Borderline (Hive Mind Book 4)

by Janet Edwards

  Lucas and I watched as the New Year was carried on south along the express belt, then turned to look north again for the first footers. Gold-costumed Lady Luck was in the lead, carrying her basket of good fortune chocolates, and tossing them to the eager people. The moment she noticed our group, she dropped her current almost empty basket onto the belt, and picked up a full one from the array clustered next to her. As she drew level with us, she turned to shower us with a host of the sweets.

  I was startled by the fact Lady Luck’s bounty wasn’t aimed at our group in general, but Lucas and me in particular. Then I realized the actresses riding the express belts on every level of the Hive would have instructions to watch for the clothes of high level people visiting their families. Lady Luck hadn’t just noticed several people in our group had Level 1 clothes, but that Lucas and I were wearing designer outfits. That labelled us as people vital to the success and prosperity of the Hive. Good fortune for us meant good fortune for the Hive.

  In previous years, I’d been scrabbling on the floor for sweets, but this time Adika had caught a handful and was holding them out to Lucas and me. We’d just accepted a sweet each when there was an alarmed shout from north of us. “We have a candidate!”

  I looked in the direction of the shout. An anxious couple had their arms around a teen girl who was on the edge of tears. Lady Luck’s attention had been on our group, so she’d missed throwing any sweets in their direction. The line of twelve gold-clad figures swinging their handbells were coming along the belt, and every teen knew that those who missed eating a good fortune chocolate to the sound of the bells would have a disastrous result in Lottery.

  Forge and Buzz were standing closest to the parents and teen girl. I was about to call out to Forge, when I saw he was already running to share a handful of sweets with them, before turning to sprint back to Buzz. The teen girl urgently ripped off the wrapping paper of her good fortune chocolate, ready to eat it the moment the first bell reached her.

  A year ago, I’d been that girl. Hastily unwrapping and gulping down my good fortune chocolate as the bells of the New Year rang in my ears. So much had changed since then. I wasn’t alone but had Lucas at my side. I wasn’t an ordinary girl but a telepath. I wasn’t wearing a tawdry teen dress but clothes specially designed for me.

  The year was 2533. Gregas had learned the truth about me being a telepath and was a borderline telepath himself. I could cleanse myself of echoes without leaving the Hive now, and I’d negotiated peace with Keith.

  I knew there were problems ahead of us. Morton’s unit would be shutting down now, ready for his surgery, and Keith was bound to cause more trouble. Most ominous of all, a Joint Hive Treaty inspection team was coming to our Hive, but if we got safely through that inspection there was the hope of a new telepath arriving.

  The first bells had reached Lucas and me, so I forgot about the future and focused on this moment. We were both standing with our good fortune chocolates unwrapped and ready to eat. Gestures of commitment should always come from the higher level person, so I held my chocolate out first for Lucas to eat, and then he gave his chocolate to me.

  The bells were ringing next to us, and the sweetness of good fortune was on our lips, as we shared the New Year lovers’ kiss.

  Message from Janet Edwards

  Thank you for reading Borderline. This book is the fourth full-length book in the Hive Mind series. I have more full-length books planned for this series, and there is also a prequel novella, Perilous. You can make sure you don’t miss future books in this and my other fictional universes by signing up to get an email alert when there’s a new release.

  You may also be interested in my books set in the very different Portal Future universe, where humanity portals between hundreds of different colony worlds scattered across space. These books include the Earth Girl trilogy, the Scavenger Exodus series, and related stories. Please continue reading for a sample chapter of Scavenger Alliance, the first book in the Scavenger Exodus series.

  You can visit me online at my website to see the current full list of my books, including suggestions on the reading order.

  I’d like to thank Cindy Smith, Alice Mercer, Charlotte Staines, Rachel Krosky, Jennefer Jones, Christina Sherwood, and Andrew Angel for Beta reading Borderline. Any remaining problems are entirely my fault.

  Best wishes from Janet Edwards

  Books by Janet Edwards

  Set in the Hive Future

  The Hive Mind series:-

  PERILOUS: Hive Mind A Prequel Novella

  TELEPATH

  DEFENDER

  HURRICANE

  BORDERLINE

  Set in the 25th Century of the Portal Future

  The Scavenger Exodus series:-

  SCAVENGER ALLIANCE

  SCAVENGER BLOOD

  Set in the 28th Century of the Portal Future

  The prequel novellas:-

  EARTH AND FIRE: An Earth Girl Novella

  EARTH AND AIR: An Earth Girl Novella

  FRONTIER: An Epsilon Sector Novella

  The Earth Girl trilogy:-

  EARTH GIRL

  EARTH STAR

  EARTH FLIGHT

  The Earth Girl prequel short story collection:-

  EARTH 2788: The Earth Girl Short Stories

  Other short stories:-

  HERA 2781: A Military Short Story

  Set in the Game Future

  REAPER

  Please visit me online at my website to see the current full list of books.

  You can also make sure you don’t miss the next book by signing up to get new release updates

  About the Author

  Janet Edwards lives in England. As a child, she read everything she could get her hands on, including a huge amount of science fiction and fantasy. She studied Maths at Oxford, and went on to suffer years of writing unbearably complicated technical documents before deciding to write something that was fun for a change. She has a husband, a son, a lot of books, and an aversion to housework.

  Visit Janet at her website.

  Follow Janet on Facebook.

  Follow Janet on Twitter.

  Sign up for new release updates.

  Preview of Scavenger Alliance

  2408. Humanity has travelled to the stars through interstellar portals, but the rebels and criminals were left behind on a ruined Earth. Eighteen-year-old Blaze is one of the last seven hundred people scavenging a living in an increasingly lethal New York. Her mother died six years ago. Her brother turned traitor. She believes her father is Donnell, the leader of the uneasy alliance between the remnants of the Earth Resistance and the old criminal gangs. She’s not sure what Donnell believes because he’s barely spoken to her since her brother betrayed him.

  Blaze has survived this long by being too unimportant to kill, but now the alliance is on the brink of starvation, and an old enemy is trying to seize power. When an aircraft carrying three privileged off-worlders crashes in New York, it adds more fuel to an already explosive situation, and Blaze is forced to step into the spotlight. Can the traitor’s sister convince Donnell, the warring divisions, and the off-worlders to work together to leave the death trap of New York? Blaze thinks that failure will mean the death of everyone she knows, but then she discovers the off-worlders’ secret. The stakes here are far higher than just seven hundred lives.

  Scavenger Alliance is set in the same future timeline as the Earth Girl trilogy, but takes place several centuries earlier, and features an ancestor of the trilogy’s main character, Jarra.

  Chapter One

  I was the only person who saw the aircraft arrive in New York, and I didn’t realize what it was at first. I’d just stepped out on to the roof of the Americas Parliament House, when I noticed the small speck in the dawn sky.

  Logic told me there was no need for me to worry about anything overhead. I was standing on top of the highest building in the area, so should be perfectly safe from the gliding attacks of the local predators. The crisp carpet of sno
w under my feet was an extra reassurance, since none of those predators would be out hunting while the temperature was below freezing point.

  I still stopped to stare upwards and make sure this was only a bird. My years in New York had taught me that letting down your guard, even for a second, could get you injured or killed.

  I couldn’t work out what species of bird this was, but it was definitely far too high in the air to be anything dangerous. I forgot about it, fixed my eyes on where the blue, planet Earth flag was proudly silhouetted against the rising sun, and gave the distinctive, right hand on heart salute of the Earth Resistance.

  My regular morning ritual completed, I would normally go back inside, but today I lingered with my eyes fixed on the Earth Resistance flag, brooding on the ominous fact that today was my eighteenth birthday. My position in the Resistance had been uncertain ever since my brother left, and turning eighteen would probably make my life even more difficult.

  I was reluctant to go back indoors in case I found my worries becoming harsh reality, but the icy January wind was finding its way through my layers of clothing, and triggering an ache in the left arm that I’d broken last summer. I sighed, turned back to the door to the stairs, and then remembered the strange bird and gave a last glance upwards.

  I was startled to see the bird was much closer now, vastly bigger than I’d thought, and didn’t look like any kind of living creature I’d ever seen. It took me a moment longer to work out this had to be an aircraft. I’d heard people talk about how such things were commonplace centuries ago, used for long distance travel in the days before the invention of portal technology, but I’d imagined them having wide flapping wings rather than stubby, rigid structures.

  The aircraft must have come from behind Fence, flying casually over the vicious wire that protected the respectable citizens from undesirables like me, but why? The last of the citizens had abandoned New York in 2389, withdrawing to their new settlements the summer before I was born, so what had brought them here now?

  I stood there for another couple of minutes, watching the aircraft fly straight overhead and across the Hudson River to skyscraper-crammed Manhattan. It stopped there, hung motionless in the sky like a hovering bird of prey for a few seconds, then slowly dropped vertically downwards and vanished behind one of the buildings.

  An enemy aircraft had landed in our city! I forced myself out of my stupor, ran back inside, clattered down the narrow flight of stairs, and then came to an abrupt halt as I saw the man walking down the corridor ahead of me. He had his back to me, just an anonymous shape in a thick, hooded coat, but the flickering lights of the gun tendrils on his right hand and wrist showed this had to be Donnell. Now that Kasim was dead, Donnell was the only person here with an Armed Agent weapon.

  I hesitated. Given my dubious situation, I normally gave messages to one of Donnell’s officers rather than approaching him directly myself, but he needed to hear this news at once.

  “Sir!” I hurried up to him.

  Donnell tugged down his hood as he turned to face me, and I saw his eyebrows lift in surprise.

  “I just saw an aircraft!” I said. “It landed over the other side of the river in Manhattan.”

  Donnell frowned for a moment, and then shrugged. “I can’t believe the citizens have suddenly started flying aircraft after all these years. It must be some off-worlders checking the art galleries and museums for anything worth salvaging. Forget about it, Blaze.”

  “Forget about it?” I repeated his words in shocked disbelief. The idea of the citizens trespassing in our territory had been bad enough, but the thought of off-worlders coming here and taking whatever they wanted was even worse. “But we’re the Earth Resistance. It’s our duty to stop the off-world colonies leeching resources from Earth. It says so in our charter!”

  Donnell ran his fingers through his thick brown hair, with its scattering of silver strands that added distinction to his legendary good looks. “That’s true, but I wrote that charter over thirty years ago, back when there were still a couple of billion people living on Earth. Everything is totally different now.”

  There weren’t billions of people living on Earth now, there were probably less than a hundred million, and only just over seven hundred of us here in New York, but I thought that made it even more important to defend our rights. Angry words burst out of me. “We should still go to Manhattan and …”

  Donnell lifted a hand to stop me. “Calm down, Blaze.”

  I was horrified to realize I’d been shouting at Donnell. I hastily shut up.

  “You mustn’t tell anyone else about the aircraft,” Donnell continued. “Everyone in the Resistance would react like you, wanting to get their revenge on the off-worlders who bled our home world dry of resources to found their bright new colony worlds, while the members of the other divisions are even more bitter about the way those bright new worlds refused entry to anyone with a criminal record. Whatever I said, the whole of the alliance would go racing off to Manhattan, and that could get us all killed.”

  His attitude suddenly made sense to me. “You’re worried the off-worlders could have advanced weapons?”

  “That’s one problem. The other is that it’s nearly two months since the winter fever hit us. Only a handful of people recovered in time to go out hunting and fishing before the last blizzard. Now everyone’s finally well again, we have to focus all our efforts on getting more food before the next blizzard arrives, because we’ve nothing left to eat.”

  Donnell’s words shocked me. I’d known we were short of food, there had been strict rationing for weeks, but … “The food reserves are gone?”

  “We’ll be eating most of the remaining food for breakfast.”

  “I didn’t realize that,” I murmured.

  “I discussed the situation with the leaders of the other four divisions. We made a joint decision not to frighten people with the truth, because we didn’t want anyone heroically heading out into the blizzard and getting themselves killed in an attempt to get more food. I’m only telling you about this now so you’ll understand why I’m asking you to forget about that aircraft. However wrong it feels to let off-worlders ransack Manhattan, we must hunt food rather than invaders today. We have children to feed.”

  I nodded in reluctant acceptance.

  “It’s not as if we’ll ever risk going to Manhattan for supplies again after that disastrous trip last summer,” Donnell added. “Anything left there is going to rot away and fall apart, so the off-worlders might as well take whatever they want.”

  I winced at the mention of that trip to Manhattan. I considered myself lucky to have escaped with nothing worse than a broken arm, because one of Donnell’s officers had been killed.

  “I won’t tell anyone about the aircraft, sir, but if it takes off when everyone is out hunting then they’ll all see it.”

  “It doesn’t matter if people see the off-worlders leaving. They won’t be able to fly after them.”

  There was a moment of silence after that. I thought our conversation was over, and was about to leave when Donnell spoke again.

  “Happy birthday, Blaze.”

  He’d remembered my birthday! I gave him a wary look. “Uh, thank you, sir.”

  “It’s time that we discussed your future.”

  Panic stabbed at me. What did Donnell mean by that? Did he feel that my eighteenth birthday marked the end of his debatable responsibility for me? I waited in tense silence to hear what Donnell would say next, but his attention had shifted to something behind me. I turned and saw Machico, the eldest of Donnell’s officers, was coming down the corridor towards us.

  Machico gave me a single inquisitive look before speaking to Donnell. “There’s a problem downstairs, oh beloved leader. Some of the Manhattan division men started jeering at Queens Island division, and Queens Island naturally retaliated. Luther was eager to flaunt his officer powers, and waded into the middle of the argument before the rest of us could stop him.”

  He pa
used. “The good news is that Manhattan and Queens Island instantly stopped throwing insults at each other. The bad news is that they started ridiculing Luther instead.”

  I frowned, distracted from my own worries by concern for Luther. All the other divisions hated each other, so an argument between any of them was likely to turn violent, but the feud between Manhattan and Queens Island was particularly bitter. Luther was barely nineteen, and had only been an alliance officer for five months. I could understand him wanting to prove himself, but it would have been wiser for him to let a more senior officer deal with the situation.

  Donnell groaned. “I’d better go and remind the troublemakers that my officers have the support of my authority as alliance leader.”

  The two of them turned to walk off down the corridor. I stayed where I was, but Donnell glanced back at me and waved his hand in a beckoning gesture. I chased after him and Machico, catching them up when they stopped by the big steel door that led to the main staircase.

  “If I can deal with this problem quickly, then we’ll be able to continue our talk,” said Donnell.

  I was even more nervous now. If Donnell wasn’t letting trouble between the divisions distract him from discussing my future, then he must have something grimly serious to say to me.

  Donnell put his hand on the security plate, and lights flashed as the plate checked his handprint. The door slid aside, and we went down six floors worth of stairs. When we reached ground level, Donnell yanked aside the heavy curtain that blocked the doorway ahead, and we left the Resistance wing of the building for the warm, smoke-scented air of the huge central reception hall.