The Lost (The Maauro Chronicles Book 3)

by Edward McKeown

  “You don’t deny it,” Shasti says with a small smile.

  I sit by the rocks, overlooking the waterfall. After a moment she sits next to me.

  “There is…” I begin, then hesitate. “How can I say what is between us? I could say love, but I have learned that there are more shades to that word than exist in the spectrum. Do I mean the same thing by it that you do? That he does?”

  “Love,” Shasti muses. “It took me a long time to recognize it as the rare and precious gift it is. Never to be scorned or taken lightly; whichever of its many forms it takes.”

  Sadness steals through me. “I believe I’m capable of it. Perhaps I’m the only machine ever to feel so. I have emotions, though they seem pale and weak things to what you biologicals feel. The powerful emotions I have felt, have all been in my context with Wrik: my desire to protect him, to spend time with him, even to simply hear his voice. Yet I am incapable of physical love.”

  Shasti shakes her head slowly. “Maauro, a being that could overcome all you have done can solve that too. You may have to be very brave, Maauro and stake your claim for something you want. Don’t wait until a door closes before realizing that it is there.”

  “Did you once wait too long?”I ask.

  “Yes,” Shasti replies. “I was very, very lucky. That one door closed, but others opened for me. Still I wonder…. Well, never mind that.”

  Two birds fly down to the small pond and skim the water before settling. We sit in silence for minutes, letting the beauty of the place settle what the conversation has stirred up.

  “Time for me to go,” Shasti says.

  I stand and walk beside her as we head out of the small park.

  “It’s said that I have a long memory for harms done me and mine,” Shasti says. “I also have a long memory for those who have done me a kindness, as you have. In the hard times that are coming, and I believe we both see them on the horizon, remember me should you ever need help.”

  “I will,” I say.

  We reach the edge of the park. The aircars, with their guards and attendants, stand waiting across the street.

  Shasti turns and smiles down at me. “I hope we meet again.”

  “Thank you, Shasti,” I say. “I promise to think long and well on all you have told me.”

  To my surprise she leans down and kisses me on the cheek, then straightens and walks briskly off, her black and silver hair a banner in the breeze.

  The End

  Don’t miss Book one of

  The Maauro Chronicles

  Three alien machines descend to the asteroid base of their enemies. The ensuing battle is short and savage. The lone survivor hopes either for rescue, or for another chance to engage its enemies. It will be a long wait…

  Set in the same universe as the Robert Fenaday/Shasti Rainhell stories, but decades later, My Outcast State begins a new cycle of exploration of Confederation Space.

  Available now on Amazon and Kindle

  About The Author

  Edward McKeown is a writer and editor specializing in science fiction and fantasy with occasional forays into literary and nonfiction. Ed escaped from NY, but his old hometown supplies much of the background to his humorous “Lair of the Lesbian Love Goddess” shorts, as his new hometown in Charlotte, North Carolina does for his “Knight Templar” fantasy series. He enjoys a wide variety of interests from ballroom dance to the martial arts. He has also edited five Sha’Daa anthologies of wry tales of the apocalypse and a wide variety of short stories. Find him on Facebook and at edwardmckeown.weebly.com.

  Ed is best known for his Robert Fenaday/Shasti Rainhell series of SF novels, set on the Privateer Sidhe, issued by Hellfire Publications.

  More Books by Edward McKeown

  FROM

  an Imprint of Copper Dog Publishing, LLC

  More Books by Edward McKeown

  FROM Ad Astra Books

  More Titles from MoonDream Press

  More Titles from MoonDream Press

  More Titles from MoonDream Press

  Dark Poetry from MoonDream Press

  An Excerpt from Book one of

  The Maauro Chronicles,

  My Outcast State

  Chapter 1

  I attack the enemy base in the company of two older M4 combat androids. We are launched from a Daggerwing assault-ship and shed our mobility capsules as we land on the asteroid. The Infestation claim the base is a lifeboat station but Intel says it is equipped with heavy weapons and sensors.

  The weapons are there. A disrupter battery fires on us; another lashes out at the Daggerwing and the ships beyond. As we race across the surface of the iron asteroid, a disrupter hits the lead M4. It staggers and slows. Other weapons switch fire to the slowing android. It is destroyed.

  I am an M7, the newest combat android, a prototype, faster and better armored. I duck into a crater and return fire from my armspac. Explosions bloom and the disrupter battery is wiped out. The remaining M4 and I crash through the base airlock. Infestor drone soldiers are inside, clad in vacuum suits. They open fire. There is no room to dodge, so we trade fire from our onboard weapons and armspacs. The Infestors’ small-arms have little effect on the M4 and none on me. We destroy them and race through the rest of the facility, killing Infestors as we encounter them. I head for the command center. M4 will attack the long-range disruptors firing on our ships.

  Explosion. The corridor I occupy shatters, killing those Infestors I have not already dispatched. A mine, or perhaps my weapon, has set off a secondary explosion. I pause for self-repair. I am made of hyper-alloyed metals, ceramics and polymers. My outer casing has ablative layers and sections made to absorb blast damage. I exchange damaged exterior parts for interior and extrude new material to replace vaporized sections. Fortunately, I have taken no core damage. I waste no time on the aesthetics that make me look like a member of my creator’s race. I carry enough spare material inside to regenerate two legs and an arm so I can get my armspac and reengage the enemy. I am much smaller now, having used up my spare material.

  M4 reaches the disrupter battery, sited atop an arsenal. The bulk of the Infestor forces are arrayed around it. We confer for a millisecond. The battery is firing at our ships in the asteroid belt. I am already damaged, as is M4, and additional resistance is possible at the command post. By ourselves we may fail to take the station and suppress its weapons. We agree on a plan of action and M4 self-destructs, detonating its plasma generator. The blast destroys the disrupter battery and its supporting forces.

  I continue my attack alone and resistance crumbles. M4 may have killed the unit queen with its explosion. I neutralize the command post and mop up the base. In the process, I take seven prisoners. These I drag to a lower level and interrogate. Little useful intel is gained from these low-level creatures. After the last Infestor expires, I cleanse myself of their fragments. Then I delete the memories of the actual interrogation while saving the intel. This procedure is technically against my programming, but the longer I operate, the more latitude I discover in my behavioral routines. I do not know why I feel the need to do this, save that of late I have found the process of interrogation disturbing. I was created to destroy the Infestation and have done so for the seven years of my existence, yet I find more reasons to delete such information as time passes. I function more efficiently without these memories.

  I reach the surface of the asteroid and step out under the stars, triggering my recall signal. No answer. I repeat it several times, then extend my sensor net to maximum and pick up a cloud of ionized gas. M4 did not destroy the disruptors fast enough. The Daggerwing, along with the support and repair staff who care for me, are gone.

  I detect flashes of nuclear fire beyond my ship’s remains. Ambush. The base may have been bait in a trap. Our forces are destroyed or driven off.

  Since I do not face imminent capture, I delay self-destruct and contin
ue repairs. I am dismayed by my level of damage even though my exterior chassis is mostly restored. Much of the damage can only be repaired at home base, which now I doubt I shall ever see again.

  I consider my course of action. If the system has fallen to the Infestation, they will likely return to this asteroid. I should lie in wait to ambush any rescue party.

  I turn my scanners to the sky for a last long look at the stars, which now are my only companions, before turning to walk into the silent base. I switch to minimum power settings. My wait may be long.

  Chapter 2

  I hung around in bars a lot. Not that I’m a drunk. I went through a short spell of drinking after I was cashiered from the service for cowardice. But the bottle is slow suicide and I’m too young and interested in living for that.

  No, I hung out in bars because that’s where a human can find work on Kandalor’s Vanceport. The Spacewitch is one of the places expeditions launch from. Not the big government expeditions from the Confederacy or the Combines, which wouldn’t use somebody like me, but the shoestring expeditions from universities or organizations short on cash. I can fly interstellar. Not everyone can handle the hyperspace visualization. I can also fly atmo, which a lot of starjockeys can’t.

  So I staked out a small table in the back, away from the long bar with its brass and dark wood where the bad and dangerous hang out. My table sat under a hanging of red-fringed velvet, keeping me in comforting shadow. Square-D, the owner, knew me and would send over people looking for my type of skills. Square-D didn’t care about me one way or another, but pilots brought trade to the Spacewitch and, he got a cut.

  Luck was with me. Square-D was talking to a tall, dark-skinned woman in green fatigues. He nodded in my direction and she turned toward me. She was tall, with a pretty, symmetrical face and an overripe figure that strained the fatigues. I guessed her to be older than me, perhaps in her late twenties or early thirties. Her vest hung open and I saw a holster under it. She strode to my table.

  “Wrik Trigardt?” The voice matched the body, round and pleasant.

  I’d left my real name in the past, with my honor. “Just Wrik.” I neither stood nor extended my hand; manners belonged to another time and place.

  She slid into the booth and rested her breasts on the table as she leaned forward on her elbows. I got my eyes back up to her dark brown ones in time to catch the flash of white teeth against her dark skin. OK, she’d caught me looking, one for her.

  “I hear you’re a good pilot both on Kandalor and nearspace.”

  “Farspace too,” I said. “I have an interstellar rating.”

  “Nearspace will meet my needs,” she said. “You look kinda young to me.”

  I shrugged. “I’ve been flying since my early teens, military training as well. As they say: ‘It’s not the years, it’s the light years.’”

  I studied her. She had a slight accent I couldn’t place. Something about her said Old Colonies or even Home World. “What needs are those, Miss…?

  “Name’s Candace Deveraux, out from Earth. Call me Candy and I’ll shoot you in the knee. I’m looking for a private ship and pilot to take my colleagues to a certain riftoid.”

  “Treasure hunters.”

  She raised an eyebrow at me. “Prospectors and salvagers. You have a problem with that?”

  I raised a hand. “No offense. I make a living hauling people around Kandalor and the near-rift looking for Old Empire relics and tech. Sometimes they even find stuff.”

  “But for every one who finds something, a thousand go broke,” she quoted, leaning back. “True enough. Before we go much further, I’d like to know a little more about you. I gave you my name and world…”

  “My name, you know. I’m out of a Confed colony world, former military pilot.”

  Her look said she knew this already. “Some people say you’re out of Retief, a separatist colony. So why are you—?”

  “Talking to a darkskin?” I finished for her.

  She nodded. “Boers and Trekkers colonized Retief to get away from any contact with blacks. You regard us as inferior.”

  “I don’t regard you as anything,” I said, “assuming I was in fact born there. I take people as they are.”

  “Yet you fought in the Uprising?”

  “As I said, you’re assuming I was there. From what I heard, the Confederacy came in and told them to admit darkskins to Retief. Then they backed it up with force. Retief didn’t last long after the Confederacy got serious.

  “If that’s enough ‘get acquainted’ for you,” I said, and then, after sipping my drink, added, “I charge two hundred credits a day with fifty more if I go into vacuum. You pay for port fees and fuel. I get a hundred-credit advance now to reserve my time. You doubtless pulled my flight sheet at the port.”

  “Doubtless,” she said, smiling. “I set the schedules and you learn where and when we fly when I decide.”

  “Deal.” I tried to conceal my relief and surprise. She’d accepted my opening rates.

  “Give me a number where I can reach you. You’ll get twelve hours warning. Tell anybody where we are going and I’ll shoot you in the other knee.”

  I passed my card to her and she inserted it into a portacomp. A few keypunches gave her my number and me one hundred credits.

  She slid my card back to me. “You gonna buy me a drink with any of those credits, spaceman?”

  “Uh, sure.”

  She laughed. “Just kidding. Next time come up with the idea on your own.” She managed a nice sashay for a big woman as she walked away. I was tempted to whistle but afraid she might take target practice on my knees.

  I finished my drink and slipped out the back of the Spacewitch after leaving a healthy tip with Square-D. Distracted a little by my good luck, I failed to do my customary check of the alley before I started down. I caught the heavy, earthy smell just before a thick, furred arm fastened over my throat and arm.

  “So, Wrik, what are we up to?” I turned slowly in Truf’s iron grip--there was no point in struggling with the bear-like Okaran--to face Dusko, the tall, Dua-Denlenn who ran a third of Vanceport’s underworld. The Dua-Denlenn looked like a woodland elf gone to seed, with pale skin and blue pupilless eyes.

  “Dusko,” I nodded slowly. “I was just coming to see you.”

  “Of course, human,” Dusko said, looking me over as if I were edible. “You owe me fifty credits.”

  Sweat trickled down my back. “I have it here.”

  “How fortunate for you, though perhaps disappointing to Truf here.”

  The Okaran whiffed a breath in my ear. “There will be other opportunities.”

  “My cardcomp’s in my inside pocket,” I said.

  “Let him go, Truf. This youngling’s too prudent to be dangerous.”

  I pulled out the cardcomp and handed it to Dusko, who ran his own card- comp over it and made the transfer.

  “Who was the offworlder you were talking to?” Dusko asked. “Anything I would be interested in?”

  “A rift-haul for a prospector. She’s cautious. No up front info from her.”

  “So no way to set her up,” Dusko shrugged. “Doesn’t sound worth my effort. You will let me know if there’s a chance for mutual profit off her.”

  “I did last time,” I said.

  “True,” Dusko said. “Their personal effects brought a nice sum. If it eases your conscience, they turned out to be druggers.”

  I tried not to remember the traders I’d led into Dusko’s ambush. But it was either them or my ship and the ship was all I had.

  “Good doing business with you,” Dusko said. “As Truf said, there will be other opportunities. See you around, human.” The languid Dua-Denlenn stepped back into the darkness, followed by his hulking guard. I leaned back against the wall, feeling the night air sift through my shirt and fighting the chill. Dusko was
right. I was prudent. I had a knife in my boot and a slug-thrower in my back belt, but I wouldn’t try an Okaran with the small caliber weapon at such close range. Throwing down on any of the established Guild was insane, anyway.

  I decided to sleep in my ship, an old Dauntless class scout I’d named Sinner, a leftover from the Conchirri Wars long ago. Before heading out, I arranged for the port recorder to forward any message from Candace Deveraux to Sinner.

  I hopped a native transport, which was the cheapest transport available. The open cart, towed by two oxen-like animals, was an odd contrast to ground cars or flitters but it was emblematic of Kandalor, which combined poverty and wealth as well as high and low tech. It had been a forgotten world until a Confed expedition stumbled across it and the races of the Old Concordiat. A few native Kandalorians, muffled in their robes, glanced at me with their bulbous black eyes but otherwise ignored me. I returned the favor and tried to breathe shallowly, the smell of the natives competed with that of the draft animals.

  Sinner sat at the spaceport’s edge under a metal overhang I’d rented to keep off the worst of the weather. She was about thirty meters long, a bulky ovoid with short stubby wings and lots of interior volume. I’d painted her anti-corrosive chrome yellow. Unlike military craft, we civvies want to be seen. I keyed in the secure code and locked myself in, letting my breath go in a rush. On Kandalor you live like a rabbit or a wolf. Maybe I’d have an extra big helping of carrots tonight.

  One week later, I was doing some scut-work on a small Indie-freighter when my comp buzzed. I took off my gauntlets and sealed the engine port before answering. “Hello.”

  “It’s Candace. Time to go prospecting. How soon can you launch?’

  “I’m in good shape for a Rift run this side of the 38th in four hours. If we are going out farther, I’ll need to add wing tanks.”