Company Daughter: The Children of Astraea, #1

By Callan Primer

A girl. A saucepan. A plan to conquer the universe.

Aleta Dinesen doesn't see the point of hanging around home, not when she can cook a mean paella. But her plan to conquer the universe one meal at a time runs afoul of her overprotective father, commander of a tough mercenary company. And when he puts his foot down, he's got the firepower to back it up.

Undeterred, Aleta escapes the dreadnaught she calls home one step ahead of the gorgeous, highly disapproving Lieutenant Park, the unlucky young officer tasked with hauling her back. But the universe isn't the safe place she thought it was. Stranded in a dangerous mining community, she clings to survival by her fingernails. Only by working with someone she can't stand will she have a chance to escape, proving to everyone that a teenage cook can be the most dangerous force in the universe.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Callan Primer
• Release date: Mar 3, 2015
• ISBN: 9781507006252

Book preview

CHAPTER ONE

Ogres and Omelets

The ogre looked at his omelet and sniffed it, his nasal slits flaring. With a dubious series of clicks from his throat mike, he tried to hand it back. I don't speak ogre, but I'd been around them all my life. I knew what he meant. Shoving the plate back at him through the hatch, I told him, Yes, I cooked it. No, it doesn't have a rat bar hidden in it.

More clicks.

I don't care what it smells like. You ordered it, you eat it.

He tried to look woebegone, which is hard to do when you're an eight-foot, green-skinned, tusked monstrosity.

Allie.

That was my boss of only two hours, Jack Choi, manning the deep fryer. His wife, Eva, was at the narrow shelf we used as a prep table, dicing onions, garlic, and jalapenos for salsa. I looked at him questioningly.

We don't boss the customers around. If he thinks there's something wrong with the omurice, make him a fresh one.

Jack was one of the few people willing to hire me. I had tried all the restaurants on both Two and Three Below, but each of them pointed to the door, too intimidated by my father to give me a chance. Even Mama DeFino, who had taught me to make panna cotta, told me to come back when I finished school. But Jack was a retired mech who feared nothing in the universe, least of all his former commanding officer. And he thought anyone willing to support themselves had the right to be called an adult.

He's just giving me a hard time.

Jack sighed, dumping a load of fried jalapenos—the nuclear version from Hirconia Five that the ogres loved—into a basket. Just make it again, okay?

I gritted my teeth. This was my first job. Likely to be my last if Dad had his way, but I wouldn't be fired through any fault of mine. I reached through the hatch and tried to take the plate back from the ogre. He clutched it protectively to his chest.

Outsiders found the ogres—our mechanized soldiers—creepy. The Gaians, those pious hypocrites who thought we all should live in dirt huts and run our food down on foot, were worse; they wanted them all exterminated. But the ogres were men under all the biological and mechanical alterations, men who liked good food, men who... had really long memories. The rat bar incident had been years ago.

This particular ogre had known me since I was a child. In fact, he'd been there for the rat bar incident—which did not give him a right to harass me on my first real job. I glowered at him, and the eight-foot slab of muscle with radiation-proof skin pretended to cower.

Just give me that— I said, making a snatch for the plate. I'll make you a new omurice, and you can watch what goes in it.

He lifted it out of my reach. With his free hand, he gently tweaked my nose with sausage-sized fingers.

I'm usually better at knowing when I'm being teased. Not knowing what Dad, aka the Commandant of the Free Company of the Astraea and my personal cross to bear, was up to had left me sensitive. I waved him off with a tense smile. He grabbed the basket of fried jalapenos along with his omurice and took it over to his squad, who stood at the tall tables Jack kept for ogres. There was a moment of silent communication among them, and they all shook with the signs of ogre laughter. Great. Now they were all going to do it.

Nine more orders for omurice popped up on the display above the grill, confirming my worst suspicions. With a sigh, I got another crate of eggs from the fridge and started cooking.

Jack's café was in the city of Four Below, the borderland between the respectable chambers above and the dingier ones below, so he got business from both directions. People from One, Two, and Three Below slummed and people from Five Below saved their money just to eat his chili and fried jalapenos.

It was hot in the narrow kitchen, the pace frenetic, and I don't think I'd ever worked so hard in my life.

I loved it. I loved it all, even the obnoxious ogre-customers who harassed me. I retaliated by scrawling rude words on their omurices with spicy ketchup. Jack saw, but didn't say anything, mainly because he knew all about ogre humor. It didn't hurt that we sold dozens of them, either. The word had gone out that the Commandant's daughter was working in Jack's café and two more ogre squads had turned up just to order fried rice omelets and complain about them.

A break in the orders allowed me to take a deep breath and wipe the sweat from my face with a clean corner of my apron. How long had I been on the job? I checked the clock. Five hours? That had to be a record. Had Dad finally washed his hands of me? Had the great mercenary commander finally realized he'd met his match?

I gave myself a minute to gloat. A job. I had a job. And an apartment. Yes, it was on Five Below, which was almost a slum, but it was in the nicest part, right up against the treepod grove. And yes, the bathroom was the size of a coffin, and the kitchen no more than a shorted-out hotplate and a cracked sink. But all it needed was a little cleaning—all right, a great deal of cleaning—some curtains, a futon, and it would be perfectly respectable. And mine.

The last ogre came up to collect his omurice. I had written baka on it in ketchup, and he waggled his eyes at me in good humor. Then he stiffened, snapping his eyes back into their chrome sockets and staring over my shoulder.

Jack and Eva were still at their stations, so someone must have come into the kitchen behind me. Someone who could turn an ogre serious. Someone who had the ability to completely destroy my life and happiness.

Frustration welled up in me. I had been so close, so close...It's Dad, isn't it?

The ogre looked down at me from his great height and slowly shook his head in great sympathy. It was worse. Much worse.

Who could be worse than Dad?

Only one person. I squeezed my eyes shut. Dad, how could you do this to me?  With an impending sense of doom, I turned and there he was, the bane of my existence.

The tall, impossibly beautiful, impossibly correct, Lieutenant Joe Park.

CHAPTER TWO

Aleta Is Grounded

With a look of acute disdain, Lieutenant Park surveyed the galley kitchen with its walls yellowed with years of grease aerosoles, the air filters held in place with duct tape, and the refrigerator that thumped and leaked coolant in a poisonous green puddle.

I spent a moment just looking at him. God, he was handsome, with almost perfect features, large dark eyes shaded by eyelashes that I would have killed for, and glossy black hair that he kept contained in a clip low on his neck.

With all that beauty I would have suspected a body mod, but he'd joined the Company when he was sixteen, the youngest age possible. Reputable modders waited until Mother Nature was done pushing bones and teeth around. And in the three years he'd been with the Company? I knew for a fact that he hadn't changed his looks.

Not that I'd been paying attention.

Miss Aleta, if you would accompany me. It wasn't a request.

I snapped back to reality. I'm not ready, I told him curtly. Wait until the shift change is done. When the current rush finished, Jack and Eva could handle the load until his night cook came in.

He fastidiously stepped around a spatter of broken eggs that I hadn't had time to clean up. He wore black fatigues, undecorated except for his lieutenant bars, three combat pips, and the badge of the Red Wolves.

Like the ogres, the Red Wolves were Company. While the ogres fought in high-tech environments, the Red Wolves fought on worlds the Gaians classified as pre-industrial. They had all the style and class and arrogance of the samurai of old. Lieutenant Park fit in perfectly.

You don't need to be ready, said the lieutenant. You just need to come with me.

Under the calm, controlled expression, he was seriously annoyed. As he was perfectly capable of throwing me over his shoulder, it was a good idea to cooperate. I scraped the grill top clean, emptied the organic garbage into one chute, the inorganic into another, then grabbed a mop, intending to clean up the egg. For some reason, Eva looked amused.

Lieutenant Park took the mop out of my hand.

"The commandant says now."

I ripped off my apron and threw it in the laundry bucket. I'll be back tomorrow, I told Jack and walked out the door before the lieutenant turned to physical coercion.

At least I tried to walk out the door. Instead, I ran into it face-first when it didn't open automatically. I turned a glare on Lieutenant Park.

With a look of cool pleasure, he said, Aleta is grounded.

The door opened. I heard clicks from the ogre-mech that sounded like tittering. Thank you, Dad.

I was under personal lockdown now. Unless Dad or his minion, Lieutenant Park, gave permission, there wasn't a door, hatch, airlock, or ventilation duct in any city in any chamber of the ship that would let me through. It was just rubbing it in to set a pass phrase and make it Aleta is grounded. I calculated the lieutenant would get to say it a dozen more times before we reached Company headquarters and the house I shared with Dad.

Lieutenant Park bowed me through the door, the epitome of the chivalrous Company man. Burning with humiliation, I muttered "feung tah," as I passed him, secure that he wouldn’t understand. No one spoke my mother's native tongue outside one small island on one planet in the Goyoti Empire. I used it when I wanted to tell someone what I really thought.

His expression didn't flicker, so I added an aimeno geso for good measure.

We walked down the alley behind the restaurant and turned onto the main street of Four Below. It was the night cycle. High above, the arched roof of the chamber was thick with an illusion of stars, but the town of Four Below was lit up and hopping. It had the liveliest night-life of all the chamber-towns on the Astraea. We passed bars and Pachinko parlors and bag houses where the bag girls sat on ledges and draped themselves over window sills. Buskers sang and juggled in the street, food carts offered noodles and fried elephant potatoes, and raucous laughter spilled out of one of the night clubs.

I sighed with envy. I had really wanted to catch that show, but the comedian was only here until he could jump ship in the Patikam system. If I couldn't talk Dad into letting me come back here by tomorrow, I would miss out.

Aleta, came an apologetic voice that only I could hear.

Hi, Zelle, I murmured back to my oldest friend, barely moving my lips. I angled my head away from Lieutenant Park to make sure he didn't see me talking to thin air.

I'm sorry. I had to tell him where you were.

Him being Dad.

I know, I told him, trying to project understanding. Zelle was the heart and brain of the Astraea, a voice from a command panel that kept the ship safe and took us wherever in the bridge 'verse we wanted to go. He was already here when the Company's founder claimed the strange, alien derelict, and centuries later, we still didn't know if he was an AI or an organic being or even where he was located. All we knew was that he was Ship, and he took orders from the Commandant like the rest of us.

The first time I'd heard him, I had been playing in my room, singing a song about a flying pig who got into all sorts of trouble. I'd just finished a verse about his escape from a hungry chef wielding a big knife when I heard someone say,

Is this right?

When I looked up, I saw a pig fluttering about my lamp like a fat, pink moth. After studying it, I announced it needed purple stripes, then a tiara, then a fairy to ride it. Zelle complied. For hours, he patiently changed the pig around to my demands, created dozens of them, sent them on complex dances, and made them sing in harmony. After that, he was always there, always available to play, and as I grew older, to talk about almost anything. Fortunately, he was wiser than I and kept our friendship hidden until I knew enough to do it for myself.

Another burst of laughter roused me from my memories. Don't worry about it, I murmured, detouring toward the club to catch some of the comedy. I know you didn't have a choice.

The doorman, a huge Arcerian whose face was a mask of ritual scars, said, heya, Aleta. Next set starts in thirty minutes. Another burst of laughter. I stared longingly at the door, but a quick set of steps and a hand on my elbow put paid to that. It was a respectful grip, but emphatic. I allowed myself to be towed away.

Heya, Falky, I said over my shoulder. I'll have to catch the show tomorrow.

He raised his voice. Did you get that recipe I sent you?

His mother's jicama-ginger slaw. It looked really interesting.

Yes, I yelled, to be heard over another wave of laughter. I'll bring you some tomorrow.

Trying to remember if I had any fresh Arcerian ginger, which was softer and less pungent than Earth ginger, I followed the lieutenant down a side street, toward a transit box and away from the bright lights and laughter. From the open windows of apartment buildings, I could hear children laughing and screeching, see the flicker of entertainment screens, smell the garlic and hot peppers of evening meals.

The tall, silent figure by my side finally spoke. Why do you do that? His voice held a faint note of repelled curiosity.

The statue speaks!

Do what?

Make promises you know you can't keep. You won't be back tomorrow.

I stopped dead in the street. Oh? I said softly, who says I won't be back tomorrow?

He turned slowly and faced me. At this point, Dad would be looking wary, but Lieutenant Park just stared down that fine nose at me. The Commandant is angry enough to lock you up for decades. Making promises you know you can't keep is dishonorable.

Dishonorable. It felt like a slap. I pressed my lips together and mentally ran through all the bad words I knew. Since I'd grown up in a mercenary company, it took me quite a while.

Aleta is grounded, he told the transit box, and it opened. He bowed again, waving me in. Amazing how a gesture of respect could look like an insult. I stalked past him and entered the box.

He followed, Company Headquarters.

I grabbed a strap and hung on for dear life as the box took off into the feeder tubes between the chambers.

The Astraea wasn't built like a normal ship, with decks neatly stacked on top of each other and connected by ladders, grav wells, and elevators. Instead, it contained dozens of large chambers in no particular pattern, connected by the feeder tubes—a bit like a termite mound, which Zelle thought was fascinating when I pointed it out to him. But Earth termites were logical city planners compared to Zelle. He didn't think in straight lines, and we'd learned to live with it.

So I hung on the strap, trying not to lurch into the walls, and went through all the bad words I knew until my mood lightened. Of course, I'd feel even better if I got any sort of expression out of the stoic Company man opposite me.

Enjoying yourself? I said, with all the irony I could manage.

Of course, he said. Bars of light flashed in his face from the junctions we passed. An abrupt U-turn almost threw me into a wall. He, of course, kept his balance without effort. No more escort duty. For decades, if I'm lucky.

I eyed him with hostility. He was barely nineteen, from somewhere in the Goyoti Empire, and Dad considered him one of his most promising young officers. He was rising fast in the Company, where people treated him with respect, if not warmth.

Why he'd gotten stuck escorting me was one of the great mysteries of the universe. With his meteoric rise through the ranks, he should have had his choice of duties. He must have seriously offended someone higher up to get stuck with babysitting. Or maybe he volunteered. Harassing innocent people who were just trying to make a living could be his form of entertainment.

So why do you do it? he said again. You waste everyone's time with these childish pranks, mine especially.

Childish pranks. I smiled sweetly at him. "That's why I do it, of course. To waste your valuable time."

He stared back, his dark eyes cold and impenetrable. Decades. He lingered on the word.

That's what he thought. He forgot I had been raised in the most successful mercenary corporation in the bridge 'verse: the Free Company of the Astraea. The Company never gave up, and neither did I.

When we stepped out of the transit box it was full night, the illusion of a moon hanging round and low over Company Headquarters. Set in the largest chamber of the Astraea, Headquarters was a small city of five thousand fighting men, ten thousand support personnel, and the homes, offices, training grounds, hospitals, memorial parks, stables, and supply depots that kept them all working.

A big figure dressed in black fell in next to us as we headed toward McAvoy Avenue, and I smiled, recognizing Lieutenant Jackson, one of my favorites. Another Red Wolf, he pursued a friendly rivalry with Lieutenant Park on and off the battlefield. He was probably the closest thing to a friend the stiff young officer had.

I hear the locals have a nice little war going, he said.

Zelle had only just finished bridging into the Patikam system, four planets and an M-class star, but trust the lieutenant to know the local gossip already.

Lieutenant Park came alert. Low, mid, high?

The Gaians rated it 3F, said Lieutenant Jackson regretfully.

3F? That meant no limits. Nukes, chem, bio, you could mutate the native life into kaiju or strip the planet down to bedrock, and the Gaian observers would just shrug.

Another one for the ogres, then.

Not this time. The fight's over a massive deposit of zyren crystals so the client has requested no energy weapons. The Commandant has already assigned the Rangers to it.

I stiffened. Dad wasn't just Commandant of the Free Company, he led the Rangers, our mid-tech division. Which meant he was off to war again and I, grounded or not, would have to stand in the family ranks in Departure Bay and smile and smile as the bands played.

That's the third this year for the Rangers, said Lieutenant Park, keeping his tone even. He was too aristocratic to complain, which would be criticism of his superiors, but he came awfully close.

And the ogres are off on another contract in the Jubal system, said Lieutenant Jackson almost as morosely. And to top it off, even the ship has a contract.

I turned my head slightly away from the two lieutenants. Zelle, you have a contract?

I'll be hunting smugglers for the Patikamu. He sounded pleased. He liked to be part of our work.

Then nothing for us, said Lieutenant Park. Again, was the unspoken coda.

"I'm so sorry, lieutenant, I said, oozing fake sincerity. Looks like escort duty for you."

He looked down his nose again. Aleta is grounded, he said. That phrase must have really pleased him, the way he kept taking it out for an airing.

Lieutenant Jackson snorted but tried to cover it. I gave him the eye, and he gave up, laughing out loud. Sorry Miss Aleta, but everyone knew the pass phrase this time. He tapped my shoulder, very gently, with his massive fist. He just doesn't want to worry about you while he's on contract.

"Oh, he's not worried about me, I said, just his blood pressure." He smothered another grin, bowed to just the right degree to a young lady who wasn't an adult yet, and took himself off.

We'd arrived at my house, a narrow, three-story townhouse with plenty of windows and a cheerful gold and pink paint job. Dad let me pick the colors when I was eight. Mom's expression when she came back from a war contract and saw it had struck worry into my eight-year-old heart, but only for a second. Then she'd hugged me, reassured me it was beautiful, and told Dad later in that tone that always meant trouble. He'd simply grinned at her and ate the pickled cabbage she served for two straight weeks without a single complaint. That was two weeks I avoided the kitchen, even though cooking Goyoti dishes with Mom was my usual reward for finishing my homework.

There had been no lessons in Goyoti cooking for four years now.

I stopped at our front steps, looking up at the gilded window frames, the gold paint glinting in the light of a street lamp, the walls the color of a really vile children's medicine. Really, that was a ridiculous color combination. Only a child would think it was beautiful.

There was a bit of pressure on my elbow—Lieutenant Park urging me up the steps. His job was to get me home. All the way home with the door closed behind me. Dad would have been specific in his orders.

I resisted the tug. Mom had been an artist as well as a warrior. She must have hated these colors. Maybe I should repaint.

Tug. With a bit more insistence.

I breathed deeply through my nose and gave in to my baser impulses. Do you ever wonder why you get stuck with escort duty?

I obviously sinned in an earlier life and the Yama Kings are punishing me.

You must have done something horrifying. I wonder what it was. Littering? Spitting in somebody's rice? I lowered my voice. "Did you forget your mother's birthday—"

He grabbed me around the waist and picked me up. All my breath left me in an ooof.

Ah, yes, he said, hauling me up the stairs without the slightest sign of effort. Now I remember who I was. Butcher Armstrong. The pirate who had such interesting ideas of what to do with prisoners. It's all coming back to me.

Had he actually made a joke? No, this was Lieutenant Park.

Setting me down in front of the door, he kept a hand on my wrist in case I made a bolt for freedom.

Recovering my mouth, if not my brains, I said, If Armstrong is in a Goyoti hell, he's there for another hundred thousand years. If he's in a Christian hell, he's there until the Resurrection and beyond. I narrowed my eyes at him and declaimed like a bad qvid narrator, What shocking secrets does this perfect officer hide? How far will he go to protect them?

May you have years of quiet to wonder about it. He put a hand on my back and pushed me forward, saying, Aleta is grounded.

The door didn't open. I helpfully pointed this out to him.

Aleta is grounded, he repeated.

The door still didn't open. You have to say it without gritting your teeth.

He opened and shut his mouth several times.

Aleta is grounded, I prompted him.

Aleta... is... grounded, he said, enunciating like guncracks, and at a subvocal prompt from me, Zelle opened the door. "For decades," he added fervently.

I smiled at him, said You wish, and closed the door on him.

CHAPTER THREE

The Walls Close In

I wandered through the rooms I shared with Dad, unable to settle down. My brief flush of victory drained away, and my aggravation with my unreasonable parent built up again. He'd humiliated me, overridden my choices, and topped it off by locking me up.

I needed something to do or the top of my head would explode, so I cleaned. Unfortunately, I had already cleaned thoroughly before I left this morning, supposedly for good, so it took little time. I couldn't even make dinner, because I had started a Goyoti-style hotpot before leaving this morning, and it still simmered away.

I sat down at my desk, intending to call my best friend Benita and talk, but all that came up was a notice about overdue homework assignments.

Zelle! I complained. I can't even talk to people?

Communications will be allowed once the backlog of assignments are completed.

All my assignments were irrelevant, useless, make-work, absolute dreck designed to keep me so bored I fell into a coma. I'm pretty sure that was the whole purpose of the education software. A comatose student can't write answers designed to freeze the evaluator. Not that I'd ever done that.

I gave a hostile stare to the notice blinking on the display. All right, let's do some research.

Zelle perked up, sounding almost chipper. Into the historical background of Macbeth? The branches of navigation math? The Five-fold way and how it compares to the Dar'haryat of Clestris?

He hated it when I was at odds with the Commandant. For my sake he would find a way to slide around a direct order, but it made him unhappy. Zelle, creation of a millennia-dead race, understood both duty and the chain of command.

Show me the Patikam system and give me a brief overview of its planets. Might as well see who the Company was doing business with.

Pause. Aleta, that's not part of any of your current assignments.

It's a new independent study project, I said. For extra credit.

You could finish your current projects and get completely caught up on credits. All you need is two more after that, and you'll finish your Basic education.

If I passed Basic, I could join the Company and choose a specialty. Not a combat role, of course. Oh, no, not for me. That wasn't the problem; I didn't want a combat role, even if it was the only way to advance in the Company. There wasn't any job in the Company I wanted. Not specialist, not officer. And not wife.

I was going to cook. Jack's café was just the start. I had plans.

The Patikam system, I said firmly.

It was research, therefore I could claim it for extra credit. Zelle gave in and streamed data and images to the console about the Patikam system.

The first two planets in the system, Patikam 1 and 2, were bare rocks, what little atmosphere they generated torn away by the solar wind. Number three had a high degree of volcanism and a thick, poisonous atmosphere of sulfides and carbon dioxide. Patikam 4, on the other hand, was much more interesting. Stable, elliptical orbit, breathable atmosphere, close to standard gravity... I leaned forward, fascinated by the swirls of white and blue, ignoring the data scrolling next to the image.

The image swooped and dipped, falling through the clouds, landing on spectacular snow-covered peaks, then skipping to lush rainforests, filled with brilliant life, then to singing sand dunes, mysterious caves, and fragile, airy cities, before skimming white-sand