The Outback Stars - Softcover

McDonald, Sandra

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0765355558 ISBN 13: 9780765355553

Verlag: Tor Books, 2008

Inhaltsangabe

Lieutenant Jodenny Scott is a hero.  She has the medals and the scars to prove it.
 
She's cooling her heels on Kookaburra, recovering from injuries sustained during the fiery loss of her last ship, the Yangtze, and she's bored -- so bored, in fact, that she takes a berth on the next ship out.  That's a mistake.  The Aral Sea isn't anyone's idea of a get-well tour.
 
Jodenny 's handed a division full of misfits, incompetents, and criminals.  She's a squared-away officer.  She thinks she can handle it all.  She's wrong.   Aral Sea isn't a happy ship.  And it's about to get a lot unhappier.
 
As Aral Sea enters the Alcheringa -- the alien-constructed space warp that allows giant settler-ships to travel between worlds, away from all help or hope -- Jodenny comes face to face with something powerful enough to dwarf even the unknown force that destroyed her last ship and left her with missing memories and bloody nightmares.  Lieutenant Jodenny Scott is about to be introduced to love.
 
Author Sandra McDonald brings her personal knowledge of the military, and of the subtle interplay between men and women on deployment, to a stirring tale that mixes ancient Australian folklore with the colonization of the stars.

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorinnen und Autoren

Sandra McDonald has been a Hollywood assistant, a software instructor, a bureaucrat, and an officer in the United States Navy.  Her short fiction has appeared in Realms of Fantasy, Strange Horizons, and elsewhere.  She lives in Jacksonville, Florida.

Sandra McDonald has been a Hollywood assistant, a software instructor, a bureaucrat, and an officer in the United States Navy. Her short fiction has appeared in Realms of Fantasy, Strange Horizons, and elsewhere. She lives in Jacksonville, Florida.

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Chapter One

 

If Jodenny spent one more day on the planet Kookaburra she might try to kill herself again. Not funny, she told herself, and not true, but morbid humor was her only defense against the prospect of spending the next eight hours stuck in a cubicle, routing invoices that nobody at Fleet gave a damn about. Nearly dying on the Yangtze was one thing, but bureaucratic suffocation promised to be no less fatal. First thing Thursday morning she headed to the Assignments building, but as she drew near she saw that Matt Lu had beaten her to it.

 

“Forget it.” Lu shaded his eyes against the sun. “No requisitions came in and the Survey Wing didn’t post any new jobs.”

 

“What about the Aral Sea?” Jodenny asked. The freighter, with its complement of five thousand crew and colonists, had been in orbit for a week.

 

“Leaves today for the Alcheringa. Trapped for another day in paradise, that’s us.”

 

He gave her a jaunty salute and headed off toward the mess hall, circling a miniature sculpture of Wondjina Spheres as he went. With the cadets on holiday, Alice Training Base’s peaceful air was broken only by the hum of robots cutting the grass on the soccer fields. Beyond the main gate, a lush eucalyptus forest stretched all the way to the pink sandstone of the MacBride Mountains. Earth must have looked like that once, back before the Debasement, but Jodenny had no time for beautiful landscapes and instead went inside the cool, ink-scented lobby of the building behind her.

 

Before Jodenny could ask, the ruddy-faced sergeant on duty said, “No, Lieutenant Scott. Yes, I’m sure. Yes, I remember you’d be eternally grateful if I called you the moment anything came in. So would Lieutenant Lu, Lieutenant Armstrong, Lieutenant Bell—”

 

“Quit your blabbering, sailor.” Chief Pau came to the counter with an armful of files. “Take these down to Processing and shove them up their asses, why don’t you? Goddamned paperwork.”

 

As soon as they were alone, Pau leaned over and gave her a conspiratorial wink. “Thirty minutes ago the Aral Sea sent out a priority call for a supply officer. The requisition is in the commodore’s queue.”

 

“Chief, I love you,” Jodenny blurted out. She regretted the inappropriate words immediately, but Pau only grinned.

 

“Better get over there before everyone else smells blood in the water, Lieutenant.”

 

She slipped out the back door, brazenly cut across the V.I.P. parking lot, and reached the commodore’s suite thirty seconds later. The cold, quiet offices were carpeted in blue and curtained in gold. Models of starships and a massive Team Space pennant provided the proper military decoration. Campos’s aide, busy on a link, held up a hand to forestall her from barging in on the commodore. From behind closed doors, Jodenny could hear an angry voice.

 

“Do you really think I’d throw everything away?” a man was saying. “Fifteen years in, pension on the horizon, and I’m going to take up with an able tech half my age? I’d be an idiot!”

 

Campos’s reply was too low for Jodenny to distinguish any words. A moment later the door was wrenched open and a lieutenant commander, his face red, stormed past Jodenny and out of the suite. Jodenny kept her gaze averted. She waited a respectful moment and then knocked on Campos’s door.

 

“Good morning, ma’am,” Jodenny said.

 

Campos was standing behind her desk, her expression grim. “Lieutenant Scott. What brings you here?”

 

“I came to talk to you about that requisition. On the Aral Sea?”

 

“News travels fast.”

 

“Consider me packed.”

 

“Come in and sit down, Lieutenant.”

 

Jodenny resisted the urge to rub her right thigh. Most days she forgot entirely about the new bone there, but every now and then too much exertion would set it throbbing. She sat in a straight-backed chair and focused on a pink gymea lily on Campos’s desk. The commodore came from authentic Aboriginal ancestry, and she’d decorated her office with art, sculpture, and weavings from Old Australia.

 

“I don’t think you’re ready to go back into space,” Campos said.

 

“I passed my physical—”

 

“With a moderate duty recommendation for six months. I don’t think that means jumping into the middle of a deployment.”

 

Jodenny lifted her chin. “I’m cleared for reassignment, ma’am, and there’s nothing for me to do here.”

 

“There are dozens of other officers waiting for jobs to open up, and five of them are supply types like yourself.”

 

“But I’m the best one for the job. You know my record, ma’am.”

 

“I do.” Campos gazed at her squarely. “I know what you did on the Yangtze and I know what you did afterward.”

 

Jodenny didn’t flinch. The scars on her wrists had been hidden so well by plastic surgery that even she couldn’t see them anymore. “I’ve earned this.”

 

“Maybe. But I’ve decided to send Lieutenant Lu instead.”

 

“Commodore—”

 

“I just pinged him,” Campos said. “He’s going to have to hustle to get on the Aral Sea’s last birdie at noon. Don’t worry, Lieutenant. The Alaska’s due to arrive in a few months. Maybe they’ll have something.”

 

“Yes, ma’am.”

 

Jodenny waited until she was outside before she pulled out her gib and pinged Fleet. Commander Taymore appeared on the screen wearing a distracted expression.

 

“Good morning, Lieutenant. How are things?”

 

“Fine, sir.” Jodenny squared her shoulders, knowing that what she was about to do was highly irregular. “I was hoping the admiral was in.”

 

Taymore scratched his chin. “He’s stuck in a meeting. Something I can help you with?”

 

“It’s about the Aral Sea, sir. I don’t think it can wait.”

 

“I heard they had a last-minute billet open. Did the commodore choose someone else?”

 

“Yes, sir. But I want it.”

 

“I know what the admiral told you,” Taymore said. “Promises made during the award of the MacBride Cross aren’t taken lightly. But are you sure? The Aral Sea isn’t a happy ship.”

 

And I’m not a happy lieutenant, Jodenny thought, but it didn’t matter. Unlike the Yangtze, the Aral Sea was intact and functional. Her bulkheads hadn’t been ripped open to the stars. Her decks weren’t stained with blood nor fused with flesh, and if any ghosts haunted her passageways at least they didn’t whisper Jodenny’s...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Tor Books
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2008
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0765355558
• ISBN 13: 9780765355553
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 400
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Nicht verfügbar