The Tournament: The Interstellar Trials, #1

By Kate Sheeran Swed

Her life is a crime. To survive, she'll steal another. 

 

Reggie's spent her life stowed away in the crawl spaces of a generation ship that's headed to the stars. If the ship's tyrannical authorities discover she exists, it'll mean a long walk out of a short airlock. 

 

When the authorities announce a tournament to make peace with the estranged other half of their fleet, Reggie steals another girl's identity -- along with her spot in the games. 

 

She doesn't want to win; she wants to escape to the other fleet. But avoiding the trials is harder than she expects, and avoiding the other contestants is even harder -- especially the charmingly naive future captain who keeps trying to bring her into the fold. 

 

When a threatening note appears under her door Reggie must decide how ruthlessly she's willing to be -- and who she's willing to betray to protect her secret. 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Spells & Spaceships Press
• Release date: Mar 28, 2023
• ISBN: 9798215509197

Kate Sheeran Swed

Kate Sheeran Swed loves hot chocolate, plastic dinosaurs, and airplane tickets. She has trekked along the Inca Trail to Macchu Picchu, hiked on the Mýrdalsjökull glacier in Iceland, and climbed the ruins of Masada to watch the sunrise over the Dead Sea. After growing up in New Hampshire, she completed degrees in music at the University of Maine and Ithaca College, then moved to New York City. She currently lives in New York’s capital region with her husband and son, and two cats who were named after movie dogs (Benji and Beethoven). Her stories have appeared or are forthcoming in the Young Explorer’s Adventure Guide Volume 5, Electric Spec, Daily Science Fiction, and Andromeda Spaceways. She holds an MFA in Fiction from Pacific University. You can find her on Instagram @katesheeranswed.

Book preview

CHAPTER 1

The Nero’s main passenger deck smells like soap, and that’s never a good sign.

I bury my nose in my collar, enduring the itch of the wool so I can breathe in the comforting whiff of metal that clings to all my clothes. Until it occurs to me that it might cause trouble if an officer sees me and decides I’m trying to hide my face. So I lift my chin out of my shirt, slip my hands out of my pockets, and edge into the thread of people who need something badly enough to risk venturing into the open.

As open as the deck of a spaceship can hope to be, that is.

An elbow whacks me in the ribs, and I look up, expecting an officer. Expecting the moment that’s been due to me my entire life, the reckoning my mother thought she could avoid.

Instead of a murderous officer, though, I catch a quick glimpse of wide, frightened eyes. They glance at the floor, then back to me, and that’s all I have time to see before the person is gone.

I follow their gaze toward my feet, and I see I’ve strayed outside of the markings that dictate the proper lanes for walking. Hot embarrassment flushes my cheeks, and I move aside. I’m not looking to get anyone killed here. And I’m certainly not looking to get caught out over such a dumb infraction.

You wouldn’t think there’d be any stowaways on a ship that’s been cruising through the galaxy for ten-plus generations. But you’d be wrong. I honestly don’t know what they’ll do to me if they find me, but I suspect it’d involve a long walk out of a short airlock.

Usually I stick to my perch between the hulls. Out of sight. Today, though, there’s something I need to steal.

I only trek this way once per cycle, but it’s definitely more crowded than usual. A head of mousey brown hair bobs along in front of me, and it takes a major effort not to bounce on my toes to see what the holdup is about. If I don’t sneak into the isolation room in time for the catcher collection, I’ll miss my window.

Unfortunately, there’s not much to see when you’re trapped in a lane like this. Glance down, a parade of scuffy shoes. Glance up, pipes and wires, and the occasional rust-colored button drone zipping along on a job. (I haven’t had the guts to try stealing one of those. Yet.)

I’m trying so hard to see what’s happening that I almost don’t notice we’ve reached a corridor intersection. Not until my gaze lands on a New Fleet officer, standing statue-still in the center of the turn. Her fatigues are the color of midnight, a holdover from the Fleet Wars, but the white sash running from her shoulder to her hip is supposed to indicate peace times. Or something.

More importantly, she’s got a shining silver plasma rifle cradled in her arms like a baby.

I snap my eyes away from the officer, praying she hasn’t noticed me examining her, but I don’t breathe easy until she’s well behind me.

I’m just here to steal this cycle’s catcher. Then I’ll be gone.

The soap smell only gets worse as I shuffle toward the far end of the ship. It’s like too-sweet flowers and rubbing alcohol had baby together, and that baby wants to crawl up my nostrils. It’s making my sinuses ache. My lungs aren’t super pleased with it, either.

When I turn the next corner, the Nero’s main plaza opens up before me like a big, open waste of space. There’s a banner stretched taught across the middle of the space, a crimson sheet of cloth printed with eye-curdling yellow words:

GOOD LUCK FLEET TOURNAMENT CHAMPION

It almost reads like a threat.

This explains why Nero’s arteries are clogged with people today, and why they’ve apparently used the ship’s entire cleaning supply to scour the decks. The shuttle’s coming to pick up the girl who’s going off to compete in this tournament thing. The admiral’s pet project.

It’s supposed to be an olive branch to the other fleet—the one we used to be a part of, until we started a war with them a few decades ago—but it’s not something I’ve spent much time thinking about.

OK, I might’ve imagined winning the tournament and returning in glory. But only for a second or two.

The tournament is for politicians, and for the poor girl who can apparently do fancy gymnastics or shoot arrows, or whatever she needs to do to win. Her name’s Jemma, or Janice, or something like that. I don’t have time to care about a game.

Mom would’ve told me to ditch my plan at this point. That the extra-protein jerky I can afford when I trap a catcher isn’t worth the risk on such a crowded day, when there are so many officers patrolling. That I should resign myself to a cycle of crop-deck scavenging and sneak back into the shadows.

But then, Mom also would’ve told me not to steal catchers at all. And Mom’s not here.

I just need to make it across the plaza. Then I can sneak into the collection room, nab my prize, and melt back into the safety of the hull.

The walking lanes disappear as I enter the plaza, a fair imitation of freedom. But there are so many officers threading through the crowds today, their sashes shining like searchlights, their boots polished. I can’t help noticing how well-fed they look, too. At least in contrast to the people who duck their heads whenever one of them passes.

The officers stop random people in the crowd. They check pockets. They ask questions. It must be related to the tournament shuttle, though I really can’t see why that would be.

My heart’s hammering in my chest by the time I reach the center of the space, and the plaster-white statue of a man that looms over us all. Sweat beads along my hairline, but I don’t wipe it away. I’m too afraid to call attention to myself.

It feels risky to finish my trek by crossing through the center of the space, so I skirt over to the wall instead. My target is steps away now. It’s a public bathroom, where a loosened ceiling tile will admit me to the space between the pair of airlocks that so ruthlessly keep me from crawling through the hull like I usually would.

Maybe there’s a reason Mom wouldn’t have risked this.

There’s a woman resting against the wall in front of me, and it takes a pretty solid effort on my part not to glare her down for being in my way. She’s wearing a brown dress, her hair tangled in a knot at her neck, and there’s dirt caked under her nails. A crop-deck worker, maybe; she’s hanging her head like she just finished a double shift.

As the thought crosses my mind, the telltale clip of boot steps passes perilously close on my right side. I freeze, suppressing a flinch, but the officer isn’t aiming for me. His sleeve brushes mine as he marches over to the resting woman, and he thrusts rough hands under her shoulders to haul her onto her feet.

The admiral’s instructions were explicit. The officer’s voice is deep, but in a strained way. Like he’s trying to sound more intimidating than he thinks he is. No low-deck citizens in the plaza today.

Oh. Got it. Xavier—that’s the admiral—wants Nero to look good in front of the First Fleet reps who must be on that tournament shuttle. Earth forbid anyone should actually see any of the people who keep us all fed.

That explains the soap smell, I guess.

If I were the crop deck worker, I might protest that I’d just been heading back to my cabin. Or that I was personally requested.

This woman just lets the guard haul her away. To the brig? To an airlock? Her eyes meet mine as they pass, glassy and resigned, and my breath catches. For a second, she almost looked like Mom.

My fingers drift to my earlobe, where her last gift to me nestles safely behind my ear. I don’t need it right now, but it’s good to know it’s there.

I swallow hard, forcing myself to turn away from the woman. I can’t sacrifice myself to try and help her. I’d only get us both killed.

Besides, my path is open now. I take the final few steps to the restroom and slip inside. I can’t lock the door behind me because that would catch attention when they realized someone had disappeared back here, so I have to work quickly. Using the toilet as a stepstool, I give my trusty ceiling tile a mini punch, then use the pipe on the wall to support me as I shimmy up into the gap.

Nero’s darkness folds around me like a hug, and I take a second to breathe it in. It’s not exactly quiet; the ship is a behemoth of a machine, always cranking and humming and sighing. It’s a familiar orchestra, though. Away from shuffling feet and muted voices, and the ever-present clip of the officers’ steps.

In a lot of ways, I’m safer than your average Nero citizen, as long as I’m tucked away like this. No one knows I’m here.

I take a second to let my heartbeat slow and gather oxygen into my panicked lungs. When I’m ready, I crawl along my usual path above the bathroom, picking my way over pipes and power tubes. Mom would’ve known what each of these things did, but to me, they’re just rungs on the ladders that let me jungle-gym my way to the catcher isolation room.

I’m late, and the collectors are already starting their work. I can hear them chattering as I drop into the material isolation chamber, keeping my back to the airlock behind me. It’s there in case they need to expel something in a hurry, but that’s never happened in my presence, so it doesn’t worry me.

What does worry me is the possibility of catching a glimpse outside. Other people like to look at the stars, and watch the fleet ships cruising to every side of us like a silent escort of whales—yes, I know about whales—but I don’t know why. To me, the only thing out there is death.

I guess I might feel differently if there were a bridge I could cross. It’d be worth the risk, a chance to escape to the First Fleet.

But I’m stuck on Nero. I have to work with what I’ve got.

At the moment, what I’ve got is a network of half-pipe tracks lining the walls to either side of me. In a few minutes, they’ll be crawling with catchers. My fingers are itching already. It smells like rubber in here, and I’d love to get my butt back into hiding before that tournament shuttle shows up.

Sadly, the collectors are taking their time today. They’re all suited up in case of a breach, but I’m close enough to catch snippets of conversation when they turn toward the chamber, and I know I’ve got newbies on my hands when one of them says, Do you think they ever bring anything dangerous? The catchers?

I can’t hear the partner’s reply, but it’s probably something like ‘obviously, they do. They wouldn’t have isolation chambers otherwise. Mostly, though, the chambers are a precaution.’

Catchers are thumbnail-sized nanobots that swarm the outer hull of every ship in the fleet. Both fleets. These things are like mini warriors. They’re malleable, which means they can rearrange their particles to absorb the blows from sand, rocks, rogue hydrogen particles, and anything else that might erode Nero’s hull over time. They can liquify, flatten, and roll into balls that isolate the materials.

Once a cycle, a bunch of the catchers trickle into the collection room to deliver the particles they’ve been grabbing out of space. For study, for building, for whatever.

You might think I’m here to steal those particles, but it’s the bots themselves I want.

And before you get all ‘but Reggie, the ship,’ there are billions, probably trillions, of catchers protecting the hull. They form a meter-thick barrier around the entire thing. Poor little off-the-grid Reggie could steal one every day for three lifetimes and never make a dent.

A clank sounds from the back of the airlock, and the first catchers enter the chamber. It’s like being stormed by an army of slate-gray ballbearings, rolling and clicking along on both sides.

You might think I could snatch one up now and disappear, but a catcher won’t melt back to its original form until its released whatever particle it caught. That means I can’t pry it open to pluck out its hive-mind sensor so it’ll obey me, or repurpose its chip. It’ll just be a useless hunk of metal. With a potentially hazardous fleck of space dust trapped in the center.

And my customers don’t pay for useless hunks of metal. Trust me, I’ve learned that the hard way. So I have to wait until the catchers roll into the collection room, deposit their goodies, then head back out to the hull through the decontamination room.

Usually, the trickiest part of that is just keeping a lid on my impatience. I can’t risk tapping my toes or muttering under my breath. I have to stay silent. Vigilant. When the catchers roll back, I make my move.

One of the collectors raises his voice, so I can hear a bit of what they’re saying. ...don’t want to miss the shuttle docking.

He sounds whiny, and loud. But his friend’s reply is firm. I’m not getting demoted to particle sifting because I didn’t follow protocol. This is our chance.

Like I said. Newbies.

The tracks on the walls shift angles so the newly clean catchers can roll back to the outer hull with the assistance from the ship’s artificial gravity. I need to work fast, because most collectors approach this job the lazy way. They cut corners. Which means I don’t know what a newbie following exact protocol might do.

The trap doors on the collection end of the tracks flicker open, like a wall of eyelids awakening, and the catchers roll back into the decontam chamber. I pluck one out of the lineup and it vibrates as I hold it firmly between by thumb and index finger. I can almost feel it trying to drag my hand back toward the track, like a magnet searching for its mate. It’s the size of a fat blueberry, and round like one, too. (I saw blueberries, once, when a new crop-decker forgot the third latch on the high-value greenhouse.) Its dusky metal feels rough against my skin.

I dig my nail into the reset slot, and the vibrating stops. Victory is mine. And the catcher, too.

We don’t need to check the airlock, the whiny collector is saying. We can just go. Watch the shuttle arrive. They won’t know.

The friend hesitates, and I hope it’s because he’s considering this option. I can see patches of them on the other side of the eyelids as the catchers stream in from the collection room, their white atmo gear, the bulky gloves on their hands. It’s like watching the world through a honeycomb.

Yes, I know about honeycombs. Unfortunately, no newbie beekeeper has ever left that particular wonder unguarded.

"Let’s go," the whiny collector says, and his friend gives in. Turns away.

I slip my prize into my pocket and leap, using a pipe on the wall to boost me to my ceiling tile. But my foot slips, landing