Wild Nines (Mercenaries Book 1)

by A. R. Knight

  “I assume Castor put our friend Davin into his current state?” Marl said.

  “It doesn’t matter. Just drop the charges so we can leave.”

  Phyla kept her distance. Wished there was somewhere to put Davin so she could draw her own rifle. Marl had at least one sidearm, and it wouldn’t be much fun to dodge fire while still trying to keep the captain on her shoulders.

  “I’m sorry that the inspectors contacted you,” Marl said. “They were supposed to land and then be taken care of immediately thereafter. That’s why I made sure we leaked the second ship, the one that turned its engines on your crew. Only, you weren’t supposed to be there.”

  “Thanks for letting us know,” Phyla said. She squatted to slip Davin off of her back, one hand staying on the assault rifle.

  “I was trying to spare you.”

  “You were trying to keep a secret,” Phyla replied. Davin hit the floor, crumpled to the ground. Phyla twisted, caught Davin’s head before it slammed into the floor.

  The sidearm didn’t make a sound as it fired. The flash of the laser hit Phyla’s eyes at the same time as the burn lashed her side. Pain bloomed and Phyla collapsed next to Davin. Breathing was inhaling fire. White lines played around the outside of her vision, threatening to expand and wipe away the universe in shock. The floor, her left hand touching it, was icy. That chill shoved her back from the edge. Couldn’t collapse now. Had to create distance, use the rifle.

  Fight back.

  “Eden wants someone to take the fall for Claire and Ward,” Marl said. She was walking towards Phyla now, her face haloed by Jupiter through the windows. The sidearm held out in front of her, stiff, as though Marl was conducting a ceremony. “And while I think Eden can rot, while I’m doing all I can to tear it apart, we aren’t ready for its focused attention. Not yet.”

  Phyla used her legs, pressing herself back. The rifle dragged along the floor while her arms were busy pushing. Saw Marl’s face tense up. Grabbed the rifle and swung it up in front of her face.

  She couldn’t see the laser, only the light it cast as the shot burrowed into the rifle. Nothing broke through the rifle’s body. Bet its makers didn’t think it would serve as a shield. Phyla swung the rifle back towards Marl, pressed the trigger, and the safety light blinked red. Malfunction. Marl wouldn’t aim at her face again.

  “Almost had me,” Marl said, expression easing from stunned panic into an easy smile. “We would have tried to recruit all of you. Too bad.”

  “Recruit for what?” Phyla said. She had her own sidearm, there on her left thigh. Marl would kill herif Phyla went for it, but there wasn't any other option.

  “It doesn’t matter anymore,” Marl replied. She raised the sidearm again. No time. Phyla made a reach for her own, the burn in her right side searing.

  86

  An End

  Marl was only a meter away. About to shoot, body stance like a warrior delivering a summary execution to a bested opponent. Thing was, that attention meant she missed what Davin was doing. How he was struggling to move a hand he couldn’t feel to grip the handle of Melody, how he only knew he’d found it in the fog of his perception when his arm didn’t lift as easily as it did before.

  How he pulled the trigger as soon as the shotgun flopped in front of his own eyes.

  Melody wasn’t stunned. The shotgun did what it was designed to do. Six balls of glowing green energy exploded out from the weapon and collapsed into Marl, bursting into gouts of flame. Melody’s fire spread fast, the heat from each ball meeting the others halfway and igniting Marl's entire uniform.

  Causing the head of Eden Prime to turn and backpedal, to hit the edge of the observation deck, to press over the railing and fall like an emerald meteor into the terramorpher’s crunching depths.

  Would have been nice to sigh right then. To feel the tension leak out of his muscles. To take a deep breath. But Davin was still floating in a half-conscious world where his body gave him no information. Where his lungs kept him breathing through an instinctual response, where his eyes blinked out of habit. The world a movie he was watching from inside his own head.

  “Hey,” Phyla said, her head appearing in front of his eyes. “Thanks for that.”

  A pause. A wait for an answer Davin wasn’t able to give. He’d have nodded, declared that’s what Marl had deserved, but his body wasn’t listening.

  “Right. I’m going to pick you up again, and we’re going to get out of here,” Phyla said. “I’m hurt, Davin, so if you can wake yourself up, the sooner the better. Or you will owe me so much for carrying you back to the ship, that —”

  Davin was pretty sure Phyla kept talking. That she mixed in a series of curses as they went down the steps and Davin’s full weight fell on her. But he couldn’t really focus. Couldn’t push back against the dead senses any more with the adrenaline dying. Couldn’t do anything except greet the black hoping that when he woke up, he’d be somewhere else.

  87

  A New Contract

  The blue moon never looked better than when Davin was leaving it behind. Glowing there in the dark field of stars, the edge of Jupiter sneaking into the window as the cargo hauler gathered speed in a gravity slingshot that would put them on target for Ganymede.

  Old-style navigation aids like the slingshot were necessary as the hauler didn’t have the fuel to brute-force its way through space. The maneuver meant it would take a few days to get around Jupiter’s massive size and intersect with Ganymede. There, they’d get their ship back.

  “And then where?” Phyla asked, lying on her cot. Erick had her chest all wrapped around with bandages, ointments spread across the section where Marl’s shot struck home.

  “Not sure yet. But I hear Neptune’s beautiful this time of year,” Davin said, sitting next to her. “The next wave of androids will have a hard time finding us out there.”

  Viola had the cockpit, with Opal giving the girl tips on astro-navigation. With the course already pre-programmed, there wasn’t a whole lot of trouble they could get into. In fact, for the first time in what felt like months, Davin wasn’t afraid something was going to go wrong.

  A few hours later, getting ready to catch some much-desired sleep in the cramped crew quarters, Davin heard a buzz on the comm.

  “Hey captain,” Viola’s voice. “Can you come up for a second?”

  “Can I take a nap first?”

  “Don’t think you’ll want to do that.”

  Up in the squat cockpit, where Davin had to duck his head to get to the deeper section with the chairs, Viola had the transmitter on the console. A video screen showing an active call, coming from Miner Prime.

  “Mind ducking out for a few minutes?” Davin said to Viola, who squeezed past him with a glance and left the captain alone.

  “It was harder to find this address than I thought,” Said the voice on the other end. “I learned that your ship was on Ganymede, but I couldn’t reach you there. Then a friend mentioned your hijacking tendencies. Quite the downgrade.”

  “We’ll have the Jumper back soon,” Davin replied. The waiting game for transmissions from here gave Davin a chance to scan back through the headlines. A blip about Eden Prime, a fatal accident involving the base’s manager. A second accidental explosion in the base itself, damaging some stores and a hotel. Eden’s media team doing their work.

  “Marl didn’t drop the charges,” Bosser’s next communication said. “You’re all still wanted for murder.”

  “You killed Lina. I ever see you again, I’ll do whatever I can to justify that charge,”

  “All of you are wanted, Davin. Your crew that you profess to care about so much. I’m calling to offer a solution,” Bosser didn’t even flinch in the transmission. Lina’s death didn’t cause the slightest surprise. No remorse. Davin hadn’t realized what it was like to hate someone before this moment. The bubbling anger slicing through self restraint and begging Davin to find away to leap across space, take Bosser, and throw him out an airlock.


  But Davin couldn’t do that. Going back to Miner Prime wouldn’t work either. Bosser would be ready, would drown the Jumper in laser fire before the ship could even dock. If the short-term was out of play, there was only one other way to go.

  “You'll drop the charge?”

  “I’ll convince Eden to remove it. Tell them the truth.”

  “What do you want?” Davin asked, hating every word as it came out of his mouth.

  The picture of Bosser’s face, set in a grim line, flexed a minute later into a toothy grin as he described what the Wild Nines would need to do to clear their name. As he heard the words, Davin wondered if they were all going to die anyway.

  Acknowledgments

  This novel is the product of of my family and friends refusing to let a dream die. My fiancé Nicole, for letting me write in the early mornings and making sure I didn’t starve. My brothers and parents for their continual comments, support, and enthusiasm.

  Evan Aaseng, for being a constant sounding board and reeling me back in whenever my ideas went too far.

  And, of course, you, the reader, for giving me a reason to write.

  About the Author

  A.R. Knight spins stories in a frosty house in Madison, WI, primarily owned by a pair of cats. After getting sucked into the working grind in the economic crash of the 2008, he found himself spending boring meetings soaring through space and going on grand adventures.

  Eventually, spending time with podcasting, screenplays, short stories and other novels, he found a story he could fall into and a cast of characters both entertaining and full of heart.

  The Wild Nines have more adventures to come, along with new plots, settings, and stories in the future. From there, A.R. Knight plans on jumping through to other worlds and finding new stories to tell in the limitless borders of our imagination.

  Thanks, as always, for reading!

  For more information:

  www.adamrknight.com