Constellation XXI

By Edward Hoornaert

Rediscovering love at the worst possible time

Although Sienna Dukelsky had been the most promising student pilot at Keening AstroSpace Academy, she inexplicably settles for a routine, unglamorous job guiding incoming spaceships to safe berths at Farflung Space Station. Rumors, never verified, blamed her surprising decision on a boyfriend who got expelled from Keening.

Crispin Hunt, fleeing enemy forces, is greeted by a tugship captained by Sienna, his former girlfriend. Love rekindles—until an old betrayal boils up. Her ship loses power while aimed dead on at the space station, forcing Sienna to confront the terrifying truth about Crispin and his cargo...and her routine job suddenly becomes the most important in the entire galaxy.
Edward Hoornaert’s romantic space opera, Constellation XXI, continues the Repelling the Invasion saga of the Dukelsky family, begun in The Guardian Angel of Farflung Station and Escapee.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Edward Hoornaert
• Release date: Feb 14, 2019
• ISBN: 9780463662496

Edward Hoornaert

Edward Hoornaert is not only a science fiction and romance writer, he's also a certifiable Harlequin Hero, having inspired NYT best-selling author Vicki Lewis Thompson to write Mr. Valentine, which was dedicated to him. From this comes his online alter ego, "Mr. Valentine."These days, Hoornaert mostly writes science fiction—either sf romances, or sf with elements of romance. After living at 26 different addresses in his first 27 years, the rolling stone slowed in the Canadian Rockies and finally came to rest in Tucson, Arizona. Amongst other things, he has been a teacher, technical writer, and symphonic oboist. He married his high school sweetheart a week after graduation and is still in love ... which is probably why he can write romance.

Book preview

Constellation XXI

Repelling the Invasion book 3

Edward Hoornaert

http://eahoornaert.com/

Copyright 2019 by Edward Hoornaert

All rights reserved

This novel is a work of fiction.

Names, characters, places and incidents are either

the product of the author's imagination, or, if real, used fictitiously.

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Cover design by Sweet ’N Spicy Designs

Edited by Marianne Judy

ISBN: 9780463662496

Dedication

This one’s for my son, Chris. In addition to helping improve the manuscript by beta reading it, he also gave his personal stamp of approval to Crispin as the hero’s name…for some reason or another.

"And gentlemen in England now a-bed

Shall think themselves accurs'd they were not here,

And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks

That fought with us upon Saint Crispin's day."

Chapter One

She didn’t do it.

Couldn’t have. There was simply no way. Everything about it was impossible.

Nonetheless, guilt slammed Captain Sienna Dukelsky as hard as if she’d rammed her beloved ship nose-first into the rocky head of a comet—because at the instant all the ship’s systems died, she was indulging in an erotic daydream of the glorious affair she’d had with Crispin Hunt while at Keening AstroSpace Academy.

Through him, she’d learned how happiness could transcend all boundaries. Learned her life up to then had been sepia compared to the astonishing crimsons, shimmering golds, psychedelic greens, and black velvet nights love had revealed. He was her first lover, so she’d naively assumed passion would eventually deliver another such life-changing fulfillment, but there were no second chances for undeserving women and after Crispin, sex wasn’t even sepia, but monochrome.

Now he was here, on this very ship, trailing rainbow memories that seduced her senses and shrouded her brain as thoroughly as the shielding on the ship’s reactors. It was no surprise, then, that her first coherent thought, post-ship-death, was that he’d turned off the lights on the bridge to sneak up and throw his arms around her like old times and then—

No. The past was ashes. Love was just a cruel ghost. She had murdered it.

Her second thought when the ship died, a nanosecond after the first, forced a black scowl that banished all color.

Sergeant Vallant. The marine must be hazing her again because she was a rookie from a rich and famous family, although the humblest twig of the family tree. But how dare Vallant mess with the ship! Turning off the power and artificial gravity was surely a court-martial offense.

Sienna sent an angry brainwave command through her helmet to turn on the lights. But there was no response.

She sent another command.

Then another and another in a stream of orders that increased in speed and urgency, approaching, but never quite reaching, panic.

Nothing worked, nothing. All the ship’s systems were dead.

Which was impossible. Multiple levels of redundancy, firewalls, and backups made total power failure out of the question. Didn’t it?

Apparently not.

Her third thought after the ship’s death felt like an obituary—but not for the ship, even though it had died. For her. She could almost see the scoffing headshakes and curled lips of Tugship Service veterans as they gossiped about her with sniggers of contempt.

Have you heard about that Dukelsky idiot? On her first mission—the very first!—the dumb Cherry destroyed one of our newest, most expensive tugships.

No, she growled into the blackness. There was nothing she or anyone else could’ve done to kill the ship’s power and electronics. If she flew it at top speed into the comet she thought of a moment ago, this ship was built so some systems would survive, for a while at least.

Mere facts didn’t matter, though. She was the captain, so she was responsible. Period.

When an uncaptain-like whimper escaped her, her cheeks flamed with humiliation, even though no one could’ve heard. Calm down. Think. Breathe.

She wished she hadn’t said the word breathe. If everything else had shut down, why not life support, too? A moment’s thought told her she wouldn’t suffocate, though. She’d freeze to death first. Some consolation.

Until icicles form inside the chambers of your heart, remember to breathe, she ordered. Then get a torch.

She fumbled through tarry blackness. Were torches in storage compartment Starboard-A3 or A4? Her fingertips clicked a compartment open. Now feel over toward the left…

There! Pressing the end of the torch, she was rewarded with light, blessed light. The beam cast sharp shadows that transformed the bridge into a grotesque parody of safety—but she could see, and as long as she could see, she could do…something.

But what?

She’d spent the last three years memorizing procedures for troubleshooting every component of this ship. All the procedures required power, though—and there was no procedure for recovering from a total shutdown. No procedure for dealing with a tyrannosaurus rex materializing in the mess hall, either. No need. Both were impossible.

Yeah, right. Impossible

Captain to co-pilot, she said without much hope. DA387’s co-pilot was a team of four artificial intelligences. Although they used the ship’s main electrical grid by default, each AI also had a battery, an independent power source, and a backup electrical source. For the co-pilot to go down, the main grid, four batteries, and eight power generators all had to fail simultaneously.

Which was impossible.

Captain to co-pilot, please come in. She squeezed her eyes shut. That was too much like the deathly darkness, though, so she opened them again. You aren’t there, are you. It was a statement, not a question.

Shock had made her waste precious time. Habit forced her eyes up to check how much on her helmet’s visor, but it remained dark.

Sienna took several deep breaths as she flicked switches and pressed touch-panels, hoping to troubleshoot systems manually. Nothing worked, of course. Had she really done it, then? Ruined a magnificent new tugship?

An echoing voice from the lower deck reminded that for the moment, her duty lay with the crew…and her passenger, Crispin Hunt.

Sorry, Crispin. I’ve let you down—betrayed you, destroyed your life—yet again.

Before she left the bridge, she attached the other magnetized torch to her belt, pulled the log wafer from the dashboard recorder, and grabbed a water bottle. She rose and spared two seconds to look around for anything else of use, then yanked her family pictures from the wall. The violence of that motion caused her to spin in the darkness like a leaf in a whirlwind, but without gravity to confuse her inner ear, she felt no dizziness. The holograms folded easily as she spun. She stashed them in a pocket then pushed against the command chair to propel herself toward the ladder.

She pushed too hard and slammed against a bulkhead. It would take awhile to get her zero-gravity legs under her—but she wouldn’t have enough time because she’d fix the gee-damned problem. Soon.

Very, very soon.

No colors glimmered from below. Afraid what she’d find, she shined the torch down the tube leading to the lower deck, where Crispin awaited. Her thought about a dinosaur in the mess room had been gallows humor, but he was a tyrannosaur of the heart—a creature from the distant past capable of tearing at her hard-won peace until all that remained was quivering flesh and raw, bleeding emotions.

And to think that this mission had begun so well…

Chapter Two

A few days earlier…

Sienna Dukelsky’s big day had finally arrived—her first solo flight. Excitement fizzed like champagne through her veins, but she ruthlessly popped every bubble. Spaceship captains did not giggle like schoolgirls.

Step thirty-eight of Monitoring Hyperspace for Incoming Ships Procedure, she said in the forceful tone of a captain rather than her real voice. Her favorite apprenticeship instructor had cautioned her about speaking in a voice he said was too shy, too feminine, too darned nice.

Crews won’t snap to attention and obey you, he’d said apologetically.

No one reprimanded her now, or even answered. Sienna was alone on DA387. Alone for the first time, on her maiden solo flight after five years as a flight cadet and three years as a tugship apprentice. Alone as few people had ever been. Alone as few people could tolerate without running mad.

And she liked it. In her personal life, she sought balance—not too much eating nor too much dieting; not too much drinking nor too much abstinence. But for years, ever since He Whose Name She Dared Not Speak, her emotions had been off-balance. The tonnage of loss and guilt made her lopsided, forcing her to limp through life.

But not out here. Here, she flew.

Compared to star systems such as Earth’s, the Crassin system was flat, meaning the orbits of all four planets were within four-point-six degrees of the same plane, compared to seventeen degrees for Earth’s solar system. She now overlooked that flat plane from half a billion miles above it, from a virtually empty region called the Oort cloud.

She’d memorized these explanations, but from where she sat, the words were academic abstractions. Degrees of rotation. Oort cloud. Half a billion miles. They were real, yet meaningless. If she looked out the view port, she could see none of them.

Yet that was why she’d finally found balance. With nothing, absolutely nothing, to the left or right, balance was easy.

Step thirty-nine. Upon reaching alpha position, turn on gravitational-wave sensors.

She thought a sequence of letters and colors to activate the grav-wave grid. She would’ve preferred flipping switches with gratifying clicks, but DA387 was a Thought Ship, with a limited array of manual controls. It had been delivered only two months ago with every bell and whistle, costs be damned. And it was hers, all hers.

In response to her brainwaves, a grid showing the scanning sensors glowed on her helmet’s visor. She thought with sufficient force to send a command through the bioelectrode nanos in her neurons. The nerve impulses leaped at the speed of light through the finger sockets in her gauntlets and then to the ship’s computers.

A request for confirmation appeared on her visor.

Aye, aye, Sienna said, though she could’ve thought the confirmation, instead.

Sensors flashed to life on a monitor screen as they began scanning her sliver of hyperspace for approaching ships. A thrill of power tingled down her back. Planet Crassin and its orbital transfer depot, Farflung Space Station, which was home to her and seven-thousand others, were social and technological backwaters. This ship’s cutting-edge equipment felt like magic.

Step forty, she recited from memory, run automatic diagnostic tests on the scanners and drive systems.

She ran the tests with a few mental commands. Then she duplicated the diagnostics manually, just in case. Nothing, absolutely nothing, was going to screw up her maiden flight.

All tests checked out perfectly, of course. She was done, for now.

Sienna had trained herself not to smile on the job—her favorite instructor had frowned on cadets who smiled, especially female cadets who barely made the Tugship Service’s minimum height and weight—but now she grinned. She thought the command to rotate her chair in an unhurried circle. She drank in the gleaming beauty of readout screens, toggle banks, computer controls, storage compartments, and clocks set to Crassin’s major cities. Everything was in perfect working order, perfect balance…including, finally, her life. She sighed with satisfaction and savored the perfection of this moment. Her dreams had come true, even though no one had expected baby sister, the afterthought born ten years after her siblings, to fly the stars.

Step forty-one: wait.

She glanced around, trying to anticipate what might go wrong, because if anything went wrong, her ship and her life were at risk. She double-checked diagnostics and scanned sensors manually. Almost satisfied—almost, because she could imagine a dozen unexpected problems—she relaxed.

Step forty-one B.

Sienna whispered the words. Whispering seemed appropriate, because this step was her own, not the Intragalactic Traffic Control Guild's.

Study the holos to remind yourself why you have to be perfect.

She swiveled the chair to face the montage of holograms she'd affixed to the cover plate of storage compartment Portside-B9. At top left, mom and dad in healthier days, gazing at each other. Sienna yearned to make them proud while they still lived.

Top right: Cousin Duke and his wife, Sandrina, who were Farflung Station's Security Chief and Assistant Stationmaster, respectively. They'd be dishonored if a rookie with the same last name screwed up.

Bottom: her brother and two sisters with arms outstretched to encompass their children, Sienna's four nieces and three nephews. All of them could die if she failed to keep an incoming ship on a precise course at a slow, safe docking speed. She caressed each holographic cheek, wishing she felt warm skin instead of cool plastic. Her fingertip lingered on seven-year-old Dani, who wanted to be a pilot like the aunt she idolized.

Sleep tight. It was standard midnight on Farflung. Dream big, Dani.

Sienna ran several more checks, all of them redundant to the ship’s automatic checks. Eventually, boredom set in, which was fine. Boredom was the appropriate reaction to this moment’s balance.

Steps forty-two through sixty. Wait, wait, wait, and wait some more.

Planet Crassin and its space station lay off the major trade routes. Probably no ships would arrive through her assigned sliver of hyperspace during her week-long shift. The largely uncharted cone stretched ten-thousand light-years toward the soul-shriveling emptiness between galaxies. They’d assigned the emptiest sector to the rookie.

But even if nothing came in from the Black, Farflung depended on her to remain vigilant. A collision with an errant freighter traveling at a fraction of light speed would vaporize the space station—and kill all her family. Even a slow collision could nudge Farflung out of orbit—and kill all her family. It was her job to dock incoming ships without even the tiniest bump.

Scarier was the chance of invasion through this lonely backdoor. The thought of her nieces and nephews being captured appalled her. The humans of the Proxima star system were notoriously cruel to prisoners of war, if they bothered to take any. It was her responsibility to shoot off a system-wide warning before an enemy torpedo blew her to Hades. If the Proxies invaded, she would die, and she accepted that.

At the moment, though, nothing was happening. Absolutely nothing.

After another painstaking double-check of all systems, Sienna reclined her command chair—step one of the trance procedure—and then followed the other eight steps involved in entering the high-alert repose that would allow her to function for seven days without sleep.

Boredom and routine were good. Boredom and routine were her friends. But as Sienna drifted through clouds of cotton candy into the cozy depths of trance, she wished something exciting would happen. Just once, so she could convince the doubters—including, she was annoyed to discover, herself—that she was worthy of one of the most exacting and underappreciated piloting jobs in the galaxy.

* * * *

The visor of Sienna's flight helmet cycled from jade to burgundy and back in a soft, ever-brighter rhythm. The signal combined with a subtle influx of drugs to nudge her out of trance.

Incoming ship!

She jerked straight in her command chair even before it was fully upright. Her hands flew to the dashboard and tapped sensors to life. Only then did she remember to use mind controls.

Gravitational-wave sensor eight displayed an insignificant dot. When she magnified it to maximum, the dot grew a short tail that wiggled like a stringfish tadpole. Sienna thought the command to turn on the communication channel to Rampart-G space station, her ‘home’ during this six-month tour of duty, so she could report the approaching ship.

Sergeant Scheherazade Vallant here, a raspy alto replied through the radio after a short pause.

Sienna sat up even straighter. This marine was a Tugship Service legend. Everyone knew about the fight with six space pirates. Her voice could grate the peel off an orange, because the pirates had damaged her vocal chords. Everyone also knew Vallant had single-handedly defeated those six