Stars Beyond Read online

  PRAISE FOR STARS UNCHARTED

  “An absorbing space opera, in the tradition of The Expanse and The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet.”

  —Charles Stross, award-winning author of The Delirium Brief

  “[A] brilliant female-driven tale. . . . Readers of Asimov, Lois McMaster Bujold’s Vorkosigan saga, or Anne McCaffrey’s Pern series will enjoy this story.”

  —Booklist (starred review)

  “A fresh concept, cutting-edge technology, and characters that pop! A must-read.”

  —William C. Dietz, New York Times bestselling author of Battle Hymn

  “The prose is fluid, easy to take in, but never simple, and keeps readers entranced by the action, making Stars Uncharted a superb sci-fi novel.”

  —Seattle Book Review

  “Stars Uncharted is a precarious space odyssey of epic proportion. The crew battles political machination, corruption, and betrayal all while trying to stay alive. Complex world building, characters with true depth and intense action.”

  —Tome Tender

  “An engaging plot and high-octane escapades. . . . A fun, exciting ride.”

  —Fantasy Literature

  “Compelling. . . . Dunstall might be my favorite new science fiction author.”

  —Richmond News

  ACE BOOKS BY S. K. DUNSTALL

  THE STARS UNCHARTED NOVELS

  Stars Uncharted

  Stars Beyond

  THE LINESMAN NOVELS

  Linesman

  Alliance

  Confluence

  ACE

  Published by Berkley

  An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC

  penguinrandomhouse.com

  Copyright © 2020 by S. K. Dunstall

  Penguin Random House supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin Random House to continue to publish books for every reader.

  ACE is a registered trademark and the A colophon is a trademark of Penguin Random House LLC.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Dunstall, S. K., author.

  Title: Stars beyond / S.K. Dunstall.

  Description: First Edition. | New York : Ace, 2020. | Series: Stars uncharted

  Identifiers: LCCN 2019024901 (print) | LCCN 2019024902 (ebook) | ISBN 9780399587641 (paperback) | ISBN 9780399587658 (ebook)

  Subjects: GSAFD: Science fiction.

  Classification: LCC PR9619.4.D866 S72 2020 (print) | LCC PR9619.4.D866

  (ebook) | DDC 823/.92—dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019024901

  LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019024902

  First Edition: January 2020

  Cover art by Fred Gambino

  Cover design by Judith Lagerman

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Version_1

  Contents

  Praise for Stars Uncharted

  By S. K. Dunstall

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Cast of Characters

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  CAST OF CHARACTERS

  THE CREW OF ANOTHER ROAD

  Hammond Roystan—captain

  Josune Arriola—engineer

  Carlos Almeida—engineer

  Jacques Saloman—chef (and cargo master)

  Nika Rik Terri—modder

  Bertram Snowshoe—modder (Nika’s apprentice)

  JUSTICE DEPARTMENT

  Alistair Laughton—agent

  Cam Le-Nguyen—agent (works with Alistair)

  Paola Teke—coordinator (Alistair’s boss)

  1

  LEONARD WICKMORE

  It might have been coincidence—the chairman of Eaglehawk Company standing in the foyer of the Grande Hotel, watching the news vid on the three-floor-high screen—but Leonard Wickmore didn’t believe in coincidences. Not when Chairman Keenan was as unlikely to frequent midlevel hotels like this as he was. Nor when they’d both just come from a board meeting where Keenan had told Wickmore, in the cold, nasal way that irritated Wickmore so much, “Ten of your own staff dead. Sloppy, Wickmore. Downright sloppy.”

  And every head around the boardroom table had nodded.

  “Drawing attention to our company at a time when the Justice Department is cleaning itself up is bad form,” Keenan had continued. “They already suspect Woden worked with us. Woden was your assassin. You lost control.”

  Tamati Woden had become a liability. Wickmore was glad he was gone. “The Justice Department is easy to take care of.”

  Keenan had fixed Wickmore with his cold, flat gaze. “Not as easy as it used to be, Wickmore. If you don’t realize that, then maybe you’re no longer fit to—” He’d broken off before he’d finished, because he wasn’t stupid enough to cross Leonard Wickmore without the board a hundred percent behind him. Not even with ten of his elite staff gone.

  But Wickmore had seen the nods. He knew who backed whom.

  Wickmore made his way across the foyer of the Grande. “Were you looking for me?”

  Keenan glared at the man on the screen. “Honesty League. Two months ago they were nobody.” He sipped the coffee in his hand, curled his mouth as if the coffee was curdled, and scowled at the screen again. “Now the whole galaxy is on their side.”

  “The Honesty League has been around for ten years.” Not that Wickmore disagreed with Keenan. They had been unknown. Just another fringe group trying, unsuccessfully, to bring so-called law and order to an unlawful universe. Until Santiago—one of the Big Twenty-Seven companies—had been stupid enough to convince the Justice Department to blatantly look the other way while they murdered the brother of the man who owned most of the free media inside the le
gal zone and outside it. The Honesty League had used this to call the Justice Department to account. Santiago had given them a martyr, and a voice, and they were taking full advantage of it.

  “One month and we have to watch everything we do,” Keenan said.

  It was closer to three months now, but you didn’t correct the chairman of the board for minor inconsistencies like that.

  “We can’t even dispose of anyone now without the Honesty League, and hence the Justice Department, jumping all over it.”

  “How many people have you disposed of lately?” Wickmore’s department looked after jobs like that.

  “Metaphorically speaking. That’s not the only thing the Justice Department turns a blind eye to.” Keenan looked at the coffee again, looked at the recycler. “I hate this stuff. They coat the container with some sort of wax.”

  The coffee hub that made up the center of the foyer was doing roaring business, with customers waiting five-deep for their order. Keenan’s bodyguards were nowhere in sight. They’d come looking for him soon.

  “Fact is, the Justice Department’s becoming unreliable,” Keenan said. “We can no longer count on them. We need other ways to get things done.” He turned away from the screen.

  There would be a point to this. Keenan would get to it eventually.

  “Nika Rik Terri was my modder, you know.”

  Wickmore had known. It wasn’t something he’d thought about, except to wonder if he could slip something into Nika’s studio to eavesdrop on conversations. He’d discarded that because she was obsessive about cleanliness, likely to find hidden bugs, which might just tip her over the edge. Instead Tamati Woden had done the tipping. He would have killed Woden personally for that alone, if Nika hadn’t done it for him.

  “I had an appointment three days after she disappeared.” Keenan looked at his coffee again, looked at the recycler. Wickmore bit back the urge to tell him to throw it in if he hated it that much.

  “I ran into Tamati Woden,” Keenan said. “I admired his mod. We got talking.”

  And no doubt Woden had identified himself.

  “A device that can temporarily exchange bodies,” Keenan said. “I can see uses for it.”

  Woden had no right to discuss that with Keenan. The exchanger was Wickmore’s, as soon as he caught up with Nika again. There would be no mistakes this time.

  Keenan’s gaze came up to meet Wickmore’s properly for the first time. “Your department budget has been curtailed for the moment.”

  Thanks to the man in front of him. Wickmore forced his expression to politeness.

  “The company has discretionary funds. We would find an exchanger useful. Very useful. Deliver it, and there might even be a promotion in it for you.”

  Might? Wickmore doubted it. He was already a part of the Eaglehawk executive. There was only one possible promotion he could get. A seat on the board.

  And he could get that by using the exchanger himself.

  More concerning was the fact that Keenan had known to come here, to the Grande, where Wickmore was following a trail that might lead him to Nika Rik Terri, the modder who had built the original exchanger and had since disappeared, taking all knowledge of how to build another with her. How closely was the other man watching him?

  “I might take you up on your offer of those funds,” Wickmore said slowly. “If I have the need.”

  Keenan nodded. “Mention our mutual deceased friend if you do.” He glanced across the foyer. “Ah, here are my bodyguards. Must go.” He tossed the coffee into the recycler and disappeared into the crowd around the coffee counter.

  Wickmore skirted the crowd the other way and made his way over to the lifts, to the restaurant on the two hundredth floor, where they served coffee in elaborate gold-patterned glasses.

  “Pol Bager has a reservation,” he told the maître d’. He could see her now, looking around the restaurant as if wondering if Wickmore had stood her up.

  He slid into the seat opposite. “Apologies for my tardiness.” No point in getting her offside immediately. Not before he’d learned what she knew. If he chose to work with the chairman, he didn’t need Pol and her schemes, but he hadn’t decided what to do about Keenan yet.

  He ordered, then turned to her. “So, Pol. You say you were on Hammond Roystan’s ship, The Road to the Goberlings.”

  “Yes. I was there when we found the Hassim.”

  “And after?” He probably knew more about her movements than she did. She’d led a mutiny on Roystan’s ship, stolen the memory of the Hassim, and escaped with it. Wickmore’s employee, Benedict—now dead—had made a deal with Pol. He’d help her find the treasure in return for the memory. Unfortunately, the memory couldn’t be opened. Pol claimed that Roystan had opened the memory, so Benedict had taken the crew of The Road prisoner. Pol had gone with the crew when they’d escaped. It was the crew who held Wickmore’s interest now.

  They talked through details already familiar to Wickmore. How The Road’s crew had escaped, how they’d taken a ship down to Lesser Sirius to rescue Nika Rik Terri. Pol glossed over why she’d been left behind. Wickmore knew. He’d seen the records from Benedict’s ship. Pol hadn’t been working with the crew, as she’d implied, although she wasn’t lying when she claimed she had helped them escape.

  Wickmore’s staff had kept track of Pol, but he hadn’t expected to ever want to talk to her. Not until an unrelated casual conversation with the captain of a cattle ship had mentioned a name he recognized.

  “So when you got to Lesser Sirius,” Wickmore said, “who was left? Yourself, Captain Roystan. Who else?”

  “Jacques and Carlos.” Jacques Saloman had been cargo master, Carlos Almeida the engineer. “And Josune, of course.” The hatred in her voice ran deep when she mentioned the name. Good.

  “Was that all?” She hadn’t mentioned the name he needed to hear. “Did anyone else escape with you?”

  “What? No. There was just us.” She stopped to think. “And the body modder, of course.”

  Finally. “What was his name?”

  “Snow, I think. I mean, it wasn’t his real name. I don’t know what his name was. He was just there when Benedict captured them. Us,” she corrected herself.

  She didn’t even know Wickmore had been on the ship with them for a time.

  “What about Nika Rik Terri?” Nika was already on her way to Lesser Sirius. Just in time to blow up her own studio, and Wickmore with it. He realized he was grinding his teeth, forced himself to stop.

  She frowned. “Not her. She was already gone. They had some plan to rescue her.”

  Wickmore brought up an image of Bertram Snowshoe. “The man who was with you?”

  She considered the image. “Maybe,” then, “Yes, but he’s younger in that picture.”

  Good. Wickmore smiled. “Well, Pol. I think you and I might have a deal.”

  * * *

  • • •

  Leonard Wickmore watched as Captain Oliver Norris strode toward him. Norris wasn’t a big man, but he walked as if he owned the world. Wickmore walked the same way. Image mattered. Act as if the world was yours; prove it by everything you say and do, and people believe you. Especially if you could back that up with a harsh hand and absolute control. Unfortunately for Norris, young Bertram Snowshoe had provided a recent setback.

  The captain had brought guards. Eight witnesses. All the better.

  “Executive.” Norris scanned the empty street, flicked a glance toward Pol, beside Wickmore. “You’re alone?”

  Wickmore also glanced at Pol. “Not quite.”

  “Not what I meant, as you’re aware.” Norris dismissed the woman, but a smile tilted one corner of his mouth. “So the rumors are true. Your team has been decimated. I hadn’t believed it possible.”

  Wickmore ignored the almost-question and smiled himself. He was satisfied to see Norris’s
amusement change to wariness. He would have made Norris sweat longer, but he needed him onside. “This meeting is for a side excursion of mine. I plan to present it to the board fait accompli. I don’t need spies.”

  Norris nodded slowly. “I’m intrigued.”

  Of course he was.

  “But allow me to introduce you to my companion. Pol, meet Captain Norris, of the mercenary ship the Boost. Norris, Pol Bager, a former crew member from the cargo ship Another Road to the Goberlings.”

  Norris inclined his head in a greeting. “Another Road. It sounds familiar.”

  “Of course it’s familiar,” Pol said. “We found the Hassim.”

  Wickmore noted the flash of interest that sparked in Norris’s eyes and kept his own expression bland. Nothing excited men quite so much as treasure. But Norris was a careful man, not a stupid one apt to chase dreams. It wasn’t treasure that swayed Norris, although it would sway his crew. It didn’t matter—that was just the bait. Wickmore had done his research.

  First, however, the small talk.

  “Allow me to draw your attention to Pol’s bracelet. It came from one of the worlds Feyodor and the Hassim crew discovered.” The bracelet had been among Benedict’s effects. Wickmore had returned it to Pol earlier that day.

  “May I?” Norris asked.

  Pol hesitated, her hand over the bracelet.

  “Go ahead,” Wickmore said. “Captain Norris is not a thief.” He was a soldier who’d kill you if you crossed him, which Pol was sure to do. Norris would probably even return the bracelet once he’d killed her. Wickmore didn’t care whether he did or not. The bracelet was simply to prove Pol had seen the Hassim.

  Pol handed it over. Her wrist showed red where the bracelet had stained it.

  “One of my men had it analyzed,” Wickmore said. “The red veins are a mineral composite, nothing we’ve seen before.”

  “Interesting.” Norris handed it back. “How long does the stain remain?”

  “Forever.” Pol rubbed her wrist.

  “I can send you our findings if you’re interested.”

  Norris shook his head. “Not really.”