To Touch the Stars snippet

Okay, the second one.
FYI
1: The following is raw, I haven't even spell checked it. (again, lazy)
2: I haven't incorporated Darion's corrections yet. (See above excuse)
3: I check to see if there are 10 reviews on the weekends...

To Touch the Stars

Founding of the Federation book 2

Prologue:

 

Little 3 and a half year old Hannah Anne Castill looked up to the night stars with her father as she sat in his lap. Her tiny hand pointed up, she asked what a big light was. Her hazel eyes studied the light with an intensity that amused her father.

He wrapped his arms around the kid. She was a wonder, just like his son, a genius. She had an edict memory and a brain with an astronomical IQ. That still didn't stop him from treating her like a little girl and teasing her whenever he could though. “What do you think it is, a flying teddy bear? A unicorn?” He joked.

“No fair,” she mock pouted, jutting out her bottom lip in a cute face that tore at his heart.

“Well,” he drawled, “I told you honey, I work for Lagroose industries,” he explained, nodding his chin over his shoulder to the faded sign painted on the side of one of the out buildings. She nodded dutifully. It was all there for her to access, in fact she had accessed some of it, but she didn't understand it all.

“Some of those are satellites,” he said. “Some are stations and junk. Not a lot of junk, companies have been cleaning up the orbitals for the past couple of decades now,” he said.

Bret explained the history of the initial space program, how the Irons had worked with the government to kick start colonization of Mars and then gone private when the funding had dried up. He used his tablet to point out various projects in space including Mars. “Mars is a planet, I know you know that,” he said as she made a face at him. “But right from the beginning they set on it being terraformed. Luigi Irons hit it with an asteroid right after the first group got there I think. I'm not sure about the timing,” he said.

“I'll look it up,” Hannah said, not wanting her dad to get distracted by a tangent. He nodded.

“You can look up the whole Mars program. It's neat, and it's visual. Real visuals, even three D stuff,” he said. She wrinkled her pert nose at him but then nodded. He looked up once again. “To be there when they were doing that. It must have really been something,” he whispered.

There were 15 billion people on Earth, another 5 and a half million people in space and on Mars. The Earth's climate change had accelerated despite last minute desperate efforts to halt it. Too late those that had refused to listen saw the melting ice from the poles as a threat. Despite that, billions of dollars had been spent on trying to protect the cities on the coasts. Not much could be done, some areas like India, Florida, and parts of Africa were under water.

Some of the populations had abandoned the efforts and moved further inland, swarming inland cities which caused a refugee crisis for decades. They did start up new cities on higher ground. But the real estate wasn't ideal, they had to fight over the dwindling natural resources as well as the land.

The Earth plainly sucked he thought. His blue thoughts were yanked back to the present by a tug on his arm to get his attention.

“I thought Lagroose just did communications?” Hannah asked, waving to the antenna farm on the hills beyond their trailer. “Cyber stuff? Software?”

Bret looked over his shoulder to the communication equipment and smiled ruefully. “Not quite kiddo,” he said. “I'm a communication's engineer. I service this stuff, it's all tracking, telemetry feeds, that sort of thing. We're out here in the boonies because I want to be.”

“Oh,” Hannah said, blinking at him.

“Trust me dear, you don't want to be in a big city. Here you can breathe and see,” he said, waving a hand to indicate the Yukon. It was one of the few last bastions of untamed wilderness left in North America. Man had encroached just about everywhere else, even the parks they'd set aside were being pressured to fold.

She nodded dutifully as she nestled into the blanket she had wrapped around her small frame. It was cold out in the Canadian outback, but beautiful. She loved seeing the trees, she'd heard they were rare in parts of America. “So what else do they do?”

“Oh a lot kiddo,” her father laughed. He pulled out his tablet and then pulled up the company website. He scrolled through it, narrating softly as he pointed out the various projects the company had going on.

He judged Hannah was pretty close to understanding Lagroose and some of the current events. Jamey had picked it up around five. The kid had changed almost overnight when he'd started to look at current events, turning into a chipper child into a somber boy with the weight of the world on his shoulders. It had given Bret a few sleepless nights. And when Jamey had announced he was going to follow in his father's footsteps, sign up with Lagroose and change the world, he'd had to wrestle with his own conscience over the idea.

Lagroose industries was a megacorp, one of the better ones in his opinion. They had went to space to mine and to settle the solar system in the early days of the Mars settlement program. They'd been one of a dozen start ups that had thrived on the new frontier, in no small part from the alliances Mister Jack Lagroose had forged with the Iron family of Mars fame.

Jack Lagroose was another child prodigy like Hannah and Jamey. He was now in his mid forties, but he'd done some astonishing things in the past three and a half decades. He'd overshadowed the Irons family and just about every inventor humanity had ever produced.

“Come on daddy, we don't have all night,” Hannah grumbled. “I've got to hit the sack soon, you know bedtime?” she asked.

Bret coughed, hiding a chuckle. He'd let Hannah stay up a few times and she'd been cranky the next morning. That had taught her it was important to get her sleep. When she'd looked into sleep and realized it was important for her development she'd gotten into insisting on getting her eight hours in. To Bret the reversal was comical sometimes.

He cleared his throat and then went on to explain how the company made space ships to carry people, goods, and food across the star system, and eventually beyond. “You're brother's going up there. He's at the Lagroose academy now.”

“I know,” Hannah nodded dutifully. “I remember. He's not the only one with an edict memory. I'm as smart as he is,” she said with a petulant airy sniff.

“You may be kiddo,” Bret said, ruffling her hair.

As a father he had some misgivings about sending his 14 year old son, however gifted, off on his own. But Jamey had proven himself, he'd graduated high school at age 11, gotten his bachelor's degree the following year and there was no holding the lad back. He refused to stand in the boy's way out of some misplaced tradition or conventional wisdom like his grandparents said. He'd been piloting the family plane since he could walk and he'd made it clear he was going up. Bret envied the lad for his courage and intelligence. Unlike his parents he refused to stand in his son's way.

Down here ground side was just filthy air and constant fighting. The world was weary of the scandals and fighting, but like a punch drunk fighter, they didn't know how to stop. There was also a fear of stopping and not being able to start again.

He closed his eyes briefly. He wanted better for his kids. There were millions who were expecting some sort of world war, a revolution or something to wipe the slate clean so they could start over. That expectation had been around for over a century now. Each year though... they teetered ever closer to the brink. Of course none expected they or their friends to be hurt by such matters. He wanted his kids safely away from that when it all came crashing down.

Already the luddites were screaming that the spacers were a major drain on the economy. The fact that the space program was self sustaining and paid for a lot of stuff ground side didn't matter. They just saw something to sap to feed the undying appetite of the machine.

“I'm old, but when you are old enough and on your own I'm going up if they'll have me,” he said. “I've been training for years,” he said.

She blinked at him. He nodded solemnly. He didn't tell her that he'd put his own dreams on hold to support his family. He didn't want to hurt her. He'd never get her advantages, or Jamey's, but he could get them off the rock with the right push. “Jamey's going to go up to orbit for the first time in a month,” he said.

“Really?” She practically squealed in envy. “That's so not fair! He always gets to be first!” She jutted her bottom lip out in a too cute pout.

“He's got the touch kiddo,” he said, ruffling her hair. “He's earned his shot.” He remembered his unenviable first and second runs on the vomit comet. Jamey'd handled it just fine. Of course the lad had loved roller coasters and thrill rides once he was tall enough to ride them. “He wants to see the stars up close. They are a lot prettier up there with no atmo and light pollution in the way,” he said. “Maybe he'll even name a world after one of us.”

“He....” His daughter stared at him in surprise.

“He could do it,” her father said with an earnest smile. “That's the great thing about being first. Now we've got a real chance to do it. People have been dreaming it for hundreds of years, but it's finally getting to where we can actually do it.”

The little girl's eyes lit with a fire. “I want to do that,” she said slowly as if coming to a weighty decision. “To see new worlds. To touch the stars too daddy.”

He looked at her and then hugged her close. “Eat all your peas and get good grades and keep your chin up and you just might.”

She grinned, then went on to ask about other stars in the night sky.