Bringing Stella Home (53 page)

With the imperials out for
her head, she took one of the family ships and ran to the Belarius
system, which had a thriving underworld. She joined up with a
Belarian militia for a while, then broke off to start a private
military group. She did this out of a warped hunger for revenge, to
become a thorn in the side of the Gaian Imperial Navy. She wanted
to develop a mercenary force so that when the empire finally fell,
she would be in a prime position to join with the forces bringing
them down.

This was her original
idea, her dream since childhood. However, as the years passed by
and the reality of mercenary life set in, more and more she has
contented herself with odd jobs and simply looking out for the next
paycheck.

Danica has natural
leadership qualities. She knows everyone on her ship personally,
including all of the enlisted, and commands their respect with her
unyielding sense of justice and her equal treatment of everyone
under her command, including herself. Her primary concern is the
safety and welfare of her crew, and they know this. At the same
time, however, she has many buried feelings from her troubled past
than many of them do not understand.

Because of her past life
among Tajjur's elite, Danica is surprisingly well educated and has
an extensive grasp of history and an appreciation of
culture.

Roman Krikoryan

Age: 52

Roman is the son of a
working class Tajjur family. His father was an alcoholic factory
worker, and his mother had seven or eight children to take care of.
Roman was the middle child, and didn't have much of a future except
in the planetside factories, so he enlisted with the Gaian Imperial
navy.

He saw action in several
frontier worlds struggling to gain their autonomy. During this
time, he gained considerable military experience and moved up the
enlisted ranks. He also came to see how weak and corrupt the empire
was.

When Tajjur declared its
independence, he led a mutiny on his ship (which employed a 60%
Tajjuri crew) and defected to the Tajjur navy. He was made sergeant
major and went on to fight the imperial forces in that brutal
war.

The Tajjur war for
independence left him lost and disillusioned. Many of his friends
lost their lives, and he found himself fighting directly against
many of his friends from the imperial navy. When the war finally
ended, he was still alive but had lost everything, including his
dignity. Considered a traitor by the imperials and hunted by the
occupation forces, he fled to Belarius.

He drifted for a while,
working odd jobs on the spaceports in that system and spending his
money on booze. Eventually, however, he met up with Danica, who saw
something in him. She offered to take him on to her crew if he
sobered up, and he accepted. He was one of her first recruits in
the mercenary unit, and so became a key advising officer from the
very beginning.

As chief petty officer of
the Tajji Flame, Roman is the key military advisor, the link
between the enlisted men and the officers, and the backbone of the
organization. He's seen it all, and he knows how to get things
done.

Anya Sikorsky

Age: 26

Anya is from the Belarius
system, from a local merchanter family much like the Mccoys. She
apprenticed as a pilot and regularly made runs to Tajjur and
Karduna.

When she was eighteen, she
was kidnapped by pirates in the outer rim of the Belarius system.
The pirates held her ransom but killed off the rest of the crew of
the merchanter ship, which consisted of an old man and his son with
whom Anya had a relationship. Anya escaped, only to be captured
again and severely abused by the crew. Shortly after, her parents
paid the ransom and she was released.

The experience traumatized
her, but it also hardened her and she determined to get revenge.
Having stolen some information on the pirates' ships while in
captivity, she found out where the pirates usually went to port.
With this information, she ran away from home, changed her identity
and appearance, bought some firearms on the black market, hunted
down the pirates while they were in port and killed them all. She
then hijacked their ship and flew it back home.

This proved to be a
mistake, however, because the pirates were actually underlings in a
much larger crime organization. When their boss found out what had
been done, he tracked her down and sent out a team of thugs to kill
her family. Anya narrowly escaped all of this.

With the pirates hunting
her down, she fled to the starlane stations just outside the Auriga
Nova system, where the imperial forces had generally stopped most
pirating. She found it difficult to settle down, however, with
little future and no connections.

She drifted for a while,
then hired on as a pilot to a local freight company. This gave her
the time to get over, at least somewhat, the loss of her family.
She soon became involved in a relationship with one of the younger
freighter navigators, Alex Goldsteyn. He promised to protect her,
and while she was with him she finally started to get over the
nightmares that had haunted her ever since the death of her family.
He also helped her complete her training, making her into a
first-rate astrogator.

However, soon after
completing her training, a band of pirates attacked their
freighter. Alex helped Anya to escape, but he was killed in the
process. The event further traumatized her, especialy the loss of
her lover, but she came out of it with a renewed determination to
make herself strong so something like this wouldn't happen
again.

She returned to Auriga
Nova, but this time decided to sign up with a mercenary crew where
she could learn to be a fighter. Danica came through right about
this time just after hiring Ilya, and Anya offered to sign up. She
almost didn't get the job, but when Roman heard about her past
fighting the pirates, he decided she was the right
material.

Soon after she was hired
on, she got involved in a relationship with Ilya. This relationship
has been ongoing for some time, though it's really more of an “I
need somebody and you're available” kind of thing with relatively
little commitment. Danica tolerates it, but only just.

Despite her hard past,
Anya has a naturally warm, nurturing personality. She likes to
stand up for the little guy, and doesn't like to see other people
suffer (unless, of course, they are her enemies). She likes the way
Ilya talks tough and doesn't let others put him down. She doesn't
know that he's a coward at heart.

Ilya Ayvazyan

Age: 22

Ilya grew up as a
delinquent on a Tajji moon under the imperial occupation of his
home system. He has a natural knack for mathematics and computers,
and soon learned that he could make more hacking into networks that
doing petty street stuff.

He moved up in the local
gangs, but a series of gang wars and brutal imperial sting
operations forced him to flee. He stowed away on a freighter bound
for the Auriga Nova system.

The freighter was captured
by pirates, but Danica's band of mercenaries attacked the pirates,
per their contract with the owners of the freight company. Ilya
snuck onto the pirate network and hacked into their drone fighters,
deactivating a wing in mid-combat. As a result, Danica crushed the
pirates and soon liberated the ship. Ilya told Danica what he'd
done and asked her for a job; she accepted, having discovered that
the higher paying work requires at least one cyber-ops
officer.

This was about two and a
half years before Danica met up with James. Tajjur fell to the
Hameji a little less than two years later.

Ilya has little military
experience and a natural disdain for authority. He thinks very
highly of himself and likes to push people's buttons. Because of
his young age, most of the senior members of the crew tolerate him
the way they'd tolerate an annoying puppy, or perhaps a cat. Ilya
doesn't let this bother him, or stop him from doing exactly what he
wants.

Despite the airs he puts
on, Ilya is a coward at heart.

It’s amazing how much the story comes
alive when you truly get to know your characters.

Bringing Stella
Home
went through multiple drafts and
several test readers, all of whom (I think) are listed in the
acknowledgments. My military friends were especially helpful; I’ve
never served in the military and couldn’t even pretend to write
military science fiction, so their feedback proved
invaluable.

In the fall of 2010 when
the manuscript got to a publishable state, I decided to hold off
submitting it until World Fantasy Convention in Columbus. The
convention was awesome, and while I garnered a little bit of
interest from agents, I made several new writer friends who
expressed interest in reading it. Their feedback convinced me to go
back for one last revision, and while I was working on that, the
ebook revolution really began to take off. I read Konrath’s
“
You
Should Self-Publish
” post on
his blog, and was thoroughly stunned; here was advice that ran
against everything I’d ever heard, and yet it completely made
sense. I discovered Dean Wesley Smith and Kristine Katherine Rusch
around this time—two long-time writers with careers like the one I
hope to have someday. The more I learned about the changes in the
publishing industry, the more I realized that
Bringing Stella Home
would probably
find its audience better as a self-published ebook than a
traditionally published novel. The severe dearth of classic space
opera and space adventure at World Fantasy 2010 (with the notable
exception of Night Shade Books) hammered this home to me as
well.

In spite of the short-lived depression
the first draft put me through, writing this novel has been a true
joy. I hope some of that passion was shared as you read it. If you
enjoyed it, the best, most awesome thing you could do is share it,
blog about it, tell a friend, post a review or tag it on
Amazon—every little bit helps. The thing about indie publishing is
that it’s all about the readers, which is exactly as it should
be.

As of right now (October
2011), I have finished the first draft of the sequel to this novel.
It needs a ton of work, including a new title, so it probably won’t
be available until 2012 or so, but it’s pretty awesome. It takes
place five years after the events of
Bringing Stella Home
, and includes
James, Lars, a couple of love interests, and another showdown with
the Hameji. So stay tuned for when that book comes out!

If you want to find me on
teh internets, the best place to start is probably my blog,
One Thousand
and One Parsecs
(onelowerlight.com/writing). There, you can sign up
for
my email list
, where I do
periodic giveaways and share news about my latest releases. I’m
also on
Twitter
(@onelowerlight)
as well. As new releases come out, I’ll definitely be posting them
there. My goal is to publish a minimum of two novels per year, and
I have a ton of ideas for stories in the Gaia Nova universe, so
expect to see some of these characters again!

In closing, I just want to say thank
you for reading this book! Without you, stories like this one
wouldn’t come alive; they’d just be sitting in a hard drive, or
taking up space in a cardboard box somewhere. My dream is to make a
living telling stories that I love, and I couldn’t do that without
readers like you. So thanks again, and I hope to see you
soon!

Acknowledgments

I got a lot of feedback
with this novel, and every little bit helped. First, I would like
to thank Brandon Sanderson for teaching his excellent writing class
at BYU, English 318R. Next, I’d like to thank my writing group from
that class: Stephen Haskin, Sarah Ray, Max Florschutz, and Nathan
Waitman. I’d also like to thank my first round of test readers:
Charlie Holmberg, Jason Housely, Officer Joel Frary, Ben Hardin,
Julie Black, Stephen Dethloff, and Kindal
Debenhaum
…
yes,
even you, Kindal. Thanks also to my second round of test readers:
Mykle Law, Peter Johnston, Jenna Kimble, Craig Roddin, Liel Boyce,
and Lieutenant David Kerman. Finally, I would like to thank C.A.
Jacobs (aka “minion”) for her help with the last revision, Kindal’s
writing group (Emily Debenhaum, Andy Lemmon, Aneeka Richins, Ben
Hardin, Megan Hutchins) for help with a couple of scenes, Dan Wells
for his amazing 7-point plotting system, Josh Leavitt for his copy
editing services, Lorenz Hideyoshi Ruwwe for the excellent cover
art, and Scott Bascom for the help with the teaser. Thanks so much,
guys! This book would not be nearly as great without
you.

The saga of Gaia Nova continues in
Heart of the Nebula!