Atonement , Farthinghome, Vol.-3

Farthinghome Series, Vol. 3 by Nina M. Osier

It's going to take several lifetimes, or maybe longer, to reach Earth. The survivors from the alien-occupied Farthinghome star system have nowhere else to go, so they're setting out with what little they have left. Of the refugee fleet's three leaders, Magister Charra Waxwoman has given up already on their hopeless quest. Now Commodore Aisha Tambour and Father Bazel daKiev must fight to hold their people together as they reach the border of deep space. Is there any way to cross the gulf that separates them from Humankind's first home? Or must they face death in the void, so their descendants may one day find safe harbor?

ISBN 1-59431-476-4 Suspense / Sci-Fi/ Young Adult

Cover Art by Shelley Rodgerson

Also available in RTF and HTML formats.

Chapter 1



“What do you suppose we’ll find if we come back here someday? Or our descendants, if it’s them?” Commodore Aisha Tambour asked Father Bazel daKiev that question as a much-shrunken flotilla prepared to move out from Minerva, the most populous Human-controlled planet remaining in the Farthinghome system. The two middle-aged lovers stood at a dining saloon viewport aboard the ashram Daughter of Ceres, staring out at this world that the third member of their triumvirate of leaders — Magister Charra Waxwoman — called home.



“I’d like to think that our descendants would find theirs thriving, of course. But I doubt it.” daKiev didn’t put his vision of Minerva’s future into words, because in some superstitious part of his soul he feared that doing so could make it come true. He saw it far too clearly. The great dome of the colony world’s capital, and all the smaller ones around it, fallen dark. The open-atmosphere crops beyond those domes either vanished or running wild, and the satellites that now hummed high above gone — burned up in the planet’s atmosphere, their power exhausted and their orbits decayed. Within the domes, did the remains of the last survivors lie mummified? Still recognizably Human? Or had they deteriorated — first into skeletons, and finally into dust?



His scientific training, that of a StellaGuard Academy astrophysics major, left him clueless about such medical and biological matters. He said, in order to banish those vivid and desolate images, “Who knows? After what the survivors we rescued told us about the Draj raid, I half expected we’d come back to find the domes breached. The crops destroyed, and anyone left alive here starving. But that’s not how it happened.”



“Thank gods,” his companion murmured. She sought his hand, and they clutched each other tightly. “I don’t blame Charra for wanting to stay, now that she’s had a second chance to make that choice. Although if I had children as young as hers, I’d still do what I’m doing. Leave this system, and take my chances and theirs where there’s no Scourge inhabiting the next world in. Just waiting for Minerva to rebuild, adapt, make something worth having again, out of a few residence domes and some crops that’re tough enough to survive in the open on a planet like this one....” Her voice trailed off as she nodded toward the globe below.



“That’s when they’ll decide to take it, too,” daKiev agreed. “Just as they took Farthinghome.”



A voice over the commlink mercifully ended the ensuing silence. “Wolfenden to Tambour. Mom? Are you and Bazel ready? Your flag captain says we can make sail any time.”



* * *



To leave their home star system again, and strike out into open space with no intention of returning. It had been hard enough the first time, when they’d had more ships. Many more ships, and many more people. Tambour pictured what she couldn’t see from this viewport, her reassembled fleet riding in orbit around and above the Daughter of Ceres. Should she be thankful she had less responsibility, at least in a sense, as they set out for their new destination? Or should she listen to the part of her that mourned fiercely for the hundreds of people who had changed their minds like Charra Waxwoman? People who couldn’t bring themselves to set off a second time into the unknown, who would therefore stay behind to live or die on Minerva. Or at least, since the Farthinghome system had other Human outposts and sub-light speed transports to move inhabitants from one to another, to live or die as close as they dared approach to the world that Humankind called home.



Erroneously. The former StellaGuard commander, who served as commodore to the strangest star fleet ever assembled, braced her shoulders as she reminded herself that they now knew for certain this wasn’t the case. Humankind’s first home, its real home, lay thousands of light years in a direction that also held the home-world of the Silver Scourge. Or of the nosey-globes, as Farthinghome’s people had called those once innocuous automated scouting devices. Before the noseys turned killer, and the alien species that built them followed in ships to take possession of a world poisoned against any further attempt by Humans to inhabit it. Before Humanity’s closest allies, their old partners from the Trade Wars, turned on them in one case (the Drajs) and stood back to watch, impotently by choice, in the other (the Ecrusipis).



Both of those species were lost now. Wiped out first by their own worlds’ unexpected nosey-globe invasions, and then by battles in which their remnants engaged the surviving Humans. It was from the Drajs, who captured Human slaves during a raid on Minerva’s surface, that Tambour had learned to call the world-poisoners by the apt name of Silver Scourge.



She could accomplish nothing now by letting herself think mourning thoughts. For her still loved former husband, who’d died far below the surface of Farthinghome’s ocean after the Scourge assault made escape impossible. For her last captain, who would have carried the infection back to the star cruiser Gallant if Tambour hadn’t blasted the younger woman’s shuttle before it could glide into the old ship’s docking bay. For the Gallant’s crew, who except for Leading Starman Stanislaus Frankel died not long after their captain; with Frankel and Tambour surviving only because they were, by then, aboard this ship. The Daughter of Ceres, ashram of Outlands Primate Bazel daKiev.



She had known those people, out of the billions who died on Farthinghome’s surface and beneath its waters. On Castor, its larger moon, and on board the orbital batteries and ships protecting the planet’s skies. Not to mention, more recently, at the hands of the Draj raiders — both during their assault on Minerva, and later during their treacherous attempt to take control of Tambour’s refugee star fleet.



No. She’d lost two more people for whom she might mourn by name. Archat, the Ecrusipi commodore, murdered by Minervan officials taken prisoner during the Draj raid; and Frankel, her old friend and long time coxswain, who gave his life to keep Minervan Human captives from dying while still in Draj hands.



I wonder what became of them after they murdered the Ecrusipis, stole their ship, and started back here? Governor Thorne — Chief Engineer Keil — and Home Guard Captain Winrich? Tambour knew as she wondered that she might never find out, since when her own much slower ships made port at Minerva weeks later the commandeered Ecrusipi warship hadn’t been heard from.