The Kip Keene Box Set: Books 1, 2 & 3

by Nicholas Erik

  “The power, it’d blow a hole straight through it. Rip it apart. The unshielded planet would cook from the sun’s rays in days.” Derek finished the old man’s message with little emotion.

  “How the hell did we get here without killing everything, then?” Keene said.

  “The engines were shut off after you exited your star system. You were drifting for the rest of the time without power, according to the ship’s logs,” Franz said.

  “You two need to come with me,” Keene said, old instincts taking hold.

  “Like hell we do,” Lorelei said.

  “Who the hell said this was a negotiation?” And then Keene walked out of the dead ship, back into the cold.

  Only after climbing out of the crater did he notice his legs and arms shaking with a tremulous furor he’d never before experienced.

  Nothing quite like the fate of the only world he had left to call home to jolt him out of stasis.

  13 | Johnny

  Before Keene could return to the ship to extract a definitive yes from either Lorelei or Derek, his satellite phone rang.

  He jabbed the talk button and brought the great plastic beast up to his ear. “Keene,” he said, before thinking as if it could be anyone else. To complete the stupidity, he added, “Who’s there?”

  “You damn well know who it is,” Strike said. “Give me your status.”

  “Alive,” Keene said. “Unhappy. Unwanted.”

  “I don’t need a rundown of Maslow’s hierarchy,” Strike said.

  “You asked.”

  “Forget it,” Strike said. “I swear, it’s like you’re from another planet.”

  “Found the old team.”

  “You find our midnight burglar?”

  “No,” Keene said. He took a moment to choose his next words with precision and care. Strike, if an ally, was similar to the Rottweiler one kept chained in the backyard. Indiscriminate in targeting its rage. “Not yet.”

  “Sounds promising.”

  “I’m breaking up. I can’t hear you.”

  “That’s bullshit. It’s a pure digital connection, thousands of dollars a month—”

  Keene made a series of weak cracking and rumbling sounds with his mouth that were no more convincing than a six year old yelling vroom vroom as he pedaled a plastic Cadillac down the street.

  But he hung up anyway, ignoring the phone’s buzzy rattling when Strike called back.

  Lorelei and Derek emerged from The Blue Maybelle, along with Franz. They made their way to Keene’s position at the top of the impact zone.

  “We’ll come.” Lorelei said. “The two of us. Franz is a little old to be saving the world.”

  “On one condition,” Derek said. Keene didn’t respond. Just waited. “You destroy the cores.”

  “Sure.” Keene wasn’t sure if that was a lie. If he had the opportunity, home was still an alluring prospect.

  “Promise, damn it,” Lorelei said. “Swear.”

  “I swear.”

  “On Mom and Dad?”

  Keene swallowed, despite his lack of superstition. “Yeah. On Mom and Dad.”

  “Okay.” Lorelei looked satisfied, as if the pact was now iron-clad. “Lead the way.”

  “The cop who busted me,” Keene said, not sure where he was going with this. “She thinks a man killed her father.”

  “Interesting,” Derek said, in a tone suggesting he found this revelation the exact opposite.

  “The skeletons were both Spanish?”

  “Dating back to the sixteenth century,” Franz said. “Carbon dated.”

  “That means Johnny might be out there, too. This cop, she was adamant. Convinced. Maybe they both want to go home.”

  “If he got out four hundred years ago,” Lorelei said, shaking her head, “that’s impossible.”

  “But is it? Look around you.”

  No one looked, but they got the picture. The improbable and the impossible, though often conflated with one another, were not the same.

  “So this guy, what’s your theory?” Lorelei said. “It’s Johnny?”

  “We seem to be all right from the cryostasis, but it can have…effects.” Catarina was all there, except that she wasn’t. It made Keene’s chest hurt a little bit to think about.

  “So we track down Catarina without a lead. Or we track down Johnny’s ghost. Solid plan, Captain.” Derek didn’t move, his arms intertwined like two thick oak branches.

  “But if he were around, where would we find him?”

  Keene remembered the last time he uttered those words, and the consequences that came thereafter.

  The consequences that, ultimately, led them all to this very juncture.

  14 | Source Code

  Four and a half years earlier. Or, rather, two hundred thousand four and a half. Time was an unknowable beast.

  And Keene had said, “So I guess what I’m saying is, if I wanted to find him, where would a guy like him be?”

  The bar was dingy, its floor unswept, the rickety structure built long before Keene had been born.

  And the old guy, Jack the Diamond the locals called him, he had smiled and said, “That’s what we hired you for, kid.”

  Then Jack threw down a couple pieces of misshapen silver—the bar still operated on barter, even though they’d gotten a credit processor a few months prior—before he walked out. Keene—too young a man to grasp any semblance of cause and consequence—was left holding a dusty packet of papers.

  Keene wiped stale beer from the top sheet and let loose a deep breath. He’d been holding it for the entire conversation with this scarred up old pirate, half-expecting the limping man to run him through with a rusty blade and rob his corpse.

  Not that Keene had anything worth stealing. Otherwise, he wouldn’t have been in the worst dive bar on a planet of dive bars, rubbing arms with one of the greatest criminals in all of Apollus. Hard like diamonds, people whispered. Unbreakable. Immutable.

  The Coalition had tried to break Jack during the First War.

  Hadn’t worked. He’d lost an eye, but even that hadn’t loosened his tongue about where his Resistance battalion hid. And, when his men came to save the day, blowing away the Coalition forces holding him hostage, his loyalty had proven itself well-placed.

  But it wasn’t a bet on Jack’s part. It was just a character trait. Keene thought it was from the stories, the legends that people told their children, that he had heard growing up. But sitting there for two minutes with the old man, he’d seen that this fellow shot straight. You stayed by his side, you got rewarded.

  You didn’t…well, Keene had something new to be nervous about.

  He turned to Derek and nudged his friend, who was knee-deep in conversation with a local girl—not ugly, but something about her suggested to Keene that she’d steal your wallet and clothes while you were sleeping without a second thought.

  Derek turned, the girl clinging to his arm, and gave Keene a look. “Kind of busy here.”

  “Were you listening?”

  “To Jack? Yeah, swell guy.” Derek’s eyes returned to the girl. Keene grabbed him and spun him around.

  “So why are you still trying to bang this slut with—”

  “Excuse me,” the girl said. “I am not a slut.”

  “Tricia’s a good girl.” Derek turned and nodded at her. The look she shot back indicated that he’d butchered her name. “Trixie? Tracy? Tyra?”

  She picked up the pint of warm beer sitting on the counter and threw it in his face. “Tina. Have fun blowing your boyfriend. You don’t know what you’re missing.” The woman stomped off and disappeared out the door as Derek wiped liquid from his face.

  He signaled to the bartender for a round of shots.

  “You have the reverse Midas touch with women. Every time you show up, it turns to shit.” He c
linked his glass against the one sitting on the counter and downed the cheap whiskey. “Hell of a skill.”

  “Not all of us can look like you. Sound like you.”

  “It’s belief, Keene, belief.”

  Keene picked up the glass, sniffed it and gagged, but drank it down anyway. “I was doing you a favor,” he said. “Besides, don’t you have enough girls around? What happened to that other chick?”

  “Jordan? She split after I refused to get a real job.”

  “The one after that.”

  “Oh, Daria? She’s still around. She can get us in the Razor’s Edge.”

  “And you’re pissed about losing that one? Daria’s sexy,” Keene said. He scratched his head and looked around the bar. These were not his talents. Picking up women. Being a leader. Engaging in criminal activities.

  He crinkled the wax paper between his fingers. A job for Jack the Diamond. His throat was drier than twenty-year old tobacco.

  “Yeah, she’s just, I don’t know,” Derek said. “You know.”

  Keene didn’t know anything, but he still said, “Sure, I know.” He stared off into the sea of drunken people.

  “So, Razor’s Edge?”

  “You haven’t been listening to a damn thing tonight.”

  “Multitasking,” Derek said. He waved a piece of crumpled paper in front of Keene’s face. “While you were listening, I was reading. And guess what this little gem says? One of the last people to see this Coalition soldier Jack wants us to find so bad is Red Anderson.”

  “That name doesn’t mean anything to me.”

  Derek rolled his eyes. “He owns the Razor’s Edge.”

  “This isn’t some ploy just to get laid, is it?”

  “You know my talents.” Derek clasped a hand around Keene’s shoulder. “I don’t need to head to the Razor’s Edge for that.”

  Keene shook loose from his grip and snatched the paper from Derek’s hand. He brushed it off, careful not to crease it any more, then slid it back into the wax paper envelope.

  “You’d think it was a girl’s number, the way you hold it. Who the hell uses paper any more, anyway?”

  “Jack the Diamond,” Keene said with a certain reverence as they settled their tab before walking out the door, “Jack the Diamond does.”

  “Privateering, that’s a capital offense.”

  “And here I thought the Ladykiller of Apollus wouldn’t be such a wet blanket.”

  “I have your back,” Derek said, his glib demeanor darkening for a moment, “but things could go wrong.”

  The hot, swirling winds hit Keene’s face as he stepped outside. He blinked, a scowl creasing his lips.

  “This is already rock bottom. Only ways to go from here are up or dead.”

  Keene and Derek walked down a long metal runway that fed into a long tunnel. Neon advertisements for Pro-Yes and other meal replacements flickered along the squalid walls, casting a funky purple and red glow over the squalid, cracking ceiling.

  The tunnel, like the runway that fed into it, was slanted at a steep angle, so that by the time the pair was at the end, they were a mile beneath Apollus’ surface.

  “I don’t think this place meets fire code,” Keene said. Before them, the solid stainless door to the Razor’s Edge glinted in the neon glow.

  “You really need to get laid, man,” Derek said. “Who cares about fire codes?”

  “People who have been in fires.”

  “Sorry, I forgot.” Derek gave Keene an affectionate pat. “I’m focused.”

  “I need this.”

  “I do too.”

  “There’s nothing out there. If you don’t join the Coalition’s training program, there’s nothing.”

  “I’m with you, man.”

  “I gotta take care of Lorelei,” Keene said. He rapped his knuckles against the door, and a small slit at the top began to open. “I’m all she’s got left.”

  “That girl can take care of herself.” Then Derek caught Keene’s grave look. “But I get what you’re saying. Serious. I promise.”

  A hawkish eye appeared in the opening. “Who you know here?”

  “We want to see—” Keene began, but Derek cut him off and pushed him out of the way.

  “You know Daria?”

  “Yeah,” the guy on the other side of the door said.

  “I got a little something for her. You know, to keep her going.” Derek extracted a thin plastic bag filled with pinkish crystals. The man’s eye grew wide with greed. “And to keep you going, if you need it.”

  “I’m on the job.”

  “It’s a stressful job,” Derek said. The slit slammed shut, and Keene turned to Derek.

  “Damn it man, we’re never—”

  The whir of the heavy door opening ran roughshod over whatever Keene was going to say. The two of them stepped inside, and Derek tossed the door’s operator the bag with a knowing nod.

  Keene looked over his shoulder, unsure whether his nerves were ablaze, or the dark club’s music was reverberating through him.

  “Wait a second fellas.” The door guy rushed over. “On the house. For, you know.”

  He shoved two pairs of disposable thermo-goggles into their hands, then returned to his post. His hands flitted over his pocket, like he was unsure whether he should take the uppers Derek had given him now or save them for later.

  “The hell are these for?” Keene said. He looked at the rough plastic, the battery welded to its side in haphazard fashion by some underpaid local factory worker.

  “Just put them on.” Derek strapped on his own pair of goggles and pushed Keene forward into the pitch black Razor’s Edge.

  Orange forms surged and grinded in the endless dark expanse. Occasional staccato flashes of light burst through the Razor’s Edge, causing Keene to periodically claw at his goggled eyes in pain. The other revelers, however, didn’t even seem to notice these intermittent interruptions—as far as Keene could tell, they even enjoyed them.

  “You’re making me look bad here.”

  “What?”

  “I’m kidding.” Derek just shook his head.

  Given the situation, it had to be a joke. If they tracked down this Coalition soldier for Jack the Diamond, it wasn’t as if he and Derek could stay on Apollus.

  The only thing Keene could hear was bass and industrial-sounding noises mixed together in something resembling a melody. As drinking establishments went, he much preferred the hole-in-the-wall bar they’d just come from, where the rats scurried underneath your feet and no one got all that angry about it.

  The Razor’s Edge pretended to be hip. But it was a sham when the whole planet was in economic shambles, dying at the hand of the Coalition. No one went cool hunting here, except for misguided fools. The dancers were like snakes—stupid, dangerous in the wrong circumstance and only capable of seeing one another’s body heat.

  After another flash of light, Keene found himself alone. A brief panic set in, but then Derek returned, hand-in-hand with a girl—Daria, Keene figured out by squinting extra hard—and then pointed to a stairwell at the far end of the club. The trio wound their way through the throngs of intoxicated people and mounted the stairs.

  Derek reached up and ripped the goggles from Keene’s face as the door in front of them opened.

  “Hey, what the hell,” Keene said, but then almost doubled over in pain when the lights above came on. When his eyes finally stopped watering and he could open them, he found that he was in the office of the boss man himself. Apparently the pitch black aesthetic didn’t spill over into actual business operations.

  Daria slid by Keene with a smile on her way out. She looked pretty hot, even with red rings around her eyes from the stupid goggles pressing into her perfect complexion. Derek and his way with women.

  And his way with people. He was already sha
ring a cocktail with Red Anderson. Upon noticing Keene had recovered, he beckoned his friend over with a hasty hand.

  “And Red,” Derek said, like the two were old buddies, “this is my best friend in the whole damn world. Universe, even. Kip Keene, meet Red Anderson.”

  “A pleasure,” Red said, extending his hand.

  Keene gave him a limp handshake and said, “Same.”

  “Cocktail? We keep the finer spirits for our good friends.”

  “No thanks, we’re in a hurry,” Keene said. He slid the wax paper packet out of his pants and threw it on the table. “We’re looking for someone.”

  Red got up and went over to his private bar and began mixing. Keene shot Derek a confused glance, like he didn’t understand why this guy wasn’t showing more urgency. Red returned to the desk, propped his feet up and sipped from the glass.

  “You should really try a drink, son,” he said. “They don’t have liquor like this in Apollus.”

  “I said I was fine.”

  “Suit yourself,” Red said. “But I was you, I’d take that offer while I could.”

  Something in the way the man said it, sitting there in a nonchalant, arrogant stupor, like Keene was nothing, not even worth the drink he was being offered, rubbed the younger man raw. In two bounds, Keene had leapt the great desk, slapped the martini glass to the ground and lifted Red from his feet.

  He had the man pinned high up against the wall, elbow on his fat throat.

  “Now you listen to me, you greedy son of a bitch,” Keene said. Despite his lean, almost gaunt musculature, Keene didn’t even feel the strain of the weight against his muscles. Red choked and gagged, his face turning a deep shade of purple. “You’re going to look at those pictures, and then we’re going to leave your shitty establishment.” He dropped the man to the ground and gave him a kick to the stomach. “And then you’re going to install a back exit. It’s a damn fire hazard.”

  “Again with the fire,” Derek said. He was a safe distance away, still sipping his drink, but watching the proceedings with a profound awe, as if he’d witnessed the birth of a new man. Whether that new man was a monster or a hero was very much up for debate.