Jailmates

by Lesli Richardson

  Table of Contents

  Description

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Also by the Author

  Dedication

  Author's Note

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  More Like This...

  About the Author

  Free Preview: The Great Turning

  Free Preview: Bleacke's Geek

  Free Preview: Governor

  Description

  This wasn’t in the contract.

  Simon Quigley had no idea what to expect when he agreed to do this for the money, but the eight-foot-tall pink alien isn’t what he was expecting. For starters, Simon’s straight.

  And Mohrn isn’t a girl.

  The contract? It’s unbreakable.

  It’s going to be a long five years…

  Jailmates

  A Maxim Colonies Novel

  Lesli Richardson

  www.LesliRichardson.com

  Jailmates

  A Maxim Colonies Novel

  Copyright © 2019 by Lesli Richardson

  First E-book Publication: March, 2019

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. This work may not be reproduced, transmitted, or distributed in any form or by any means currently available or available in the future, including electronic or photographic reproduction, in whole or in part, for free or for sale, without express written permission from the publisher and author.

  Distributing copies of this e-book to others is a violation of international copyright law and infringes the rights of the legal copyright holder. This e-book may not be shared, copied, sold, given away, offered as a contest prize, or otherwise distributed to anyone other than the original purchaser. Distributing this e-book as part of any collection, or with any type of resale permission, is also strictly forbidden and a violation of copyright law.

  This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to real people, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  This is my livelihood. PLEASE do NOT share, upload, or otherwise distribute this book. When people buy my books, it pays my bills. Please do not steal from me. I am NOT rich. If you want me to keep bringing you more stories, I need to be able to pay my bills. If you obtained this book for free, and it wasn’t through me, or through an authorized giveaway by me, or through a public library lending program, or gifted via a legitimate book sales site I link to, it’s likely an illegal copy. Thank you.

  http://www.LesliRichardson.com

  Also by the Author

  Please sign up for my author newsletter, where I post info about both my Lesli Richardson and Tymber Dalton pen names, and never miss a new release or update:

  http://eepurl.com/cXKR7v

  Writing as Lesli Richardson:

  The Bleacke Shifter Series:

  1) Bleacke’s Geek

  2) Geek Chic

  3) A Bleacke Wind

  4) Bleacke Spirit

  5) A Bleacke Christmas (Coming May, 2019)

  The Great Turning Series:

  1) The Great Turning

  2) The Great Turning: Into the Turn

  3) The Great Turning: Future Ages

  Governor Trilogy:

  1) Governor

  2) Lieutenant

  3) Chief

  3.5) Yes, Governor (in the Passion, Pleasure, Pain benefit anthology)

  Determination Trilogy:

  1) Dignity

  2) Diligence

  3) Desire

  Devastation Trilogy:

  (Coming April, 2019)

  1) Dirge

  2) Solace

  3) Release

  Of Boardwalks and Bison

  Cross Country Chaos

  Poly (Coming 2019)

  Jailmates (Maxim Colonies 1)

  Lesli Richardson is better known by her more prolific Tymber Dalton pen name. Please check out her website for more info on all her titles under both her pen names, including full book and series listings, trivia, character information, and more.

  http://www.tymberdalton.com

  Honest reviews are greatly appreciated and can help boost a book’s rankings on retail sites. Thank you!

  Dedication

  This one’s for my dear friend, Tracy Damron-Roelle, because she’s the one who said, “You should make him pink.”

  Thus the Big Pink Bastard was born.

  She’s also the one who named Simon.

  I warned her I was going to dedicate this book to her, and she said she was cool with that. Sooo… Here ya go, honey. LOL

  Also for Hubby, and for Sir—He knows why.

  Author's Note

  The Maxim Colonies books are a standalone series and can be read independently of each other and in any order. There will be more books in this series.

  Chapter One

  Simon

  “What are you going to do when you get out?”

  I hate mornings.

  I hate them even more when someone is yakking at me while I’m trying to shave in the bathroom our whole unit shares.

  I especially hate mornings after all of the above and before coffee.

  The annoying cherry on top of that craptacular cupcake being it’s my extremely annoying bunkmate, Stacks, who’s asking me.

  For like the fiftieth fricking time.

  My answer hasn’t changed, either.

  “I don’t know,” I mumble, trying not to cut myself as I shave around my upper lip.

  I have seven days left in my five-year stint in the military, which is the simple way we all refer to the Interstellar Galactic Coalition Forces.

  My CO has already had “the talk” with me, where the air quotes were visible, as was his boredom. He’s a lifer, so I didn’t blame him at all for giving it a try. Anyone approaching the end of their term, they get a “talk” from their CO about how great it’d be if they re-upped, and all the supposed benefits to doing so. That way, later, the CO can honestly tell their superiors they gave it their all to try to retain another wonk.

  Those of us who want to re-up, believe me, we do it when we want to.

  I most definitely do not want to.

  I haven’t seen Mom or my little sister, Helleia, in five years because none of my stints were ever close enough to Axind 5 for me to get a free pass there. I didn’t have the money to buy a ticket to visit them, even at the discounted military rate. Every spare bit of change I earned I sent back to them so Mom could keep Helleia in primary until my sister graduated with her basic marks. She’s only eighteen, five years younger than me. Without basic marks she would have no hope of ever finding a decent
job and definitely would never get into a secondary school of any kind.

  Our dad died fifteen years ago in a freak accident at the freight company he worked for. He was working with his crew, unloading a freighter. A magno-lift sled malfunctioned, tipped, and shipping containers crushed him and four others. The company’s insurance payout was enough to buy us a tiny apartment in a not-horrible building in a halfway decent city. It gave us enough of a cushion Mom only had to work one job while Hells and I went to primary school. Then I graduated and joined the military.

  But if I don’t want my little sister ending up in the military herself—or spreading her legs in a brothel somewhere—I need to come up with the paper to send her to secondary school. She’s smart but she didn’t have the obsessively high entry scores needed to land her a full-ride scholarship.

  Because of my military service and our father’s death Hells can get reduced-fee tuition to several schools near where we live. But we still need to come up with living expenses for her. She graduated from primary nearly twelve standard months ago. Since then she’s been working part-time jobs to try to build a cushion in savings. She’s got a drive to succeed and I want her to be able to earn her way to a better life than she has now.

  Mom does her best but she never could afford to attend secondary school. Dad went into the military not long after they got married. While his salary was enough to keep them in a small apartment and pay the expenses, it wasn’t enough to send Mom to secondary. Their plan had been once he got out he would transfer his secondary credits to her so she could use them. Then he’d get a job and take care of us while she went to school.

  Unfortunately, the military changed that clause while he was in, making credits nontransferable. After he got out, he needed to go to work to support us. They wanted to get the two of us through primary and into adulthood. Dad was going to use his credits for secondary once that happened, and then hopefully they’d have enough money for Mom to attend.

  He never got to use them. It’s been a struggle for Mom ever since. I know she didn’t really want me enlisting but once I received my final primary marks I knew I had to if I wanted Mom to be able to support Helleia. All my expenses in the military were paid, and my income tax-free, so everything I earned went to my family.

  Except now?

  I’m done.

  At least fifty different times during my enlistment I was literally seconds from dying, and dozens more times I was maybe a minute or so from death. I’ve never told Mom and Helleia about any of those events. I let them think I was stuck in a boring mech-tech job, which was partially the truth.

  The job was boring—usually.

  Except when I was dropped into a live-fire zone with a bunch of other mech-techs, assigned to keep the front-line troops online and moving. Or when our battalion’s ships got caught in an asteroid field after a solar flare knocked our sensors offline and we were literally flying old-school blind.

  We lost three ships in that, and the one I was on sustained heavy damages.

  Or when we had a hull breach in the mech bay once due to a hit from a desperate pirate wrecker’s pulsar cannon while they tried to escape our tractor beam. I nearly didn’t make it through the bulkhead door and into safety before it slammed shut to seal off the bay from the rest of the ship.

  The screams of the three guys behind me who didn’t make it will haunt my dreams forever.

  Yeah. Fun times, if you enjoy nightmares.

  I’m done. I can’t hack it, and I admit it. Some people, they develop a taste for the adrenaline hit those kinds of encounters create.

  Me?

  They left me sick and shaky and missing home like crazy. Don’t get me wrong, I loved exploring the galaxy. I loved getting to see foreign planets and other races. I’m no xenophobe. I served with lots of troops from coalition forces from all over. Even made friends with some of them, trusted them to have my back under bad circumstances, just like I had theirs.

  But I need…stability. Peace.

  A boring life.

  I want to be on a planet—or near enough to one—where I can actually see nature from time-to-time. I’m sick of space and would like to be able to settle in one place for a while. Or, if I have to be in space, to be in as safe a situation as possible.

  That’s a life the military can’t provide me with, and I damn well know it. I also need a way to ensure my family’s future. Hell, I’d love to find someone to settle down with, even though I’m not looking to have kids.

  I just don’t want to be alone anymore.

  But you need funds to do that. Axind 5 isn’t a bad planet, but unless you come from a rich family, or marry into one, you probably aren’t going to become rich yourself. Although they do have gorgeous parks. A strict environmental protection policy from the first day the planet was settled means the parts of nature that do exist are nearly pristine.

  I don’t yet know what the hell I’m going to do for a living once I’m out because my mechanical skills, while pretty diverse, aren’t anything special to give me a boost in my job search. I could use my own credits to attend secondary, except then my family’s back to square one of not being able to afford to survive while Helleia attends secondary. So that’s on hold.

  I’ve already scoured help-wanted ads on Axind 5. Countless other mech-tech wonks before me have already capitalized on those same skills in the private workforce, meaning the job market is fairly saturated there. I could always hire out to be security, but that puts me back into high-adrenaline situations I have no desire to be in.

  Upon regaining my freedom I’ll receive free transport to anywhere I want, even on portal jump ships. My destination, of course, will be Axind 5.

  Stacks looks at me. “You’re not going back to that shithole you came from, are you?”

  I inwardly bristle at his characterization of Axind 5, even though I don’t let it show as I continue shaving. “There’s nothing wrong with that planet.”

  “I’ve seen it, Quigley. It’s a shithole. Calling it a shithole is an insult to shitholes.”

  I refuse to look his way. “Better than Earth,” I say as I lift my chin to reach my neck. “That’s a shithole.”

  “Hey, that’s where we all came from, you know. I’m from an original family.”

  Not that any of us could ever forget that, because he’ll never let us.

  “You act more like a missing link,” I snap back, my patience worn clean through. “You bleed red the same as I do. Doesn’t matter what planet we’re born on, we’re all humans. And if I remember correctly, your ‘original family’ is made up of military lifer wonks, so it’s not like you’re rolling in paper. What the hell you think you’re going to do when you go back there? Run around raking up animal dung in a park or something?”

  Some families take great pride in maintaining their roots on Earth, Stacks’ family being one of them.

  The preservationists finally managed to get Earth declared a historic planet and have been devolving it for several centuries, turning it into a nature preserve, ecological research station for reviving animal and heirloom plant species, and a vacation destination. As decaying urban sprawl was demolished, the building materials were recycled and re-purposed, and natural ecologies were allowed to revive and flourish, except where experimental farms were established for plants and animals. Residents received cash incentives to emigrate from the planet to one of the colonies. The farther the colony from Earth, the bigger the cash incentive and other bonuses.

  Generations ago, my family was one such family. My father’s great-great-great-great-grandfather had taken a lump-sum payment to leave Earth and go to Mars. His son joined the military and ended up on Axind 5 in the second wave of settlers there. My mom’s family surely started on Earth at some point, but who and when vanished within the mists of time. Mom’s great-grandmother met her husband while in the military, and they settled on Axind 5 after they got out, because they both found lucrative work there back when skilled cargo pilots were still
in desperate demand by private corporations trying to settle the planet.

  Stacks gives me a disgusted look. “For your information, smartass, I’ve lined up a job with a mining company through the Maxim Colonies’ employment division. Five-year minimum commitment, eight mil signing bonus. In addition to a half-mil annual salary, guaranteed, plus production bonuses. All expenses paid, too, so that’s gravy. And if I re-up at the end of five years for a second stint I can earn another ten-mil signing bonus.”

  Now he has my attention. I turn to look at him. “Eight mil? To do what?” Stacks is a B-7 mech-tech who doesn’t even have all the skills I do as D-12. I missed getting my master’s certification and a bump to E-1 status by two lousy points on my last cert test.

  He grins. “Now I got your attention, don’t I?”

  “To do what, Stacks?” With that kind of money, Mom can finally take it easy for a while and not stress. Helleia could go to school for whatever the hell degree she wants, from hairstylist to fricking neurosurgeon. Hell, I could attend school at the same time then, instead of waiting until Helleia’s graduated from secondary.

  With a lot of funds to spare.

  “Outer boundary asteroid mining equipment maintenance,” he says. “Little risky, but I checked their safety records. They haven’t lost a ship in over a decade. In the region where I’m going there’s no wreckers, no hostiles, and they’re full coalition crews. Kind of desolate, sure, but eight mil will hold me over for years back on Earth. I plan to buy into my family’s eco-tour business on Earth. That’ll keep me set until I’m ancient and draw a pension.”

  Everyone knows about Maxim Colonies, a fairly new intergalactic mega-conglomerate who focuses mostly on settling and exploration. But they have their corporate fingers in all the pies, from transport to freight, to mining, to medical and bio-research, agriculture and terraforming, and energy production.