Homebound
Dedication
To J. B.
A genius, relative to his kind
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Dedication
Prologue: Unanswered Questions
1. Fire Away
2. Invasive Species
3. The Price You Pay
4. The Rock and the Hard Place
5. One Stone at a Time
6. Any Port in a Storm
7. Playing the Odds
8. Lost and Found
9. The Magic Word
10. The Flight of the Icarus
11. A Promise Kept
12. A Place to Start
13. Something Worth Saving
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Books by John David Anderson
Copyright
About the Publisher
The ache for home lives in all of us.
—Maya Angelou, All God’s Children Need Traveling Shoes
Unanswered Questions
“TAKE ME THROUGH IT ONE MORE TIME.”
The poor kid looked at him, eyes burning with frustration and impatience. Or maybe just exhaustion. “The whole thing?”
“Not the whole thing. Just the part where the Djarik boarded your ship.”
“The first time? Or the second?”
Salty, this one. But understandably so. Sergeant Hilliard rubbed his chin, covered in scruff. It was going on three days since he’d shaved. Four days since he’d had a hot shower. Seven since he’d had a full night’s sleep. Of course as bad as he probably looked right now, the displaced teen sitting across from him looked worse. Like something a Snid sucked up and spit out. Splotched skin, bloodshot eyes, untamed hair—he looked wild. Wounded. Maybe even a little dangerous.
Hilliard couldn’t blame him. He’d seen his fair share of orphans, rejects, and refugees since being stationed here, but this kid had truly been through the ringer. First he watches his father get taken away at gunpoint by the enemy. Next he’s left stranded on a crippled ship in the middle of the void. Gets attacked by pirates. Then he loses his brother—though really that one was at least partly on him. Then the Djarik come back for him for some reason, but before they can do whatever terrible thing they’ve got planned, he and what’s left of the ship’s crew rise up and take control of the alien transport, pointing it at the closest Coalition outpost they can find, depositing this poor, skinny, beat-up teen right into Hilliard’s lap.
The sergeant felt for him. Really. He was somebody’s son, after all. Hilliard was a father himself; he couldn’t fathom what it must feel like to have your family suddenly ripped apart like that. What he wanted was to give this poor boy a hug and a hot meal. But for now, all Hilliard could do was take his statement, get every bit of information he could. Because the kid’s father was an important somebody.
“The first time,” the sergeant clarified. “When they took your dad.”
The young man nodded, then started up again. You could tell he was just reciting at this point, like reading off a holoprompter. He’d relived this event so many times in his head that he’d almost grown numb to it.
At least until he got to the part where his father put him in charge, asked him to look after his younger brother. Then you could see the shame printed on his cheeks. The regretful choke in his voice. Just imagine, sending your own brother away in the middle of uncharted space.
Some things seem like good ideas at the time. In moments of crisis. When there really are no good ideas.
“And the Djarik didn’t say anything about what they wanted Dr. Fender for?”
The boy shook his head.
“They didn’t mention anything about his research? Or EL-four eight six? Anything like that?”
“I wasn’t there when they took him,” the kid said. “I just know he was the only one they took.”
“The first time.”
“The first time.”
Hilliard nodded and keyed a note into his datapad. None of his superiors bothered to tell him what this was all about, only that the kid might know something vital to the war effort, that his father was some big-shot American scientist who had been kidnapped, and that Aykari High Command had an interest in getting Dr. Calvin Fender back. Preferably before the Djarik got whatever it was they wanted out of him.
“Do you have any idea where my dad is?”
The kid stared hard at Hilliard, an intensity burning behind a pair of blue eyes, all the more striking for their bloodshot rims.
The sergeant shook his head. “We’re working on it, son. My understanding is that the Coalition is making it a high priority. They want to get your father back. We all do.” It wasn’t just a line. Hilliard had heard stories about what the Djarik did to their prisoners: torture, interrogation, execution without trial. There was no galactic equivalent of the Geneva Convention to protect them. This war between the Djarik and the Aykari—it was brutal, and everyone was paying the price.
There were days he honestly wished those lanky blue-or-orange-eyed Aykari interlopers had never shown up to begin with, parking their silver ships in the Earth’s atmosphere like they owned the place, dropping drills on every square inch of earth they cared to. But if it hadn’t been them, it probably would have been the Scalies. Or some other alien race looking to poke holes in the planet’s crust and squeeze it like a sponge, sucking out every last bit of V. That’s how it was: you had something the universe wanted, they would find a way to take it. You could try to fight or you could just let them have it, but either way, it was going to cost you.
God, he was tired.
“What about my brother?” the kid asked. “Have you found anything about him? Or the pirates that took him?”
Hilliard scrolled across his datapad’s screen, bringing up all the information he had on the kid’s brother. Name: Leo Fender. Age: thirteen. Human. Earthborn. Assigned as a passenger aboard the Beagle—a ship that was now just space dust. The family was from Colorado. A lot of ventasium in Colorado. Hilliard had gone skiing there once—before the constant avalanches made it unsafe.
That was pretty much all the info Hilliard had on the brother. But there was quite a bit about the company he was presumably keeping: several data files about the human pirate Bastian Black and his cutthroat crew, including a sizable bounty and an even bigger list of arrestable offenses. Leo Fender had picked the wrong ship to stow away on. Assuming, of course, that the kid was still with them, that the pirates hadn’t sold him to a slaver or simply blasted him out of the air lock. Hilliard wasn’t about to say it out loud, but the chances that someone like Black would keep ballast like that around were slim.
Unless he thought he could get something out of him. Pirates could find profit in almost anything. And if Black knew who Leo’s father was . . . At the very least he could use the kid to blackmail the dad. Force him to give up secrets. Research. Anything he could turn around and sell on the black market. Hilliard couldn’t think of a single thing he wouldn’t do to keep his own daughter safe.
The sergeant conjured up a pathetic excuse for a smile, immediately regretted trying, and resumed his somber expression. “I’m sorry. We don’t have any information about your brother, but rest assured, we are looking for him as well.”
“As hard as you’re looking for my father?”
Hilliard paused before answering; this kid was smart. Dr. Calvin Fender was a renowned physicist with intimate knowledge of V and the Coalition’s ongoing research into its uses. Leo Fender was just a kid. One of millions who had been displaced or abandoned as a result of this war. The higher-ups made it clear that finding Dr. Fender was a priority and that all effort would be expended to do so.
The hope was that Leo would just turn up. Much like his brother had.
“We really are looking for him,” Hilliard repeated. It was the best he could do.
The young man leaned across the table, fingers clinched. “Can’t you tell me anything? I’ve answered all of your questions and you’ve given me nothing. You don’t know where my father is. You don’t know where my brother is. You won’t tell me what you’re doing to find them. You can’t even tell me why they took my dad in the first place!”
Hilliard sighed. This kid was breaking his heart. The sergeant had already made up his mind that when this debriefing was over, he was going to go hunt down a cup of hot coffee for the both of them. Some small gesture to let this boy know that somebody out there cared, at least a little.
“Sorry, son. If there are answers to any of those questions, they’re above my pay grade. Believe me, I’m only trying to help.”
The kid slumped back in his chair, rolled his eyes to the ceiling. “Some help.”
Hilliard decided to switch gears for a moment, maybe get the kid to refocus. “Says here you’re interested in joining the Coalition Navy. That’s admirable.” Honestly, he could think of other words to describe it—foolhardy, impetuous, suicidal—but saying them could get him in trouble. Best not to bad-mouth the boss.
“I just want to get my family back,” the kid replied. “Even if that means going out and looking for them myself.”
“So what? You learn how to fly and then steal a starship and just go hunt them down?”
“If I have to,” the kid said, challenging him with a stare. “If you won’t.”
Hilliard knew better than to take it personally. You was the Coalition. The Aykari. The whole machine. The sergeant was just a cog.
“Probably better to leave the search and rescue up to the professionals.” He looked again at his notes. “Let’s get back to your dad, Dr. Fender,” he began, but his next question was cut off by the hiss of the door opening behind him. He turned with a scowl ready—he’d been told he could use this room for as long as he needed with no interruptions. “Excuse me, I’m sort of in the middle of some . . .”
The sergeant trailed off. Standing in the doorway was a human he didn’t recognize, though admittedly he didn’t know most of the personnel assigned to this outpost. She wore a Coalition uniform that looked too small, stretched over her muscular frame. A pistol sat on her hip, standard issue, but in her left hand was some other kind of device Hilliard didn’t recognize—something of alien design perhaps, sticklike, pointed at one end, like an oversize stylus. His eyes gravitated up to the woman’s hair—short and neon green—and back down to her eyes, which didn’t even seem to acknowledge his presence. They were fixed instead on the kid sitting on the other side of the table.
“Gareth Fender?”
The boy nodded. Suddenly the sergeant’s skin started to tingle, instincts from three years in the service kicking in. Something wasn’t right here. According to the bars pinned to their chests, Hilliard was a higher rank, yet this woman hadn’t bothered to salute. She might be in uniform, but she wasn’t a soldier.
Which meant she was trouble.
The impostor kept her gaze fixed on the kid. “You’re coming with me,” she said. It wasn’t an invitation or even a suggestion. There was no threat implied, but there was no doubt either.
Hilliard stood up, dropping his hand to his side, fingers reaching for the handle of his own weapon. “Excuse me . . . who are you? What’s your name and rank? What division do you belong to?”
The woman finally looked him in the eyes and Hilliard realized a second too late just how much trouble she was. He didn’t even have time to unsnap the button on the holster. The arc of blue energy spit from the tip of the unknown device, a jolt of forked lightning hitting him square in the chest, causing every muscle to seize. He hit the ground hard, feet twitching.
Sergeant Sam Hilliard’s last thought before blacking out was of sitting on his deck in his backyard with his wife and daughter back on Earth. So very far from here.
The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting.
—Sun Tzu, The Art of War
Fire Away
LEO FENDER COULDN’T CRY.
He tried. He stepped on his own foot, grinding the heel of one polished loafer into the toe of the other, wincing at the pain, but wincing wasn’t the same as crying, and even if it was, they would still be the wrong kind of tears. Physical pain wasn’t anything like what he was feeling now.
This was so much worse.
It didn’t make sense. He’d cried a hundred times since that day. He’d cried himself to sleep almost every night. He teared up at the most random times: clearing the plates at dinner, putting his clean socks back in the dresser, watering the daylilies—the ones they’d planted together—along the front porch. But now, when it was called for, when everyone was surely expecting him to, he couldn’t, and it made him angry at himself.
Gareth was crying. His brother’s eyes had been swollen for hours, a slow but steady procession like the drip of a melting icicle, earning him no end of sympathetic pats and pouting frowns, not to mention a piece of chocolate from their neighbor Mrs. Tinsley, who insisted it would make him feel better. Not that Leo wanted anyone’s sympathy or their chocolate. He just couldn’t stomach the thought that someone else was hurting worse than him—or that he wasn’t hurting enough. Cousins and nieces and colleagues and friends were all shedding tears. The tissue box sitting by the guest book was nearly empty. Even the sky itself was in mourning, the rain battering the stained glass windows. But Leo, dressed in his scratchy suit and clip-on tie, couldn’t summon a drop. He dug his nails into his arm until they nearly broke skin. Nothing.
Even staring at the picture of her that had been placed on the altar didn’t prompt the tears to come. The photo, taken the year before while they were on vacation, long hair and a wistful smile, her searching gold eyes staring across the Grand Canyon, which she was seeing for the first time. The picture, enlarged and placed on a stand, took the place of a coffin or an urn. Grace Fender had been too close to ground zero when the missile struck, practically vaporizing everything nearby. No physical remains—just a million reminders.
Leo fiddled with his watch, tempted to press the button that would summon her. That would play the video of her sitting on the porch, bringing her back to him, if only for a moment. He longed to hear her voice. I see you there, my little lion.
“How are you holding up?”
Leo glanced up to see his father standing in front of him, dressed in an almost identical suit to Leo’s, save for the fact that his tie required a knot. His father owned a million ties. A new one every Christmas, mostly from the kids because they didn’t know what else to get him. Leo shrugged. “People keep asking me that,” he said.