A Planet Too Far: Beyond the Stars, #1 Read online

  Contents

  The stories herein...

  Foreword (Patrice Fitzgerald)

  Venatoris (G. S. Jennsen)

  Hope 91 (Nick Webb)

  Symbiosis (Rory Hume)

  War Stories (Samuel Peralta)

  The Mergans (Ann Christy)

  The Immortals: Anchorage (David Adams)

  Pele’s Bee-keeper (Annie Bellet)

  Services Rendered (Theresa Kay)

  Spike in a Rail (Logan Thomas Snyder)

  The First to Fall (Sabrina Locke)

  The Ivory Tower (Elle Casey)

  Beyond the Stars

  A Planet Too Far

  The stories herein...

  Venatoris (G. S. Jennsen)

  Humanity may have colonized much of the galaxy, but space remains as dangerous as ever, and so do the people inhabiting it. When Alexis Solovy‌—‌space explorer, freelance scout, recalcitrant wanderer‌—‌lands the contract of a lifetime, the race is on to claim the prize. Now she must not only outrun but outsmart her rivals to uncover the secrets of an ancient, mysterious pulsar. For deep in the void, far beyond the reach of civilization, wealth and renown matter little absent the ultimate reward: survival.

  Hope 91 (Nick Webb)

  A child escapes Earth aboard a NASA spaceship, one of the few chosen to settle a new world thousands of lightyears away. With only a few robots as companions and decades of space travel ahead of him, the boy soon learns there is another space traveler nearby in another ship, and will do whatever it takes to talk to her. To see her. To console her. To laugh with her.

  And hopefully, against all odds, to love her.

  Symbiosis (Rory Hume)

  Mariana Soto arrived in orbit around Verdu with one job: to observe the elevator taking cargo down to the planet. When the job ended up being more than Mari expected, and she was in the middle of an interplanetary war she knew nothing about, the only way out might be her coworker… a symbiote without a name.

  War Stories (Samuel Peralta)

  You don’t really want to hear about war. You want to hear about courage and honor. You want the medals, the bugles, the drums. You want to hear about starships on fire off Orion’s shoulder, plasma beams glittering as they slice through inertial drives. I’m sorry. This isn’t that story.

  The Mergans (Ann Christy)

  They are almost legend, but not quite. In a galaxy as vast as ours, it’s easy to miss one planet laid to waste. And if a few centuries pass and history remarks on the changes on that planet somewhere, who is to say what‌—‌or who‌—‌caused it? Are they pirates or rescuers? Fanatics or bringers of justice? The answer depends on who is asked.

  To those who see the dark, round shapes in their sky, they are not legend. They are harbingers of the end.

  The Immortals: Anchorage (David Adams)

  Recruited into the mysterious Synapse Foundation, Nicholas Caddy‌—‌still bearing the scars of an interstellar war‌—‌is dispatched on his first mission with the Immortals. A passenger liner, the Anchorage, has gone silent. Their task is simple: find the ship, salvage what they can, report what happened. Simple.

  Simple.

  This is Part two of The Immortals series set in the Universe of War, thirteen years before the events of Symphony of War: The Polema Campaign.

  Pele’s Bee-keeper (Annie Bellet)

  A pilot crash lands on a faraway moon and discovers a solitary woman living there, trying single-handedly to terraform this barren world. Somehow the woman, layered in veils and mystery, is more than she seems. Somehow she knows that there was an explosion… a loss… a death.

  There are sides to every fight, and secrets in every war. And sometimes it’s impossible to know if someone is an enemy or a friend.

  Services Rendered (Theresa Kay)

  Li’hanna, a member of the prized and elusive Kotkaa race, is prepared to do anything to keep the secrets of her clan out of the hands of the evil imperial fleet.

  Captured by one of the imperial hybrids and his human associate, she’s smuggled aboard a transport ship that belongs to the vengeful Jeren Skalos. When she manages to break free, she finds herself assisting the human crew to outwit the enemy‌—‌instead of running for her life.

  What starts as a desperate escape attempt engenders something else‌—‌a partnership that could be the beginning of a rebellion against the empire.

  Spike in a Rail (Logan Thomas Snyder)

  Trouble is brewing aboard Over/Under Station. Returning to the station after an extended absence, the huntrex Xenecia of Shih’ra is summoned by an elderly mystic known only as “the Grom.” The Grom has had a vision, she explains, one that speaks to the station’s imminent destruction… and only Xenecia can prevent it. How this catastrophe will come to be, however, the vision did not reveal. Is the station doomed, or can Xenecia discover the truth behind the Grom’s vision in time‌—‌even when all is not as it seems?

  The First to Fall (Sabrina Locke)

  When Fallan Jin-Dahl was six years old, her father gave her a child’s toy she named Paladin. Ten years later when Paladin goes missing, Fallan discovers there might be a whole lot more to the object than she believed. She might not be the person she’s always thought herself to be. The hunt for Paladin brings two mysterious guys onto her ship‌—‌Alden and Finn Hendrix‌—‌but are they her protectors or her jailers?

  Fallan’s journey to find a lost toy leads her into adventure and tragedy. She will have to choose whether to cling to her family and her past or leave her old life behind in order to find out who she is‌—‌and more importantly‌—‌who she can become.

  The Ivory Tower (Elle Casey)

  In a world where the human race is at risk of extinction, the future is in the hands of the last four girls in existence. Each is kept in isolation, her every hour scripted and controlled by a team of men who call themselves fathers. Zelle has accepted her fate until one day someone offers her a choice: remain in her ivory tower to become a mother to future generations, or escape and perhaps live another life where free will is no longer just a dream.

  Foreword

  by Patrice Fitzgerald

  SO WHAT EXACTLY is space opera?

  The term was coined in 1941 by a writer named Wilson Tucker… and he didn’t mean it as a compliment. His idea of a space opera was a “hacky, grinding, stinking, outworn, spaceship yarn.”

  A more flattering description comes from science fiction anthologists and authors David G. Hartwell and Kathryn Cramer, in their 2007 collection The Space Opera Renaissance, who defined the genre as “colorful, dramatic, large-scale science fiction adventure, competently and sometimes beautifully written, usually focused on a sympathetic, heroic central character and plot action, and usually set in the relatively distant future, and in space or on other worlds, characteristically optimistic in tone. It often deals with war, piracy, military virtues, and very large-scale action, large stakes.”

  To me, that describes space opera pretty well… and the collection of short stories in Beyond the Stars: A Planet Too Far surely fits the bill. Here you’ll find drama, larger-than-life heroes and heroines, and everything from classic “pew-pew” military battles to gargantuan starships traveling across the galaxies to make peace and settle planetary squabbles.

  What should also be mentioned is that these stories are fun. Space opera gives a writer the biggest canvas possible… the entire universe! Whatever bizarre alien creature anyone could imagine can come to life in one of these stories. Conflicts and relationships of every conceivable type can be played out against a background of invented worlds and weird civilizations. There are no limits. The only boundaries are the walls of our brains.
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  The authors in this anthology managed to fit all these qualities into the short story format. Concise but powerful tales, each like a precious gem mined fresh from the writer’s imagination, are lined up here before you, one after another, in a string of mesmerizing stories.

  Now it’s time to take the pilot’s seat and strap in for the ride. The g-forces are about to hit you. We’re powering up and heading… beyond the stars.

  Patrice Fitzgerald

  April 1, 2016

  About Patrice

  Intellectual property attorney, part-time opera diva (meaning real opera… she’s a mezzo-soprano), and CEO of a boutique publishing company, Patrice Fitzgerald has been happily self-published since Independence Day, 2011. Her books include Karma of the Silo, based in Hugh Howey’s world of WOOL; Running, a standalone political thriller about the U.S. Presidential race; and numerous short stories that have been anthologized in The Future Chronicles as well as in other collections. She’s currently writing a space opera trilogy, Star Crimes, featuring aliens, spaceship battles, and an investigator with an unnerving ability to penetrate minds and read memories.

  Patrice publishes other authors who write in the cozy mystery, romance, and fantasy genres, and is the founder and series editor for Beyond the Stars. She also writes some very different kinds of books under two pen names.

  Patrice is the one asking the questions in the Q&A segment after each story. The curious will have no trouble finding her on Facebook (far too often). She lives in New England with her husband and tries to keep up with the adventures of her four children, two of whom came to her by birth and two by marriage.

  Venatoris

  by G. S. Jennsen

  “The fast lane I am flying down is one

  with no end in sight

  filled with reckless adventure and

  paved with dangerous delights.”

  ‌—‌ Ashley Young

  YUZHOU LI ORBITAL STATION

  Shi Shen Stellar System

  1,080 Parsecs from Earth

  March 2317

  “DOUBLE BOURBON, STRAIGHT up. Double everything. Except the ice. Don’t double the ice.”

  Alexis Solovy glanced down the bar in idle curiosity at the source of the dramatic pronouncement. A woman with frizzy black hair and pale, bleached skin sagged off a stool and onto the bar, arms splayed out in defeat. She looked familiar, but damned if Alex could pull a name out of anywhere. “Bad day?”

  The woman didn’t lift her head from where it lay propped sideways on her elbow. “My ship is trashed. A mangled heap. Bloody asteroid spun out when I tried to grapple it. I limped back here like a crippled monkey, jack shit to show for my trouble.”

  Alex raised her glass in contrived sympathy and turned away. If the woman didn’t have any useful leads, it wasn’t worth the pain of engaging in conversation, polite or otherwise.

  Intel was the only reason to come to this godforsaken place, the sleaziest bar on the sleaziest space station for two kiloparsecs. Tidbits. Information. Leads. On a good night, contracts.

  Her eyes roved over the room in search of better prospects. The bar was nearly two-thirds full‌—‌loud and busy, but not so full as to preclude card and target games and the occasional display of bravado. Bad synth blaring out of the speakers made it feel rowdier than the reality.

  Alex knew half the people on sight. Some she was on a last name basis with; others, an epithet basis. Many were interstellar scouts, freelance‌—‌same as her, while a few were traders, smugglers, or both. But she didn’t see any corp reps or brokers. Was no one in this cursed place doing business?

  “Alex, doll, you need something stronger than… what are you drinking?”

  She leveled an unimpressed scowl in Bob Patera’s direction as he leaned on the bar beside her. “A Carina Nova. They make it in civilized places like Earth. Luckily, the bartender’s visited civilized places.”

  He nodded with as much vigor as his inebriated state allowed. “Still need to get you something stronger.”

  “Can’t. I’m working.”

  He stared at her skeptically but couldn’t seem to think of a suitable response. Finally he took a long, fulsome sip of his drink, a dark and frothy concoction. “Go on a date with me.”

  It had to be at least the seventy-fourth time he’d asked in the two and a half years since she’d met him. “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because you think you’re a space pirate, Bob.”

  “But I am a space pirate.”

  She laughed in spite of herself. “My point exactly.”

  “You dated that Ethan Tollis guy, and he thinks he’s a synth star.”

  “He is a synth star.” And the dating happened years ago, before Ethan found well-deserved fame, but she wasn’t inclined to correct him.

  He looked genuinely offended. “I am a space pirate.”

  Patera was a good guy; a functioning drunk and a righteous lech, but a good guy nonetheless. He took the odd scouting job mostly to entertain himself and to have tales to brag about at any of a staggering variety of bars, of which this was only one.

  “Oh, clearly. But‌—‌”

  She recognized the man the instant he stepped in the bar and made sure she was the first person he made eye contact with. “Sorry, Bob, got to go. Working.”

  The man sat down at a table in the corner near the door. She stood up and headed for it with an air of deliberate casualness. It wouldn’t do for anyone else to notice him and beat her there, but she also didn’t want anyone else to notice her running for him.

  She made it to the table scot-free and slid in opposite him. “You have a job?” Perhaps not the smoothest greeting, but she rarely had the patience for pleasantries.

  He didn’t appear to mind. As a respected and experienced broker for numerous Alliance corps, he presumably knew interstellar scouts weren’t always the most socially well-adjusted people.

  “Astral Materials is getting ready to post an open contract for rare, high value elements at a newly discovered pulsar in Messier 71.”

  Messier 71 lay a considerable distance from Shi Shen, out in the void beyond settled space. She was okay with that.

  “What’s special about it?”

  “It’s a millisecond pulsar with three suspected planets identified. The scientific data is so promising they already gave it a name: Shanshuo. It’s the Chinese word for‌—‌”

  “Scintillation. I know. And it’s an open contract?”

  “Should hit the boards in the next hour or so. You did a great job on the contract for Palaimo last month, so I thought you’d be interested in a little forewarning.”

  Pulsar planets were rare, and rare was interesting. Better yet, millisecond pulsars were very, very old, which meant lots of opportunities for elements to bake, mature and transform. The odds leaned toward something lucrative waiting at Shanshuo.

  She harbored no doubts she would find that something if it was there to find, but she also had to find it first. “What’s the payout?”

  “Depends on what you find.”

  Her gaze bore into him until he made a prevaricating motion. “200K to 1.2 million.”

  She managed to stand up without sending the chair skittering across the floor. “Appreciate the tip.”

  Then she slinked out the door, hoping no one noticed her exit, and hurried down the curving walkway of the station’s outer torus as she messaged Kennedy.

  Ken, where are you? It’s time to quit partying and start working.

  The response took several seconds to come in.

  Are you sure? I literally just met a delicious merchant from Arcadia. He sells custom wide-band decrypters fabbed onsite.

  And he needs you to come to his hotel room so he can show them to you?

  Actually I suggested the hotel room.

  Alex reached the transfer lift and hopped aboard as it departed.

  Hey, it’s your vacation, but you said you wanted to come on a job with me so you could, and I
quote, ‘See what I did with all my free time.’ Here’s your chance. You can stay and bed Don Juan if you want, but I’m clamps off in twenty.

  Oh, fine. I’ll meet you at the ship. I’ve got to disentangle myself here.

  Twenty, Ken.

  * * *

  The hangar deck did not look to be in compliance with any safety regs from this century, and certainly not Earth Alliance regs, which Shi Shen claimed to be subject to. Maybe the jurisdiction got fuzzy once one breached space? Alex knew better, though. Her mother‌—‌Queen Admiral of the Universe, Earth Alliance Strategic Command Division‌—‌would have an apoplectic fit if she saw the wreck this place was. But her mother did not deign to frequent places such as this.

  A third of the bays were filled with half-broken ships while their owners, bots and assorted mechanics tried to put them back together. Two men were busy installing a new impulse engine in the ship next to hers, right there on the deck. She shook her head and strode past them.

  The Siyane sat at the end of the left row. Sleek, aerodynamic lines gleamed panther black, giving it a predatory appearance. It wasn’t the largest ship in the bay, but by God it was the most beautiful. As well it should be, since she’d designed it herself. Built to spec by the company Kennedy worked for, it represented nothing short of perfection.

  … Except for all the upgrades and customizations she desperately wanted to make but could not yet afford. Step by step, day by day.

  Kennedy came rushing up behind her, a mess of golden curls bouncing around a flushed face as she repositioned the straps of her jade slip dress on her shoulders. She skidded to a stop in a huff. “You’re not on board yet? I could’ve gotten‌—‌”