Varkan Rise by Tracy Cooper-Posey

Author:Tracy Cooper-Posey [Cooper-Posey, Tracy]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Science Fiction Romance
Publisher: Tracy Cooper-Posey
Published: 2016-02-15T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Nine

Gate Station, Shanta System. FY 10.092

Somewhere during the run to Shanta, Catherine felt the muzzy cloud that had been inhibiting her thoughts lift and fall away. Possibly, it was after that first conversation in the dining hall. Maybe it was all the speculation they did together whenever they met.

The question about whether Bedivere was rogue was never raised again. Catherine, though, could not forget the possibility, even while she pretended to herself and everyone else that Bedivere’s actions would make sense once they correctly determined the reasons for them.

Kemp spent a lot of time in the ship’s gymnasium, working his body and bringing it back up to normal strength and flexibility. In between, he ate and slept. Catherine had seen many men rebuilding themselves after a regeneration and left him alone to follow his personal process. Kemp knew what worked for him and at least he didn’t snore.

Sometimes his feedings coincided with the meals that Catherine took with Brant and Lilly in the dining hall.

When she was not with Brant and Lilly, Catherine spent a lot of time on the terminal in her room, tapping into the ship’s datacore. It was a big, generalist core, because the ship was a commercial passenger vessel and bored passengers caused public relations issues and impacted morale. Most of the public areas of the core were filled with entertainment and distractions, although there was a decent-sized non-fiction library, too.

At the beginning of the twelve day run, she spent a lot of time studying medical and philosophical texts, delving into the nature of madness. None of what she found was new, or revealing, although she was reminded yet again that the Ancients sometimes considered people who were truly mad to be blessed with divinity—geniuses who were too smart to operate within normal society.

The idea did not make her feel any happier.

She drifted toward the entertainment tanks and spent the last five days with mindless diversions, deliberately not thinking.

They slipped through the gates at Shanta exactly on schedule and all four of them crowded around Catherine’s terminal to see the first images of the destroyed station from the external monitors as they flickered into life.

The Shanta gates were five hours from the gate station, turning it into a tiny speck of light against the red world of Shanterry behind. Then they noticed the other pinpricks of light around the station.

“The lights are twinkling,” Catherine said. “They’re in the atmosphere, so they must be at the same level as the station.”

“Other ships,” Lilly guessed.

“One of them will be acting as a default way station if the station itself was destroyed.” Catherine tried to increase the magnification. “Commercial terminals….”she muttered as the view remained stubbornly as it was.

As the ship drew closer, details became clearer. Catherine found she couldn’t look away, even as she was packing her bag.

“I thought the station itself had been destroyed,” Lilly said, from her seat in front of the screen. She had packed hours before. Hers and Brant’s bags were sitting on the floor by the door.

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