Exiles End

Exiles Series, Vol 2 Nina M. Osier

Interstellar Guard Commander Alana Robie first hears of her father's disappearance and her little sister's kidnapping when the freighter Callon's first mate summons her home to take charge of the House of Callon, and of the search for her sister. Alana answers that summons against all of her own wishes.

ISBN 1-59431-155-2 Science Fiction/ Futuristic Romance

Cover Art Maggie Dix

Also available in HTML and RTF formats.



Chapter 1

It was a fine day for a kidnapping.

The Trade Fair was in full swing on the surface of Chaitanya, and there were scores of ships parked in orbit around that less-than-hospitable world. The Trade Fair was held here, and not on a more inviting planet (of which there were of course dozens - hundreds, even - within the uneven sphere of human-settled space), simply because of its location; Chaitanya belonged to no group in particular, and to every human in general. And just as importantly, it was somewhere near the physical center of the area regularly plied by freighters and tankers and other such commercial starships; so gathering here at intervals that followed the solar year of long-abandoned Earth was as workable as any such gathering pattern might have been, although of course not every trader's House was represented at every annual Fair.

Valeria was always represented, though. Like most of the older Houses, that family held several ships and deliberately scattered them across the established trade routes in order to cover as much territory and consistently gain as much profit as possible. This year the old man's own ship, which according to custom bore the House's name on its superstructure, was itself in orbit above Chaitanya Spaceport. Of course, everyone in the trading community knew that Anders Valeria himself would probably take little part in the Fair's proceedings; but he was there, and his ship rode in one of the more coveted orbits where shuttle access could be had by an almost direct rise from the surface instead of by a circuitous routing in order to avoid everyone else's orbits and everyone else's shuttles. Everyone respected Anders Valeria, and because they knew the cause of his weakness almost everyone excused it by never mentioning it where any of his family members could hear.

But everyone knew, of course, that Anders Valeria would spend most of his time in a wine-fog in his cabin while his eldest child - a thirty-year-old son - ran things, for all intents and purposes as if his father were already dead. When his fellow traders spoke of this at all, carefully out of the Valeria family's hearing, they agreed that it was fortunate for everyone that Jock had both his father's gifts for starship trading and his long-dead mother's calm, sober personality. If Anders had bred another like himself as his firstborn, that ancient House would have been in deep difficulties by now. It had taken young Jock the entire nine years since he'd completed his military obligation and returned to his father's ship to get the House back on an even keel; it had been tottering dangerously by that time, with Anders Valeria's young second wife dead and his attention focused solidly on chemical consolation rather than on his business or even on his ship.

Jock would have liked nothing better than to have gone down to the Fair with his young half-siblings, on this day when the real business was taking place aboard the orbiting ships and what happened dirtside was for fellowship and entertainment's sake only; but he no longer had that luxury, had not had it since the year he himself had been just turned eighteen and on his way - literally, straight from the Fair - to Guardbase Alpha to begin his three years of compulsory military service. So he had sent twins Jason and Xanthe, who were celebrating their own eighteenth birth-anniversary this very day, down to the festivities with firm instructions: "Enjoy every minute of it! I wish I'd known when I was 18 that being young doesn't last forever!"

That, of course, made his half-siblings look at each other with mingled amusement and disgust. In a sense he seemed as ancient to them as did their father, and therefore it was not conceivable that he'd ever been as young as they were; and in another sense he was their brother, not their parent, and therefore had no business making such speeches.

They were technical adults themselves, as of today, and had for the first time been admitted to any entertainment they cared to sample; had been able to purchase intoxicants, experiment as they pleased - and hadn't bothered with much of it, because like so many of their kind they had figured out ways to do illegally at fourteen (or earlier) everything that today was supposed to be so new and magical at eighteen. Jason had spent much of his time discreetly trailing after a certain golden-haired, closely-chaperoned girl; and Xanthe had spent her time keeping an eye on her twin.

Which was why they were arguing now, uncharacteristically, as the shuttle they were co-piloting lifted from Chaitanya's surface toward their father's ship and as night began to come down on the hemisphere where Chaitanya Spaceport was located. No longer were they young enough for curfews, but staying dirtside to sleep hadn't even occurred to either of them. It was almost beyond imagining, to voluntarily sleep anywhere but in the safety of the Valeria's familiar compartments.

"Jason, you looked just plain foolish!" Xanthe told her brother now, tossing her mane of dark hair and giving him a quick glare when her eyes weren't busy with the instrument console in front of her. "How could you think she'd be interested in you, even if she could get away from her chaperone? Do you think she doesn't know her father hates ours?"

Jason Valeria was not responding well to his twin's needling, because he was barely noticing it at all. The slim, wiry young man - shorter by centimeters than half-brother Jock, and so much less powerfully built that seeing the likeness of their faces was always something of a shock to strangers - was doing his job as co-pilot well enough, because that came almost as naturally as breathing; but he was thinking far more about that slender, blonde girl who'd been boarding another House's shuttle just as he and Xanthe had boarded theirs, than about his sister's chattering tongue.

"Jason! You do know that's Kyla Robie you've been trailing around all day?" Xanthe could have reached out and shaken him, the half-smile on his face was so aggravating. "I realize no one ever sees her, the old man keeps her locked up like some kind of exotic crystal - but you did know that's who she is? And you do remember what that means?"

Jason gave himself a small, deliberate shake. It was becoming obvious that his twin wasn't going to run down until she got a reply, and he was too happy to want to give her the sort of cutting response that she probably deserved (probably even expected!); so he was searching half-heartedly for some appropriate word or phrase that could be used to quash her gently, when he heard a different sound from her lips.

"What?" she said, and followed the word with another that Jock would definitely not have let her say in his presence no matter what birthday she'd just celebrated. "Jason! My console's off-line. Have you got her?" (Her, of course, being the shuttle.)

He hadn't. The shuttle was moving, at just the same speed as a moment earlier when Xanthe had had it firmly in her experienced grasp; but its course was altered, and neither twin had entered any request for that course change.

Jason tapped the comm. "Shuttle to Valeria," he said, in his surprisingly deep young voice. "Are you tractoring us? What's going on?"

There was no reply except static. At his side Xanthe tapped her own comm, and tried for another contact. "Chaitanya Control, this is Valeria shuttle," she said, with the outward calm of a lifetime already spent encountering and dealing with the sometimes terrible surprises that were part and parcel to a trader's life. "We're being tractored, apparently not by our own ship. Control, do you copy?"

More static. The twins looked at each other, then at the readouts on their consoles; and they went to work without a word, tapping in instructions - rerouting controls - reconfiguring power circuits.

To no avail whatsoever. The comms stayed dead, the consoles stayed off-line, and the shuttle continued lifting toward - where?