Prologue
Blight slid silently through the trees, the darkness enveloping him, as he listened to the men below bicker.
“We need to keep moving,” the white-haired man said at last. They were on a small hill, with one of the few openings in the trees where they could look back and see where they’d come from. A small base with a solitary short, fat building in the center, surrounded by a tall perimeter fence, was lit brightly. Flashing red klaxons were going off everywhere on the base. They could see the activity from here.
“I thought you said we were safe here, Cal,” the pudgy one, who was named Kerry, replied.
“And now I’m saying we have to keep moving. We need more distance from the lab.”
“Can’t they just send a ship up here?” Kerry asked.
“Not under total lockdown. There’ll be power drain nets everywhere. Nothing flies in or out.”
“Where the hell is Private what’s-his-name?” the tall one asked. “He was right behind me.”
The others spun around to look. “He left us?” Kerry asked.
“He’s probably scouting ahead,” Cal said.
“Damn asshole Marine’s supposed to be watching our backs,” the first man said angrily. “We aren’t even armed!”
“Calm down, Jacobs. I’m armed,” Cal said, revealing a plasma pistol in his unsteady hand.
“Well, now I feel better,” Jacobs said.
From the treetops, Blight decided to help them find their missing man. He dropped the dead body and watched as it silently tumbled through the air. The impact sent blood splattering on the white coats the men wore.
“Holy shit,” Jacobs said, almost falling backwards. His gaze shot upward, but Blight had already receded into the darkness.
“Oh God,” Kerry gasped, choking on the words caught in his throat. “What happened to his face?” He fell forward on his knees and threw up.
Blight hadn’t realized he’d mutilated the man’s face. He wasn’t sure why he’d done it. It was the anger in this body he’d chosen. That was a problem, he knew. It would cloud his judgment.
Jacobs nudged the body of the dead Marine over. He shook his head. “This is his work,” he whispered. “He’s here.”
“How?” Kerry asked, his voice rising toward panic. “How could he be here?”
Cal shook his head slowly as he, too, scanned the treetops. “It can’t be him,” he said firmly. “The Marines said they had him contained in the lab.”
“They told us what we wanted to hear,” Jacobs said darkly.
“We didn’t do anything wrong,” Kerry blubbered, rocking back and forth, vomit all down the front of his white lab coat. “We didn’t do anything wrong.”
“I sure as hell didn’t do anything wrong,” Jacobs said. “I did my job. So why aren’t the damn aggro bastards with guns doing theirs? They wanted this damn thing. They can kill it.”
“Shut up,” Cal hissed at both of them. “Nobody did anything wrong. He got what he deserved.”
Blight silently dropped down behind Jacobs. He twisted the man in half before he knew what was happening. There was no scream. No struggle. Precious little blood. Blight tossed him down the side of the hill and out of sight.
Rather than slip away, Blight chose to reveal himself.
Cal spun around and pulled the trigger on his pistol, firing wildly. After a dozen pulses, the weapon went silent in his hand as it started a recharge cycle. He opened his clenched-shut eyes. They grew huge as Blight walked calmly toward him.
“Easier to hit something with your eyes open,” Blight said.
“No,” Cal whispered.
Blight ripped the recharging gun from Cal’s trembling fingers and smashed his teeth in. Cal staggered back, holding his mouth as blood dripped down past the Empire-issued security patch on his lab coat. Blight reached out and casually flicked Cal’s head around. There was an audible snap as his head twisted around to face backward, and his limbs went limp. Blight held him aloft to admire his handiwork. He looked better this way.
“I guess you got what you deserved,” Blight said.
He dropped Cal and turned to Kerry, who was still cowering on his knees, rocking back and forth, eyes shut tight. Blight took him by his hair and raised him to his feet. “Who else?”
Kerry only whimpered. Blight shook him. “Who else, Kerry?”
At the use of his name, Kerry’s eyes flew open and he gasped, but at least he seemed to gain some control of his senses. “Who else what?”
“Who else knows about me?”
“I don’t—”
Blight shook him hard.
“I don’t know,” Kerry said, crying again.
“Who would know?”
“Doctor Eden,” he sputtered. “He ran the project. The whole project. He knew what was happening. He knew everything about … about you.”
“And where can I find this Doctor Eden?”
Even before Kerry’s crying eyes slipped down to look at the crumpled old man with his head facing the wrong way in a puddle of blood, Blight knew the answer. His badge said Dr. Cal Eden.
That temper. This is what it gets you.
Cal’s brain would still have electrical signals, but the data was now impossible to extract.
Blight twisted Kerry until he faced him directly. “I need to know what you know.” Blight formed one of his fingers into a long extraction needle.
“I’ll tell you anything!” Kerry stuttered, staring at the sharp point.
“I don’t have time for that,” Blight said. He jerked the head of the sniveling man back. “This will hurt.”
Kerry screamed in terror as Blight sank the needle through his eyeball, past the socket, and into the still-functioning brain beyond.
Blight closed his eyes and saw the contours of the mind, and began to quickly parse the data, looking for the information he so desperately needed.
Chapter 1
Hovertrain
Planet Dufana
Sergeant Lucky Savage felt cold metal against the back of his neck and shivered. His hands, bound behind his back and to his feet, tensed.
“It seems like maybe we got off on the wrong foot here,” Lucky said, staring forward at the rear hatch of the hovertrain. They were in the back cabin, and he could see the canopy of red alien trees just beyond the blue energy ribbon that the hovertrain was traveling along. The energy ribbon ran high above the trees, suspended on evenly-spaced power trusses well above the canopy, which was itself more than a hundred feet above the world of Dufana. “I’m new to this whole private enterprise thing. Maybe we could make some kind of arrangement that would be beneficial to all of us?”
A foul-smelling face slid up next to Lucky. It wasn’t human, not exactly. There were all the features that Lucky would be looking for in a face, but it was pulled taut, like someone had been making a face and decided to just wrap it up in plastic and call it a day.
The flat, open nostrils were the most disturbing. Not just because they were smashed back against the face and wide open, and not because they were oversized for the face, like horse nostrils on a human. No, it was because the creature ate, drank, and, most disturbingly, spoke out of the nostrils, too.
Technically they were called Hooti, but Lucky found it pretty understandable why everyone just called them boogers.
“We are done talking, hooman,” the creature said, his voice impossibly nasal and echoing in the large, open car.
“What was your name again?” Lucky asked, trying to sound as nonchalant as he could with a weapon at the back of his neck.
The blaster shifted a bit in the creature’s four-fingered hand. The Hooti looked more like horses that stood on their hind legs. Skinny legs, hairy thick body, and a tail that swished around with what seemed like a mind of its own.
“I’m Ick-rjrid-dixi-sos,” the creature said.
“Sorry I asked,” Lucky said. “Can I just go with Ick?” There were more than a dozen of the Hooti looking on, but it was clear that this one was the leader of the group.
“I’m not with him,” interjected the man who was to Lucky’s left. He called himself Knives, and was similarly bound and on his knees. “I’m just trying to help out with a job.”
Knives turned around, or tried to, but the surprised Hooti behind him smashed his blaster in the back of his head. “Ouch!” Knives shouted. “Son of a bitch, that hurt!”
Lucky tut-tutted. “You just can’t get good help these days,” he said. “Know what I mean, Ick?” As he said it, he slid the EMP flashbang grenade down into his hand. Knives’ little performance had done the job of distracting everyone for a moment.
“There are no jobs here,” the nasally voice screamed as Ick turned back to Lucky. “This is our planet. We don’t allow hoomans here.”
“Oh, is that a fact?” Lucky glanced to his right. Xe Jiang, a former Empire Marine turned privateer, like Lucky, was similarly tied up. Her compact, muscular frame put her a few inches below eye-level. “You hear that, Jiang? I told you we were on the wrong planet.”
“I guess we can just be on our way,” Jiang said.
“We kill all hoomans we see,” Ick said.
“Now that seems a bit unfair,” Lucky said.
“And also hypocritical,” said Jiang. “Since you haven’t killed us yet.”
Knives leaned forward. “Really, Jiang?”
“Here’s the thing,” Lucky said. “I have a few questions for you. Before you kill us, that is.”
Lucky spun around on his knees so fast that Ick hardly had time to react. As he did it, he dropped the grenade behind him and kicked it to activate it.
Ick’s gun was now pointed at Lucky’s forehead. Lucky waited for the grenade to go off.
And waited.
His smile started to fade. A sick thought crept into his mind. The back hatch was open. Had he inadvertently kicked the flashbang out of the cab? The flashbang was similar to an EMP, but had a more limited range. It should kill any weapon that wasn’t hardened within a few dozen feet. But if he’d kicked it right off the train—
A bright flash and loud explosion just beyond the hatch told him that if he hadn’t kicked it out, it was damn close. But it should do the job.
He hoped.
Lucky heard a sickly wet sound that he realized belatedly must be what the Hooti laugh sounded like. “Is that the best you can do?” Ick hissed as he shoved the blaster hard into Lucky’s forehead. “Kill them,” he said to the others as he pulled the trigger.
Nothing happened. Lucky glanced from side to side and saw that the Hooti behind Knives and Jiang were similarly mashing down on their triggers with little effect.
Lucky exhaled loudly. He hadn’t realized he was holding his breath.
Ick looked incredulous, or what Lucky guessed was the Hooti equivalent of it, as he pulled the trigger of the blaster again and again. He seemed to notice at last that all his deputies had the same problem. “What is going on?” he huffed nasally.
“Seems like you have a weapons issue,” Lucky said.
The space inside the hovertrain was tight, but with the Hooti stepping back in confusion, Lucky could at least maneuver a bit.
Lucky jerked at the powered locks on his arms and legs, and they fell open easily. He spun around, leaping to his feet as Jiang did the same next to him.
Knives slowly stood and rubbed the back of his neck. “That really hurt,” he said. “Just so you all know, I’m going to kill you very slowly.”
“No you’re not,” Lucky said. He’d pulled open a concealed tray on the side of his combat suit and pulled out his old punch pistol. It wasn’t as powerful as the pulse rifle he was used to, but it would do in a pinch, certainly against a group of Hooti who’d suddenly realized that none of their weapons worked. The Hooti began to backtrack toward the opposite side of the cab.
His plan was working. He couldn’t actually remember a time in his former life as a Frontier Marine that one of his plans had actually worked.
Maybe being a mercenary wasn’t going to be so bad after all.
Jiang pulled open a similar tray on her combat suit and pulled out two more punch pistols. She threw one to Knives, who caught it and spun around and fired in one motion.
“Knives, dammit!” Lucky shouted. “I told you not to…uh…kill anyone.”
Knives was staring at his punch pistol. He’d pulled the trigger, but it did nothing but click. “What the hell?”
“Hey,” he said, throwing a dirty look at Lucky. “I thought ours were supposed to work.”
Lucky frowned down at the punch pistol in his hand, then glanced over at Jiang.
They each pointed and fired at the nearest Hooti.
Nothing happened.
“You Marines act like you’re so damn smart!” raved Knives. “But what are we supposed to do now, smartasses?”
Lucky had never thought he was smart. This was probably why.
The Hooti, who now realized that the humans didn’t have working weapons either, began to pull out blades. At least one had what looked like a bat with spikes on it.
So much for the plan.
“Go to Plan B,” Lucky said.
Ick snorted, raising a large blade in front of his ugly face as he advanced on Lucky.
“Plan B?” Knives shouted. “What the hell is that?”
Before Lucky could answer, Jiang shot past him like a spring uncoiling. “Improvise,” she screamed.
Chapter 2
Four hours earlier
Canyon Space Port
Planet Dufana
“Looks like you’re running from something, General,” Lucky said, glancing through the windows of the nondescript conference room in which he was sitting. Beyond was an equally nondescript Empire stackshack, the kind of simple, fast-construction facility that Lucky was used to spending plenty of downtime in. There were boxes everywhere. A handful of soldiers kept coming and going, grabbing boxes as they went.
Just beyond the far hatch that led out to the landing pad where his ship, Last Gasp, was idling, he could see hoverbeds piled high with the same nondescript boxes. And beyond those, the giant mechanical legs of huge 80-foot-tall robomechs were swinging gear and equipment into the belly of an enormous transport ship. It looked big enough to just pick up the whole stackshack and throw it in. And at the fast, careless pace they were going, Lucky wouldn’t put it past them.
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