The Colossus Collection : A Space Opera Adventure (Books 1-7 + Bonus Material)

by Nicole Grotepas

  A ship appeared in the sky above her father’s house. It was unlike any Holly had ever seen. It hovered over them. George waved at Holly and blew her a kiss. And then they vanished. The ship lifted into the air and shot into the sky.

  29

  “That’s why I left him,” Sophia said. “Don’t look at me like that, Holly. If I’d known you were running around the moon system saving children and fighting the Shadow Coalition, I would have told you—that’s your father, the one orchestrating it.” They were sitting around Meg’s counter discussing it. She’d told them how George disappeared on a strange ship—one that Grant said was from out of their system, and was possibly from a non-humanoid race. Now Meg knew that George was the Heart and responsible for the Shadow Coalition stuff.

  Holly stared impassively at her mother. “I guess we’ve all had secrets.”

  “That is what it comes down to,” Sophia said. “I still don’t even know all that George was doing. I’d ask him where the money came from, and he said that was on a ‘need to know basis’ and that I didn’t need to know. I could just enjoy the retirement he was providing and not worry about it. I found it infuriating.”

  Meg kept repeating “my own father” under her breath as she prepared a soup for dinner and listened to the conversation and inserted herself into it when it suited her. She got Lucy to head to Charm’s so that she didn’t hear the terrible things they were saying about her grandfather. Gabe was set to show up soon. According to Meg, he deserved to know the truth. Holly wasn’t sure she wanted to stick around to discuss it much more. Besides, she had a meeting with Grant.

  Or a dinner. Or something. They hadn’t labeled it.

  “At least he’s gone now, and you won’t have to keep worrying about it,” Sophia added.

  “That’s not the point, mom. I wanted to kill him,” Holly said, toying with the label on her beer bottle. “I did. Until I knew it was Dad.”

  Sophia sipped her wine. “You might have done the universe a favor if you had. He changed. I didn’t really recognize him much after we moved to Itzcap. It was like a midlife crisis gone wrong.”

  “I can’t kill my own father. Some people can. But I didn’t really see how evil he was. And he had excuses and I believed them—he wasn’t the one who had tried to have me killed.”

  “But the children, he ordered that,” Sophia said. “When I found out about the children, that’s when I left.”

  “Didn’t you ever wonder where all his money was coming from?” Meg asked, then shook her head again and muttered, “My own father.”

  “I knew. The hydrantium. But I didn’t know how he was getting it. When I’d ask he told me not to worry. That worked for a little while.” She shrugged. “And then one day, it didn’t. And I left.”

  “It must be awful for you, mom,” Holly said, thinking of how it impacted her mother and not how it had hurt herself. “I’m so sorry.”

  Sophia smiled and looked at Holly. “That is how life is, my girl. We get hurt and we get back up again. And hope that the people who love us keep loving us.”

  The conversation drifted away from what Holly had been through and the topic of her father, and into more pleasant realms. Meg finished making the soup and called Lucy home, which was Holly’s cue to leave. They said goodbye and she went out into the cold night, heading for her next appointment.

  Snow fell through Analogue Alley and made halos of yellow upon the curtains of white flakes. People dressed as strange and wonderful creatures strolled through the alley, heading to a zoo animal gala located in the central area of the alley. It felt like a dream as Holly shielded her eyes from the snowflakes and walked across the soft blanket of white beneath her feet. There were no autos allowed in the alley, which was one of the best parts about it. Her feet made fresh impressions as she crossed the center of the street to hurry up the stairs to Create Like Your Life Depended On It.

  Her crew were all out at their own events that night. Shiro was attending an early Christmas party, while Odeon was performing at the Glassini bar. Holly wasn’t sure where Darius was, but Charly would be hosting her own shindig at the Surge. Holly wanted to be everywhere, supporting her friends, feeling warm and grateful for her crew that had her back.

  But tonight she would be in the place she wanted to be more than anywhere. She opened the door to Iain’s shop and the bell tinkled. She locked the door behind her and switched off the open sign. She weaved through the shelves and displays and called out a hello to Iain, wherever he was.

  “Back here.” His voice came from deep in the shop.

  She passed through the doorway into his office. A record played on the turntable. Candlelight lit the room in flickering yellow hues that prompted some primal cozy feeling in Holly. Iain handed her a glass of wine and smiled at her.

  “Sit with me?” he asked, taking her hand and leading her to the couch against the far wall. “We’ll eat later. Dinner is in the oven upstairs. You OK with going up to my living quarters?”

  She sat next to him. “You mean, I’m being invited into the inner sanctum?”

  He laughed softly. She felt it beside her, deep in his chest.

  “Listen to this song,” he said. “It’s a really good one.”

  She leaned back into the couch and fell against his side. He wrapped his arm around her, and held her tight.

  * * *

  THE END

  * * *

  Birth of the Colossus continues the saga of Holly Drake against the Shadow Coalition.

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  Birth of the Colossus

  1

  “The job shouldn’t be this hard,” Holly Drake said as she crept through a hallway that had been closed off to standard foot traffic. She was smack dab in the middle of a hydrantium mining base orbiting the gas giant Ixion, on a mission to retrieve something—Ixion knew what: a clue, a lead, or possibly the frayed end of an unspooled thread that could guide them back to something else—something that could be money or even a clue that could lead to money elsewhere.

  She was hoping for money nearby.

  Or, she thought somewhat cynically, it could be a wild, misguided notion of Xadrian’s and she was a fool for trusting his suspect information gleaned from the underworld of the 6 Moons.

  “I can honestly say that it’s not, for me,” Darius said. “It’s cake. Or some other baked good. Maybe a pastry. I’m not picky.” His response came over the comm unit in Holly’s ear.

  “Says the chap at a desk back in the Surge Club on Kota,” Shiro said. His voice came from inside her ear but also from behind her where he snuck along the deserted corridor. It was a strange stereo sound with a slight lag to hear him in both places. She had half a mind to turn off the comm unit so it stopped happening.

  “How do you know I’m at the club?” Darius returned. “For all you know I’m in bed, nearly asleep.”

  “For all you know, we’re not on the Ixion base,” Odeon said. He was bringing up the rear.

  “I do know, though, Odeon, buddy, because I’ve got your video streams right here. I can see what you’re doing right now. Better turn those off if you want to hide from me.”

  “You just gave yourself away. Now we know you’re not in bed.” Charly laughed.

  “But do let’s be honest, chaps, we know the more likely possibility is that he’s in a bar, drinking and gambling.”

  “Ouch, Shiro. That really hurt.”

  Shiro chuckled. “Oh, I do somehow doubt that. You, my friend, are unfazed by everything. Nothing gets beneath that thick skin of yours.”

  There was a stinging truth to their banter, but overall it was in good humor. Holly
realized once more that she’d missed her crew. The time off had been necessary. Not for them—for her. The discovery that her own damn father had been the mastermind behind the Shadow Coalition had sent her spiraling into a depression that had almost been her undoing.

  “You better be there. Ixion knows I need the extra eyes on Torden. How’s my club doing?” Charly asked. She was back near the landing pad in the hangar area of the mining base, keeping eyes on their escape route. Trip waited in the hangar, her ship, the cruiser Olavia Apollo, ready to shuttle them quickly away from the base once they got what they’d come for.

  Holly felt a reluctant smile creep along her cheeks. “As though Torden would ever do a thing to put his baby in danger.”

  “You mean my baby, Hols. How much further till you get to the goods? This locale just got incredibly busy with the shift change. More people is good, but also bad. I can’t be certain we don’t have a sniper watching for you or some other knife-wielding jerk-off waiting, ready to take you down or something. And I don’t like that. One bit. I gotta keep my crew safe.”

  “I hear that, Charly. I wanted this to be faster as well. If we’d not needed to clear out three stragglers, maybe we’d be done already.” Holly bit her lip. Xadrian’s intel had confirmed the second map she’d recovered from her music box birthright, the one her father had left for her. It pointed to a cache in the base that should offer something that could help them either locate George or direct them toward . . . Anything. Really. Anything was better than nothing. It was a long shot. Holly didn’t like to bet on long shots, but she had nothing else. Her father’s trail had gone cold weeks ago. Now she was taking care of the loose threads, hoping that anything would turn up. She had no way to know what might, so she was betting a tiny bit on everything. “But, if I had to guess—we’re nearly there.”

  When Xadrian had brought up the intel a week ago, she knew that it was time to look into the map she’d recovered from the music box even if she’d been ready to drop the whole endeavor.

  “Any signs that you’re not the only one going after it?” Darius asked. His voice sounded like he could be gambling somewhere. She wouldn’t put it past him, but she hoped he was running comms like he ought to be. His leisure activities weren’t her business to govern, but when he was on comms back-up, he had a job to do.

  “If you ask me, yes. Everywhere,” Shiro said. “Every random-seeming individual who avoids eye contact or makes eye contact sends cold chills up my spine. I’ve become a cynic. Trusting no one’s motives. Perhaps that’s because my own are so suspect.” He laughed.

  “It’s true, guys. When you’re up to no good, everyone looks suspicious.” Charly agreed. “That elderly man on the other side of the corridor from me looks like he’s about to beat up a random person and take their novas.”

  The crew laughed, the sounds coming at Holly in some wild extra-dimensional style from the earpiece and the fact that Odeon and Shiro were with her.

  Soon they came to an intersection in the station that they should supposedly know, from the many times they’d already been there—from the first visit looking for Charm, the Yasoan child, to the massive rescue of kidnapped kids. Crates lined the walls. Hatch-style doors surrounded them.

  “Take that middle door,” Darius said over the comms. “It should lead to another room. The room. The one with the vault.”

  The crew had grown silent as they approached the door. Holly was on high alert as Odeon inched toward it, his Ousaba at the ready.

  “We’ve got your back, Odeon,” Holly said.

  He nodded, standing to the side of the hatch as he touched the keypad. Nothing happened.

  “Locked,” Shiro said. “Where’s a Skelty Key when we need it?”

  “Hang on,” Darius said. “I can hack that piece of space garbage.”

  “Is it just me, chaps, or does that sound incredibly dangerous? That our very own crew-mate can simply hack into a system and willy nilly open doors?”

  Charly chuckled over the comms. “Next he’ll be venting us all off the station.”

  “Odeon, keep working on it while I do my own magic. One of us is bound to get through.”

  Odeon hadn’t stopped working on it. Holly watched as he opened his velvet wallet of lock-picking tools. He may not have Aimee Voss’s Skelty Key, but he had his own suite of devices. He removed a palm-length tool with suction cups on the end of wires, which he attached to the scanner-lock. He activated it and watched it closely.

  Holly glanced up and down the corridor, which had been fairly empty as they’d approached the appointed door. She grabbed Shiro’s arm and pulled him close to make a huddle around Odeon as he worked. “Time to pretend we’re random stragglers, if perhaps a bit lost.”

  “Oh, that old act. Of course. Why not?” He allowed himself to be pulled closer to her to make a shield around Odeon. “It’s been so long since we did this one, Ms. Drake. I’d almost forgotten what an accomplished team we are. As in-sync as longtime dance partners.”

  She began to answer him when the hatch hissed open. They were caught off guard by it, and unfortunately the door didn’t lead to another corridor like they’d hoped.

  Instead, Holly found herself staring straight into the faces of what she could only call thugs. They reminded her of Shadow Coalition members, but she wasn’t sure that’s what they were now that the former Heart—the organizational head of the SC—had disappeared.

  The room was small—no bigger than the Bird’s Nest back on Kota. Overturned tables and chairs were scattered across the floor, which was covered in trash. One of the thugs stood by the vault. The vault itself hadn’t been looted. Holly’s mind registered in a flash that it still held a pile of stacked novas, their familiar purple and green color catching the light. There was something else too, something unfamiliar, though obviously not a stack of money.

  There were three thugs in total. Wearing the black and white suits she’d gotten used to seeing on foot soldiers of the Shadow Coalition. Two of them were male humans. The one nearest the door was a female Constie.

  For a few seconds everyone just stared at each other—the thugs, Holly and her crew—struggling to grasp what the hell was going on.

  “Oh shit,” Darius said in Holly’s ear.

  “Why ‘oh shit?’” Charly asked. “What’s happening?”

  “Was not expecting that,” Darius said. “They look like Shadow Coalition.”

  “Did you get into the room?” Charly asked. No one answered her. “Did you get into the room?” Her voice rose in pitch.

  Holly ducked to the side of the hatch, backing up against the wall. “Yes,” she breathed, fighting to regain control of her breath. “The room is occupied, Charly.” Shiro wasn’t far behind and nudged up against her as he too hugged the wall, while Odeon took cover on the side of the hatch with the scanner lock. It would close soon if they didn’t do something fast.

  Holly motioned to Odeon that they should get inside. The thugs shouted at each other to get the money and go.

  Holly pulled her aether whip from the holster beneath her jacket and flipped the switch near her thumb. A stream of purple light flowed from the end, stacking tightly together until it formed into a solid-looking rope of light. It was mesmerizing to watch, but she had no time to admire the beauty. She darted around the hatch doorframe into the room, diving for cover behind an overturned armchair. She hadn’t come all this way to just lose what was in that vault. She assessed the room from her cover, biting her lip.

  The thugs had also taken cover. The Constie near the door brandished a long knife. The thug at the vault had squared himself to defend the vault.

  Suddenly Odeon was in the room, a flash of black and violet that whisked over the furniture and began to engage in blows with the man at the vault. Odeon’s Ousaba made cracking sounds as he brought it down against his opponent. The three interlopers shouted at each other.

  “Get the novas!” The Constie said, sizing up Holly and Shiro, who had quietly entered be
hind Holly.

  The man at the vault answered. “Don’t let them stop you. I’ll take out this Druiviin easily and get the novas before they do!”

  “Yeah, this should be easy.” The man said who stood between the vault and the Constie near the entrance.

  “She has a knife. Hardly a match for my sword, but I’ll take it,” Shiro said. He unsheathed his sword in a dramatic gesture and began delivering parries and thrusts, which the Constie skillfully countered. Holly was left to engage the human male that had taken up a post between the vault and the door. She stood up and flicked her aether whip, warming her arm up. She ignored the voices of Darius and Charly in her ear, asking what was going on. They’d have to wait. For now they had a job to finish. She was aware of the novas almost glittering in the vault, taunting her.

  The fight was on. Her opponent reached behind himself, going for his weapon. Before he could get it, Holly flicked her aether whip toward him. The whip coiled around his ankle. She jerked it back, yanking his foot out from under him. He crashed onto his rear-end and cursed loudly.

  She didn’t want to find out what he’d been reaching for. So she pulled the whip even harder to attempt to drag him across the floor. He was too heavy. Holly assumed having a whip lashed around your leg and being pulled by it was painful, judging from the screeches he emitted. He rolled onto his side and clawed at the ground to prevent her from pulling him. Holly relaxed the tension on the whip and flicked her wrist to cause it to release from his leg entirely, then drew the length of whip back to her. It slithered across the floor like a glowing violet snake coiling to strike. Her opponent scrambled to his feet and began reaching for whatever weapon was secured under his jacket on his back. Funny, she still had no wish to see what that was. She targeted him with the whip again, this time she went for the hand that was reaching for his weapon.