“I don’t, Lady Carani,” Gerard whispers back, “but I’m going to find out. Do as your father says. Stay in your room, and don’t come out.”
I nod – and let the Sentinels guide me to the stairs.
My father barely glances at me as I walk past him. The closer I get, the more I see the gauntness in his face. Two months ago, when we first got the news that would change everything, he went from suffering near-constant anxiety to unheard of levels of pure stress. He’d pace the halls of the house constantly, sometimes staying in his study for days at a time to pore over spreadsheets and mutter to himself.
The Sentinels don’t react to his tension, and Gerard keeps calm no matter what my father does. It feels like I’m the only one in the estate bothered by the dark cloud of my father’s strain. All his work on Marn will come to fruition if this new mining operation pays off. All the isolation I’ve suffered will finally have a purpose if the deposits yield what my father believes they will.
I mean, I know how much Orbs are worth. We’re not just going to be rich – we’re going to be obscenely rich. We’ll be able to leave behind the cutthroat society of Marn and instead move to a planet within the Human Alliance, closer to the center. There, we’ll be protected from Scorp, and Toads, and everything else that my father is trying to protect me from.
Then – and only then – will I finally be free. Then, I’ll finally have the power to refuse to let my father control me anymore. I haven’t been able to until now – after all, I’m not an idiot. For all my frustration, I do understand that Marn is dangerous. I know why my father brought us here, into the risk, but if this mining operation pays off, it’ll be time to put this isolation and loneliness behind me. The moment I’m finally on a safe planet? I’m going to live my life on my terms.
I’m tired of being told what to do – and I’m tired of feeling like a prisoner.
Then, I remember what my father had just said.
Who could the visitors be?
The Sentinels stop at the top of the stairs. I leave them looming in the hallway as I dart into my bedroom, finally glad to be rid of my ominous, mechanical shadows. I breathe a sigh of relief as I shut my bedroom door.
Leaning against the door, my mind begins working on overdrive.
The only people my father would ever allow into this manor would have to be able to offer him something – something substantial. If my father is willing to risk bringing visitors here, they must be able to provide one of the last, key things my father needs to bring his ambitions to fruition.
My hopes rise – right along with my apprehension. If someone’s going to buy my father out – taking ownership of his rights to the Orb-Material, and with it the risks attached – this entire situation could be resolved even sooner than I’d expected.
I try to temper my excitement. In that scenario, I could be on a shuttle to a Human Alliance planet as early as next week.
But it would also mean that word of my father’s new mining rights is getting out. He deliberately kept news of his huge discovery as quiet as possible, to try and mitigate the risk – but on Marn, secrets are impossible to keep for long.
If someone knows – or if somebody found out – then maybe my father’s obsessive security precautions still haven’t proven to be as tight as we’d thought.
I shelve those thoughts and return to the present moment, instead. I look around my room – now utterly bare.
I used to have toys. My mom would get them for me whenever she left the estate for the markets, but when she passed away, I couldn’t bear to look at them anymore. I’d put them in a cupboard and never touched them again. The only furniture that doesn’t look barren and empty is my bookshelf – the only solace in my lonely life.
The bookcase is packed to the brim with paperbacks and hardbacks. They’re my escape. I suppose I could use virtual reality or digital simulations to venture beyond the walls of this estate, but somehow my imagination feels more real than anything an artificial simulation could mimic. There’s nothing quite like sitting down and immersing myself in a story – using my own mind to escape the here and now. Through books, I can imagine countless different lives – each one vivid and visceral, drawing me into a story that’s even more real than my bland, isolated life.
And my reading isn’t constrained to stories. My collection of non-fiction rivals my fiction – and that’s a good thing, too. We used to have a tutor – but when the kidnappings got worse on Marn, three years ago, my father fired him and replaced him with an AI. My tutor’s last gift to me was a collection of books from the ancient philosophers of Old Earth, written back before humanity had ever understood or explored the cruelness of the universe.
They contain so much wisdom, even though they were written in an age of innocence. The golden era of Old Earth philosophers took place before man ever ventured beyond the orbit of his own planet – and long before our species encountered the brutal, terrifying Scorp.
Our First Contact had been with those nine-feet-tall, disgusting predators – and they’d ripped through humankind like the helpless children our species were back then. The Scorp had almost brought us to extinction – and that was before we’d even encountered the other major powers of the universe…
That was before we’d learned the
