The Dark Between The Stars

TWENTY-SEVEN
GARRISON REEVES

When the bloaters exploded, Garrison had been accelerating away from Elisa’s ship. He had activated the stardrive, shields on full—and they missed the worst of the blast.

He could not believe Elisa had actually fired on them! No doubt she had meant it as a warning shot to prove she was serious, but the bloater detonated like a small supernova. The shock waves compounded the flame fronts, blossoming outward like solar flares.

Seth yelled. The windowports automatically opaqued as the flash roared over them until their engines made sufficient headway. Before the damaged stardrive shut down again, Garrison’s ship had leaped so far away that the light from the growing explosion took a full three minutes to reach them.

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

Elisa was surely dead in the inferno. The conflagration had erupted so quickly, shock waves 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. Not yet. The boy finally whispered as the main lights came back on in the piloting deck. “Why did Mother do that?”

Garrison hated making excuses for her. “She didn’t know they would explode.”

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

Garrison focused on the controls in front of him and said in a quiet voice, “I really don’t know…” Maybe he didn’t know Elisa 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 in clan Reeves, working at the half-empty reconstruction site of Rendezvous, he’d been trusted with starship runs since he was seventeen, flying to clan strongholds and Theroc, negotiating for supplies, requesting loans (which, more often than not, had to be reclassified as “donations”).

But Earth had always been a forbidden destination; Olaf Reeves made that very clear. The clan leader hated the Hansa, though it no longer existed. “You only have to look at the destroyed Moon to see the danger they brought upon themselves.”

Once, standing up to his father, Garrison pointed out, “Rendezvous was destroyed too. How is that different? Did we bring it on ourselves?” Olaf slapped him, hard. For insubordination.

After that, Garrison acted dutifully obedient, but the more he was told not to go to Earth, the more tempted Garrison was, and so he made an undocumented detour on one of his runs. When he saw the busy rubble-corralling operations in the debris field of the Moon, it reminded him of Rendezvous—the big ships and equipment. The Moon operations, however, used the efficient Iswander modular habitats, and he realized the modules could be used to great effect at Rendezvous. Clan Reeves would be able to finish their large, slow, long-term project.

Knowing this, he’d met with a Confederation trade representative who worked with wealthy and ambitious Roamer industrialist Lee Iswander. Her name was Elisa Enturi, independent, hardened, out to make a good life for herself. He learned that she might be able to help him get some of the Iswander equipment modules for Rendezvous. She agreed to help.

Later, he had spotted Elisa at an Earthside bar. They went out on a balcony with their drinks, and she discouraged light conversation. “The meteor shower is supposed 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 helped him make a deal with Lee Iswander, leveraging the finances from his line of clan credit. He arranged to buy surplus modules and heavy equipment from the lunar operations. He saw it as his chance to demonstrate to his father the sort of abilities a clan leader would need. This was also a big deal for Elisa, because it made significant profits for Iswander Industries. Garrison and Elisa went to Rendezvous with a flotilla of Confederation machinery and modules.

Olaf was horrified and wanted nothing to do with the “help” from Earth, blaming them for the destruction of the former Roamer center of government. He upbraided his son for making such a foolhardy mistake, refused to accept the delivery. Elisa lashed back at the stubborn clan leader, “Sorry—the shipment’s paid for, and Iswander Industries will not take them back.”

She dumped the equipment modules at Rendezvous and left. Just to show his disdain, Olaf cut them loose and let the modules drift out in space, not wanting to clutter the rest of Rendezvous with them.

Garrison was appalled by his father’s bigotry and stupidity, and told him so. Olaf slapped him again, beat him down. This time Garrison slapped his father back. “Don’t treat me like a fool, Father, when you’re an even bigger one.”

Returning to Earth, he had found Elisa to apologize for the treatment she’d received from his pigheaded father. She said she only cared about the treatment she received from him, and Garrison treated her very well. Together, they slipped back to Rendezvous, rounded up all the perfectly good modules that Olaf Reeves had discarded, then returned them to Iswander Industries where they were quietly sold again. Out of pride, Olaf would never bother to search for the modules (or never admit it), and Elisa looked like a hero for doubling Iswander profits.

She and Garrison celebrated, and commiserated, and slept together. Realizing the most potent way he could defy his father, he married Elisa. 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. Congratulating them, Iswander gave her time off for the new baby and distributed her responsibilities to secondaries, promoting them instead of her. Elisa felt left behind, but she hadn’t admitted she resented her husband until later.

On Sheol, Garrison had his work, but he cared more about his family than advancement. Oddly, though Olaf Reeves had never even met his grandson, Garrison began to realize the call of family that he hadn’t understood before. As he thought of the falling out with his father, now he worried that the clan leader might have been right about Elisa…

He and Seth spent eight hours assessing their damaged ship as they drifted in open space. They repaired what they could, verifying 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 couldn’t afford that. He had left everything behind on Sheol.

He was a Roamer, though. Maybe they could go to Newstation and ask some sympathetic person for help. But feeling the sharp pain in his heart from knowing that his wife was dead—and he had indeed loved her—he realized that he had only one place to go.

Home.

Garrison set course for the clan Reeves settlement at Rendezvous.