Andromeda Rising Read online

  Andromeda Rising

  Andromeda Chronicles I

  Jay Allan

  Copyright © 2019 Jay Allan Books

  All Rights Reserved

  Contents

  Blood on the Stars Series

  Join my email list

  Cast of Characters

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  The Crimson Worlds Series

  Blood on the Stars Series

  (Available on Kindle Unlimited)

  Duel in the Dark (Blood on the Stars I)

  Call to Arms (Blood on the Stars II)

  Ruins of Empire (Blood on the Stars III)

  Echoes of Glory (Blood on the Stars IV)

  Cauldron of Fire (Blood on the Stars V)

  Dauntless (Blood on the Stars VI)

  The White Fleet (Blood on the Stars VII)

  Black Dawn (Blood on the Stars VIII)

  Invasion (Blood on the Stars IX)

  Nightfall (Blood on the Stars X)

  The Grand Alliance (Blood on the Stars XI)

  The Colossus (Blood on the Stars XII) – Coming Soon

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  Cast of Characters

  Andromeda “Andi” Lafarge – An orphan from “The Gut,” the worst slum on the industrial hellworld of Parsephon, turned Badlands adventurer.

  “The Marine” – An ex-Marine officer, discharged amid scandal, and living now in The Gut, addicted to the drug Blast. The Marine befriends a young Andi, teaching her to fight and survive.

  Captain Walter Hiram – Owner-captain of Belstar, a small freighter. An acquaintance of the Marine, and Andi’s commander for a time.

  Captain James Lorillard – Owner-captain of Nightrunner, a free trader engaged in illegal old tech prospecting along the Badlands frontier. Andi’s commander along the frontier, and her second mentor.

  Tyl Jammar – A member of Nightrunner’s crew. A native of the planet Physalia.

  Tyrell Stone – A member of Nightrunner’s crew. The ship’s communication’s specialist.

  Gregor – A member of Nightrunner’s crew. A native of a high-gravity world, a virtual giant towering well over two meters and massing more than one hundred fifty kilograms.

  The Jackal – A member of Nightrunner’s crew. An ex-thief, stealthy and light footed.

  Anna Fasarus – A member of Nightrunner’s crew. A good fighter, with an unknown and shadowy past.

  Barret – A member of Nightrunner’s crew. Ex-Confederation navy gunnery specialist.

  Yarra Tork – A member of Nightrunner’s crew, and the ship’s gifted engineer.

  “Doc” Rand – A member of Nightrunner’s crew. A former first aid technician, and now the ship’s de facto doctor.

  Sylene Merrick – A member of Nightrunner’s crew. A gifted programmer and expert hacker, and Andi’s best friend.

  Pierre Gavereaux – An agent from the Union’s Sector Nine intelligence agency, posing as a frontier information broker.

  Darvin – An unscrupulous Badlands information broker and Spacer’s District gangster.

  Chapter One

  “The Gut”

  Vulcan City

  Planet Parsephon, Obliesk II

  Year 295 AC

  The girl raced through the haunted, perpetual dusk of the back alleys, ducking under low-hanging beams and sidestepping jagged holes in the cracked and broken pavement. Her desperate flight took her past strung out addicts, decomposing corpses, and putrid piles of rotting garbage alike.

  Vulcan City was an industrial powerhouse and, from the outside at least, a shining gem of the Confederation, a megalopolis covering forty thousand square kilometers of Parsephon’s scarred and polluted surface. The wares it produced were sold on every world of the Confederation, and beyond, even out on the Far Rim, on planets whose names were known only to the trading houses and cosmographers who had reason to possess such arcane knowledge.

  Those compelled to live in its slums and work long shifts in its dirty and dangerous factories had another view of course. Vulcan City was only the largest of Parsephon’s many industrial cities. The planet’s surface was a checkboard of old, nearly exhausted, strip mines, intermixed with urban areas consisting mostly of vast stretches of factories and block after block of worker housing. The laborers and derelicts of Vulcan City were no different than those in Carpathia or Gruniswald, though outside the decrepit and overcrowded neighborhoods where they lived and worked, no one much cared. Not as long as the goods continued to flow from the factories to the waiting holds of the freighters in the spaceports and in orbit above.

  The city was a wonder of sorts, however. Its vast industry had created almost limitless wealth, and claimed for it a place high in the ranks of the swath of worlds known as the Iron Belt. Those sixteen systems poured out such vast quantities of manufactured goods, almost alone, they powered both the war machine that had resisted constant Union aggression and the economy that made the Confederation the envy of every nation on the Rim.

  It was a perverse wonder of a sort in its vast ghettos, as well, where human and inanimate debris existed in a strange unity, the morality that would have drawn a significant difference between the two almost entirely absent. Men and women who fell below the working class disappeared into the alleys and catacombs, where most of them died, clearing the way for the next group of lost souls. The bodies of the dead were collected, not unlike trash was, or they were simply left where they had fallen, to decompose once they were picked clean of clothing and anything else of value they possessed.

  Parsephon’s slums were infamous, and Vulcan City’s the worst of all, but none anywhere, perhaps in the entire Confederation, was more notorious than the Gut. Barely ten square kilometers, in a long sliver running from the stench of the putrid riverfront to the heavy industry sector, it was home to six million officially, and an uncounted number of homeless and wanderers.

  It was a living nightmare, a place reeking of human waste, chemicals, and caustic smoke. Of all the worlds of the Confederation, it was by far the foulest, the most miserable, and the one most dominated by a corrupt and brutal ruling class that made the rest of the Confederation’s politi
cians seem almost just and dedicated by comparison.

  It was also the girl’s home, the only one she had ever known.

  Her hand was clasped tightly around a small gold chain. It was but a trinket to the enormously wealthy owner she’d stolen it from, a bit of ornamentation easily replaced, but to her it was two or three month’s food, at least. A true haul, even at the miserable valuation Argus the fence would offer her. Assuming she got away, of course, which at that moment was still an open question.

  She’d shaken the regular police. That had been easy enough, as it usually was. The police were scared to go into the Gut, unless they went in significant force, and the two cops that had been on her tail gave up almost as soon as she’d crossed back into the grim and familiar zone. The police weren’t the problem, not this time. They were never much of a problem.

  Chasing after petty thieves, and even ones that rated a designation somewhat north of ‘petty,’ wasn’t something that really got the cops’ blood running, not when there were several hundred fresh murders every day in Vulcan City to occupy their time. Their first priority, in reality if not official process, was to operate the patrols that maintained order, that kept the millions of workers moving peacefully to and from their shifts at the factories. Industrial production was the planet’s lifeblood, and certainly it was the top priority of the great industrial families that controlled Parsephon’s industry. The police departments themselves were entirely in the pockets of the industrialists, and all of the officers wearing the familiar brown uniforms knew they were a favored class, at least somewhat of one, at least when compared to the miserable factory workers or, worse, the dregs that slipped down into shitholes like the Gut.

  No, the problem wasn’t the cops, it was the private security agents on her tail. That was a charitable designation, she knew. The men chasing her were thugs, pure and simple, and she had a good idea what they would do to her if they caught her. The details were highly variable, of course, but none of the possibilities were pleasant, and they all made getting arrested look like a picnic.

  She reached down, feeling around to reassure herself the blade was still stuck in the ragged piece of cloth she called a belt. She’d found the knife a few years ago in a pile of garbage, the same way she’d come upon just about everything else she possessed, except, of course, for the things she’d stolen. The blade had been in pretty bad shape, but she’d managed to tighten the handle and refasten the grip with some old synth leather. She’d sharpened the weapon to a keen edge on the hard masonry of an old warehouse. It had come in handy more than once. She’d used it to scare off those who had threatened her—almost an everyday occurrence in the Gut—and she’d wielded it in an actual fight or two, but this was by far the most desperate situation she’d faced with it.

  She’d been sneaking into ‘The Heights’ and stealing what she needed to survive for almost a year now. The exclusive neighborhood was home to many of Vulcan City’s wealthiest oligarchs, or at least it was the location of the manor houses they maintained near the factories and foundries they owned. They all had sophisticated security systems, of course, but she’d found her ways around them. She’d managed to score some success in her endeavors, mostly because she went there looking for scraps and not trying to pull of grand heists. Staying below the radar, keeping a low profile, had been crucial to her success, and it had also allowed her to sidestep the risk of the higher security and heavier police presence in the Heights. The leavings of the rich and powerful were meaningful treasures to her, and she’d become adept at crawling through the transport tunnels and underground infrastructure to get where she was going unseen.

  This time, she realized, she’d simply picked the wrong house. Parsephon’s industrialists were hard men and women, arrogant, and far from tolerant of thieves or disobedient members of the working class. Still, they rarely wasted much time chasing after the small scraps she stole. Until this time.

  The two men behind her were familiar. She’d seen far too many of their sort preying on the denizens of the Gut. They were mobsters, and the house she’d chosen to rob apparently belonged to one of Vulcan City’s crime bosses, or at least to an industrialist with significant underworld connections.

  It had just been an accident, a mistake, and very likely to be her last. She had always given the mob crews a wide berth. She didn’t want the wares they peddled, drugs to fight off the daily misery or numbers games offering false hope of escape for the dregs of humanity. And, she definitely didn’t want any trouble.

  Trouble like the kind she had now.

  She had managed to stay ahead of them, but she was getting tired, and she could feel her legs slowing. She knew her pursuers had to be fatigued as well, but they had pursued her a good part of the way in a vehicle, and they’d only resorted to a chase on foot when she’d gotten back to the narrow alleys of the Gut.

  Also, they were grown men, and she was a fourteen-year-old girl. In places less harsh than the Gut, she would still be considered a child.

  She was losing hope of outrunning her pursuers, of getting away. She was going to have to fight. It was a battle she knew she couldn’t win. She was tough, scrappy, and she had some experience fighting off other denizens of the Gut, but this fight would be another thing entirely.

  She figured the thugs had guns, and that made stopping in the open and waiting to fight something akin to suicide. She had to pick a spot, somewhere she could hide and wait, and jump them once they were close. Her chances in a knife fight against two of them were beyond poor, but it was a better plan than getting shot down in the street.

  There was a turn coming up, she remembered, almost ninety degrees, an even smaller, filthier, more ragged alley than the one she was on. It was too far ahead to see yet, in the gray monochrome of the dismal alley, but she knew where she was. Dirty, reeking, dangerous, the Gut was her home, and she was willing to bet she knew it better than the two gangsters chasing her down.

  You’re betting on it, alright. You’re betting your life.

  She tried to breathe deeply, regularly, struggled to get ahold of her fear. She had to be ready. She’d surprise her pursuers, at least if she did everything correctly. If she could take one down before they knew what was happening, just maybe…

  She could see the turnoff, just ahead. She knew where it was, by heart, but now she was nervous, worried that she’d run past and give her pursuers the chance to catch her before she had another chance to ambush them.

  She was soaked in sweat, from the running, of course, and now even more from the fear gripping her body like a vise. She’d lived her entire life on the streets, the last four years completely alone. She was tough, able to take care of herself, but this time she knew she’d gotten herself in deep. If she could escape from—or kill—the two thugs pursuing her, maybe, just maybe, she could slip away, become a mystery for whoever had sent two goons to kill her. There had been surveillance assets all around the house, of course, but she’d gone in with her hood over her head, looking like one of millions of vagabonds prowling around Vulcan City’s lost neighborhoods. She’d left DNA evidence behind, almost certainly, but she was a street rat, born on the floor of an abandoned building. That had never seemed like an advantage before, but the fact that she had no profile in the planet’s databases was certainly helpful.

  She lurched to the side, just as she got to the turn, pulling her blade out as she did. She stepped back, perhaps a meter from the main alley, and she tried to breathe as softly as she could. She knew her life depended on what she did in the next few seconds, and she tried to ignore the cold realization that she had little chance of taking out both of her pursuers.

  She’d been ready for death, in one way or another, since the day she’d knelt down beside her mother, providing what miserable comfort she could as the woman who’d protected her, and done God only knew what to feed them and keep them reasonably safe on the streets, died, choking up fountains of blood and bits of her diseased lungs as she did.

  B
ut now that death she’d thought herself ready to face seemed at hand, she was terrified…and determined to survive. Somehow.

  She gripped her knife, her fingers tight around the weapon. Her eyes were focused on the alley, and her ears were attuned, listening for the sounds of her attackers approaching. The light was dim, as it always was in the Gut’s maze of alleys, but her eyes were accustomed to it. With any luck, the two thugs weren’t. And she needed every advantage she could get.

  She heard the sounds of their boots on the loose gravel, and another sound, one of them kicking some bit of garbage or debris. She didn’t doubt the two men could handily beat her in combat and kill her, but they didn’t seem likely to sneak up on anyone soon.

  Her heart was pounding, and she rubbed her arm on the frayed old material of her tunic, wiping away at least some of the sweat. She could hear them coming close, see vague shadows in the dusky light.

  Then the first man moved into view. She’d been planning, thinking, trying to stay focused, but suddenly, instinct took over. She lunged forward, her hand hitting the man’s shoulder, pushing him with all the force her limited strength could muster…while she brought the knife down, plunging it into his back.

  The thug, screamed in surprise and pain, and he lunged around, his fist swinging for his still unseen attacker as he stumbled down to his knees. The girl had tried to pull back, to duck the response she knew would come, but she wasn’t fast enough. She dodged the main force of the blow, but the back of the man’s fist caught her on the side of her face.

  She staggered back under the impact, and her legs went limp, her strength draining away. She stumbled, struggling to stay on her feet, and even as she did, she saw the second man, his arm moving up, bringing his pistol to bear. She tried to move to the side, to evade the shot she knew was coming, but her legs were too wobbly, too weak. She’d yanked the blade back, out of her victim’s back, and she held it in her hand. But her would be killer was too far away.