by J. N. Chaney
J. N. Chaney
Copyrighted Material
Orion Colony and Renegade Star Copyright © 2018 by Variant Publications
Book design and layout copyright © 2018 by JN Chaney
This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living, dead, or undead, is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved.
No part of this publication can be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without permission in writing from JN Chaney and Jonathan Yanez.
www.jnchaney.com
www.jonathan-yanez.com
1st Edition
Books in the Renegade Star Universe
Renegade Star Series:
Renegade Star
Renegade Atlas
Renegade Moon
Renegade Lost
Renegade Fleet
Renegade Earth
Renegade Dawn
Renegade Children (Out Now!)
Renegade Union (January 2019)
Renegade Empire (March 2019)
Standalones:
Nameless: A Renegade Star Story (Out Now!)
The Orion Colony Series:
Orion Colony
Orion Uncharted (Dec 2018)
Stay Up To Date
Chaney posts updates, official art, previews, and other awesome stuff on his website. You can also follow him on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter.
He also created a special Facebook group called “JN Chaney’s Renegade Readers” specifically for readers to come together and share their lives and interests, discuss the series, and speak directly to him. Please check it out and join whenever you get the chance!
You can also join Jonathan Yanez’s fangroup, called Jonathan’s Reading Wolves. Check it out for more info about his upcoming releases.
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Orion Colony
By
J.N. Chaney
Jonathan Yanez
BOOK DESCRIPTION
Orion Colony
Orion Colony Series #1
Humanity’s Exodus is about to begin.
When half of mankind revolts and demands more opportunity, those at the top decide on a compromise: they will build the first colony ships and allow those who are willing to discover new worlds to leave and start over.
Twelve ships are built, the first of which is called Orion. Many are eager to go, but only one hundred thousand are chosen for each vessel. Far from Earth, a new life awaits, and it promises the prosperity they’ve always wanted.
But still, resistance stirs, eager to sabotage this new expansion effort, threatening the promise of a new life. As Orion moves through the void of space, towards a distant world, its passengers must fight for survival in an unprecedented conflict.
Win or lose, their future will be forever changed.
Experience a sprawling galactic tale in this first entry to The Orion Colony series. If you’re a fan of Firefly, Battlestar Galactica, or Indiana Jones, you’ll love this epic, space opera adventure.
For all of the Renegade Readers.
Your support made this new series possible.
-J.N. Chaney
To J.N. Chaney,
Now, we’re cooking with gasoline.
-Jonathan Yanez
Chapter 1
Life on Earth was changing.
Thanks to the creation of an immortality drug, humanity had divided itself into two distinct groups--the Eternals, a class of wealthy, prospering people, and the Transients, which consisted of lower- and middle-class folk who were just trying to stay alive in a world that was quickly running out of room.
My name is Dean Slade, and I’m a Transient mechanic, grade-2.
Once the Transients rebelled against the all-powerful Eternals, demanding a return to the old ways, things seemed to get out of hand, quick and in a hurry. It took a few months, but the Eternals had struck a deal with the leaders of the rebellion, finally granting their lower level counterparts—us Transients—an opportunity to branch out and leave this planet. This compromise had been a long time coming.
Twelve seed colony ships had been built over the last few decades, each the size of a small moon. I was one of the lucky sons of guns working in the trenches, assembling parts. Mechanics were high in demand right now, thanks to the sheer size of the ships. It wasn’t as if they valued our trade, however. Far from it.
They just needed hands to hold the tools, turn the screws, and connect the pieces. Automation could only get you so far, after all. There was just no substitute for human hands and a little elbow grease.
It was about two kilometers in each direction from my apartment to the yard where I worked. During this walk, I traveled through a neighborhood well known for its crime statistics. As it happened, I was about to become one of those numbers.
The sounds of footsteps shuffling echoed like a whisper from the nearby alleyway, followed by someone gagging and coughing. Usually, I didn’t get involved in these types of things. My credo was, don’t ask, don’t tell. Just keep my head down and do my job. Live my life.
Survive.
I don’t know what made me break my silent pledge. It’s not like I didn’t know better. For whatever reason, I chose to stop and investigate the sounds, poking my nose where it undoubtedly did not belong.
Around the corner, large trash receptacles and a fair amount of garbage littered the ground. The smell of week-old rations someone had thrown up wafted through the air. Past the stench, three men wearing heavy coats and beanies struggled with a woman. Outnumbered three to one, she still found the strength to fight back.
While I didn’t know her name, I knew I had seen her before. She was one of the other mechanics working on the colony ship. There were hundreds of us, and I’d only taken the time to talk to a handful.
The three men harassing her were reaching into her coat pockets, or at least I hoped that’s what they were doing. The alternative left a foul taste in my mouth.
“Easy, come on now,” snickered the man covering her lips. “Credits don’t come easy around here. This is Warlord territory, so you’d better get to know that name. You’re going to have to start paying a fee for walking on our streets.”
She tried to speak, but his hand kept her voice muffled. His two counterparts were wrestling her arms to her side, while still rifling through her pockets. To her credit, she wasn’t making things easy on them as she squirmed around, trying to get away. Suddenly, they ripped off her coat and beanie, revealing a curtain of long, dark hair.
“Well, well, what do we got here?” asked the second man as he pulled out of her pockets. “A fistful of credits and some kind of—card? What is this? Is this one of those fancy new holo—”
Her foot came up, kicking him so in the groin.
The unlucky mugger sank to his knees, whining like a small child.
At the same time, she bit the first man’s hand. He grunted and pulled his palm away.
She looked at the entrance of the alley, seeing me for the first time, and her eyes begged for help. She opened her mouth to yell when the last mugger slammed a fist into the side of her face. A hard crack sounded, and she slumped to the ground.
The man glanced back at me, finally alerted to my presence, and all three men weighed my intentions. I wasn’t the biggest brute in the
room, by any means. I was only average height and in decently good shape from my years lifting and working with my hands. Still, I’d been in enough fights to know I could handle myself.
You don’t need to do this, I reminded myself. This isn’t your problem. This has nothing to do with you.
“What are you looking at?” The bigger one who’d hit her across the jaw yelled. “You gonna do something?”
“Yeah,” I said, plainly. “I guess I am.”
“Wait a minute. I know you,” the man holding the dazed woman said. “I mean, you’re different now with the beard and long hair but—I’ve seen you somewhere, haven’t I? What’s your name, fella?”
I ignored the question, making my way down the alley. My steel lunch box container was the only weapon I had, but it would have to do.
“You’re a mechanic, aren’t you?” said the one who had his balls kicked in. He was still recovering, barely able to stand straight. “Just another Eternal slave. Working on their ships, following their rules and doing whatever your Eternal masters tell you to do. The Warlords don’t bend the knee to those albino scum. We make our own rules. You’d better watch out, boy, because if we don’t get you, the Disciples will. Yeah, the Disciples are who you need to worry about.”
“Naw, he’s just dressed like a mechanic, but he’s someone else. It’s right on the tip of my tongue,” said the man holding the woman. His face was screwed up in a look of concentration. “Where have I seen you before?”
“Don’t think too hard,” I said. “You might overheat.”
“Oh, you got jokes,” the big man said, moving to intercept me. “Let’s see how funny you are when you’re lying on the ground. There’s three of us.”
“If you want to make it a fair fight, I can wait for you to go grab more of your friends,” I said. “Or you can just walk away with all of your teeth. No one will hold it against you.”
“That’s it, asshole!” he raged.
He was faster than I gave him credit for. He ran forward, swinging with his right fist.
I stepped back, slamming my lunch box upward with every ounce of strength I had. Adrenaline kicked in. It had been a while since I’d felt this, and I was scared to say I missed it.
My heart rate doubled as the lunch box exploded on impact. The container latch broke, sending my meager meal hurling through the air, falling in a pile of garbage. A spray of bloody teeth followed, launching together with the food in a gruesome display.
I didn’t wait to see how damaging that blow would be. I dropped my broken lunch box and took to the brute. He didn’t have a chance. It was an unfair fight from the beginning.
I landed two left hooks to the body, followed by a right to his temple, sending him to the ground.
The first man released the girl. She was finally conscious enough to stand on her own and slowly staggered away from him.
“I do know you,” said the man. “You’re—”
“Stop talking and grab him!” yelled the other guy who was still holding his groin from the pain.
He reached into his coat pocket revealing a knife with a short blade. He rushed at me with a flurry of blows. I blocked most of them, but it had been too long, and I was rusty. On his second attempt, he stabbed my left forearm.
Pain exploded in my limb. I clenched my teeth, refusing to yell out. Instead of concentrating on the knife in my arm, I took advantage of his momentary sense of triumph, breaking his nose with a brutal strike from my right hand. Blood spurted into the air like a broken sprinkler. Whether it was the pain or being in a fight again, bloodlust took over, and I laid into the man.
Landing a series of strikes to his body and face, a rib snapped inside of him. Coming out of my trance-like state, I shook my head, breathing hard. I didn’t want to kill him, just put him down.
Glancing over, the last man had backed out of the alley. His mouth formed in a wide circle. He gave me one last look, then bolted.
I decided to let him go, knowing it would be a waste to follow. Instead, I turned around and walked over to the woman.
“Thank you,” she said, massaging her jaw. “If you hadn’t come, they would have—well, I don’t want to think about what they would have done to me.”
“You shouldn’t walk by yourself in this part of the city,” I said, motioning to the two unmoving bodies in the alley. “With everything that’s happening, it’s just gonna get worse around here.”
“I usually don’t,” the woman said. “I picked up an extra shift at the yard, and well, I needed to get to work. You’re—you’re bleeding by the way.”
I looked down at my left forearm. As the adrenaline wore off, its throb only grew more intense.
“I’m fine,” I lied. It seemed like the right thing to say. “I’ve got to get to work now. I’m going to be late.”
“At least let me stop that bleeding,” she said, picking up her coat from the pavement and coming closer. She reached inside her coat pocket for her beanie and tore it, making an impromptu bandage.
Getting a better look at her now, she was slender with deep brown eyes and full lips. Problem was, I didn’t want to get any closer to her, or anyone else for that matter. “Really.” I took a step back. “I’m fine.”
“Hold still,” she said, reaching for my forearm.
I bared my teeth against the pain as she squeezed the cloth around the wound.
“No warning? Not even a countdown or something like that?” I asked.
It wasn’t pretty, but it would do the job until I reached the yard. I could pass the injury off as something that happened to me at work and receive medical attention there. They had a med pod that could fix a wound like this in under an hour--one of the perks for working on the colony ships. Gotta keep those cogs turning.
“I’m Stacy, by the way,” she said, moving to pick up her scattered belongings.
“That’s nice,” I answered back.
“Really? You’re not even going to tell me your name?” she asked, raising her brow.
“Dean. And I’m still late.”
She stepped aside, picking up her lunch bag and a red holo card. Whatever the card was, it seemed precious to her. She quickly stuffed it into her pocket, as if she was protecting it.
I thought about digging through the trash for my own lunch, but the horn for the next shift blared from the yard.
If I didn’t get there soon, I was going to be in a heap of trouble with the foreman, and he wasn’t exactly the forgiving type.
Chapter 2
“I suspected this from you, Wilson,” Boss Creed said to Stacy, skewering her with a severe stare. He ran a hand over his bald head as he looked at me. “But not from you, Slade. You’re always on time, keep your head down and—are you bleeding?”
“New fashion trend,” I said, hiding my wounded arm behind my back. The makeshift tourniquet Stacy fashioned for me was beginning to bleed through. My arm felt like it was on fire, and the pain was growing more intense.
“Uh huh,” Boss Creed said, clearly not believing me, but also not caring enough to pursue that line of questioning. “You know there are a dozen other mechanics on the line that would kill for your job. Right now, we’re only weeks away from the greatest journey into space Earth has ever seen, and you two are here showing up fifteen minutes after the horn. I have enough to worry about with threats from the Disciples. I don’t need delinquent mechanics on my mind.”
Boss Creed looked us over again.
“Sir--” Stacy cleared her throat to speak up. “It’s not Dean’s fault he saved—”
“I saved her from a bad date last night, and she returned the favor by going out with me, instead,” I boldfaced lied. “It was a late one. Too many drinks. It won’t happen again.”
I could feel Stacy glaring at me. Not just for the lie, but also for what I was insinuating. I didn’t care. Any lie was better than the truth. This was something Boss Creed could understand—two people acting like fools, spending a work night together. He’d been mar
ried for twenty years, but he still talked about his dating life in the break room. Still bragged about the girls he’d been with before the missus tied him down.
“Oh, I see.” Boss Creed stood from his seat behind his desk, crossing thick arms over his chest. “All right, both of you are docked a half day’s pay. One more screw-up like this and it’ll be your jobs. I have too much going on right now to deal with relationship drama. Now, get the hell out of here and make up for the lost time.”
“Thank you.” I turned for the door, trying not to appear too eager to get out of the office.
I reached for the door with my right hand and let myself out into the cold morning. The familiar sounds of welding tools, power hammers, and chain blades echoed in the yard. Engineers, construction workers, and their supervisors were all hard at work on the ship.
Most of the vessel was being constructed at a station near Mars, but most of the more complex systems were designed and put together down here. There were dozens of factories just like ours, each of them tasked with producing specific pieces of a greater whole--a ship that most of us would never have the pleasure of seeing with our own eyes.
The ship didn’t have a name yet but was being built in unison with eleven others. The project had taken years to see through to fruition. It was the start of a whole new era for humanity, a chance for the Transients to get out there and build something of their own.
That was the agreement the Eternals had made with them--stop rebelling and everyone who wanted to leave would be given passage to another world. A fresh start on the other side of the galaxy, never to return. It was an enticing prospect for people who’d spent their lives at the bottom, desperate for a better life.
The first seed colony ship would be launched in the next few weeks, carrying one hundred thousand colonists.
I didn’t really care too much about any of this. Now, I just wanted to get paid and do my job. Oh, and head over to the medical station and blame my wound on a work incident. I needed to get the wound disinfected, and right now, some pain meds to ease the throbbing burn I felt creeping through my wound and up my shoulder.
