by Jamie Davis
Labor and Delivery
A Newton’s Gate Series
Jamie Davis
Contents
Also by Jamie Davis
Foreword
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Afterword
Also by Jamie Davis
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About the Author
Copyright © 2018 Jamie Davis
All rights reserved.
This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, businesses, events, or locales is purely coincidental.
Reproduction in whole or in part of this publication without express written consent is strictly prohibited.
The authors greatly appreciate you taking the time to read their books. Please consider leaving a review wherever you bought the book, or telling your friends about it, to help spread the word.
Thank you for supporting their work.
Cover art by Nicole at www.significantcover.com
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Also by Jamie Davis
The Delivery Mage
Book 1 - Deliver or Die
Book 2 - Deliver the Goods
Book 3 - Labor and Delivery
—
Coming Soon
Book 4 - Deliver Us From Evil
Book 5 - Signed, Sealed, Delivered
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The Broken Throne Series (5 books)
Read book 1 - The Charm Runner
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The Accidental Traveler LitRPG Trilogy
(with C.J. Davis)
Read book 1 - The Accidental Thief
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Accidental Champion Trilogy
(with C.J. Davis)
Read book 1 - Accidental Duelist
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Extreme Medical Services Series (8 books)
Read book 1 - Extreme Medical Services
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Eldara Sister Series (2 books)
Read book 1 - The Nightingale’s Angel
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Follow on Facebook for updates, news, and upcoming book excerpts
Facebook.com/jamiedavisbooks
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Foreword
Welcome to the Newton’s Gate Universe, where The Delivery Mage series takes place.
What is the Newton’s Gate Universe?
On New Year’s Eve of 2050, humanity launches Newton’s Gate, a gateway meant to enable interstellar exploration. But when the gateway explodes, our greatest achievement morphs into our greatest disaster. Portals begin to appear around the world. Some open and close briefly, others swallow entire cities, while some remain permanently active, linking Earth to a wide array of planets, galaxies, universes, dimensions, and alternate times. Earth has become Grand Central Station for all of existence, bringing humanity into contact with alien humanoids, fantastical creatures, and everything in between.
One consequence is certain: chaos reigns everywhere.
The NGU and the C.J. Clemens pen name have emerged from the combined efforts of over thirty authors, featuring series ranging from space opera to urban fantasy -- epic fantasy to steam punk -- thrillers to military sci-fi. Virtually something for everyone!
Chapter 1
Kurt Carter winced as the steel-toed boot caught him square in the chest, propelling him backward. He slammed into the building behind him. His head cracked back into the brick wall and rebounded causing him to see stars. Kurt’s vision swam and he worked to keep focused as he almost blacked out.
Shaking his head, he reacted on pure instinct and reached out, blocking an incoming punch with his forearm. Kurt followed up with a jab outward with his other fist, plowing it into the attacker’s solar plexus.
The scaly, reptoid gangbanger doubled over as the punch drove the wind from his lungs.
Kurt took the opportunity to dance backward, putting some distance between himself and the massive humanoid in a leather vest sporting the Hell’s Gate Clan colors. He needed a few seconds respite to regain some of his composure.
“I’m really getting tired of these little meet up’s with you and your friends,” Kurt said as he tried to focus on catching his breath. “I don’t know why we can’t work this out in some other way.”
“Blood spilt requires blood in payment,” The Hell’s Gater hissed. “You killed four of our brethren so we have to kill you.”
“Yeah, about that, there’s got to be a price you accept to compensate your gang for your lost friends. After all, aren’t gangbangers like you getting killed all the time?”
A snarling growl answered Kurt’s comment and the creature charged in at him.
Kurt ducked under a roundhouse right cross from the scaly humanoid. He dodged to the left and jabbed a punch into the guy’s ribs as he bent around behind his attacker.
The rough, scaly hide scraped a layer of skin from his knuckles but Kurt ignored the pain. He shoved with his other hand, knocking the Hell’s Gater off-balance.
“It’s been four weeks since you guys trashed my apartment. I was hoping to find some other way to handle this besides having to deal with random assaults while I go about my day to day business.
The gangbanger growled in reply and spun around, charging back in for another attack. He moved faster than Kurt anticipated and this time a clawed hand managed to grab ahold of Kurt as he spun a way to dodge the incoming assault.
Holding onto Kurt’s arm with an iron grip, the two-meter reptoid swung the smaller man around in an arc slamming him back into the brick wall again.
Striking the rough bricks face-first this time, Kurt felt his nose break as his face crunched against the unforgiving surface of the wall.
This is getting old, Kurt thought. He needed to end this before the gangbanger’s friends arrived.
Kurt had been taking a different route to and from his apartment on his daily chores as well as using surveillance drones to scout around before he left for the day.
It didn’t matter.
Invariably a few of the ones set to watch out for Kurt caught up with him. He’d been attacked six times in the last two weeks as the Clan managed to catch him while out on his rounds.
Kurt ignored the blood pouring from his nose and pushed off the wall, spinning around and blocking an incoming punch with his arms crossed in front of him. The block raised the other man’s arm high and the blow struck nothing but air.
Scissoring his arms so that he grabbed the other guy’s wrist, Kurt took his turn to spin his attacker around. He kicked out with one foot so that he tripped the reptoid so he fell to the sidewalk.
Continuing his spin move, Kurt lifted an elbow and came down on the back of the guy's neck with all of his body weight behind it. There was a guttural groan and then the creature went limp, lying facedown on the sidewalk.
Kurt let out a sigh. He’d managed to knock out the creature.
Climbing into his feet and wiping at his bloody nose with the back of his hand, Kurt glanced around, scanning the street, making sure no one else was nearby. It wouldn’t do for one of this guy’s comrades to show up and catch him unawares.
There were no signs of any help coming from other Hell’s Gaters and Kurt let
himself relax a bit. As the adrenaline started to leave his system, he winced at the pain signals flooding his mind. He’d managed to get himself beat up pretty well this time.
Kurt shook his head. He was going to need some time to recuperate before he’d be ready for another one.
With no one else nearby in the alley where the fight happened, Kurt headed back out to the main street and turned right, heading back towards his apartment.
Knowing the front of the building was being watched, he altered his course to take a spin around the nearby reservoir and come in from the back side of his street.
It had been two weeks since he returned from his last, pretty routine courier run. The trip had been uneventful and the delivery went off without a hitch. Ordinarily, Kurt would have taken satisfaction at a job well done.
That afterglow disappeared when a pair of gang members jumped him as soon as he arrived home. The repeated attacks since had Kurt hoping Trent had another job for him soon. He looked forward to an opportunity to get out of town for a few days and give things a chance to cool down here.
Kurt also needed the money. The cash would come in handy if he ever found the right Hell’s Gate Clan leader with whom he could negotiate the blood price.
While he walked towards the reservoir jogging trail, Kurt tapped the stainless steel cuff on his wrist containing, among other things, a mini-computer and checked his comm for any sign of a text message or incoming call. There was nothing.
He shook his head and kept walking, checking over his shoulder frequently to make sure no one came up behind him.
In addition to Kurt’s own efforts, Trent was also supposed to be looking into getting a brokered price for the blood debt. So far, Trent said he hadn’t had any luck. The job broker suspected that was because the price was still too high.
Trent’s advice was to keep beating up Clan members who attacked him until the gang decided payment was the most cost-effective way to decide the debt.
“Just whittle down their numbers a little bit,” Tent told his friend and business partner a few days before. “If you cause serious injuries to enough Hell’s Gaters, you will make the price too high for them to keep coming after you. That’s when they’ll settle things and give us a price.”
Kurt grunted a wry chuckle as he recalled the conversation. It would be a great suggestion if it was Trent’s body getting a routine beating while trying to deliver a message to an underworld gang. He’d have to remember to offer to use Trent as a possible body double sometime.
Almost to the path circling the reservoir, Kurt reached a cross street about a block away. He checked among the few pedestrians he could see on the other side of the road. None of them looked much like a biker gang member, but you could never tell for sure these days.
The Hell’s Gater Clan seemed to have reached into parts of society Kurt hadn’t suspected. Three days before, he was jumped by a guy in a business suit. That had caught him completely by surprise.
The street looked clear of any suspicious individuals and Kurt crossed the street to continue down the boulevard until he reached the turnoff to use the jogging path around one of the Baltimore city central reservoirs. If all went according to plan, he’d be able to circle the lake and get a good look at the building where his apartment was before he approached it.
The dry cleaner who owned the business below his apartment was supposed to leave him a message if anyone strange it was hanging around, but Kurt suspected that some members of the gang had already corrupted that potential source of intelligence for him. Kurt didn’t blame the guy. He wasn’t the one under the blood feud and couldn’t afford to have his business trashed or firebombed in retaliation for siding with Kurt.
Continuing around the reservoir while he pondered his options, Kurt wondered what would happen if he chose not to proceed with trying to pay off the blood debt. It didn’t look like it was just going to go away on its own. He thought about the option to relocate.
With thousands of gates open on or around the Earth, there were only a few worlds that didn’t have one or another criminal organization associated with them. From his experience, they often ended up working together at one point or another. If he wanted to go anywhere that was worth going to, it was likely he’d be spotted and identified by someone who might be interested in collecting a bounty for turning him over to the Hell’s Gater Clan.
Kurt sighed. It didn’t seem like there was any right answer to the situation. He liked where he lived. Baltimore was ideally located to give him access to gates up and down the east coast of the United States. He could be in New York City or Boston in a couple of hours travel north. In the opposite direction, he could reach Atlanta, Charleston, or even northern Florida in a few more hours travel.
None of that mattered, though, if he couldn’t live here safely. Something had to break his way and soon.
Kurt rounded the final turn in the reservoir path and gazed down on the street where the dry cleaner’s building sat. He could see no sign of anyone else in the vicinity other than normal pedestrian traffic. He decided it was worth making the final approach and returning to his apartment.
He came around from the rear of the building to the side door leading up to his apartment. Reaching the door, he activated his wrist computer and typed in the code on the keypad which started deactivating the series of new security measures he put in place since his apartment was ransacked weeks before.
As the door sequence unlocked and Kurt pulled it open, he shook his head. He still wasn’t any closer to figuring out how they got past his previous security measures. What he had put in place now was nothing short of what would be found in a top government facility and it had cost him a pretty penny. Just another thing that put him in debt so that he couldn’t pay back the gang.
Pulling the door shut behind him Kurt heard the magnetic locks click back into place. Multiple door bolts slide out to lock into the doorframe. It would take nothing short of a significant military-grade explosion to blow that door open. Putting these additional security measures in place had been almost the only thing that kept him feeling safe enough to even stay in the second-floor loft right now.
The other thing that kept him there was Kurt was just plain stubborn. He didn’t like getting pushed around. He also didn’t like thinking that people could run him off of his land or out of his apartment just because they wanted to scare him a little.
All right, he admitted, not scare him. They wanted to kill him. Still, it was the principle of the thing.
Heading upstairs and wiping more blood from beneath his nose, Kurt went to the first-floor bathroom and grabbed a towel so that he could try and clean up his face a little bit.
He looked into the mirror and winced. He was going to have two black eyes again. He had just healed up from the last ones.
Kurt made a mental note to check with the urgent care center a few blocks away to see if they had any openings in their stem cell regeneration suite. He was going to need his nose and a few other bumps and bruises fixed once again.
He didn’t like to use the advanced health services there, preferring to heal up the old-fashioned way, but given the number of attacks he’d withstood over the last few weeks, he’d never have survived if he hadn’t made sure to heal up as much as possible, as quickly as possible in between beatings.
Finishing washing up and tossing the bloody towel in the laundry chute leading down to the cleaners below, Kurt headed to the kitchen to figure out what he was going to have for dinner when the embedded comm chip behind his ear chirped. Working the muscles attached to his mastoid bone in a particular combination activated the incoming signal. Kurt said, “yeah, go ahead.”
“Kurt,” Trent said. “Just the guy I wanted to talk to. Are you around your place right now?”
“Yeah, I just got back as a matter of fact. I ran into a little trouble though so I’m still trying to get cleaned up. Are you close?”
“I’m a few blocks away. I’ll stop by if you don’t m
ind. This is something I’d rather not talk about over the open comm system.”
“Sure just buzz when you get here and I’ll let you up.”
“Sounds good. See you in a few.”
The signal cut out and Kurt decided he needed to put on a fresh shirt. He headed back upstairs and stripped off his shirt. He splashed water on his face to clean up the rest of the blood dried there.
Kurt slipped on a fresh t-shirt and heard a chime sound indicating Trent was downstairs. He tapped the mirror in the bathroom activating the integrated holo-display to make sure it was his friend before opening the door. The camera showed his job broker and one-time CIA handler standing there on the sidewalk looking up at the camera and giving him the middle finger.
Kurt smiled and pressed the virtual button on the display to open the door. He headed out into his bedroom, grabbed a fresh shirt out of the drawer, and pulled it on over his head as he headed downstairs to the first floor of his loft apartment. Trent stood waiting for Kurt when he reached the main level.
Trent Took one look at him and winced. “Geez, you weren’t kidding. Someone beat the crap out of you.”
“Yeah, well you should see the other guy.”
“I hope so. You didn’t kill him did you?”
“No, I’m meticulous about that. You know that. I did leave him unconscious in a dark alley, though. Hopefully, he doesn’t get rolled by somebody else along the way.