by Jamie Sawyer
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Copyright
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 coincidental.
Copyright © 2018 by Jamie Sawyer
Excerpt from Splintered Suns copyright © 2018 by Michael Cobley
Excerpt from Adrift copyright © 2018 by Rob Boffard
Cover design by Lauren Panepinto
Cover illustration by Ben Zweifel
Cover copyright © 2018 by Hachette Book Group, Inc.
Hachette Book Group supports the right to free expression and the value of copyright. The purpose of copyright is to encourage writers and artists to produce the creative works that enrich our culture.
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Simultaneously published in Great Britain and in the U.S. by Orbit in 2018
First U.S. Edition: November 2018
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Library of Congress Control Number: 2018949565
ISBNs: 978-0-316-41115-8 (mass market), 978-0-316-41114-1 (ebook)
E3-20180919-JV-NF
Contents
COVER
TITLE PAGE
COPYRIGHT
DEDICATION
PROLOGUE
CHAPTER ONE: BROKEN
CHAPTER TWO: THE BODY REMEMBERS
CHAPTER THREE: ENGINEERED PERFECTION
CHAPTER FOUR: REDACTION
CHAPTER FIVE: DISGUSTING PRISONERS
CHAPTER SIX: ZERO PROSPECTS
CHAPTER SEVEN: REUNITED
CHAPTER EIGHT: TOO CLOSE TO THE SUN
CHAPTER NINE: SUITED AND REBOOTED
CHAPTER TEN: RESURRECTION
CHAPTER ELEVEN: BACK IN THE GAME
CHAPTER TWELVE: BURY THE DEAD
CHAPTER THIRTEEN: THE HARBINGER
CHAPTER FOURTEEN: ASSAULT ON DARKWATER
CHAPTER FIFTEEN: A NEW SKIN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN: DANGER TIME
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN: DESPERATE MEASURES
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN: REVEALED
CHAPTER NINETEEN: AT WHAT COST?
CHAPTER TWENTY: THIS IS THE ENEMY
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE: SOMETIMES THEY COME BACK
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO: WAR THINGS
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE: SOMEONE’S DREAM
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR: APPLIANCE OF SCIENCE
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE: SCIENCE OF VIOLENCE
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX: AZIMUTH, FAITH, FIRE
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN: COLD RETRIBUTION
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT: SLEEPER: ACTIVATED
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE: WARGAMES
CHAPTER THIRTY: HAVE FAITH
EPILOGUE
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
EXTRAS
MEET THE AUTHOR
A PREVIEW OF SPLINTERED SUNS
A PREVIEW OF ADRIFT
BY JAMIE SAWYER
ORBIT NEWSLETTER
To Mum, for always believing in me
PROLOGUE
For a long, hurt moment Clade Cooper—former Alliance Army Ranger, more recently turned head of the Black Spiral terrorist organisation—was back there.
No more. Not again.
Cooper spluttered, cried out. Gasped for breath like a drowning man. The burn in his chest felt so real that he put a hand there, and held it. Clutched at his own beating heart.
It’s a dream. Just a dream. Nothing more.
Finally, when Cooper knew he could accept it, he sighed to the dark. Let his breathing fall into a rhythm, and was glad when the hot, dry air filled his lungs. That was the good hurt. But the nightmare lingered, a guest outstaying its welcome, and that was the bad hurt. The horror had been warm, and very wet, pervading every element of his body.
“Does that hurt?”
“Of course it hurts. Everything hurts.”
One leg out of the bunk. Foot to the cold floor. Pain crept through the limb and it took all of his strength not to scream, but the sensation was passing. Cooper rolled his body around, allowing the bedsheets to grate against his skin—causing another ripple of discomfort through the mass of scar tissue that was his flesh—and sat up.
The room around him was dark, and empty, but that didn’t mean that he was alone. The place was filled with ghosts. They gnawed at the edge of Cooper’s consciousness. Threatening to drag him down into the Deep.
“We want to do everything we can to make you comfortable.”
“I’ll never be comfortable again.”
There was a communicator beside Cooper’s bunk, and it chimed once, an indicator light warning of an incoming communication. Such a simple, innocuous thing—part of everyday life aboard a starship—but it evinced a sudden reaction in Cooper. He snapped his neck around to respond. Desperately trying to stop himself from falling back into the nightmare. Into the wet. Into the shadow …
“This isn’t going to be easy. No one has ever survived this procedure.”
“I don’t care. Not anymore. Not without them.”
A face appeared on the communicator’s small screen, throwing a thin light over the chamber. As much as Cooper hated to admit it to himself, he was grateful for the illumination, and glad to see the face there. It was one of his Disciples, a small, greying man, with a middle-aged face.
“Sir?” the Disciple said. “Your cabin activated the medical alert. I thought that I should check on you …”
The Disciple’s nation and planet of origin were unknown, but he had once been a doctor. That didn’t matter anymore, because now he had no title. It was the Black Spiral’s way: none of the Disciples had any proper rank. It was, Cooper supposed, a consequence of his response—his rebellion—against the structures that had once bound him. He had known many doctors, once, but he was no longer that man.
“There are certain technologies that would allow you to retain your identity, but with a new skin … You should consider a body-sculpt. A complete physical overhaul.”
“I wouldn’t be me anymore.”
Cooper could remember her eyes, most of all. They were almost pleading, because no one could live in that much pain. Not if they wanted to remain human.
“Sir?” the Disciple asked, calling him back to the here, to the now. “Are you experiencing more night terrors?”
“I am fine,” Cooper growled.
“Do you need assistance?”
“I was dreaming. It is one of the many consequences of my history.”
“Yes, sir. Of course.” The Disciple swallowed. He was almost mesmerised by Cooper’s face. That was a universal reaction, something that Cooper had grown accustomed to. Finally, the other man bowed his head, clutched the symbol at his neck. “They seem to be getting worse as the fire spreads. Would you like more pain relief?”
“This isn’t going to be easy.”
“Nothing ever is.”
“Yes. Send me more drugs. More oblivion.”
> “As you wish.”
Cooper reached over and activated the pain-relief system set into the bunk control console. The effect was instant: the cool spread of analgesics spreading through his dry, tortured body. He felt as though he was inflating inside his own skin, becoming more alive with each heartbeat. The nightmare’s shadow quickly receded, leaving nothing more than a psychic stain. He felt a brief stab of resentment—of displeasure that he had to rely on the machines around him to live, to endure any sort of quality of life—but it was passing. Whenever Cooper slept, he did so attached to the apparatus. The machinery constantly flushed his blood of the poisons that accrued there, and was a requirement of being outside his armour. The filtering device was a fact of life, nothing more.
“Thank you, Disciple. You are a good man.”
“It is all for the glory of the Spiral.”
“Have they found the target?”
“Lieutenant Runweizer has reported.” Runweizer was one of many agents deployed on Old Earth, within the structure itself. Like many military converts, Runweizer was less willing to give up his title than other Disciples. However, such operatives were a necessary evil. “He has visited the target’s last known location,” the Disciple said, but left it at that, hesitant to give the full report.
“And?”
The Disciple’s voice dropped. “The target was not present.”
“That is disappointing, although hardly unexpected. Tell the lieutenant to keep looking.”
“Yes, sir. There … there is something else.”
“Go on.”
“As you know, we are desperately in need of more materials …”
Pain relief and medical supplies, as well as other essentials for shipboard existence, were growing sparse. Another fact of life aboard the starship, and one that Cooper felt acutely. The Disciple looked on with doleful eyes. Perhaps it was the doctor in him, still seeking to understand what was happening to Cooper. That made a smile jerk at the corner of Cooper’s mouth, because he didn’t really understand this himself. He doubted that anyone understood what was happening to him.
“Our stock of the retrovirals is almost depleted,” the Disciple muttered. He swallowed, staring off-screen, pained to admit it. “I … I’m not sure how much longer I will be able to administer treatment to you, sir.”
“Understood.”
“We should conduct another raid,” the Disciple suggested. “And soon.” His eyes misted, noticeable even over the comm-link. “While I am still able to help you.”
“Very well. I give the order.”
“As you wish, sir.”
“Alert me when we get to the next Gate.”
The Disciple went to open his mouth, to speak some more, but Cooper cut the comm. The after-image of his grey, aged face lingered on in the dark for a second or so; then Cooper was alone again.
“Wouldn’t it be easier,” said the doctor, “to just …”
What had she meant to say? It had been many years since their meeting, and Cooper had often caught himself wondering what she had sought to tell him. Had she wanted him to die? To give up?
Never. While I live, their memory continues. They live.
Cooper’s eyes fell to his armoured suit. It sat in the corner of the room, illuminated in its charging cradle. He couldn’t remember having activated it, but that wasn’t new. Increasingly, he had found the armour switching on without his permission: the wrist-comp flashing as it connected with unseen networks, the weapons systems cycling up of their own accord. It was as though the armour itself was becoming sentient, reaching out to other machines around it.
Cooper stood on pained legs and wandered to the suit. Its black plating was scratched, battered. The manpower-amplifier was an older pattern, the attenuators and strength-augmentation system partially exposed on the arms and legs. Still, every threat-marking and kill-score had been painstakingly restored: the skull-motif glared back at him from the helmet. He reached out, caressed the armour. Felt a prickle of static touch his skin, and more exquisite agony erupt inside of him.
“Who am I?”
“I am the Warlord of the Drift,” he answered, “and I will bring it all down.”
There was work to do.
The old gods were coming back, and they were hungry.
CHAPTER ONE
BROKEN
Private Chu Feng manned the UAS Santa Fe’s navigation console, and read the results from the terminal. His eyes were wide, the words rolling out of his mouth on automatic.
“We’re in Asiatic Directorate space,” he said. “Riggs has jumped us directly into Directorate space.”
Silence stretched across the Sante Fe’s bridge, and for a heartbeat no one dared to move or speak. I was frozen in time and space, unable to draw my eyes from the tactical display as it gradually populated with data. Not even Captain Miriam Carmine, the erstwhile and irascible officer in charge of the Santa Fe, could bring herself to question the results.
Corporal Daneb Riggs, second in command of Jenkins’ Jackals, as well as my sometime lover and confidant, had just betrayed us in the most spectacular way imaginable. He’d flown the Santa Fe into one of the most dangerous locations in the known universe.
The dam finally broke.
“We’re … we’re in Directorate space?” Lopez stammered, dumbly, in utter disbelief. “How can that even be possible? The Fe’s equipped with diplomatic protocols, right?”
Lopez was talking about the navigational inhibitors with which all Alliance starships were equipped. In theory, that meant that the Santa Fe wouldn’t be capable of jumping into a diplomatically sensitive area. Unless …
“Riggs overrode them.” Feng jabbed keys and cursed in rotation. His face crumpled in an anxious grimace. He looked to me. “This is bad, ma’am. Very bad.”
“Explain,” I said. I couldn’t see how things could get any worse than they already were.
“This isn’t Chino territory.”
In ordinary circumstances, Private Chu Feng was young, hot-headed and a decent son of a bitch. He had been vat-grown by the Asiatic Directorate, designed to be one of their elite Special Operations troopers, but fate had a different destination for Feng. His liberation from a Directorate training facility had resulted in his induction into the Alliance Army Simulant Operations Programme. Somewhat ironically, Directorate Spec Ops clones made decent simulant operators, and Feng was a good example of this principle. His Asian features were boyish in a way that betrayed the purpose of his muscular body. Right now, his brow was sweaty, short dark hair swept back from his darker eyes. He looked like a frightened kid, which I guess in a way he was. Feng had been born fully grown, and was only a few years out of the vat.
“You just said that we jumped into Directorate space,” Lopez said. She sounded angry, and in no mood for discussion on this topic. “Now you’re saying we’re not in Chino territory? Make up your mind, Feng.”
Gabriella Lopez: Proximan and proud, the only daughter of one of the most powerful political figures in the Alliance. Lopez had joined up with Sim Ops to prove a point to her old man. She’d come to me young, beautiful and full of arrogance. Her military career had once been a joke. Now I hardly recognised the hard-edged, stern features of her face—the way that her jaw bounced as she assessed the tactical display. I liked her a lot more this way. Long dark hair pulled into a ponytail, gene-sculpted face still covered in bruises and lacerations from our last operation, this Lopez meant business. Although, strictly speaking, shipboard regulations prohibited it, Lopez carried her Revtech-911K pistol holstered on her thigh.
“Yeah, well, there’s a lot more to the Asiatic Directorate than just Chino territory,” Feng said, eyes still to the monitor in front of him. “And we’re somewhere so much worse.”
“Such as?” Lopez pressed. It spoke more of her sheltered upbringing than anything else that she didn’t know that the Directorate was made up of dozens of nation-states.
“We’re in Asiatic Directorate space claimed by
Unified Korea,” Feng answered.
“Uni-Kor?” I said. “Shit. That is worse.”
Korean space. Of all the Asiatic Directorate member states, Unified Korea was the most bloodthirsty, the most fervent. The Uni-Kor had never recognised the end of hostilities between the Directorate and the Alliance, and I doubted that they ever would. Their region of space was secluded and well armed, a stronghold against the rest of the universe.
Just then, Private Leon Novak burst onto the bridge. The life-prisoner was still recuperating from multiple injuries—walking with a protracted limp, his face and shoulders covered in abrasions—but none of that seemed to stop him.
Novak shook his head. “Ship says we are in Asiatic space!” His blunt Slavic accent was painfully matter-of-fact, his tattoo-covered features creased in alarm. “We are fucked, yes?”
“Welcome to the shitshow,” said Lopez. “You’re a little late.”
Novak had been recruited from a prison in the Russian Federation, and had joined Sim Ops because every transition—every death—gave him a little more life. His enormous arms were scored with self-harm injuries, each marking a successful transition in a simulant, his muscled body barely fitting inside his shipboard fatigues. I had sent Novak down to the docking bay, to check on what we’d assumed was a faulty door sensor. He’d been too late to stop Riggs from launching the Warhawk, the Santa Fe’s only shuttle.
“Are you sure about this, Feng?” Lopez whispered. Strength seeped from her voice as she spoke. “Maybe the navigation console is malfunctioning.”
“Of course I’m sure!” Feng shouted back, pounding a fist against the terminal. “Do you think I’d make a mistake about something like this?”
Captain Carmine spoke up. “The boy’s got it right,” she said. “We’re in Uni-Kor space.”
The Santa Fe was Carmine’s command. She sat in her captain’s throne, hunched over the console. Also known as “the Carbine,” Carmine was an ageing Californian with attitude, and one of the oldest, and best, starship captains that I’d ever had the pleasure of serving with. Strands of silver hair escaped from beneath her service cap, her frame whip-like, left leg replaced by a crude Navy bionic. She clutched a holo-picture of her three daughters in her hand.
