Cargo (The Ascendants Book 1) Read online

  Cargo

  The Ascendants: Book One

  by V. M. Law

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2016.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in book reviews.

  Table of Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Epilogue

  Prologue

  The girl, nine, and her grandfather walked a few miles through a thicket before coming to a clearing in the hemlock, where they spread a blanket, sat, and waited among dying fireflies for the thrusters to ignite. The changing direction of the wind brought with it the shouts of technicians and engineers orchestrating the takeoff, soldiers and military leaders boarding the Morrow, for its flight to the Jovian Front.

  The amplified boom of authority projected over the vast hardpan that separated the knoll in which they sat from the spacecraft’s launch pad. The old man, righting his shoulders to face the night, pointed out constellations: the pole star, and the red ruby of Mars visible from the glade. He pointed out Venus, Mercury, and when he found Jupiter, he dropped his voice and said to his granddaughter, “Kasey, do you see that planet? Above that hemlock? The red one?”

  Kasey nodded, not knowing which prick of light her granddad pointed at. She was held rapt by the expanse before her, the vista of the cosmos, unable to focus on any particular star or planet, but staring past everything into the deepest black of the night sky over Springer Mountain.

  “That is where my father is, Kase.”

  “Your father?” A face, dim and half-remembered, surfaced in her mind. “What is he doing up there?”

  He let his gaze wander the ribbon of the Milky Way, turning to the cosmos to conceal from Kasey the intensity with which the moonlight blazed in his eyes. The phantom screams of disembodied voices died on the hardpan, their ghosts drifting toward the pair of interlopers hiding in the forest to steal a glimpse of what most people never saw in their lives. Night, the stars, rockets turning that night into day and sending skyward impressive bulks of steel and other alloys. Rockets that defied the laws of nature and brought man to the unending expanse that for centuries had been a barrier, a variable, an anomaly.

  The countdown would begin soon. He told her, “He’s watching, waiting for us to follow him.”

  Kasey, disconnected from the moment, stared at the sputtering light pulsing above, thinking about its flicker and the wan glow of fireflies.

  In the distance, the promised daylight rose from the cataclysm of jet propulsion that roared to the west. Kasey and her grandfather followed the eruption of flames with the wonderment and fear of those living at the base of a volcano, who wake up at night to trembles and are stuck knowing that everything is lost. They sat in the glade until the Morrow escaped Earth’s orbit, leaving in its wake a grey streak that cut the night in two.

  Chapter 1

  She waited for what seemed an interminable amount of time, an endless march of minutes spent crouched behind a shipping container. She was torn between the urge to flee the hangar, forgetting everything she heard, and the irrefutable magnetism of her captain’s and quartermaster’s treasonous utterances.

  The two men approached, bringing with them the static sizzle of deep space communications and a warbled voice barely discernible through the SatCom. Footfalls sounded in the emptiness, and the worry in their voices betrayed the magnitude of their conspiracy. She could have signaled her presence, given warning to the conspirators—a cough, a spilt mop bucket, a whistled melody would have done—anything to alert the pair that someone else shared their privacy. But she chose not to. Instead, Kasey Lee, a janitor, decided to stay and listen, sweating, feeling fear and adrenaline and knowing that her career as an interplanetary traveler sat on a cusp.

  “Sir, we are unsure why Ms. Farrow elected to come aboard. Could be standard security screenings. Could be she wants to make sure we don’t have a repeat of the Morrow incident. Could be she suspects something.”

  Kasey knew that voice. Captain Ajax Hardmason. He held a degree of celebrity for his daring and the number of deep space missions he had captained, but in recent years, Kasey knew him by his reputation for carousing and dishevelment. It became widely known that he was to pilot the Age of Discovery on its journey to the Europa mining station, and the dockets filled with alarming speed. Kasey herself felt the rush of excitement and surprise when she opened the letter of acceptance in her apartment on Earth.

  She pricked her ears up at the mention of Morgyn Farrow, the company’s security head. They must be up to something big, if Farrow has to bust them herself, she thought, finally resolving to peek her head out from behind the safety of her shipping container. The two men stood with their backs to her, hunched over a SatCom, Ajax shaking it in his hands every time the voice that spoke through it grew too warbled for comprehension.

  “You can take no chances, Ajax,” said the stranger. “Nor you, Gustav. If we are to succeed, she must be kept in—” Here, the reception failed once more, drawing groans from both conspirators. A hard smack from Ajax Hardmason against the device brought the sentence home just before the voice fell silent. “The Ascendency must have its—” static again, and the words were lost to Kasey, though Ajax seemed to have understood.

  The Ascendency?

  “Yes sir. Farrow’s engineers haven’t searched within two miles of the Catacombs. Our cargo is likely safe, but we can never be too careful.” This voice must have been the other man, Gustav. Through the sturdy tone of his voice, Kasey intuited the chain of command, beginning with the man speaking through the SatCom and moving down to Gustav, then Ajax, who shuffled on his feet and allowed his shoulders to slope down in the presence of his superiors. A convoluted reflection of the man she knew from a thousand thank yous, apologies, talk shows, award shows, speeches and dignified public appearances. He seemed callow, and even through the titanium surface of the shipping container, Kasey felt his narrowed eyes shifting and his fingers wrangling themselves into a confused knot.

  “Good. Remember, the Age of Discovery represents our final chance at closing the Jump, and if it remains active—” Silence fell, not interrupted by static, but rather the labored breathing of a sophomoric janitor promising herself to return to Earth and never leave the stratosphere again.

  The stranger resumed speaking, his tone professional once more, the imminence of tragedy dispelled by the reassurance of the man’s sultry tongue. “Hardmason. I do hope you are fit for the tas
k. We are depending on you.”

  Ajax must have given a gesture in response, for nothing more was said, and Kasey presumed the conversation drew to a close. She listened to her own heavy breathing, the words of treason echoing in her mind and rising to an inescapable din. What could the Ascendency want with the Age of Discovery, and how could they possibly hope to get it from MarsForm? Could the stranger’s voice breaking through the static be the Commoner, the most hated man in the solar system?

  Every way her thoughts turned, they came back to the same place: the starboard-aft cargo hold on the bottom level of the Deep Space Freighter where nosiness and bad timing initiated her into the secrecy of the Ascendency, mythical warriors of the space age, fighters for a doomed cause banished from Earth by the Terran Council. She knew the Ascendency from scores of misdeeds attributed to them. Wasn’t it they who sabotaged the troop transporter, the Morrow, twelve years ago, ending the lives of twenty five thousand men and women in their twenties and thirties?

  Ajax and Gustav, in the absence of the stranger, resumed their worry. The captain turned to Gustav and said, “Do you really believe that Farrow showing up is a coincidence?” His tone seemed to imply an answer; anyone who could be so daft surely constituted a liability.

  “Stay your worry, Hardmason. The only person who knows the location of the Catacombs, other than the Commoner, is myself. You wouldn’t imply that I am not committed to our mission?”

  Again, Kasey was given occasion to regret ever signing on to the Age, ever agreeing to cover a night shift buffing floors; her heart slammed against her ribs at the mention of the Commoner and she instantly realized that the stakes had been raised by the name’s utterance. That she gambled not with her job, with her dream, but with her life, and one misstep from this point could lead to her death. They could be armed, they could bludgeon her to a pulp with their fists to protect their secret because she did not only gamble with her own life, but with theirs, as well, for being a known affiliate of the Ascendants. The Commoner had proven a death sentence for more than one. Her tongue scraped against her mouth, seeming audible, amplified by her fear.

  When he did not receive a reply, Gustav continued, “You are the only pilot qualified for the job, and I am the only person who can even recognize Charybdis for what it is.”

  “How do you suppose we keep her out of The Cata— ”

  A hard slap ended the captain’s rant so abruptly that Kasey felt the sting in her own cheek. She molded her back to the corrugation as if she could press herself through the metal, becoming invisible.

  Gustav broke the quiet, his voice dropping to a low rasp that sputtered and spat every word. “The significance of the mission is far greater than you know, Hardmason, and you would do well to remember that you are my captain in name only.”

  “It isn’t stable yet. When we hit the atmosphere—”

  “I told you to stay your worrying,” Gustav barked, and in the ensuing hush, his words bounced back at the conspirators and their silent guest, growing muddled until nothing remained except the ringing in Kasey’s ears. “I know the Catacomb is secure because we are two days from Europa and she hasn’t found it yet. This ship is old and it holds even older secrets, and even with the entire security arm of the company on board, there will never be a complete report of everything in these cargo holds. As for the atmosphere on Europa, you might find it creates less turbulence now than it once did.”

  Ajax Hardmason regained his resolve. “You’re right. Even if she does know, we can’t do anything about it now. If it comes down to shooting—”

  “Then we shoot.”

  Kasey listened to the conspiracy with her eyes growing wider, her pulse quickening, distress sending her spine into a shiver.

  Ajax must have nodded in response, or drawn back his coat over the holster his pistol sat in, or some other menacing gestures that came to mind when Kasey visualized what transpired on the other side of the shipping container.

  “Good. We have more work to do,” Gustav said, regaining his amicable inflection. “You should get some sleep. We’ll need plenty of energy for the Catacombs when we land.”

  “Energy,” Ajax replied with a laugh, he too sounding more like the celebrity pilot that Kasey knew him as. “More like Vitrol. I fear I’m getting old.”

  The two men walked away, leaving Kasey with her thoughts and her mop bucket, crouching behind the container until long after the footfalls faded into the distance. After some time, Kasey ventured from her hiding place, still wrestling with Catacombs and Vitrol and special cargo. What are they planning? she thought, calling to mind a thousand conspiracies and mixing them up with stories her grandfather told her—that his father told him—of deep space’s lawlessness.

  When she reached the custodial closet, she replaced the mop and bucket and descended even further into the Age of Discovery to her bunk, where there were no more windows through which to look at stars, and where the other custodians, waste teams and mechanics drank, gambled and put crushed up pills up their noses. She walked the aisles of triple-stacked bunks and made eye contact with no one. She started no conversations, and bypassed the bunk of Llewellyn Mantiss, who would doubtlessly want to hassle her for working so late every day, saying, “Why don’t you put your load down and relax, Kase.”

  Her response always a variation of “Because I don’t want to clean toilets for the rest of my life.”

  She scanned for Mantiss and his friends, but did not see them. She thought about telling him in the morning but decided that prudence suited her more. Restless, she stared at the vaulted titanium ceiling above her, consumed by what might sit in the reaches of the ship, in the Catacombs, and why it commanded such secrecy. And what the hell is Vitrol?

  Sleep took her late that night, after most of the carousing had died down and the snores of drunken crew members achieved crescendo.

  Chapter 2

  Kasey stirred substitute into her coffee and shuffled powdered eggs about her plate, contemplating what she overheard. She did the same throughout the night in the intermittent periods when the weight of her secret slowed her breathing and forced her from sleep. She was now sitting at a panoramic window in the simulated light of morning, aboard the floating city of treasonous captains and interloping security chiefs. Fixing her gaze on the star systems, she preferred to dwell on her coffee, taking sips of the tepid brew to the tension of her recent memories.

  “You look like a pile of rocks.”

  Kasey jumped, her coffee sloshing over the rim of her mug and rolling down to pool on the table. She welcomed the intrusion. “Morning, Llewellyn. You caught me thinking.”

  Llewellyn Mantiss took an empty seat beside her, placing his own coffee and a plate of rehydrated eggs on the table with care. “It must have been good.”

  “Just a dream I had last night. About Corbin,” she said, not wanting to incriminate.

  “Corbin Lee. Still kicking, right? Driving his combine?”

  “What else would he be doing?” She sipped her tepid coffee, missing its lost steam. “You know, when I told him I was signing on at Olympus Station, he said, ‘Mars? What on Earth for?’”

  “What’d you tell him?” Llewellyn asked through a mouthful of eggs.

  “I told him that when I am his age, Earth would be the dead planet.”

  Mantiss laughed, not noticing the eggs falling from his drooping bottom lip into his beard. “You must be his favorite.” He tossed his head back, sloshed coffee in his mouth, and swallowed. Kasey reflected. She liked Mantiss’ company because he seemed disinterested, and at home. Like a trip from the Earth, to Mars, to Jupiter, and back to Earth posed no threats that weren’t encountered by any number of Earthbound humans working their jobs as farmers, store clerks, or bureaucrats. He joked with alarming sacrilege at the worst moments, and unabashedly told Kasey’s boss, Marlo Cunningham, to piss off. He was her only friend.

  Looking over the rim of his mug, Mantiss said, “You are up to something.”

 
She ran her fingers through her hair, knowing that she told terrible lies, and damning Mantiss’ acute perceptions of everything that went on around him. “I heard a conversation last night.”

  “Go on.” His fork rested on his empty plate, his eyes on Kasey’s.

  Kasey ventured a question. “What do you know about Vitrol?”

  “Vitrol? The drug? It’s illegal, an anti-aging thing that people used for deep space exploration before cryogenics or H3. It pretty much built MarsForm’s Uranus infrastructure; all of the workers were going real heavy with it.”

  Kasey sat up, eliciting a response from Mantiss visible only in the arch of his brow, the flare of his nostrils. He set his mug down, eyeing her with mock suspicion.

  “About as illegal as murder. After it made a killing for the pharmacist that invented it, it became known, in a most public and unfortunate way, that prolonged usage lead to dementia, memory loss. The whole thing was totally screwed. Who’s talking about Vitrol, anyway? I didn’t think there was any left.”

  “No one. Just something I heard in the common hall last night.”

  “So you hear someone talking about a drug and all of a sudden your curiosity is inflamed. You, who I can’t even get to share a drink with me, are asking about a drug you’ve never heard of that you heard mentioned by someone in the common hall.”

  Kasey felt her nerves shaking again, giving way, and she cursed herself for folding beneath the stare of the mechanic who seemed to see through every facial expression and hand gesture that Kasey made. “I—”

  She stayed her tongue when she noticed Mantiss’ eyes drifting from her own eyes, upward, to the vacancy above her head.

  “Custodial Technician Kasey Lee.” A familiar voice. Marlo Cunningham.

  Kasey Lee spun on her seat, facing the globular bulk of her boss, bathed in the stench of the man who had made his life scrubbing shit from a thousand latrines, who ate with vigor and heart, tearing through chicken breasts and steaks and the fineries not permitted to lower level employees. “Yes?”