Sandra McDonald - Wondjina 01 - The Outback Stars.pdf - Sandra McDonald - widez2

THE

OUTBACK

STARS

SANDRA MCDONALD

Scanned By Daj

Proofed By MadMaxAU

* * * *

PROLOGUE

espite the protective suit shielding her from flames, Lieu-tenant Jodenny

Scott expected to die very soon. The prospect should have alarmed her,

but on some dim, exhausted level, she sup-posed it was only fair. So many

of her shipmates were already dead or dying, cut down by unexpected

violence in the middle of what should have been routine operations. Why

should she be any differ-ent? She fought her way through the fire, her

damaged lungs labor-ing, her gloved hands groping for the control panel

that would put an end to this inferno.

“Lieutenant,” said the voice over her commset. “Report!”

She would have been angry—how did they expect her to talk when

she could barely even breathe! —but all her energy was focused on her

mission. If somehow she survived this disaster, she would direct her fury

toward the people who had caused it. The murderers who’d killed her

friends and coworkers. Very briefly she thought of the man she loved, and

how she had last seen him: burned, bleeding, unable to even hear her final

farewell.

Jodenny’s hands closed on what she hoped was the control panel.

She bent forward so that her visor was flush against the metal, but ash and

smoke made it impossible to see. In her mind’s eye she imag-ined the

panel: the sensors, the indicator lights, the override. Her gloves were too

bulky to feel fine details. She pulled one off, ignoring the noisy alarm in her

helmet that indicated a suit breach. She touched searing hot metal and

recoiled with a cry. But then her fin-gers brushed against the lever she

needed, and she wrapped her burn-ing, blistered hand around its handle.

Here goes everything, she thought, and pulled with all her strength.

A new alarm started to screech. With violent speed, smoke and

debris and corpses and anything that wasn’t lashed down, including

Jodenny herself, rushed toward the vacuum outside the ship. She felt

herself lifted and carried toward the stars, her lungs collapsing, her suit

unable to protect her. But she had done it. She had saved her ship. This

time…

* * * *

CHAPTER

ONE

f 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, rout-ing invoices that nobody at Fleet gave a damn about.

Nearly dying on the Yangtze was one thing, but bureaucratic suffocation

prom-ised 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

para-dise, 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. Be-yond 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 eter-nally

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

Sandra McDonald - Wondjina 01 - The Outback Stars.pdf

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