Sharpe End

by James David Victor

  Sharpe End

  Raven Sharpe Chronicles, Book 3

  James David Victor

  Fairfield Publishing

  Copyright © 2018 Fairfield Publishing

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. Except for review quotes, this book may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, without the written consent of the author.

  This story is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual people, places, or events is purely coincidental.

  Contents

  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

  Thank You

  Bonus Content: Story Preview

  1

  A human man and a large, shaggy Earth wolf sprinted through the streets of Valha IV in pursuit of a skinny, one-eyed, butter-yellow male N’aarvian named Kid.

  ‘If you had listened to Raven, we wouldn’t be doing this, ’ Axel made a point of saying as they collided with a pedestrian for the seventh time since starting this little chase. They had never intended to be in pursuit through a crowded city street, but things hadn’t exactly gone as planned.

  And Blake’s companion wanted him to know that it was his fault.

  ‘Shut up. ’ The human didn’t have a good comeback for it because he was pretty sure that the stupid dog was right.

  “Clear the way!” he shouted aloud, waving at the Valha natives filling the street. Every time he or Axel ran into one of them, it slowed them down and Kid slipped further away.

  When they had first taken the case, Blake had thought that ‘Kid’ was a stupid name for a non-human. Raven had informed him that the name was also a word in his native N’aarvia dialect. Blake had reasserted that he thought it was a dumb-sounding name. Of course, five seconds after he’d said it, he'd realized that he was the one sounding dumb…

  “Out of the way!” he shouted, somehow managing to growl at the same time. He wanted to just draw his gun and shoot at Kid, but he knew that could result in many bad things and almost no good ones. The most likely thing to happen would be a panic that trampled them all to death.

  The upside to that would be that he'd be dead, so he wouldn’t have to hear about this from his ex-wife later.

  “Why won’t you people MOVE?!” Blake railed against them. Axel growled and snapped at everyone in front of him, which found a little more success in making people clear a path.

  Of course, part of the trouble was that the Valha people were all pretty short but blocky. It wasn’t even like hitting another human, where there was some rebound effect that you could use to further your momentum. They were more like stumbling blocks, and he nearly fell straight over one particularly wide female. He would have ended up flat on his face if he hadn’t recovered at the last moment.

  Every collision was more time he wasn’t likely to recover, however, so he wanted to clear them out of the way…

  They just weren’t listening to him.

  Maybe he should have read his information about this world more closely. Perhaps shouting didn’t convey urgency here. He just didn’t know, but at least a growling wolf seemed to translate very well between worlds.

  Kid suddenly turned a sharp corner sending Blake scrambling and stumbling into a group of Valha. They were verbal about it, although in such a monotone native tongue—which his neuro-implant struggled to interpret—it was hard to be sure if they were checking on his welfare or cursing him out.

  Well, whatever they were saying, he knew that he was cursing.

  Axel, of course, had no trouble making the turn and the crowds parted like water before him as he sprinted after the alien ahead while Blake struggled to catch up. He nearly fired off a shot just to stop Kid, but he knew that would be one more very bad idea on a long list of his very bad ideas. At the very least, he’d never hear the end of it from Raven. At worst, he’d get arrested. Their security clearance on this planet was limited.

  ‘Hurry up, slowpoke, ’ Axel called back.

  ‘Shut up, ’ Blake responded. ‘I’ve only got two legs, you know. ’

  ‘Humans are terribly designed. ’

  Blake might have retorted again, but he realized he’d walked right into that one. So he stopped talking and just concentrated on pushing himself to the limit. Axel was likely the one about to catch Kid, but Blake at least wanted to have a hand in it so it didn’t look like the wolf had done all the work.

  Kid took another corner, which put them onto a side street with far less traffic. This was both good and bad, helping Blake as much as it did Kid.

  ‘I didn’t think Kid’s record said he’d ever been here, ’ Blake commented. ‘How does he know these bloody freaking streets so well? ’

  ‘Perhaps the record was incomplete, ’ Axel replied pragmatically.

  Again, he had no good reply for that. It was so simple an answer that Blake felt like an idiot for even saying anything.

  He seemed to be feeling that way a lot lately, and he really wasn’t liking it.

  ‘However, his apparent knowledge puts us at a disadvantage if we do not catch him soon, ’ Axel went on. With a yipping growl, the large grey wolf put his head down and poured whatever energy he had left into running again.

  Blake focused on his running as well and burrowed into his own brain. He reached out to Nyx, hoping that her sensors could see further ahead than his eyes.

  ‘Can you tell me how many options he has to lose us on the path he’s on? ’

  There was a long pause and then Nyx replied, ‘On the current street, very few unless a door happens to be open that he knows how to lock once inside. Two possible side streets coming up in the next five minutes, at your current speed, seem to have access to the underground city substructure. Should he end up in those tunnels, his species’ night vision will serve him far better than yours will serve you. ’

  Blake almost groaned, but he couldn’t waste the breath. ‘Thanks, ’ he said dryly.

  He tried to keep his eyes out for the upcoming side streets, but alley mouths tended to look the same as regular doors from this angle and at this speed. However, it became pretty obvious when Kid made a turn and there was no sign of a door. Axel immediately followed, and Blake was just a few moments behind.

  As he careened into the alley, however, he saw Kid at a dead stop with his hands in the air. In front of him was Raven, Blakes ex-wife and fellow hunter. She had her pistol out and aimed at Kid’s face.

  “You can’t shoot me here,” Kid said in perfect Galactic Standard. “The Valha Government won’t like it.”

  “No witnesses,” Raven pointed out with a smirk. “They won’t know. Wanna try me, or are you going to come peacefully?”

  Kid was still for a moment, then dropped his head. “I will go.”

  Raven’s smirk turned mock-sweet. “Good choice,” she said, then glanced over the alien’s shoulder to where Blake was panting. “Nice of you to join us, Blake. Why don’t you put some cuffs on this guy?”

  2

  “I had everything under control,” Blake said as they returned to the main cabin of Raven’s ship.

  She tried very hard to not roll her eyes, and succeeded a little. “Oh, please,” she
snapped back, tired of Blake’s whining. “You’re bright red like you’re about to explode from the exertion and you were falling behind as it was. If he’d slipped Axel, he would have been gone.”

  Blake frowned. “How do you know I was falling behind?”

  Raven crossed her arms over her chest and just stared at him. “No wonder you’ve been so bad at this job,” she said flatly. “Nyx, you idiot. She could track you, and between her and Silvanus, they could see where Kid was going once he got closer to the ships. He’s the only one of his race on the planet, so they isolated him in proximity to you and reported it to me as I moved to get ahead of him.”

  He looked like he wanted to snap back, but he didn’t because he knew he didn’t have anything to snap back with.

  “I can’t remember why we agreed to work together again,” he said, somewhat sulkily.

  “Because you weren’t making much money and then got unwittingly tangled up in a smuggling ring,” she reminded him. “Now it’s clear that you need adult supervision, and here I am.”

  Normally, she tried to not be so…barbed with him, but she was in a bad mood. He’d said he could catch Kid on his own and so he’d gone off without her. She’d given him advice, but she had known that he’d ignore it. Which was why she’d worked with the two ship’s AIs to track them both so she could get into position to catch Kid.

  It wasn’t that she minded working or doing her job, because she didn’t, but she did mind that she had to do his job.

  He wasn’t the only one second-guessing their decision to team up again. While she’d been able to get over a lot of the hard feelings and bitterness from their breakup, she knew she hadn’t gotten over all of it…and then he just had some really annoying traits that she was struggling to live with, again.

  After they’d stood like that for a time, just staring at each other in frustration, she finally arched a brow. “Don’t you have a ship to get back to?”

  “The prisoner is on your ship,” he replied. “Since we’re both responsible for him, I figured it would be better if I flew with you.”

  Her other brow joined the first. It wasn’t that he was wrong, precisely, but his presumption irked her further. “And were you going to ask me about that or just camp out on my couch?”

  Now his brows rose. “I thought it would’ve been obvious.”

  “Even so, that doesn’t give you permission to be rude,” she returned easily. “You don’t need to be here, he’s unlikely to escape. Even if he gets out of the holding cell, he can’t do anything.”

  Blake pursed his lips slightly, and she knew that she had him.

  “But fine,” she said, trying to not sneer. “You can fly back with me until we drop him off. It should be about two hours from here.”

  “Thank you,” he replied, with only a modicum of sincerity.

  ‘You two are so much fun to be around, ’ Kyra said lazily from where she was laying in her usual corner, seemingly asleep.

  Raven didn’t reply. “Silvanus, get the ship moving on our way to Alta Port.”

  “Yes, Raven. Lifting off in three minutes.”

  Turning to look at Blake, now sitting on her couch, with Axel taking up much of the floor space in that area, she sighed. “I’m gonna go take a shower.” It might be one of the last places on her own ship with enough room for her.

  After her shower, Raven decided to take a nap, or at least lie down on her bunk until they got to Alta. Kyra had chosen to join her, rather than hang out with the ex-husband and wolf in the main cabin.

  AI ships for hunters were not built to be spacious. They were made to house one bounty hunter and their large animal companion, plus a holding cell down below for whoever they caught. The majority of the funds for the ship went into the AI, which was understandable because the ship’s AI was an amazing aspect. Raven knew that she’d have been lost, many times over, if she didn’t have Silvanus and Kyra.

  Therefore, comforts were at a minimum, as was space.

  She had a bunk built into the bulkhead of the small room that served as her bedroom and she curled up on it, dimming the lights.

  Of course, once upon a time, she and Blake had been married. Somehow, they had made the space problem work then. They would fit themselves onto the bunk together, which was possible though not ideal. The “standard” bunk size was still decent since races other than humans served as hunters and some of them needed more room. These ships, up until the moment the AI was integrated, were generically mass-produced.

  Raven found it hard to sleep, though. The shower had taken much of the edge off her agitation, but she wasn’t really sleepy.

  ‘Did I make a mistake? ’ she asked the big cougar without looking at her.

  ‘You think too much in the land of either-or, ’ Kyra replied, in that lazy philosophical tone she took sometimes. ‘It isn’t black and white. Almost nothing is when it comes to you humans. You’re all so confused and confusing. ’

  ‘So…you’re saying I both have and haven’t made a mistake? ’ Raven asked. ‘What is this, Schrödinger's mistake? ’

  Although a sigh from a cat didn’t sound like one from a human, Raven could still hear the exasperation.

  ‘Humans. It is simply that sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t. It’s a complex thing. You cannot just give it a one-word label and act on that. It also hasn’t been that long. ’

  Raven felt like the cat was wrong, but she would certainly never say that. This cat was most definitely alive, not in a box, and could kill her in her sleep.

  3

  Once Kid had been dropped off and their payment processed, Blake returned to his own ship and Raven was able to use the main cabin in peace again.

  They had Silvanus and Nyx flying in tandem en route to a starbase they visited often enough to consider it an almost home when Raven received an alert. She put aside the tablet she was reading and got up, sitting at the console and opening the message. It was pretty basic, text only, coming from Halliwell—the company that had given both Raven and Blake their start.

  She looked at everything from Halliwell with some suspicion, considering all that had happened and that one employee’s connection to the illegal smuggling, but everyone involved had been arrested. The company was otherwise proceeding as normal and most of her leads still came from them. The difference now from when she worked for them was that she could turn down a job, if she chose.

  Reading over the notice, she thought it sounded like it could work, and the starting point/possible location was near their present trajectory.

  “Silvanus,” she said. “Link up with Nyx and open a channel to Blake.

  “Done,” Silvanus said a moment later.

  “What’s up?” Blake asked.

  “I got a job lead from Halliwell,” she said without preamble.

  There was a long pause. “We’re trusting them?”

  She shrugged, though he couldn’t see it. “The whole company wasn’t corrupt, and I’m not sure we can really afford to ignore everything from them. Most of our future jobs will still come in from them, since almost everyone goes to them when they’re looking for a hunter.”

  “Fair point,” he conceded grudgingly. “What’s the job?”

  “Transmitting the message over to Nyx now,” she replied, deciding to let him just read it for himself rather than paraphrase.

  Greyson Taylor, 36

  Human

  Convicted of murder. Rumored hitman for galactic crime organization. Escaped during prison transport to penal colony. Considered armed and highly dangerous. Last known location was Acadia Colony, as reported by eyewitness and security footage. It is unknown if he has left Acadia as of the sending of this message.

  Attached to the message was a biographical file and dossier of his crimes, both convicted and suspected. Raven was browsing the attachments while she waited for Blake’s opinion.

  For a human, this guy was pretty tough. There was a suspicion of genetic enhancement, although if it was done, i
t wasn’t through a legal source and so there was no record of it. If he really was guilty of even half the crimes in the dossier, then he was also smart and prolific. Since he had only been convicted of two.

  Other hitmen and assassins that Raven had hunted tended to not be human. Many races had species-specific traits that tended to give them a step up from the average human when it came to that sort of profession. The last one she had tangled with had been a shape-shifter, which had been something else altogether to hunt down.

  “It’s been a while since I had to chase down another human,” Blake finally commented, interrupting her reading.

  “I had to hunt you,” Raven said wryly. “Otherwise, the same for me. It could make for a nice change of pace. Acadia is a human colony, though, so he won’t stand out there the way he would if he’d chosen a predominantly alien location.

  Blake was quiet for a moment, but clearly chose not to respond to that first part of her statement. “I suppose it will make for a nice change of pace.” She tried to see if she detected any annoyance, but she couldn’t—though whether that was because it wasn’t there or she just couldn’t hear it, she wasn’t sure. “Let’s go for it. Sign us up.”

  She nodded. “You got it. Have Nyx set course.”

  “Silvanus and she are already on it.”

  Raven smiled. Their AIs were the most efficient of all six of them, which was to be expected, really. She sent a response off to Halliwell, accepting the job at the proposed terms, which were on the upper side of average. Not quite a windfall, but reasonable for the job at hand.

  “We will arrive at Acadia Colony in approximately three and a half hours,” Silvanus announced.

  “Have you made contact with colony security to ask them to hold all outgoing ships?” Raven asked, returning to the couch and stretching out so she could go back to reading. She knew that her AI would be on top of most of the details, but she liked to be sure.

  “I have. They are not particularly pleased, but they have agreed. They say they will hold ships for four hours out of courtesy and the safety of the colony, but if we hold them up any longer than that, they will begin charging us.”