The Loralynn Kennakris Series Boxed Set: Books 1-3:
The Alecto Initiative
The Morning Which Breaks
Asylum
Jordan Leah Hunter
&
Owen R. O’Neill
Next in the Loralynn Kennakris Series
Apollyon's Gambit (Loralynn Kennakris #4)
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Also by
Jordan Leah Hunter
The Erl King’s Children
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, and organizations either are the product of the authors’ imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
This eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This eBook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for you, then please return to Amazon.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of these authors.
Copyright © 2016 Owen R. O’Neill and Jordan Leah Hunter
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.
Cover designs by Pleiades Web Press.
Published by Pleiades Web Press
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Livermore, CA 94550
DEDICATION
Slavery, human trafficking—call it what you will—has been part of human history since our earliest days. No regularly practiced human activity casts a longer or darker shadow. To all its victims—but especially the girls—for whom an Arizona never came, I dedicate this book.
Jordan Leah Hunter, March 2016
To the two best women I have ever known:
You believed in me, you gave me strength,
you kicked my lame ass over the finish line.
With more gratitude than words could ever hold, I dedicate this book to both of you.
Owen R. O’Neill, March 2016
Acknowledgements
A great many people have helped us in getting this book from a fuzzy idea into published volume. Our thanks go out to all of them for giving us feedback, providing encouragement, and generally supporting our work. Most of these wonderful folks we cannot put a name to, but we trust you know who you are, and that you are appreciated.
However, some deserve particular mention for their efforts on our behalf. So we extend heartfelt gratitude to Alex, Brett, Cynthia, Edward, Joe, Ramona, Kira, Nick, Mark, Scott, Stephen, Valentin, and Yoly for their keen insight and invaluable comments that saved us from many errors and enriched our universe. We allow them no responsibility for any errors and shortcomings that remain, despite our best efforts.
Table Of Contents
The Alecto Initiative
Beginnings
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
Aftermaths
The Morning Which Breaks
Prologue
PART I: NEW BEGINNINGS
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
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
PART II: RETRIBUTION
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
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Four
Chapter Thirty-Five
Chapter Thirty-Six
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Chapter Thirty-Eight
PART III: AWAKE THE SLEEPING SWORD
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Epilogue
Wogan’s Reef
Prologue: Zero Day
PART I: A LULL IN THE TEMPEST
Chapter One: The Echoes of Battle
Chapter Two: The Marines
Chapter Three: The Commanders
Chapter Four: By The Fates Assembled
Chapter Five: The Gathering Storm
PART II: THE SHATTERED SWORD
Chapter One: Opening Gambits
Chapter Two: The Die is Cast
Chapter Three: First Blood
Chapter Four: The Hour of Reckoning
Chapter Five: “The Only Thing Sadder. . .”
Epilogue
Asylum
The Beginning of the End
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
The End of the Beginning
Authors’ Notes
About the Authors
The Alecto Initiative
Beginnings
Parson’s Acre Colony
Alpha Emzara-Furae, Methuselah Cluster
When the harvest failed again, her father dismissed the last few workers and sold off the remaining equipment. Returning from Gabriel, where he’d gone
to deliver the last of it, he called her into the kitchen as the dwarf sun retreated over the low squashed hills. It’s small blue-white companion had already set and it painted the room with a rusty light that aged everything it touched. He sat there at the cheap table—all the nice imported furniture had gone the previous season—the deep creases in his face picked out in harsh detail, the squat glass of amber liquid already in front of him but as yet untouched, colorless eyes hooded and dull.
There was work, he explained—work off-planet. He knew people—had made contacts—it was decent work—would get them back on their feet again. She asked how long. Six—eight months, he said. Maybe a year; maybe more. “I found a place for you,” he went on. “Good people. They’ll give you a job and a place to stay.” He didn’t meet her eyes but stared at the drink, screwing it back and forth on the table.
Why couldn’t she just go back to school, she asked. She’d already missed the beginning of the current term, helping him get the harvest in, but it wasn’t too late. “You can go to school again when we get back on our feet,” he answered. “They’re coming tomorrow. You should get your things together tonight—they’ll be early.”
She asked their names. He took his cel out of his pocket; thumbed up an address. “Blodgett. Down in Gabriel. Own a lot of business down there.” He put the cel back, looked out the window at the gathering dark. “Good people. You’ll be fine.”
What arrived in the morning was the Blodgett’s truck, right after first light—three men in dull green coveralls with a patch on the shoulder. Her father handed the driver an envelope while the other two looked at her quizzically: lanky, raw-boned, angular, awkward and just a few weeks past her eleventh birthday; freshly scrubbed with her long still-damp hair pulled back in a ponytail and a small satchel at her feet.
“That it?” One of the men pointed at the little bag. She nodded, mute. “Good,” he said and bent to pick it up. As he bent, he looked up into her still forming face. “Don’t say a hell of a lot, do ya?”
She shook her head.
“Good.” He handed her into the back of the truck, a big cent-weight rig with a covered back, and she saw five other girls and a skinny boy, all about her age, huddling on the benches. The man tossed her bag onto the truck bed and walked around the side, muttering. Her father stepped into view as the truck engaged thrusters and raised his hand. She waved back as the truck accelerated, staring after him until he was lost in the swirls of red dust. Then, ignoring the others, she crammed herself into a corner, cold at the pit of her stomach. She hadn’t been able to clearly make out what the man had said as he walked to the cab—it had sounded a lot like: “What a fucking waste.”
The Blodgetts were in the hospitality business. They owned a cluster of establishments in Gabriel that catered to travelers—she could tell that from the price lists. Parson’s Acre was a poor colony; it served mainly as an entry point for travelers doing business in the Methuselah Cluster, the farthest of the Outworlds, lying a thousand light-years beyond the Outer Trifid. Gabriel, the site of the colony’s starport and its only real city, existed to serve their needs.
Those needs were explained to them in a short orientation meeting by uniformed staff overseen by a slightly-built man with graying hair who spoke only briefly, welcoming them with a smile that did not reach his eyes. Rules of conduct were laid out, especially the strict curfew they were sternly warned not to break. Private cels were not allowed and would be confiscated—email and cloud access would be provided to those who performed well. After getting settled they’d be given their work assignments. That was all. She had never been to a city before; if they were all like this, she wondered why anyone stayed.
Afterwards, company men escorted them to their quarters in a subterranean compound: a series of dormitories segregated by sex. The tiny rooms, each housing four bunks, were arranged along bare corridors that had a lavatory and a large communal shower at each end. They showed her and three other girls into a room with their first names on their assigned bunk. Hers was spelled wrong.
The work she got was not hard: helping out in the kitchens mostly, washing fragile items that couldn’t be trusted to the big autoloading sanitizers or fetching things from refrigerated lockers that were many times the size of her room. Sometimes she cleaned the guest suites. She was kept away from guests though, unlike the older girls who were often assigned to take them meals in their suites. She noticed that delivering meals often seemed to take an unusual amount of time.
Each dorm had a terminal where those who’d been granted access could get email and surf in their off-hours. That was the limit of the leisure activities. She got an email from her father saying he was fine, doing well; he hoped things were working out for her. She said they were. It was a lie.
For two months, she got emails from him regularly, always much the same. He did say he was on Tolliman (she had vaguely heard of it) and there was plenty of work in asteroid mining. Things were going well—even better than he expected. But he said nothing about coming home. After three months, the emails stopped. She tried sending him a few after that. They bounced.
She got a new roommate every month or so. She made friends with none of them. After she’d been there six months, she awoke in the middle of the night to hear two of her roommates talking in whispers. They noticed her stirring and stopped. That evening, both were gone.
Two months later, she was cleaning up after the lunch period, her arms elbow deep in hot water and detergent froth, when the twinges started. She tried to ignore them but by the end of her shift they couldn’t be ignored and worse, there was a wet sticky oozing in her crotch that frightened her. She crept to a bathroom, stopping to pant when the strong cramps came out of nowhere, and once there stared in horror at the blood on her fingers. She jammed a disposable towel between her legs and wanted to die.
Her boss found her there, curled up on a bench by the showers. “What’s the matter with you?”
She shook her head, but the woman noticed the towel.
“Come on,” her boss said, taking her by the upper arm. “We’re gonna see the nurse.”
The nurse made her take off her clothes and sit on a narrow, thinly padded examination table. It had jointed metal arms at the foot with stirrup-like things on the ends. “Lie back,” the nurse said as she moved some lights into position and laid out an array of instruments. “Put your feet in these.”
She asked why.
“Pelvic exam. You just got your period—nothing to worry about.”
She did as she was told.
In a dimly lit room, devoid of furniture except for three hard chairs and a bulky out-of-place desk, two men and a woman watched the examination on a bank of video monitors. “She’s intact,” the woman said, looking over at the two men with a smile. “Never can tell with these people.”
The older of the two men leaned back in his chair, put his feet up on the desk and waved an index finger at the screens. “What’s the story on this one?”
The second man activated his cel and consulted a file. “Father brought her in eight months ago. Alcoholic. Had a big place up-country—let it go to hell. Paid the deposit in cash.”
“What happened to him?”
“Shipped out to Tolliman—packet said he was a mining engineer. No current certs but—”
“Mining engineer? What the hell was he doing here?”
“Couldn’t say. Record says he came out about nine years ago—lots of money, no history and a drinking problem. Says here he married twice—neither lasted more than a couple of seasons.”
“Where from?
“Had a New Caledonian passport. Issued on Skye though, so it don’t mean much.”
The older man grunted. Skye was notoriously lax about issuing passports. “Payments?”
“Nothing for the past five months.”
He scowled at his companions, displeased.
The woman gestured at the image on the screen. “Look at her.”
The scowl became
calculating. “Okay. So what about this guy—where is he now?”
“He did show up on Tolliman, but that’s all we know. No taxes filed, no payroll submitted, no new accounts, no major transactions . . . and no exit visa stamps.”
“How many times has he been off-planet before this?”
“None. No off-world contacts at all. That we know of.”
“Alright.” He took his feet off the desk. “Put her on the list—send a message.”
A week later, she was awakened early by the door to their room opening. As she sat up, a tall man silhouetted in the entry pointed at her. “You, get dressed. Come with me.” She slid out of her bunk in just her underwear, pulled on her pants and a company work shirt, and slipped on her shoes. The man tapped a finger on the doorframe, impatient. As she reached for the little kit with her wallet in it, he leaned over and grabbed her arm. “You won’t be needin’ that.” He glowered around the little room, taking in the frightened eyes in the young faces, grunted and shoved her out into the corridor. Another half-dozen girls were also standing there: most older than her; most looking dazed and still blinking with sleep but one almost terrified, her fists wadding the front of her shirt. The tall man waved to two others dressed like him and she saw they all carried truncheons.
She asked where she was going.
“We got new work for you,” he said and gave her a shove in the middle of the back.
They put her and the others in the back of a crowded cargo lorry without windows. She had to tuck her knees up hard to get them out of the way of the rear doors as they slammed shut and sealed. No one spoke. As far as she could tell, they were all girls.
The flight was short and when the rear doors opened, she could see nothing except a row of harsh spotlights illuminating a strip of pavement with a line painted on it. The glare hid all other details but she knew they were inside a huge building: the space gave back dim hollow echoes as the men pulled them out and pointed to the line.
“Over there—no talking.” They shuffled into place and she saw others being herded to join them, maybe fifty or so: girls and young women, some young boys, even a few adult men, looking shaken and cowed. More company men with truncheons walked up and down the line, a few slapping them suggestively. The people in line with her squirmed and twitched, some muttering, others whimpering—one half-strangled cry that was cut off by the thud of a truncheon. The air was sour in her dry mouth and she felt a throttling panic form behind her diaphragm and start to spread.
The Loralynn Kennakris series Boxed Set Page 1