Ruins of the Galaxy Box Set: Books 1-6

by Chaney, J. N.

  Awen was free, released from the confines that had threatened to crush her. She felt herself snap back to her corporal body and gasp. The air rushed into her lungs so deeply she thought they might burst. Thunder echoed off the rotunda walls but soon faded like the tinkling of wind chimes.

  “Are you all right, Awen?” A firm hand touched her shoulder.

  Awen opened her eyes, blinking. Fine purple mist danced all around TO-96’s head, glinting as if caught by sunlight through a morning window. At first, she thought she was still in the Unity, seeing the remains of her work rippling through the ether. But then she realized this dust was real, not a construct within the Unity. From what? Not the rocks I decimated. That dust would have been the fine gray of stone. Instead, this was… purple, like part of her soul.

  Awen shuddered as a chill raced down her spine. She tried to get up, but she was spent. “Ninety-Six,” she said softly, “we need to get out of here. But I can’t. I don’t think I can move.”

  “I will take care of you, Awen.” The bot leaned over and scooped her up in his arms.

  She looked into his face and tried to smile. “Thank you, Ninety-Six,” Awen said, barely able to hear her own voice. She was as tired as she’d ever been. Then she looked back toward the entrance. Covered in a glowing mist of sparkling purple, Ezo and Sootriman emerged from the archway, running toward Awen and TO-96.

  “We are ready to leave now,” TO-96 offered.

  “Yes,” Awen whispered. “I think we are too.” She felt the bot turn toward an exit on the far side of the rotunda. She felt Ezo and Sootriman appear beside her and run alongside TO-96. And just before the deep darkness pulled her into oblivion, she felt the heat of a thousand suns erupt behind them and the presence of a black-eyed monster chase them into the void.

  37

  “Mr. Lieutenant Magnus, sir?” a small voice said as Magnus neared consciousness. Someone’s hot breath filled his ear. He wanted to see who’d spoken but couldn’t get his vision to cooperate.

  “Piper?” Magnus asked. “Is that you?”

  “Yes! Yes, it is, Mr. Lieutenant Magnus, sir!”

  Piper, the strange little girl he had rescued from the Bull Wraith, was safe. He couldn’t believe it. There had been a firefight. At the village. The Jujari outnumbered them. And then… what?

  Magnus tried to open his eyes, but the effort was painful. He squinted, which caused even more pain. He heard himself swear then remembered that a child was next to him. His voice was hoarse.

  “Mama, he’s awake! Come quickly!”

  Magnus reached a hand to his face. He felt gauze over his eyes and traced it around his head with his fingertips. He wasn’t wearing his helmet or his armor. Where is my MAR30? He panicked. Suddenly, he remembered the flash of light and the end of the world. An orbital strike. He’d survived a danger-close orbital strike!

  Magnus tried to sit up, but his body constricted in pain. His lungs and throat were tight. He let out a loud moan.

  “Don’t try to move by yourself, Mr. Lieutenant Magnus, sir. Mother will help.”

  Footsteps padded across the floor as someone neared. “Lieutenant Magnus?”

  Magnus instinctively turned his head toward the new voice even though he couldn’t see. Only a dim light flittered through the gauze and his closed eyelids. “Yes,” he replied then cleared his throat. He tried to sit up again.

  “Easy, Lieutenant.” It was a woman’s voice, one he knew. “This is Valerie. I’m going to help you sit up. Is that okay?”

  “Yes,” Magnus said, suddenly feeling vulnerable. Needing help just to sit up was… demeaning. But somehow, her asking him allowed him to retain some level of dignity. “Thank you.”

  “No problem. Now, let’s see here,” she said, moving closer. Magnus could feel her warmth and smell her hair. The scent was like sinnowilt blossoms on a warm spring morning. “The good news is that doctor says everything is healing well.” She reached behind his head. Her fingers were thin but confident as if this wasn’t her first time attending to the sick.

  “What’s the bad news?” Magnus asked.

  “That you have me as a nurse.”

  He could hear her smile.

  “Oh, I’m not so sure that’s such a bad thing,” Magnus said. The words had no sooner left his mouth than a shooting pain charged up his spine and seared the base of his skull. He winced but managed to keep from letting out a childish yelp.

  “Easy, easy,” she said, helping him sit up.

  “Thank you,” he replied as she stuffed some pillows around his tender body.

  “The doctor says we can remove the bandage over your eyes, but it will still be a few more days before the nanobots have finished their magic. You want to try to remove it?”

  Magnus nodded. “Thanks.” He felt Valerie begin to unfasten something and then gently unspool the gauze. He tried to help by moving his head opposite her tugs. With every pass, he noticed more light behind his eyelids.

  “It’s really a miracle you’re even alive, you know.”

  “The orbital strike?” Magnus asked.

  She nodded. “It struck just in front of your position.”

  Magnus replayed the last moments in his mind. He’d been fighting the Jujari four to one—maybe five to one. He couldn’t remember exactly. All he knew was that they were moving in on his fire team’s positions, and he was running out of options. His mind stretched to remember their names. Corporal Dutch had taken the rearmost position with Valerie and Piper. Private First Class Gilder and Haney took the left flank while Chief Warrant Officer Nolan, the navy pilot, took the right. Magnus was on point. He’d been leaning out to fire when everything went white.

  “You weren’t hurt?” Magnus asked as the final gauze strip peeled away from his scabby eyes, yanking against his eyelids.

  “No. I had a little angel with me.”

  Magnus guessed she meant Piper, but he had no clue about what to infer tactically from the remark.

  “You can try opening your eyes, Lieutenant, but if it hurts too bad, don’t force them.”

  Magnus’s eyelids fluttered as he attempted to open them. They felt glued shut, like he’d slept all night with a bad cold and had them crust over.

  “Hold on.” She sounded like she was rummaging through a drawer. She moved back to him, and he felt the heel of her hand press against his cheekbone. It was warm. “A few eye drops. This won’t hurt.”

  Fluid filled the inside corner of his eyes and spread along the lashes and against his corneas. It was cool but didn’t hurt, just as she’d said.

  “Try that.”

  Magnus’s eyes flickered open. He saw only hazy light and generic shapes, but he could make out Valerie’s head and long flowing golden hair. He didn’t need to remind himself how stunning she was. He wished he could focus on her more clearly.

  “Mr. Lieutenant Magnus, sir? Anything?” Piper asked.

  “Piper,” Valerie said with a chiding tone. “No questions.”

  “But, Mama!”

  “Just shapes,” Magnus answered. “Everything’s pretty blurry, though.”

  “That’s about what the doctor said to expect. Pretty blurry is totally normal with how badly your eyes were damaged.” She paused, and Magnus sensed she wanted to say more but restrained herself.

  “How badly were they damaged?”

  Valerie lowered her head.

  “What’s—what’s wrong, Mrs. Stone?” he asked.

  “Valerie, please,” she said, placing a hand on his forearm. It was the first time he’d been touched by a woman like that in… How long has it been, Magnus?

  “Your face was badly burned. But the skin reconstruction was fairly straightforward. Your eyes, however, were much worse.”

  “They’re totally bioteknia now,” Piper said.

  “Piper!”

  Magnus swallowed. “What?”

  “They’ll just be blurry until they take,” Piper continued.

  “Young lady, back to your quarters righ
t this instant!”

  “Yes, Mama.” Her voice was sullen. “Goodbye, Mr. Lieutenant Magnus, sir.”

  Magnus tried to speak, but he was too stunned by this news—assuming it was true, of course. No sense getting worked up over a misunderstanding. He listened as Piper’s footfalls faded away.

  As far as Magnus could tell, he and Valerie were alone in what appeared to be some sort of makeshift recovery room. He heard people talking somewhere else in whatever building they were in, and the strange smells of medical cleaning solution and skiff fuel mixed in his nostrils.

  “You’ll have to pardon her. She’s—”

  “Is she right?” He swallowed. “Did they go bioteknia on me? For my eyes, I mean? Is she right?”

  “Yes, Lieutenant,” Valerie said without hesitating.

  Magnus looked down. Blood rushed to his head, his pulse quickening. Adrenaline, something he’d spent years learning to subdue, punched into his system unabated.

  “Lieutenant, I understand that—”

  “No, you don’t understand, Mrs. Stone.”

  “I understand that you will never be allowed back in the service, Lieutenant.”

  Magnus looked up at her. She did understand. “I’m sorry,” he replied.

  “So am I.”

  Magnus felt his breaths coming in short bursts, like the staccato blaster fire of his MAR30 on high frequency. He was having trouble staying in control. This was the end. Not of his life, of course. He supposed he would eventually be grateful for that. To never serve in the Republic Marines again, however, was just as bad as being dead, at least as far as he was concerned.

  It didn’t feel real. None of it did. Maybe he was still dreaming, still shaken from the orbital. He’d wake up soon. This was all just a bad dream.

  “Lieutenant? You, okay?”

  Magnus looked up. Her features were still a mess of fuzzy shapes. “I just need a second.”

  Her hand moved along his arm, rubbing it gently. It felt good, comforting. Loving.

  Get a grip, Magnus. You have to pull yourself together, Hunter. Own the field… but only Recon Marines truly OTF. Now that I’m not Recon, what will I own?

  This was all splick. He’d talk to Colonel Caldwell and get a release to go back downrange. He shouldn’t be panicking like this. He wasn’t some noob—he was a Midnight Hunter with the 79th Reconnaissance Battalion.

  But he knew the regs. Human tissue couldn’t be hacked, but bioteknia could. No one had ever done it, but it didn’t mean that some alien species wouldn’t jeopardize an entire battalion of modified Marines and win a major victory all because they had superior code splicers. There were no exceptions to the regulations. Ever.

  “Who made the call?” Magnus asked.

  “I did,” Valerie replied without hesitation.

  Magnus blinked several times, tears welling in his eyes. From the pain. She knew what it meant for him, yet she’d still made the call. This woman he’d only just met. She had forever altered the course of his life without even consulting him. That was what the rich did, wasn’t it? They controlled whatever they wanted to and made all the decisions, no matter how or whom their decisions affected. He’d seen it play out a thousand times in worlds all over the galaxy. He’d just never thought it would happen to him. Though it seems fitting payback for your past sins, doesn’t it, Magnus?

  “Neural cohesion to the optic nerve was deteriorating in both eyes,” Valerie said.

  “I don’t want to hear about it,” he replied, waving her off. He couldn’t take her reasoning. There was nothing she could say that would explain it away.

  “The cellular tissue was dying, Lieutenant. Faster than we could regenerate it.”

  “No.” Magnus shook his head.

  “It was bioteknia or—”

  “No!”

  “Or you would be blind forever.”

  “You had no right to choose for me!”

  Silence fell in the room like a heavy snowfall. Magnus’s heartbeat thumped in his ears. His skin was hot, sweat beading on his forehead. But you know all about choosing for others, don’t you, Magnus?

  “You had no right to choose for me,” he repeated, softer now.

  “You’re right.”

  “Huh?” Magnus looked up at her. Was she wiping away tears?

  “You’re right. I didn’t have the right to choose for you. But I had a responsibility to fight for you.” She pinched her nose then wiped it with the back of her hand. “Fighting is… well, it’s—”

  “It’s ugly.”

  Valerie huffed. “Yeah. It’s ugly. And you’re just making the best call you can with the information you have. Either I let a Marine go blind for the rest of his life, or I give him a shot at seeing again. Either way, you were out. I just chose to give you a chance to stay downrange somewhere else in some other way.”

  Valerie took a deep breath, and Magnus could see her shoulders sag. She moved away from him and sat down on a stool. The woman was shaken up.

  Magnus sniffed and shoved his upper lip beneath his nose, fighting back tears. He looked down at his hands folded in his lap, bandages wrapping select fingers, knuckles, and both wrists. He flexed his hands, balled them into fists, then opened them again.

  He wanted to be mad at her, whoever she really was. Valerie clearly knew what she was talking about medically. And based on the way she’d handled his MZ25 outside the village, she had military training too. This couldn’t be easy for her, and he’d been too hard on her. Were he in the same position, he would have picked the same course of action. And she would probably be just as pissed as he was if she were a career Marine.

  The proverbial snowfall in the room continued to swallow all the sound save her soft sniffs.

  “Thank you,” Magnus finally said.

  Valerie looked up. “What?”

  “Thank you. For choosing for me to see again.”

  She stood up and walked over to him, her hands reaching down for his. “You’re welcome. And thank you for saving our lives.”

  “You’re welcome. I only wish that I could’ve saved your—”

  “There was nothing you could have done,” Valerie said.

  Magnus’s mind flashed back to Piper and the burst of energy that had exploded from her pod on the Bull Wraith. Then he remembered pulling back the blood-splattered canopy on her father’s capsule and burying his body in the wastes of Oorajee.

  “Your daughter… is she…?”

  “Not now,” Valerie whispered. “Another time. When it’s safer.”

  Heavy footsteps fell in the corridor outside the recovery room, and Valerie pulled her hands from Magnus’s. A large shadow filled the room, and Magnus was aware that a man stood over Valerie.

  “The gods smile favorably on you, buckethead,” said the deep-bass voice that Magnus remembered from his last stop on the desert planet.

  “Abimbola,” Magnus said, squinting.

  “He has not lost his memory, I see,” Abimbola said.

  “No, he has not.” Valerie pulled a data pad from a countertop. “All vitals look stable, brain activity normal. The bioteknia eyes are taking and should be fully integrated within the next few hours.”

  “Just in time, then.”

  “In time for what?” Magnus asked.

  Abimbola waved a hand, ignoring the question. “Can you believe how our paths have crossed again, and so soon? First, I save you from the Jujari and bombs, and now, I save you from more Jujari and an orbital strike from your own Republic. The gods either want you dead or want me to protect you.”

  “Let’s hope it’s the latter,” Magnus said.

  “Yet you continue to surround yourself with beautiful women.” Abimbola gestured at Valerie. “Where do you find them? What could you possibly possess that makes them fawn after you?”

  “There’s no fawning going on here,” Valerie protested.

  “First, the Luma princess of Elonia, and now this epiphany from Capriana.” The black giant of a man leaned away and
regarded Valerie. Then he waved a heavy finger at Magnus and stepped closer to him. Magnus could smell the metal from the grenades in the bandolier Abimbola wore across his chest. He could also make out a long facial scar that ran to the giant black man’s collarbone. “You know, I second-guessed my decision not to kill you,” he said, flipping something—one of his poker chips—in the air and catching it. “My wall needed one more bucket. But I have never seen a man fail so miserably yet attract so many females as you. I think you are a marvel worth permitting to live, at least for a little while longer until I figure you out. I would do it for the fair dau Lothlinium alone.”

  The mention of Awen brought a sudden pang to Magnus’s heart. Since waking, he hadn’t thought of her once, yet only a few short days before, she was all he’d been concerned with. Her delicate face and violet eyes evoked a longing that made him—uncomfortable. She represented everything he was not. He knew she didn’t understand why he pulled his trigger, and he certainly couldn’t understand why she put so much faith in seeking peace with killers. Still, he felt something for her, perhaps more than he cared to admit.

  “What am I in time for?” Magnus asked, hoping to redirect the conversation.

  “Sharp, this one,” Abimbola said to Valerie. “You were most likely right to save him and let him see again.”

  “In time for…?” Magnus prompted a third time.

  “Your friends are alive,” Abimbola said. “Well, at least some of them, we think.”

  Magnus blinked, hope rising. “Dutch?” His mind raced to remember the others again—things were still a little foggy. He looked at Valerie for confirmation. “Gilder, Haney, and Nolan?”

  “Ha!” Abimbola clapped. The sound made Magnus see stars. “No, they are resting already. Seems they will make full recoveries. I do not mean those friends.”

  “I don’t understand,” Magnus replied, trying to will his new eyes to focus on the warlord.

  “Of course you don’t. Your friends—your fellow bucketheads. My Marauders think some of them survived the ambush in the mwadim’s palace.”