The Dark Between The Stars

EIGHTEEN
ELISA REEVES

She found Garrison’s ship surrounded by the mysterious nodules drifting in empty space. The vessel’s running lights were on, but Elisa didn’t think he had detected her yet. Not surprisingly, he’d let his guard down. Why would anyone be watchful for a ship out here, so far from the nearest star system? He must have thought this was a perfect hiding place.

Noticing carbonization on the hull, burned-out station lights, and other indicators of damage, she wondered what sort of trouble Garrison had gotten into. It looked as if the ship had been in a fight. Elisa narrowed her eyes as she ran scans. He’d better not have let any harm come to Seth.

Not bothering to think through her words, she activated the comm. “Garrison, don’t make this harder on yourself.”

Seth’s image appeared on the screen, surprised and confused. The boy seemed different, but she wasn’t sure how. Elisa tried to remember the last time she had really looked at him. “Mother! You found the bloaters too.”

Bloaters? What were they?

When Garrison came on the screen, he didn’t look angry or frightened, just resolute. “I thought you might be following us. When I found your magnetic tracker, I couldn’t believe it, but after all these years of knowing you, I don’t know why I was surprised.”

“I knew you well enough that I could guess what you’d do. If I’d been more prepared, I would have stopped you.”

Garrison frowned. “I had to get Seth away from Sheol. You and Iswander kept ignoring the warnings.”

“You stole my son!”

“Our son,” he corrected in a calm voice. “I wish you had left with us. We could have stayed together as a family, but you made your choice—and I made mine.”

Having studied the specs en route, she knew that the weapons on her ship were better than those on his stolen vessel. Elisa knew exactly how to cripple his ship. “I’m taking him back with me. You proved you’re an unfit father by kidnapping him.”

She tried to bait Garrison, make him lose his temper in front of Seth, but he wouldn’t rise to it. “Provided Seth doesn’t go back to that place, we can work out a resolution. My priority is keeping him safe.”

“He’s coming with me. That is nonnegotiable.” She nudged her ship closer, trying to think of how she would strengthen her relationship with her son, make life better for him on Sheol, make him love her more. She might even let him have his own compy.

Garrison regarded her on the screen, and for a moment his features looked just like the image of Seth she kept on display. “He’s not a trophy you can claim in order to prove you’ve won something.” His stolen vessel drifted in among the bloated nodules, trying to hide. One of the nuclei flashed, and the sudden flare of light distracted her. “I’m not going to make him choose.”

“I didn’t ask him to choose—he’s going home with me! I warn you, I can damage your engines with a single shot and then take him to safety.”

Two small, defensive jazers would be sufficient to take his stardrive offline. Lee Iswander’s ships had to be able to protect themselves against marauders; as a powerful and wealthy industrialist, he’d learned how to protect what he had, and Elisa had learned from him. Garrison wouldn’t stand a chance.

“We could find a neutral place,” he said. “Seth is old enough to go to Academ. It would do him good to be among other kids his age. We can send him there, work things out.”

“You might want to shirk your responsibilities, but he’s coming with me. I’m his mother.”

He maneuvered his ship through the mysterious bloaters, dodging out of sight. He was trying to lose himself, and Elisa accelerated after him. She tried to lock in on his engines for a disabling strike.

He sounded disappointed on the comm. “I thought that’s what you’d say, but I wanted to make sure I tried everything. We got rid of your tracker—you can’t follow us.” He powered up his engines and began to move, dodging the island-sized nodules as he gained speed.

“Damn you, Garrison!” She plunged after him, looking for a good shot to damage his engines. “I’m warning you!”

His parting message enraged her. “I’ve had plenty of warnings, and I know which ones to listen to.”

He didn’t take her seriously! He was forcing her to do this. She tracked ahead and fired a warning shot across his bow. The jazers lanced out like javelins, magnetically bound high-energy beams.

When the beam struck one of the bobbing globules, the sphere erupted like a supernova. The explosion was more than just an outpouring of fire and energy: the detonating bloater ignited an adjacent bloater, then another one, like firecrackers in a chain-reaction inferno.

The shock wave engulfed her ship.