Destroyer - Cygnus 5: Book Two: Cygnus Five, #2

By Alex R Oliver

In this sequel to Lioness of Cygnus Five, the survival of the colony teeters on the edge. The alien city in which they have taken refuge turns out to be not so abandoned as they'd thought, and Bryant finds himself torn between his love for Aurora and his driving need to restore some of the ancient defences before the Kingdom attacks.

Starvation is beginning to bite as the Kingdom forces tighten their stranglehold around the colonists, forcing them to turn to treasure-hunters and pirates for aid.

Needed on site to spearhead the military resistance to Kingdom invasion, Aurora must send her most trusted people into the heart of enemy territory to beg for supplies and to rescue her baby, with no guarantee that when they return there will be anyone left alive to come home to.

Yet survival may come at too great a cost if Bryant cannot control the secret he is awakening at the heart of Cygnus Five.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Beecroft Books
• Release date: Nov 8, 2017
• ISBN: 9781386050100

Book preview

CHAPTER ONE

Homecoming is not all it's cracked up to be.

AURORA SET THE Charity down in one of the pocket dustbowls on the rainless side of the Serra da Calvo, and sat in the cabin for a moment, appreciating the feel of home. Ship gravity had normalized to planet gravity the moment the engines were disengaged, and a heavy weight had settled on her, like the comforting pressure of a familiar hug.

She stretched, to let her body acclimatize, and a satisfying rightness slid through every bone as she shed the persistent feeling that she was about to float away. Right. Good. She was in the place for which she had been made and she fitted there as though all her puzzle pieces had found their mates.

Her mind was not equally at ease. She brushed the shoulders of the uniform jacket she had borrowed from Mboge, feeling the roughness of the material on the shoulder, where the patch that should have shown the winged scroll of a Kingdom warrior had been torn off. She was returning home in disgrace. A fallen woman, an unmarried mother, a soldier who had refused to die on command.

She sighed and smoothed the fabric of her veil over her knee. On Cygnus 5, she had stopped wearing it. Modesty had not been something she strove for as de facto queen. But her mother... well, she could just see it being her mother's last straw. The woman was all too likely to take shame and conquest in her stride and yet balk at uncovered hair. For mãe then.

Aurora raised the cloth to her forehead and pulled it taut before winding it tight over the coiled mass of her hair and knotting the ends around her bun. Strange how heavy and unwieldy it felt after only a few weeks of being without, like stepping back into a shoe she'd outgrown.

"Charity?"

I'm here.

Don't open up to anyone except for me, OK? If someone tries to break in, take off and wait for me in orbit until I com you.

Yes ma'am, said the ship, a little reluctantly. Aurora's chief engineer, Morwen Crouch, had written a program that essentially forced Charity to acknowledge Aurora as her new legal owner, but Aurora had the impression that the ship wasn't completely convinced. The old governor of Cygnus 5, Charity's previous owner, had by negligence starved the convicts in his care to the point where they rebelled and did the same to him, but to Charity he had been a perfect gentleman with a beautiful voice and few unreasonable demands.

The governor would not have set her down in this crushing place full of wind-swept dirt. Nor would he have given her orders that required her to use the AI with which she came equipped. So she had been built with her own judgment? It was computationally expensive to use and she preferred not to.

At least, that was how Aurora interpreted the ship's small delay in replying to her. Anthropomorphizing, perhaps, but what else could you do, when you were trying to figure out another person? Thank you, she said, sincerely, because that was all she could do about that particular problem.

Aurora opened the main hatch and stepped outside, closing her eyes at the rush of nostalgia - at the smell. Dust and nutmeg and distant sugar cane fields, and cows. The scents of the oxygen rich air made her feel like she could work for years, and the faint ketone smell of the sparse powder underfoot that didn't yet deserve the name of 'soil' was the smell of youth.

She set off for home, concentrating on the familiar landscape so she wouldn't have to think about how her parents were going to react on seeing her. It was going to be fine. This clench of dread and nausea in her chest was going to be relieved by a hug. Her mother would call her brothers, her sister, her cousins. Her brothers would bring their wives and children. There would be farófias, all cinnamon and lemon and sweet, and she'd know what it was to have her family around her again.

Maybe.

Within half a mile of her landing site she rounded a spur of rock and came out into more fertile land. Here the iron rich soil sprouted a mixture of scrubby copper colored native plants called Simeo's Cents. These were pressed by the hand of gravity into perfectly circular pads ranging from button to wagon wheel in size. Hardy Terran dune grasses, used to eking out a living on sand and water, were dotted among them.

A half a mile later on and there were cattle, stocky long-haired cattle with crescents of white horn, browsing on the grass and the Simeo's Cents with equal indifference. A long time ago it had been discovered that the cows could digest the native flora. They went out into the barren lands and ate the inedible lichens that grew there. They carried grass seeds in their coats, and their dung was full of Terran micro-bacteria that colonized the dirt on which it fell and turned it into soil.

After the cows had grazed an area for ten years or so, one could begin to plant soybeans, then other beans. Then sugar cane. And with beans and beef, milk and sugar, what more did you need?

Aurora had been at war for the past five years, and in that time she saw with no small pride that the cattle had extended her family's terraformed land to the very edge of the mountains. She needed some for her new world. That was also why she had come.

The land fell away from the hills gently, the lone sentinel of the rock outcropping known as Papão looming like a giant with a runny nose just ahead of her, where a hydroelectric station harnessed the power of the spring on the bogeyman's side. The sky was bluer than she remembered, even with a light haze of pink dust high up where the winds whined like racing cars from pole to pole.

But for the gnawing thing in her chest it was pleasant to walk through early spring sunshine down into grassy valleys. The cattle raised their heads to watch her as she passed, and she was conscious of their deceptively mild liquid eyes, and the sweet smelling huff of their breath. She kept a respectful distance because in truth the cattle of Novocasa had wicked tempers to match their red coats, and before it became beef all that muscle was a walking anti-personnel missile waiting for an excuse.

They had bells around their necks - individually painted bells with their names and dates of birth, and her sister's contact number, so they could be returned if they wandered, like lost dogs or children.

But she wasn't thinking about children. Definitely not thinking about how to get her own child back from its father. One problem at a time.

After three more miles of grazing land she passed into bean fields, where hired hands she didn't recognize straightened to gaze at her as incuriously as the cows. She ducked her face into shadow, remembering sharply that she was no longer here as the family's hero. She was the dead come back to visit, and she hadn't had the courtesy to wait until the festival to do it.

When the villa came into sight, white as a dropped salt crystal in the midst of its grove of forest peach trees, she stopped to close her eyes, just for a moment. Then she breathed out a long breath, tucked the stray wisps of hair back into her veil and braced her shoulders. There were people moving down there in the colonnade of the house, and that distant blob of dawn pink in the flower beds below the balcony must be her mother.

If so, she was oblivious of Aurora's presence, going about her daily tasks unaware that she was being watched. I could still walk away Aurora thought, with a tearing twist of hope and despair at the base of her throat. I could leave her in peace. But how was she taking it? All of it? Surely mãe needed a hug as much as Aurora did? Surely her mother's arms would always be open to her?

She gave a short laugh at herself, because there was really only one way to find out, and began walking again.

Mãe noticed her as she came out from under the trees and stepped onto the gravel of the path. It crunched under her footstep, and mãe looked up. A shock went through Aurora like a lightning strike, terror and yearning stealing her breath as mãe too jerked and gasped.

A long moment. Aurora hoped her mother would move. She needed her mother to move towards her, to stir out of her petrification with a cry of joy. But it didn't happen, and her hopes lowered themselves as she got herself mobile again instead. She walked closer, but wasn't sure if she could move in for a hug or not. She wasn't sure if she dared to find out.

Mother?

Her mother's hands rose to press against her mouth. Beautiful polished fingernails, not immodestly colored, but perfectly buffed and polished to look chic. Aurora's nails were short and rough these days, and she'd forgotten that she aspired to keep them like mãe's.

Her mother was more beautiful than her in every way and always had been. Except for the hair - Aurora had inherited her father's red-touched glossy black hair - but hair didn't count for much when one could wear a pink and peach and silver veil, and look like a pristine sunrise.

She took another step forward and reached out to take her mother's wrists and gently tug. Mãe, please say something.

Mãe's eyes brimmed and she pulled her wrists out of Aurora's grasp and turned half away. They said you were dead.

The pink outfit abruptly became a cause of misery. I see you didn't bother to mourn.

That was always a lie, mother. That's why I had to come. I had to make sure you didn't think—

And then they said you were a traitor. Mãe's mouth compressed, holding back tears or fury. Aurora felt the ground sliding away beneath her feet, she had to scrabble for purchase on something, or she would fall.

They betrayed me.

That's not how it works! Her mother was shorter than she was, and petite by the standards of high gravity Novocasa, but fighting with her was infinitely worse than it had been fighting with McKillip. She didn't want to hurt Mãe, or to ever have her be disappointed or angry.

You work for your government. They don't work for you. You gave them the right to send you into situations where you might die. You don't get to rebel and become some kind of cangaceiro. It is a sin to rebel against the Kingdom of God.

Aurora's brows twisted. She bent her head so the words would not fall on her face and stared at the impeccable gravel under her mother's feet.

It had become so difficult to contain the anguish and the anger that she couldn't risk moving or speaking for fear of what she might do. It hadn't occurred to her before that her mother might have preferred it if she had died. That never would have occurred to her.

As always, her silent unresponsiveness just escalated her mother's fury. What has happened to the daughter I raised? You throw away your virginity. You get pregnant - you're not even married! You show no signs of remorse. You ask for no pardon, and the next thing we know you're overthrowing the legitimate authorities and setting yourself up as some kind of queen? How could you come back here and rub that in my face? You are a shame to me. The neighbors laugh at us now.

The words stopped, briefly. Too briefly for Aurora to work her way past the burden of her feelings to give any kind of response, and again her silence was taken as provocation.

Tell me you are sorry!

She wanted to. She really did. She wanted to say whatever her mother needed her to say in order to earn praise and forgiveness. But she couldn't, because it wasn't true.

Her mother hissed, breathing in through her teeth, driven beyond her endurance, and Aurora reeled as a slap she wasn't expecting cracked across her cheek.

You are a shame to all your family.

When Aurora gasped in a breath it tasted like fire. She choked on it and her chest went into spasms. Her face tried to implode around grief and she found herself doing exactly what she'd been trying to avoid - sobbing as though she was four again, with wet cheeks and a runny nose. Ugly sobbing, abject and humiliating.

Her mother gave a little growl. Aurora heard her move a step away, and was ready to lunge out and grab the woman, fall to her knees  and hug her around the legs and beg her not to turn her back, not to go. But her mother made another noise, pained and angry and exasperated and then she was back with a handkerchief in her hand.

Oh, mãe said, as if she couldn't bear it anymore, Oh, don't cry. Sweetheart, don't cry.

Aurora caught her breath, grasping at the minimal comfort with everything in her. She got the sobbing under control, breathing hard and sniffing as her mother's perfumed hand caught her under the chin and wiped the linen handkerchief over her face with a deftly practiced touch.

Aurora risked looking up at her. The faded brown eyes looked worried but oddly impersonal, as if this was a subroutine she had fallen into because it had become so ingrained she could no longer help it.

I'm sorry, Aurora managed, meaning that she was sorry to cry, but willing to let her mother take it as the apology asked for. She sniffed again, feeling drained and embarrassed. I didn't mean to make things hard for you. The last thing I wanted was to bring shame to you and Pai. I...

Tears threatened again. She didn't even know what she wanted to say to them, these honest, hardworking, law abiding people. She always forgot, when she wasn't here, that she'd left in the first place because she'd felt suffocated.

Her mother gripped the tops of her arms and leaned in to brush Aurora's cheek with her own. A scent of orange-blossom and the buss of papery fine skin, and it wasn't the hug she'd wished for, but it was so much better than the slap that Aurora felt her spasming stomach muscles smooth out once more and her breath cool until it no longer burnt her throat.

I'm sorry too, darling, mãe said soberly. You caught me by surprise. You couldn't have called and told me you were coming? I would have got the family together to welcome you home.

Aurora discovered she still knew how to laugh, watery though it was. I'm a fugitive right now, mãe. I had to keep a low profile.

Her mother was fast cheering up, though there was a shadow of something still in her eyes. Doubt or weariness or second thoughts. Well, Selena is in the cattle shed. I'll com Joachim, Miguel and Tiago and tell them to come over. I can make dinner. You should...

She looked Aurora over for the first time, now almost restored to her normal vivacity. You should go take a bath and find some decent clothes. You look like a skeleton. I tell you this working in space and on other planets - flimsy planets - it isn't good for you.

Leaning in, she put a hand on Aurora's trembling arm and peered. When did you last pluck your eyebrows? And would it kill you to wear a little foundation?  Not too much, just a little. People see you not caring about how you look and they will think I haven't raised you...

Her voice trailed off as she evidently remembered again all the other reasons why 'people' might disapprove of her parenting of Aurora. Then she shook her head. Go get cleaned up. Put something nice on. Then you can come help me in the kitchen. You can explain everything to me before everyone else arrives.

Mãe turned and strode off, leaving Aurora bruised and confused. It felt like a momentous thing to stir out of her paralysis and begin to walk towards the house after her mother, and she didn't know if she was relieved or disappointed by this first meeting. Perhaps the worst was over with. Perhaps her welcome would improve from now on.

Her own room was as she had left it, save for the addition of a cat family sleeping on the bed. She sat on the comforter beside them and looked out through the window to the familiar bunched up, hunkered down landscape of her childhood. Even the planet under its foreign coating of green had a compact, muscular look to it as if it was crouched to pounce.

Aurora took a long bath, intending to consider her options, but allowed herself instead to be soothed and distracted by the luxury of it. She painted her offensive nails and plucked her eyebrows and shaved her legs. It wasn't the relief she had expected it to be. Like the veil, it felt like the return to a box she'd outgrown.

The clothes were good though. A whole wardrobe of her own clothes and a chance to shed a uniform that didn't represent who she was anymore. She dressed in a outfit of dark trousers and boots and a silk blouse over a camisole with lace over the top. The mirror caught her for a moment - she looked and smiled, because Bryant had never seen her looking like this, and it was a comfort to imagine his face when he did. If suggestions of sex did not follow in short order at the sight of her like this, she would knock his head against a wall.

The thought prompted her to fill a small bag with a couple of changes of clothes and even a dress. She was stuffing the tablet with her library into it when it occurred to her that she was packing in case she needed to flee. That was ridiculous. Her family might not approve of her, but she was safe here. No need to be paranoid.

To the indignant stares of a couple of rudely awakened kittens, she set the bag on the bed and finished filling it up. She'd thought Keene loved her once, and he didn't. She'd thought Bryant loved her and he... well, he was always doing things she didn't expect. One could not always count even on the people one loved most. She buckled on her belt with her service side-arm and arranged her blouse and jacket over the top to conceal it. Best to be prepared.

Another five minutes were spent in marveling at the bright eyed soft innocence of the kittens. Oh, they thought they were fierce with their batting little velvet claws, but their attacks on her fingers under the watchful eye of their tabby mother just left her smiling.

Could she really face the kitchen? Walking over the razor wire of her mother's reproof over and over, hoping for a forgiveness that would have come already if it was going to? No, she couldn't. She padded down the back stairs and went out to find her sister.

As mãe had said, Selena was in the cow shed. What she hadn't said was that Selena was covered top to toe in waterproof overalls and had her gloved arm up the birth canal of one of the heifers. Aurora immediately regretted wearing the silk blouse.

Selena seemed to be struggling with fastening calving chains around the calf's correctly positioned front feet. The cow stood in a head gate, but every time she bore down Aurora could hear her horns thud against the doors and the ominous sound of wood beginning to split.

You need some help there?

Selena's head snapped around, and she gaped at Aurora as if she was the one who had been slapped. Then the cow sidled and stepped on Selena's booted foot. Selena turned back to her work, taking hold of the chains and sitting down to pull. I don't know what you want me to say to you.

The tears had not retreated far. Aurora felt them shake her voice as she replied. How about 'Hi sis, it's good to see you. Things must have been hard for you recently. I'm glad you're OK.

I ca... I can't—

I know.

Aurora shut up and let Selena help the cow push. The heifer strained three more times, Selena gritting her teeth and panting as she pulled at the same time, and then the head was out and the rest of the calf slid in a rush of fluid out to land on Selena's waterproof knees. She cleaned its nostrils out, flicked an ear until it snorted in its first breath and said Can you release the head gate for me?

Aurora did, guiding the tired heifer into a pen with a manger of clean straw and a trough of water. Selena set the bull calf in front of his mother and guided the heifer's nose down so she could sniff him. When she began to lick, cleaning him up, claiming him as her own, Selena smiled. Let's give them some room.

They moved away to the other end of the shed, where the horses drowsed after a long day of managing the herd. Aurora reintroduced herself to her own riding horse, Tigre, hooking an arm over his neck for moral support. Tigre bent his head back and lipped at her veil as though he still remembered who she was.

Selena stripped off her overalls and placed them with the chains in the sterilizing unit. Underneath, she wore a smart business suit appropriate for a successful vet, but daring for a woman of Novocasa. Like Aurora, she had insisted on a career rather than a marriage, but unlike Aurora she had not wasted that too.

She was older than Aurora remembered, now mature and settled in her strength. Something hard glinted in her hazel eyes as she caught Aurora's gaze. But after holding it for a short time she looked away with a rueful smile. No hug?

Oh God! Aurora lunged for her, gathering her up tight in her arms, and then they were pressed together and she was crying again, miserable and rejected and grateful into Selena's raw silk jacket. Oh God, tell me I haven't lost you too.

No. No you couldn't. Nothing you could do. Whatever it was. Selena wasn't making a lot of sense, her own voice choked and her embrace clinging uncomfortably hard. When I thought you were dead I—You could have called!

This reaction was much closer to what Aurora had hoped for from her mother. It made her chin tremble and her stinging eyes burn again, but she stepped back and straightened up with a sigh. I'd got a colony to manage, everyone starving. I didn't want to invite reprisals either on them or on you.

Selena reached out to stroke Tigre's nose, looking at Aurora sidelong as if the world was such that she really couldn't face it head on. The vids say you deposed the legitimate government and killed the governor out of hubris, and you threatened Admiral Keene that you'd go to war with him over your daughter. Is that true?

I didn't kill the governor, Aurora murmured, because this drowsy old barn didn't seem like it could exist in the same universe as her history of blood. He should be arriving in Snow City round about now, with money to book a passage home. Other than that, yeah. Pretty much. Not hubris though. The government abandoned us there to die. If I hadn't done anything the colony would have failed and everyone on it would have starved.

She thought about the ancient city in which they had set up base, abandoned and empty, the native plants going into winter, the fish stocks dwindling. Lunches of boiled boot-leather, followed by dinners of hot water. They still might. I couldn't let that happen. Over a thousand souls. I couldn't just get back in my ship and leave them to starve.

The calf was on its feet now, russet and fluffy, a chunky-legged little thing nudging at its mother's udder with a fresh pink nose. Selena moved over to her bag and drew out a collar with a tiny brass bell, the name Fausto already painted on it in neat white paint. She clasped it around the calf's neck while it drank.

I can see that, she patted the tuft of Fausto's forelock and seemed to come to a decision, smiling at Aurora almost cheerfully. The murder, that was what I couldn't believe about you. The boys trying to kick you down, and you telling them where they could get off - that I could see.

Aurora laughed, and rubbed her thumb over the slight roughness on the surface on her dog tags to remind herself of old friends. Only all my life.

So I suppose if everyone's starving that includes you? You're hungry?

I'm ravenous. But I'm hiding from mãe.

Selena huffed as if to say 'for someone so brave you're such a coward' and took her elbow. I'll go with you. Come on. I'll field the questions while you eat dinner.

It's a deal.

They walked in through the boot room and the pantry, where the barrels of maize flour, the jars of oil and wine struck her for the first time as strange. To have so much food you could store it up! What a miracle. After scrubbing her hands at the sink, she walked about just touching things - the rind of a hard cheese impervious as a little planet, one link out of a string of sausages, a bulb of garlic.

Selena smiled, but the expression had a worried edge. You look like you've never seen food before.

I've learned not to take it for granted, Aurora corrected, just as Tiago put his head into the room and froze, watching her as though she was a rattlesnake on his floor.

Tiago was the baby of the family, barely twenty, lighter skinned than most of them and with a honey blond shade to the ends of his curly hair. Questions might have been asked, if he had not so clearly resembled his father's mother. His round face broke into a smile just an instant too late to look natural. Aurora. I. Ah. I didn't believe you were really here. Are you in trouble? I mean, are they hunting you down, because Ayiqueo wanted to come, and she's expecting our first and I don't want her to be in any danger.

Tiago! Selena snapped, putting an abashed look on his face. Aurora had already left for boot camp when Tiago was born, so this wasn't the misery of her mother's reaction, but it was another strike on a place already bruised.

I shouldn't have come.

I don't think I was followed, she said, And I'm not staying long.

Good.

Tiago! Selena said again, gratifyingly outraged. Don't talk to your sister like that."

It's all right, Aurora interrupted, though it wasn't, not really. Not much she could do about it though, other than accept it and get out of here soon. It was selfish of me to visit.

Tiago nodded in solemn agreement to that, but looked mollified. He sighed. Mãe says to lay the table. I'll do plates.

It wasn't at all, Selena hissed to her, as they straightened the tablecloth over the dining room table and put down mats to protect the polish. How could it be selfish to come home? I don't understand how he could—

This isn't my home anymore, Aurora hadn't known the sentiment was in her until she heard herself articulating it, but it felt true. Truth was she'd outgrown this place years ago, but kept it out of sentiment as a memory of an idyll that never was.

How can that be true?

I, uh, the thought of Bryant hit her with sudden stab of longing. Bryant and his slippery charm, and his obvious joy in the mysteries of 'his' new planet. Bryant holding out a glowing alien flower to her, by the light of a galaxy of blooms. I, she shrugged. I met someone.

No! Selena clasped her hands over her mouth in a gesture that reminded Aurora unhappily of her mother, but she was smiling. "You? He's not scared of you?"

Oh, it felt good to gossip like a normal person, to let herself grin back, a little smug. He is, but he kind of likes that.

No! Selena exclaimed again, shocked and amused.

There's a lot of that going about.

Aurora's levity burst like a balloon. She turned at the sound of Pai's voice, to see her father enter the dining room. Gray haired, distinguished, he had the build of a silverback gorilla and the amiable stroll to go with it.

A lot of what, sir?

A lot of saying 'no' to whatever it is that you've done now.

Pressure tightened around her chest once more, but she wasn't going to start crying this time. Mother got the love, father the obedience, that was how they had always seemed to prefer it.

I'm just doing what I think is right, sir, like you taught me.

Well... let's eat before we discuss that. Your mother put a lot of effort into making a meal for you. We should appreciate it.

He sat at the head of the table like a commanding officer, like Keene on his flagship, and a wave of discomforted hatred went over her at the thought. Men in authority. God, they were everywhere.

Miguel and his wife Folade came in and sat in their places without looking at Aurora. They nodded to Selena, and spoke to Tiago, and murmured polite noises in response to Pai pouring them wine. But Aurora might have been transparent. Even when their eyes rested on her, their gazes passed straight through.

With a prickle of unease, she noted that they were alone. What did you do with your children? she asked. Where's my niece Francisca? And the other one you were expecting when I was here last? Zantina, wasn't it?

Miguel's eyes slid towards her and then away without actually making eye contact. Ill at home.

Joachim sat down opposite her and began passing dishes up the table as mãe brought them in. He