by S M Wright
Copyright © 2019 by S.M. Wright
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without prior written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.
ISBN: 978-1-7341554-1-9 (E-book)
ISBN: 978-1-7341554-0-2 (Paperback)
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, and incidents are either the products of the author's imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
Cover illustration and design by Maria Freed aka MissChibiArtist.
Editing by Rachelle M.N. Shaw.
S.M. Wright/Far-Flung Press
smwright.wordpress.com
TABLE OF CONTENTS
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CAST OF CHARACTERS
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
For my Mom,
Not a day goes by that I don't think of you
and miss you.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
A lot of work goes into the creation of a book. I cannot thank my alpha and beta readers enough. Without them, Heritage Lost would not be what it is. Thank you, Amanda, Kylie and Rachelle, for going through it, warts and all, reassuring me it was a story worth pursuing. Thank you, Aubrey, Ann, Beth, Brian, Lauren D., and Lauren W., for stepping in as beta readers—your comments were invaluable and helped shape the story in ways I wouldn't have thought of before.
Amanda also stepped in as a final proof reader, catching silly little goofs. I swear sometimes my fingers don't know how to operate.
I'd also like to thank my cover artist and cover designer, Maria Freed aka MissChibiArtist. She has done a marvelous job bringing two of my characters to life. She was also incredibly easy to work with.
I must also recognize my cat, Marinus, for all the little typos he's added throughout the process by lounging across my keyboard. What do they say about adversity? Something like Ahfhjafjagargi zzkakkgaarikragrg in cat.
Last, but certainly not least, I must express my gratitude to my editor and friend, Rachelle M.N. Shaw, who makes sure everything is in order. She also provides copious amounts of support and pushes to carry on. I would be lost without her support! And, yes, she earned that exclamation mark.
CHAPTER ONE
Clack, clack-clat, clanck. A mechanical component of The Maelstrom heaved and protested, sending off-kilter vibrations through the corridor's metal wall to Katya's hand. No sweet or sulphuric aroma permeated the recirculated air. Promising, but some deaths were silent, odorless affairs—a morbid tidbit dropped by academy instructors. Vibrations always required care, especially while hurtling through space.
She balled her hand against the wall. It never failed. Troop transports frequently conjured up problems in the small Boita D-Class freighter—often helped by stray hands. Being thirty years in service, though, perhaps the old gal had earned the right to protest, if not all-out revolt. At least whatever plagued it this time wasn't emitting enough radiation to paint a target on their backs for opportunists, or worse.
Without witnesses—Rein elsewhere inspecting The Maelstrom and Mina in the cockpit—Katya ground her fist into the metal until tingles shot up her arm. Her paranoia-fueled vigil throughout the ship had held merit after all. Gritting her teeth, she dropped her hand to her side.
"Of course it'd wait until we left the station."
She ran a finger between her own Res Publica de Magistratus uniform collar and her neck. Its Muma wool scratched her unprotected skin, and the sweat created by the thick dress uniform only made it worse.
Activating the small communications device nestled in her ear, she said, "Rein, meet me in the engine room."
A faint crackle followed before she received a gruff, "On my way."
With her hands folded behind her back, she resumed her patrol through the tight, narrow corridors—a claustrophobic nightmare—to the bowels of The Maelstrom and its engine room. Her footfalls echoed until the clacking and hums of the ship's mechanical elements smothered them.
At the engine room door, she keyed her code into a nearby panel, punching each pockmarked number harder than necessary. Silent relics. That’s what it and its clones dispersed throughout the ship were. Holdovers from a time when such ships carried worthwhile cargo: currency, commodities, medicines, or materiel to whatever conflict called for it. The security had remained intact, out of a combination of laziness and austerity. Only Plasovern would target such a ship nowadays, and only if the terrorist organization wanted to send a message. Yet another reason to double-check their radiation levels.
The clattering increased the moment the double-blast door opened, disappearing into the wall. She wasted no time, hopping between the consoles and getting a read on the systems, making minor adjustments.
Her brow knotted. The one lieutenant's smug face with its punchable, loose smile—the tyro fresh from some second-string academy—sprang to mind. He'd turned around as soon as he'd disembarked, that smirk. He'd probably burrowed some dumbass piece of code, the type an academy student would find clever, into the system. Small, so as not to be too dangerous, but enough to gunk up the Boita's mechanical works. Katya had initiated the diagnostic tool by the time the door reopened.
"You didn't touch anything, did you?" Rein asked, his voice grating.
"Last I checked, Lieutenant"—Katya squared herself as he approached—"she was still my ship."
"Sir." Rein hunched over a secondary console, setting to work. No salute, nothing else. They'd never stood on protocol, not since coming to the Fringe; however, it had bred . . . problems.
The lights changed with his touches. He shifted his weight when she moved in for a better view, blocking the screen.
A lopsided smile spread across her face when Rein reversed one of her adjustments. He'd never last on a larger ship, a more important one in the Mezzo, let alone in the hub of Magistrate space. Reznic had left its mark on him: a chip on his shoulder, paranoia, and a resistance to authority—at least her authority, even after five years. She often wondered why he’d volunteered to leave the planet, his homeworld, to serve under her. Likely, the allure of full Magistrate citizenship. Complete ten years of service, gain a tier; prove exceptional, gain the closest thing to being born on a core Magistrate world.
"I knew they were down here," Rein grumbled before changing to Reznic curses, something about Magistrate recruits and wishing their dicks—now that was cruel.
"Tyros," she muttered. "I'd wager on their lieutenant having been the mastermind."
He grunted.
Katya slid in next to him, noting the way his muscles tightened. Beyond that, he ignored her. His hands, however, scrambled to conceal the displays, even as she tracked each command. Rein's dingy brown hair clung to his face, leaving her to speculate how he could even see to work—not that she could talk. Her own golden-brown bangs hung low, always in her eyes, trapped in a tradition she had no memory or understanding of. Her father had always been like a lepidopterist, pinning her brothers and si
sters to all their respective cultures and planets with fashion.
"Lieutenant," she said, "do you suggest we find a station?"
"Let me look at it. We may not have to do anything. It might be a loose bolt . . . maybe a line."
"Let the diagnostic scan finish. I’d place money on it being in the codes. Or the old gal's showing her age." Katya gestured to The Maelstrom's patched innards with a sweep of her hand and then snorted. "Yet here we are still on Fringe runs. She should be making trips in the same sector, if not retired and scrapped."
"Scrapped? Most captains would rather be tortured than say that about their vessels, especially their first." A gleam of humor, so infrequent, flitted in his eyes before it vanished, though his gaze lingered on her.
"Why?" Her voice remained light and brisk. "Scrap’s remade. I can't see anything wrong with that. Who knows, in her next life she might be a C-Class destroyer, and I could be her captain again. It'd be a step up, that's for sure."
His jaw tightened, but he held his tongue.
She bristled at the unspoken: She'd be the first woman to ever command a C-Class destroyer.
Straightening the gold name tag on her uniform, she lifted her chin. "No" had never thwarted her before. Her primary and intermediary teachers had spoken of the Respecta Academy like a forbidden holy place. Yet she’d nabbed an opening through high standards, pure stubbornness, and the surname Cassius. And there, she supposed, lay the crux of the strife between her and Rein—a citizenship handed to her, through luck and the one man who'd welcomed her into his home.
A loud hiss emitted, followed by red lights flashing across the panels. A few feet away from them, the FTL released steam to cool itself. A string of Reznic vulgarities erupted from Rein, and he slammed his fists against the console, as if that'd stop the sequence. During his tirade, he kicked its metal frame, which only increased the level of insults.
"R-56 is in the next sector," Katya said. She placed distance between them while he bent over and rubbed his foot, his expletives now under his breath. "We should be able to reach it with the solar sails. I'll have Mina set the course."
As she closed the door, another string of curses flowed behind her. Always so quick to anger, only requiring a small spark to explode. She dusted off her uniform and trekked back to the ladder that connected to the ship's main floor. After surmounting that one, she climbed the next set, which led to the crew quarters and cockpit. She faltered in front of the hatch to her rooms, tempted to leave behind the uncompromising, overly starched dress uniform. With just Rein and her—the only magistrate officers onboard—there was no reason to wear it now.
Bowing her head and turning from the hatch, Katya thrust her hands into the outer jacket's pockets and strode down the narrow catwalk. Duty before comfort. It'd been drilled into her head enough.
Katya punched in her clearance code at the cockpit's security panel, nothing more on her mind than to check the radiation levels. The door swished open with the last number.
Mina, who sat in the pilot's chair, bobbed her head, her cropped hair—dyed red this time—sticking out at every odd angle. Katya envied its shortness, or would have if she didn't know the purpose behind it: to keep out Reznic's filth, plus its fleas and lice. The planet had definitely deserved its moniker, the Slums of the Magistrate. In fact, it had a special stench to it that she would detect even a year removed from Reznic.
But from a young age, the teenager had not only survived but thrived in the planet's decay. A smile tugged at her lips. While she admired the hair, she didn't covet Mina's neon pink top, which made her eyes want to bleed.
"Minding things, are we?"
Mina stiffened in the pilot's chair, and Katya barely caught the wires as the teen jerked her retro earbuds out and swung around, her feet dropping from the front console.
Before she could speak, Katya did. "Get the solar sails out." She folded her arms in front of her, hoping to convey seriousness despite the corners of her lips quivering. "The FTL’s getting a rest until we get to R-56. Go easy on the old gal; she's limping as it is."
"As always!" A wicked, toothy smile spread across the teen's face, somewhat paler than its normally rich copper complexion—a side effect of ship life, with Katya probably resembling a spectral spirit—as she dislodged the lever to the sails. "I may have forgotten to check them on R-20, so . . ."
"If they don't work, we'll call for a tow."
A small portion of the viewscreen in front of them displayed the stars outside; the rest relayed data about the ship and external conditions. Radiation levels remained within normal ranges.
"What if R-56 doesn't have the parts we need?" Mina leaned forward, resting her elbows against the console; the light from the viewscreen reflected in her brown eyes.
Katya rested in the chair secured near the secondary consoles. "You tell me."
Mina shifted her dialect to what she undoubtedly deemed proper Magistrate. "Indubitably, we would set off posthaste to the subsequent way-station, where we'd presumptively find ourselves in another peccadillo."
"That word doesn't mean wha—"
Mina didn't stop, though her manner of speech shifted to its normal Reznic dialect. "It'll take us three times as long using solar sails. Meaning . . . it'd be more practical to wait at the station and contact Magistrate distributors." She ran her hands down her face, holding them on her checks. "We'll be stuck on a backwater cesspit for weeks."
Folding her hands in her lap, Katya snorted. "That's the life of a captain. Still want to—"
Blip! A band of red streamed across the viewscreen with a basic Magistrate warning.
"Mina, change course!"
"Eh—"
Katya swung around to the navigation console next to her, a second dot appearing on its grid-like map.
"Change direction to two o'clock!" she barked.
A sour taste filled her mouth. The dot's purple color meant the ship it represented belonged in Medzeci Empire space. The displayed information suggested a smaller vessel, probably Plasovern. Its ships used Medzeci signatures unless they'd misappropriated a Magistrate chip.
She clicked on her com. "Rein, cut the FTL. There's company in our front yard."
Over the intercom, he said, "If we cut it completely, we won't get it up fast enough to break away."
"With luck, they won't even see us." It was the only option, being in what amounted to a floating shoebox with pathetic armaments. Hardly a good one, but the lesser of several evils. "We can't afford to stress the FTL, and we can't fight them. That's an order, Lieutenant."
The viewscreen's data stream yielded the exact moment the FTL operations ceased. The unidentified ship, meanwhile, remained stationary, giving off a blip of radiation from its own FTL drive. The radiation emitted by their solar sails shouldn't even catch the other ship's notice.
"Keep it steady, Mina." She patted the teen's shoulder, eliciting a jolt. Mina’s joints stiffened as she worked the controls. Her complexion had turned almost milky. "They'll assume we're just a natural occurrence as long as you keep it steady. We'll cut back toward the station and report the sighting to the proper officials once we're clear."
"Is it normal for the Medzeci to be in Magistrate space?"
"We're on the edge," Katya said, tone level. "More often it's Plasovern . . . Medzeci hasn't stepped in since the Fringe Campaigns. Not that they've had to. They've funded Plasovern well. But that’s neither here nor there." The purple dot stayed put. "You're doing wel—"
"This is insane!" Rein barged into the cockpit. "We might as well paint a target on the hull." The muscles along his square jaw twitched.
"And running wouldn't be a shot into the brown?" Katya's lips formed a thin line after she’d thrown out that old gem learned on the firing range. The temptation to order him back to the engine room gnawed at her tongue. If things went sour . . .
He brushed up against her to get next to the console. "Plasovern, aye?" His frame shook against hers. "Idiots, the lot of them. And the
y're brazen enough to sit in Magistrate territory as if it were a day at the park."
"Even idiots can wreak havoc," Katya said. "A single cell took out an A-Class frigate while it was station-bound. The explosion crippled a quarter of the station, and there was barely anything left of the frigate."
"Can we not talk about stuff like that?" Mina whispered. "They're still stationary, right?"
"Haven't budged." Katya cleared her throat. "You’re doing fine. Just keep us steady. Focus on what I've taught you."
"Can't you take the helm?" Rein pointed to the seat Mina occupied.
The girl’s fingers shook over the controls, slight tremors passing through her arms. She sat the straightest Katya had ever seen her sit. Kindness would be to remove her from the situation. Katya tugged at her collar. Kindness could kill, as one of her instructors had fondly said. Maybe not now, but at some potential juncture in the future. So she remained rooted. Mina needed to meet this. No matter where she went, she would meet inescapable hardships.
"Keep us steady," Katya intoned again. "Rein, back to your post. If things get choppy, we'll need you down there. Mina’s doing fine."
"Our lives—"
"Then you know how important the FTL drive is. Right, Lieutenant?"
"On it . . . Captain." Rein plodded out of the cockpit, his shoulders lowered.
"I can't do this," Mina sputtered as soon as the door closed. Tears collected in her eyelashes.
It brought a tightness to Katya's chest. She remembered all too well that little girl who had snuck onto a military base—so standoffish while peddling a bubbly exterior. She'd been terrified of the base yet clung to it, the one point that despite its rough, often crude, soldiers just happened to be safer than any other location on Reznic. The girl she'd promised to make a pilot.
Steeling herself, Katya said, "Then you can't be a pilot. What a shame . . . I had such high hopes when I pulled you off Reznic."
Mina remained silent; however, the tremor lessened.