Sanctuary Thrive Read online

  Sanctuary Thrive

  Thrive Space Colony Adventures Book 6

  Ginger Booth

  Copyright © 2020 Ginger Booth

  All rights reserved.

  Cover design by Raphael Francavilla

  Skyship image © Freestyleimages | Dreamstime.com

  Diagram by Ginger Booth

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the author.

  Created with Vellum

  Contents

  Author’s Note

  Prologue

  Map

  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

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Afterword

  Also by Ginger Booth

  Acknowledgments

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  Prologue

  Launched on a shoestring,

  The colonists were humanity’s only hope for survival.

  They were failing in the Aloha star system.

  The Thrive crew turned that around.

  But there are six other colonized systems.

  Sass Collier takes Thrive to visit Sanctuary,

  the secret bastion of the Colony Corps.

  It’s an eleven-year trip, one way.

  Map

  Thrive floorplan.

  1

  The original Colony Corps constructed and crewed the vast refugee ships of the final exodus from Earth, bearing as many as a quarter million souls per transport. These crews deposited their charges at their destination star systems, tarried a few years to help out, then departed. – Quasar Shibuya, The Early Diaspora.

  “Goodbye,” Captain Sassafras Collier said, her face frozen in a smile. Her partner and first mate, Clay Rocha, caressed her shoulder and reached to click off the recording. Rather than allow time for second thoughts and video editing, he hit Send before she could stop him.

  This was their final farewell to their old shipmates before they vanished from the Aloha star system for two decades. No further communications would be possible. The Thrive’s current crew, including Clay, had sent their intimate goodbyes to family. But Sass’s crews were her only surviving family. She saved her closing video for last.

  Forty minutes from now, they’d receive the data burst on Mahina. The moon lay 700 million kilometers beneath them on the planetary ecliptic. Pono, the gas giant Mahina orbited, also hurtled away from their last meeting.

  By the time her friends could reply, Sass would be gone.

  She released her aching smile and sat back thoughtfully in her chair on the bridge. “Why am I not crying?”

  “Because the real goodbye was eighteen months ago,” Clay reasoned. Back then they hugged and kissed these people in person, and cried a river. “By now, my honest wish is to get on with it.”

  “True,” she agreed, though she did regret not feeling more…regret. Even after a few years, the revelation of her wetware-computer nature still generated self-doubt at the damnedest times. Would I be bawling now if I were a real person?

  Clay was no help. The gorgeous man, matching her at an apparent age of 20, was actually 109, five years her senior. His facsimile personality ran on the same nanite operating system as hers did, ever since their originals died within minutes of each other back on Earth, 70 years ago subjective. Or 78 years objective, adding back the eight years they skipped in the blink of an eye on the way to Aloha. Here she was, about to skip forward another eight years relative to her friends.

  This warp technology was cruel.

  She hailed her engineer, Darren Markley, once mentor to her old crew’s Copeland. “Good to go, chief. I’ll be with you shortly.”

  She and Clay clambered out of their seats into the cramped rear of the bridge, and Clay folded her into his arms for a hug. She clutched him hard and fierce, then let go with a sharp nod. “You’re right. Let’s get on with it.”

  Clay at her heels, she headed for the galley, where the crew awaited. Despite 18 months together now, she didn’t know them well. Most were spending the trip in cold sleep. Given the utter tedium of three years transit planet-to-planet, subjective, in a modest asteroid-hopper built to sleep 15, they weren’t missing much. A few even asked to skip this momentous turning point, to be roused only if and when their skills were needed.

  Sass didn’t like them the way she loved her original crew. She selected those friends one by one, and treasured them closer than brothers and sisters, their years of shared experience rich in trauma and triumph. Clay recruited the new candidates, mostly older, seasoned, pragmatic types for her to choose between. Boring.

  She smiled confidently and waved. Then she placed views from external cameras onto the big display above the dining table. One of them included the Aloha star, blue-white and noticeably dimmer than the view from home, but still clearly their sun and not a distant star.

  “I’ll join Mr. Markley in the hold. One of these displays should show Sanctuary’s star real soon now!”

  The crew cheered. She touched Clay’s hand and left them to him.

  Outside the galley, she swung under the railing and hopped down from the catwalk. She automatically flicked her personal gravity for a gentle landing five meters below. Their express slide stayed behind on Mahina with Jules, along with the gaudy mushroom-shaped produce stand. Copeland’s son was old enough to play with them now. The tidy hold felt a bit barren without their bulk.

  “We’re ready when you are.” She joined the engineer at the warp drive. The device stood on a tool bench, looking like a toaster oven. Its power cables were intimidating, plus its hard data line to the ship’s computer. Navigation and the engines already contributed for 18 months to position Thrive for this next trick. The warp box didn’t use them.

  As Sass understood it – which is to say, not at all – the warp drive turned on and suddenly translated them to an analogous location relative to Sanctuary. Then they’d unplug the device and stow it in a closet until it was needed agai
n. According to the tentative plan, that would be four years from now, allowing for three more years of travel, inbound and outbound, plus one year at their destination. They’d jump right back here, relative to Mahina. Warp travel had nothing to do with the ship’s propulsion.

  Except that it would devour their maximum star drive output, plus drain their capacitors. Sass trusted their time without power would be brief. Darren didn’t seem concerned.

  Perhaps that point was worth checking. Engineers could be a bit tunnel-visioned. “How long will this drain our power?”

  Darren, a mild and plain brown-haired geek, looked up from his wiggle-scope grinning like a kid in a candy store. “Instantaneous!”

  He reminded her of Clark Kent, Superman in his 1950’s mild-mannered guise, complete with button-down khaki Oxford shirt with pocket protector, dark grey slacks, short tidy hair, and black plastic-rimmed glasses. Darren’s superpower was to maintain a crappy eight-decade-old asteroid hopper masquerading as a starship, with spit and baling wire. Or in this case, printer steel and ingenuity. Losing his glasses and morphing into tights would be his Kryptonite, from technical genius to simply silly.

  “I’ll rephrase,” Sass said. “After this thing wipes our capacitors, how long till the lights come back on?”

  “Ah! I rigged a backup battery. The emergency lights should stay on.” No longer interested in this pedestrian diversion, he tested the wiggling waveform emitted by another power conduit. He shook his head in awe. “I’ve never played with this much power!”

  In misgiving, Sass asked, “You used to do power plants, right?”

  “Yes! Oh, nothing like this, though!”

  “Darren, this little box hasn’t been used in what, twenty-five years? Then it spent a couple decades in an over-pressured argon atmosphere on the Denali sea bed. It’s not going to like, short out or something, is it?” Sass’s understanding of electricity was sketchy. Unlike him, though, she grew up with lightning. And the ship surrounding her was metal.

  “That’s what this is for!” Darren replied in glee. “Could you help lift it? Wait!” He quickly tested two more leads, to his vast satisfaction. Then she helped him lift a box into place over the warp drive. “Sorry about the weight. Lead-lined steel.”

  Sass tipped the box this way and that as Darren lovingly snugged his cables into their guide slots, then sealed them with foil and duct tape. “Isn’t the ‘on’ switch trapped inside?”

  Darren tapped a little box like an archaic computer mouse. Its tail was bound to the data feed line to run into the cage.

  He stood back at last with a slow smile. He met her eye. “Tell me you aren’t excited.”

  “Terrified,” she assured him. There was no way to test this damned thing in advance. Oh, there was a ‘self-test’ button. But the only way to really activate it was, step one, travel 1.5 years north from the system ecliptic. Step two, feed it as much power as she used to escape Denali’s gravity well. Step three, turn it on.

  No, step three was to pray. Or worry and annoy the engineer with final misgivings as she did now, sort of like a captain’s prayer.

  His finger hovered over the button, his eyebrows lifted.

  “Engage,” Sass agreed.

  He pressed the button. And nothing happened.

  “That was smooth,” she acknowledged uneasily.

  Darren studied his tablet. “Computer, activate warp drive.”

  “Signal sent,” the computer agreed.

  Darren pursed his lips. “It didn’t engage. Hm.”

  Sass stepped over to the bigger screen at the engineering console instead of using her small pocket tablet. “No power consumption.”

  “I saw that,” Darren noted calmly. Doubtless the chief engineer was way ahead of her.

  Unlike most of the crew, Sass knew Darren well. Dot Vrooman, his wife, popped into cryo every other week. The nurse practitioner was exploring how to improve on the cryo drugs, and experimented on herself. But Darren was happy as a clam staying awake for three years to keep Sass and Clay company. He seized the precious bounty of free time to study nanite engineering. The Markleys were both 72, creche-mate childhood sweethearts, apparent age arrested at 25 by nanites. This was standard in the urb city of Mahina Actual. The new Yang-Yang advanced nanites were only beginning to make this blessing available to the masses back home.

  “There isn’t supposed to be an extra box,” Darren suggested warily, considering his shielding.

  Sass helped him remove the cage, and test each connection again. Nothing loose.

  Darren opened the toaster-oven-style door and peered within. Sass soothed herself that this was perfectly reasonable. A corner of her mind dwelt on how humiliating it would be to fail at this juncture. Just turn around and go home, having wasted three long years with nothing to show for it.

  Make that four or five long years. By the time they could reverse their velocity and reach it, Pono would be on the far side of the sun.

  Darren closed the device again. He pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose, lost in thought. He then attached his meter to a cable with alligator clips, and handed it to her to hold. He held up a wait finger as he visited an engineering cabinet. He returned with a second meter and clipped it to the opposite power cable.

  “What we’re looking for is any power drop between your meter and mine when we turn this on.” He drew next to her to hold the scopes together. Then he threw the switch.

  With a blinding arc of blue-white light, and a sinus-searing whiff of ozone, Sass was instantly electrocuted. She flew backward a meter across the hold, the meter dropping from her hand.

  2

  After delivering their refugees, the Colony Corps rendezvoused in the Sanctuary star system, a secret location reserved for settlers from the Luna, Mars, and Ganymede colonies. – Quasar Shibuya, The Early Diaspora.

  Electrocuted, Sass lay on the hold decking unable to breathe, her heart not beating, brain not firing, for some unknown moments. Then her nanites kick-started her heart back into operation. She raggedly gasped for air redolent with the reek of ozone and melted insulators.

  Cheering erupted from the galley upstairs. She ignored that for now. In a few more moments, her limbs regained the willingness to obey instructions. She sat bolt upright, and her eyes crossed. The hold swum around her, lit in a dim lurid red glow. Emergency lights. Applause.

  Nope, still not her priority. There was something else.

  Her vision settled, and she spotted Darren. She tried to rise and toppled forward to the deck. Instead she crawled on hands and knees. She reached the engineer, lying inert, eyes and mouth wide in astonishment.

  “Help!” Sass attempted. The word came out a raspy squeak. She tried her comm tablet and found it dead. “Computer, get Clay.” No, her voice was too soft to attract the computer’s attention, either.

  But her nanites made rapid progress toward restoring her senses. She tried to open Darren’s shirt, but the buttons required fine motor skills. She didn’t have any. Screw the shirt.

  She started pounding on his clothed chest and applying mouth-to-mouth.

  “Sass?” Clay called down. “Congratu – what?”

  He vaulted down, yelling for Dot.

  Upon arrival, he thrust Sass out of the way. Her balance still lagged, so she tipped over to land on her face. “Ow.” She managed to plant her palms to either side of her head and shift her nose out from under her. At that point she resolved to rest for a minute while Clay, then Dot, performed far more effectively at reviving Darren.

  She commiserated with his whole-body jerk as his heart restarted, and his gasping breath. Whether his brain was fried was another question. Judging from her own pose, perched on hands and cheek and knees, butt in the air, his wits might take time to catch up.

  “Where are we?” Sass inquired.

  Her pose muffled her voice, but she spoke loud enough to catch Clay’s attention. He considerately peeled her off the floor to sit upright in his lap.

  “
We’re in the Sanctuary system,” he replied. “I assume. There’s an orange sun. Did we expect the power to go out? Or was that, um…”

  Sass summoned the rags of her dignity about her. “We anti-ci-pated that.” She’d never noticed before how difficult that word was. “The capa-ci-tors are recharging. If the engine is on.” She paused. “Is the engine on?”

  “I believe so,” her first mate offered. He picked up a tablet from the deck and found it fried. Instead he asked, “Computer, is the engine on? And the capacitors recharging?”

  “Yes, estimated 33 minutes for life support to resume.”

  “Thaz good,” Sass slurred.

  Clay inquired, “Life support is out for half an hour, and that’s good? How long would be bad?”

  Sass conceded that was a good question. “Um.”