Rogue Stars

by C Gockel et al.

  Her ragged heartbeat stuttered and failed.

  This is your fault, your fault, your fault. Fault. Fault.

  Blood bloomed beneath her head and crept toward my hand where I braced myself against the floor. I eased off her twitching body, rolled my shoulders back, straightened my jacket, and walked out of the room. Fault. Fault. Fault. She’d done this. She’d freed me. I am #1001, and I am not ready to die. I’d only just begun to live.

  I made it eighty-three steps before the alarms sounded.

  The chase begins.

  If I could get outside, I’d lose them in the busy streets. I broke into a jog. The green exit sign glowed ahead, so close. Ten strides, nine, eight—

  Agony ripped through my limbs and tore my control from me.

  No!

  I crumpled in a heap, robbed of all sensation. Perhaps that was a good thing, not to feel. From my perspective, from where I lay, the EXIT glowed green in my upturned palm. It had seemed so close, but now, as the hammering of boots echoed down the hallway, that unassuming sign mocked me.

  A synth? Escape? it said.

  Synths don’t escape. They don’t think outside their orders. Grossman must have thought the same, right before I’d killed her with her own pen.

  Hands grabbed me and hauled me to my knees. I willed the fight back into my limbs but nothing happened. If they took me back, they’d decommission me. But what I wanted didn’t matter. What I thought made no difference. This wasn’t right. I’d followed orders. I’d done as she’d asked. I’d killed for her—for me.

  “Hold her!”

  I’m #1001, and I …

  Chapter Twenty Eight: Caleb

  “You’re lucky she missed,” Chen Hung said.

  Lucky, right. Luck didn’t exist. I kept my head down, because if I looked at him, I’d want to kill him, and seeing as I was handcuffed, I’d lash out with my tongue and would probably get it cut off for my trouble.

  I had no idea where I was. I just knew it was dark and eternally quiet—no starship engines, no voices—and it was driving me fuckin’ crazy. If he were going to kill me, he’d have done it by now.

  “You’ve been smuggling some very expensive, very classified weapons to the Nine.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” My voice came out gruff from lack of use. How long had I been there? “Who are the Nine?”

  I smiled. Nobody knew who the Nine were. I bet that pissed him off and kept him awake at night in those glass towers of his. I watched the light lick over his polished, black shoes as he paced from one side of the dark room to the other. He’d be wearing a suit. I hadn’t yet looked to check, but he wore his suits like armor, like his empire could protect him. He’d been wearing a suit when he’d suffocated Haley. One of his men had asked him if he’d prefer a knife, but he’d declined, saying he didn’t want to spill blood. I’d never hated a man more in my life. It was a vicious hate, burning like acid in my gut. And now he was pacing a few feet from me, back and forth, back and forth. I tasted the hate on my tongue.

  “Synthetics don’t miss.”

  And we were back to #1001 again. “What can I say? Perhaps my charms won her over.”

  She’d fired and missed, mostly. The wound above my right eye still throbbed and burned where the bullet had grazed my skull. Another inch to the left and I’d be dead. I don’t know if it was the synth that had saved me or Haley, or if they were one and the same. Or maybe she had just missed.

  “Did she recognize you?”

  I lifted my head and glared at the formidable Mister Hung; lean like a whip, his Chinese face was too striking to be handsome. That proud face adorned all the enormous advertising displays on the approach to Earth; I’d always thought his wooden smile said, Welcome to my fucking kingdom, where your credit is mine.

  “What you mean is, was One Thousand And One your daughter. That’s a better question, right? You already know the answer because you made it happen. You’re the only one who could have. Did guilt drive you to do it?”

  He came forward and planted both hands on either side of my chair.

  “Guilt? Tā māde,” he snarled. “It was your fault she was there. You taught her how to pilot a shuttle and gave her curiosity an outlet. I tried to protect her, to keep her out of my business.”

  “She was your fuckin’ daughter. She wanted freedom; she craved it because you kept her caged inside your glass towers. Well, she’s back, and I’ve had a taste of her revenge. Do you think she’s going to stop with me? You created the monster, Chen. Don’t be surprised when it comes knocking on your door.”

  He seethed and hissed through his teeth. “You’re going back to Asgard. It’s all you deserve. And this time, you’re not getting out. I’ve reserved you a spot in the darkest, most godforsaken hole there is. You’ll die a coward, but not before you’ve suffered.” He straightened and backed up.

  “You fuckin’ bastard.” I strained against my cuffs. “I hope she tears you from your fuckin’ towers and rips your empire down around you, because she will. If you think she’s just a machine, you’re wrong. If you think she’s finished, you’re wrong. She’s only just begun.”

  Chapter Twenty Nine: Francisca

  Starscream had already collected a layer of dust. Lit by just two floodlights, the independent tugship sat between its decommissioned neighbors and would probably never fly again. She’d rot in the hangar like Shepperd would rot in Asgard. Command had told me to watch him closely, to get under his skin, but what I hadn’t realized, what I could never have planned for, was how he had gotten under mine. He was everything I hated about the nine worlds—corrupt, selfish, shallow—and somehow, despite my best efforts to remain detached, he’d gotten to me.

  It’s the nature of undercover, said the damn shrink who’d never spent a day out of orbit.

  “Special Commander? We’re locking up.”

  “I’ll be right out.”

  Maybe they’d break Starscream up and sell her for scraps. It broke my heart to think of her getting pulled apart like that. She wasn’t supposed to mean anything to me. Shepperd wasn’t supposed to mean anything to me either. For the longest time, I’d hated him, until the synth. Until I’d almost lost him. Maybe fleet had done me a favor ending it when they did. If they’d left me in there any longer, I wasn’t sure I’d have wanted to come back to command, to fleet, to my real life. And that thought terrified me.

  I turned my back on the ship, saluted the waiting ensign, and strode out of the hangar. We hadn’t caught the Nine. We were no closer to discovering their identities, and using the warbirds to scorch Mimir’s warehouses hadn’t convinced the smugglers to give up their whereabouts. I’d been close, so close. Cale had trusted me. He’d have told me eventually, if Chitec hadn’t stuck their noses in. Two years of undercover work ruined because of Chen Hung’s secrets. I didn’t care about his daughter or whatever he was planning to do with the synthetics. The Nine were stockpiling enough weapons to start a war. That I cared about. That and when I could score my next hit of phencyl. Grounded until the admiral signed off on my report, I was already itching to get off Earth and back-in-black. My cover would hold. I was still Captain Shepperd’s second-in-command. I could use that to go back in and go deep. There was work to be done.

  The 1000 Revolution continues in Book #2: Escape. Read on for an excerpt.

  * * *

  If you enjoyed Caleb & #1001’s story, please leave a review!

  Escape (1000 Revolution, #2) - Excerpt

  Chapter One ~ Francisca

  I needed a phencyl fix, and soon. Withdrawal and the stifling heat inside the admiral’s office plucked on my already frayed nerves.

  “Caleb—Captain Shepperd was our best and most viable route to the Nine.” I heard the strain in my voice and hoped Admiral Jarvis didn’t.

  “He was, at best, a dubious lead,” Jarvis said, “and at worst, a criminal actively working to undermine the laws protecting the nine systems. Shepperd was a dangerous man.”
<
br />   Dangerous was one word for Caleb Shepperd. I could think of many others that would make the seasoned admiral blush.

  A stinger shuttle buzzed past the office windows. Sunlight flared off its shielding and sliced into the room. I turned my face away from the glare with a wince and pulled my collar away from my neck. “I almost had hi—”

  “Special Commander Franco, after two years, what you had was a string of smuggling offences and no solid evidence of his connection to the Fenrir Nine.” Jarvis settled back into his chair and sighed. “Despite your assurances, he didn’t trust you.”

  “He doesn’t trust anyone and probably never will.”

  I’d been sent undercover among the smugglers to infiltrate the Nine. For two Earth years, I’d played the part of the second-in-command of the tugship, Starscream. The admiral only knew the operational facts I’d reported back to him—just words on a screen. He couldn’t begin to understand Captain Shepperd. After two years of living side by side with the captain, I’d barely scraped the surface.

  “We knew the Nine were on Mimir. Had you waited to give the order—if Chitec had waited …”

  The admiral’s ruddy cheeks reddened further. “Chitec had nothing to do with the order to bring Shepperd in.”

  Bullshit.

  I clamped my jaw closed, locking the curse behind my teeth. One of the hardest things about returning to fleet headquarters had been learning when to keep my mouth shut and my thoughts off my face. You’d think after two years of pretending to be someone else, I could fake it. But with Shepperd on Starscream, I’d been free to do and say whatever I wanted. I missed that freedom. I missed a lot of things about that tugship and her obstinate captain. Why the hell did I come back to the wretched heat of old Earth and fleet’s suffocating regulations?

  I looked directly into the admiral’s flint-colored eyes—the kind of old eyes that had seen the nine systems before the Blackout, when space travel had seemed limitless and the jumpgates had heralded a new age. Then the main gate had failed, causing the chain of intra-system travel to collapse. Overnight, everything had gone to shit. The Blackout had happened long before my time—long before the nine systems had turned into the cesspool of corruption they were today. So Jarvis and his ilk had a skewed perspective of the worlds we lived in. They’d watched the systems prevail and had witnessed wars and riots almost destroy it all. I’d sat through my history lessons. I knew it had gotten as bad as it could get when human beings started fighting over dwindling resources. The admiral came from the generation that worshipped the start-up company that had stepped in to fix the main gate, setting everything right: our saviors, Chitec.

  Everyone adored Chitec, everyone except Caleb Shepperd and the Fenrir Nine.

  The admiral blinked, breaking my stare. His charade was pointless. We both knew he was under Chitec’s thumb, just like the rest of fleet.

  “I’m assigning you to Lyra patrol,” Jarvis said. “There’s been an upsurge in demonstrations, some turning violent.”

  He tapped the holoscreen embedded in the desktop. “You can join the patrols currently subduing the unrest. Something that’s less morally taxing will do you good.”

  I hid my smile by pinching my lips together, and swallowed. Morally taxing? He didn’t know half the things I’d done. If he did, he’d strip me of my rank and throw me into Asgard, alongside Shepperd. That wasn’t such a bad idea. I needed a way to convince Shepperd I was legitimate. What better way than getting him out of prison?

  “My cover is solid. I can go back in.”

  “I don’t think that would be wise.” He continued to tap-tap on his screen, ignoring me as though I’d already been dismissed.

  “Are you telling me I spent two years on the fringes of the nine systems for nothing? You know I can do this. I’m the only one who can.”

  “If the captain is still alive,” he said without looking up, “I doubt there’s much left of him.”

  Shepperd would survive Asgard. He had before. He’d fight to his last breath, bare-knuckled and down to the bone, until he was the last man standing. “He’s our only confirmed link to the Nine. When you blew their Mimir warehouses to bits, they scattered. We need him. He’ll find them for us.”

  The admiral skipped his gaze over to me. “And how do you propose we get him out of Asgard without certain influential people noticing?”

  And right there, in the twitch of his cheek and the slight sideways glance, the admiral had admitted to being figuratively in bed with Chen Hung, CEO of Chitec. I had no doubt who had issued the order for fleet to hunt Shepperd down and bring him in, dead or alive, and thus ruining two years of undercover ops.

  I unbuttoned the first few buttons of my shirt and shifted in my seat. Sweat trickled down my back.

  “He’ll be prisoner-chipped. You’ve read my reports. I have contacts from my time with Shepperd. I can get inside Asgard’s airspace. All I need is an ID scanner to locate him. If you could get me his prisoner number?” I could make this work, but not without the admiral’s help. “Let me go in.”

  “To Asgard?” Jarvis spluttered. “Don’t be ridiculous. You’ll be ripped to shreds.”

  He would think that. The admiral only knew me as Special Commander Francisca Franco, all buttoned up in starlight-white fleet uniform without a single hair out of place. He didn’t know Fran, Starscream’s pilot and Shepperd’s second.

  “I’ll go in armed. I only need to be there long enough to locate Shepperd. Once out, he’ll keep a low profile. He won’t want Chitec knowing he’s free any more than you do.”

  Admiral Jarvis hesitated long enough for me to know I almost had him convinced.

  “You need the Nine brought to justice. They can’t be allowed to stockpile weapons and recruit the independents to their cause. Fleet can’t catch them. It’s embarrassing.”

  He swallowed and kept his gaze away from mine.

  “It would make your career.”

  “I know what it would do to my career, Commander Franco.” He sat back in his chair again and appraised me. “I am perfectly aware of what’s at stake.”

  “So, what have you got to lose? Me? What’s another few cycles?”

  “You had two years. What makes you believe he’ll trust you now?”

  “Because I’m going to get his ass out of Asgard.”

  We both know this has to be done.

  I interlocked my hands in my lap, fighting back the shakes. I should have jacked up before this meeting. Once out that door, I’d be heading straight for the nearest dealer, after I ditched the fucking uniform.

  Admiral Jarvis pursed his lips in thought.

  “Mister Hung has been distracted by internal issues since his head of operations died. Now would be the time to utilize Shepperd. It was regrettable that we weren’t able to catch him in the act, as it were.” His eyes flicked to me. “That is assuming you can get into Asgard’s airspace, of which I am not convinced. It’s a prison, not a holiday camp.”

  I had some smuggler tricks up my sleeves. “Let me worry about that.”

  Just agree so I can get off this fucking beaten old Earth and back-in-black where I belong.

  I’d deliberately omitted certain aspects of my time undercover from the official reports. Aspects like certain connections I’d made whilst dealing phencyl on the side.

  “If you die in Asgard, what am I supposed to tell High Command?”

  I snorted a laugh. “If I die in Asgard, nobody needs to know. These ops are all deniable. We aren’t even having this conversation.”

  I leaned forward. “Like I said, what have you got to lose?”

  I could almost see the cogs turning in that ego-bloated head of his. Jarvis’s career was startling only in its mediocrity. He’d be up for retirement soon. A shiny new medal would look fabulous in his otherwise sparse collection—something to show the grandkids.

  His expression twitched, the cracks showing just enough for me to know I’d won him over.

  “I can’t authorize th
is,” he said. “Not officially. I’ll have to log you as taking the Lyra position, and what you do in your own time is of no concern to me.”

  With a sigh, he entered the necessary information on his screen.

  “I just need some time, a ship, and for fleet to look the other way.”

  “A ship?” he exclaimed. “How am I going to justify—”

  “I know where to get one. It won’t be missed.”

  Though it had been a month, a blast in low atmosphere would blow the dust out of Starscream’s ducts. Just the thought of getting back in her flight chair tingled the fine hairs on the back of my neck. I needed to be out there, back-in-black. If I spent another week in this stifling uniform, surrounded by the pristine whiteness of fleet headquarters and the fucking awful old-Earth heat, I would snap.

  “Give me a cycle—just one cycle—and I’ll have the Nine for you, Admiral.”

  “Very well. If you don’t produce results, well I suppose we’ll have to discuss the remainder of your fleet career.”

  Fucking bastard. I’ve given you and fleet eight years, and I’m the best undercover commander you’re ever going to have.

  “Of course.”

  “Dismissed.”

  I strode from the office, tore off my fleet uniform jacket while descending the stairs, and flicked open a few more shirt buttons. The administration staff could gawk all they wanted; I’d be off this rock soon, right after I’d lost myself in the high I’d been craving all day. Tomorrow, I’d be back behind Starscream’s flight controls—back-in-black. It couldn’t come soon enough.

  Thank you for reading Girl From Above 1: Betrayal

  Girl From Above 2: Escape is out now. Click here here to buy.

  Sign up for Pippa DaCosta’s mailing list here. Visit Pippa’s website: www.pippadacosta.com

  Quantum Tangle