The Hidden World

by Melinda Snodgrass

  CONTENTS

  Cover

  Also by Melinda Snodgrass and coming soon from Titan Books

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  1: We Were Going to be Rich

  2: Is Anything About you True?

  3: Pulling Strings

  4: Sending Messages

  5: Convenient Couples

  6: What Happened to Us?

  7: Once a Soldier, Always a Soldier

  8: We May be Called Upon to Sacrifice

  9: Sugar and Shame

  10: The Taste of Shame

  11: To Our Swords Never Drawn Without Cause or Sheathed without Honor

  12: A Whiff of Sedition

  13: Whispers and Rumors

  14: Cookies and Conspiracy

  15: What’s in the Heart

  16: She Loves Me

  17: To Die Bravely

  18: The Wayfarer’s Choice

  19: Worry About Tomorrow When Tomorrow Comes

  20: There Will be Pain

  21: Coming Events Cast Their Shadows

  22: Time is Rushing Past

  23: It Couldn’t Last

  24: We all Play Our Roles

  25: Rolling the Dice

  26: Misdirections and Reversals

  27: When Games Get Real

  28: Picking up the Pieces

  29: Family Matters

  30: Will You to your Power Cause Law and Justice, in Mercy, to be Executed in all your Judgments?

  31: A Call to Arms

  32: Full Circle

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Also Available from Titan Books

  THE HIDDEN WORLD

  Also by Melinda Snodgrass and coming soon from Titan Books

  THE HIGH GROUND

  IN EVIL TIMES

  A TRIUMVIRATE OF HATE (July 2019)

  BREAKING THE YOKE (July 2020)

  The Hidden World

  Print edition ISBN: 9781783295869

  E-book edition ISBN: 9781783295876

  Published by Titan Books

  A division of Titan Publishing Group Ltd

  144 Southwark Street, London

  SE1 0UP

  First edition: July 2018

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  Names, places and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead (except for satirical purposes), is entirely coincidental.

  © 2018 Melinda Snodgrass. All Rights Reserved.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

  This book is for Sage Walker, writer, physician, advisor, and dear friend, and someone who writes the best sex scenes in the business. I hope mine are half as good as yours, Sage, even though I was blushing the entire time I wrote them.

  1

  WE WERE GOING TO BE RICH

  “Of course it would be you looting the dead. You always were a jackal.”

  And the day had started out so well, thought Oliver Xavier Randall, who hadn’t begun life with that appellation.

  “You know this person, Admiral?” asked one of the suited figures standing at the side of Beauregard Honorius Sinclair Cullen, the Duque de Argento y Pepco, royal consort to the Infanta, Mercedes Adalina Saturnina Inez de Arango, heir to the Solar League.

  Oliver felt the eyes of his crew upon him, and he was pretty sure that Jax and Dalea were goggling at the radio aboard the ship. It was going to be an unpleasant conversation when they demanded an explanation about why he had lied to them for all these years. Oliver wondered why the universe hated him? Because clearly it did. Thus far the only positive out of this shit sandwich was the fact his crew had not recognized the suited figure as the imperial consort.

  Squaring his shoulders, Oliver forced himself to look up and defiantly meet the gaze of the man behind the helmet’s faceplate. The fact that Cullen topped him by four inches and was Vidstream-star handsome and didn’t seem to have aged a day since the last time they’d met, and was now a vice admiral just added to Oliver’s sense of ill-usage.

  “Believe it or not, Lieutenant, this intitulado was once an officer in the Orden de la Estrella,” Cullen said. “I attended the High Ground with him.” Cullen gave a theatrical sigh. “Further proof that the academy and the officers’ corp is no place for commoners.”

  Behind Oliver loomed a massive abandoned spaceship resting on the rock and ice surface of a medium-sized asteroid in a worthless solar system that lacked any viable planets and was so far off the beaten path that the arrival of an imperial ship much less a squadron was so improbable as to be impossible. Which proved Oliver’s point about the universe hating him.

  The members of Oliver’s crew who had been busily removing the cargo from the derelict ship and onto a loader from their own, far smaller ship were gathered protectively around the machine and the looted—appropriated, Oliver amended—goods.

  “We’ll be taking custody of that,” Cullen said with a wave at the loader.

  Oliver inclined his head. He was damned if he’d bow. Over the radio came a murmur of objection from his crew. Oliver gestured with just the fingers of his gloved left hand—shut up! He swallowed his rage. It went down like glass shards.

  “Of course, your grace.”

  Cullen gestured to one of his fusileros. The man climbed up into the cab and jerked a thumb at Luis Baca, who had been driving. The man climbed slowly down. Oliver and his crew watched as the loader rolled away toward the open doors of a waiting military shuttle.

  “We were going to be rich…” Luis said mournfully.

  * * *

  Hours earlier Luis Baca had caroled, “We’re going to be rich!” as they stood staring up at the massive abandoned spaceship.

  Oliver could understand his crew member’s excitement. The previous owners of this ship, the Cara’ot, had been master traders carrying only the most expensive and unusual items for trade—unique jewels, Sidone spider-silk weavings, objets d’art, rare books, antiques… and medicines manufactured in the shipboard labs.

  It was the medicines that were most precious, but also problematic. In addition to being traders the enigmatic Cara’ot had been masters of genetic engineering, and the major thing they wanted in trade was DNA from every creature, sentient or not, that they came across.

  When humans had finally figured out how to transcend light speed they discovered to their horror they were not the ultimate creation in the universe. True to form, Oliver’s species had attacked and conquered every other known race, founded the Solar League and wanted no part of the Cara’ot’s genetic shenanigans. There was no way the perfection that was humanity was going to be contaminated with alien cooties. Especially when the aliens in question had no standard body type or gender. The Cara’ot could continue to distort their own corrupted bodies, but they were outlawed from doing so to any other race now under the sway of the human League, and the punishment for appropriating human DNA was death. The paranoia was so great that it ended up extending even to the Cara’ot mastery of medicine. Once Oliver had shared the disgust and fear of the Cara’ot, but ultimately he’d decided the ban was absurd. And it wasn’t just because he and his crew made a lot of money smuggling black-market medicines.

  Fortunately, there were places unknown to the League and beyond the reach of imperial law enforcement that didn’t share the Lea
gue’s obsession with the now vanished Cara’ot. The crew of the Selkie could sell the drugs they would loot from the abandoned vessel to Hidden Worlds and on the black market. Yep, they were going to be rich.

  Oliver’s gaze raked the length of the massive ship as it lay against the wall of an ice-rimmed crater. The Cara’ot ship made his own ship, the Selkie, look like a child’s toy. Oliver couldn’t decide if the derelict was more reminiscent of a fallen skyscraper or a beached whale. He decided skyscraper for it seemed to be studded with lights and ports—all dark now—and there were strange superstructures, which looked like balconies, whose function he couldn’t even begin to guess.

  “Still, you’d think the damn aliens would have been a bit more considerate and abandoned their ships in more pleasant places,” Luis added. “Why not a tropical paradise?”

  “Perhaps we aliens enjoy making life miserable for humans,” Graarack said. The words were punctuated with clicks from her beak.

  It was odd for the spider-like alien to make a sassy remark, and it amused Oliver. He tried to stifle his chuckle but it carried over the helmet radio and Luis gave an exasperated sigh and turned to look at him. Even through the faceplate Oliver could see the et tu expression on his comm officer’s face.

  “Really, hombre, I get no support from a fellow human?” Luis asked. “You might notice we’re, like, really outnumbered.”

  “And one of those aliens… who outnumber you… thinks you humans could maybe stop chattering so we can crack open this treasure box,” Dalea, their ship doctor, radioed from the ship. Oliver figured the gentle, sweet-faced Hajin would be eager to get her hands on the medicines.

  “I would second that request,” came the fluting tones of Jax over their suit radios. The Tiponi Flute wasn’t much use when it came to hauling heavy objects, given that he looked like an attenuated stalk of bamboo with agile but fragile fronds for appendages. He had remained on the ship with Dalea.

  Oliver glanced back to where his ship rested on a flat, methane-ice-coated plain. Despite the name his ship wasn’t a graceful beauty. It was squat, and broad, the outer hull pitted in places and patched in others. She was a truck designed to carry goods while keeping air inside so the inhabitants could survive as they made their way between worlds with those trade goods. Still, she was his—or at least three quarters of it was his.

  A blown Fold converter six years ago had necessitated that he sell shares to cover the repair costs. Jax had been the only buyer of the shares, and it had worked out. The Tiponi Flute had integrated smoothly with the rest of the crew and Oliver was grateful not to have to manage the books any longer. Math had always been his best subject in school but he hated double-entry accounting and Jax lived for it. The Tiponi had also improved profit margins with his wise and detailed choices of cargo. Oliver could have bought the alien out a few years back, but the Flute was one of them now, sharing in the profits and the losses. But today was going to be a giant payday.

  A dark figure raced across the hull of the abandoned ship. Jahan’s tail was held stiffly upright—a sure sign of excitement—and she had dropped to all fours for better purchase on the ice-rimed hull. She launched herself off the ship and almost too late Oliver realized she was heading straight for him. He braced and she hit his chest. He clutched at his second-in-command, and her suited arms clasped around his neck. The force of her landing sent him sliding backward across the ice. He managed to keep upright, but just barely.

  Their faceplates were only inches apart. Large neotenous dark eyes, golden fur-covered face with a darker fur on her head that formed a widow’s peak. Her lips parted in a smile, revealing the sharp canines of her species.

  “Madre de Dios, Jahan,” Oliver exploded. “What if I hadn’t caught you? You could have damaged your suit.” A new thought intruded. “For that matter you could have damaged my suit if you’d knocked me down,” he added aggrievedly. “These aren’t military grade.”

  “I had faith in your elite military training.”

  He set her on her feet. She wasn’t quite four feet tall and he felt like an indulgent parent as he looked down at her. “Over a decade ago.”

  “So you’re saying you’re fat and flabby now?”

  “Oh, for God’s sake! There’s a fortune waiting. Can we get to it?” Baca exploded.

  “What did you find?” Oliver asked the executive officer.

  “Airlocks are on the side facing the crater wall. Outer doors are locked open, no indication anybody’s been inside before us.”

  “Did I mention we’re going to be rich!” Baca said.

  “Several times,” Oliver said dryly.

  Jahan continued. “It’s tight on that other side. They must have been really skinny or just left with the suits on their backs. It would be easier to offload the cargo on this side and it’s closer to the Selkie.”

  “So we cut,” Graarack hissed.

  By now they had reached the side of the ship. Oliver craned his head to look up the towering metal. “Well, that’s going to be a bitch. It took three missiles hitting pretty much at the same point to breach the hull on Cara’ot ships during the Expansion Wars.”

  “And there’s that military background again,” Jahan whispered to Graarack, who giggled. It should have been disconcerting for Oliver, emerging as it did from a five-and-a-half-foot tall spider, but the fact that it wasn’t indicated how comfortable he had become serving with aliens.

  “Be easier to cut at the ports,” Oliver said, trying to ignore the two aliens. “Go get the loader,” he ordered.

  Baca went loping away in long, floating jumps in the low gravity.

  “And don’t forget the torch,” Jahan yelled after him. He waved to indicate he wouldn’t.

  While they waited Oliver took a sip of water from the nipple in his helmet. He was trying to tamp down his excitement, but wasn’t having a lot of success.

  * * *

  It took a long time to cut a sufficiently large opening in the ship’s side. Long enough that they’d had to replace oxygen canisters in their suits. “So, what are you going to do with your share, Captain?” Luis asked as he braced the torch against his thigh. Blobs of molten metal fell like steel tears onto the platform of the loader.

  I’m going to pay off the bogus debt that I owe the Orden de la Estrella so I can go home and see my father. But Oliver said none of that. “Not sure. Maybe replace the starboard engine on the Selkie.”

  “If this is as good as we expect, you can buy a new ship,” Jahan said.

  Graarack gasped. “Sell the Selkie? I hope she didn’t hear you say that.” Jahan and Oliver exchanged glances. The Sidone navigator’s habit of anthropomorphizing the freighter was a source of fond amusement to her crew mates.

  “Hey, hombre, I’m flagging here.” Oliver took over the torch from Luis and checked the fuel.

  “Getting low here.”

  Graarack swarmed up the struts to the platform carrying a fuel canister in one of her eight claws. As she snapped it into place she asked, “Why did they do it?”

  “Who?”

  “The Cara’ot,” the spider replied.

  “Do what? Disappear?”

  She nodded. “Yeah, that. Abandon everything. Vanish.”

  “To make us crazy,” Baca said. “Shit, I got called up because the Emperor and O-Trell got their panties in a wad. They were sure the war was starting again. And then they extended my tour. Had to spend an extra three years humping a rifle.”

  “That must have been uncomfortable,” Jahan said blandly.

  “Not humping like humping humping… you know, sex humping.”

  “One never knows with you creatures,” the Isanjo smirked.

  “Seriously, do you know, Captain?” Graarack pressed.

  “I have a theory,” Oliver said slowly. Memory fled back fifteen years. Standing in a warehouse while a half-human/half-Cara’ot child had clung to his leg. He snapped off the torch and set it aside. “The Cara’ot broke the genetic laws. They convinced some h
umans to mix DNA and they produced alien-human hybrids. When a human governor arrived to take over the planet the children were discovered and he ordered them killed.”

  “Killed?” It was Dalea. She had obviously been listening in on their conversation from the ship. Horror laced the single word.

  “I never heard about this,” Luis said skeptically.

  Oliver struggled to keep his tone neutral as he said, “The crown covered it up.”

  “Then how do you know?” Jahan asked. She was perched on the top of the ship, and she peered over the curving edge at him. In her spacesuit she looked like a robot gargoyle.

  “Because I was there.” He cleared his throat, and grabbed up the torch again. “Let’s get this thing open.”

  Jax’s voice came fluting over the radio. “Did you kill children?”

  “No!” A single explosive word. Oliver snapped on the cutter. I killed human soldiers to save them and ruined my life.

  A few minutes later he was able to deliver a hard kick to the metal and it fell into the ship. He felt the concussion as it hit through the soles of his boots. There wasn’t enough atmosphere on this rock to carry any sound. Interior atmosphere puffed out, occluded his faceplate for an instant, then turned to snow and drifted toward the stony ground.

  After that they split up and began looting—salvaging, Oliver amended—the alien ship.

  * * *

  And now he stood watching their gigantic payday vanish into an O-Trell shuttle. Cullen smiled as he correctly interpreted Oliver’s expression.

  “Be glad I’m not arresting you all and seizing your ship,” Cullen said.

  Which begged the question, why wasn’t Cullen arresting them? The answer arrived with blinding force. Because he intends to keep it for himself! Son of a bitch!

  Oliver’s gloved hands balled into fists. The words you fucking asshole battered at the back of his teeth, and he pictured his fist driving into the faceplate, cracks appearing, Cullen choking and dying. Mercifully his thinking head decided to take over from his desire to measure dicks. Oliver briefly closed his eyes and heard his father’s voice urging him to show civility and courtesy at all times to his “betters.” He bowed and managed to grit out, “Thank you, sir.”