Stars & Empire 2: 10 More Galactic Tales (Stars & Empire Box Set Collection)
Page 141
They’d planned this from the moment they’d arrested her.
The chief swiped the card, and the door opened. He pulled her across the threshold.
A control panel and a pane of glass was all that separated them from the bare metal space beyond.
The maintenance airlock.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Era’s survival instincts kicked in. She ripped her arm from the chief’s grasp and backed into Tadeo.
He pushed her forward, and Petroff slammed a hand across her face. She stumbled against the wall and sank to her knees.
The control panel went in and out of focus, but the sting of the blow shocked her awake.
She was going to die.
“Tadeo.” Era stumbled to her feet. She reached for his arm, but he backed up a step, avoiding her gaze and her reach.
Chief Petroff looked from Era to Tadeo and back. “You know this traitor?”
Tadeo’s nostrils flared. “No.”
Era lunged toward the door, but the chief grabbed her by the back of her suit and held her as she struggled against him. Cold, hard metal pressed against her temple, and she froze.
“I can just pulse you now,” he said. “But I’d rather not have a mess to clean up. Strip her, Raines. Can’t waste a good suit.”
Era’s stomach churned, but she stayed still. Was there any way out?
Tadeo unlaced her boots and took them off. Then he stood and gripped the zipper on her suit. A sheen of sweat coated his forehead, and one fat drop traced a slow trail down his brow.
He unzipped her suit.
Tears gathered in Era’s eyes, and a hard lump expanded in her throat. “Don’t do this, Tadeo, please,” she whispered.
The chief released her and forced her sleeves off her arms, ripping the suit away. It fell to the floor, and the cold air hit her sweat-soaked skin. Goosebumps lifted along the length of her body. She wrapped her arms across her exposed breasts and whimpered, shame flooding her. The chief pressed the pulse gun’s icy barrel against her neck.
Tadeo’s eyes flicked from her swollen belly to the chief. “We can’t…” he said, his voice rough.
“It’s Defective,” the chief said. “Set to be aborted tomorrow. She tampered with the archives, erased data we need to settle on a new Earth. She knew the penalty.”
“No! I didn’t erase anything. I didn’t mean to. I just had to know the truth.” Era’s voice shook. “My baby—”
The barrel pressed harder into Era’s skin, silencing her.
“But Chief, sir—”
“Raines.” The chief’s voice was hard, edged with unspoken threat.
Tadeo threw his shoulders back in the conditioned response of one trained to respond to commands without thought. But his eyes darted, wary, between Era and the chief, and his hands were balled into tight fists. A glimmer of hope burgeoned in Era’s chest. Tadeo took a step forward.
The chief dropped the pulse gun from Era’s neck and pushed her away. She stumbled to the side and hit her arm hard on the control panel. She cradled it against her bare breasts as the chief walked up to Tadeo and stopped an inch from his face. Tadeo didn’t back down.
“Remember McGill?” the chief asked. “They told you all he went back to his home deka. Sent back ‘cause he couldn’t handle the shame of a traitor nearly killing Tesmee with his pulse gun.”
Tadeo stood straighter, his jaw working.
The chief lifted the pulse gun and gestured with it. “McGill was in on it…He was working with that traitor to kill Tesmee.” His voice rose. “He gave that traitor his pulse gun. I airlocked him myself. Fleet doesn’t need to know we had a traitor in the guard. I’d do it again if I thought, even for a second, we had other traitors in the guard. Do you understand?”
Tadeo’s eye twitched, and he slowly nodded.
Era let out a small moan and looked toward the door. She had to get away. The chief pointed the pulse gun at her and gestured to the door that led into the airlock. Era took a few hesitant steps toward it, her gaze shifting between Tadeo and the chief.
“Activate it. It’s got to look like she did it,” Petroff said.
Era’s lips parted as Tadeo passed Dritan’s shift card over the control panel. Zephyr will believe I committed suicide. She won’t even question it. She’ll think I killed myself because Dritan died and because they were taking my baby.
The fail-safe might’ve worked. Why didn’t I try harder to get her to listen?
Tadeo pressed a button, and the alarms sounded.
Era reached toward Tadeo. “They’re lying to all of us about the Defect.”
The chief pressed the pulse gun into her temple. “Open the door.”
Tadeo hesitated, but swiped Dritan’s shift card across the scanner.
“No, wait. My baby can survive. Please, let me have the baby. I don’t care what you do with me after that. I have proof. I can show you. They can save the baby—”
Chief Petroff shoved Era into the airlock. She twisted, trying to get back into the control room, but the door slid closed, nearly trapping her fingers.
She straightened, teeth chattering from the frigid air, and turned to face them. The alarms blared, deafening, echoing off the metal walls of the airlock. She held one hand over the swell of her belly and banged the other against the glass. “Don’t do this! My baby can be saved. I won’t tell anyone!”
The chief watched her with his arms crossed, an impassive expression on his face. Tadeo stood beside him, clenching and unclenching his fists, but didn’t move to help her.
The grimp was gone.
Era began to hyperventilate as she banged the glass, over and over, until Tadeo turned his face away.
Would she feel herself dying?
When the airlock opened, she’d be swept into space, the air stolen from her lungs. Her bones would crack in the cold, and she’d spend her last moments of consciousness with nothing between her and the angry red planet that had stolen so much. Soren.
Chief Petroff and Tadeo blurred before her, and she used one hand to wipe the tears from her cheeks.
She rested both palms against the swell of her belly.
I’m so sorry I couldn’t save you.
The old Earth religions taught about life after death. But those gods never existed. There was only alive or dead. Breathing or not breathing. At least now she wouldn’t have to live without Dritan and their baby.
She began to count the rivets in the floor, pushing down her panic. How long until the airlock opened?
The alarm blared louder, and its pace quickened.
No. Her last image could not be of this ship.
Era lifted her wrist and focused on her infinity tattoo. She took a deep sputtering breath and closed her eyes.
Dritan. The curves of his well-muscled body, his high cheekbones, his full lips. The feeling of his strong, warm arms around her, and his hazel eyes looking into hers. Safe.
He’d come to her after his shift that day, two weeks after the riots. He’d washed and pressed his grease-stained sublevel suit, had tried to clean up, look good for her.
He’d run a hand through his dark curls, pulling on them, so nervous to ask the question he’d come to ask.
“I want to come back to you every night,” he’d said. “I want to be paired with you. Do you want that, too?”
Yes.
The portal groaned behind her.
Era swept into space, the air stolen from her lungs, her bones cracking in pain from the frigid cold.
Her eyes adjusted, and she saw the stars.
Beautiful, twinkling against the vast expanse. Sparkling promises of a better world waiting.
Darkness closed in around the edges of her vision, and the stars blinked out.
_o0o_
A Better World Awaits.
The fleet's journey continues in Paragon: Book Two of Legacy Code.
Read on for an excerpt.
BONUS CONTENT
PARAGON
AN EXCERPT
>
_o0o_
PARAGON
An excerpt
Tadeo’s pulse roared in his ears, and darkness flickered around the edges of his vision. He’d had this nightmare before. About another girl, in an airlock on a different ship. But this was real. And the airlock control panel before him counted down the minutes until it would end.
The traitor, Era Corinth, screamed on the other side of the glass barrier, slamming her fists into it again and again. Red lights flashed in time with the alarms inside the airlock, and their warning drowned out her pleas. The hypnotic pulse of red swept over her tear-stained face, her naked breasts, her bare pregnant belly.
Bile rose in Tadeo’s throat, and he turned his face away. Kit. Era reminded him of Kit. Why else would every bone in his body be telling him to save a traitor? Like Era, Kit had been petite, fine-featured, with short hair. And she… Tadeo gritted his teeth and pushed memories of Kit away, like he had so many times before. He stole a glance at Chief Petroff, but he stood expressionless, hands crossed over his chest.
“Don’t do anything stupid, Raines.” Chief narrowed his eyes, making the wrinkles around them deepen. “She’s a traitor. I meant what I said. I airlocked McGill, and I’ll airlock any other guard who goes in with traitors.”
Tadeo focused on the floor, his heart thudding unevenly. Mere minutes ago, he’d nearly freed Era and cost himself his own life. Terrorists on their ship. A traitor in the guard. Era, an innocent-looking girl, tampering with files they needed to settle on a new Earth. Why was all this happening now?
Scuffed tiles, scratched metal, blinking lights. The scene blurred before him.
The thumping of fists against glass ceased.
Tadeo glanced at the airlock, expecting Era to be gone, the airlock wide open, but she stood still. She held one hand to her swollen stomach and gazed down at the infinity tattoo on her other wrist—the symbol of her pairing with the dead husband she’d soon join.
Tadeo’s stomach lurched. Era’s pregnancy was defective and had been scheduled for termination in a few hours.
“They’re lying to all of us about the Defect. They can save my baby.” Era had said that, in a final attempt to try to convince them not to airlock her. She was hysterical. Delusional. If he helped her, he’d die with her. She never should have committed treason.
He’d broken the rules once with Kit. But he’d never break them again.
The console blinked its final countdown. In ten seconds, Era would be gone, and this nightmare would be over. For her, at least. Sweat dripped down Tadeo’s back, and his stiff, navy guard suit stuck to him everywhere, not letting his trapped body heat out or the stale sublevel air in.
00:08
00:07
I can stop it.
00:06
00:05
00:04
00:03
She chose to commit treason. The penalty is death.
00:02
00:01
00:00
Sirens erupted in the control cubic.
Era was gone.
Tadeo’s chest tightened. The dark void of space gaped at him from the empty airlock, and he glimpsed the planet the fleet orbited—a half-circle of deep red. Soren. Swirling clouds the color of rust moved across its surface, and down below, noxious air and dust choked life from anyone suicidal enough to walk its surface.
Suicide. Era was gone like she’d never existed. They’d never retrieve her body. They’d rule this a suicide. Which is exactly what the president, Nyssa, wanted.
∞
Read Paragon: Book Two of Legacy Code on Amazon now.
_o0o_
DEFECT
Prequel to the Bestselling Legacy Code Series
Selene Hayes is a genetic experiment gone wrong.
Damaged.
Broken.
Defective.
World hunger has been vanquished, but drug-resistant diseases kill millions. The corporation that gave Selene superimmunity called her Protected… until they discovered the truth. Now they hunt her and those like her, and Selene’s been hiding off-grid for eight years to avoid capture.
But she can’t hide forever. Rumors of a new threat—and a mysterious quarantine—have reached her sanctuary. And if Selene has to fight, she’ll fight until she dies. The Corporate Coalition will never take her alive.
Read DEFECT now on Amazon
DEFECT
Defect: Part One
Defect: Part Two
Defect: Part Three
Defect: Part Four
LEGACY CODE
Legacy Code (Book One)
Paragon (Book Two)
Short Stories and Novellas
Legacy Code: Origin
(AutumnKalquist.com Newsletter Exclusive)
The Telepath Chronicles
An anthology featuring Fractured Era: Decode
LEGACY CODE Soundtrack
“Artificial Gravity”
“Better World”
_o0o_
Sign up for Autumn's newsletter to get exclusive Fractured Era extras and be the first to find out when new books are released. You can sign up at AutumnKalquist.com/.
BONUS CONTENT
“ARTIFICIAL GRAVITY”
FROM THE FRACTURED ERA PLAYLIST
_o0o_
ARTIFICIAL GRAVITY
A straight line from first breath to last.
This recycled air remembers all the lies told in its past.
Sins of the father, that’s what they say.
That’s how life goes, what we’re living today.
There’s more than this; I feel it.
Drifting through this useless existence,
Held down
Held down
Held down
By artificial gravity.
Blinded by tradition, I slept, like those before.
But now I see the truth, I’m awake, and I want more.
There’s more than this; I feel it.
Drifting through this useless existence,
Held down
Held down
Held down
By artificial gravity.
Hope’s a dying star.
We need a supernova.
To wipe space clean,
And just start over.
There’s more than this; I feel it.
Drifting through this useless existence,
Held down
Held down
Held down
By artificial gravity.
STARSHINE
G. S. JENNSEN
-o0o-
BONUS:
RESTLESS
AN AURORA RISING SHORT STORY
STARSHINE
AURORA RISING: BOOK 1
G. S. JENNSEN
Copyright © 2014 G. S JENNSEN
All Rights Reserved
_o0o_
Dramatis Personae
Alexis ‘Alex’ Solovy
Starship pilot, scout and space explorer; daughter of Miriam and David Solovy.
Faction: Earth Alliance
Caleb Marano
Special Operations intelligence agent, Senecan Federation Division of Intelligence.
Faction: Senecan Federation
Miriam Solovy (Admiral)
EASC Operations Director; mother of Alex Solovy, widow of David Solovy.
Faction: Earth Alliance
Richard Navick (Colonel)
EASC Naval Intelligence Liaison; family friend of the Solovys.
Faction: Earth Alliance
Kennedy Rossi
Director of Design/Prototyping, IS Design; friend of Alex Solovy.
Faction: Earth Alliance
Liam O’Connell (General)
Earth Alliance Southwestern Regional Military Commander.
Faction: Earth Alliance
Marcus Aguirre
Earth Alliance Attorney General.
Faction: Earth Alliance
Olivia Montegreu
Head of Zelones criminal cartel.
>
Faction: Independent
Michael Volosk
Special Operations Director, Senecan Federation Division of Intelligence.
Faction: Senecan Federation
Graham Delavasi
Director, Senecan Federation Division of Intelligence.
Faction: Senecan Federation
Jaron Nythal
Assistant Director, Senecan Federation Division of Trade.
Faction: Senecan Federation
Noah Terrage
Tech dealer and smuggler on Pandora; associate of Caleb Marano.
Faction: Independent
Mia Requelme
Entrepreneur/businesswoman on Romane.
Faction: Independent
* * *
A complete Cast of Characters appearing in Starshine is available at http://www.gsjennsen.com/characters-starshine.
A detailed map of the Colonized Milky Way is available at http://www.gsjennsen.com/map.
Prologue
The end of the world began with a library query.
…or perhaps it was the space probe. The alien was being vexingly reticent on the matter, the man thought as he straightened his dinner jacket in the mirror.
“She is hardly the first person to express an interest in that region of space. Why are you so worried about her when the others didn’t concern you?”
The others did concern us, but they were deflected with little difficulty. This woman, however, has exhibited a notable talent for discovering what others cannot. As such, we would prefer she never look.
The man smoothed out a crease in one of the sleeves then fastened the antique pearl cufflinks, an heirloom passed down to him from a grandfather that never was. “Do you want me to have her killed?”
Not unless alternative methods are unsuccessful. Her death could cause the opposite effect of drawing further unwanted attention.
The man nodded cursorily and stepped out of the washroom, crossing his spacious office to the windows lining the far wall. “Very well. I’ll work to ensure she’s distracted from this pursuit. What about the Senecans?”
They are a more troublesome problem as they have already discovered an anomaly exists. They will send others to investigate.