This Starry Deep

This Starry Deep

Adam P. Knave

This Starry Deep

Adam P. Knave

ISBN: 978-1-926946-04-7

Ebook edition.

This book is also available in trade paperback format.

©2016 Adam P. Knave, all rights reserved.

Published in Canada by Creative Guy Publishing

Victoria, BC, Canada

Cover art ©2016 Dylan Todd

Thanks to:

Lauren for her always deft editing,

Ariana for helping me realize the story I needed to tell, and for all the naming assistance,

and of course N&N, A&A, and J&A for all that they are, together.

Chapter
1
– Jonah

THE MIDDLE THIRD of the tree exploded into burning splinters. The shrapnel flew with certainty and speed, but the needles embedding in my face didn’t even register at first. I focused on dodging the upper third of the tree, suddenly airborne and quickly remembering gravity.

“What do these guys have against trees?” I said as I landed, figuring I wouldn’t be heard over the echoing crash of the tree trunk. The impact shook the ground just enough to upset my footing as I sprang back to my feet.

“Stop changing the subject,” Shae said. She glared at me, pushing herself off the ground. Her face bled, but she paid her wounds as much attention as I did my own. No time to be precious and feel pain.

I checked the charge on my Acadian blaster and grinned. “I’m not changing the subject. Just trying to not get killed, either. Look, fine, let’s focus. What are they firing?”

“Tankos high-yield slugs. The ones you said I shouldn’t bother buying last resupply. You thought they were wonky.”

“I thought they were useless. Slug throwers. How often are we on planets?”

“We’re on one now, if you hadn’t noticed.”

Orsid. We were on Orsid. Not my favorite planet, but far from the worst I’ve had to set foot on. Though the ground felt too springy for me. Just moist, really. “I noticed. All right, sit rep. Both our GravPacks are damaged and the emergency jump ship won’t get here in time. We still have to blow the silo.”

“And then find a way off this rock,” Shae said. “This really moist, humid rock. If we can find a small jump ship, anything that can clear atmo, I can get it started.” She fired two shots from her sidearm, energy blasting off into the forest in the rough direction of where the last shot had come from. “So that’s settled. Now. Jonah, can we talk about this?”

“I don’t see your problem, is all.”

“We can’t raise a child living like we do.”

“I don’t see the problem.” I tapped my ear twice, and switched to coms. That way we could still whisper while we snuck forward. Not the best protocol, but this wasn’t the first time. I liked talking to Shae. Hell, I liked talking to Shae enough I’d married her.

“We can’t bring a child into combat, for a start.” Two more high-yield shots came in and missed us, exploding and sending the ground up into the air where it blinded us. The good news - they still weren’t sure where we were. Or they were terrible shots. Either way, it helped.

“So we leave the kid with whatever base we depart from on a mission. I think we’d be good parents, Shae.”

“Damn it, Jonah, of course we would be. But not if we abandon the kid at every turn.”

I used my blaster to cut a tree down, not that I had anything against them, and shoved it in a direction we weren’t. Both of us sprinted as it fell, making sure we found cover quick. Chances were they’d investigate that.

“All right, so we leave the kid with your father.”

Shae’s hand sliced through the air, two fingers extended. I nodded and crept in the direction she pointed. Dead on, there were the Orsidsians, trying to figure out why a tree had just fallen out of nowhere.

“The one who doesn’t talk to either of us?”

I elbowed the first idiot in the back of his neck and smiled at the other as he turned, startled, at me.

“I bet he would if he was a grandfather,” I said as the second, still confused, idiot, reached for his communication device. Before he could get to it, Shae’s foot cracked against his skull and he sank down into the forest, unconscious. No need to kill them, no point. Wouldn’t unless they forced the issue.

“I wouldn’t want to leave my child with him any more than I’d want to live with him now myself.”

“Base care is good, Shae.”

Her initial reply was drowned out by the sound of blaster fire from above. Great, those two called the cavalry before they investigated. Stupid efficient guards.

We huddled near a decomposing mass of leaves and detritus. Its heat would help hide us. “What was that?” I asked while we waited for the air support to get tired of blind fire.

“I said, next thing you’ll suggest we just take a child with us on missions.”

My blaster could do damage to their ship but I’d need to be closer. No way, yet. We crouched, thinking over options. “Well, a blast-proof armored papoose, maybe a small gravity shield, why not?” I smiled at the thought. Gave me an idea. My GravPack was busted, Shae’s too, but if I could get a field working at all, it might buy us the time we would need for a better plan. All too often, my life was just a way to stretch two minutes to five, and then using those extra three to stretch circumstances into survival.

I unslung my pack and started cracking open the casing. Shae nodded and did the same. We’d had to do this once before, back on King Seven. Between us we’d have the parts to make this work. I hoped. “Now you’re just messing with me,” she said.

I stopped working and looked her in the eye. “We’d be great parents, baby.”

“I know we would, Soldier. I just don’t know if this is the right time.” A small shrug as she handed me components. I slotted them in place and jammed the housing closed. This wouldn’t be pretty, assuming the pack didn’t just explode in my face.

“We’ll use that as an excuse forever. Don’t you want a kid?”

Before she could answer I pulled up a selection screen, aiming the GravPack in the general direction of the ships above. Still firing. They didn’t give up. Then again, neither did we.

I hit the makeshift switch and tried to force myself to not flinch as I did. A wave pulse rippled the air, almost too fast to see. Trees wobbled. My inner ear spun. Both ships got tossed like they were at the end of a whip and hit each other.

“I’d love a child. You know that,” Shae said as we watched the ships try to stay airborne. They managed it, but one of them sparked badly from the gun mount.

Fine, we’d reduced the rate of fire from the sky by half. I’d take it. “Then we’ll find a way,” I said, giving Shae the signal to start running. We needed them to follow us now, to see us and try to fire. If they didn’t know their gun was out, things could get ugly for them quick. Sure enough, the ship throwing sparks started to belch smoke as well and we heard the low, rumbling cough of an interior explosion.

“Fine, we’ll find a way. Now can we blow these idiots up and go home?” The smoking ship hung in the air, and I could see, mentally, the crew trying to put out fires and get things working. They hadn’t dropped out of the air yet, so they were doing something right. Good on them, I suppose. Damn it.

“Got the grenades?” I asked. We ran from strafing fire. I’d lost patience.

“I’m insulted you’d ask,” she said, patting a few pockets.

“Then let’s blow them up, already. We take one ship semi-functional and we have line of sight to target and then we’re off-world. From there, home.” I turned and fired back, knowing my blaster wouldn’t take them out. Still, might make them flinch. And did. I stood there, waiting. Either Shae’s grenades would hit the ship right or I’d be a pair of flaming boots in about a minute. I didn’t even consider it an option. I trusted her. We worked.

“Deal,” she said, and let three fly in graceful arcs across the sky.

Damn, all told that had been a good day. A good day a lifetime ago. I smiled and pushed up against gravity harder.

***

Sweat rolled off my forehead and slid down my temples. I closed my eyes. My arms resisted, but I forced them to lift the weights again. My left shoulder shook, the muscle straining hard, but my arms straightened anyway. I held myself there, arms extended upward, flat on my back, and took two deep, slow breaths. I exhaled through my mouth and lowered my arms.

Eyes still closed, I lifted again. This time I held the weight for a ten count. I focused on everything but the urgent burning in my shoulder: the sweat-slick feel of the leather padding under my back, the soft breeze that played over my body, cooling my chest and legs, the new beads of sweat that formed before they slid off, following gravity down.

I lowered the weight and held it against my chest. I opened my eyes. Above me a few clouds drifted, but most of my field of vision was taken up by a dazzling blue sky. I smiled up to greet it and hefted the bar again; it felt somehow lighter this time.

I always exercised outside if possible. The sky, that clear land above my head, had captured my imagination as a child, and I still loved it dearly. I loved it almost as much as I loved the blackness that perched above it, the parent to all of the skies in the universe.

The potential up there - the freedom and, damn, the joy I felt when I went to greet it each time - those things still got a rise out of me. I studied the sky, watching the higher winds etch patterns in clouds, and lifted that weight again and again. I felt my shoulder reach the point of no return, so I set the long metal bar in its cradle above me and just laid there a while.

My left shoulder hurt like a bitch, a knife’s hurt. I lay prone under the sun and let my heart rate ease off, stretching my arms. They ached, not as much as my shoulder, but it was a healthy ache. The shoulder, that wasn’t healthy: that was damage born of countless abusive moments.

I treated my body like a temple, but it was a temple that I raided for goods as often as prayed at. I got what I got, and considered every inch of it worthwhile. Still, it hurt. It would always hurt, unless I let them replace the thing with an alloy-and-synthetic model.

I lifted my legs and glanced down at my right knee. Same story as my shoulder. Neither joint was quite right anymore, and both “should have been” replaced. That is, in the opinion of doctors who didn’t understand me. I wasn’t against replacements, in general. But at my age, I didn’t see the point in deep-tissue surgery followed by months and months of rehab all for new joints that would possibly need further replacement a few years down the road.

Not when I was pushing 60, at least. I felt past the point of needing bits and pieces swapped out: I’d grown used to the problems and worked with them as much as possible. More than that, I let go.

I stood and rubbed at the sweat coating my body with the towel I’d brought out. I padded inside, rubbing the towel along my head, feeling my grey hair bristle against the fabric.

Shae sat in a long recliner, reading. She looked up as I entered and closed the book slowly on her thumb, marking her place. Her black hair stuck up along her head, much like mine did, except hers would probably come down to her ears if she let it hang naturally. She looked around at me, her eyes a rich hazel in the day’s light, and I felt myself smile in reaction to the smile that crept across her face.

“Hey, Soldier,” she said, resting the book on her lap, thumb still in place.

“Hey, baby,” I said. I hung the towel around my neck and glanced off toward the bathroom. “Just gonna grab a quick shower, and then lunch?”

“Sounds good,” she said. “How’s the shoulder?”

“For shit,” I admitted.

“So the usual, then?” she asked.

I nodded and shrugged. Cooling off inside the climate-controlled house was starting to produce a chill. “I should get a haircut,” I told her, stopping to run a hand through my hair again. It felt long, or at least longer.

“Yeah, it might get long enough to lay down,” she teased.

“Because you keep yours so long,” I said, smirking.

“Well who wants long hair—”

“In a combat helmet,” I finished for her. We both laughed, an easy laugh born of an old joke. Neither of us had seen the inside of a helmet, combat or otherwise, in years. We didn’t plan on it anytime soon, either. Maybe, if we got really bored, we would take a cruise up and out, but not this season. It had been a bunch of seasons since we had.

Cruise ships don’t like it when you go armed, and neither of us felt comfortable going bare hipped. Old habits die hard, and ours were born of more incidents than we could count.

“Didn’t we both retire?” she asked me, picking her book back up.

“We’re just old creatures of bad habits, baby,” I told her, the old, familiar reply. “I’m gonna go grab that shower, then we’ll have lunch.”

“Already planned,” she muttered, lost again in her reading.

I turned the shower up as close to scalding as it would go and stepped into the fray. Jets shot water from all sides and I turned, letting the heat and pressure massage my hard-worked muscles. Every time the water hit scar tissue the sensation of the hot, stinging spray dimmed slightly.

The sensation dimmed a lot. My shoulder and knee, of course, were knots of scar tissue and damage. Ugly as sin to look at but still functional. Scars crisscrossed my back and sides as well. A few dotted my chest, including one thumb-sized welt of a scar on my left side where I had taken a slug back when I was still a kid. That was the shot that should have killed me, but I was too young to die, then.

I rubbed at it, lost in memory for a minute, and stared along the thin line of wax-like flesh that ran up from my right wrist all the way to my elbow. Laser fire isn’t pretty to take, and it makes sure you remember it. My legs were just as bad as my torso, and sometimes I admit to wondering if the ratio of good skin to scar tissue had crossed the fifty-percent mark yet.