by Justin Sloan
Project Exodus
Justin Sloan
Elder Tree Press
Contents
Copyright
Untitled
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Author Notes
About the Author
What Next?
Copyright 2018 by Justin Sloan
This is a work of fiction and all rights are reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the prior written permission of the copyright owner.
Thank you team!
Editors
Myra Shelley
JIT/BETA
Edward Rosenfeld
Lois Haupt
Kelly O’Donnell
Jackie Weaver
Tracey Byrnes
Diane Brenner
Jackie Weaver
Sarah Weir
Untitled
BETAS: Edward Rosenfeld, Jackie Weaver, Kelly O’Donnell, Tracey Byrnes
SECOND ROUND: Lois, Socrates
1
Marick: Transport Ship Dynastic
The transport ship Dynastic had nearly cleared Space Station Horus’s outer limits when the ship started to slow at the sign of approaching Horus fighter crafts. An announcement rang out that all personnel were to remain in their rooms as Project Destiny soldiers came aboard and searched for two stowaways. Never one to jump to conclusions, Marick’s first hope was that this was a random check performed on all transport ships traveling between space stations. They were transporting miners to a prison station, after all, and it seemed that those in charge would want to be careful of just who was on board.
All of that was thrown from his mind, however, when the overhead speakers further announced, “We are being hailed in regards to a certain PD soldier Stealth, a.k.a. Marick Carter, and a hacker known as Alice, leader of the Looking Glass terrorist team.”
“A.k.a. Alicia,” Marick said, turning to his wife. She was still in bed and had been catching up on some well-deserved rest. Impersonating a PD recruit and challenging New Origins itself in an attempt to save Marick was a feat worth celebrating.
Following their narrow escape from Nightshade and the Taipans, they had been quickly shown to their quarters. A man named Antwon checked in on them from time to time and bring them food and water. Feeling like a prisoner while on their way to a prison station wasn’t great, but at the same time, this was their only way out of there. After their near-death experience of having almost floated off into space, the criminal leader of Os Dragoes had helped them escape to Ramiel. Space Station Horus had gone on lockdown and the space elevator would’ve been shut off. It wasn’t as if they could hop a fence and run off to hide. Out there, if they were to ‘hop a fence,’ they’d be left floating in space until they died.
Alicia, who had now begun referring to herself as such again, stirred, smiled, and rubbed her eyes as she sat up. When she opened her eyes again, a look of realization hit as the smile vanished.
“Damn, did they just say—”
“Yes,” Marick replied, handing her a glass of water and an energy bar. “We need a plan, fast.”
“You heard?” a voice said from the door as it slid open.
Alicia pulled back, instinctively covering herself with the sheets even though she was wearing a pair of shorts and a tank top given to her by the same man who now stood in the doorway.
Antwon.
“Apologies for not knocking or announcing myself, but I’m sure you heard.”
Marick nodded hesitantly, wondering on which side of this the man fell.
Antwon grinned, then motioned for them to follow. “First things first,” he said when he saw they weren’t moving. “You’ve been under our protection since Veles handed you over, and you’ll continue to be. He’s our man, through and through. Well, rather, we’re his men and women. Here’s what we need to do—figure out where to store you while they scan the place without letting the captain in on your presence.”
“You’re with Veles?” Alicia asked. “Wouldn’t that make you one of the prison escapees?”
The man shrugged. “Overall, we benefit by having people on station and off. Enough of the prisoners of Ramiel are with us that we need a sort of emissary. That would be moi.”
A glance through the ship’s windows showed that the fighters were already docking. Not much time.
“Too much worry on your faces,” Antwon said, gesturing in the other direction through the window. “See there?”
Marick looked first and then stepped back for Alicia to take a glance as relief flooded over him. “We’re not the only one being checked.”
“Which means,” Alicia added, turning back to them, “they have no idea where we are.”
“And I’m going to keep it that way,” Antwon replied with a wink.
They darted along the main passage, but hearing a clanking sound ahead, Antwon cursed under his breath and moved to the left, going past a hold where a soldier was already questioning several miners who would be using the new space station as a jumping-off port to asteroids farther out.
“You have somewhere in mind?” Marick asked in a whisper, and Antwon simply nodded, motioning them down a level. They descended into a hole via a staircase, then moved along a line of cargo to what appeared to be a regular wall.
“In here,” Antwon said, placing his hand against the wall. Biometrics read his palm and then what had seemingly been a wall was suddenly a door. “Smuggling. Sometimes the corporations can be stingy, and a bit of black market trading on the side is needed to make ends meet.”
Voices came from not far off so Antwon quickly shooed them in and gave a confident wave before closing them in darkness. The space they were in was the size of a small closet and quite dark, but it was light enough to see the shapes of various boxes that likely contained more smuggled goods.
Marick first heard his own breathing and then Alicia’s. Could he really be here with her—the woman he had thought of as Alice the hacker, his the target not so long ago? How ironic if he made it to this point only to be yanked away from her.
He wouldn’t let it happen. He couldn’t.
As the enemy approached, he felt his blood boiling and his muscles tensing. He was overcome with the urge to bust through the door and smash their skulls in, destroying them in every way for ever thinking they could take him from Alicia or for causing them to be in this situation in the first place.
New Origins had taken almost everything from him that ever mattered, and they would pay. His senses became more intensified and he could smell them out there, sense their movement and hear the sounds of their beating hearts. He wanted blood, and by God, he would have it.
He took a step forward, prepared to do whatever it took to end this right there, even if it meant losing his life. He still wore the exoskeleton with its teleporter, and Alicia had her force field. Perhaps there was a wa
y they could survive this after all.
Alicia’s hand gently touched his arm, and it was like a floodgate had let out all the rage and hatred. He turned to her, blinking, and put a hand to his brow at the realization that he had been about to do something incredibly foolish. Acting out at that point would have put the whole ship at risk. And going against a group of PD soldiers who might be trained to his level? Not smart.
“There,” she mouthed, pointing.
Now that his eyes had better adjusted to the darkness, he saw that the space they were in actually led into a narrow chamber, like a hidden passageway along the walls. They were able to pause at a bend, listening as the soldiers asked about the door they’d somehow discovered.
Antwon was making excuses, but he didn’t really need to. They’d be gone by the time the soldiers opened it, and the passageway wasn’t readily noticeable.
From the exploring they’d done earlier, Marick knew that going this way could lead to the deck, and just before that must be the control room and comms. Alicia seemed to have had this exact thought because she motioned him on in that direction.
“We just need to lay low,” Marick hissed.
“No.” She motioned him on with no room for debate and he wondered if she’d always bossed him around like that. He kind of liked it.
Together, they went on, pausing briefly as they heard two more soldiers pass by on the other side of the wall.
“It’s over there,” Alicia said, motioning to metal rungs that stuck out from the wall. Dim blue light was seeping in from cracks in the walls, giving them greater visibility. “I’m going up.”
He considered arguing but glanced back. The voices were closer, though he couldn’t tell if they were coming from the room they’d just vacated or if they’d discovered the passageway after all. If soldiers did come their way, it would be better not to be there when they arrived.
“I’ll be right behind you,” he said, seeing that she was already climbing. He prepared himself and then glanced up to a view of his wife, her fake PD soldier’s uniform tight on her perfect ass. Damn. How had he lived a year without seeing that?
She paused, turned around, and blew him a kiss, which made his mouth go dry until he reminded himself that she was his wife, after all. Not only was it okay to be caught checking her out, but she probably liked it. As much as he wanted his memories back, this whole falling-in-love-and-lust-all-over-again thing was nice for the time being.
More footsteps, and this time he was certain—the soldiers were in the passageway with them. A glance up showed Alicia’s feet disappearing out of view, so he continued after her. Clang, clang, clang. The footsteps grew closer and he heaved himself up, lying there on a piece of metal that must’ve been the roof to a hallway. He didn’t dare move in case doing so would alert them, but he was ready to pounce if it came to that.
He couldn’t see Alicia, but as he listened and his blood started burning again, he heard her foot gently touch down on the other side of the arch they’d climbed over. There was a click and then several tapping sounds, so faint that he was certain no one else would have noticed.
“Crapcakes!” Alicia hissed and Marick felt his stomach clench, hoping the PD soldiers hadn’t heard. Some more clicking followed and then another small outburst, this one quieter, then a simple, “Yes!”
A few long seconds passed, and then one of the soldiers said, “Incoming comms. They found them on one of the other ships. Move out.”
Marick and Alicia waited there, listening as the soldiers departed, and then waited a bit longer. Finally, a sound came from behind them and Antwon appeared, crouched in the darkness.
“You’re responsible for the misdirection, I’m guessing?” he said with a knowing grin. “Veles mentioned how resourceful you two are. Thanks.”
“Shouldn’t we be thanking you?” Alicia replied with a nervous chuckle.
He shrugged. “Maybe, but if they’d caught you on this ship, that wouldn’t have been the end of it. At a minimum you saved me from a bunch of paperwork, but more likely something far worse. Come on, I’ll get you somewhere closer to a bathroom and slightly more comfortable for the remainder of the trip.”
They followed him out. On the way, Alicia kept glancing over at Marick, concern creasing her brow.
“Were you okay back there?” she finally asked. “You looked like you were about to explode, and I mean more so than a normal person should look in that situation. And your right eye… it’s all bloodshot.”
“It felt like something was taking me over,” he admitted.
“Keep it inside,” she said, shaking her head, “at least until we can have someone check us out.”
“Us?”
She glanced over. “Did I say ‘us’?”
“You did.”
“Well, with the upgrades… or maybe stress? I’m not sure I feel completely myself either.”
A shot of panic hit his chest and he grabbed her hand, giving it a slight squeeze as they went. She smiled at the gesture, squeezed back, and dropped his hand.
Finally, they reached the transport ship’s navigation chamber and Antwon told the one woman in there to scram. When she was gone, he pointed to the far side where a door was slightly visible in the shadows.
“There you go. Bathroom over there to the right, and we’ll continue with food as before. That said, we shouldn’t be too long now. I’ll see that you aren’t disturbed by telling them I’m plotting our next course.”
“You’re a…?”
“No, I don’t work in navigation,” he said with a laugh, “but the corporations have people like me—some on their side and some not. The ones who fall in the ‘not’ category are the ones you have to watch out for.”
“And you fall in the latter?” Marick asked.
Antwon shrugged, tugged at the charcoal-colored vest he wore, and smiled. “If you need anything, I’ll be around.”
“Why are you doing this for us?” Alicia asked.
“Let’s just say Veles put in a good word for you two. With us, all we have is trust. If he says you’re family, you’re family to me, too.”
Marick thanked their new friend and then joined Alicia in the hidden chambers Antwon had shown them. The space wasn’t as roomy as they’d had before and was small enough to force the two to sit closer. As physically uncomfortable as that was, Marick preferred it that way.
His memories of his wife weren’t coming to him as fast as he’d hoped, and he still felt like a stranger with her. But being in close quarters like this ensured that he didn’t have to try to be close to her; he just was. They were in what must have been a storage room of some sort with only a dim light coming from the blue glowing lines around the edges of the walls.
She took his hand, kissed it, and then leaned into him.
“I know you don’t remember this,” she said, “but when we were young, just starting to fall in love, you had roommates in this horribly ugly yellow military housing the Marines put you in.”
“Yeah?”
She smiled at him as if she were back there at that moment, young and falling in love for the first time. “We hid in a closet just like this. It stank, and it was embarrassing—your fellow jarheads just outside, us trying to keep quiet so they wouldn’t know we were in there.”
“Oh, God. That sounds horrible.”
“It wasn’t,” she said, pulling his hand to her waist. “You were loving, caring… wild.”
“I didn’t!” he said in surprise. “Right there in the closet while my friends were in the other room?”
“It was more me, but you went along with it,” she said, then moved in and kissed his neck. “How could I resist. And you know what?”
He cocked his head, wondering what she would say next. Finally, he took the bait. “What?”
“Nothing’s changed,” she replied, leaning into him for a long kiss.
He was eager to get off that ship and figure out the plan, to be done with all of the chaos and the PD soldiers and
New Origins. But for now, he was quite all right with this trip taking as long as it wanted.
2
Alicia: Space Station Ramiel
Exiting the Dynastic onto Space Station Ramiel was an odd sensation for Alicia, who had done her research on the various schematics of space stations, preparing for the possibility that the answer to her husband’s disappearance might not have been on Horus. It hadn’t been necessary, but she was always the type to be over-prepared rather than under.
While the design of Ramiel was quite different from Horus, it was like walking right back into the devil’s hands. This wasn’t the same corporation, however, so she knew her level of worry was exaggerated. The corporations were often at each other’s throats, especially up here in space where it was rumored that they secretly allowed pirates to steal from their competitors.
She shuffled in her robes—orange for her, black for Marick—looking around at the large platform of docks with the three towers representing the three pillars of New Hope’s business model: Discipline, Strength, and Wisdom. They were known for being the more segregated of the big corporations, meaning it was populated by those who had long ago seen the value of space exploration and gotten in during its infancy. New Hope had risen up and proven its efficiency, and after the big wars, they’d even proven that a civilian military could have its advantages—focus on the greater economic good, resource preservation, worldwide advancement, and control over politics and personal matters.
