Island in a Sea of Stars (7 page)

“I'm already fully loaded, sixty-three people, but I've got room for a couple more. You may have to sit on my lap.”

“If that's what it takes,” he said. Five other evacuation ships lifted off.

Most of the people assigned to Tower One had already gotten away, but the bulk of Iswander's personnel had been out at the various work sites for the day shift. The processors and materials handlers were all in Tower Two, and the off-shift workers were in the crew quarters on Tower Three. Iswander felt a sick certainty that they were all lost already. Nothing he could do about it.

He was overwhelmed and furious. “This was supposed to be safe. My engineers, my designers, my specialists were all—”

Rlinda cut him off. “We can point fingers later. Get aboard.”

As he ran, he realized that this was the worst possible timing. The disaster would have repercussions through the Roamer clans, they would know of his failure right before the election of the new Speaker. Garrison Reeves had issued many public warnings; an inspection of records would show that Iswander Industries had operated on very narrow safety margins, had declined to use superior—but more expensive—materials.

Many people were going to die here. That was unavoidable. He had to rescue as many as possible. If he had, say, a ten percent casualty rate then he would still look good, he could still claim that he had led them through a disaster, saving all but a few martyrs. The sympathy vote might even be stronger than his current campaign.

But he was going to lose more than ten percent. A lot more.

As they charged through the access tube to the waiting cargo ship, Iswander felt the heat blazing around him. The walls of the thermally shielded tunnel had a dull shimmer, nearing the melting point. If even the smallest crack broke through, the searing temperatures would incinerate them in an instant. Iswander didn't intend to be one of the casualties.

Tasia's voice shouted across the comm, “The outer section of the landing deck just collapsed. All available ships have launched, and we are going to be gone in a minute if you're not aboard!”

They raced through the tunnel into the crowded loading deck, the last ones aboard, and Robb sealed the hatch. He touched his comm. “
Go,
Tasia!”

Iswander collided with a group of panicked, sweating workers. They all recognized the chief. Most were too stunned to say anything, their faces red, their eyes wide, but others glared at him. He saw their accusing expressions—and knew it was only the beginning. They already knew whom to blame.

With a lurch, the
Curiosity
lifted off just as the low landing deck dropped away. The structural sheets buckled and sank into the lava, where they melted in a discolored swirl.

Rlinda shouldered evacuees aside, clearing a path to the cockpit. There were a great many people aboard, but the numbers were deceiving. Iswander was responsible for 2,014 people, and only a small fraction of them had gotten away.

The
Curiosity
rose into the sky, and Iswander saw the other half of the split planet looming huge overhead. Tasia fought with the controls against thermal buffeting.

Once the evac ships departed, there would be no survivors left behind on Sheol. Some would die instantly in a flash of heat; those who managed to reach temporary shelter would bake slowly in a horrible death.

He had to start thinking and planning. He had a very serious problem.

12

GARRISON REEVES

When the bloater explosions happened, Garrison was accelerating away—and they missed the worst of the blast.

When Elisa had threatened to take potshots, Garrison powered up the shields, activated his engines, and set a course away. He never believed she would actually fire on them! It was probably just a warning shot to prove she was serious.

And the bloater detonated like a small supernova. The shock waves compounded the flame fronts, blossoming outward like solar flares. Garrison was already moving, activating the stardrive, shields on full.

Seth yelled. The windowports automatically opaqued as the flash roared over them, outracing even their engines.

Before the damaged stardrive shut down again, they leaped far enough away that it took a full three minutes before the light from the growing explosion reached them as they hung there in utter darkness.

Their life-support systems were drained and damaged, but the hull remained intact. Garrison's hands flurried over the controls. Though in shock, Seth pulled himself together and helped his father. Garrison had never been so proud of him.

He didn't want to admit that Elisa was surely dead in the inferno. The conflagration had erupted so quickly, the shockwaves extending outward in all directions. No, she couldn't have survived back there.

Seth realized it as well, but they didn't talk of it. The boy finally whispered as the main lights came back on in the piloting deck: “Why did Mother do that?”

“She didn't know they would explode,” Garrison said, but he hated making excuses for her.

“She still shot at us—why would she take the chance?”

Garrison focused on the controls in front of him and willed himself not to look up to see Seth's expression. Instead he said in a quiet voice, “I really don't know…” Maybe he didn't know her at all, not the way he had thought.

She was so different from the woman he had met and fallen in love with. Growing up with clan Reeves, working at the mostly abandoned site of Rendezvous, he'd been trusted with starship runs from the time he was seventeen, flying back and forth to various clan strongholds.

But Earth was always a forbidden destination; Olaf Reeves made that very clear. The more he was told not to do it, however, the more tempted Garrison was, so he made an undocumented detour on one of his runs. When he saw the busy operations, the big ships and equipment, the modular habitations, he realized these could be used to great effect at Rendezvous. It could help clan Reeves finish their slow, long-term project.

Secretly, he had met with a Confederation trade representative, who was partnered with wealthy and ambitious Roamer industrialist Lee Iswander. Her name was Elisa Enturi. She was independent, hardened, out to make a good life for herself. He'd met her at a trade function and learned that she might be able to help him get some of the Iswander equipment modules for construction work at Rendezvous. She agreed to help.

The following night he had spotted Elisa at an Earthside bar and went over to talk with her. They went out on a balcony with their drinks, and she quieted him. “The meteor shower is going to be spectacular tonight. I want to see it.” Together, they watched the shooting stars, which were frightening and beautiful, and they didn't talk business at all.

Elisa had helped him make a deal with Lee Iswander, and he arranged to buy surplus modules, seeing that as his chance to show problem-solving abilities to his father, the sort of thing a clan leader would need to do. This was also a big deal for Elisa, because it made significant profits for Iswander Industries.

Proud of what he had accomplished, Garrison arrived back at Rendezvous with a flotilla of Confederation machinery and modules. Olaf was horrified and wanted nothing to do with the “help.” He publicly upbraided his son for making such a foolhardy mistake and refused to accept the delivery.

Elisa had a steel spine, though, and lashed back at the stubborn clan leader. “Sorry—the shipment has been paid for, and Iswander Industries will not take them back.” She dumped the equipment at Rendezvous and left.

Just to show his disdain, Olaf cut the equipment loose and let it drift out into space, not wanting to clutter the rest of Rendezvous with it. Garrison was appalled at the bigotry and stupidity, and told his father that. Olaf beat him down, but this time Garrison stood up and slapped his father back. “Do not treat me like a fool, Father, when you are an even bigger one.”

Garrison left and never returned. Back on Earth, he had found Elisa to apologize for the treatment she'd received from his pig-headed father. She told him she only cared about the treatment she received from
him
, and Garrison treated her very well.

They had celebrated, and commiserated, and slept together. When he realized that partnering with her was the most potent way he could defy his father, he and Elisa got married. She introduced him to Lee Iswander, and they began working together. Olaf disowned his older son, but Garrison didn't care.

He had been happy when Elisa got pregnant, though she found it inconvenient. Iswander gave her time off for the new baby and distributed her responsibilities to secondaries, promoted them instead of her, and Elisa felt left behind, but back then she didn't admit she resented her husband.

On Sheol, Garrison had had his work, but he cared more about his family than advancement. Oddly, although Olaf Reeves had never even met his grandson, Garrison began to realize the call of family that he hadn't understood before.

Now, in the aftermath of the bloater explosion, Garrison thought of the falling out with his father, and worried that the clan leader might have been right.…

As they drifted in open space, he and Seth spent eight hours assessing the damages. They repaired what they could, studying their energy levels and life-support reserves before calling up the starmaps.

“Where are we going now?” Seth asked.

Garrison didn't trust the engines, but he could limp along to a destination, provided it wasn't too far. After the pummeling it had received, this ship deserved a full refit and overhaul in an adequate spacedock facility, but he didn't know how he could afford that. He had left everything behind on Sheol.

Garrison had options, though. He was a Roamer. Maybe they could go to Newstation and ask for help, hope that some sympathetic person would offer assistance. But now that he had lost so much, still feeling the sharp pain in his heart from knowing that his wife was dead—and he had indeed loved her—he realized with a hollowness in his chest that he had only one place to go.

Home.

Garrison set course for the clan Reeves settlement at Rendezvous.

13

LEE ISWANDER

1,543.

The number haunted him.
1,543
. Lee Iswander wasn't even convinced it was an accurate count, but that was the official casualty number from the Sheol disaster.

Once he and the evacuees were taken to Newstation, two days' starflight away, Iswander felt it was his obligation to scroll through all the names, and it bothered him that so many were unfamiliar to him. A handful of team leaders, yes … shift supervisors, some of the crew chiefs, the five smelter barge pilots, but he simply didn't recognize hundreds of the names.

Frowning, he called up the personnel records, their images, studied how long those people had worked for him, the commendations or reprimands they had received. A few he recalled from walking through a cafeteria chamber in between shifts at Tower Three, but most were just random faces to him—men and women who had families, people with political leanings, people who loved their work, and people who hated it.

1,543.

No one gave him credit that almost five hundred had survived. Didn't that count for something? They only saw that he'd placed all those people in danger for his industries, but he had not provided adequate safety margins or a comprehensive disaster plan, not even enough escape ships. A quarter of them had been saved.

Three quarters of his personnel had died.

The escapees vocally blamed Iswander's lack of foresight, his cutting of corners, his failure to design proper protective systems. The survivors were not able to console the victims' families that all the deaths had been swift and painless, either. Even Iswander cringed as he thought of how many had been trapped inside the sunken smelter barges or the collapsing towers, roasted alive. It gave him nightmares—as well it should.

His ambitious facility should have been a shining example of his ability to make a profit while dancing at the cliff edge of danger—proof of Hansa business acumen and Roamer ingenuity. Yet it had been swallowed in a whirlpool of molten metal and stone.

He had submitted the engineering records to show that the structural materials and heat shielding should have been sufficient against the Sheol environment, but Sheol itself had grown worse. Roamers would have been forgiving in the face of a planetary disaster … but Iswander Industries had been warned. Knowing how capricious the universe could be, Roamers did not ignore warnings. Iswander simply hadn't wanted to spend the money.

All the evacuees, the injured as well as those who were simply shocked and angry, took refuge at Newstation. Clans met there, Roamers exchanged assistance, other ships came in to offer help to the refugees. There in the giant wheel habitat, they recovered, and they talked.

Normally, Roamer clans pulled together in times of crisis. Throughout their existence, they had faced setbacks and disasters, and their history was full of tragedies. But Iswander could tell by their whispers and glares that they did not feel sorry for him, nor would they ever forgive him.

Reunited with his rescued wife and son, Iswander holed up in his usual suite on Newstation, large quarters with all the amenities. He had barely noticed the place before; it was just a room where he slept and prepared for business meetings. Now, it became a place to hide. He couldn't stay here for long.

He sat in the chamber, staring at reports, reviewing his losses. He was ruined, of course. The Sheol disaster ripped away his safety net and would certainly drain him of everything he had. Lee Iswander would be reviled, disgraced—and there wasn't a thing he could do about it.

1,543.

Londa brought him a cup of pepperflower tea. It had never been his favorite—too sweet—but she felt as helpless as he did, and this was her way of making a gesture. “It'll be all right,” she said, finding nothing absurd in her statement.

“Thank you, Londa.” He took a sip of the tea, then shooed her away as politely as he could.