don’t have any answers for you. I didn’t pay much attention to what my father might have bought,” Celeste said.

Darcy felt inclined to believe her, but she might know more than she realized. He knew better than to make assumptions. He had already misread Celeste’s abilities when collecting her from the campus.

He said, “The interesting thing is that after that last visit to Unlotto, your father seemed to lose his interest in insurrection. His communications included only routine activities. Towing a freighter. Rescuing a ship full of Earth pilgrims, and so forth.”

“I guess the Unlotto inspired him to change his political views,” Celeste suggested.

“Or…” Darcy countered. “He obtained technology that enabled him to mask his communications.”

“I told you I don’t know anything about it,” Celeste said.

“Well, you’ll get to know more about it when we reach Queboria,” he said.

Celeste sighed. The thought of seeing the Infinity without her father depressed her utterly, and she could give no energy to decoding the riddle that Darcy had put before her. She ignored Darcy’s stare and cleaned the last bites of food from her plate.

“I’ve arranged for you to have nicer quarters,” Darcy said.

“Does it still have a good view of the toilet?” Celeste wondered and enjoyed how her sauciness perturbed the colonel. He was not accustomed to such cockiness from anyone. Celeste wished that she had good reason to be confident, but her bold words were mostly self soothing bravado. She knew that her mother’s influence was the reason she would not spend the entire trip in a box, but her mother was not going to undermine whatever purpose PSS had for her either.

She heard the door open behind her.

“These men will take you to your room,” Darcy said. He stood for her in a gentlemanly fashion as she left the table.

Celeste’s newest cell was a single room plus a bathroom. A blue jumpsuit was folded on the small bed, and she decided to accept the chance to put on clean clothes. Huddling on the floor in solitary had not left her feeling fresh.

She slid into the bed and stared at the camera mounted in a ceiling corner. The node of surveillance represented the only bit of technology in the room. She had no way to access the Isis internet or get a message to anyone. She thought maybe that she should cry, but the bewildering events of the day had depleted her emotionally.

She quieted her mind and hoped that she might get some sleep. The gentle, omnipresent hum of the DSAPH-T soothed her with the familiar feel of space travel that she had grown up with.

Celeste stayed awake until the ship activated the GAC. The feeling of present-shifting was subtle as the GAC moved the ship and all of its contents across the galaxy. People typically felt a brief moment of vertigo if they were standing, and momentary confusion was common too. As a seasoned veteran of space travel, she recovered from the effects quickly. As her body regained equilibrium, a nasty net of anxiety encased her. The ship would be in the Queboria system now and spend the next few hours traveling toward the orbital station where the Infinity was docked.

Light years of space separated her from the pleasant life she had come to know on Isis. Her experience there already felt like it was slipping away like the memory of a dream. Making friends. Learning skills. Going to parties. Falling in love with Sinclair. Everything suddenly struck her as a deviation from what her life was supposed to be. The future that she had imagined with Sinclair had been deleted from her reality.

They had planned to travel to his parents’ homeworld of Treneter immediately after graduation. The Rambeaus were of course throwing a party for their beloved son, and Sinclair and Celeste would have announced their engagement at that event.

She remembered how pleased her father had been when he had learned that she was dating Sinclair Rambeau although she doubted that Sinclair’s parents had been as enthusiastic about her. Simon had naturally hoped that his daughter might become attached to someone important while at university. He had groomed her to pursue a position within the so-called legitimate halls of authority. “Revolutions need people on the inside too,” he had used to say, and the memory left her heart momentarily crippled with grief. She would not have him to cheer for her anymore.

Her relationship with Sinclair had been genuine as well. Their attraction was real. He had pursued her, which flattered Celeste endlessly because the desire that other women exhibited for him was palpable. They hated that he favored her despite her father’s politics and limited relationship with her mother.

She assumed that Sinclair liked her because she was not perfect. She was not even genetically engineered. She was raw and real and happy to receive his attention because Sinclair was a wonderful person seemingly uncorrupted by his powerful status, like a rare flower that knew only the warmth of the sun. Celeste liked to believe that he would be the same man no matter what circumstances he was born into. He had a generous soul and a bright wit that spared him the worst degradations of ego and privilege.

And he was lost to her now. Even if she got away from Darcy, she would be damaged goods and far too toxic of an individual for Sinclair to welcome into the bosom of his influential family.

With her heart broken on all sides, she fell asleep. Sleep was the best thing to do in space when there were hours of transit time to kill. Segregated from communications technology as she was, she could not join the many others on the ship who were surely downloading internet updates now that they were within an occupied solar system. The DSAPH-T network would be delivering updates to the internet collected while in the Isis system and receiving new data from the Queboria web. In such a way, each system remained largely connected to the Trio Alliance galactic web. Personnel throughout the ship, even Colonel Darcy, would be reading email and text messages, watching videos, browsing news, scrolling chatter sites, playing games, and conversing on encrypted military channels, except for her and any other prisoners who might be aboard. Without the option of fighting off sleep while consuming fresh content, she slid into a fitful slumber.

She sat straight up when the door opened. A man’s silhouette darkened the doorway, and an alarm buzzed in the corridor. A blazing bright headlamp obscured his face in the gloom. Celeste recoiled against the back of her bed but then jumped to her feet. She might need to defend herself.

“Tell me your name,” he demanded.

The voice was not Darcy’s. “Sterling,” she said.

The man stalked into her room toward the camera mounted in the far corner. Celeste glimpsed his face as he brushed by her. He was a young man. His focus was on the camera, and she realized that he was using the headlamp to blind the camera. He was relatively tall, and he reached up with a wrench and smashed the camera. He wrecked the camera overlooking the door next.

“We’ve only got 45 seconds before security gets back into this wing. It went into automatic lockdown when I opened your door,” the man explained.

He rushed toward Celeste. He shoved his wrench into a pocket of his jumpsuit and pulled out a small medical laser scalpel in one hand and a bandage in the other.

“I’ve got to get your chip out now,” he said.

“Who are you?” Celeste said, leaning away from the medical tool. He wore the uniform of a crewman.

“I’m here to help,” he said. He turned so that she could see a bloody bandage stuck on the back of his neck. “See, I’ve already got mine out,” he said and moved behind her.

Celeste lifted her hair so that he could do the work. The pain was abrupt but fleeting. He tossed a bloody scrap of technology onto her bed and slapped an adhesive bandage over the small wound. Then he pushed her through the door.

He hustled her toward a section of wall with an open panel. The opening revealed a shaft packed with bundled wires and pipes and a narrow ladder.

“Go down,” he said and gave her another push.

She grabbed the ladder rungs and wedged herself into the narrow shaft. The pipes and coils of wires pressed against her on three sides as she descended. The shaft went nearly dark when the man got on the ladder above her and yanked the wall panel back into place. Only the glow of circuit panels and diagnostic screens granted any light to see by.

“Faster. We have a long way down,” he said.

Equal measures of excitement and desperation rattled his voice, and Celeste realized that he was risking everything for her, and she had no idea why.

Descending the ladder, she sweated and puffed with exertion. Her wet palms made it harder to hold the rungs.

“One more level,” her rescuer finally said by way of encouragement.

When Celeste passed a level marker, she stopped by an access panel.

“You’ll feel a handle on the left. Use it to open it,” the man directed.

Celeste yanked the panel open. It shrieked a little, and she cringed from the noise. Thankfully, the corridor where she exited was empty. The man hopped out of the shaft and took her by the elbow. “This way,” he said.

“Who sent you? Why are you helping me?” Celeste asked.

“I’ll explain soon, but first we must hurry,” he said.

He steered her into a large storage bay and broke into a run toward one of the airlocks. Celeste recognized the small airlock as a mechanics port. Work that needed to be done outside the ship could be accessed by space-walking mechanics using this airlock. The DSAPH-T was surely peppered with dozens of such mechanics ports, and Celeste guessed at what he intended to do.

He whacked the button to open the airlock door and stepped in. “Do you know how to get a spacesuit on?” he asked while already grabbing one for himself.

Celeste entered hesitantly. She scanned the half dozen suits hanging on the walls of the airlock’s antechamber. “We’re just going to float ourselves out into space?” she asked dubiously.

“Someone’s coming to pick us up,” he said while pulling the suit up his legs. “Do you need help?” he asked again.

“No,” she managed and reached for a suit. She had trained in space walking, like any member of the Infinity’s crew.

“Who’s coming?” she asked as she heaved a suit up and over her body.

The man came over to help fit on her helmet. He already had his helmet on. She looked into his eyes through the glass. They were brown and sincere, but why was he helping her?

“Are you getting air?” he asked once her helmet was clamped in place.

She nodded and followed him into the airlock proper.

He put his arms around her. “Here we go,” he said and kicked the switch to open the airlock.

Space yanked them effortlessly into the void. Celeste felt the coldness immediately leach through the suit to her skin. The suit would prevent her from freezing but just barely.

Her stomach lurched when the ship’s gravity lost its hold on her. Her senses reeled as her body drifted and spun away from the vessel that rapidly became a frightful distance away despite its bulky size. Stars engulfed her vision from all angles as the vast emptiness of space consumed her. The magnitude of the void seemed almost enough to snuff out the thump of her living heart. Her tiny blob of flesh felt smaller than an atom compared to the surrounding infinity.

Chapter 3. New Normal

The man looked at the DSAPH-T as if he could not believe that he had jumped ship. He knew that he had entered the next phase of his life, if he got to have another phase.

“I’m Duluth,” he finally said.

“Celeste,” she said.

“I know. I just received word that you were a prisoner on my ship,” Duluth said.

“From who?” Celeste wondered.

“Someone from the Correction. He had the right code, and the message told me to get you off this ship before it reached Queboria Station,” he explained.

“And you’re with the Correction?” she said.

“I’ve been a sleeper agent for nearly two years. Raised from childhood to infiltrate Prescott’s enlisted military ranks and take action when called upon,” Duluth said.

“But your family? They’ll be in danger. Your superiors will figure out what you did,” Celeste worried.

“I have no family. Correctionists recruit from slum world foster care services. To tell the truth, I’d begun to wonder if I’d ever get a mission or just have to become an actual Prescott loyalist,” he said.

Although Celeste had not known about the covert recruiting by the Correction, she could relate to being raised for a purpose. She might not know the extent of her father’s off-the-books operations, but he had shared with her his political vision and hinted that she would have a role to play someday as his ally on a Prime world. She had taken such things in stride as a juvenile. Mostly, she had thought that her father’s rants and hopes would never amount to much.

“Never dreamed I’d get a mission involving Captain Sterling,” Duluth added.

The fame, or perhaps infamy, of her father embarrassed Celeste. Duluth no doubt imagined that she was on a crucial mission, but she did not even know what was going on. She decided not to shatter his excitement by confessing her ignorance.

She also considered that some unknown correctionist had considered her valuable enough to activate a sleeper agent to free her. Such an agent would not be employed lightly. She must have some important task ahead of her, and she suspected that it might be the same thing that Darcy had wanted of her.

“I’m grateful for this escape, Duluth, but we’re now floating helplessly in space,” Celeste said.

“A ship is on the way to pick us up,” he explained. Looking at the DSAPH-T that continued its course toward Queboria, he fretted, “They might be scanning for life signs by now if they figured out what I did. I hope my contact gets here before PSS can send a ship to grab us.”

With only the cold suffocation of space as the alternative, Celeste assumed she would take any ride that arrived. As she considered the scenario of recapture, she asked, “How many people do you think would crew a launch vessel from that DSAPH-T?”

“Maybe four. It would probably just be a short-range mechanics vessel,” he said.

“I propose then that if PSS gets here first, we try and take over the ship, if it’s a small one,” she said.

He nodded resolutely within his helmet. “I like the way you think. I’m a dead man if captured, right? I’m glad I didn’t have to kill anyone to get you off ship. I’ve made friends on the crew. I couldn’t help it, and, well, I didn’t know if a mission would ever come. I was starting to think about the rest of my life,” Duluth said.

“These situations aren’t easy for anyone. I appreciate your bravery,” she said.

He clearly treasured her comment, and she felt his arm tighten around her. She did not mind. Human contact while lost in the ultimate loneliness of space was precious, and one could do far worse than Duluth.

He said, “On the bright side, they might all still be running around the ship looking for you. I used my time on board to think of strategies for stealthy escape and sabotage. The ship has dozens of mechanics ports, and it’s normal for them to open. I placed that level where we spaced ourselves in maintenance mode before I got you, so the activation of the airlock would not trigger a primary alarm.”

“Very clever,” Celeste complimented.

“Thanks,” he said.

“No, thank you. I couldn’t have gotten away from Colonel Darcy alone. I already tried. Do you know anything about him?” she said.

“I know he’s Legendary Guard,” he said.

“Really?” Celeste whispered. Someone had sent an elite military specialist to get her.

Duluth continued, “We were rerouted to Queboria about 30 hours ago to pick him up and go to Isis. I know you probably can’t tell me, but what’s going on?”

She could not imagine a more trustworthy sight than the earnest face of the young correctionist who was truly her hero of the moment.

“Darcy told me my father was dead,” she said.

“Captain Sterling?” Duluth gasped. She could see that this stranger was truly dismayed by the news.

“Darcy was taking me to the Infinity. I’m not sure why, but I have to get to it before he does,” Celeste said.

“We will,” Duluth said.

Celeste glanced at her internal readings. She had 72 minutes of oxygen remaining. “How far out were we from Queboria when we left your ship?” she asked.

“98 minutes.”

She thought about the rescue ship that was supposedly on its way and the agent who had messaged Duluth. If that ship had already left Queboria Station and transmitted its message en route, then it might reach them in time.

Duluth had apparently done the same math and said, “It’s going to be a little close.”

An uncomfortable, mortality-contemplating silence paused their conversation. Eventually to distract themselves from the fear, Duluth said, “Tell me about Isis. I’ve never been. It looked pretty from space.”

Celeste gladly shared details about the wonderful world and some of her favorite things about the planet.

“What did you study at the university?” he asked.

“Political Science. I was about to graduate,” she said forlornly.

In her mind, she could see the life that she had imagined like the view of a planet from a spaceship. She thought of Sinclair and, in the stark enormity of space where one could not hide from the truth, she understood that her relationship with him could not continue. She was now an escaped prisoner of the Prescott government. She had to stay away from Sinclair for his own safety. She leaned against Duluth, needing a shoulder to cry on. No tears fell, but the splitting pain in her chest provided ample proof of her breaking heart.

“I see something,” Duluth said, squinting in the direction of the Queboria sun. The light gleamed across his face shield.

She looked and eventually spotted the metallic glint of a small vessel approaching.

Duluth tapped the communication control on the suit’s sleeve. “I have to risk a message. I don’t think that ship came from the DSAPH-T,” he said. “This is Monkey Wrench, code 14XX8. Have completed mission. Awaiting pickup. This is Monkey Wrench, code 14XX8,” he said.

His receiver picked up five pinging sounds. “It’s them,” he announced cheerfully, but Celeste caught him looking at his oxygen level. They would be playing the breathtaking game of watching the ship creep toward them across a half million kilometers of space while their air dropped ever lower.

“We should breathe slowly and stop talking,” she suggested.

“Yeah.”

As the ship came closer, she started to make out its details. It had the scrappy appearance of an aging planetary cruiser that had been rebuilt at least twice. If she had to guess, some black market trader had been using it to ship contraband into the slum settlements of Queboria for decades.

Celeste was getting short of breath when the cruiser came alongside them with its airlock already open to space. Duluth held her tightly and aimed his magnetic grappler. Its end shot out from the coil built into the hip of his space suit toward the iron edging of the airlock’s door. The physicality of the tugging sensation when the cord made contact with the ship reassured both of them after floating in zero gravity. They each put a hand on the cord and yanked themselves toward the ship together. Duluth made sure she entered the airlock first before nearly falling inside behind her. Celeste shut the door and heard the happy hiss of breathable atmosphere entering the chamber. She and Duluth were fumbling clumsily with their helmets when the inner door opened and two women stepped inside. They quickly released the helmets so that Celeste and Duluth could get fresh air.

In the airlock’s antechamber stood a dark-skinned man with a full head of graying kinky hair. He clapped his hands together in prayerful gratitude once his assistants exposed Celeste’s face. “Thank the Givers!” he declared.

Celeste recognized his baritone voice and the square gold ring glittering next to a big knuckle. It displayed his membership in the Homo Sapiens Bar Association.

“Mr. Banner,” she said. Her father’s lawyer was the last person who she would have expected to pluck her from space. “Is it true?” she asked.

His face fell. “Simon Sterling has been assassinated,” he said.

Celeste moaned, and the tears finally burst out in quantity. She leaned against the woman who assisted her out of the airlock and then she fell against Banner’s broad chest. His sympathy was palpable because he had known Simon longer than Celeste had been alive. He pressed an intercom switch on the wall and said. “We got her. Fly to the Infinity immediately.”

Celeste wiped her tears and tried to regain control. “Who killed him?” she demanded.

“PSS,” Banner said.

“Who specifically?” she said testily.

“We must speak privately,” the lawyer said. He exchanged looks with the women and told them to get Duluth settled on board.

Banner guided her into the central bay of the ship. A dozen empty passenger seats lined the walls. A cargo bay was aft of the passenger area, and a pilot and co-pilot occupied the cockpit. She felt the cruiser shifting course as it turned back toward Queboria. Banner showed her into a small room between the cockpit and passenger section. He slid the door shut behind him.

Banner shook his head. He was still stuck in the denial phase of grief but striving to function during the crisis.

He ran a hand over his face. “I haven’t slept in almost two days. I’ve been frantic ever since I got the message from your father,” he said.

Banner pulled a small data stick out of a pocket on his beige shirt. “You’ll soon know everything I know. Simon prepared a final message for you and transmitted it to me in his final moments.” He had been about to insert the stick in a reader but hesitated. “Celeste, this will be difficult to watch,” he warned.

“You’ve already seen it?” she said.

“Yes. He messaged me right before he died and included this personal message for you. I’ll leave you alone,” Banner said. He activated the reader and then bowed out of the room.

The display screen brightened and the image of Simon Sterling filled the screen. Celeste recognized that he was in the Command Access Chamber on the Infinity. The CAC provided administrator-level interface with the servers running the Infinity’s systems. His haggard face and haunted eyes shocked her.

He looked feverish and puffy. His breathing was labored. She saw that he was gripping the edge of the computer station to keep himself from sliding out of his chair.

“Dear Celeste, forgive me for what I’m about to dump on you. I had hoped to avoid putting you in the middle of this. The second generation was meant to put a fresh face on things after we removed Prescott, but events are in motion. The Correction is relying on me, and I have failed.

“An assassin succeeded in poisoning me on Queboria. We located a mechanical injection point on my neck. I’ve had assassins hit me before with micro darts before, but I’ve toughened my physiology for years by consuming small amounts of poisons. This time, though, it seems PSS got a cocktail that works. We could do nothing. My liver and kidneys are in freefall. I’ve locked the Infinity’s controls.”

He struggled to breath for a moment while Celeste watched him fade a little more. Simon rallied, although obviously in growing pain, and continued, “I’ve outfitted the ship with Unlotto tech that PSS won’t be able to cope with. The ship will respond only to you. Anyone else will trigger the internal defensive measures. The Unlotto have already pre authorized your captaincy. I made this arrangement with them as an emergency measure if I was compromised. You’ll have to take the oath of a rescue ship captain. Everything in CAC is tied to your genetics now, and you have to be alive. The necrotic filters will know the difference. Damn the Unlotto are good…”

Celeste thought that she might lose him right then. His eyes went unfocused for a bit, but he coughed and seemed to regain his senses.

“My bright daughter, I’m so sorry I won’t get to see you again, but I’m sure you’ll take up the cause and win. The Correction has grown. You’ll find allies everywhere. I had just received word of a rescue mission critical to the Correction. It’s starting for real this time, which is why the assassin was surely sent to prevent me from acting. PSS was smart enough to assume I would be needed for this rescue mission.

“Richard Roanoke has escaped the maximum security prison on Hexex. There’s a complete media blackout of the news. PSS is frantic to get him locked up again. He had finally been scheduled for execution. The coordinates for his hiding location are in the computer. The rescue call will be released to you once you’re officially Captain. You have to reach him and connect him with his loyalists.”

A terrible fit of coughing overtook Simon, and Celeste watched him in tearful horror as he struggled in his final mortal moments. She leaned against the wall with her dripping nose close to the screen.

Once he was able, he gasped out his goodbye. “Love you, Celeste. So proud of you. Am sorry.”

She saw him reach for the button that ended the recording. As his last act, he granted her the mercy of not recording his moment of death.

She trembled in the aftermath of the message. More tears fell until she was over her shock enough to replay the message. She watched again because she wanted to see her father and hear his voice and consider the content again.

Celeste knew the name Richard Roanoke. Everyone knew the notorious exiled Earth Fanatic, who was the face of the Correction movement. He had been sentenced to death six years ago, but the Prescott regime was always slow to carry out an execution because it wanted to maintain the fiction of due process and derive the most value from Roanoke’s ongoing public vilification in an attempt to convince people that his ideas were destructive.

They were destructive to those within the Prescott regime, but Celeste knew the motivations of the Correction to be just. Humanity had suffered too long under a government that doomed three-quarters of the population to drudgery and privation.

Roanoke intended to free his fellow humans from poverty and outright servitude so that everyone could share in the wonders of galactic life that the Givers had made possible for the human race.

Celeste had seen him once. They had not really been introduced. She had been fourteen years old, and her father had been rescuing refugees from the calamity that had ruined Slum Planet 5, or Hannava as it was also known. Roanoke had come on board, and she had seen him enter her father’s quarters with a group of people.

Slum Planet 5 had been a pivotal experience in her father’s life. Celeste had noticed a change in him after that rescue mission. He had always been critical of the Prescott regime, but the refugees pouring on to the Infinity during the ecological disaster that had fouled the planet’s biosphere with a mutated fungus shifted him toward radical action. Prescott’s government had ignored and then tried to cover up the problem on Hannava until it was too late and left its worker population to die. Pleas for evacuations from the planet had eventually leaked to the wide galaxy, and Simon had transported as many people as he could and rallied other ships to the cause.

And now Celeste was a radical too. She did not hate her father for putting her in this position. She knew he was motivated by the hope of improving the lives of billions.

She withdrew the data stick and slid the door open. Banner was standing outside with a sympathetic face, but she had no time to receive consolation. “Who has control of the Infinity right now?” she asked.

“PSS sort of. They can’t fly her or access systems,” he answered.

Celeste glanced around the ship, hoping that she had somehow missed the armed strike team that could support her. The flight crew was probably best suited to bribing a customs agent, and Banner’s pair of women looked like they were paralegals instead of correctionists to be reckoned with. She supposed she should not prejudge anyone.

“Where’s the Infinity’s crew?” she asked.

“Unharmed on the ship, last I knew,” Banner said.

“Do you have a plan for getting me on board?” she asked.

Banner rubbed the back of his neck. “I’m surprised we got you off the PSS ship. I’m still working on the next part,” he admitted.

Celeste went to the passenger section and plopped into a chair. “Do you know if we can dock with the Infinity?”

“Oh, yes. Your father’s control lockout left every bay open, but as soon as we dock, PSS will take us all into custody,” Banner explained.

“We’ll just have to hop the train,” Celeste said.

Banner recognized the slang term. Simon had told him how fugitives on vessels that he had to rescue would do it to hide. He looked at his assistants. “Refill the oxygen on her suit,” he ordered.

“Refill both suits,” Duluth said and locked eyes with Celeste. She nodded, glad to have his help.

Banner asked Celeste, “You’re sure you’ll be able to get inside?”

“Very sure,” she said. The Infinity was a huge ship, vast really, and she knew every backdoor and hidey-hole.

From the cockpit, the pilot announced, “Banner, that DSAPH-T just launched intercept ships.”

“Make this bucket move the fastest it’s ever moved,” Banner said.

“Already doing that,” the pilot grumbled.

Celeste touched Banner’s arm. “I need a weapon,” she said.

He opened a stowage area above the passenger seats and pulled out a metal case. Inside was a disorganized pile of particle pistols and ammunition cells. “This is what the pilot had to share,” Banner explained. He picked out a pistol, slid in a cell, and handed it to her. Celeste felt her world shift inside when she took hold of it. The rough grip against her palm and its deadly heaviness made the Correction real. She hated the thought of using it but dreaded recapture more.

“PSS will shoot back,” Banner said.

“I’m hoping to avoid a direct confrontation. If I can get to the CAC and take over the ship, we have shipwide tools at our disposal to deal with intruders,” she explained.

Her mention of the CAC prompted him to ask, “So you will take the oath of a rescue captain?”

Celeste knew that it was a huge responsibility, a sacred one even. When the Givers granted a species the gift of galactic travel, the bargain included deep space rescue. The present-shift technology of the Givers that enabled all interstellar travel could fail at times and leave a vessel stranded in space. The Givers assigned a deep space rescue vessel to each species and mandated that it be used to seek out missing ships in the depths of space. They were immense ships capable of carrying multiple vessels. The Infinity could even collect a DSAPH-T if necessary. With twelve GAC systems, the Infinity was nearly immune to total present-shift failure. As such, deep space rescue ships possessed incalculable value and were only assigned to independent captains approved by the Unlotto in the name of the Givers.

“I have to take the oath,” she said.

As a lawyer, Banner naturally cautioned, “That’s a huge step. Under these circumstances, you’ll have a huge target on your back. You could step away from this. You don’t have to join the Correction and do what your father asked.”

“Would you have activated a sleeper agent and rescued me if you thought I would walk away?” she said.

Banner shrugged his big shoulders. “I’ve only been doing what I can. At a minimum, I had a duty to your father as his lawyer to execute his estate plan.” He reached into his beige blazer and removed a tablet. “Place your hand on the screen to imprint your acknowledgment of your inheritance,” he instructed.

“My ID ring was taken,” she said.

“I can work around that. Just put your hand on,” he said and extended the screen toward her.

She set her palm upon the cool device. It lit up and scanned her palm. “He left everything to you of course,” Banner explained. “All of his personal property on the ship and the house on Treneter.”

Celeste remembered the sprawling house on Treneter, the capital world of the human civilization. Her father had grown up on the same continent where the Prescott regime ruled.

The tablet’s screen started to scroll through legal documents rapidly as it recorded her receipt of the estate plan.

“And he has left you the ship with the blessing of the Unlotto of course,” Banner added.

Celeste remembered her father’s comment in the video that the Unlotto had pre-authorized her captaincy. That should not be possible. Whenever a deep space rescue ship needed a new captain, the Unlotto screened candidates before making a selection. Hundreds of applications might be on file for the Infinity.

“Why would the Unlotto approve me? I didn’t even apply” she wondered.

“Your father must have convinced them somehow. All I can say with confidence is that the Givers appear to be on our side,” Banner said.

“Politics are quite beneath the Givers,” Celeste said.

“The Givers gave humans and other species space travel so that a galactic civilization could develop. Maybe they have decided to stir the pot,” the lawyer suggested.

“And the spoon’s up my ass,” Celeste grumbled.

Banner chuckled sympathetically. He glanced into the cockpit and read the tension in the shoulders of the crew. “We’re about to be taken into PSS custody,” he said.

Celeste hustled into the cockpit for a better view. Queboria Station filled the windows, and a long air bridge connected the station to the Infinity. Her emotions swelled as she looked upon the glorious ship bathed in the light of the Queboria sun with the shadows of the space station tossed across her pearly bulk. She had spent years of her childhood at her father’s right hand as he helmed the deep space rescue ship. His captaincy was his greatest wealth. She recalled Simon saying how his selection by the Unlotto had initially attracted her mother to him back when she did not loathe him. And now the Unlotto had done an unprecedented thing and allowed a hereditary passage of the captaincy. Celeste cringed with a feeling of unworthiness. Even so, she looked upon the Infinity with desire. How many times had she imagined herself as the captain growing up? The reality of a fantasy coming true bore down on her like the gravity of a collapsing star.

She murmured a thank you to the men at the helm of the ship and went to put her space suit on. Jumping into space twice in one day looked like it was going to be the new normal.

Continue the exciting space opera Infinity to the Rescue: Escape of the Space Rebels by Tracy Falbe.

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