No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

All characters and events in this publication, other than those clearly in the public domain, are fictions, and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

Novel length. 58,000 words.

US Edition.

Version 1.0

www.pippadacosta.com

Summary

“
I
didn’t sign
up to die a hero.” ~ Caleb

Chen Hung closes in.

The nine systems hang perilously close to a second fatal Blackout.

Billions of lives are at stake.

Does Captain Caleb Shepperd have what it takes to save the nine systems, or just himself?

Caleb never wanted to be a hero. That was his brother’s dream. Keep it simple, get away clean. Flying a ship packed with explosives into Janus orbit station isn’t simple, and there ain’t no way he’s getting away clean.

He knows the Fenrir Nine have sent him on a suicide mission, but he’s not about to lay down his life for them. He’s not a hero, and he sure ain’t no fool, despite what the Nine must think. There’s another way, he just has to figure it out before the bomb he’s carrying ticks down to zero.

One survived. Against the odds, the brutality, and the betrayal, she survived, but inside, in the part of her that’s real, she’s broken. Broken in ways that can’t be fixed.

She’s going back to where it all began, to Janus, to Chitec—to the “man” who made her. It will take all that she is, all that she was, and all that she could be to save the nine systems from the synthetics.

S
he will not fail
.

“
I
am One
, and I cannot be stopped.”

To see a world…

To see a World in a Grain of Sand

And a Heaven in a Wild Flower

Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand

And Eternity in an hour

Auguries of Innocence

William Blake

Chapter One: Caleb

H
ad Turner Candelario
not been holding a pistol to my head, I was sure we’d be getting along just fine. As it was, he knew I’d killed his sister, so I could appreciate why he might not be best pleased to see me.

“You got three seconds to tell me why I shouldn’t blow your brains out, Shepperd.”

“You wouldn’t wanna scrub blood out of those Svartelfheim drapes?”

He’d have blown my brains out already had I not had my pistol rammed in his gut.

We’d been having a civilized conversation regarding a trade before the pirate pulled a gun on me. Had I not been expecting it, the contents of my skull might have been decorating the walls. Now it came down to a man’s wits and who had the balls to shoot first. Unfortunately, I needed him more than he needed me.

This would be a great time for Fran to burst in and back me up. Any time now. Or, of course, this could be part of her master plan to deliver me to her boyfriend, Turner. It wasn’t like I could trust her.

“You know why we wear red?” Turner sneered. He was a big guy, in a manual labor kinda way, with muscles you could bounce credit tokens off of and hair as red as the tailing ponds scattered about the mines.

“No, I can’t say I do.” The pistol muzzle dug into my temple, slipping on the cool sweat making its way down my face. From my angle, if I looked down my nose, I could see his finger on the trigger. This wasn’t the first time I’d had a gun held against my head. I hoped it wouldn’t be the last.

“Doesn’t show the blood.” He smiled, showing me a tooth inset with a single, tiny ruby.

Lovely.
If Turner was anything like his sister, he probably got his rocks off by causing pain. But despite Ade’s crazy-ass ways, she’d had sense enough to know when to strike a deal and when to shoot first. I’d heard her brother was reasonable, if you had something worth his time. We were here to trade, but we’d yet to get past the
shoot-first
stage.

“Why don’t you boys put your cocks back in your pants, huh?”

Fran. Thank fuck. Unless she was there to watch her man shoot bits off me.

She sauntered into sight, hand on her hip, close to her holstered pistol, the other clutching a red sash exactly like the one she wore slung around her waist. She held the strip of crimson fabric toward Turner.

The pirate’s upper lip twitched into a snarl, making it quite clear what he thought of me, and then he shoved me back and turned to Fran. She lifted the sash, urging him to take it.

Turner brushed his fingers down the fabric. The sash had once belonged to his sister. I tried to swallow the gut-twisting unease, knowing I’d been the one to kill her. I’d fucked up. I’d fucked up a lot of things. And I was working to make some of them right. Hence my visit to KP92 and the Candes palace made of red rock.

Fran’s green eyes darted to me, either checking to see if I was still armed and dangerous or to convey some sort of message. As I was still expecting her to follow her trend of fucking me over, I ignored her and focused on the pissed-off pirate.

Turner curled his fingers around the sash and slid the satiny fabric from Fran’s grip.

“I won’t do business with him,” he told Fran while tucking his sister’s sash into his gun belt. “It’s enough that he’s here, in my house.”

“Then do business with me.” Her sharp nod in my direction was our prearranged signal.

I lingered long enough to make it known how much I disliked her dismissing me like a scolded puppy, and then left, passing through the swath of red drapes and out into a hallway. It could be worse. I might not have left at all. But I’d shown my face. All I had to do was wait for Fran to seal the deal so we could get back-in-black to the Fenrir Nine.

I marched through the palace’s innards and out onto the dust-choked gardens. It had rained, so the air was cleaner than normal, but it still tasted like blood. Finding a shaded corner, I leaned back against the redbrick wall and tucked a comms unit into my ear. Fran’s dulcet tones whispered in Spanish, but not to me. I’d rigged her comms so it was permanently on, routing her every word back to me. The only thing I trusted about her was her habit of stabbing me in the back. Hence the spying.

She uttered something deliciously smooth. I didn’t need to know Spanish to understand the meaning, especially when those words were accompanied by ragged breathing and Turner’s eager grunts. It hadn’t taken her long to work him over. Impressive. I could have jerked off to her sweet nothings had Turner’s soundtrack not doused my urge.

With a growl, I dropped my head back and closed my eyes. I couldn’t turn the comms off, just in case I missed something about how she would cut my throat in my sleep, so I was stuck listening to them going at it.

Shit, Turner had more stamina than me. I needed a drink. And a good lay. I hadn’t gotten any since … Fuck, I didn’t know when. Jesse. Yeah. Having someone you almost considered a friend get murdered mid-fuck tended to screw with your head. The last woman I’d gotten close to was One. Eight Mimir days had passed since Doc Lloyd had wiped her programming, leaving her wide open for her psycho-synth processes or some shit to take over. She’d killed the active Nine, and the Mimir folk had taken it personal-like. New nightmares stalked my dreams. Ones where she told me she liked the rain and then a bullet tore off half her face.

She’d tasted like cherries.

And I couldn’t think about her. Remembering One opened up an empty pit that not even a bottle of whiskey could fill.

I slid down the wall into a sitting position and threaded my hands through my hair. It looked like I was in for the long haul. Fran had better seal the deal. I couldn’t afford to go back to the Nine empty-handed.

The sun was hanging low over the mountains of red mine tailings by the time Fran kicked me in the shin to wake me.

“Catching up on your beauty sleep, Cale?”

She stood in the glare of the sunlight, her face hidden in silhouette. The tips of her dark, shaggy hair flared red. She’d grown her hair out since I’d dumped her ass on Asgard. She’d since sailed back into my life, backing me up on Mimir when the crowd had considered turning their wrath on me. I didn’t know what we were. Colleagues, enemies?

I’d overheard enough of her session and after-sex chat with Turner to know the pirate would skin me alive the first chance he got. Fran, though, had told him I was useful. He’d replied, “I’ve had venereal diseases more useful.”
It could be worse; they could have plotted my murder and where to bury my body.

“Did you get it?” I croaked and stretched my seized muscles. When she huffed a dismissive noise and glanced back at the red palace, I swiped the comms unit from my ear.

“Of course I got it. Thirty-five tons. Fifteen percent off. They’re taking it off one of their ships now.”

She held out her hand.

I squinted up at her. “Fifteen percent? Fuck, maybe I should offer to blow my clients for discounts.”

I caught her hand and held on after she’d hauled me to my feet.

“You’d have to pay them to fuck you, Captain.”

“How much do you charge?”

She smiled, but it wasn’t like the smiles we’d shared back in the simple days when she was my second-in-command and I was just the captain of a tugboat. This smile lacked any real spark.

“I’m too good for you, remember.” She eased her hand from mine. “We should leave before it gets dark. The deal’s good, but I don’t want to hang around.”

We strode from the red palace grounds into the market. I pulled my hood up and tugged my scarf over my mouth and nose to filter out the red fucking dust. People milled about the street, the occasional boom from the nearby mines interrupting their low murmurs. The ground trembled, but nobody batted an eyelid. I hated this rock, mostly because it reminded me of Ade. She was one crazy-ass bitch, but she hadn’t deserved to go out like she did—by mistake. I hadn’t meant to kill her.
It wasn’t my fault.

“You heard from the commander?” Fran asked, pulling her scarf up too, the fabric muffling her voice.

KP92 was Cande-ruled, and while Turner had decided to let me live—temporarily—that didn’t mean the rest of the family had.

“Not since the Island.” As far as I knew, my brother was still on Mimir, tracking Doc Lloyd. Last I’d heard, Bren had gotten word that the Chitec technician was holed up in a waterhome. Bren would find him. We’d get One back. Until then, I had to prove to the Nine I was an asset. So did Fran. I couldn’t afford to fuck this up. Bren would find One. It wasn’t as though Doc Lloyd could get off Mimir with a beaten-up synthetic body.

A memory flashed—her smile, such a pretty thing, until a phase bullet had torn through it.

“Cale?” Fran was looking at me like she was waiting for a reply.

“Huh?” We brushed by a group of locals filing the opposite way and stepped aside to allow a mule and cart to stomp through the street.

“He’ll find her.”

“Or the Nine will,” I said.

We hadn’t really spoken of the Nine and their island-sized ship camouflaged as a Mimir storm. A place like that, I imagined it had shocked Fran more than me. She’d come from fleet and had just learned that the Nine’s operation, once mobilized, could blow fleet away. She’d taken it well. At least, she hadn’t run back to fleet to tell tales. I was beginning to believe Asgard had sealed something in her mind. She no longer jacked up either. Clean as a Janus whorehouse, that was Fran.

Through the swirling dust, I could just make out
Starscream
squatted low on her struts at the end of the landing plain. The fading light and dust-heavy air gave her a warm, red aura. My heart did a little stutter like it always did at the sight of my ship. She wasn’t the prettiest thing and was starting to show her age. Most of her panels were streaked with fatigue scars and the obs window needed a good cleaning, but I couldn’t think of anything I loved more than coming home to her. As long as I had
Starscream
, I had an escape plan, a getaway, a way out, a Plan B. She was my assurance that I’d always have a place in the black.

“What do you think they want the explosives for?” Fran asked.

“Haven’t given it much thought.” In truth, I’d been grateful to wrap my head around something besides One’s absence and all the deaths.

“Thirty-five tons? It ain’t a lot. But it’s enough to do some serious damage in the right location.” She strode on, thumb tucked into her pants pocket, hitching the sash back to reveal her pistol to anyone who might care to look for weapons. “I think they’re gearing up to retaliate against fleet, if—when fleet makes their move. The Nine’ll place the explosives strategically. Don’t know how … I guess we’ll see once we deliver it.”

I’d been running guns for the Nine since they’d sprung me out of Asgard the first time around, and I wasn’t their only smuggler. On the Island, they had a big enough stockpile of weapons and ships to fuck fleet over and then some. I’d underestimated them, and that had been the point. Nobody knew how advanced they were. All their spooky bullshit with their hoods and only appearing in a group of nine made them look like crazies.

I had to admit: standing on the right side for once felt good—so long as I saw some of that action when it all kicked off, which would be soon, if fleet’s presence at every jumpgate was any indication. All I had to do was get the cargo back safely, prove I could do more than quietly haul their guns around, and the Nine would have to let me in.

Fran stopped. Her hand twitched over her pistol.

A line of Cande pirates poured from behind the market stalls and blocked the narrow street, kicking up red dust clouds. Turner sauntered through the haze, dressed in his full pirate-lord getup. Red sashes and heavy gray cloaks all-round. I didn’t much like the smile on Turner’s face.

“Fran?” I hovered my hand over my pistol.

She didn’t move, didn’t speak, but the glare she pinned on Turner wasn’t friendly.

Turner lifted something in his right hand. Not a pistol, but a small, cylindrical device. It took me a few seconds to recognize it. By then, it was too late. He lifted his thumb. His smile stretched. And then he pressed the remote trigger.

The shockwave hit us first, a great blast of heat and dust that burned my eyes and clogged my throat, but that’s not what dropped me to my knees. Dust, rock chips, and bits of metal rained down. Eyes burning, I blinked into the settling cloud.

Where
Starscream
had been, smoke bellowed skyward.

My whole world had been torn out from under me.

My ship.

She wasn’t there. She’d been right there. And now she was gone.

My ship.

There was nothing left of
Starscream.

Turner strode forward. I fumbled for my pistol while my ears rang and my vision blurred, but arms locked around me from behind. One of the pirates snatched my pistol free while the other hauled me to my feet.

“
Hijo de puta madre!
” Fran snapped. She had her pistol out and aimed at Turner, but he didn’t seem fazed.

“You feel that, Shepperd?” Turner stopped too close and snarled. “That empty pit in your gut?”

He blew up my ship.

I couldn’t bring myself to reply, or struggle, or do any fucking thing.
Starscream.
My life. My freedom. I was nothing without my ship.

He slammed a fist deep into my gut. My breath whooshed out, my guts heaved, and the rest of me turned to liquid. I’d have gone down had his guy not held me up.

Turner snatched a handful of hair and yanked me upright.

“That feeling right there, that empty hole eating you up? That’s what you did to me when you took Ade.” His red-rimmed eyes burned into mine. “Welcome to my pain.”

The next right hook smacked the consciousness right out of me.

Other books

Consequences by Penelope Lively

Madre Noche by Kurt Vonnegut

Grand Pleasure Station: Exposed! by Kendall Swan

Stoneskin's Revenge by Tom Deitz

Wives and Daughters by Elizabeth Gaskell

Half-breed Wolf by Shiloh Saddler

Rowena (Regency Belles Series Book 1) by Caroline Ashton

Lightning Kissed by Lila Felix

Elly: Cowgirl Bride by Milburn, Trish

Before by Nicola Marsh