by R S Penney
Test Subjects
Justice Keepers Saga Book VIII
R.S. Penney
Copyright (C) 2019 R.S. Penney
Layout design and Copyright (C) 2019 by Next Chapter
Published 2019 by Beyond Time – A Next Chapter Imprint
Cover art by Cover Mint
Edited by Gregg Chambers, Jourdan Vian
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the author's permission.
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Table of Contents
Prologue
Part 1 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
Interlude
Part 2 Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
About the Author
Contact the Author
Books by the Author
Prologue
With a mug of coffee in hand, steam wafting upward with a delicious scent, Vix Taldien stepped into the cockpit of his small cargo hauler. It was a simple room with two seats facing a shared control console in front of a concave bulkhead. One of those seats was occupied by Trieli.
She swiveled to face him, and he had to pause for a moment to admire her beauty. Tall for a woman and slender, she had a round face of dark skin. Her deep brown hair was tied in a thick braid that coiled around her neck. “And…you forgot me again,” she said, eyeing the cup in his hand.
Vix blushed.
A slim man of average height, he always felt as if the clothes he wore seemed to hang off his body. His pale face was a sharp contrast to the black hair that he wore in a simple brush cut. “Sorry,” he said.
“Forget it, dummy.”
He took the seat next to her and checked the instruments. They were traveling at over ten-thousand times the speed of light, charting a course along the edge of Antauran Space, near the Leyrian border. Thinking about that left him feeling a little uneasy. Just about anyone who had been hauling cargo for more than a year had heard the rumors of ships being attacked if they got too far away from the homeworld.
People said the Leyrians had turned aggressive in the last six months, but he was skeptical. Concerned, but skeptical: that was his way. Never-mind the propaganda. The Leyrians were not aggressive by nature. Haul cargo long enough, and you would learn as much in short order. Still…There were too many reports of ships being raided by Justice Keepers for him to feel entirely comfortable.
His mouth a thin line, Vix squinted at the readouts and shook his head. “These old engines just don't have enough umph,” he said. “Effective velocity dropped considerably when we got within three lightyears of that blue giant.”
Reclining in her seat with hands folded over her stomach, Trieli smiled at the blank wall. “You complain too much,” she teased. “We're gonna get there. So what if it takes us an extra six hours? Just enjoy the ride.”
“Military ships could make this run in three days,” he said. “We'll be lucky to pull it off in five and a half.”
“Got somewhere you have to be, Vix?”
“I just don't like being out here.”
He slid two fingers across the console, brought up a menu and checked the integrity of the warp field. Everything seemed fine. Scanners detected no other ships within three lightyears. Of course, they could be flying past an entire fleet for all that Vix knew, and they would never find out unless some of those ships jumped to FTL speeds. “You must have heard the rumors,” he said.
Trieli shot a glance in his direction, arching one dark eyebrow. “You mean about the Leyrians attacking our people?” Her snort of contempt told him what she thought of that. “Space monkeys get bored; so they make up stories.”
Slurping as he sipped his coffee, Vix shut his eyes and thought deeply about just how far he wanted to push this point. He liked Trieli quite a bit; he didn't want her to think of him as skittish. “If you had heard even half of what I've heard,” he said at last. “It's getting dangerous out here.”
She rolled her eyes.
“I'm serious.”
“I know you are,” Trieli said. “What have you heard, Vix?”
He hesitated before answering. Part of him really wanted to press on – if only to get it off his chest – but his chances of spending a night cuddled up with Trieli were small enough already. Anxiety won that particular conflict. “Abraxis,” he said. “You must have heard about that.”
“What about it?”
He turned his chair toward her, sitting with hands on his knees as he worked up the courage to elaborate. “You really don't know, do you?” he mumbled. “Every outpost on that world went dark eight months ago.”
“And you think that's a sign of what?”
Grimacing as several ideas occurred to him, Vix shook his head. “I'm not sure what to think,” he answered. “But space-grunts talk, you know? When every single base on a world goes silent, they talk a lot.”
“Vix, you'll believe-”
His console started beeping like crazy.
Spreading his hands across its surface, Vix enlarged a window, tapped a drop-down menu and checked their status. “We've dropped back to sub-light speeds,” he said. “Our warp field was disrupted by a Slip-Pulse.”
Trieli was at her side of the console, tapping like crazy and scowling as she read the results. “I'm reading two Leyrian Class-2 assault shuttles and a stinger-class frigate,” she said. “They're closing on us.”
“Show me.”
A hologram rippled into existence right above his console, depicting a field of stars against the inky blackness, and then a shuttle swooped into view. Shaped very much like the point of a spear with curving wings on each side, it flew nose-first toward him.
Orange particle beams erupted from cannons on the shuttle's wings. A force-field popped up to shield them, but the sudden jolt that nearly tossed Vix out of his seat made it clear that this freighter's defenses weren't nearly strong enough to handle that kind of firepower.
Now the hologram showed only static.
Trieli was bent over, scraping at her forehead with the knuckle of one fist. “Shield emitters are down,” she said. “The sensors are on the fritz. We're flying blind until repair protocols-”
The ship trembled again.
“They're still shooting us!”
With his mouth hanging open, Vix blinked and tried to collect his thoughts. “Okay,” he said. “Can you track them with aft sensors?”
“I can.”
His console lit up with an image of his ship in the centre of a black screen with the two shuttles in red circling around him, vultures moving in on a carcass. Each one fired, and the ship was jostled again with every impact.
“Warp engines are down,” Trieli shouted. “We're stuck here.”
As a last-ditch attempt at saving their hides, Vix swiped a finger across his screen to bring up a menu that controlled the comm-unit. With a few quick taps, he told the ship to broadcast his message on all frequencies. “This is the freighter Arvosa to the attacking shuttles,” he said. “We are well within the borders of Antauran Space, which makes your unauthorized attack an act of war. We mean you no harm. Please stand down-”
His words cut off when the jolt of weapons' fire threw him forward so that he had to brace his hands on the console to avoid going head-first into the wall. They must have heard his message; why were they still attacking?
Behind him, the cockpit doors slid open, and Draxo – the defacto captain of this ship – came stumbling in. Tall and bulky, he was surprisingly muscular for a man well into his middle years.
A scruffy gray beard stretched from one ear to the other, but otherwise, Draxo's fair-skinned head was bald. “What's going on?” he demanded. “Who's shooting at us?”
“Leyrians,” Vix said.
“What?”
“They came from out of nowhere,” Trieli explained.
Draxo showed his teeth as he stared angrily into the flickering hologram. “How did they ambush us?” he screamed. “We should have seen their warp trails long before they got within weapons' range.”
Vix was hyperventilating, sweat oozing from the pores on his forehead. “They must have known our route ahead of time,” he speculated. “Positioned themselves in front of us and waited for us to get within range.”
Once again, they were jostled about.
A loud metallic clank startled Vix while he was still trying to come up with a way to get them out of this mess, and then a buzzing sound on the other side of the door made him jump. “Breaching pod!” Draxo cried out. “Move!”
He turned and went for a small compartment in the corner, opening it to retrieve a small pistol. “They're not taking this ship without a fight!” Draxo declared. “Move! Back me up!”
Vix wasn't entirely sure what he or anyone else could do to assist Draxo. This was a small freighter; aside from Draxo's personal weapon, there were no guns that they could use to repel a raiding party. They had no body armour, no heavy munitions. This plan was suicide, but what else could they do? Vix was fairly certain that the kind of people who would violate interstellar borders and risk a war over a pointless raid weren't the kind of people who took prisoners.
So, he followed his captain.
When the cockpit doors slid apart, Vix had to shield his eyes from the glare of light from above. This wasn't a big ship. Outside the cockpit, there was a small lounge where couches were built into the wall.
A cutting laser traced a small circle across the ceiling with a brilliant flash of blue sparks that made his eyes sting. Vix could smell the acrid stench of burnt metal. No one, not even Draxo, was willing to step out into that chaos.
Moments later, a circular chunk of the ceiling dropped to the floor. Air rushed through the opening into the endless void of space, but the hole was quickly plugged by the bottom of a breaching pod.
The pod's hatch opened, allowing a man to drop out. He landed in a crouch and quickly rose to stand before them with a mocking grin on his face. This one was tall and slim with dark skin and black hair that he wore in a buzz cut. “There is no need to-”
Draxo raised his weapon.
The intruder thrust a hand out, his image warping into a blurry streak of colour just before Draxo's shot ripped through him. Instead, the bullet curved off to Vix's right and drove itself into the wall.
“Stop!” Vix shouted. “You'll damage the ship!”
The whirlpool of colour solidified into a man who let out a peel of rich laughter as he strode toward them. “I trust you understand the futility of your resistance,” he intoned. “Surrender peacefully, and you will not be harmed.”
Red-faced and fuming, Draxo narrowed his eyes as he tried to stare down the other man. “Peacefully?” he spat. “You've led a raiding party into Antauran Space and attacked a cargo ship carrying food and medical supplies to-”
“This is Leyrian Space now.”
Before anyone else could speak, a tiny woman dropped out of the pod to land just behind her companion. And she was tiny. Short and slender with olive skin and dark hair that hung loose to her shoulder-blades, she watched them all like a cat trying to decide which mouse it would pounce on first.
The male intruder pressed his lips together and nodded to them. “I'm Agent Ravio Corvali of the Justice Keepers,” he said. “And I charge you with violation of the Belosian Accords which designate this sector of space as Leyrian territory.”
“The Belosian Accords have not been enforced for over sixty years,” Vix blurted out. “Your government ceded this territory to us decades ago.”
The tiny woman stepped up beside her companion and gave Vix an icy stare that made him want to duck back into the cockpit and hide. “Correction,” she said in a voice thick with contempt. “Our government did nothing when you violated our territory sixty years ago, a decision that forced many of our colony worlds to take drastic action against Antauran aggression. We have since amended that policy.”
“You're not taking my ship!” Draxo bellowed.
Quick as a flash of lightning, the male Keeper drew his sidearm, thrust it forward and fired a bullet that sped across the room and hit Draxo square in the chest. It bounced off, but the charge it carried caused Draxo to spasm and collapse to the floor.
Trieli turned her back on them and ran for the cockpit. She took at most two steps before a charged bullet hit the back of her neck and sent her sprawling face-first into the wall instead.
Gasping for breath, Vix stiffened against what he knew would come. “No, no, no,” he whispered. “Please-”
The sudden sting of a stun-round to the chest made him flinch – he felt tiny prongs on the bullet piercing his clothing – and then his arms and legs seemed to become rubber. His balance was gone, and he was barely even aware of hitting the floor when the darkness took him.
When Arin pushed open the door to what was once a warden's office, he froze at the sight of Isara seated behind the desk. It wasn't the woman's presence that unnerved him; he knew perfectly well that she had taken charge of this facility. No, it wasn't her mere presence.
It was her appearance.
A ghostly figure with a red hood pulled up to hide her face sat with her back to a window that looked out on an expanse of stars. “Welcome back, Agent Corvali,” she said. “I trust your mission was a success.”
Arin shut his eyes, stiffening as he breathed in through his nose. “All prisoners are secure in their cells, ma'am,” he said. “We brought in six from that freighter and another five from the scout ship we captured along the border.”
Isara rose smoothly behind the desk, and when she looked up, a small amount of light penetrated the hood. Enough for him to make out her chin. “Excellent,” she replied. “We will arrange for a few to escape in a week's time.”
“I have instructed the guards to sabotage the locking mechanism on the freighter captain's cell,” Arin said. “The man was exceedingly aggressive; I'm sure that he'll make an escape attempt as soon as he discovers the problem.”
“Does he have a cellmate?”
Crossing his arms over his chest, Arin took a step back and kept his eyes fixed on the floor. “Yes,” he said, nodding once. “A young man, part of the freighter crew.”
“Make sure that one of them dies on the way to the shuttle bay,” Isara commanded. And it was a command. Something in the woman's voice made it clear that she expected obedience. “We want this to look real. One man should be more than sufficient to carry tales of Leyrian
aggression back to his people.”
“Yes, ma'am.”
As she flowed around the desk, Arin had to suppress the urge to shiver, and it was even worse when Isara planted herself in front of him and smiled up at him. “Oh, cheer up, Arin,” she said. “You always wanted to be a Justice Keeper, and now you've had your chance!”
Ladira woke up with a gasp to find her bedroom shrouded in darkness. It took a few seconds for her eyes to adjust, but she soon saw the outline of her bed and her dresser in the soft purple moonlight.
Rolling onto her back, Ladira rubbed at both eyes with her fists. “What time is it?” she croaked. “Too damn early for-”
Something was wrong.
From the corner of her eye, she thought she saw something move, but when she focused, everything looked normal. There was nothing in this room except her bed and the nightstand, the dresser and the mirror positioned on top of it. Except…She couldn't quite shake the strange feeling of being watched.
And then she saw it.
Purple light through the window left a bright spot on the opposite wall, and in that spot, she saw the shadow of a man. A bald man, by the roundness of his head, tall and muscular. Ladira squeaked in terror.
Her first instinct was to search for the intruder who had found a way into her room. Given the shadow's position, he should be standing at the foot of her bed – and facing the window – but there was nothing there.
A shadow without an object to cast it? How was that possible? Maybe her groggy mind was playing tricks on her. Or maybe it was something outside the window that only looked like a man. Yes, that was probably it. She was beginning to calm down. Seeing a human-shaped silhouette was eerie, but there was bound to be a rational-
The shadow moved.
It flitted from one wall to the next and positioned itself in a spot where it was just barely contrasted against the darkness. And it was watching her.
Scrambling backward on her mattress, Ladira shrieked and pulled the covers up over her head. She shivered under the blankets, sobbing and praying to the Companion for some kind of protection. She had never been a believer – souls, the afterlife, Layat and the Great Covenant: it all seemed like nonsense to her – but something was in this room…and it was watching her.
