by Skyler Grant
Centauri Fury
Skyler Grant
Contents
Previously
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
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Afterword
Previously
Previously on the Centauri Bliss
Captain Quinn Jade is the captain of a beat-up old ship, the Kathryn, and living mostly on the wrong side of the law, mourning the loss of his wife, Kat, and accompanied by his loyal first officer, Taki, and the ship's engineer, Melody.
The ship soon wound up taking passengers, including a cold and calculating lawyer named Tamara, and her client and charge, Jinx. They also took aboard Dela, an appraiser and xeno-archaeologist who had also turned to a life of crime.
The announcement of the death of the Emperor placed the Imperium on the verge of a civil war. Jinx, inheritor of a previous royal line, was on the run from those who might use her to strengthen their own claim.
The green-skinned alien mercenary, Kara Vex, invaded the ship to capture Jinx, but when made a better offer she decided to stay and become a member of the crew.
After a series of betrayals, the Kathryn and its crew of people who are all running from something decided to form a family of their own, a Centauri, and to rename the ship the Centauri Bliss.
While foiling the schemes of the wicked Lord Barr they met up with Mara, a genetically-enhanced spy of unknown allegiances. In time she too would be joining the Centauri.
Having made many enemies in the Core, the crew of the Centauri Bliss headed for the Rim. Seeking a new life and a new beginning.
They found work almost impossible to find, almost all crime on the Rim being handled by the guilds or through the crime families of Arkstone.
When a client ambushed the crew to try to avoid payment, the crew turned the tables on them. This brought them to the attention of a crime family that needed a job done well outside civilized space.
Quinn and his companions found a system that was a graveyard. A planet, ships, and a space station all filled with long-dead corpses. The result of a purge by the Emperor, and an effort to destroy two of the "Unshackled" who had been in the system, the Unshackled being powerful magic-users with the ability to contaminate others. The system was also home to the Divide, a magical barrier the Emperor had constructed that cleaved the old Empire in two.
Investigating the station the crew triggered an ancient medical stasis pod, awakening the Unshackled Ilinar. He, in turn, stole a ship and managed to breach the Divide, leaving the system and journeying to wage a war on the colony of Hope's Reach. Ilinar was accompanied by a horde of wrathspawn, mercenaries corrupted with his magic.
The crew of the Centauri Bliss managed to stop the invasion, and Jinx, for the first time truly mastering her own magic, executed Ilinar. Upon his death her hand was marked with a glowing magical rune.
Tamara is always a believer in the long game and the ship would spend the majority of the profits they had made to help restore the colony of Hope's Reach in exchange for shares of its future. The colonists knew that Jinx had saved them from Ilinar, and cured them of a plague that infested them. Prepared to swear their loyalty to her, they were stopped only by her insistence she wanted no such title. Lords, ladies, and empresses had no honor. She was a thief, nothing more. The title Queen of Thieves was born.
The Centauri Bliss is capable of jumping through systems without the need of Runestones, due to the acquisition of a runic sphere, and the crew decided to put their considerable talents to good use. Justice was a thing reserved only for the wealthy on the Rim, and the Centauri Bliss would achieve it for as many less-fortunate souls as they could.
Their first target was to steal the yacht of the notorious slaver, Damian Sinclair. Sinclair was not a man to forgive insults easily and seeking revenge used his vast fortune to hire mercenaries, declaring that the crew of the Centauri Bliss must turn themselves over to him or the colony of Hope's Reach would pay for their crimes.
They decided to rob Sinclair of his powerbase and free the innocents he had tormented. This could be done by staging a slave revolt upon his floating marketplace, The Block.
Things did not go to plan. Jinx lost control of the runic sphere, and when Tamara tried to help her regain control the sphere locked upon the strongest desire in their combined minds—Tamara's desire to go after the archive of her ancestor, Tourmaline.
The archive had been lost for over a thousand years, hidden deep on the other side of the Divide. The Centauri Bliss along with The Block crashed onto the jungle world.
Captured while scouting the planet, Tamara was tortured so badly that her death seemed imminent. A fellow prisoner named Vess declared that she knew the location of the archive, and that it alone was capable of saving Tamara. Quinn decided to trust Vess.
According to everything Tamara knew of the Tourmaline, it was a collection of knowledge named after its founder—thousands of years of wisdom and personalities handed down from her ancestors, all powerful and capable women, and absorbing it—and them—would make Tamara far more than she was now. That turned out to be something of a lie. The millennia of experience was there, but control didn't go to the most recent personality of the line—but rather to the original member, Tourmaline herself.
Tamara is refined, whereas Tourmaline is crass and fond of her short-term pleasures instead of the long-term gain. As inheritor of Tamara's memories, Tourmaline also claimed to love Quinn and the rest of the Centauri, declaring herself a member of the family.
They would ultimately agree, but only on the terms that Tamara not be lost. The two now share a single body, switching back and forth between them. Vess, who reveals herself as a shape-shifting dragon, joined the family also as Tourmaline's long-time protector.
Magic had long been disrupted on the planet due to the efforts of an Unshackled to tame a source of wild magic. Jinx was able to use Order magic to restore balance to the world, freeing Vess's people and earning Jinx a second glowing rune, this one upon a thigh.
With Tourmaline's knowledge of this side of the Divide they set off to explore and found they weren't the first to come this way. One of the many contenders for the throne, calling herself the Empress Joline, had a runic sphere of her own and she had fallen into the hands of the Unshackled Kalisa.
The crew found that instead of a united Imperium on this side of the Divide, space was divided amongst countless warring clans. The most powerful of these often formed around one of the Unshackled, becoming warped and twisted by the magic of these powerful mages. The crew of the Centauri Bliss decided to be a clan too, the Clan of Thieves, named out of respect for the mage Jinx.
Mara was captured attempting to infiltrate Kalisa's holdings. Where subterfuge had failed, the crew tried diplomacy. They found the Unshackled was willing to make a deal�
��if Mara could win a duel against her apprentice she could go free. Jinx channeled the power of her evolution rune, using it to mingle with the power of Mara's genetic alterations to awaken magic in the spy. Utilizing that magic, Mara was able to wield Ilinar's blade and, consumed by wrath, kill Kalisa's apprentice.
Kalisa proved true to her word, and more. The magical runes, marks upon the skin, are a sign of respect and power amongst the Unshackled. That Jinx already had two was noteworthy, although she had little idea how to use that power. Kalisa had her own motives, and was willing to accept Jinx as her new apprentice and help her to hone her abilities, as well as release Joline to them, all in exchange for accompanying them on their journey back to the other side of the Divide.
When the Centauri Bliss returned they found Hope's Reach once again being invaded, Damian Sinclair true to his word as he attempted to enslave the populace.
Quinn had to face his own demons, meeting with the ruthless and predatory pirate admiral called Ice, once his best friend and lover to him and Kat. Ice's fleet could save Hope's Reach, but she didn't want payment in coin, she wanted to become a part of their family.
Taki had always hated Ice, but even she was forced to eventually agree that the pirate had something to offer, although she was unwilling to let her live with them on the ship. Ice would instead become the Admiral of Hope's Reach, putting her skills in command to good use.
They freed the colony, but they were keenly aware that their respite was brief. The clans were coming from beyond the Divide, and while disorganized and fractious, they were armed with technology more powerful than the Imperium possessed.
Empress Joline was respected by the Imperium Navy, and was the most likely claimant to unite the Imperium once again under one rule and face the coming storm.
The crew of the Centauri Bliss made the decision to escort her back to the Core and to aid her in that struggle. To steal for her a crown.
1
"This is a really bad idea," Quinn said.
"Straighten your collar and lay off the canapes," Tamara said, her arm hooked in his as she led him forward
The ballroom of Chalesis Station was renowned as one of the most stunning in this sector. Carefully manipulated fields allowed for multiple levels of any event to be placed seamlessly atop each other—you could always look down at your social inferiors, or up to see just how much better the more elite had it.
Each layer added holographic touches and lighting that made their own level stunning, but when glimpsed from levels above became a more unified whole.
They were at the very top, and from here the layers of dancers and decor down below looked like brightly colored coral beneath their feet. Dancers constantly in movement were like fish swimming in the depths.
Tamara was dressed for the Core, much like she was when Quinn first met her. Layers of bluish-black straps that showed much of the perfectly formed flesh beneath. The placement of the straps showed exactly who she was, and how important—her schooling, income, and social position. To the knowledgeable eye they were a life history.
It was a common style of dress here. Quinn stood out in his first Imperium tuxedo.
"I feel ridiculous," Quinn said.
On the dance floor the highest of society whirled, although most of the space was taken by small clusters involved in conversation. Nobody beckoned them forward.
"You're fine. We're fine," Tamara said, frowning as she tugged him in the direction of a bar.
Tamara ordered them two flutes of a reddish drink that seemed to almost sing, the drink vibrating in Quinn's hands as he raised it to take a sip.
Tamara was tense. A stranger wouldn't have known it to look at her, since she always held herself with such careful poise, but Quinn was her husband.
"Parties not as good as they used to be?" Quinn asked her.
"It isn't that," Tamara said with a fixed smile, and tilted her head towards a couple in the distance. "See that couple over there? The blonde in red and the guy who keeps staring at the redhead in green. Lady and Lord Penbrooketon, I represented them over a dozen times."
Quinn studied them as he sipped from the glass. In truth he'd already noticed them, noticed a few people around the room. When you were a thief you became keenly aware of just how interested people were in you. The way their eyes would shift your way even when they spoke to someone else, and how they'd stare when they thought you weren't looking.
Tamara was getting a lot of looks. At first Quinn had thought it was his suit—he was on her arm after all and he didn't fit in, and he did get a few glances. But mostly, her.
"You're in a room of friends and nobody is coming to say hello," Quinn said.
Tamara was silent for a long moment before saying, "I thought so too, when we came. Now it appears I'm in a room of former acquaintances who no longer find me useful."
Tamara had spent a good three hours before they came, getting her straps just right. Most of what had applied to her in the past didn’t anymore. She was no longer with her old firm. Technically, she wasn’t even Tamara Cross. With the codes from her other half she'd officially claimed the Tourmaline identity.
"They're probably just intimidated. I remember how you used to speak about Tourmaline Cross with such reverence," Quinn said, as he rested an arm on the bar, setting the glass down to tap at his comm.
Above the ballroom was the home and office of Reynard Depash, claimant to the throne. The station was well shielded, and the drone they'd launched days ago had needed to drift through space unpowered and undetectable until it hit the station and clamped to the hull. There it had sat idle, waiting for a signal source close enough to break through the signal blockers to command it—Quinn’s comm.
Quinn and Tamar’s chatter was real, they knew Reynard would have his people monitoring this party. It had to be real, it was also a distraction.
"Before I learned who and what she was," Tamara said with a huff. "But that isn't it. Powerful ancient immortal? Being close to one is intoxicating to half the people in here and an aphrodisiac to the others."
"Doesn't seem that way," Quinn said, his fingers sending the drone flying through maintenance conduits.
"That’s because they don't believe it. They know I was fired from the firm and my license stripped. They know I was kicked to the back of my line. They know I married a smuggler and a thief. They aren't coming up to us because they're afraid. And they aren't coming up to us because they think I'm a fraud." This time there was almost frost in her tone.
There was real bitterness there, real anger. Tamara might not be as violently deadly as some of the others in the Centauri, but Quinn still thought her perhaps the most dangerous woman he'd ever met.
"They let us in the door, someone thinks you're for real," Quinn said, trying his best to be reassuring while also being thoroughly focused on the drone. There was zero room for error. If the drone so much as brushed a wall in the narrow conduits it would set off alarms.
"They didn't let me in to charm me, Quinn. They let me in to snub me. Not just me, they know I represent Empress Joline. This is them snubbing her as well," Tamara said, downing the rest of her drink.
"We always knew it was a long shot that Reynard would be willing to talk terms."
"He is no commander and she is a military genius. They need each other. This is idiocy," Tamara said, turning increasingly hostile.
After Joline had gone missing and was presumed dead, the base of her power had disintegrated. When they'd returned to the Core they had some hopes it might be easy to place her upon the throne—it was anything but. Reynard, unlike Joline, had never attended the naval academy, but his family was the source of many of their ships through government contracts. In her absence, the Navy had gravitated to the man best able to keep them flying, and Reynard had the title of Emperor within his reach. So close, he’d adopted it already.
There, the drone was in place.
The royal scepter. Part of the royal raiments, the previous Emperor took it wi
th him wherever he went. It had been on the ship when he disappeared, and now it was locked up in Reynard's tiny museum above them. There to woo his special guests. Except, of course, in the case of a major security threat.
"Let's find a quiet nook somewhere and work off some of your tension," Quinn said.
That was their cue. When Quinn propositioned her, it was time for them to make a disturbance. They hadn't planned out what that would be, so much depended on circumstance.
"Oh, I'm going to work off some tension," Tamara said.
The change in her body language was immediate. Tamara was always poised, careful, arrogant and thoughtful. Tourmaline kept her weight on the balls of her feet, her stance wide. Tamara had turned over control.
Tamara was heavily wired up with the most advanced cyberware, genetically altered into near-human perfection. No combat monster, she lacked the boosted musculature and bone strength of Mara. Still, what she had was a formidable weapon in the right hands. Tourmaline was those hands.
"Do you see me now?" Tourmaline asked Lady Penbrooketon, before a punch sent her crashing to the floor. A head-butt shattered Lord Penbrooketon's nose when he went to the aid of his wife.
"Honey, this isn't the best idea," Quinn said, following her, throwing an elbow into the gut of a young lord about to tackle her from behind.
Security that hadn't been evident until this moment appeared and closed in, a suited figure moving with a stun-stick to charge Tamara. Instead of making contact as he hoped, the man was hurled into the crowd by an overhead throw, the stun-stick sending an aging heiress in too much jewelry collapsing in spasms to the floor.
