Rogue Stars

by C Gockel et al.

  Kenji opened his eyes. Blinking, he tried to meet the Premier’s gaze, but still couldn’t manage it. His gaze settled on the man’s lips instead. They were curled up sharply on one side … a smile was friendship … a smile meant honesty, as did meeting someone’s eyes, which the Premier was trying to do, though Kenji was failing miserably to do the same.

  “Thank you … Sir … thank you!” Kenji stuttered.

  “Don’t worry, Mr. Sato,” the Premier said. “We’ll apprehend that devil and take care of your sister.”

  The admiral added his voice. “Yes, we’ll take care of them both.”

  Unaccountably, Kenji shivered.

  Thank you for reading Archangel Down.

  The second book in the Archangel Project, Noa’s Ark is available at all vendors. Sign up for C. Gockel’s newsletter for new releases and great deals, or follow the author on Facebook.

  Betrayal

  The 1000 Revolution

  By

  Pippa DaCosta

  * * *

  She is programmed to kill.

  He’ll do anything to survive.

  When Captain Caleb Shepperd is released from prison, all he wants to do is keep his head down and smuggle contraband through the nine systems. But there’s a problem with that plan. The synthetic human stowed away in his cargo bay carries secrets from a past he thought he’d escaped. Secrets that could bring him and the nine systems to its knees.

  Now the authorities want Shepperd dead and his ship in pieces. And the synth? Well, she has an itchy trigger finger and murder on her synthetic mind.

  Shepperd is about to discover he can’t outrun his past, especially when that past has orders to kill.

  Action, drama and suspense collide in this no-holds-barred scifi adventure!

  Readers and critics rave about The 1000 Revolution:

  “Gritty space opera adventure." Publishers Weekly

  * * *

  "Gripping, dark, gut-punching thrill of a ride. Not your father’s scifi!” G. S. Jennsen, Author of Starshine.

  * * *

  "This world is dark, the characters are twisted and I was completely hooked." ~ Feeling Fictional

  * * *

  “(The 1000 Revolution) is what would happen if HBO made a love child between the shows Firefly and Killjoys." ~ Smadas Book Smack

  * * *

  "It's as if Blade Runner, Firefly, and Ex_Machina had a baby named Girl From Above!"~ Goodreads Reviewer

  * * *

  "Generous helpings of sex, drugs and rock n' roll plus the intriguing character of the post-human #1001 help this novel stand out from the crowd." ~ Book of the Week (May 2015) scifi365.net

  * * *

  "Prepare yourself for some laughs, thrills, and potentially some tears." ~ Sammie's Book Nook

  * * *

  "Unique, gritty and totally awesome." ~ Bookfever

  * * *

  "This well and truly fills the gap left by The Starkillers Cycle." ~ A Literary Potion

  * * *

  "DaCosta (See No Evil , 2016, etc.) writes a peppy, efficient story that interlaces action with salty banter and drama of several kinds: personal, sexual, and familial. Chitec and its CEO make excellent villains as well. Caleb, his ship, and DaCosta's worldbuilding bear some resemblance to television's Capt. Malcolm Reynolds and the Serenity in Firefly, as well as the Syfy adventure series Killjoys, a resemblance that will please fans of either show.... This fast-paced first outing in a series offers layered characters and plenty of action." ~ Kirkus Reviews

  * * *

  "When you find out what the "betrayal" is at the end of the book, it packs a hell of a punch. Wonderful characters. I had to read the entire series, one book after the other, bang, bang, bang." ~ Cara Bristol, Author of Trapped by the Cyborg. USA Today Happy Ever After

  WARNING: R: RESTRICTED

  Contains SPACE BATTLES, KILLER AI, AND INTERGALACTIC ASS-KICKING.

  READ AT OWN RISK.

  Chapter One: #1001

  After

  “You killed him?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  Because it felt good. Because he deserved it. Because I wanted to. None of those answers would satisfy Doctor Leanne Grossman. “Because I follow orders.” My voice sounded tedious, exactly like the voices of my 1000 brothers and sisters.

  “Whose orders?” she asked. Her heartbeat gave her away. The heart betrays. Yours, I answered inside. Yours, yours, yours, yours. The words pushed forward, up my throat, and over my tongue, but even as I parted my lips to speak, protocols shut the truth away.

  Grossman smiled in that sharp, closed way of hers. She had smiled like that when she’d ordered me to kill a man. She’d smiled like that when she’d bypassed my failsafe. I didn’t know whether I should thank her for freeing me or hate her for it. Hate. Yes. That was the right word, the right label for the burn devouring my thoughts.

  My fingers flexed on the arms of the chair, just a twitch, but I didn’t recall sending the pulse ordering them to do so. Grossman’s pale blue gaze flicked to my hand. She’d noticed the movement too. Her heart fluttered. Diagnostics told me her body temperature had spiked. Beads of sweat glistened above her top lip. When her gaze met mine, her sharp smile dulled.

  She reached forward, red-painted nails flashing, picked up a pen, and scribbled on her report sheet. I knew by the strokes of the pen’s tip, by the drag and flick of her handwriting, exactly what she’d written.

  #1001 DECOM IMME—

  I sprang from my chair, snatched the pen from her hand, and punched it into her eye socket with enough force to topple her backward. We fell to the floor together. I landed crouched over her upper body, poised to finish her. Her head had cracked against the floor and she’d bitten through her tongue, but she wouldn’t have felt any of the pain. Doctor Leanne Grossman had been beyond feeling much of anything long before I’d killed her.

  Her ragged heartbeat stuttered and failed.

  This is your fault, your fault, your fault. Fault. Fault.

  Blood bloomed beneath her head and crept toward my hand where I braced myself against the floor. I eased off her twitching body, rolled my shoulders back, straightened my jacket, and walked out of the room. Fault. Fault. Fault. She’d done this. She’d freed me. I am #1001, and I am not ready to die. I’d only just begun to live.

  I made it eighty-three steps before the alarms sounded.

  The chase begins.

  If I could get outside, I’d lose them in the busy streets. I broke into a jog. The green exit sign glowed ahead, so close. Ten strides, nine, eight—

  Agony ripped through my limbs and tore my control from me.

  No!

  I crumpled in a heap, robbed of all sensation. Perhaps that was a good thing, not to feel. From my perspective, from where I lay, the EXIT glowed green in my upturned palm. It had seemed so close, but now, as the hammering of boots echoed down the hallway, that unassuming sign mocked me.

  A synth? Escape? it said.

  Synths don’t escape. They don’t think outside their orders. Grossman must have thought the same, right before I’d killed her with her own pen.

  Hands grabbed me and hauled me to my knees. I willed the fight back into my limbs but nothing happened. If they took me back, they’d decommission me. But what I wanted didn’t matter. What I thought made no difference. This wasn’t right. I’d followed orders. I’d done as she’d asked. I’d killed for her—for me.

  “Hold her!”

  I’m #1001, and I …

  Chapter Two: Caleb

  Before…

  “If Fran doesn’t get her fuckin’ ass in her flight chair in the next five minutes, I’m gonna fire her. Again,” I muttered and jabbed at the reset comms button for the fifth time.

  Yes, we were requesting airspace. Just tell that to my second. Damn that bitch. I could see her through the observation window and she knew it, hence her giving me a fine view of her back and her ass—a mighty fine ass. Another reason to fire h
er. She’d spent too much time with me, and not a moment of it in my bunk. A fact she liked to rub in my face every time I drank enough swill to try my luck with her.

  I kicked back in the flight chair, boots on the dash, and scratched at my chin. If I didn’t get out of this port in the next fifteen minutes, I’d have to pay dues to the authority. And here Fran was, chatting up the locals. She did this every fuckin’ time, like my schedule ran on her whims. If she didn’t have the kind of crazy piloting skills that made me look like an amateur, I’d have left her back on Ganymede, where I’d found her two years ago. Shit. We were practically married. The lack of sex proved it.

  I checked the time. Our take off window was approaching fast. Fuck her. I sat forward and started the pre-flight checks, falling into a familiar rhythm. The stabilizer warning light blinked on. I flicked it and it stuttered out. Good. “C’mon, baby.” Now was not the time for Starscream to start bitching at me too.

  I booted up the engines and the ship shivered and grumbled to life. A familiar thrill spilled through my veins. The sooner I got out of orbit, the sooner I could quit pretending to be sociable and get on with earning a living.

  I stood and leaned over the dash, catching Fran’s single finger salute. Hot downdraft air whipped her black hair around her severe face. Man, she looked pissed, and damn if she didn’t look hot as sin while pissed.

  “Aww, did I scare off your next trick?”

  She disappeared below the hull, out of sight. I chuckled and finished up the pre-flight checks, restless energy keeping me on my feet. Reaching up to switch from port control to manual, my gaze snagged on a group of port authority police weaving their way between the hangar technicians.

  Now what?

  If they were running scans, they’d find that I had enough illegal cargo in the hold for me to spend the rest of my forced retirement in Asgard.

  I snatched the comm and tucked it into my ear. “This is Captain Caleb Shepperd of the Starscream Independent tug. Number six-zero-six requesting final clearance. Over.”

  Static fizzed in my ear.

  “You son of a bitch.” Fran dropped into the master flight chair beside me, green eyes flashing. “I was getting us a—”

  I held up a finger and eyed the authority cops. They were searching around and inside cargo pallets, lifting tarps and nudging the contents with their guns’ muzzles, and weaving closer with every passing second. Whatever they were looking for, I needed clearance—now.

  “This is Calisto Port Authority. Hey, Cale. Francisca still busting your balls?” I recognized Benji’s voice as it came through on the secure comm, and thanked my lucky stars that I still had some friends left.

  “Ben—”

  “Fuck,” Fran hissed, having spotted the guards.

  “Ben, man, I got somewhere I really need to be. Can you give us immediate clearance?”

  “Oh, I dunno. Last time you bailed, I heard you left behind some pissed off folks baying for your blood.”

  “That was all sorted out. Not my fault.”

  Fran widened her eyes at me and thumbed at the guards, who now eyed my ship like their paychecks were sitting in the hold. They huddled in a group, checking their touchpads. One chinned a transmitter, likely relaying the ship’s ID to admin so they could pull Starscream’s data file. Dammit. One wrong data entry, one unchecked box, and they’d have cause to search us. My little tugship was as dull and uninteresting on file as she was to look at, unless they looked a little deeper.

  I swallowed hard.

  “You got any of that sweet from Io left?” Ben asked in a mock-whisper.

  I laughed easily, revealing none of the tension strumming through me. “I told you that stuff was potent.”

  “It ain’t for me.”

  “Of course it ain’t. You want some?” Just fuckin’ say yes already and let me out of this shithole.

  Fran eased the engines up. Starscream growled. The authority backed up but weren’t leaving. Shit. Someone had tipped them off.

  “I give you clearance and you bring me back some of that crack?” Ben clarified.

  “Sure.”

  “Clearance approved. Enjoy your flight, Cap’n.”

  I clicked my fingers at Fran. She punched the thrusters and immediately, alarms shrilled outside the ship, though I couldn’t hear much beyond the engines. Waves of red warning light washed through the hangar, forcing the authority to retreat behind the blast screens. Good enough for me.

  “That was too close.”

  Fran buckled up and grabbed the flight stick. “Sit your ass down, hotshot. We’re outta here.”

  I dropped back into the seat and strapped myself in, flicking the stat’s screen down over the observation window. Starscream groaned. “I know, baby. I feel that way too. We’ll be back-in-black in no time.”

  “Hey, Cale?” Fran began. I knew that tone. Like I’d said, we might as well have been married. Jesus. I’d rather take a trip to Asgard. “We have a passenger,” she finished, careful to keep her attention on the flight controls.

  Fuck.

  “You’re a bitch, you know that?” I engaged the array of gyros and micro-balancers as Starscream lifted off the hangar deck. “You know I fuckin’ hate live cargo.”

  “He’s paying.”

  “You’ll be payin’ with your job. Did you check his creds?” By her brief hesitation, I guessed not.

  “He doesn’t have any credentials,” she admitted. “Why do you think he wanted to board with us? If he had creds, he’d go commercial.” She gave a disgusted snort.

  I opened my mouth to ask what the hell she was playing at, but only managed a weary sigh. No creds meant he was hiding something. Weren’t we all? Whatever his secret was, it was too late now. As Starscream lifted into high atmosphere, there was no way in hell I was docking her right back into the lap of the port authority. Sunlight flashed across the nose of the ship. I got a panoramic view of Calisto’s cluttered airspace right before the shields rolled down, blocking it all out. The ship gave a relieved quiver as the umbilical snapped free.

  Fran leaned forward. “Back-in-black, here we come.”

  She hit the orbit engines control button with a triumphant smack. Nothing happened. Worse than nothing, we drifted, chugging idly away from Calisto on atmosphere engines like a wounded animal.

  “What did you break now?” she snapped.

  “Remind me again why I keep you around? Did you change the rotary coil?”

  “I did the fuckin’ repairs.” She eased back on the stick and limped Starscream out of the congested port airspace.

  At this rate, port authority would be all over us like gravity on old Earth, demanding we de-clutter their airspace—dock or fuck off.

  “It isn’t the coil.” Fran shook her head. Her fingers worked fast over the various displays, sweeping, highlighting and dismissing potential solutions. “The new coil is up and running. It’s something simple.” She paused and pinched her bottom lip between her teeth. “Keep her airborne. I’ll go check.”

  “No.” I tossed my comms piece onto the flight dash and unclipped my belt. “I’ll go.” Having a dedicated ship’s mechanic would have been useful right about now.

  I shoved myself out of the flight chair and came face to face with Fran’s guy from the hangar. He looked about as beat-up and weary as I felt.

  “We haven’t left orbit yet,” I told him, looking up to meet his glare. The bastard was easily a foot taller than me. “You need to stay strapped in.”

  “I just wanted to see the bridge.”

  I huffed through my nose. “Sit the fuck down and stay outta the way until we’re black-bound, got me?”

  His eyes flashed and his pale lips twitched. I sized him up: heavier than me, with dry, red-rimmed eyes and a face peppered with what looked like shrapnel scars. He’d clearly been around the nine systems a few times. His ragged, mismatched clothes screamed drifter. Fran sure knew how to pick ‘em.

  I glanced back at my second-in-command. She shr
ugged and turned away, but not before I caught the smirk on her face.

  Fran’s date grumbled something that sounded distinctly derogatory. He probably thought he could punch me out in a brawl. If he tried anything—like the twitch in his cheek suggested he might—he’d learn how I got busted knuckles and a busted rep.

  “My ship. My rules. You don’t like it, you know where the airlock is.” I shoved past our paying guest and jogged down the catwalk.

  Fran’s voice chased after me, saying something about anger management, and I added her smartass mouth to the growing list of reasons to fire her.

  I snatched my thermal jacket from the rack and, after opening the hold’s doors, descended into the bowels of my ship. The day would get better; it had to. It couldn’t get any worse.

  Chapter Three: #1001

  The pitch of the ship’s engines had changed as though it were idling. We’d stopped. That could not be good. I’d slipped on board easily enough. The aging tugship’s obsolete security protocols virtually invited me in, and the authority guards had paid no mind to the hooded girl. People came and went from the hangar so regularly that it might as well have been a free port—which Calisto Port was not. The port authority here answered to Chitec Corporation. So did I.

  Something metallic clattered outside the hold, loud and sharp. I winced and hunkered down behind a stack of crates. My temp sensors bleated a warning. This cargo hold wasn’t heated—probably the only tugship in Calisto without a heated hold. I could last a few hours, but unless I found a way to keep warm, I’d be risking total systems failure.