Opus X Book 12: Crucible of Truth

It turns out that even if you are immortal, you can still be blown up.

May 11, 2231, Wolf 359, Aboard the Fleet Destroyer UTS Kano

Commander Shen’s gaze flicked between the half-dozen data windows floating in front of him. Numbers ticked down as the destroyer hurtled through space toward the contact on the far edge of the sensor window. 

They’d picked up a weak distress call. That hadn’t concerned him much, but what little they could pick up on the long-range comm should have made no sense. 

They were far from the frontier, but the UTC had gone mad.

“I…under…attack…” the message repeated. He’d ordered the comm station to relay it directly to him and his first officer, Lieutenant Commander Albriz. 

The tall woman sat in her chair, focused on different systems windows, including power and weapons. No one was expecting a battle when the Kano had been assigned to Wolf 359 a few months prior, but with chaos sweeping Earth after the attempt on the Prime Minister’s life, no one was surprised that they might face one. 

“Clear up that signal,” Albriz barked. “Sensors, confirm secondary readings. We need to know what we’re dealing with.”

The sensor operator continued tapping his controls while he shouted his report. “Transponder codes indicate that it’s the Beidou, a Class II yacht registered to Julia Caldo.”

“Julia Caldo? As in, that Julia Caldo?”

“She’s got all sorts of special privileges in the database.”

Albriz sucked in a breath. “What else? Any hostile contacts?”

“Unclear, ma’am. According to her listed flight plan, the Beidou should be part of a flotilla. If these readings are right, we’re picking up a lot of debris but only a single ship.”

“Enough debris to make up the other ships?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Albriz looked at the commander. “Sir, there could be terrorist fighters hiding in that debris. The escort vessels might have taken the mothership with them.”

“Please!” screamed a woman’s voice over the crackling comm. “This is Julia Caldo. Everyone else is dead. I’m in a panic room, and I don’t know how long it will hold. Anyone who is out there. I’ll pay you anything. Please save me.”

Albriz gave Commander Shen a pleading look. He could understand her frustration. This wasn’t the frontier. People shouldn’t be picked off like sheep by rabid wolves.

He gave her a firm nod. “Call it. I’d rather overreact than get surprised.”

“All hands, General Quarters,” Albriz shouted. “Prepare for battle stations. Assault infantry squads, prepare for forced boarding action. Alpha squadron, prepare to sortie. Possible enemy fighter contacts and armed terrorists expected. At least one civilian survivor is confirmed.”

The lights on the bridge dimmed slightly, and holographic red warning panels appeared at the stations. 

“New contacts!” shouted the sensor operator. “Three small craft, moving in fast from the debris field. No active transponders. Their profiles don’t match any ships recorded in the Beidou flotilla’s flight plan.”

Albriz consulted a data window. “We’ve got several minutes until we enter maximum effective range and sixty seconds before our fighters can launch.”

Commander Shen scoffed. “Those idiots are either the bravest men in the galaxy or the dumbest if they think they can take on a destroyer with three fighters.”

“Please…” Julia whimpered over the comm, her voice distant and distorted by static. “I don’t understand who these people are. They kept ranting about their cause. I don’t understand. They didn’t have to kill everybody. If it was me they wanted, why not just take me?”

That confirmed it—terrorists, not pirates. Terrorists made more sense. The idea of pirates hitting a system like Wolf 359 seemed absurd, but it wasn’t all that many years ago there had been an insurrection there, so he couldn’t ignore the possibility. 

Different people held different opinions about what constituted the core worlds and the frontier. A lot of people thought of the latter as the place where trouble happened, but trouble followed people, and where more people lived, there was more trouble. A massive terrorist force had infiltrated the largest city on Earth and nearly killed the Prime Minister. That was all the proof anyone needed that nowhere was safe.

True safety was an illusion. That was why the police, the Army, and the Fleet existed. The wolves circled in the distance, salivating and ready to pounce, and the shepherds needed to be ready. There might be nowhere safe, but dead terrorists couldn’t hurt people.

“Communications, prepare for transmission to the small craft,” Commander Shen ordered.

“Aye, sir,” the operator responded. “Transmission ready.”

“This is Commander Shen of the UTS Kano to the three unknown ships currently on an intercept course. We have received a distress signal from the Beidou. You are not registered as part of their flotilla and are not sending recognizable transponder signals. You will immediately halt, depower, and prepare to be taken into custody. Refusal to abide by these orders will be considered hostile action, and you will be fired upon.” He waited a few seconds before looking at the comms officer, who shook his head. “Sensors, any escape pods?”

“No, sir.” The sensor operator’s voice quaked. “None detected.”

There were a lot of people fresh out of training among the crew this tour. Many of them had never seen combat or anything more significant than helping out with an evacuation when a ship lost power, but a man or woman couldn’t serve in the Fleet without expecting to see some death. He pitied them, but right now they needed to concentrate on the problem in front of them. Their training would carry them through.

“Alpha Squadron ready to launch,” Albriz announced.

“Launch fighters,” Commander Shen ordered.

“Launching fighters, sir.”

Shen narrowed his eyes as four triangles with ID tags broke away from the Kano on the sensor display. A destroyer might be the smallest Fleet ship capable of carrying fighters and had small squadrons, but they were state of the art and flown by the best-trained pilots in the UTC. Whatever ragtag terrorist trash was flying the three approaching ships wouldn’t be able to handle them. 

The idiots had let themselves get drunk on victory. Now it was time for a painful hangover.

“We need to get to that yacht,” Commander Shen commented. “Comms, have we lost the Beidou?” 

The comms operator frowned. “We’ve still got signal, but nothing’s coming through, sir.”

“Squadron intercept in one minute,” Albriz reported. 

“Still no response from approaching ships,” the comms operator noted.

“Those vultures had their chance to beg for mercy,” Commander Shen replied coldly. He nodded at Albriz. “Full engagement. We don’t have time to play with the bastards.”

“Alpha squadron, full engagement,” Albriz ordered. “Weapons free. I repeat, weapons free.”

The squadron broke into pairs of fighters and released two volleys of missiles in quick succession while moving to flank the enemy ships. The enemy fighters tried to charge right through. If they had defensive countermeasures, they didn’t use them. 

The Fleet missiles converged on the fighters and exploded. A cloud of tiny contacts replaced the three unknown contacts, the debris of ships blown to pieces. 

It barely qualified as a fight. It was closer to pest extermination.

“Establish a patrol perimeter, Alpha Squadron,” Albriz barked, a satisfied look on her face. “Helm, slow us up. We don’t want to blow right past the yacht.”

Despite the hard counter-burn that rattled the ship and strained the grav emitters, the destroyer zoomed past the engagement site and continued toward the Beidou. The forward camera feeds visually confirmed the remains of several ships forming a ghostly cloud of debris. 

The Beidou had several hull breeches, including in the bridge, and spun end over end with no obvious sign of attitude control. That could have been from dead crew, damage to the ship, or both. 

“We’re going to have to have our squad board from a cargo shuttle,” the commander concluded. “We don’t have time to try and straighten that out while people might be bleeding out onboard. And Caldo confirmed armed terrorists aboard.”

Albriz began to relay the order when a loud male voice came through from the Beidou.

“It is now the time of chaos. The time of rebirth. Our organization might perish today, but we have taken a powerful woman and her servants with us. You call us terrorists, but we are freedom fighters who will liberate humanity.”

Commander Shen growled. “Now, you listen here—”

Explosions ripped through the Beidou and blew the ship apart. Pieces hurled in every direction, slamming into the remaining pieces of other destroyed ships. A chain reaction had half the debris cloud expanding aggressively.

“Avoid the cloud, Helm,” Commander Shen ordered, glaring at the camera feed and the sensor display. He glanced at the sensor operation, who shook his head.

“No indication of escape pods, sir.”

“No emergency signals, no signals at all,” the comms operator offered quietly.

Commander Shen cupped his chin. “Understood. Stand down General Quarters, but keep Alpha Squadron sweeping. Maybe they’ll see something we can’t.”

The commander stared at the tumbling debris, his mind soaking in the implications. He didn’t care much about politics, but given what was going on, that wasn’t a luxury he could afford. Julia Caldo was a famous, wealthy woman, and she’d just been murdered by terrorists in what was arguably a core system. Once the news got out, it’d add to the fear spreading across the UTC. 

“Damn.” He shook his head. “Sorry, Miss Caldo. We tried.”

__________

The whole chapter I’m shouting “don’t help her”, then bam, what a twist! Opus X Book 12: Crucible of Truth is available for pre-order now, and the whole book will be available on February 5th, 2021.

The Great Insurrection Book 1: Warlord Born

My how the mighty have fallen. One of the most legendary warriors of all time, reduced to accepting help from the enemy.

“Odin” existed during certain times, those when death sprang from the Titan’s hands like water from a fountain. The rest of the time, he was Alistair Kane. After his fall, he was no one. He existed in a world that no one else could see, one of intense pain and nothing else. No knowledge of where or who he was. No knowledge of the past and no hope for the future. There was simply pain.

He didn’t know how long he was in that place, but toward the end, he started to hear voices.

Alistair couldn’t make out what they said. His mind couldn’t piece together what any of it meant. He only knew that it was different from the pain.

Next, he saw a jumble of light, blue and purple, some white. Words, noises, lights.

Until he woke up.

***

He felt the sting of the slap before he knew what was happening.

“Wake up,” a gruff voice commanded. “Wake up.”

Smack. Flesh on flesh, the mark of the slap red across his face.

Alistair blinked, once, twice, and then peered into the world. The lights were bright on his eyes, and he kept them narrowed. People stood on both his left and right, but their faces were blurred by Dimmers. They looked pixelated and dark.

“Who are you?” Alistair said, though his throat was on fire and he didn’t know how clear his words had come out.

The man on the left responded, “Your guardian angels.”

Alistair groaned. No citizen in the Commonwealth would talk about such an ancient concept. He had thought life could get no worse, with Control issuing his death sentence. Now he had somehow been kidnapped by Subversives. How many of them had he killed? How many had he Clipped who were now in cryo? He couldn’t count the number if he had untold lifetimes.

Alistair knew what came next: torture. Perhaps years of it, until he had told them everything he knew about Control and the Commonwealth. Until he had made things up that had never existed and never could, but he would say them anyway just to make the torture stop. Alistair had seen Subversive victims before, or at least what was left of them.

“Kill me,” he whispered.

The man on the left nodded. “Would if I could, Bub, but it’s out of my hands.”

The man on the right waved a needle in front of Alistair’s face. “We need you to wake up, so I’m going to give you a stim. You ever had a stim before?”

Alistair groaned again, turning his head against the pillow. He didn’t know what the man was saying and didn’t care. His legs, his chest—everything was on fire as if someone had doused him in gasoline before tossing a match on him.

“Going to feel like someone put a mechheart in your chest,” the man said as he continued waving the needle in front of Alistair’s face. “You may want to try and attack us, thinking you can get out of here.” He looked at the bottom of the bed Alistair lay on. “Your legs don’t work no more. They’re fragged, and your lungs are only pumping because of this.” He tapped a machine to Alistair’s right, something he hadn’t noticed.

The man on the left spoke up. “So don’t try anything, Bub. If we wanted you dead, you would be, comprende?”

Alistair said nothing, still not understanding what was happening around him. The needle glistened in the light as it rose into the air. The man holding it spoke once more. “We’re hitting your heart with it because we need you wide awake. You won’t feel a thing, though, so don’t worry.”

Alistair barely had time to register what the man was saying before the needle plunged into his chest. If he’d thought he was in pain before, he’d been wrong. Very wrong.

Fire lit across his chest plate as the needle cut through bone, then punctured his heart. The man pressed the button on the side of the syringe, and the stimulant rushed into Alistair. His eyes sprang wide, his mouth opening into a scream that didn’t come out. He realized he had no air in his lungs. He couldn’t breathe. He sat up, pain breaking out across his lower body, hands grasping at the air.

The man on the left leaned over and swatted him hard on the back.

His lungs opened, and air rushed into them. Relief washed over Alistair. He fell back in the gurney-like chair. The pain in his chest was still there but fading. His eyes focused on his surroundings, years of training taking over without any effort. A light overhead, the rest of the room dark. A single door to his right. Man on his left wore no armor, but there was some kind of small plasma weapon holstered on his hip.

Alistair tried turning around to see the man behind him.

“Don’t strain yourself, Bub.” The man walked around to the front of the chair, turning off the Dimmer over his head. “I’m not hiding from you, and I don’t care if you see my face. You can’t trade information with anyone on Earth any longer. Go ahead and tell Control you know who I am. It won’t save your life.”

Alistair understood now, the stim working on his brain as well as his body. He said nothing, knowing these people were Subversives. There’d be no help here. He tried sitting up again, but the man on the right slammed him back down. “Nuh-uh, Bub. Right where you are is where you shall stay. Now listen to me, and listen closely. Him and me?” He pointed between him and the other guy. “We’re the only two things that are keeping you alive right now. Personally, I think this is the worst decision I’ve ever seen, but I don’t got much say in it.”

He took a step back and pointed at the door. “Out there is a ship waiting on you. Its only goal is to get you off this planet and out to the furthest reaches of the solar system. As close to safety as you’re going to find, now that your life is forfeit. But, Bub, we don’t force anyone to do anything. I won’t put you on that ship if you don’t want to go, so you have to decide if you want to stay on this rock or go to another. You stay here, you’ll never see my face again. You’ll never see his face again.” He nodded at his partner. “We’ll wheel you out of here, and then you’re on your own. Comprende?”

Alistair was taking every word in, understanding it all after the stim. He glanced at the door, wishing he could get up, but he’d seen his legs, which were mangled and completely unusable.

Luna, he thought. If he left, she was lost to him forever.

The man on the left snapped his fingers in front of Alistair’s face. “Listen up, Bub. Time is short. Like, real short. Your former friends are searching for you. They aren’t gonna stop any more than they stop when they hunt me and mine down. You go to the ship or you…” He looked down at the wreckage of Alistair’s body. “See how far you can run on the things you used to call legs.”

Alistair laid his head back on the chair and closed his eyes. How had he gotten here? How was this his life?

The thought that made up his mind was a simple one: If I stay, I’m dead. No Luna. If I leave, maybe there’s a chance I see her again.

It was the silliest of thoughts, one that ignored a galactic empire, a thousand years of law, and the fact that he was now a broken man. Yet the thought possessed him like a virus, rapidly taking over his mind and decision-making capability. Without opening his eyes, he said, “I’ll go.”

There were a few moments of silence, which caused Alistair to open his eyes. The two men were staring at each other, and Alistair realized that neither of them had thought he would agree. “What is this all about? Why are you helping me?”

The man on the right stepped away from the chair and behind Alistair. When he came back into view, he was holding a gray blanket. “The reason you’re in this mess, Odin of the Titan Legion, is because you saved some of ours. The AllMother knows you did, and it means she owes you a debt. The AllMother pays her debts, no matter the cost. Apparently, even if it means saving a cockroach monster like yourself. Don’t mistake either of us here. We don’t like you. I’d kill you now if I could, but that’s not my decision to make.” He took a step closer and lifted the blanket. “This is what’s going to happen. I’m throwing this over you, and we’re walking out of this building. You’re not to move because you’re a corpse, and we’re transferring you. We’ve got the paperwork in order, so unless you rise from the dead, this shouldn’t be a problem.”

The one on the left, the man not holding the blanket, leaned close to Alistair’s face. “If you do decide to rise, thinking you can somehow save your skin by turning us in, I’m going to slit your throat faster than you and your pretty Whip can possibly imagine.”

At the mention of his Whip, Alistair’s hand automatically moved to his side, where it was always kept. 

“Don’t worry, Titan,” the man whispered. “We’ve got it. The AllMother said to keep it for you. Now lay the fuck down, so I don’t have to look at you anymore.”

Whatever they were doing for Alistair, it wasn’t out of love. Their faces held nothing but hate and disgust; they would murder him if they were allowed. Alistair laid his head back down on the chair, and the man on the right pressed a button, allowing the top portion to recline backward.

They draped the gray blanket over him, then the gurney started to move.

***

Alistair listened with ears that had been trained to detect the slightest danger. He heard every turn of the wheels below him, as well as the footfalls of the men pushing him. He listened for words and other noises, anything that might give him a clue as to where he was. He didn’t have any idea how being a corpse was going to get him on an interstellar flight. Off-world body transfers did happen when all of someone’s relatives had left Earth, but now? During a manhunt?

The man had lied to Alistair about one thing. They hadn’t just given him a stim, at least not the normal kind. His brain was alert, but his body felt numb, so some kind of speedball was in effect. Alistair could only hope they’d gotten the dosage correct.

The gurney came to a stop. Alistair’s breathing was as slow as he could make it. This was something Titans trained for, and he was the best at it, with virtually complete control over his bodily functions. All the same, corpses didn’t breathe, and if anyone looked at the wrong moment, there wouldn’t be a whole lot he could do.

The man who’d called him “Bub” spoke first. “Off-world, Mars.”

“Approval orders?” The voice was stern, no-nonsense, and Control wouldn’t have it any other way. Interstellar travel was constantly used by Subversives, and they often used interdimensional travel. They all had to start here in the third dimension. Thus, Control made sure only the most detailed-oriented Commonwealth servants were placed in positions to monitor it.

“Here,” the man who’d held the syringe said. Alistair knew he was handing over a DataTrack. It would have all the necessary approvals and orders to get them through—or it wouldn’t, and all hell would break loose.

Seconds passed, and Alistair could feel the drugs’ effects starting to wane. He wasn’t worried about brain fog or anything of that nature, but rather, the pain in his legs. He remembered, or at least thought he did, them saying something about his lungs, that they weren’t working anymore either. He didn’t know about that, but he knew they had to quickly get him somewhere with solitude.

Even his mastery of his body wasn’t going to be able to shove this kind of pain away.

He tried to think of his wife, to focus on her face, on her laugh. He tried to think of the way she smiled when she was teasing him, the little curvature of her lip as it pulled up. The way her eyes sparkled when she knew her wit was quicker, and he wouldn’t be able to tease back fast enough to matter.

“Is there a problem?”

The question pulled Alistair from his thoughts. He thought Bub had asked it, but he wasn’t sure.

“Problem?” the immigration agent responded, his voice sounding like he wasn’t used to being challenged, but he was up to it all the same.

“Yeah, Bub, problem. I come and go through Immigration at least three times a year, sometimes more if I’m not going interplanetary. I’ve never seen anyone take this long over a simple body transfer, and from what I hear on the holosphere, there’s a war zone downtown. So yeah, is there a problem? I need to get this body on ice before it starts smelling.”

The pain was growing, and Alistair’s need for oxygen was increasing.

“If there’s a problem,” the immigration agent said, “it sounds like it’s your problem. You’ll wait until I’m ready to let you go.”

Alistair’s ability to think was fading, his body’s need for morphoids and oxygen surpassing anything else.

“Let me see the body.” The immigration agent stood up.

One of the men sighed. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”

Alistair’s heart rate didn’t increase, nor did his breathing, but he didn’t know how he was going to fake looking dead. Pallor, skin suppleness, and a dozen other things separated a dead body from a live person, none of which Alistair could manipulate.

Someone grabbed the corner of the blanket, and lifted. Alistair knew his naked body was visible to all. He kept his eyes closed, his breath held inside his chest, hoping against all odds that somehow he wouldn’t be recognized. That somehow his damned face wasn’t plastered on every holowall in the city.

One of Alistair’s men asked, “He look dead enough for ya?”

“Cover ‘im up,” the immigration agent instructed. “You’re cleared.”

The blanket flipped back over Alistair’s body and the gurney started moving again. The shot they gave him must have done something to his outer body as well as his inner, but he couldn’t consider that right now. Alistair waited for a few minutes, then whispered, “Need stim.”

“What you need,” someone answered from above, “is to not say another word. We’re not out of the woods yet.”

Alistair’s hand bore down on the metal beneath him to keep from screaming as the wreckage of his legs demanded to be heard.

More long minutes passed, then Alistair felt cold air wash over his body. The gurney stopped moving, the blanket was removed, and before he knew what was happening, someone new was stabbing a needle in his arm. Alistair gritted his teeth for a second and felt the soothing morphoid flood his system.

He looked up at a new man, who had a thick beard. “Thank you.”

The beard looked at the two men who had wheeled him here. “The AllMother has lost her damned mind.”

Alistair tried to keep his eyes open, but he couldn’t. Really, that wasn’t so bad because unconsciousness had become preferable to sleep.

_____

These men definitely have a point, if Odin had indeed killed as many of their comrades as he says, then why are they helping him at all. The AllMother must have something very interesting planned. The Great Insurrection Book 1: Warlord Born is available for pre-order now, and will be loaded to all devices on February 16, 2021. I know it’s difficult to wait, but keep an eye out because another snippet is coming your way.

Opus X Book 12: Crucible of Truth

As we catch up with our heroes, there is a sense of familiarity and comfort. The sense of uncertainty and danger ahead is tangible in this second snippet.

May 10, 2231, Neo Southern California Metroplex, Private Hangar of the Argo

Erik hadn’t been so excited since he was a kid getting gifts for Christmas and New Year’s. 

Much like those holidays, he could take extra joy in watching someone put together his gift for him.

Bright sparks dropped from the top of the Argo, spewing from a small construction drone’s torch. The torch ran along the massive laser cannon now nestled on top. 

Lanara sat on a crate beneath the ship, smart goggles covering her face, her hands jabbing invisible displays to control the drone. Another pair of drones moved along the stern of the ship, their manipulator arms jammed into a bundle of cables invisible from the ground. Their controllers, Wei and Janessa, were tucked inside the Argo.

Tactics and bravery counted for a lot in a fight. A good weapon often counted for more.

Jia stood beside Erik, eyeing the weapon. “It’s funny.”

Erik looked her way. “Laser cannons are funny? You’ve got a weird sense of humor. Not that I didn’t already know that.”

“It’s not the laser cannon. It’s what it represents.” She gestured at the weapon. “We met as police officers. We didn’t do a lot of undercover work, and we were bound by a lot of rules and regs.”

“Okay.” Erik nodded slowly. He was not sure where Jia was going with this, but that didn’t dampen his feelings about the huge new toy the engineers were building. She’d not expressed any dislike of the new weapon, and that was all he cared about.

“We were straightforward on the force,” Jia continued with a soft smile. “But sometimes we couldn’t do what we needed to without jumping through too many hoops. That led to us risk our lives in situations that shouldn’t ever have arisen.”

“True enough.” He eyed the weapon and looked at her again before jerking a thumb in the direction of the ship. “What does that have to do with the laser cannon being funny?”

“I’m getting there. The point is, after that, we became ID contractors.” A wan smile took over Jia’s face. “And though it often ended with something big and explosive, we had to spend a lot of time sneaking around, much more than we did as cops. We were supposed to have fewer restrictions, but it’s annoying to have to chase people but hide who you are. Fake names, disguises.”

“Nicer toys,” Erik countered. “This ship, the advanced-model exos.” He scratched his chin. “Much bigger explosions.”

Jia chuckled. “Not everything is about the best toys all the time, but…” She stared long and hard at the cannon. “That weapon means something important. It means we’re officially done being sneaky. It screams, ‘We’re here to kill you.’”

“Yeah, no way to hide that thing.” Erik laughed. “And no reason to. The government’s at war with the Core. I don’t care if they’ve lost some of their guys from the civil war. I have a feeling the biggest fights haven’t come yet.”

“Right now, all we’re doing is sitting around this hangar.” Jia shrugged. “I wonder what we’ll do after all this is over.”

“Hmmmm. We could become pirate hunters.” Erik grinned, imagining himself in a ridiculous wide naval hat that hadn’t been popular for three centuries. “With the ability to jump around, we could wipe all of the pirates everywhere within a few weeks, especially with this baby.”

Emma’s lack of commentary didn’t surprise Erik. 

She’d made it clear she was using their recent downtime to work on the programming and modifications necessary for her child to come into being. Erik didn’t know a lot about systems programming to begin with, let alone AI, but considering the entire government research apparatus couldn’t copy her, the problem was obviously pretty damned hard to solve. 

He couldn’t blame her for wanting to step things up. No one knew what might happen with the government after the Core was officially destroyed.

“Take out a deep conspiracy and then take out all pirates?” Jia asked. Her too-serious look made Erik want to laugh about his half-joking suggestion.

Loud footsteps echoing from the Argo’s back ramp stopped Erik from clarifying. Anne stormed out of the ship with a deep scowl on her face. Erik and Jia exchanged looks and waited for the agent to close on them.

“What’s wrong?” Jia asked softly.

“Paris is under martial law.”

Erik shrugged. “So is Neo SoCal.”

“There have been clashes.” Anne clenched her teeth. “There was a rationing order because of disruptions to some shipments into the metroplex. The primary shipping companies in the area are barely operating because of arrests related to the Core and damage from raids. People started protesting, and some terrorists decided to take advantage of that.” She threw up her hands. “It’s chaos.”

Erik nodded. “No big surprise. It’s been happening elsewhere in the Solar System. Lots of trouble on Mars, but I’ve heard Venus and the moon are doing okay. Everyone wants to be trendy and join Neo SoCal.”

“It’s not the same thing. Yes, they declared martial law here, but other than the incident against the Prime Minister, it’s been fairly orderly.” Anne pinched the bridge of her nose. “Now it feels like things are spiraling out of control all over Earth.”

“Seoul was having trouble yesterday, and New York.” Jia sighed. “If it’s not service and supply disruptions, it’s antisocial behavior from people thinking the government is about to collapse. People are panicking and lashing out. They’re scared, but once they understand it’s not the end of the UTC, they’ll calm down. It’s not even been two weeks since the Prime Minister’s speech.”

Anne glared at the floor as if she could burn a hole through it with sheer will. “We stopped the assassination attempt and a lot of their other terrorist plans, but it feels like they’re winning. A lot more people are going to die by the time this is over.”

“We expected this,” Jia offered quietly. “The Core is intertwined with the UTC economy. Earth is going to feel it worse than a lot of places because half of humanity is here, with the accompanying demand for resources.” She let out a bitter laugh. “Ironically, the frontier colonies might suffer the least in all of this.”

Erik furrowed his brow, thinking that over. “Yes and no. They might not need a huge-ass megacorporation to ship them enough crap to keep ten billion people from losing it, but a lot of them don’t have the industrial infrastructure for everything they need that breaks. Trouble’s gonna continue to trickle in for a while, and it might continue even if we finish off the Core right away. There is a lot of critical dome equipment that’s only manufactured on Earth or the older colonies.”

Jia grimaced. “I liked it better when you were excited about your new toy.”

A tiny shrug was what she received in return. “Humanity finally got what it was gearing up for.”

Anne looked confused. “Humanity was gearing up for mass chaos?”

“Yes.” Erik nodded. “Galactic war. It just turns out it’s more a civil war than a war against the space raptors.”

“This isn’t a civil war,” Anne snapped. “This is us smoking out a terrorist conspiracy that is hiding behind innocent people.”

Erik sighed. “The quicker we finish off whatever’s left of the Core, the fewer people die. In the meantime, it’s not going to be fun for a lot of people, but there’s nothing we can do about it but wait for orders.”

Anne glared back a moment, then two before softening her look. “I keep wondering if there’s more we could have done before this happened.”

Erik was surprised Anne was the one talking like that. She’d always come off as the ultimate professional, but that might have meant she believed she had more control over the situation.

Alina’s death had struck her hard, probably the hardest among the four of them.

Anne had known the agent for a lot longer than most of the others on the team. Years of being a soldier had taught Erik how to handle loss. When he lost a friend in battle, he did what he always did: committed their face to memory and swore to himself it wouldn’t be in vain. The pain was there but manageable.

“As long as we’re not dead, we can move forward,” Erik announced. “A lot of good men and women are going to have to deal with a lot of crap over the next few months. However, we are the ones with a jump drive. That means we can do more than most.”

Jia nodded. “The Core, or whatever’s left of it, thought they could cripple the UTC by assassinating the Prime Minister, but that failed. They aren’t gods. They’re just people who threw away their morality and restraint. We don’t have to waste time trying to convince them. We just need to find them and take them out.”

“You’re both right.” Anne took a deep breath and squared her shoulders, then blew out a lungful of frustration. “The war isn’t over yet, and it won’t be until we’ve destroyed every last person in the Core.” 

She spun on her heel and stomped back toward the Argo. 

There was more confidence on her face, but Erik wasn’t sure how long a woman that tightly wound could last without a mission. Kant had been quieter than usual and kept more to himself, but he was taking the social disruption in stride.

Jia watched Anne walk away with a concerned look. “We said all that, but it’s easier said than done.”

“Not really,” Erik replied. “There has to be something else coming soon.”

“How will we know what it is?”

Erik shrugged. “We’ll leave that up to the ID to figure out. They can point us at them. Sitting around waiting for a battle feels…nostalgic to me.” A stray thought popped into his head. “It slipped my mind in all this, but what about your friend’s wedding? Neo SoCal might not be as bad off as Paris or Seoul, but I wouldn’t want to have a big ceremony in a month.”

Jia shook her head. “Chinara already rescheduled.” She looked wistful. “She’s waiting two more years. I hope we’ll have this all figured out by then, one way or another.”

“Yeah, assuming the Core doesn’t manage to blow up Earth, two years should be good.”

“Blow up the Earth?” Jia blanched. 

“Joking. Joking.” Erik chuckled. “If the Core could pull that off, they would have tried already.”

“You think they would?” Jia stared at him in horror. “I know they’re monsters, but killing half of all humanity?”

“I don’t know what to expect anymore.” Erik pointed at the roof. “We still don’t know what they were planning with that Hunter ship. At this point, I wouldn’t put anything past them, but it doesn’t matter. We’re going to stop them, then no one will ever have to worry about them again. Shit will get rough for a while like it always does, and people will recover like they always do. Maybe this time when they rebuild half the economy, they can make sure it’s not controlled by a bunch of psychotic freaks who like to put brains in tanks and mix alien and human DNA.”

Jia’s expression brightened. “This is going to make me sound totally self-centered, but I just thought of an upside to all of this.”

“Upside?” 

“Yes.” She nodded. “Not to the Core, but to Chinara rescheduling the wedding. No wedding right away means no bachelorette party, and that means I don’t have to plan it.”

Erik laughed at her bright smile. “You’re not that worried about taking on a dangerous conspiracy, but you’re worried about a party?”

She raised her head, attitude straight from her mom evident in the pose. “We all have our strengths and weaknesses.”

__________

I just love the conversations between Erik and Jia. I can’t wait to read the rest of the book. If you are as excited as me, then head on over a pre-order Opus X Book 12: Crucible of Truth. The full book will be available everywhere on February 5th. In the meantime keep a lookout for another snippet coming soon.

Opus X Book 12: Crucible of Truth

Danger around every corner, new mysteries unfolding. What is Julia planning?

1 – May 10, 2231, Wolf 359, Remus, New Rome

Yan ducked into the alley, guns cracking loudly. Bullets ripped into the corner of the commercial storage facility right behind him.

At least, that was what it was, according to the sign he’d noticed while sprinting down the narrow space between the two buildings. 

The narrow alley was wide enough for a couple of men, but there was no way his pursuers could get their hovertruck through. The decisions he made in the coming moments might help determine the fate of the UTC.

He wouldn’t die there. No, it wasn’t that he wouldn’t, he thought. He couldn’t die there. 

Fear for his life didn’t enter into his concern, only fear of failing his Immortal Empress. 

He would not lose his life under the false holographic blue sky of a colonial dome before finishing the tasks appointed him.

He was an elite, a top agent, and one the empress had personally selected for this role.

A role he cherished and a role he would complete. Dying or being captured by the government was not acceptable. 

They weren’t alike. He was better, stronger, and faster. Yan carried the blessings of his empress, and he’d show the government dogs what that meant.

He leapt at a wall and pushed off on contact toward the opposite wall, then repeated the movement. Barely a challenge. 

The empress’ scientists and doctors had done their work well, granting him abilities far beyond those of humans at only the cost of his lifespan. There was a beautiful symmetry in the contrast between his fleeting life and her eternal life, she who would advance the human race beyond the petty limitations of his forebears. Eventually, a historian would document his sacrifice for his people, and at that time would the value of his efforts be known.

Yan had given up any expectations for recognition during this lifetime.

The men chasing him were custodians of stasis and weakness. They protected a corrupt order riddled with political cancer. Fools, all of them, serving false ideals. 

A gray hovertruck whirred to a stop at the front of the alley. Yan was already halfway toward the roof. Mere misfortune allowed the Intelligence Directorate agents to detect him.

Detect, not defeat.

The agents called themselves ghosts and took advantage of the fear of the masses to enhance their reputation and resulting effectiveness to extract information. Their advanced technology and the resources of the government convinced some they did have supernatural powers like their namesakes.

He grunted as he pushed off the wall once more. Ghosts in name only. 

They were men and women, nothing more. 

He would go so far as to add they were cowards who lacked commitment to the cause. That was why they would fail. 

There was no pity in his heart for government dogs.

An ID agent jumped out of the car, a pistol in hand. He swept it back and forth before lifting his head and shouting a curse, but it was too late. He got off one shot before Yan was out of range. 

“You had your chance,” he murmured. A few small pieces of a badly attached pipe dropped as he continued up the walls and landed on the flat roof of the storage building.

Drones aimlessly circled in the air, relying on their preprogrammed flight paths. Yan didn’t try to avoid them. His jamming made them useless. All he needed to do was keep moving.

The ghosts’ movements made it obvious they’d never had direct camera or drone line-of-sight on him. Which, he had to admit, puzzled him. Given their clumsiness, how had they spotted him?

Yan smiled thinly as he charged to the opposite edge of the roof. His leap cleared the distance easily. He headed for the next roof, his anxiety lessening. Yan would not fail his empress, but that changed nothing.

He couldn’t risk contacting the Beidou until he finished cleaning up his mess. 

It wouldn’t take long.

* * *

Yan stood in the darkened apartment near the door, his fingers tight around the handle of a knife. The late arrival of his would-be assassins surprised him. He’d assumed the ghosts would retreat immediately to their safehouse. 

When they’d spotted him, he wasn’t anywhere near it, and there was no reason to assume he’d compromised the location. Instead, they’d spent far too long trying to track him in the city. He waited with a small glint of amusement at the idea they would die in the one place they believed secure.

Standing in the darkness of the quiet apartment, the only sound the mild hum of the environmental control system, transformed Yan’s assassination preparation into a near-meditative experience. 

The apartment lay inside a tall building and was located near the center. That insulated it from the noise of street-level traffic or the occasional flitters allowed above buildings in the tight airspace of the domed colonial city.

The location annoyed him. 

The arrogant ghosts had picked a poor location. He could understand their choice, but it was flawed. 

The large strike team would have to travel through more than one hall to arrive, and the lack of windows to the outside combined with apartments beyond provided a natural sniper defense. Those advantages were canceled by the lack of an easy escape route.

Yan’s frustration with the quality of his targets built. 

The ID had always been a minor consideration in the plans of the Core. While the government agency’s efforts against other members of the Core had facilitated the acceleration of the empress’ plans, the current fevered timetable had never been her intent.

At least, not when he joined.

Harassment of the other Core members was one thing, but the damage to her operations was unforgivable. In the last few years, the ID had changed from a manageable threat to a potentially lethal one.

Yan’s teeth ached as he subconsciously ground his annoyance between them. The Last Soldier and the Warrior Princess were the problems. A small number of highly skilled people could execute missions with far greater success and influence than their organization could account for. 

Morale. Momentum. Mayhem. He understood those tactics all too well. They were the ID’s reflection of Yan, Tralian, and Celeste. 

Empress Julia had alternately attacked the pair and used them for her own ends. He wouldn’t dare question her vision, but it was obvious Blackwell and Lin had become catalysts for the efforts against her. All efforts should have been expended to crush them before they’d gained the protection of the ID.

The apartment door slid open, and a man stomped in with a frown. He was one of the ghosts who’d been chasing Yan. The idiot didn’t bother to sweep the apartment. He all but begged for death.

“What’s up with the lights?” the ghost asked. He tapped his PNIU.

Yan sprang away from the wall and planted his knife in the agent’s throat before the man could turn his head. After Yan pulled the man’s gun out of his shoulder holster, a quick shove sent the wounded agent gurgling into the hallway, his hand to his throat. 

The ghost’s partner jumped back and reached for his gun but hesitated since his partner was in the line of fire. That brief indecision cost him his life. Yan shot him twice in the head before shoving the gun against the knifed agent’s forehead and pulling the trigger. 

A short silence extended as two bodies thudded to the floor.

No screams. No alarms. Useful to know. 

He hadn’t been sure what would happen but hoped the ghosts had taken measures to ensure they could kill someone near their place without it bringing in the police for an investigation.

Yan tossed the gun to the floor. 

“So disappointed.” He sighed.

He didn’t fear the ID would ever know who killed their agents. They wouldn’t be able to trace anything to him, other than whatever brief pictures the agents had sent in during the chase. 

Those didn’t matter. As far as the UTC’s databases were concerned, Yan didn’t exist.

He bent down, yanked the knife out of the agent’s throat, and wiped it off on the dead man’s shirt before checking his own jacket. A couple of spots might be noticeable, but he’d done well, considering the close-range kill. 

He secured the blade in a hidden leg sheath, then jogged down the hallway. 

Now he was satisfied with his outing’s success. The ID might suspect something was happening in New Rome or on Remus, but the death of two of their agents would set back any investigation. 

They could obsess over it all they wanted. If anything, that would be more useful to Empress Julia’s plans. 

This city and world were unimportant as anything more than a distraction.

Yan emerged from the building through a side exit, and a parking lot filled with hovertrucks and miniflitters greeted him. Instinct and recent experience led him to immediately sweep the area, and that saved his life. Suited men stood on both sides of the building, aiming their guns in his direction. They opened fire.

Yan rolled forward and took cover behind a hovertruck. A bullet nailed him in the back, but the fiery pain dulled after a couple of seconds with the help of a nerve override. The enemies continued shredding nearby vehicles with their uncoordinated fire. 

Something was off; the ambush was too sloppy. If the ID had known he was in the apartment, they wouldn’t have sacrificed two agents and waited until he was back outside, which gave him more places to hide. The bold open attack risked drawing attention, even if they’d done something to keep the local police away. 

Yan kept low as he made his way to another vehicle for cover.

“Did we get him?” one of the men called.

“Close in and make sure,” another man shouted in response. “Be careful. This guy probably already iced a couple of ghosts.”

Heavy footsteps sounded from both sides. The entire group was closing in on him. Yan drew his gun, shame surfacing. 

I am reduced to using a tool such as this.

He stowed his feelings. The coming weeks would mean sacrifices for his empress. His strength was her gift to him, but he could never lose sight of the reason for it. The best honor was success.

As Yan had lived for the Immortal Empress, he would die for her, and he would kill for her again and again until he breathed his last.

Even without using drones or bots to verify his death, there were many ways they could have finished him off without risking themselves. They obviously didn’t care about making noise, so there was no reason not to use explosives.

He waited and listened, his breathing shallow, the bullet wound in his back now a minor ache. The footsteps grew closer and closer—more amateurish techniques. They could have gotten a man close enough for visual inspection without giving up the positions of everyone in their group.

Yan popped up from behind a truck and opened fire. Despite the pain being under control, his movements were stiff. 

That wound might cost him.

He fired three quick shots, none wasted. His targets all fell backward, new holes in their faces. 

“Shit!” one of the men on the other side shouted.

They opened fire again, but it was too late. Yan dashed forward, darting back and forth as he took three more shots. Headshots killed two of the men instantly. The third fell to one knee, still alive despite the painful graze on the side of his head. 

The man stumbled away, grimacing in pain, with blood blinding one eye. Two more rounds into his head finished the job. Six men now lay in pools of their own blood in the parking lot, dead or close to death. 

They’d gotten one good hit on him.

Yan stayed low, listening and checking the nearby roofs for suspicious glints that might suggest a sniper. After twenty seconds of no follow-up, he nodded in satisfaction and stood. He pulled out a med patch and applied it to his wound.

No matter the advances, applying a patch to the back was never simple. Shame the bullet didn’t penetrate his side; much easier to reach.

He walked over to the corpses and pulled off their PNIUs. There was no way these men were ID agents, but the empress’ operations couldn’t continue on the planet without identifying all enemies. 

Jamming would keep the devices from being traced until he got what he needed from them. For the moment, he needed to figure out the men’s identities.

* * *

Yan bowed his head. Empress Julia lazed in a high-backed chair, wearing a loose blue dress, and she had a faint look of boredom on her face. He’d already told her he wouldn’t report to her until he had the full details of what had occurred.

“Speak,” she ordered.

Yan lifted his head. “My Empress, the second set of assassins were syndicate-affiliated.”

She raised a delicate dark eyebrow. “Syndicate? How far operational security must have fallen if common thugs were able to ambush one of my top agents.”

Yan didn’t avert his eyes despite the shame flowing through him. She was right to highlight his failure. Killing them all after being ambushed was barely a victory. He should have never been wounded.

“What local syndicate trash was after you and why?” Julia asked. “If they were seeking your life, that means they’re seeking mine. No one can be permitted to attempt that.”

“Their attempt was not made at the behest of a syndicate,” Yan explained.

“That’s odd.” Julia frowned for a moment, thinking it through. “Are you saying the ID hired syndicate killers?”

“No, my Empress.” Yan shook his head. “They work as syndicate assassins, but from what we know, they are allowed the freedom to take private assignments, provided they give a fee to their superiors.”

“I see. And who hired them?”

“That’s difficult to know for certain,” Yan replied. “We did find one reference to ‘Old Man Barbu’ and a rough description of him, but no images. Judging from some of the location data, they were watching the apartment building even before our arrival in the city.”

“They used the ghosts as bait to kill you?” Julia laughed. “How deliciously entertaining.” Her smile faded. “Old Man Barbu. Marius Barbu. That name keeps returning to haunt me. How does that piece of underworld trash know so much about me? About the Core?”

“My Empress.” Yan bowed his head. “This Barbu might have served one of the others in the Core. That’s the most likely explanation.”

“Maybe.” Julia looked thoughtful. “But we have evidence that he was helping the ID fight the Core as well. I have suspicions about the Chang’e incident, among others. His name has surfaced too many times.”

“I’ll find him, and then I will kill him,” Yan spoke as if Barbu were a fly he needed to corner.

Julia waved a hand dismissively. “It’s unfortunate he has greater knowledge than one like him should have, but it doesn’t matter. Even if he is a leftover servant of Sophia’s or one of the others, I’m the only one left alive. Knowing part of my plans or resources will be insufficient, especially with the current chaos.” She sighed. “I would have liked to spend a couple more days in preparation, but the same could be said about this entire plan. We will move things forward. The outcome will not be adjusted because some underworld cockroach hires riffraff. Soon, he won’t matter. None of them will.”

“And the backup plan?” Yan asked. 

Julia folded her hands. “Consider it less a backup plan than the final part of the current plan. It’s irrelevant at this point. Even if I sent a recall signal, they wouldn’t get it before carrying out their orders.” She stood, an excited gleam in her eyes. “No matter. Let the galaxy burn from both ends. Let the UTC become a phoenix, with me at the center of the fire.”

_____

Man, it is so hard to not root for Yan, even though he is working for Julia. More will be revealed though so keep checking back for more snippets of Opus X Book 12: Crucible of Truth. Pre-order today and get ready because on February 5th it will be loaded to your device.