Senescence (Jezebel's Ladder Book 5) Read online

  “No. The others are normal. The doctor calls Mercy a mutant witch. Normally, we would dismiss such a claim as imbalanced ramblings. However, from Commander Zeiss’ log, we know that as the first person into the ship Mercy has a special link with its artificial intelligence, Snowflake. He cited several instances where this AI has protected her or bent rules in her favor.” Kieran paused. “Making her immortal is not outside the realm of possibility.”

  My sister has been promoted from saint to goddess.

  Her heart raced. “That’s all pretty extreme supposition,” she said, struggling to keep her voice even. “I wouldn’t want you ridiculed. As a friend of the Smith family and head trustee of her charity, I’d like to avoid smearing Mercy’s name. What would it take to persuade you to scrap this entire exhibit?”

  “I’m listening,” Kieran said.

  “Come to Rio with me for a while. You’ve proven your skills managing a non-profit.” And showing gratitude. “The presidency of STEM University just opened up. I can make sure the job is yours for as long as you want it.” I can also put a clause in his employment contract to protect the foundation from Llewellyn family financial claims—two birds with one stone.

  “I don’t speak Portuguese,” he protested.

  Mary leaned against him. “Come with me on my jet tonight, and I can teach you,” she said, her voice husky.

  “There would have to be more substantial incentive.”

  “I’ll throw in a seat on the board of the foundation.” When he vacillated, she whispered the current worth of the endowment in his ear.

  ****

  After Kieran signed the agreement, Gabriela and Mary waited in the limo while he packed for the trip.

  Gabriela whispered, “He’ll never know he could have had it all if he hadn’t demanded the bribe.”

  “I had to protect the trust,” Mary replied.

  Gabriela pulled her close. “I was talking about you, querída. I’m sorry.”

  Chapter 1 – Homecoming

  After almost twenty years of absence, the starship Sanctuary emerged into normal space above the permanent hexagon shape at Saturn’s North Pole. The nexus provided easy access under Einstein’s rubber sheet to subspace, where normal limits on velocity didn’t apply.

  “God, it feels good to be back home,” said the real Mira Hollis. She lay on one of three control couches connected to the ship’s snowflake-shaped interface. With her head under one of the central helmets, she could see 3D representations of the ship’s route and the large gravity wells nearby. “I’ve placed us in an orbit just inside the A ring.”

  From the closest couch, her husband, Commander Zeiss, said, “Our repairs to the landing bay lens opening are holding. No heat emissions. Excellent. To anyone watching on gravity sensors, we’ll look like a chunk of ice that the innermost moon knocked loose.” Hours ago, he had ordered radio silence. Half the crew members were suited up in the landing bay, ready to take any number of emergency actions. “Now it’s time for Mr. Llewellyn’s final exam.” As a former Math instructor, Zeiss loved tests and puzzles.

  The eighteen-year-old co-pilot, Stewart Llewellyn, occupied the third control couch. His star-drive and gravity senses, plus the orbital computation skills he had inherited from his parents, Mercy and Kai, meant that Stu had been born to fly starships. In spite of these advantages, he had completed the same astronaut training as the rest of the crew. All of the crew members had coached him in some aspect of his duties, each convinced that his or her advice would keep him alive someday.

  Mira was proud to see him wearing his father’s old flight suit, but she would always think of him as the adorable, curly-haired toddler she had babysat. Now that the mission was over, she might finally be able to have some children of her own.

  Eyes closed, Stu concentrated his special senses on the space surrounding the ship. “I see a station in geosynchronous orbit near the nexus. Five smaller objects are drifting within laser range of its dock.” Stu relayed object coordinates and masses through Snowflake’s virtual model. With a ghost of his father’s British accent, he asked, “Sir, shall I open the lens a hair and check for signals?”

  Zeiss sat up, disconnecting from the Snowflake headset. “Negative. Stay dark.”

  Mira agreed with the decision. Their departure from the Solar System had been controversial. Their return might not be entirely welcome.

  “Plot an intercept for the station,” Zeiss ordered. As navigator, her husband would normally do this himself, but they had agreed to grill Stu on the hot seat for a while. “We can use the station’s long-range radio to negotiate our return with the UN Space Agency.” On Labyrinth, an inhabited moon in hard-to-reach Oblivion system, most of the ship’s communication gear had been lost.

  She added, “Make that course within a kilometer of the station so I can scan it.” On Mira’s own, she could detect intent and Page talents within fifty meters. Linked to her husband through the Collective Unconscious, she could detect human life on the other side of the biosphere. “Use a light touch. I don’t want you to spill my coffee, let alone the lakes.”

  “Aye, aye, ma’am.”

  Minutes later, he disconnected from the Snowflake headgear and presented his solution on the saucer-shaped control room’s overhead bubble.

  Mira double-checked the heading. The course was smoother than silk, but the rationale behind an answer was important, too. “Thirteen hours to intercept? That seems longer than usual.”

  “The commander wanted us to drift in like an ice chunk,” Stu explained. “Besides, less fuel spent now means more options later.”

  “You just earned your wings!” Mira gave Stu a congratulatory hug, but he pulled away quickly and averted his eyes. With her talent, she could feel his stomach flutter. Guilt?

  “I’ll tell the others in the habitat,” Stu stammered. Abruptly, he bounced through the zero-g room toward the exit.

  When the boy was gone, Mira turned to her husband. “What’s with him?”

  Zeiss smiled. “He didn’t want me to get jealous.”

  “Why would you?”

  “Stu had a bit of a crush on you when he was sixteen.”

  “Stu? I changed his diapers!”

  Her husband wrapped an arm around her waist. He was so gentle that sometimes she forgot how tall he was. With his last pod treatment, the touches of gray in his hair had darkened back to his original blond. “Well, with your energy and the time you spent in stasis, you could pass for twenty-five.” He demonstrated her desirability with a kiss. “You are closest to his age.”

  “What about Joan? She’s thirteen.”

  “Stu treats her as an annoying little sister. Besides, she doesn’t even have breasts yet. With her Magi genetic modifications, Joan might never develop human sexual traits.” She had been spliced with alien DNA in utero in what was supposed to be therapy to ease complications of the pregnancy.

  Mira frowned. “When you put it like that, Stu must be pretty lonely. The rest of us have been paired up since the beginning. For us, returning to Earth is about professional redemption. For Stu, it’s a chance to find a match of his own.”

  ****

  “Twenty klicks,” Mira said as the ship drifted to the designated mark. She could barely contain her excitement. Within minutes, they might reestablish radio contact with the UN Space Agency. She already had the cake and punch set out in the low-g dining commons.

  “Open the landing-bay lens just enough for signals to pass,” Zeiss ordered Snowflake.

  Stu sat on the edge of the pilot couch, sharing all relevant meters and images on the wall. Everyone except the shuttle crew crowded into the control room to watch, wearing spacesuits according to regulations. Although, bulky helmets and gloves hung nearby.

  Oleander, Joan’s tall Nordic mother, checked the communications board. “Receiving the automated docking signal from the station. No chatter. Transponders on three other objects identify them as deep-space radio telescopes.”

  “Warm
up the weapon,” Zeiss ordered over the shuttle’s umbilical cable. He still refused to break radio silence.

  The shuttle crew turned the two authorization keys on the craft’s powerful chemical oxygen-iodine laser (COIL). After the initiation sequence, Yuki reported, “Weapon armed.” The Japanese electronics expert had been selected to head the shuttle mission. Not only had she been the narrator of the videos sent to Earth after they landed on Sanctuary, but everyone knew she hadn’t taken part in the theft of the shuttle. Both facts should generate goodwill during the negotiations to come.

  “Snowflake, dial the lens open just wide enough to check thermal imaging.”

  Mira watched through the interface because Sanctuary wasn’t close enough for her to use her special abilities. “No activity on the station. No heat or light signatures. It looks mothballed. The other two objects appear to be empty fuel tanks. Should we send the shuttle to investigate?”

  Zeiss shook his head. “No. Something doesn’t feel right. The station airlock could be booby-trapped, or the controls could be encrypted with software we can’t crack.”

  As the veteran with the most deep-space experience, Oleander said, “The radio telescope array could be used to send a message to Earth. If we send Ascension to patch into the array hardware directly, Yuki will have less security to overcome.”

  Stu steered the huge ship toward the telescope with the elegance of a Strauss waltz.

  “Hold at one kilometer distance,” Zeiss ordered from his control couch. “Status of Ascension team?”

  “Shuttle ready,” Yuki reported from Ascension’s cockpit.

  “Dock ready,” Risa echoed from the landing bay. Her husband, Herk, would be riding on the shuttle in case they needed his exoskeleton strength or the cutting torches on his combat armor.

  Through the Collective Unconscious and her Empathy, Mira could sense the mental flames of all six shuttle astronauts. The strength and colors of the shifting aural lights told her the Page talents and general health of each individual.

  Zeiss said, “Rig for silent running. Keep the station in your COIL sights.”

  “Disconnecting the umbilical,” Yuki replied, separating the shuttle from the starship’s power and air feeds.

  Mira projected the view from the landing-bay lens onto the overhead bubble. Then she watched the scene unfold with everyone else. Against the black vastness of space, small diamonds shimmered in the distance. Ascension rose from the bay with the softest of puffs. The shuttle floated for a full minute before another short burst angled it toward the communication array.

  Stu whispered, “Telescope two moved.”

  “Could be a coincidence,” Mira said. “The radio telescopes have to perform minor adjustments to maintain orbit.”

  The moment Zeiss said, “Halfway,” the shuttle fired forward thrusters to counter momentum.

  All three telescopes opened like carnivorous flowers. The one in the center pivoted to track Ascension. Stu said, “The shuttle has been acquired. The middle ear is a ringer!”

  “Easy,” Zeiss replied. “The crew will see it, too. Soon, they’ll be able to hide behind telescope one.”

  Yuki’s voice tore over the airwaves. “Synchrotron radiation buildup!” The COIL pivoted toward the center telescope and fired. The beam focused on the same spot for several seconds before the device stopped moving like an ant under the rays of a magnifying glass. Then a bright flash triggered the solar-flare filter on the main screen. One opponent down.

  However, the other telescopes were armed and firing heavy radiation at the shuttle.

  “Abort!” shouted Zeiss.

  Ascension fired main thrusters to escape the trap as it locked the COIL onto a second telescope.

  Mira said, “Move in. The shuttle needs to get to shelter before—” The fear and panic of the shuttle crew terminated as their mental flames blew out. Ascension’s cockpit exploded.

  Everyone in the command room was too stunned to move.

  “We have to rescue the shuttle,” Mira said. “The feeling is faint, but I know Herk’s alive.”

  Stu reported, “The second telescope is tumbling toward the planet. The third one—”

  A beam of high energy lanced through the open bay into Sanctuary, and the ship’s intelligence screamed. Snowflake’s displays winked out. Smoke drifted in from the storage room. Oleander sprang over with a fire extinguisher.

  Stu strapped into his control couch. With no external cameras or sensors responding, he was the only one who could sense outside the ship. He sounded the collision alarm.

  While everybody else secured themselves into padded alcoves, Mira warned her friend to clear the landing bay. “Risa, decontamination.” The shrieks of feedback from Snowflake forced her to cover her ears.

  Bypassing Snowflake, Stu opened the lens to its fullest and banked Sanctuary like a rollercoaster. The telescope plunged into the bay, snapping off its solar panels. Once it crashed, the pain in Mira’s head halted.

  Mira said, “Snowflake has a little brain damage, but the systems under the mountain appear unscathed. Switching to backups.”

  Stu eased the ship’s spin and scanned the skies. When he found no more targets, he said, “Clear. Permission to scoop Ascension, sir.”

  Pulling up the human-made, low-tech, remote cameras, Zeiss said, “Mr. Llewellyn, you made a mess of my landing bay. If we bring Ascension down in this, we risk tearing it open.”

  “We have to try,” Mira countered. “Seconds count if Herk has a suit breach.”

  “Have Risa shift as much of the rubble as—”

  Stu interrupted. “Sir, the robots that Mom stores near the landing bay can clean faster.”

  “Do it,” Zeiss agreed, “but don’t recycle any evidence that might tell us who orchestrated this attack.”

  “Yes, sir.” Stu coaxed the starship controls to gently bring the shuttle home.

  Mira glanced toward the open door to the dining commons. Globules of Welcome Home cake and red punch floated through the control room as medical personnel raced for the cargo shaft to reach the landing bay.

  Chapter 2 – Response

  The crew reeled from the loss of Ascension. Stu hid their ship from Earth and assessed damage. He handed a summary to the commander. “Our gravity generators took a beating, especially in the landing-bay area. About 8 percent of them are degraded, but none of them popped.”

  Zeiss clapped him on the shoulder. “At least you spread the effects out. Without your quick thinking, the damage would have been much more severe.”

  “The generators will take months to repair, and I’m not sure how we’ll manage that without Herk,” Stu said, his voice catching on the name.

  “I’m worried, too,” Zeiss confided. “He was the best man at my wedding.”

  “Any word from the response team?” Stu asked.

  “The doc should be up soon. The rest are combing the shuttle wreckage or patching damage to the bay.”

  “Sorry. I should have—”

  “Stop. You followed orders and probably earned a commendation,” Zeiss said.

  Both fell silent when Dr. Auckland floated into the room to report. “Herk is still hanging on.” He sounded weary and grim. “I’ve clamped off and dosed everything I can, but he wouldn’t survive the thirty hours it would take a decontamination pod to repair him. We’ve placed him in medical stasis until we can stabilize him. Risa is in shock and has been relieved of duty until further notice.”

  As a pair-bonded couple, Risa wouldn’t survive long without her husband.

  ****

  Once the emergencies were taken care of, Zeiss called a meeting for all remaining crew members in the dining hall. Stu chose the foot of the table, so he could have the stool Risa had made for him.

  The couples sat next to their partners along the widest edge of the table, which now doubled as a giant whiteboard. Still the professor, Zeiss handed out dry-erase markers for brainstorming.

  As the last in, Nurse Yvette was stu
ck with the wobbly chair at the head of the class. She affixed a magnetic coffee cup to the corner. “There are only seven of us left?”

  “Eight,” Joan corrected, sitting on the counter next to her mother, Oleander. Because of Joan’s small stature, people forgot she had an adult mind and full voting rights. She had her father’s wide and stocky build, with legs like bowling pins, not at all like her willowy, ash-blonde mother. However, their faces and speech patterns matched.

  Zeiss called the meeting to order. “I’d like to begin with a moment of silence to honor our friends.”

  After a minute passed, he said, “In addition to our comrades, we’ve lost key specializations.” Yuki had repaired electronics. Park had been both a pilot and gravity-drive theorist. Nadia had run power and laser systems. Rachael had maintained life support. Herk had performed the heavy lifting and dangerous jobs like head of security. “I know you’re all still in shock, but we need to focus on our immediate goals if we’re going to survive.”

  Zeiss wrote each item in a separate corner of the board. “Negotiate Amnesty with UN. Repair Snowflake. Rebuild or Replace Shuttle. Medical Assistance for Herk.” He drew dependency arrows from Herk and Snowflake to the shuttle.

  “How bad off is the shuttle?” asked Joan.

  “We could fabricate new hull sections and landing gear, but almost every subsystem in the cockpit has some critical component that should come from the manufacturer, Fortune Enterprises.” Zeiss inserted Fortune Enterprises into the flow chart as a prerequisite for the shuttle repairs.

  Pratibha, the doctor’s Indian wife, said, “Achieving the UN task would enable us to accomplish all the others more efficiently. Unfortunately, without a long-range radio, we can’t contact Earth.”

  “So we fly there in person,” Zeiss said.

  Indignant, Mira ripped the marker out of his hand before he could write anything else. “And give them the chance to finish the job?”

  “We go in covertly.”

  “You’re still willing to give them everything?” Mira asked, her voice growing louder. “We offered them the keys to interstellar community, space travel, and human biology, and they killed a third of us.” With his marker, she added the word JUSTICE to the center of the list in large, capital letters.