Make You See Stars

Make You See
Stars

Jocelyn Han

© 2013
by Jocelyn Han, Smashwords
Edition

Cover design by Jocelyn Han
& Clarissa Yeo

This book is copyright.
Apart from fair dealing for the purpose of private study, research,
criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright Act, no part
may be reproduced by any process without the prior permission of
the author.

1.

“Cheer up,
babe.”

Tori grimaced at herself in the
mirror as she adjusted her silky, red hair,
gathering some stray hairs into
the chignon in her neck. She didn’t like what she was seeing. The
official navy-blue skirt suit she was wearing wasn’t doing much for
her complexion. Then again, the poor overhead light wasn’t really
helping either. Nor was the fact that she
hated
these kinds of clothes.

Soon,
however, she’d face the bright
flashes of multiple cameras pointed at her. Better practice her
sweet-and-innocent, yet professional smile while she
could.

Make sure
you look presentable,
darling
, her
mother’s voice trilled in her mind.

“
Yes, mom,” she mumbled at
her reflection in the mirror, pulling another face at herself
before re-applying her make-up.

In a way, l
eaving Mars had been tough, but
it had also been a relief. It was the start of a new life – a life
she’d claim as her own. As soon as the cruiser had taken off and
left the surface of Earth’s red neighboring planet behind, Tori had
fled to her private quarters in the aft of the spacecraft to avoid
the hordes of journalists traveling on the same space line toward
Desida Two, the space station orbiting Saturn. The last thing she
needed was news-hungry paparazzi chasing her up and down the ship,
trying to get a few questions in with Victoria Weiss, daughter of
the Great German ambassador on Mars.

By now, s
he was completely fed up with
being an Elite icon. Why couldn’t she have had an older sibling to
take the brunt of all the attention and be in the limelight? She’d
have loved someone’s shadow to disappear into, invisible to the
public eye, able to live her own life without having to be an
upstanding example of whatever it was her parents expected of
her.

Tori
tentatively smiled, turning away from
the mirror on her high heels. Even though she was leaving her
entire life on Mars behind by taking up an internship in the
Astrobiology Department on Desida Two, she’d still have some
friends to welcome her on board when she got there. Anna and
Shirley – the two American girls her mother had always tried to
keep away from her, because they were ‘too different’. Like she was
only supposed to befriend exact clones of herself.

Anna had just graduated from
North Mars Uni with a degree in Geology. She was part of the
Cartography team mapping all of Saturn’
s moons for the first time in
history. She’d arranged for their friend Shirley to do her
internship there as well. If all went well, the three of them would
be sent out on multiple missions doing assignments on the moon
Enceladus together – Tori in her capacity of Astrobiology student,
taking samples of the subterranean waters hiding below the surface,
and her two friends as mapmakers. Desida Two was a multicultural
station with many scientists from Canadian Greenland and the Ten
States of America, so it was also a golden opportunity to practice
her English and make new, international friends.

“
Approaching Desida
Two
,” a
tinny voice above her head announced. “First docking point: Saturn
Boulevard. This cruiser will continue to Hydroponics and the Main
Cargo Hold, where this service terminates.”

Tori walked over to her trolley
bag to pack up, then stopped midway. The most convenient way
to
get to
her quarters on Desida Two was by entering via Saturn Boulevard,
but all the journalists probably knew that too. Maybe she should
sit this one out. After all, nothing waiting for her in the Main
Cargo Hold could possibly be worse than vulture-reporters circling
her to get the latest scoop on why Ambassador Weiss’s only child
had moved out at age twenty, wanting to finish college as far away
from home as she could.

She whipped out her pad and
typed out a message to Anna: ‘don’t
wait 4 me @ the blvd. dodging journalists.
will take cargo exit!!’ This was the most excellent idea she’d had
all day.

Grinning a self-congratulatory
smile, Tori sat back down in the chair next to the window showing
her new home looming in space. The vision was breathtaking: Saturn
was taking up most of the view from the porthole, but the object
truly standing out was Desida Two, sunlight hitting the station
floating silently in space glittering like a precious diamond,
presently flanked by one of Saturn’s smaller moons –
Prometheus.

There was no longer any need
to
keep
wearing her skirt suit to ‘look presentable’ now, but Tori decided
to get out of the prim outfit later. She had no idea how long it
would take for the spacecraft to dock at the Main Cargo Hold, and
she didn’t want to miss her opportunity to sneak out of this ship
unnoticed.

Tori shot a look at her
baggage containing
lots of twentieth-century casual clothes that she’d previously only
been allowed to wear at home – and even
that
had been a source of ongoing dispute with
her parents. After all, Ambassador Weiss couldn’t have his servants
blowing the gaff on his daughter dressing in anything else but
standard issue Elitist attire. Having an idealist daughter with a
penchant for nostalgia was highly inappropriate for a man who ruled
the entire Northern Martian Hemisphere with iron fist and zero
tolerance.

“
Airlock closing.
No more passengers
are allowed to leave the spacecraft. The next docking point is
Hydroponics,” the intercom droned on.

Tori sniggered softly.
It was a true shame
she wasn’t there to see the reporters milling around, looking for
her all over the Boulevard, wondering what had happened to her. The
reason most of them were here was actually completely unrelated to
her – Commander Kelso, head of Desida Two, had recently discovered
a small wormhole close to Saturn, and they were sending in a probe
tonight. It was possible this would be a chance at first contact
with intelligent life elsewhere in the universe. Most journalists
assumed her presence here meant that Ambassador Weiss wanted to
keep an eye on everything by sending his daughter to the station to
report back to him.

“
Main Cargo Hold: final docking
point,” the robotic voice declared. “All remaining passengers are
requested to disembark. Please take your personal belongings with
you.”

As Tori rolled her suitcase out
of her room and down the hallway, she thou
ght back to the few times she’d
visited her maternal grandparents in Great Germany. Back then, the
trains had still been safe to use for the Elite. She’d been on a
long-distance train running between Barcelona and Kiel, and she had
felt free and careless, despite the fact that she’d had to take her
personal belongings with her every time she needed the bathroom due
to petty theft running rampant on those trains. Nobody had been
there to tell her what to do – she’d been her own person. And
that’s what she intended to be once more on this
station.

When the airlock opened with a
hissing sound, Tori was the only one waiting
there to get off the ship. She
couldn’t help but smile at her own ingenuity – with a little luck,
the swarm of pressmen wouldn’t even recognize her by the time she
got to the Boulevard with her friends. She’d change as soon as she
got to her quarters. Her hippie clothes would be her
disguise.

The click-clack of her high
heels leaped off the aluminum as her feet hit the floor, the wheels
of her trolley bag following in their wake. The cargo bay was
enormous. Tori looked around her, blinking against the cold
fluorescent strip lights shining down from the ceiling. Where was
she supposed to go? There were no signs or exits anywhere, as far
as she could tell.

When she kept walking, she
suddenly spotted three men in the
left corner all the way to the end of the
hangar. They were busy processing cargo containers that had
probably arrived from one of Jupiter’s moons earlier that day. She
could read the Russian labels on the side of one of the containers.
After Russia had been dealt a crippling blow during the Great Wars,
most of the Elite population of Moscow had relocated to Ganymede
and Europe when there were still ships to take them
there.

Tori squinted at the
work crew. The
tallest of the three men seemed to be their superior officer,
judging from the fact that he was giving them orders – and doing
the least menial labor, which usually went hand in hand in this
kind of situation. She’d seen it so many times in her dad’s office:
the most self-important and authoritarian people seemed to be most
afraid of getting tired… or their hands dirty.

Tori veered off in the
direction of the cargo crew.
If nothing else, they’d be able to tell her where
the nearest exit for cruiser passengers was. As she sashayed toward
the three men, the commanding officer suddenly looked up and locked
eyes with her for a few seconds. His dark gaze then slowly trailed
down her immaculately clad body, one corner of his mouth pulling up
disparagingly before he looked up again, shaking his blond head
almost imperceptibly.

Okay – what the hell? Why was
this guy looking at her with disdain written all over his face?
Maybe she’d broken some unwritten rule by parading down his holy
cargo hold in heels. Admittedly, she looked like she’d wandered off
some chick-flick movie set and accidentally stumbled into the Star
Trek studios, but still. It was none of his business what she
looked like or what she was wearing.

At that
moment
, she
spotted a set of elevator doors in the corner. Brilliant – she
wouldn’t have to ask this unlikable man for the way to the living
quarters on the station. Tori raised her hand to press the button
next to the door when her gaze suddenly fell on the words ‘freight
elevator’ painted across the exit in gray letters.

When she swiveled around,
he was right behind her.

“
Can I help you?” he
asked,
a
look of amusement evident on his face. He spoke English like a
Brit.

“
Gee, I hope so,” Tori replied
acrimoniously. She looked up to meet his eyes, only to realize they
weren’t dark at all – they were blue as the sky on Earth, but his
dark eyelashes and eyebrows had made them seem darker from a
distance. “Actually, it would be really
helpful
if you could scrape the contempt off
your face before we continue this conversation.”

The
tiny smile playing around his mouth
broke into a lopsided grin, which caused her to stare at him in
fascination. He was gorgeous. And sexy. And he was obviously
laughing in her face.

Cocking his head to one side,
he observed her
through narrowed eyes. “You know, for such a nicely-dressed
Elite lady, you have an astonishing lack of manners,” he slowly
replied. “I guess money can’t buy everything.”

Her mouth fell open. “Excuse
me? What the hell is your problem?
I don’t know what your job at this station
is, but to me, you’re just a random guy showing me out of this
stupid cargo bay before riding off into the Saturnian sunset.
Okay?”

A brief quiver tugged at the
corner of his mouth. “Thanks for proving my point. Why don’t you
follow me, your
Highness
.” He gave her a mocking bow before leisurely strolling
over to the other corner of the hangar, flipping a switch in the
wall to open a sliding door revealing another elevator.

Tori st
rode past him, holding her head high
as she nodded at him coolly and entered the elevator. When nothing
happened and the annoying, good-looking guy in front of her
remained where he was with the same disdainful, mocking look in his
eyes, she rolled her eyes impatiently. “Am I supposed to put in a
coin somewhere to make this thing go up?”