The Outback Stars
Authors: Sandra McDonald
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Contents
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To my parents, for everything. And to Stephanie, Terry, and JPK, for everything else.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
A novel is never created in a vacuum, not even the vacuum of outer space. My thanks for this book's Big Bang go first to the extraordinary men and women of the United States Navy, including Kathy Harris, James Goudreau, Robin Allen, Linda Hutton, and Jay Munninghoff. They taught me how to be (and not to be) a military officer.
My gratitude also goes out to the faculty and students of the Viable Paradise workshop on Martha's Vineyard, especially James Patrick Kelly, Steven Gould, and Debra Doyle. May there always be midnight strolls to the beach to gaze at the stars. Fond thanks to the folks at the Strange Horizons workshop in New Jersey, where Mary Anne exclaimed, “Don't tell me what happens next! Get it published so I can read it then.”
I am grateful to Patrick Nielsen Hayden and James D. Macdonald for making these adventures better, and to Teresa Nielsen Hayden for believing in me. Many thanks also to my agent, Jeff Kellogg, and that rainy day in a Boston bakery when we became partners. His comments and insights have been amazing.
Most important, thank you and much love to Wilfred and Carol McDonald, Eric McDonald, David Bruno, Brian McDonald, Stephanie Wojtowicz, Terry Berube, Terry Odell, and the spouts. Every sailor needs a port to call home, and you've been mine.
PROLOGUE
Despite the protective suit shielding her from flames, Lieutenant Jodenny Scott expected to die very soon. The prospect should have alarmed her, but on some dim, exhausted level, she supposed it was only fair. So many of her shipmates were already dead or dying, cut down by unexpected violence in the middle of what should have been routine operations. Why should she be any different? She fought her way through the fire, her damaged lungs laboring, her gloved hands groping for the control panel that would put an end to this inferno.
“Lieutenant,” said the voice over her commset. “Report!”
She would have been angryâhow did they expect her to talk when she could barely even
breathe
?âbut all her energy was focused on her mission. If somehow she survived this disaster, she would direct her fury toward the people who had caused it. The murderers who'd killed her friends and coworkers. Very briefly she thought of the man she loved, and how she had last seen him: burned, bleeding, unable to even hear her final farewell.
Jodenny's hands closed on what she hoped was the control panel. She bent forward so that her visor was flush against the metal, but ash and smoke made it impossible to see. In her mind's eye she imagined the panel: the sensors, the indicator lights, the override. Her gloves were too bulky to feel fine details. She pulled one off, ignoring the noisy alarm in her helmet that indicated a suit breach. She touched searing hot metal and recoiled with a cry. But then her fingers brushed against the lever she needed, and she wrapped her burning, blistered hand around its handle.
Here goes everything,
she thought, and pulled with all her strength.
A new alarm started to screech. With violent speed, smoke and debris and corpses and anything that wasn't lashed down, including Jodenny herself, rushed toward the vacuum outside the ship. She felt herself lifted and carried toward the stars, her lungs collapsing, her suit unable to protect her. But she had done it. She had saved her ship.
This time
 â¦
CHAPTER ONE
If Jodenny spent one more day on the planet Kookaburra she might try to kill herself again.
Not funny,
she told herself, and not true, but morbid humor was her only defense against the prospect of spending the next eight hours stuck in a cubicle, routing invoices that nobody at Fleet gave a damn about. Nearly dying on the
Yangtze
was one thing, but bureaucratic suffocation promised to be no less fatal. First thing Thursday morning she headed to the Assignments building, but as she drew near she saw that Matt Lu had beaten her to it.
“Forget it.” Lu shaded his eyes against the sun. “No requisitions came in and the Survey Wing didn't post any new jobs.”
“What about the
Aral Sea
?” Jodenny asked. The freighter, with its complement of five thousand crew and colonists, had been in orbit for a week.
“Leaves today for the Alcheringa. Trapped for another day in paradise, that's us.”
He gave her a jaunty salute and headed off toward the mess hall, circling a miniature sculpture of Wondjina Spheres as he went. With the cadets on holiday, Alice Training Base's peaceful air was broken only by the hum of robots cutting the grass on the soccer fields. Beyond the main gate, a lush eucalyptus forest stretched all the way to the pink sandstone of the MacBride Mountains. Earth must have looked like that once, back before the Debasement, but Jodenny had no time for beautiful landscapes and instead went inside the cool, ink-scented lobby of the building behind her.
Before Jodenny could ask, the ruddy-faced sergeant on duty said, “No, Lieutenant Scott. Yes, I'm sure. Yes, I remember you'd be eternally grateful if I called you the moment anything came in. So would Lieutenant Lu, Lieutenant Armstrong, Lieutenant Bellâ”
“Quit your blabbering, sailor.” Chief Pau came to the counter with an armful of files. “Take these down to Processing and shove them up their asses, why don't you? Goddamned paperwork.”
As soon as they were alone, Pau leaned over and gave her a conspiratorial wink. “Thirty minutes ago the
Aral Sea
sent out a priority call for a supply officer. The requisition is in the commodore's queue.”
“Chief, I love you,” Jodenny blurted out. She regretted the inappropriate words immediately, but Pau only grinned.
“Better get over there before everyone else smells blood in the water, Lieutenant.”
She slipped out the back door, brazenly cut across the V.I.P. parking lot, and reached the commodore's suite thirty seconds later. The cold, quiet offices were carpeted in blue and curtained in gold. Models of starships and a massive Team Space pennant provided the proper military decoration. Campos's aide, busy on a link, held up a hand to forestall her from barging in on the commodore. From behind closed doors, Jodenny could hear an angry voice.
“Do you really think I'd throw everything away?” a man was saying. “Fifteen years in, pension on the horizon, and I'm going to take up with an able tech half my age? I'd be an idiot!”
Campos's reply was too low for Jodenny to distinguish any words. A moment later the door was wrenched open and a lieutenant commander, his face red, stormed past Jodenny and out of the suite. Jodenny kept her gaze averted. She waited a respectful moment and then knocked on Campos's door.
“Good morning, ma'am,” Jodenny said.
Campos was standing behind her desk, her expression grim. “Lieutenant Scott. What brings you here?”
“I came to talk to you about that requisition. On the
Aral Sea
?”
“News travels fast.”
“Consider me packed.”
“Come in and sit down, Lieutenant.”
Jodenny resisted the urge to rub her right thigh. Most days she forgot entirely about the new bone there, but every now and then too much exertion would set it throbbing. She sat in a straight-backed chair and focused on a pink gymea lily on Campos's desk. The commodore came from authentic Aboriginal ancestry, and she'd decorated her office with art, sculpture, and weavings from Old Australia.
“I don't think you're ready to go back into space,” Campos said.
“I passed my physicalâ”
“With a moderate duty recommendation for six months. I don't think that means jumping into the middle of a deployment.”
Jodenny lifted her chin. “I'm cleared for reassignment, ma'am, and there's nothing for me to do here.”
“There are dozens of other officers waiting for jobs to open up, and five of them are supply types like yourself.”
“But I'm the best one for the job. You know my record, ma'am.”
“I do.” Campos gazed at her squarely. “I know what you did on the
Yangtze
and I know what you did afterward.”
Jodenny didn't flinch. The scars on her wrists had been hidden so well by plastic surgery that even she couldn't see them anymore. “I've earned this.”
“Maybe. But I've decided to send Lieutenant Lu instead.”
“Commodoreâ”
“I just pinged him,” Campos said. “He's going to have to hustle to get on the
Aral Sea
's last birdie at noon. Don't worry, Lieutenant. The
Alaska
's due to arrive in a few months. Maybe they'll have something.”
“Yes, ma'am.”
Jodenny waited until she was outside before she pulled out her gib and pinged Fleet. Commander Taymore appeared on the screen wearing a distracted expression.
“Good morning, Lieutenant. How are things?”
“Fine, sir.” Jodenny squared her shoulders, knowing that what she was about to do was highly irregular. “I was hoping the admiral was in.”
Taymore scratched his chin. “He's stuck in a meeting. Something I can help you with?”
“It's about the
Aral Sea,
sir. I don't think it can wait.”
“I heard they had a last-minute billet open. Did the commodore choose someone else?”
“Yes, sir. But I want it.”
“I know what the admiral told you,” Taymore said. “Promises made during the award of the MacBride Cross aren't taken lightly. But are you sure? The
Aral Sea
isn't a happy ship.”
And I'm not a happy lieutenant,
Jodenny thought, but it didn't matter. Unlike the
Yangtze,
the
Aral Sea
was intact and functional. Her bulkheads hadn't been ripped open to the stars. Her decks weren't stained with blood nor fused with flesh, and if any ghosts haunted her passageways at least they didn't whisper Jodenny's name.