Starship Castaways

by Nina M. Osier

Marooned on board an alien-built space station deep inside dangerous "Clan space," all the survivors from the destroyed star cruiser Archangel want is to go home. Or do they? Captain Mitch Dufrain has found love here, 20 years after he lost his first family. Chief Engineer Rilla Lansing has discovered new purpose after fleeing both retirement and her long-dead marriage. Senior Ordinary Aristotle Merchant looks forward to seeing the survivors colonize the planet the station orbits—but First Mate Thalia Eriknova, stranded among unchanged humans, wonders when and if she’ll see her native Themyscira again.

Meanwhile, on Lansing’s home-world at the border of Clan space, a lone survivor from the ship that wrecked the Archangel lives a paroled prisoner of war’s existence and plans for the day when he can return and (if necessary) finish the job as Clan Cranston’s honor requires. When Rilla Lansing’s diplomat ex-husband needs Chandler Cranston’s help, the clansman gets his opportunity at last—and the resulting "rescue mission" sails straight into an ambush as the space station’s mysterious builders return.

Science Fiction, Romance, Space ISBN 1-59431-698-8

Cover art Shelley Rodgerson

Also available in RTF and HTML formats



Chapter 1

“Dammit, Alike! This just isn’t right!” Chandler of the Clan Cranston hissed the words into his commanding officer’s ear so that no one else on the Baikal’s bridge could hear him (he hoped). “It’s wrong to leave them crippled like this. We have to finish them!”

“Chandler, I don’t have time for this.” Alike, also of the Clan Cranston, fixed her second-in-command with a stare that wasn’t even a degree or two warmer than the expanse of vacuum separating the Baikal from its victim. She didn’t give Chandler the courtesy he’d given her. She spoke at normal volume, and her voice (as always) reached every officer in the compartment. “They’re not going far, and that means they can’t survive for long. I want to get that freighter under tow before anyone else shows up—we’re on the border of Clan Yanger’s space here, and we could wind up having to stand off one of their ships if we’re discovered with a prize that’s unsecured.” She let her green eyes rest on Chandler for a moment longer before she gave him the mercy of looking away and snapping to a more junior officer, “Helm! Take us alongside! Nice and easy, now, so that anyone who’s not in the control room watching sensors won’t even know what’s happening.”

That was how any Clan raider did it after disabling a Commonwealth ship that had chanced the dangerous passage through Clan space. Open a breach in the hull—flood its interior with poison—and soon after that, the boarding party could do its work without opposition. The Clans had regarded this part of space as theirs for generations, and they claimed whatever of value crossed it as their own.

Nothing was supposed to be crossing it from Commonwealth to Empire, actually. That was why the Baikal’s current prey was escorted not by a state-of-the-art military vessel bristling with the latest armaments—but instead, by a ship picked up at auction and refitted for this kind of guard dog duty.

Chandler spared that hapless vessel, what twenty years ago when it was launched from a Commonwealth shipyard was classed as a light cruiser, a last glance as it passed out of range of the Baikal’s sensors. As he did so he shook his head in wonder at the valiant fight that ship’s people had managed to offer his own. He didn’t dare repeat, not even in a self-directed whisper, what he had already told his captain; but he thought it again unavoidably.

The people on board that enemy ship had fought with valor, and they were out of range now only because they were continuing in the direction they’d been moving when their vessel’s sublight drive as well as its hyperdrive ceased functioning. Inertia would carry it along at the same rate, since in space there was no atmospheric friction to slow them, until long after the human beings inside it died from whatever got them first.

Would it be exposure, as the ship’s interior temperature fell inexorably after eventual power failure? Oxygen starvation? Death from lack of water? Or—slowest of all—from starvation, after the rations ran out?

They wouldn’t be able to call for help. Before she gave the order to abandon their crippled prey to its fate, Captain Alike Chandler of Clan Cranston first made sure that the enemy vessel’s communications array was destroyed.

You fought gallantly to protect your charges. You deserve better than what you’re facing now, Chandler Cranston thought at whoever was still alive inside that hulk. You deserve mercy given by one honorable crew to another, and I’m ashamed—bitterly ashamed—that a Cranston clan ship is abandoning that duty.

Damn you, Alike! Cousin or no cousin, you’re still what happens when a raider captain’s chosen according to pedigree instead of by combat record!

“Chandler!” Alike’s voice penetrated his thoughts (and probably the Baikal’s bulkheads, too, Chandler thought sourly as he responded with lifted head and expectantly directed eyes). “There’s no rush now. Don’t send the boarding party across until every compartment of that ship’s been flooded and then cleared. D’you understand me?”

“Aye, Alike. I do.” Chandler inclined his head toward his superior with respect in his manner, and utter disgust in his eyes.