by A. B. Keuser
The Boundary Zone
By A. B. Keuser
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One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
Eleven
Twelve
Thirteen
Fourteen
Fifteen
Sixteen
Seventeen
Eighteen
Nineteen
Twenty
Twenty-One
Twenty-Two
Twenty-Three
Twenty-Four
Twenty-Five
Twenty-Six
Twenty-Seven
Twenty-Eight
Twenty-Nine
Thirty
Thirty-One
Thirty-Two
Thirty-Three
Thirty-Four
Thirty-Five
Thirty-Six
Thirty-Seven
Thirty-Eight
Thirty-Nine
Forty
Forty-One
Forty-Two
Forty-three
Forty-Four
Thank You!
Books by A. B. Keuser
Xyvar
Death of Empire
Short Stories
The Lazarai Lost
~
A century and a half before I was born, a Kindiran woman warned her race of their coming doom.
Her pleas for caution were met with ridicule.
She offered hope for salvation, but like all legends, interpretation of truth is often impossible until a fortelling comes to fruition.
A two-headed chameleon, born of a false mother…. Those who listened thought her mad.
Electricity crackled through Kindiran veins, igniting a pride the likes of which the universe has never since seen.
They bought her silence with a blade slicked in blood.
And within a year, their less evolved cousins hunted them to extinction.
But that’s what humans have always been good at.
One
Mackenzie Flack had been electrocuted more times than she’d been kissed.
And she’d enjoyed more of the zaps.
She slapped a magnetic light strip against the crumpled bulkhead. The cicada-like device glowed a steady yellow as it clicked to life and she peered into the compartment laid open like a cadaver’s chest cavity.
Clotted with splintered wire casings and grime-coated tubing, the cube held no electrical buzz of life.
Her fingers slid over the row of tools spread across her lap. Metal as cold as the stale air around her stung at her skin.
She should have brought gloves.
Studying the connections that held the tertiary atmosphere processor in place, she murmured, “Laser scalpel.”
Mack stretched out her stiff fingers and plucked the blade from its banding. It flared to life, her only option now that she’d seen the damage.
A whirring chirp echoed from her hip and she flinched at the too-loud noise. She slapped a hand against her belt to muffle it to an indistinct burble. One quick glance down the desolate corridor and she forced herself to relax. No one had come to crash the party.
She snatched the incessant comm plug from its pouch and juggled the blade into her other hand, holding it like an over-long cigarette.
Stabbing herself in the face wasn’t on the day’s agenda.
Pressing the plug into her ear and double tapping the fleshy surface, she said, “Serrano’s Pizza and Pig Wings, if we’re not there in five minutes, feel free to assault the delivery boy.”
A beleaguered sigh filtered through the comm. It laced a shiver down her spine like an expertly wielded cube of ice. Not that Commander Whitney “Cable” Carr would play that game with her.
“That’s not funny, Kenzie,” he said, using the nickname she only allowed two people to use. One, now.
“Come on, you know you want to laugh.” Crouched in the decommissioned central corridor of Celesta Station’s sector ten, Mack pursed her lips and waited for his reply.
Cable grunted and a screech echoed through her earpiece, followed by a too-familiar, heavy clunk.
“If you want to set up a playdate, you have to stop calling me while I’m at work,” Mack said, flicking her scalpel between the correct fingers. “I can’t flirt with you and do my job. It’s unprofessional.”
Cable knew she wasn’t on duty. Fixing the things they still needed and decomming parts like this one already spoken for by other parts of fleet was limited to twelve hours a day, and she would have been going on sixteen.
Her job was the reason she knew the processor was here… and that no one would miss it.
Information didn’t buy itself, and her job didn't cover the cost of treason.
“Illegal Acquisition Specialist” didn’t jive with station admin’s idea of a legitimate vocation.
“Thank Goddess for budget cuts,” she muttered under her breath.
“Talking to yourself again?” The word filtered through a labored breath.
She traced a line on the wall, blue laser leaving an orange scar. “You don’t have to come bail me out. Promise.”
The sound of the air processors in Cable’s comm line disappeared as he muttered a word his mother would have sprayed his mouth out with sanitizer for--and had done, at least twice.
She had exactly twenty seconds to get the TAP out of its housing and vanish into the maintenance ducts.
“Don’t think about ghosting on me.”
“Wouldn’t dream of it,” she said, forcing cheeriness through clenched teeth.
Her heart hammered inside her chest like a misfiring piston. The protesting screams of the blast door made her flinch and she echoed Cable’s earlier curse.
Prying them open was an asinine move, one he would bust any security crew for.
She had ten seconds to disappear.
Dropping the scalpel on the decking and ignoring the smell of burning polymer tread, she braced her boot against the bulkhead and grabbed hold of the thing with both hands.
“Come on, you ugly piece of crap.” She leaned so far back, she could see the dark square of her escape route.
Freedom was right there.
Five feet, five inches tall with a figure that had always been made fun of as boyish, she could get through that claustrophobic spaces reserved for cleaning drones, maintenance bots, and errant orphans.
Cable couldn't follow her there. His were not the shoulders of a man built for navigating ducting.
Five seconds and she saw the problem.
The final terminal had sheared off at the connector and compressed on the rod.
If it was anyone else coming for her, she would have risked using her micro torch.
Anyone but Cable.
He wouldn't do anything if she let him catch her.
He hadn’t yet.
Done anything….
He’d caught her plenty of times.
Gritting her teeth, she grabbed the still-burning scalpel and snaked her hand into the compartment.
It broke free and she yanked as hard as she could.
Nothing.
One more pull….
The little bastard eased loose the same moment the shadows from her strip light shifted.
She managed not to curse. Pulling the device from its housing, she moved methodically. He didn’t need to know how much it rankled when she lost their little game. “I thought I’d die of old age before you got here.”
He shifted and she didn’t have to look up at him to know he’d crossed his arms and fixed her with that all too familiar scowl.
“Why are you dead set on getting yourself thrown
in lock up?”
He was cute when he pretended to scold her.
“And,” he growled, “why are you smiling.”
Shrugging, she wrapped the TAP in anti-static padding. “I’m a bad influence on you.”
“Goddess knows you try.”
The exasperation in his voice hinted that he’d like her to be. But that was a trick her mind played, looking for things it wanted to hear.
“What are we going to do about your stalking habit?” She flicked off her scalpel and waved the handle in the direction of the light spilling into the far end of the corridor from the unseen, abandoned blast door. “Someone might think you’ve got a thing for me. Following me into decommissioned sections to watch me dissect the guts of the station. How would your superiors feel about that?”
Eyes on the corridor, he grimaced and echoed her words. “How do you think your brother would feel about this?”
Her first instinct was to punch him in the knee and see how he felt about the floor.
Her second, well…. The humorous retort caught in her throat like the dry husk of a dead beetle.
It was a low blow, and Cable had the decency to look away, face pinched as though she had punched him… just aimed a little higher.
Stretching out the fingers on the hand she’d unconsciously balled into a fist, she said, “He’d be mad I got caught.”
Cable didn’t need to know his best friend had taught her how to steal for fun and profit. Or that he’d given her half the contacts currently on her buyers list.
Aaron was dead.
She made her own trouble now.
That line of thought stabbed at her with an icy knife.
Goddess, she was a mess.
Fists resting on his gun belt, Cable glared at the floor beside her, jaw a stiff line.
Six months of redundant station duty for him--and minor crimes for her--was not long enough to heal the cavity her brother had left behind.
Blinking, she turned back to the part in her lap. “You didn’t have to come all the way down here. I don’t need supervision and we both know you aren’t going to arrest me.”
He would have hauled her up from the floor already if he’d intended anything resembling punishment.
When the silence had stretched too long, she asked, “How do you always manage to find me?”
She didn’t look up as she tucked the processor into her duffel.
“Maybe I’ve learned how to track you through the system’s sensors without the locator ID badge you so conveniently forget in your habcube, or Gunk’s bar,” he said, and then, glancing over his shoulder, he added, “Or, maybe I thought you’d been too quiet and expected something worse than this.”
It had been two days since she’d forced him to drag his ass out of his comfy chair up in station ops.
“Did you miss me?” she asked with a flirtatious lilt, knowing he wouldn’t rise to her bait.
“Get up and step away from the TAP, Kenzie.” His hand wrapped around her bicep and he pulled her to her feet. “I’m the first one here, but Bezzon and his team aren’t far behind. You don’t want to deal with that creep on your own.”
“Two seconds is all I need. Promise.” She pulled her arm from his grasp, plucked up her bag, and shoved it into the maintenance duct.
“It’s been great catching up.” Blowing a kiss, she crouched down to wiggle in behind the part.
“Not this time.” His hands wrapped around her shoulders and he pulled her upright. “You’re not getting away that easily.”
He kicked the maintenance hatch closed. It sealed with a vacuum pop as the first flicker of lights shone around the curved corridor.
Cable held her in place as though he thought she would bolt at any second. “Relax. It’s just a man you hate and an unlikely prison sentence. You’ve dealt with worse.”
Sadly, he was right.
His hand still on her shoulder, he squeezed, thumb pressing into a knot she’d had for weeks. She pulled away and shot him a coy smile.
If Bezzon was the one coming for her, she’d need all her mental faculties intact. And Cable’s touch was counterproductive to that goal.
“Next thing I know, you’ll be pulling my hair.” She tugged the tie from her sloppy bun and shook out the long locks everyone thought she dyed.
It was a sort of shield, and Bezzon was more of a creep than Cable knew.
Her hair was among the lieutenant’s favorite subjects. How much he liked that it fell to the top of her ass. How much he’d enjoy learning just what it covered, sans jumpsuit.
It was a subtle weapon of distraction she had no problem employing. Especially when the one person on the station he was afraid of stood next to her.
Cable glanced at the curls falling down her back and for half a second, she hoped he’d call her bluff. Catching Commander Carr in a PDA would set the rumor mills abuzz.
That she was the second party would likely start them ablaze.
He gave her a sidelong glance, “I’ll offer the next time I’m not in a position to arrest you.”
“I always knew you wanted to use those cuffs on me for non-regulation purposes.” She glanced at the items secured in the pouch at his hip and watched him flush.
Letting out an exasperated sigh, he looked at the ceiling as if asking the Goddess for patience. “Someday, a doctor is going to ask me how I got an ulcer the size of the Horsehead Nebula. My only available reply is going to be ‘Mackenzie Dee Flack’ and they won’t understand.”
“I don’t believe that for a second.” Mack managed to keep in a laugh. “They’d be too afraid to do anything other than nod in vehement agreement.”
He snorted, a low, quick sound. “You’re not afraid of me.”
“I’ve known you too long. And besides, I’m too clever for you to punish.” She met his gaze and raised her brows, waiting for his contradiction.
For a moment, he was so still, she thought he’d let it go.
“We’ll see about that.” He studied her face and then, he reached out.
And tugged a single curl.
She couldn’t look at him. Swallowing the jumbled mess of possible responses, Mack watched the darkness of the distant corridor wall and put all her energy into rolling her tool kit and securing it to her belt.
Two
Cable knew he shouldn’t have done it.
Her teasing was a temptation he wasn’t allowed to fall victim to, and yet… he toed that line every damned day.
Gladly.
Kenzie was the sort of person who delighted in confusing people. It started with her appearance: she could have been her older brother’s twin--and had, on several occasions pinned her hair up and painted her face to match. In the right outfit, few people could tell the difference… until she opened her mouth.
She spoke softly when people expected her to scream--and the uninformed took that to mean she wasn’t dangerous.
And every once in awhile, she did exactly what was expected of her… just to throw everyone off.
That was why she was on the station. They’d expected her to follow him here. Which was why he’d flinched at the sight of her. Or, it could have been the fact that she’d looked more like her dead brother that day, and he’d thought he was seeing a ghost.
But Aaron was a soldier who liked his guns and played tech because he was good at it, not because he enjoyed it.
Kenzie… she lived for live wires.
She practically glowed when she was around a system in need of repair.
Joy had always been something Aaron lacked. Maybe the military had beaten it out of him. Maybe that was why….
Swallowing against those thoughts, he focused on Kenzie. She wasn’t looking at him now, and he took the brief moment. Opportunities to remind himself people like her did exist in the universe were few and far between… and soon, they’d be gone. Or, rather, his regular diet of late, would be interrupted.
She’d done more to heal him in the last six months than anything the fl
eet could have prescribed.
As much as Cable wanted to be on Celesta, the station kept him caged, and helping one of his friends meant he was unable to help others.
The Boundary Wars were coming to an end. The last of the rogue states were slowly being dealt with. But somehow, Maeltar’s rebellious forces still attacked them with startling results.
When the reports of the Curran’s disappearance came through, Cable knew there was only one woman who had the manpower and the hubris to steal a warship and think she could get away with it.
Maeltar had always been his problem. And now Cable was on the sidelines, watching someone else hunt his nemesis down.
Maybe they’d be able to do what he never had. The universe would be better off without the woman who claimed to be a queen.
He squatted down and looked into the empty cavity. Slapped to the wall, the strip light was bright enough to leave phantom blurs in his vision. He’d caught sight of the side readout before he’d looked away. 110% output. And it had been running three minutes longer than its listed lifespan.
But that was one of the reasons he’d been able to get Kenzie the Celesta contract. Batteries seemed to last longer when she’d installed them. An ‘unfixable’ disconnect would be able to stagger along until a replacement was found, or the system attached to it was taken fully off line.
She joked that she was magic… he was more than ready to believe it.
She could look at a hole in a panel, tell you what was supposed to be there, how long it had been absent, and what it would take to bypass--even on the rare occasion she hadn’t been the one to take it.
And she could put those bypasses in even when they seemingly broke the laws of electrodynamics.
“I know you’re going to spin some boring story to Bezzon when he gets here, but you could tell me the truth. Why this one? What are you going to do with a tertiary atmosphere processor? They’re only good for emergencies. If you’re relying on one of these, you’d better have an O2 mask at hand.”
The station had redundancies stacked on backups piled on contingencies. This particular technology was old enough it couldn’t have been easily replaced if they’d intended to salvage the station.
“Half the older generation of stations runs with three tier enviro systems,” she said. As if that explained anything.