Dark Beyond the Stars Read online

  “One hand takes all?” he asked.

  She nodded. “One hand’s all I need.” Her chin came up, along with her color. She was going a little pink now, making her almost beautiful.

  He smiled to himself. Like taking candy from a baby. “Good. I’m tired. Looking forward to bedding down for the night.” He winked at the crowd, and they rewarded him with uproarious laughter. The word spread through the layers of people and eventually the entire bar was in on the game.

  The first few cards were dealt. People behind Langlade leaned in, trying to catch a glimpse of what he had, but he kept his hand at his chest. He was very good at guarding his own reactions, but he knew the people behind him could reveal the strength of his hand and ruin his chances at seeing what made this brave but very stupid girl tick. She had to have heard of his reputation—out here, everyone had. What made her want to ante up her most valuable possession to the kind of cutthroats that frequented Gervais’s place? Maybe she was one of those gluttons for punishment.

  He shrugged as he added a newly dealt card to his hand. It wasn’t his problem if she was damaged. All she had to do was take her clothes off and he’d handle the rest; her state of mind wouldn’t be part of the picture.

  Givit could be a very long game or a very short one, depending on the theatrics of the dealer and the players. Langlade was happy to see that neither of the other people at the table had any interest in putting on more of a show than they already were just by being there. The last card was delivered, and it was now time for him to claim one card from his opponent’s hand. Langlade stared at the cards held by the girl, trying to decide which one he wanted. He couldn’t see them, of course, but he felt as though maybe he could glean their faces by her behavior. She stared at one of them over and over, trying to pretend like she wasn’t. That was the card he wanted, but he took his time leaning over and plucking it from her hand.

  He play-frowned as he tucked it into his own. “I hope that didn’t spoil your plans to pilot my ship out of here.”

  The group closest to him laughed.

  The girl didn’t say a word. She just glared. Langlade, for the life of him, couldn’t figure out if that was a good sign or bad one. This girl was good. Really good. It made him wonder if she’d be a natural in bed too. The idea fired him up even more. He’d never dreamed he’d be walking into this situation when he’d piloted the DS into the station, but he was sure as hell glad that he had.

  She stared and stared at his cards as if she were trying to see through them to their faces on the other side, her youthful exuberance at the task a traitor to her fear. Langlade smiled, certain he could smell her panic from where he was sitting. She had to be almost twenty Earthyears old, but to still have her innocence? It was unheard of. Maybe she was younger than she looked.

  The idea should have put him off, but it didn’t. She was obviously old enough, as Gus had said, and it had been a while since he’d had a warm, soft body waiting in his bunk. He was really going to enjoy collecting on this bet, possibly more than any other he’d ever made before.

  “So what’s it going to be, Cass, girl of unknown origin, smart enough to play a fair hand, but stupid enough to bet against me?” He was enjoying delivering a bit of theatrics, savoring the moment, knowing his victory would be all the sweeter when it arrived. “You going to pick a card and call it a night, or what?” He looked to his left and right as he rested his elbow on the table. A grin spread across his face and he delivered the blow he knew would throw her completely off her game and get the crowd laughing along with him. “And when I say ‘call it a night,’ I mean ‘get in my bunk,’ of course.”

  He turned his attention back to the girl, and a sudden passion seized him when he noticed her hand resting on her knife. This one was going to be a wild child, no doubt about it. He looked meaningfully at the knife and then at her. “Better save your energy. You’re going to need it, lass.”

  The girl looked positively terrified.

  Raucous laughter filled the room, making Langlade feel like he was floating on air. In less than an hour he’d have her naked and willing, he had no doubt about that. And when it was all over, she’d be begging him for more, her knife forgotten in a pile of her clothing on the floor.

  His hand jerked involuntarily from just thinking about her naked, and her eyes lit up in reaction. A slow grin spread across her face, making him suddenly nervous. The dealer tapped the table on the girl’s side, reminding her that it was her turn to choose a card from Langlade’s hand.

  Langlade stared at the card he wanted her to take, praying to some unknown, unseen force out in the universe that she would ignore the one he needed to keep, the one that would cut her to the quick. And for a moment, she seemed to fall under his spell, her finger hovering over the garbage card he would have been happy to be rid of. But then her hand shifted, and she took the one card he knew could be a problem. He looked at her face, but saw nothing there—no mark of triumph or gloating. He smiled, believing then that he had her beat. He was going make her pay in passion for that little heart attack she’d just given him.

  She turned his givit card over and added it to her own hand. “Save your own energy, you ugly sonofabitch, because I’ll be sleeping in your bunk alone tonight.”

  Her cockiness got him even hotter than he already was. He decided they’d head right for his bunk immediately after she showed her losing hand; screw getting parts for the engine room.

  “You sure about that?” Langlade laid his cards out, letting each one flick on the table individually so everyone could add them up as they fell. It must have been like arrows into her heart, he thought, to see the numbers coming together and to know she was about to lose the most valuable thing she had to her name. He almost felt sorry for her. Almost.

  The girl placed her cards flat, no hesitation or finesse to it. He didn’t have to add up the numbers—the faces were all he needed to see. His heart sank all the way down into his boots and turned into a molten puddle of regret in his heels.

  She smiled, a grin so large it took up her entire lovely yet devious face.

  “That’s a full blockade,” she said, winking at Langlade like she hadn’t just stolen his drifter ship out from under his nose. “Aces high.”

  My ship… what have I done?

  Q&A with Elle Casey

  Where did this story come from?

  I decided a while back that I really wanted to write some science fiction, specifically a space opera. I’m always looking to watch TV shows and movies in that genre, and there just isn’t enough out there, as far as I’m concerned. (I’m one of those disappointed Firefly fans who wishes the series could have gone on for twenty seasons.) So, I made room in my 2015 schedule for a series called Drifters’ Alliance, and in March I started writing what would become book one, starring Cass Kennedy, a rebel with a cause. Once the characters leaped into my head, I had so, so many things to write about. Every character in that book has his or her own story to tell, so this anthology was a great vehicle to get one of those stories out of my head. This short story contains just a snippet of the world, but it’s a great addition to the Drifters’ Alliance series from my perspective; it really helped me get to know some of my characters better and see where they could go together in future books in the series.

  Will you be continuing this story elsewhere?

  Yes. I published the first Drifters’ Alliance book in June 2015 and will be adding to the series over several months of 2015, and in 2016 possibly as well. There are at least 3 books planned, but I’ll happily write more if enough of my fans ask for it! The main character of the Drifters’ Alliance series is Cass Kennedy, and Book 1 begins where this short story ends. I hope you’ll take a chance on Drifters’ Alliance Book 1 and give it a read, and, as always, I’d love to read your review of my work.

  Tell us something we might not know about you.

  If this is the first book of mine you’ve read, then you probably don’t know that I write in almost every
big genre out there. If you like my style of writing and think you might want to venture out of sci-fi a little, you can try my urban contemporary fantasy, romance, thriller, dystopian, action/adventure, or other novels. Just search for “Elle Casey” on any of the big online retailers and you’ll find me! You can also find a reading list of all my books broken down by genre on my website, ElleCasey.com, and I’m also on Facebook.

  Works in progress?

  I write about one book a month (yes, a full novel), so I’m pretty busy. I write sometimes seven days a week, and I’m kind of addicted to reader-fan love, so yeah… it’s what I have to do, but I love doing it, too. I’m a huge bookworm, so being a huge bookworm feeder makes me very happy. You can see what my publishing plan is for the year on my website. It includes more sci-fi, fantasy, and paranormal titles, sometimes with a touch of romance thrown in for good measure. I try to keep all my readers happy, no matter what their favorite genres might be. You’ll also see a new series of mine launched by traditional publisher Montlake Romance, titled The Bourbon Street Boys. It’s a romance and full of laugh-out-loud moments (or so I hope).

  Future plans?

  I dream of seeing my work on a screen somewhere, either television or film. We’ll see what happens, but in the meantime, if you know anyone in these industries and like my work, please pass it on!

  Carindi

  by Jennifer Foehner Wells

  Ei’Pio was alone.

  She could still hear the screams echoing back through the tunnel of memory. It had been madness, pure chaos, followed by the darkest, deepest silence she had ever known.

  A plague had rioted through the Oblignatus, affecting everyone but her, presumably because she was the only crewmember aboard who wasn’t sectilian. Every last one of her colleagues had been damaged so severely that that their thoughts and mental patterns were no longer recognizable to her—then they’d met dusk wherever they happened to be.

  She didn’t like to think about it, yet she couldn’t stop. There was nothing else to occupy her mind. Her water-filled enclosure spanned the core of the city-sized ship. For days, she’d jetted from one end to the other attempting—repeatedly, thoroughly—to reach out mind to mind, searching, but had found only empty silence. In a ship meant to house ten thousand sectilians, only one individual in the ship community had survived.

  Her.

  What she wanted above all else was to return to Sectilius, to her people, but that was impossible. The infernal yoke kept her from moving the ship, no matter how hard she railed against it. There wasn’t an officer left to issue the command to release it. In all her long life as a devoted fleet officer—completely above reproach—this had never been a concern, but now it maddened her.

  The yoke wasn’t a physical restraint. It was a combination of code and electronic devices embedded in a secret location within the ship. It kept her, or any other kuboderan navigator, from moving the ship without authorization. Apparently the ship’s designers had never considered the current scenario.

  The ship was too deep in the Kirik Nebula for a message to penetrate to any nearby colonies. They’d been on a research and exploration mission and had come across a red giant in its final stages before supernova. The Quasador Dux had decided it was a rare opportunity to observe the phenomenon. They would leave probes in orbit while they conducted other research at a safer distance.

  The last maneuver they’d performed had taken them on a close approach to the red giant. They’d intended to remain in the danger zone just long enough make the drop, but the plague had hit at the worst possible time, effectively stranding them in the orbit intended for the probes.

  Even if someone came looking, the Oblignatus was nowhere near its designated research coordinates. After a few weeks, the possibility of rescue seemed remote.

  Ei’Pio watched the data closely. The star had burned through all of its hydrogen and helium and was at the end of the carbon-fusion stage. Carbon levels inside it were diminishing steadily. She calculated that she would have thirteen to fourteen years to wait before the core collapsed and the star went supernova.

  Eventually she’d come to contemplate suicide. It was an unspeakable act, but the taboo against suicide was predicated upon one’s usefulness to society—one’s duty to others. So what did it matter now? Who would censure her or threaten her with reconditioning if she dared have such dark thoughts?

  Her anxiety had become a palpable thing. Why live on, waiting for the inevitable, living in a perpetual countdown? What life was there for her without anyone to serve, without anyone with whom to commune?

  She lost herself in a fugue, her mind wandering from one treasured memory to another, each one given to her by those who were forever gone to her. She neglected her duties. Why care for a ship full of the dead?

  She drifted in the depths of unrelenting stillness. Not eating. Not caring. Limbs heavy with depression. Brains aching from pain that went well beyond physical. Barely moving, except wherever the swirling, artificial current carried her.

  Then something in her digital ocular implant caught her attention. It was just the smallest inconsistency. She’d almost missed it. Curiosity stirred within her.

  Her senses slowly sharpened as she focused on this irregularity. When she realized what she was actually looking at, the morbid sluggishness vanished. She jetted restlessly from one end of her enclosure to the other, checking and double-checking the sensor readings. There was a single life sign, but it was minuscule and muted. It was no wonder she’d missed it in the early days of anguish.

  Her limbs quivered. She pulsed water through her mantle erratically. She couldn’t help but hope, though she knew it was probably just a shambling zombie that’d had a delayed reaction to the disease and hadn’t yet expired.

  She would do whatever she could to save them, though she had no idea what the plague vector had been. Her people had simply transformed into violent beasts and then suddenly stopped functioning altogether, until they perished of thirst and hunger.

  Just one survivor could change everything.

  Ei’Pio fluttered tentatively against the mind of this individual, braced for crazed thoughts, dull thoughts, or the barest semblance of thought. Braced for another senseless death.

  But to her surprise, this person was intact, whole, and… starving.

  Even at the surface level of anipraxia, misery flooded Ei’Pio’s senses. There were fragmented impressions of gnawing hunger, disbelief, abject terror—and then a bout of all-consuming sobbing that led to the unconscious oblivion of sleep.

  This person had suffered the same level of loss that she had herself—perhaps even more, if that was possible. She or he desperately needed Ei’Pio’s help.

  She discerned something else in this shallow contact. Strangely, this individual had not developed a capacity for anipraxic communication. That was exceedingly rare in any ship community. Occasionally an objector served in the fleet, but Ei’Pio knew there weren’t any objectors aboard the mission to the Kirik Nebula. She had no idea who this person was.

  Ei’Pio scoured internal sensor readings and camera coverage and soon discovered that the individual was inside a suit of sectilian power armor. That explained the faintness of the bio-signature. The suits were shielded. Had the suit isolated the survivor from the plague the same way she had been spared?

  Once Ei’Pio realized this, her primary objective was to communicate with this person, to let them know they weren’t alone—that he or she could take command of the ship and return them to Sectilius space.

  As the only surviving member of the quorum, Ei’Pio could appoint the survivor as the Quasador Dux of the Oblignatus and download the command-and-control engram set into his or her brain. That would allow the ship’s computer to recognize them as the highest-ranking officer—then she or he had only to issue the command to return to Sectilius and the yoke would be released.

  They would be able to move the ship.

  They could go home.

  She d
idn’t yet know anything about this person—name, gender, or occupation, but it seemed wrong to continue to refer to him or her in the abstract. It would take time to establish communication and learn those important details. In the interim, she would refer to the stranger as male, an entirely random gender assignment, and give him the name Suparo, which meant survivor.

  Establishing communication between herself and Suparo wasn’t as simple as one sectilian opening his or her mouth and speaking to another sectilian. Ei’Pio was unable to communicate that way. A small portion of this untouched brain had to be stimulated in a very concentrated and specific way to encourage the development of the set of dormant structures that allowed anipraxic communication. Ei’Pio had done this many times in the past, whenever new crewmembers had come aboard.

  This time was different.

  Normally when she inducted someone into the circle of anipraxia, there was resistance. The changes could be painful, though Ei’Pio did her best to minimize that, and often an individual had an inner level of reluctance that was an additional barrier to the process, even though they had chosen this lifestyle.

  Suparo was sleeping deeply when she began the process but soon awoke. He did not resist at all—he seemed very receptive to the alteration, seemed quite inquisitive about it, in fact. Suparo seemed to recognize that someone was there to help, that someone was communicating somehow. That was unusual.