Rogue Starship: The Benevolency Universe (Outworld Ranger Book 1)

by David Alastair Hayden

  The assassin stabbed, sliced, and thrusted with his force sword. Kyralla shifted, blocked, and backpedaled to avoid the attacks. Then, as the feeling returned to her left side, she went on the offensive. She feinted high with her force staff. The assassin blocked the attack, and Kyralla kicked, sweeping his legs out from under him. She followed with a roundhouse kick to the back of his neck, slamming the assassin to the ground. A heel-stomp to the nose and a staff thrust to the back of his neck finished him off.

  A bead of sweat trickled down her face. Now that was more like it! Still, a little more challenge wouldn’t be… She smiled. There were more of them. She could feel their presence. She could feel them focusing on her—intently.

  Kyralla dove to the floor, and a stream of plasma bursts blazed overhead. Then a laser beam burned down at her. She rolled to the side, and it scored the floor as it blazed past her. She leapt to her feet, zigging and zagging as more plasma shots streaked her way.

  She sprinted toward her attackers: an assassin crouched behind a crate, his plasma rifle trained on her, and a hovering security cog, a Buzzy-7 with a three-shot laser beam cannon, a short-range neural disruptor, and… She racked her brains to remember what else it was armed with.

  Another laser beam burned toward her, followed by another burst of plasma shots. Dodging, she raced across the warehouse. A crate blocked the path to her attackers. She chose to leap over it rather than go around.

  “Antigrav at two-percent,” she commanded.

  With the slight boost, she hurdled over the crate.

  A plasma burst scorched across her right arm, melting through the armor and singeing her skin. It hurt, but it wasn’t anything she couldn’t handle.

  As she landed, she remembered the Buzzy-7's other weapon. And she saw it launch a split moment before it actually did.

  “On my mark, antigrav one-hundred percent.”

  A guided missile fired off the back of the Buzzy-7. Powerful enough to take out an android soldier in a battlesuit or pop open a tank, the missile was more than powerful enough to reduce her to a fine mist.

  The plasma bursts let up as the missile zoomed toward her…closer…closer.

  “Now!”

  Kyralla propelled herself upward and forward. With help from the antigrav, she soared right past the missile and toward her opponents.

  “Drop antigrav.”

  The plasma shots resumed as soon as she passed the missile. One grazed her hip. Another blistered her left cheek. She landed behind the assassin. He spun around. She kicked the gun out of his hand and grabbed him by the front of his uniform.

  Taking a slow, wide arc, the missile spun around.

  “Antigrav at one-hundred-fifty percent.”

  With energy streaming out of her antigrav belt’s power pack at an alarming rate, she jumped, taking the assassin high into the air with her.

  The missile zoomed toward them.

  Kyralla planted her feet on the assassin’s chest. Then she released his uniform and kicked outward.

  While she flew backward, still under the antigrav’s effect, the assassin sailed directly in the missile's path. Lacking the agility to go around him, it hit him dead center and exploded.

  The blast reached Kyralla and knocked her back against the far wall. The breath whooshed out of her lungs, but she was okay. Bruised and blistered, nothing more. The third, and final, laser beam streaked toward her.

  “Cut antigrav.”

  She dropped, and the beam sliced overhead.

  “Safe fall.”

  She landed and dodged the spray of neural disruptor blasts as the cog closed. It seemed to realize its danger and backed away. But it wasn’t fast enough to escape her. A few well-placed staff-strikes knocked it out of the air and left it smoking on the concrete floor.

  Bent over, gasping for breath, drenched with sweat, bruised, burned in several places…Kyralla smiled. She wasn’t happy often. But she was now. With a challenging set of enemies defeated she was ready to—

  Something was wrong.

  Three distinctive rifle pops echoed through the warehouse, followed by a faint whistling sound that buzzed toward her. Guided rounds!

  Kyralla turned toward them. She spotted the first a split-second before it reached her. She spun sideways. It tore across the threads of her uniform, barely missing her flesh, and detonated in the wall instead.

  The second shot adjusted its course. At the last moment she stepped out of its line of fire. The round couldn’t adjust fast enough, and it too blew up in the wall.

  The third shot gave her less time to react. It arrowed towards the exact center of her mass, and she'd already retreated the same direction twice. But she'd taken more injuries on the other side and there was only a fraction of a second left to make her move.

  Indecision could get a limited precog killed as easily as anyone else. She tried to spin away. Too little, too late.

  The armor-piercing round struck her in the chest and detonated.

  Damn.

  Kyralla fell, blood spurting from a gaping hole in her chest. Pain radiated throughout her body. An excessive amount. Far more than someone in this situation would actually feel, since the shock would’ve killed them.

  “Rosie,” she said to her chippy, “discontinue the program.”

  The warehouse, the assassins, and her injuries faded away, leaving her inside the darkness of her simulation capsule. The doors dilated open, and she cringed under the bright lights in the training hall.

  Frustrated, she ripped the capsule’s electrodes from her temples, wrists, waist, and legs. Then she tore the neural circlet from her head and hopped out of the capsule.

  Her trainer stepped forward and tossed her a towel.

  “That was excellent,” Mika said.

  “Excellent? I got killed!”

  “You said you wanted a harder mission than the last several I gave you.”

  “Harder, not impossible.”

  “It was doable. You could’ve sensed the sniper before he fired.”

  She squeezed sweat from her hair and dried off her face. “Yeah, right. I’m probably the only lightly armored, non-android who could’ve even gotten as far as I did.”

  “Don’t get too cocky,” Mika said. “And training isn’t about being the best. It’s about bettering yourself.”

  She tossed the towel back to him and took the water he offered. “I know…you’re right. I’m just frustrated.”

  As she downed her water, a notification popped up in her HUD.

  “Madam, incoming message from Senator Pashta.”

  Kyralla groaned. “Patch him through.”

  A static image of Senator Pashta’s face appeared in the messaging window as his voice came through. “Kyralla, could you please join me for a nightcap? There are several important matters I would like to discuss.”

  She gritted her teeth. “Of course, Uncle. I’ll join you…” she liked to keep the man waiting whenever she could, for as long as she could “…in about an hour. I need to shower first.”

  Showering would only take her a few minutes.

  His face twitched with displeasure. “Of course, my dear.”

  The screen disappeared, and Kyralla shivered as if a spider had crawled across her skin. Skeevy old coot. He’d probably rather I joined him while I was sweaty in my tight workout clothes. Too bad.

  “Rosie, where’s my sister?”

  “Oona is in the meditation grotto, madam.”

  “Send word for her to stay there. I’m getting a shower.”

  As she walked down the hallway toward her quarters, she shivered again, though it wasn’t cold.

  A vague sense of danger pulsed through her mind. She glanced around, listened carefully, and checked the sensors in her HUD. There was no apparent danger.

  And yet…something bugged her.

  Something was amiss.

  Kyralla shook her head and reassured herself. Stop worrying. The estate is fortified and well-guarded. And no one knows we’re h
ere. The simulation left you rattled, that’s all.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Siv Gendin

  “Power pack zeroed, sir. Switching to the main system.”

  Siv unbuckled the cheap backup antigrav belt and tossed it away. He had already burned through two others. Now he was using only his primary belt.

  Initially he’d worried about accidentally setting off movement sensors by dropping the extra belts. But he was carrying every piece of gear he could imagine needing, from his plasma carbine to his drones. So he’d decided it was more important to dump every scrap of extra weight he could spare. If there were sensors that sensitive he’d set them off when landing anyway.

  The free fall continued.

  “How am I doing, Silkster?”

  “I don’t think you’ll splat, sir. But you are drifting off target again.”

  Siv spread his arms out and tilted so that he’d fall eastward.

  In the autumn, strong winds frequently kicked in after sunset, especially at higher altitudes. Even Silky had failed to take this into account, probably because Siv had him running hundreds of falling and infiltration and detection simulations based on the scant data they'd been provided about the senator’s compound, not to mention trying to crack the encrypted data on the target. The effect of the wind was a detail that would’ve been ironed out given adequate planning time, which they hadn't been given.

  A gust blew him further westward.

  “The body lean technique isn’t working, sir.”

  “What if I were to set the antigrav so I would fall faster, making the wind impact me less? I’d just have to punch it back up soon enough to prevent splattage.”

  “Calculating… Not an option, sir. Well, I could compensate some, but it’s only going to help so much. Uh-oh. Incoming, sir.”

  Siv glanced around and spotted a ten-meter long, high-flying transport skimmer. And it was heading eastward, at a leisurely, fuel-conserving speed.

  “I’ve got an idea.”

  “Sir, that’s not an idea. It’s a brain fart. And I have it on good authority that humans are supposed to ignore those.”

  “We rarely do.”

  “Then for the sake of your species, sir, start now.”

  “I’m going to miss my opportunity if we don’t hurry and—”

  “Sir, I’ve already made the adjustments. I know you’re a special kind of dumb.” Silky sighed. “And besides, I’m not sure there’s a better option if you want to hit your primary target zone.”

  The antigrav decreased, and Siv sped toward the incoming transport skimmer.

  “It’s automated, sir. No pilot.”

  Perfect. Just before Siv smacked into the roof, Silky switched the antigrav to full compensation. Siv landed hard onto the metal top, but not hard enough to result in anything more than a few bruises. Lying in the center of the transport’s length, he scrambled to grab onto something, but the top was smooth. Just before he reached the end, he thought to activate the magnets in his boots.

  The magnets activated, and Siv stood up on the transport, as if he were on a surfboard. He smiled, remembering how a lot of people had traveled on skimmer-boards when he was a kid. Sadly, nearly all of them had been scrapped. After the Tekk Plague, the antigrav and propulsion systems in them were considered too valuable for what was seen as a toy or a luxury item.

  After a few moments, Silky said, “Release now, sir.”

  Siv deactivated his boots and dropped off the transport. Again he fell toward the compound. He was way off center, but if he continued to drift with the winds as before, he would land on target.

  The transport continued along its way, as if nothing had happened. He doubted there was any system for detecting suspicious roof impacts and reporting them to authorities.

  “See? Everything turned out all right.”

  “You know with all these stunts you pull, sir, you’d be dead if you didn’t have me. Seriously, even an 8G model would’ve gotten you killed by now.”

  “I know, and I appreciate everything you do, Silkster old buddy.”

  “In fact, sir, I’m not sure even I could have saved you when I was new, fresh out of the factory. But I am what I am because I served with the best.”

  “So you tell me, but I never get any details.”

  “Still classified, sir.”

  Siv almost argued that the order to make it classified, centuries ago, came from a power that no longer existed. But that was a pointless argument they’d had many times before.

  Siv scanned every direction visually and using the radar in his HUD. No other vehicles were nearby. So far he’d been lucky enough to only encounter a few transports and nothing with living pilots. And fortunately it was illegal to fly over the senator’s compound at the lower altitudes passenger skimmers used.

  “Okay, time to hide, sir. Readying countermeasures, activating the refraction field…starting at ten percent.”

  Siv’s RC-4 refraction cloak was a hand-sized box housed in the armor on his back, just below his sensor pack. The RC-4 emitted a localized energy field that refracted light so as to blend him in with the surrounding environment, as if he were a chameleon. They would steadily increase the strength of the field as he neared the compound. At full power it would render him effectively invisible.

  The RC-4 was incredibly powerful, but he hated using it. Early in his procurement career he had relied on it heavily. But then in a nasty fall off the back of a moving skimmer, the unit had gotten damaged. Now the refraction unit only lasted about half as long as it used to on a full charge, and thanks to overheating it had a nasty habit of deactivating unpredictably.

  He’d tried to fix it, but that wasn’t his area of expertise and replacement parts were almost impossible to find since it was military issue like so much of his dad’s old equipment.

  “I should see if Bishop can repair the RC-4.”

  “Sure, but why don’t we focus on surviving first, sir. Time to landing…twenty seconds…nineteen…on target…seventeen…antigrav at maximum compensation…”

  Siv took a deep breath. Death or freedom. That’s what awaited him here. Of course, death was a sort of freedom, just not the kind he fancied.

  “Fourteen…thirteen…twelve…antigrav power remaining at point two percent… Brace yourself, sir.”

  His plan of attack seemed brilliant. But most of his first draft plans seemed brilliant, until a few nights of study and contemplation exposed all their flaws. And this one relied on guesswork and decades-old blueprints.

  “Ten…nine…”

  A distortion energy screen cloaked his landing area: a small, private garden in the southeast wing of the senator’s compound. Or at least that’s what the blueprints showed. A level five sensor scan from above had registered water, rocks, and vegetation. But verification had proven impossible.

  “Seven…six…maximum cloaking…”

  What am I getting myself into? He so desperately wished that Silky had been able to crack the encryption on the data Big Boss D had sent him. Flying blind made this twice as dangerous. And it was already an odds-on sticky death for him.

  “Four…three…”

  As he passed through the distortion screen, a wave of harmless energy washed over him, leaving goosebumps on his skin.

  “Two…one…”

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Siv Gendin

  The distortion screen capped a small courtyard tucked discreetly into the middle of the southeast wing of Senator Pashta’s compound. Flickering lanterns hung from maple and pear trees. Smaller ones lined the courtyard’s winding pathways. An illuminated fountain splashed into a koi pond. Statues of gizmet-sized nymphs frolicked through ornamental shrubs and flowers, and several benches and two recliners formed a seating arrangement on the patio.

  Siv landed softly on a patch of grass beside the pond. His refraction cloak system was maxed out, but the heat level was holding steady…for the moment.

  He glanced around, spotting no one. T
hen he used his smart lenses to do an infrared scan, but that didn’t reveal anything unusual either.

  “Silkster?”

  “Level five scan of the courtyard shows…no people, no cogs, and no cameras or other monitoring devices. I guess it never occurred to them that a thief might be crazy enough to skydive into their garden.”

  It was entirely possible a sensitive radar detection system had defeated his countermeasures and pegged him on the way down, alerting security. A considerable amount of firepower might now be heading his way.

  “Any response inside?”

  “Scans aren’t picking up any alarms or nearby interior movement, sir, but it’s hard to be certain. The compound’s walls are surprisingly well shielded.”

  Siv rushed up to the single door leading from the garden into the building. The door had only a simple touchpad for entry.

  “You know, I could make a killing as a security consultant, telling people what they should never do.”

  “That you could, sir. Still not detecting anyone on the other side.”

  “Okay then, here goes…”

  Siv swiped the panel, and the door slid open. He quickly stepped inside, and the door closed behind him.

  He found himself in a giant, lavish bedroom, decorated with natural woods and silks, plush rugs and tapestries, expensive furniture and delicate knickknacks.

  According to the blueprints, the door directly across the room led out into a hallway that could take him all the way to the south wing of the compound where his encrypted instructions would tell him what he’d come here to steal.

  A canopy bed dominated the room. It was easily five times bigger than the cot he slept on. The bed covers weren’t ruffled, but a pair of panties and a military-style dress uniform lay at the foot of the bed. And a faint trail of steam curled out through the open door to the bathroom.