The Legend of Sirra Bruche (Roran Curse Book 1) Read online

  “Are you out of my league?” he persisted.

  “Honestly, Drake, don’t you have a better way of finding girlfriends?” Andie wanted to know.

  “Never hurts to keep all my options open,” Drake bantered. “So, what brings you to the Jensen Building this fine day? You just missed our little ‘free the slaves of Corizen’ rally. Not that I care, but anything that brings the girls wins in my book.” Andie groaned. It was impossible to have a decent conversation with Drake.

  “I was looking for Casey,” she admitted.

  “Well, you’re in luck. I saw him inside. You might even catch him in the lobby,” he informed her. Andie’s heart leapt at the news. She hastily excused herself from Drake and headed into the building. There were still groups of students milling around in little clusters, the largest concentrated near a tall blue-skinned man packing a bag near the far end of the lobby. Andie gazed at him curiously. She had never seen a Denicorizen in person before. Racking her memory she decided this was probably Casey’s Denicorizen professor. For a moment she forgot what she had come into the lobby for. She wondered if the professor missed his home planet. Were people actually decent to him here on Zenith? Corizen was an anomaly among the known inhabited planets, the only one with a human population that didn’t belong to the Planetary Union.

  Suddenly she caught sight of Jo on the far side of the lobby near the lifts, driving all speculation about the Denicorizen professor from her mind. Andie smiled excitedly. She had missed Jo so much! What great luck to run into her here! Jo had her arms around some guy. They kissed, and Andie smirked. Jo had a boyfriend! Why didn’t she say anything? she wondered. Jo had commed her only last week, but she never said anything about dating anyone. Andie peered at them, trying to get a better look at the guy while she moved in their direction.

  Abruptly she stopped moving toward them. She knew that sandy hair and tall frame. Jo stepped away and blew a kiss. Then she ducked out a side door. Andie stood motionless, staring blankly ahead trying to process what she had seen.

  Her first thought was to hurriedly retreat from the building but for some reason her feet would not cooperate. All she could do was stand there and stare at Casey, feeling sick to her stomach. So he had kissed her and then gone running right into Jo’s arms? Did she even know her friends at all? He hadn’t commed her because he was too busy making out with Jo!

  Casey had been facing the side door, probably gazing lovingly after his girlfriend, but then he turned and headed for the other end of the lobby. Andie instinctively stumbled backward, looking around for somewhere to hide, but he saw her before she could get away.

  “Andie!” Casey called out excitedly. He strode right up to her and pulled her into a hug. She could still smell Jo’s perfume on his shirt. Extricating herself as quickly as possible she stepped back.

  “What are you doing here?” Casey exclaimed. “You were the last person I was expecting to see at a rally for Corizen!”

  “Um, I really wasn’t here for the rally. I’m visiting Jenna, and I thought I’d drop by and say hello,” she explained hastily. There was no way she was going to tell him why she really came. Probably he would laugh at her, thinking, Silly little Andie thought that kiss actually meant something! Why I kiss all kinds of girls.

  The small talk caught in her throat. Finally she just asked what she really wanted to know.

  “How long have you been dating Jo?” she questioned blandly. She was proud of how her voice came out. It didn’t sound at all like the answer really mattered much.

  “A few months,” Casey returned evenly. He ran his fingers through his hair. A few months? Here she’d been agonizing all this time over his silence while he’d been out enjoying himself hugely. Suddenly Andie’s temper got the better of her.

  “Nice of you to let me know,” she complained, her tone bitter. Casey’s face hardened.

  “I could say the same to you!” retorted Casey. “Did you ever say anything about your romance with that hotshot pilot? The one with all the looks and no brains?”

  “Scott is not just a pretty face,” Andie insisted angrily. “Don’t insult my friends like that!”

  “What about us, Andie? Jo and I are your friends too, maybe you could just be happy for us instead of angry.”

  “Happy! When you’ve never bothered to speak to me, when you didn’t come home for the term break . . .” she trailed off. In a moment she was going to be crying. She took a deep breath and tried to pull herself together.

  “You’re just jealous because for once you’re not the center of attention,” Casey accused. “Well, come out of your self-centered little world, Andie, and notice that the rest of us have lives too!”

  Andie felt as if he had punched her in the gut. Her eyes were smarting with the tears that she knew were going to come any second. With an iron effort she forced cold hardness to take its place.

  “Fine. I see that you have your own life,” accepted Andie in a steely voice. “Don’t worry, Casey, my jealousy won’t interfere in your life ever again.” She whirled and stalked to the door. It slid open with a whoosh, and she stomped down the stairs and into the commons without so much as a backward glance.

  Andie wandered around campus aimlessly, tears clouding her eyes until the quickly descending night reminded her that Jenna would be worried. It took a little while to figure out exactly where she was and make her way to Jenna’s apartment but she made it in the end. Jenna had taken one look at her tearstained face when she opened the door and then let her in without a word. As she made a bed for Andie on the couch she finally asked what had happened. Andie had grown closer to Jenna, but she still couldn’t talk to her very well. She just explained that she had gone to visit Casey at the University, but they’d had an argument. Jenna glanced at her knowingly and handed her a pillow. She cleared her throat awkwardly. “Well, if you would like to talk about it I’ll listen,” Jenna offered.

  “No thanks, Jenna. I think I’ll just get some sleep,” Andie responded wearily. “It’s been a long day.”

  “OK. Good night, Andie,” Jenna said quietly before disappearing into her room.

  Andie did stretch out on the couch trying to sleep, but all she did was replay her argument with Casey over and over in her head. It had been so silly for her to fly into a temper because Casey didn’t tell her about Jo. He was right; she never did tell him about Scott. How could she blame him for pursuing other options when she never commed him? Worse, did Casey really think she was self-centered? Was she? Did she only think of herself and never of anyone else?

  Perhaps sometimes she was a little oblivious to everybody else’s plans or needs. It was not a comforting thought.

  Casey had nailed another thing right on; she was jealous. She was so envious of Jo it hurt. All her life she had taken for granted that next to his mother, she was the most important person in Casey’s life. Even though she hadn’t spoken to him for the last few months, deep down she had still felt like she had a secure place in Casey’s life. Now Jo would have that, and Andie never would again.

  As the night wore on she felt worse and worse about how the conversation with Casey had gone. She couldn’t face the thought of returning to Dos Cientos and leaving things on this note. Finally she dragged herself off Jenna’s couch and rummaged through her bag for her flipcom. In a few minutes she had typed out a letter to Casey apologizing for what she said. Then she explained why she had really come to Omphalos. Somehow it was easier to write now. She closed by wishing both him and Jo well but then hesitated before she sent the message.

  Did she really want him to know how she felt about him? Was that being selfish of her? Maybe it was just a subconscious ploy to try and win back his attention from Jo. In the end she just saved a draft of the message; she could decide later if it was a good idea to send it. However, just having it written eased her mind enough that she was finally able to drift into an unsettled sleep
.

  ♦

  She never actually decided not to send the message. Instead she just kept putting it off until she forgot it was there. Back on Dos Cientos she threw herself into her work to try and fill the hole in her life. Casey continued to ignore her existence. With no boyfriend and no best friend she felt awfully empty at times. Occasionally Andie even grew impatient with her job. It was all good and well that she enjoyed being a pilot, but what life did she have beyond that?

  Since she had plenty of extra free time now, Kelly recruited her to study the Denicorizen language with her. Andie thought this was silly—what possible need could she ever have to speak Denicorizen, after all—but Kelly was determined. Her mother was a member of the Galactic Trade Commission, and she told Kelly that trade with Corizen was possible within five years.

  “Think of all the possibilities!” Kelly exulted. “For those traders willing to get in right at the beginning, the business opportunities will be endless. I plan to be right there in the middle of it. Which means that I better start learning their language now.” Andie laughed at her roommate’s mercenary plans, but she agreed to be a study partner. At least she was doing something to help someone.

  Life continued on, though things were a bit monotonous. Once a week she still went to have dinner with her parents in their quarters. Her father had been promoted to full admiral over the entire base and getting her schedule and his to match up was tricky. Often it was just Andie with her mother.

  Things had changed some for the better with her mother. For some reason her accident had had the opposite effect on her mother than the one she had expected. Since her mother was so convinced there was a curse of some kind, Andie thought her close brush with death would have only strengthened the paranoia. However, her mother seemed to relax a little bit more. It was if she felt that the accident had filled Andie’s quota for near-death experiences. For Andie, it meant she could loosen up and actually tell her mother about life at work, which was a huge relief after all this time of carefully watching everything she said so as not to worry her mom.

  Only once did Andie run into Casey’s mom, and that was purely by accident in the rec lounge. They had chatted briefly and though she was just as cordial as ever, Andie could tell that she knew that Casey and Andie weren’t exactly on speaking terms. Though Andie was dying to ask about him she stifled all her curiosity, and his mom didn’t volunteer anything either.

  Her first news about him in months came predictably from Jo. Jo had never quit sending Andie periodic comms, and Andie, unwilling to freeze Jo out with no explanation, had continued to write her back, though each short reply took an agonizing amount of effort to compose. For a long time Jo never even mentioned Casey, not even alluding to the fact that they were dating, leaving Andie to wonder if they still were. Finally, one spring morning nearly a year after her disastrous visit to Omphalos, Jo mentioned off-hand that she and Casey would probably get married.

  “Of course it would be prudent to wait until he’s done with the Academy so I figure after he graduates is a good a time as any. What do you think?”

  As if Andie could honestly answer that question! In the past year she had tried to keep Casey from her thoughts as much as humanly possible, but with these words all her longing came home with a ripping agony.

  The boy she loved was going to marry someone else.

  And somehow she had to go on living.

  ♦

  It was Scott, of all people, who suggested the solution she needed. She had stayed friends with Scott, but it was a pretty distant friendship. They still worked opposite schedules so they only ran into each other occasionally, but when they did, things were fairly cordial. One evening Scott actually came to her room looking for her. In surprise, she invited him in and they chatted for a few minutes. Andie was pretty confused; it wasn’t like Scott just to drop in and chat.

  Soon he got to the point of the visit though.

  The Armada was creating a brand new skiff squadron on the base they had just finished expanding in Zoria, and he had been assigned to captain the squad. It was an area that had been having a lot of turmoil between the new settlers and less-than-aboveboard groups that were already living there. The skiff pilots assigned to this base would not just be called out for emergencies; they would be providing the bulk of the law enforcement for the area.

  “Since it’s such a hairy situation to walk into I get to choose my pilots,” he explained. “And I want you on my squad.”

  “What?” Andie exclaimed in horror. “In Zoria?” Zoria was a large, sparsely settled continent with large spreads of rainforest and a southern desert that was a barren, rolling land of sand dunes. All Andie knew about Zoria was negative: it was infested with ravenous carnivores, plagued by horrible diseases, and filled with criminals and smugglers and terrorists and other rabble.

  “You’re the best,” Scott said simply. “But I won’t force you to move away from your family if you don’t want to. That’s why I’m here. I thought I’d ask before submitting your name.”

  Andie sat in silence for a little while. Zoria! The only place more savage was the planet Corizen. Still, he was offering her a chance to fly all the time instead of just occasionally for call-outs. That was something. Plus there was the added advantage of maybe getting her mind off her love life, or lack thereof, and giving her a new challenge.

  “OK, I accept,” Andie decided. Scott raised his eyebrows. “You don’t want some time to think it over? I don’t have to submit my list for another week.”

  “No, I’ll go,” Andie reiterated.

  If being a skiff pilot in Zoria could get her mind off Casey’s wedding, it would be completely worth it.

  ♦

  Her parents did not take well to her decision. It was like her bid to go to the Academy all over again. She broke the news to them the next time she went over for dinner. Judging by the fact that her father had rearranged his schedule to be home, she suspected that he had already seen Scott’s list. In light of that, she simply told them she was transferring to Zoria before they even sat down for dinner. Her father had showed no surprise, but her mother had gasped in horror.

  “I forbid it,” her father growled. “Zoria is a lawless waste. We lose more Armada soldiers there than the rest of the planet combined!” Andie’s mother moaned. Her father turned and put an arm around his wife comfortingly. “Marian, don’t worry. I won’t let her go.”

  “Dad,” Andie said firmly, “you just can’t keep calling on favors to protect me through my whole Armada career. I am an excellent skiff pilot, and they are asking for the best to deal with the situation. You know if I were not your daughter you would wholeheartedly approve the transfer.”

  Her father merely glowered silently in response. He knew it was true.

  “Mom,” she said, a hint of pleading in her voice, “This is my life. I know you worry about me, but I can’t sacrifice everything I want out of life just to stay safe. Otherwise, I might as well be a vegetable.”

  “I’m not going to tell you how to live your life,” her mother responded with a heavy sigh. She was silent for a minute, obviously trying to get control of her emotions. “But I don’t have to like it.”

  It wasn’t a gracious assent by any means, but Andie took what she could get. Later, after her father had gone back to work, her mother broached the subject again.

  “Tell me one thing, Andie. Does your decision to go to Zoria have anything to do with your fight with Casey?” she wanted to know, her questioning eyes fixed on Andie.

  “Of course not, Mom,” Andie defended testily. How in the world did her mother get that idea? Not that it was entirely wrong, but still! “Besides, Casey and I are not fighting.”

  “But you don’t speak to him anymore,” her mother observed flatly.

  “No, but we’re on different sides of the continent. We’ve kind of . . . you know, drifted apart.”
Her mother just shook her head. “It just happens when people grow up, I assume. Where did you get the idea we were fighting?” Andie asked, trying to keep her voice neutral.

  “Oh, I ran into Dr. Morten the other day. She wondered how you were doing since Casey never tells her anything anymore.”

  Andie suspected there had been more to that conversation than her mother was saying, but she brushed it off. Of course their mothers would have their own opinions on the subject, but she didn’t really want to know what they thought about it.

  “I just want to make sure you are not throwing your life away because of a boy,” her mom insisted.

  “I’m not throwing my life away,” Andie protested, trying to keep her temper in check. Why couldn’t they just leave her to do what she wanted? She could tell her mother didn’t want to let it go so she invented an excuse to leave and finally escaped her mother’s suffocating worry. Nothing was going to happen to her. It was not as if she was going to stay in Zoria forever!

  8. Zorian Disaster

  Zoria was a horrible place to live.

  Hot, sticky, and yet dusty, all at the same time. At least that was the perpetual weather situation in Caramba where the Armada base was located. When the skiff team arrived, their quarters had not quite been finished yet, and she spent the first month living in a temporary shelter made out of molded plastic. It barely kept the dust out and it sure didn’t keep insects out. She had her tiny shelter all to herself; she was the only female pilot who came to Zoria. Andie found it all extremely lonely. One of the other pilots had come from her squad, and of course she knew Scott, but things just weren’t the same without Kelly. They kept in frequent contact through comms, but it didn’t fill the long hours of silence when she was off duty.

  The only thing that made up for it was her job. Scott had assigned her to patrol an area that included a large settler plantation that had been attacked several times by men who were probably smugglers, trading outlawed goods they brought in from other planets in the Union. She had two goals: defend the fort from attacks by any outside groups and report any unusual ship landings so they could track down the smugglers’ hidden village. Most likely they were somewhere nearby and hoped to frighten the settlers away. It meant constant flying over the area and a fair amount of scanning the large jungle to the southeast of the plantation.