The Dread Warlock

Book 1: Blackjack Chronicles

by Orlando A. Sanchez

Genres: Science Fiction; Space Opera; Authors of color; Sci-fi Action & Adventure

Synopsis

Someone thought they were easy targets…someone made a mistake.

Meet the Blackjacks, a renegade mercenary group led by Jacques ‘Jack’ Noire. When they take a job to deliver state-of-the-art terraforming components to one of the outer stations, they realize the simple delivery mission isn’t so simple. The components are really a weapon and someone wants them dead.

Now, with bounties on their heads, and Conglom Industrial hunting them, Jack and his crew must pilot his sentient ship, the Warlock, through some of the most dangerous parts of space. Outgunned and outnumbered, Jack has one secret weapon his enemies didn’t count on-magic.

Jump onboard the Warlock and into a deep space adventure with the Blackjacks, as they face off against overwhelming odds and discover that when it looks too good to be true…it usually is!

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Release date: August 30, 2018

Publisher: Bitten Peaches Publishing

Print pages: 135

Sample

CHAPTER 1

“Never be a hero. Heroes die uncomfortable deaths.” – Jack Noire.

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Polvo meant dust.

Sand, if I was being precise.

A backwater dustball in the corner of a no-name system with a no-name star. So far off the commercial shipping lanes it didn’t exist on a map. The calculations it took to locate Polvo were less like navigation and more like divination. No one deliberately visited this planet. Not unless they were looking to shorten their life.

There was no law enforcement or military to speak of. It was survival of the fittest— and the fittest were the most lethal. I sat in Darlex, one of the less violent clubs in the sector. My hand rested on my blaster as I watched the crowd. I was feeling twitchy and couldn’t focus on the show.

“You see that, Jack?” Frost asked, pointing at the dancer. “That’s what I call talent.”

I glanced at the dancer on the stage. “That’s what I call assault with a deadly weapon with intent to maim.”

Frost, my second in command, kept her eyes fixed on the stage. Behind me, Verb, my gunner, watched the door. Fargo, our contact, was late.

“I don’t know if I could arch my back like that without breaking something valuable, like the space-time continuum.” Frost cocked her head to one side, and licked her lips as the dancer executed a move that would have severed my spine in three places. “She has skill. I wonder if she could teach me that move, Indio would love it.”

I turned my head to admire the dancer. “Only if he wants to wake up in the infirmary with broken parts.” I paid the tab, and we made our way to the exit.

“And a smile,” Frost added, as we stepped outside with Verb bringing up the rear. “What do you think, Verb?”

Verb stood behind us and looked over his shoulder at the stage. He shook his bald head, eyeing the dancer’s gyrations. “Dangerous,” his baritone voice echoed around us. 

Strapped to his massive back, he carried the Scythe, a plasma rifle that was almost as long as I was tall. He had served in the MCorps as a sniper and now as a gunner on the Warlock. A man of few words, he preferred to let the Scythe do the talking.

“Fargo’s never late.” I looked around. “Especially when it comes to business. Something is off. My gut feels—”

“Hinky,” Frost finished. “I know. You and that gut are a miracle of science.”

“We never question the gut,” I said, looking down the street. “This was supposed to be an easy job.”

“It’s probably that spice broth you had that’s currently melting your gut.” Frost poked me in the stomach. “I don’t know how you eat that poison.”

“Acquired taste,” I muttered. “Watch the clock.”

“Always.” Frost touched her wrist and a small holodar—a holographic radar display—of the surrounding area appeared in front of her. “Nothing on our twelve, nine, or three. We have movement on our six.”

“Conglom?”

“Can’t tell,” she said, shaking her arm. “This planet interferes with everything.”

Our contact, Fargo, had gotten cold feet. Something had spooked him, and he didn’t spook easily. My gut was telling me we were standing in hostile territory. Polvo’s only claim to notoriety was the network of deutritium mines that crisscrossed it’s surface. 

Aside from being a rare mineral, deutritium also effectively jammed most scanners, rendering the planet virtually invisible. It was the perfect place to meet Fargo, collect our credits and cargo, and conclude our business.

“Fargo’s a no show,” I said. “I know he has a place here. Let’s pay him a visit.”

“He has a place?” Frost shook her head in disbelief. “On Polvo?”

I nodded. “Far side of town. Industrial district.”

“We’re already gone then.” Frost tightened her holsters and checked the dusty street before looking back one last time. “She was good, though.”

“Didn’t realize you had such a discerning eye for talent, but I think you’re right, we need to go,” I said, jumping into the Growler parked outside Darlex. “Something tells me Fargo is playing” —a laser blast screamed by my head, nearly giving me a permanent haircut—“hard to get.”

“Shit!” She ducked, shoved me to one side, and took the controls of the Growler. “I told you not to take this job, Jack. Strap in.”