Broken Worlds- The Complete Series

by Jasper T. Scott

  Darius tracked the steps all the way up. There had to be thousands of them. Maybe this was how the Keth had gotten to their fortress. Where else would those steps lead? A thrill of excitement coursed through him at the thought, but seeing again how many stairs there were gave him pause. He was going to be very thirsty by the time he reached the top. It was a pity he hadn’t thought to bring a canteen along when Tanik had asked him to help gather firewood.

  Darius wondered if there was a way he could fashion a canteen, maybe from the skin of the Seeker carcass at the river. But that sounded time-consuming, and fraught with difficulty. Without any survival training to draw on, how long would it take him to figure that out? He’d have to clean the skin and maybe dry it in the sun, and then tie it up with something. Sinew? Grass?

  Fashioning such a thing would probably take him the better part of a day. The longer he waited to deal with Nova, the longer she would have to call reinforcements. When those reinforcements arrived, he somehow doubted everyone would stay here. Nova would probably evacuate the Acolytes to a proper Revenant training facility in another star system. If that happened, he’d end up stranded on Ouroboros with all the time in the world to figure out how to make a canteen from Seeker hide.

  Darius grimaced and shook his head. He couldn’t afford delays right now. He’d already lost a day lying unconscious on the forest floor.

  Letting his reservations go with a sigh, he started up the steps. His legs were burning and trembling before he’d even made it halfway up, and he’d been right about needing water: sweat was dripping from his brow, and his mouth was so dry that his tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth. Dizzy with exhaustion and gasping for air, Darius sank to his hands and knees on the steps. His head spun at the sight of the distant treetops, reduced to toothpicks once more. It was a long way down.

  Once his breathing had slowed and his legs had stopped burning, Darius pushed himself back up and forced himself to climb the rest of the way to the top. Once there, he found himself looking up a grassy, pebbly slope. The stairs continued up that slope, all the way to a sheer black cliff where the castle loomed, shrouded in thick white clouds.

  Darius thought about the running water in the castle. If he could sneak in, he’d be able to get something to drink. He swallowed past his dry, burning throat, and forced himself to go on. Onwards and upwards...

  He hoped no one was looking down from the castle to see him climbing the slope. Then again, he’d probably look like an ant at this distance, so it wouldn’t matter even if they did see him.

  By the time Darius reached the foot of the cliffs below the fortress, he was delirious with thirst and exhaustion. His legs were trembling violently and he felt nauseous. The steps continued ahead of him, chiseled from the side of the cliff and rising another thousand feet. Whoever the Keth were, they had to be born athletes.

  Darius walked off the path and collapsed in the shade of a few trees. He lay there gasping with his heart hammering. The heat of the day pressed down on him like a physical thing. He was drenched in sweat, the tattered remains of his jumpsuit sticking to him. His mind was foggy, his muscles burning and aching at the same time, and his feet felt like they were made of blisters. He needed to rest and shut his eyes for a minute.

  A warm breeze blew, caressing his face, and a rotten smell filled Darius’s nostrils, making him gag. His eyes popped open and he frowned. That smell was familiar. It smelled like... like the mud that had been dripping from Dyara’s boots and gloves after she’d gone diving in the well. Darius sat up quickly and looked around. He couldn’t see anything in his immediate vicinity, so he stood up and walked around, looking for the source of the smell. He found it about twenty feet away, behind a pair of thick tree trunks. The smell was from a pile of bones, coated in dried black mud. They were crawling with insects. Darius recognized some of the bones—a piece of a human skull, a femur... a shattered hip.

  This was the proof he’d been hoping to find. Nova had found the bodies in the well and thrown them out the window. His vision had been of the past.

  That seemed like a pointless victory now, but it did serve to reinvigorate him with outrage. Nova had lied to them from the start.

  Darius stalked back to the steps and began the arduous climb to the top. All along the way, he concentrated on staying hidden, on keeping his presence small. Near the top of the cliff, he reached a landing that led to a sturdy wooden door. Darius walked up to the door and tried the handle. It was locked. He tried forcing the door open, but it wouldn’t budge.

  With a sigh, he continued up the stairs until he saw the landing platforms arcing out overhead and heard voices. Darius crept off the path and crouched in the shadow of the nearest landing pad. He calmed his breathing, and cocked his head to listen. One of the voices belonged to Blake.

  “It’s been a week since the Revenants got here, and they’re still sending supplies down! You’d think when they can lift things with the twitch of a finger that they’d offer to help unload the cargoes, but no. They’d rather watch us grunts do all the work!”

  “Shut up and carry. You want them to hear us?” another man said in a hushed voice. Booted feet went clomping down the walkway.

  Darius blinked in confusion and shock. It’s been a week since the Revenants arrived? How was that possible? He couldn’t have been unconscious for a whole week. Not without water, food... shelter. He slowly shook his head, casting back to the time after he fell. He remembered waking to find a hole in his side, both of his legs broken, and long, bloody scratches running down both of his arms. Then he’d passed out and dreamed of dark shadows moving around him.

  Darius’s heart thudded in his ears. The conclusion was inescapable. Someone had treated his injuries, but who, and where were they now?

  Chapter 25

  Trista awoke tied into an acceleration harness in the passenger’s cabin of her own ship. She looked around. The other five seats in the cabin were empty.

  “Buddy?”

  No answer.

  He needed a custom-fit acceleration harness, and the only such harness was bolted to the copilot’s seat in the cockpit. Hopefully that’s where he was, and not tied down like luggage in the cargo bay. Trista strained against the zero-G tether tying her hands together, struggling to reach the release lever of her acceleration harness. She twisted in that direction, using the odd half an inch of wiggle room that the harness gave her.

  But it was no use. The release lever remained half a foot out of reach, and her harness held her in place more effectively than the loop of metal tether wrapped around her wrists.

  Trista bit back a scream. She wasn’t going to give Jaxon the satisfaction. Then again... where was Gatticus? Did he even know what was going on? If not, screaming might actually be good for something.

  So she screamed, and screamed again, until her lungs were empty and her throat hurt.

  Heavy footsteps came clomping down the corridor outside the cabin. Trista tried to determine if they were coming from the cockpit or from one of the ship’s sleeping quarters, where Gatticus might have found a charging port. She couldn’t be sure since both the cockpit and the sleeping quarters lay in the same direction.

  The door swished open. “Hey there, Tris.” Jaxon grinned and leaned against the jamb. “You shouldn’t waste your breath. Haven’t you heard? In space, no one can hear you scream.”

  Trista glared at him. “Where’s Buddy?”

  Jaxon waved a dismissive hand at her. “He’s fine. Don’t worry, he’s too valuable to throw out an airlock.”

  Trista’s eyes narrowed at that. “Valuable?”

  “Of course. Don’t tell me you never thought of selling him. Togras are highly-prized companions.”

  “Selling him?” Trista shrieked. “You sell him and I’ll drop you at the nearest hunting ground.”

  Jaxon barked a laugh and clucked his tongue at her. “You’re hardly in a position to be making threats, Tris. But thank you for the idea of what to do with you if you becom
e too much of a burden.”

  Trista gaped at him.

  And he gaped back.

  Her eyebrows scrunched together in a frown; then she saw the subtle jittering of Jaxon’s limbs, followed by electric arcs of blue fire leaping off his clothes. His eyes rolled up and a familiar face appeared over his shoulder.

  “Gatticus! Where the hell have you been?” she demanded.

  “A simple thank you would suffice,” Gatticus replied. “Who is this?” He jerked his chin to Jaxon, who was unconscious, but still standing thanks to the zero-G environment.

  “Long story. Would you mind helping me out of my harness?”

  Gatticus retrieved Trista’s sidearm from the holster on Jaxon’s hip and then squeezed around him to help her out of her acceleration harness. He pulled the release lever and folded her harness out of the way. Trista stood up on cramping legs.

  “How did you stun him?” she asked, noting that the gun in his hands had been in Jaxon’s possession until just a moment ago.

  Gatticus held out his free hand, palm up, and she saw blue arcs of electricity leaping out of it.

  Trista snorted. “Nice to be an android.”

  “Indeed it is,” Gatticus replied.

  “Well, let’s stun him properly, just in case.” Even as she said that, she realized that something was wrong. She leaned to one side for a better look. “Kak! He’s already gone!”

  Gatticus glanced over his shoulder. “He appears to have revived himself. He’s an unusually resilient individual.”

  “We need to hurry,” Trista muttered. “Help me free my hands.”

  Gatticus took a moment to examine the zero-G tether wrapped around her wrists, then he aimed her sidearm at it. “Do not move,” he said, and flicked the setting on the side to beam.

  “Wait!” Trista said.

  He pulled the trigger and a solid white beam of energy hit the tether. In a matter of seconds it began glowing red-hot. The cord branded her skin and she cried out in pain. Then it snapped and she was free.

  “Fek it!” Trista snatched her gun away from Gatticus. “What the hell were you thinking?”

  “I was thinking that we need to hurry, just like you said.”

  “Come on,” Trista growled, and ran from the passenger cabin with her wrists red and stinging. She turned, heading for the cockpit, but a hand landed on her shoulder and pulled her back.

  “Wait,” Gatticus whispered. “He’s in the tender.”

  Trista glanced back at him. “How can you tell? Never mind. Tell me later,” she added quickly. “He must be trying to make a run for it. If he gets away in that ship, I’m grakked!” She ran down the corridor toward the tender’s airlock. By the time Trista reached it, she could already hear the tender’s engines rumbling on the other side.

  She slapped the airlock door controls and the inner doors parted. Her finger tightened on the trigger in anticipation of the kill, but the airlock was empty. Stalking through to the outer doors, she slapped that control panel, too, but this time it spat out a depressurization warning.

  “What?” Trista blinked in shock at the control panel. And a split second later the rumbling roar of the tender’s engines disappeared. She was too late. He was already gone. Trista turned and darted out the airlock, almost knocking Gatticus over on her way out.

  “Where are you going?” he asked.

  She gave no reply, saving her energy to run. She pounded down the corridor, cursing under her breath all the way to her cockpit. When she arrived, she fell into the pilot’s seat and activated the Harlequin’s defensive turret. Out of the corner of her eye, she noticed Buddy sitting beside her, tied and harnessed into the copilot’s seat with that sock still stuffed in his mouth. His cheeks puffed out with a muffled demand for her to cut him loose, but there was no time, so she pretended not to notice.

  Finding the tender on her contacts panel, she targeted the engines—then thought better of it. Engines were expensive to repair. She targeted the tender’s cockpit canopy instead. Using an infrared overlay she located Jaxon and aimed at his chest. Just as she was about to pull the trigger, a hand reached around and pulled her arm away from the joystick. A second hand canceled her targeting solution before she could pull the trigger mentally.

  “What the fek! Let me go!” Trista roared.

  “I cannot allow you to kill him,” Gatticus said. “Murder is a crime. I’d have to send you to the nearest hunting ground if you kill him.”

  “But he’s stealing my ship!” Trista said. She made a grab for the joystick with her other hand, but Gatticus grabbed that arm, too. “Fek you! Am I supposed to just let him get away?”

  Even as she said that, the tender turned and directed its thrusters at her, making an inexpensive kill shot impossible. Those thrusters flared bright blue as Jaxon hit the throttle.

  Trista’s comms chimed with an incoming message, but she ignored it. She used her ESC to mentally access the turret controls. Just as she was about to get a lock on the tender, Gatticus released her wrist to cancel the targeting solution once more. Her hand was only free for a fraction of a second before Gatticus’s iron grip closed around her wrist once more.

  “Grak it! Let me go!” Trista screamed, half from pain and half from outrage as she strained against Gatticus’s hands, further injuring the burns that he’d inflicted earlier. “At least let me disable its engines!”

  “There’s a one in three chance that you’ll hit the Alckam reactor and destroy the tender if you do. That would also earn you a murder charge. Is it worth the risk? I don’t believe you want to find out.”

  “It’s a tender! It doesn’t have an Alckam drive!” Trista said. That was a lie, but how would Gatticus know that? The only reason her tender was warp-capable was because Jaxon had owned it before her. He’d spent a fair portion of his career smuggling illegal goods past Union patrols, so he’d needed a getaway ship.

  Gatticus pointed to her targeting display. The tender was bursting with gamma rays, a telltale sign of matter-antimatter reactions. “He’s about to jump.”

  A split second later, the tender vanished with a dazzling flash of light.

  The fight left Trista, and she slumped in her seat, blinking spots from her eyes. Gatticus released her wrists. Seeing the blinking red light on her comms panel, she remembered the message she’d received just before Jaxon had jumped. She keyed it for playback.

  Jaxon’s voice came slithering out of the speakers: “That was a nice trick, Tris. I never would have had you pegged for a friend of the metal heads, but I guess you never really know a person, huh? See you around. Oh, and I’d lay low for a while if I were you. Yuri isn’t going to be happy to hear about your new friend.”

  Trista gaped at the comms.

  “Is something wrong?” Gatticus asked.

  “I’m done!”

  “You’re alive. You’re free. You’re welcome, by the way.”

  Trista glared at him. “Do you have any idea what you’ve done? My career is over!”

  Gatticus cocked his head. “And why is that?”

  “Do you know who Yuri is?”

  “I’m afraid I do not.”

  “Yuri Mathos? You don’t know who Yuri Mathos is?”

  Gatticus’s eyes widened in recognition. “The terrorist?”

  “He’d prefer to be called a freedom fighter, but yeah. Jaxon goes way back with Yuri. Thanks to you, every pirate and terrorist this side of the Union is going to find out that I’m carting a metal head around with me, and now they’re going to be looking for me. When they find me, they’ll seize my ship, and either force me to join them, or kill me. Either way, I’m grakked.”

  Chapter 26

  Darius lay in the shadows below the walkway with his head spinning. A week had passed. How could he have survived that long? Something wasn’t adding up, but he didn’t have time to figure it out. He needed to find water before he passed out. His head felt hot, while the rest of his body felt chilled, signs of heat stroke.

  Dari
us cocked his head, listening for more footsteps. All was quiet. He crept out from under the landing pad and back to the stairway. There was a landing nearby, leading to a door just below the castle’s entrance hall. Darius walked to that door and found it locked, just like the one on the first landing he’d encountered.

  The last few dozen steps led straight to the front steps of the castle, within clear view of the front entrance. He couldn’t go up there without being seen. Glancing back to the door in front of him, he wondered if there was a way he could break in. His sword. His hand found the hilt of his sword. If it could chop down trees, it would definitely slice open a wooden door. But would he reveal himself to Nova by drawing on the ZPF to shield himself and his blade? Darius grimaced. He’d have to risk it.

  He activated his shield, and a pale white glow peeled back the shadows around the door. He drew his sword and pushed the tip as gently as he could through the edge of the door. The wood splintered and smoked, glowing bright orange around the blade. A curling tongue of flame appeared. Darius pulled the sword out. He waved the smoke away, cringing at the acrid smell. He couldn’t afford to start a fire so close to the entrance of the castle. One of the Marines might smell it or see it and come down to investigate.

  Darius studied the door once more. This time he pushed his sword into the seam on the right-hand side of the door, and swiped it down in a quick, smooth motion. A wooden beam clattered on the stone floor behind the door, making him wince. Hopefully, no one had heard it.