by B. V. Larson
More Books by David VanDyke:
Plague Wars Series:
(in chronological order)
The Eden Plague
Reaper's Run
The Demon Plagues
The Reaper Plague
The Orion Plague
Cyborg Strike
Comes the Destroyer
Visit DavidVandykeAuthor.com for more information
More Books by B. V. Larson:
The Undying Mercenaries Series:
Steel World
Dust World
Visit BVLarson.com for more information
OUTCAST
(Star Force Series #10)
by
B. V. Larson and David Vandyke
STAR FORCE SERIES:
(in chronological order)
Swarm
Extinction
Rebellion
Conquest
Army of One (Novella published in Planetary Assault)
Battle Station
Empire
Annihilation
Storm Assault
The Dead Sun
Outcast
Copyright © 2014 by Fireball Press.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. All rights reserved. No part of this publication can be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, without permission in writing from the author.
Contents
Title Page
Copyright
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From the Authors
STAR FORCE SERIES:
More Books by David VanDyke:
More Books by B. V. Larson:
-1-
My name is Cody Riggs, and I’m the son of a legend—which totally sucks most of the time.
My dad had made a lot of enemies in his day. During the long years of the Macro War he’d marshaled Earth’s forces and commanded them through countless battles. Star Force had fought the machine invaders in space, in Earth’s skies, over land and even under the sea. Billions of humans had died and large swaths of our planet had been poisoned. Afterward, my father had ruled all of Earth as an Emperor for a brief time. Most people have subsequently formed a good opinion of the part my father played in those days—but not everyone. In the angry minds of many grieving souls, my family came straight from the fires of Hell.
As I grew up, adults who had the misfortune of being put in charge of me often said I had an “attitudinal problem.” They claimed I wouldn't listen to authority. They called me rebellious and stubborn. But I never saw it that way. I’ve always been naturally curious and preferred to do things my own way. Individuality is its own reward.
I think they focused on me because of the family name. Anything I did was scrutinized more than it would’ve been for a normal kid. Like I said, it kind of sucked growing up in my dad’s shadow.
If there was one thing that was cool about having Kyle Riggs as my dad, it had to be the opportunity to meet interesting people. Probably the most interesting of them all was a weird robot named Marvin. He was an eccentric metal creature my dad had built a long time ago—no, that’s not quite right. Marvin had pretty much assembled himself from the very beginning.
I was a kid when I first met him, about eight years old. The first thing Marvin did was make a big deal about how I was a genetic combination of my parents in appearance, I had skinny arms, tan skin, big eyes and dark hair that was cut short.
Marvin had come to stay with us for a few days in September, and although he wanted to live in our house, and I’d even offered to share my room with him, Jasmine, my mom, wouldn’t allow it. She pointed her finger sternly toward the barn, and Marvin had slunk away on coiling tentacles.
Marvin was strange that way. Being sent to the barn was insulting to him. He didn’t even like being called a robot. He preferred to be thought of as a full-fledged person—an artificial person to be sure, but a person and a citizen of the Federation nonetheless.
To me, he wasn’t anything like a normal human—which was good because that would have been boring. He was an extremely intelligent, strange, electromechanical creature, and I found him fascinating. He’d been on humanity’s side in most of Earth’s battles and in many cases he’d caused us to win. It was well-documented that Marvin had saved our collective butts on more than one occasion throughout history. But it was equally true that he’d nearly triggered our extinction on less happy days. As I said, an interesting guy.
Marvin’s one and only visit to my family farm lasted about two weeks. He spent most of that time in the barn he’d been assigned to, but he came out now and then to wander around the property.
One crisp fall morning as I left the house and walked toward the school bus stop, I noticed Marvin going for one of his seemingly aimless walks. Suddenly, he returned to the barn and entered, moving quickly. Not thinking much of it, I kept heading toward the school bus.
Many years later, I can still see the events that followed in my mind…
The bus had pulled up and was idling, waiting for me to board. The vehicle hovered there not ten inches from the ground. It was maybe a hundred feet ahead of me, with the wavering bluish light of an energy field flickering underneath it. The idling repellers caused swirling eddies of dust to form. Funny, how some visuals stick with you years later.
The waiting door of the bus was so close—but not close enough.
I heard the first ripping explosion. A fraction of a second later I felt a surge of heat wash against my back. It was like being too close to a fireplace when it flared up behind you.
I took a look back—I couldn’t help it. A blazing plume of orange fire shot up into the sky. The barn was gone. In its place was an inferno. What I remember best were the flaming chickens. Like cotton balls soaked in gasoline, they ran around the yard aimlessly—living fireballs with churning feet.
I started to run toward the road. The flames surged behind me, flaring bright. Then a secondary blast—bigger than the first—knocked me flat. When I opened my eyes a second or two later, my eyelashes and eyebrows were gone. I thought this must be what it was like to be breathed upon by a dragon.
I tried to get up and run to the road, but the bus had roared away to save the rest of the children. I threw myself down again and crawled toward the road. My dad had taught me that. When the shit really hits the fan, son, he’d always said, get low and crawl on your belly.
Looking back at the raging fire that had engulfed the barn, I spotted Marvin. He wormed his way out of the flames, his tentacles smoking. I could tell he was alive, but damaged.
Determinedly, I kept crawling toward the road. There was a ditch out there alongside the pavement. I could roll into that and find shelter in case
things went from bad to worse.
Before I reached the ditch, something gripped me and lifted me up. I hissed and struggled, thinking it was Marvin and expecting to be branded by those white-hot tentacles of his. Instead, it was my mom. She wasn’t happy, and she carried me at an amazing pace toward the house before she finally put me down.
“I’m okay, Mom,” I kept repeating, but it was as if she couldn’t even hear me.
“That damned robot,” I heard her say, along with a lot of bad words. “We should have scrapped him years ago.”
I never did learn exactly what had gone wrong inside our barn. I don’t think my parents ever figured it out either. But they were sure pissed off.
They threw Marvin roughly off our property. I found a tentacle, which my dad had ripped loose. My parents weren’t standard issue humans. They were ex-Star Force. That meant they’d been nanotized, and in my dad’s case, genetically enhanced.
The tentacle was blackened and still smoking hot. It continued operating, whipping around in the ashes long after the flames had died down. I picked it up when it cooled enough and took it to the porch to fool with it, snapping it around like a whip.
Mom had gone inside to find her first aid kit. She wasn’t too happy to discover I had a squirming memento in my hands as she came out to patch me up. She made me drop my prize in the dirt near the porch.
I wasn’t too badly hurt. Sure, I had half a dozen nail-like splinters in my back. They hadn’t gone in more than an inch, and they didn’t really hurt. I think Mom was more upset than I was about my injuries. She picked at the splinters and fussed over the puncture wounds as if they were bullet holes.
My parents had always known there was something unusual about me physically. Microbial baths had changed my dad forever, and he’d passed some of that altered DNA down to me. As a result, I was a tough kid who’d always ignored the kind of pain that brought others to tears.
While Mom stitched and salved me with nanite sutures, I stared at that tentacle. I watched it whip around like it was alive. Which I suppose it was, in a way—as much as the rest of Marvin was alive, anyway.
Over the next hour, the barn burned down to black sticks. The chickens were transformed into little round heaps of ash. I can still remember the smell—a campfire-like mixture of wood smoke and burnt feathers.
I wanted to keep the tentacle as a souvenir, but my mom wouldn’t let me. She took it away, and I never saw it again.
When I asked if Marvin would ever come back, Dad told me Marvin was always up to some kind of mischief and couldn’t be trusted to do anything quiet and normal. He said if Marvin did come back, it would be because times had changed and events were going badly for humanity again—in other words, because we needed him.
I didn’t quite understand at the time. I do recall Dad trying to explain that the robot was a devil and an angel all wrapped up into one. I guess the devilish side had risen to the forefront that day. It was years later before I really understood what he was talking about.
-2-
Fifteen years after Marvin incinerated every chicken on my Dad’s farm, I graduated from the Star Force Academy as an ensign and enjoyed a brief period of shore leave before coming on active duty. I was proud of my commission, and so was my old man. He’d offered me a beer in the basement, and one had led to twelve in short order. When the party was in full swing, Mom showed up at the top of the steps that led down into what she sometimes called “the brewery.” She informed me that Olivia had arrived—and that changed everything.
Olivia was my girlfriend. She wasn’t just any girlfriend. We hadn’t been together more than a semester at the Academy, but I already thought she was the one girl in the universe I might marry someday.
I staggered up the steps, laughing. Dad followed. We had beer-grins on our faces. Mom responded to our expressions with a dour one of her own. She’d never really liked it when we got drunk. I think in the past my dad hadn’t been at his best when he drank too much.
I’d expected Olivia to be in the living room, but she was outside. I went to the window, and that’s when I saw it.
Her father’s space yacht, Greyhound, sat in the yard right between the tractors and the new barn. My jaw sagged.
“Seriously?” I asked her.
She smiled, showing me a lovely curve of glossed lips, and nodded. She was British, rich and attractive. Whenever we spent time together, I found myself grinning a lot.
“We’re going for a ride, Cody,” she said.
The only person who didn’t think a celebratory flight into space while intoxicated was a good idea was my mom. She was right, of course, but I was too happy to listen to her. With a sigh, she rolled her eyes, forced a smile and wished us well.
Olivia and I rushed off to Greyhound before anyone could think of a good reason to stop us. My dad shouted behind me, and I waved over my shoulder. I knew Mom had been hoping my shore leave would be a quiet family affair, a brief period of family togetherness. But it wasn’t meant to be. I was more like Dad than I was like Mom in personality, and that meant I liked to get into “situations.”
I’d gathered more than my share of bumps and bruises while growing up. Just having the Riggs name had been a pain in the ass, but not for the reasons you might think. I’d been nanotized and Microbe-optimized from birth, so I had to be really careful about pushing back against all those assholes that wanted to test my reputation. With this name, some guys just wanted to take a swing at me in a bar, and I had to make sure I didn’t win too easily.
The knowledge that I wasn’t as likely to die or get permanently maimed did make it easier to get into trouble. Like the time I’d borrowed a flitter and repeller-dived onto the top of the Academy water tower with a backpack full of spray paint. I’d been slightly drunk and on a mission to tell the world how much I thought of my new girlfriend and classmate Olivia Turnbull. They’d never proven it was me, and even if they had, what were they gonna do? Kick Cody Riggs out of the Academy?
Once aboard, Olivia and I quickly piloted the boat up into space. We approached the refueling station in orbit, waiting our turn.
I stared through the nano-glass front viewing port of her father’s sleek space yacht. From the ground, Greyhound had seemed huge, the size and shape of a jetliner of the prewar days. But here in Earth orbit it was small, especially when compared to the Star Force battleship looming off the port bow.
“There’s our future,” Olivia said as we watched the warship glide into a docking station and begin to refuel. “We’ll be captains someday.”
“Think big,” I said. “We’ll be admirals.”
She laughed that throaty laugh I loved.
Our turn at the orbital refueling station came quickly. The Turnbull family pilot had flown us up from the farm and now guided Greyhound in with a deft touch. I’d wanted to do it myself, but the man had been adamant about following his instructions. I decided now was not the time to push the issue, not with my girl watching. Later, when we were out in deep space, I would get my hands on the controls and we’d see about some real piloting.
I looked over at Olivia, running my eyes up and down her shapely form. She had high cheekbones like a model and straight dark hair. Her legs were long, and her body had just enough curves in the right places to give her a sleek, sexy look. We’d started dating in school, and I’d known right away I’d hit the jackpot.
All that and money too. The Turnbulls were one of the British Isles’ richest and most influential families—and I was a Riggs. Between the two of us we had fame, fortune and guts. Who could ask for more?
Olivia grinned as she noticed my scrutiny. She leaned over and whispered in my ear, “What are you thinking about?”
“I was wondering how wide the bunks are on this yacht.”
She snorted and shook her head. “All you think about is shagging.”
I put my arm around her and kissed her, but didn’t try anything else. I’d take my time.
I figured I’d make my move a
s soon as we got past the refueling station. She had to be expecting me to try or she wouldn’t have brought me up here. Things were definitely heating up with Olivia.
As freshly commissioned officers, Olivia and I had two months before we had to report for duty, so we were going to spend some time running around the solar system on a last fling before we started full-up pilot training. We’d both been qualified as pilots on civilian models like the Greyhound since our teenage years. Also, the brainbox on this ship could fly it by itself, so we weren't worried.
Suddenly, the yacht gave a bump and a lurch. I glanced sharply at the pilot, who ignored me. I knew that if I'd been at the controls, I would have come in much more smoothly. We latched on to the magnetic grapples of the orbital refueling station and the rich deuterium-tritium fuel for the fusion generator flowed to the tanks. At that point the pilot stood and said, “This is where I get off. Ma’am, Sir, have a nice trip.”
I thought I saw something disdainful in his eyes as he looked at me. Maybe it was envy over the babe at my side, or maybe it was more of the Riggs mystique.
Olivia nodded to him and we watched as he left the small bridge. “He’ll take a shuttle to his next job,” she said, as if I really cared.
More bumps and thumps came as the automated station refueled us. I sat down and began to customize the controls for myself. This was going to be fun. A few minutes later we cast off. Following Olivia’s instructions, I set course for the Tyche ring. Olivia still refused to tell me exactly where we were going.
“An adventure,” she’d declared, and then sealed her sexy lips.
Once we were out of the control zone and Earth's orbit, I told Olivia to strap in. Even with the high-end inertial fields on this boat, it was safer to be cushioned, especially for Olivia, since she had yet to undergo the nanite treatments. The seats formed smart metal shells around our backs and sides, and straps extruded themselves across our bodies in several places. It wasn’t very comfortable, but it was much safer.