Island in a Sea of Stars by Kevin J. Anderson

1
    GARRISON REEVES
    He had to run, and he fled with the boy out into the dark spaces between the stars.
    Garrison Reeves took one of the ships from the Iswander Industries lava-processing operations on Sheol. Though he’d planned this for days, he gathered only a few supplies and keepsakes before he departed. None of the possessions mattered to him more than getting away safely with his son.
    He had been living on edge, alert for the disaster that he knew had to come. Lee Iswander, the Roamer industrialist, gave no credence to his concerns and refused to spend the money necessary to increase the safety margins; Garrison’s own wife Elisa didn’t believe him. The other lava miners paid little attention to his warnings about third-order tidal shifts in the broken planet, not because they disputed his geological math, but because they didn’t want to believe.
    So Garrison made his choice, the only possible choice, he believed. He stole one of the company ships, and Elisa was going to say that he stole their son.
    He flew out of the system, running far from any Roamer settlement or Confederation outpost that might log his passage. Elisa was not only ambitious, she was also abusive and dangerous—and he knew she would come after them. Garrison hoped he’d get enough of a head start.
    This was just a standard Iswander ship, nothing special, with no particular modifications. It was a workhorse, fully fueled with ekti, run by an efficient Ildiran stardrive. Garrison could fly the vessel without special training, as he could fly most standard spacecraft.
    As they soared into the stellar emptiness, ten-year-old Seth rode in the cockpit next to him. Garrison spent much of the long and lonely time familiarizing the boy with cockpit systems and engine diagnostics, giving him simple navigation problems to solve—as any good Roamer father would, even though Garrison had chafed under how his stern father had raised him .
    Roamers were free spirits, sometimes deprecatingly called space gypsies, whose clans filled rough and rugged niches that other, more pampered people considered too dangerous. Not many pampered people came to the lava operations on Sheol, but he had followed Elisa there, for her advancement in Iswander Industries.
    â€œYou should stay away from That Woman,” Olaf Reeves had warned him, not once but dozens of times. “If you defy me, if you marry her, you will regret it. You are spitting on your heritage.”
    He hated to admit his father had been right.
    Garrison closed his eyes and opened them after taking a breath. He studied the markers on the ship’s copilot control panels, then turned to his son. “Go ahead and set the next course, Seth.”
    â€œBut where are we going?” the boy asked.
    Garrison smiled. “On this trip, we’re truly roaming. So long as we’re heading away from Sheol, you pick.” He tapped the starscreen, which showed infinite possibilities. “For now, we’re just staying away from everything and everybody.”
    â€œLike hide-and-seek?”
    â€œA little, but it’s not really a game. We need some time alone so I can rethink things.”
    The boy was obviously glad to be with his father, but anxious. Seth knew that they were escaping from the fiery planet, though he didn’t entirely understand why. He respected his mother, even feared her, but he loved his father. Seth and Garrison genuinely liked each other. Elisa had never allowed herself to let down her walls—not with any business associate, not even with her own son.
    After scanning the star catalog, Seth chose coordinates that qualified for little other than “middle of nowhere.” They adjusted course. The stardrive engines hummed and changed tone as they readjusted, then the vessel streaked off again.
    Garrison felt dismayed to leave all those other workers at the Sheol lava-processing complex. More than two thousand employees, specialists of