Centauri Honor Read online

  Centauri Honor

  Skyler Grant

  Copyright © 2018 Skyler Grant

  All rights reserved.

  This novel is a work of fiction. All characters, places, and incidents described in this publication are used fictitiously, or are entirely fictional.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted, in any form or by any means, except by an authorized retailer, or with written permission of the publisher. Inquiries may be addressed via email to [email protected]

  Cover designed by Ivan Tao

  Typography by Kasmit Covers (kasmitcovers.com)

  Editing Polgarus Studio (www.polgarusstudio.com)

  Electronic edition, 2018

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  Created with Vellum

  Contents

  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

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Afterword

  Also by Skyler Grant

  1

  "This is a really bad idea captain," Dela said.

  Dela was in the copilot’s seat of the Centauri Bliss while Quinn had the controls. The view screens showed the green and blue surface of the planet below. Above it were two cruisers, neither in their prime, but both serviceable with the insignia of the Black Fist mercenaries prominently showing.

  "We'll be fine," Quinn said. They were heading right towards the cruisers. Weapon fire was already blasting in their direction, and evasive maneuvers were sending the ship in dizzying spins and thrusts to avoid the shots.

  "We could have gone around," Dela said.

  They weren't going around. Quinn was charging for the gap between the cruisers, their gunners slow to catch onto anyone trying anything so reckless.

  Quinn reassured himself that it was a good plan, really. It bought them a few seconds of distraction on approach and the cruisers wouldn't fire on each other once they were between them.

  Quinn hit the ship-wide comms. "We ready for a full-burn?"

  Melody's voice came from the engine room moments later. "Ready, Captain. I can give you two minutes safe."

  That would have to be enough.

  The Centauri Bliss reached the cruisers. It was like passing down a long metallic canyon where the walls were studded with guns. Some were firing, and they shouldn't have been.

  Dela hit the side jets while Quinn kicked in a bit of extra powers from the main engines, the surface of a cruiser getting uncomfortably close in the view screens. The ship trembled—they'd scraped against an array of sensor antenna on the cruiser. In the battle between lightly armored hull and sensitive electronics, the lightly armored hull won and severed electronic bundles were drifting behind them.

  "They weren't supposed to be firing," Quinn said.

  "Guess nobody told them that plan," Dela said, tapping at her keys. "Atmo’ in ten."

  The Centauri Bliss shuddered again, this time from an incoming round. A wild shot must have found them. Where there was one successful hit, there would soon be more, and Quinn triggered the burn.

  The Centauri Bliss lurched violently. Fuel was precious, expensive, and generally not to be wasted. It could also make an already fast ship much faster.

  Most of the ships blockading the colony of Hope's Reach were patrol craft, smaller and faster than the cruisers the Centauri Bliss just soared past. The big guns were there as an initial discouragement in orbit, but not having been discouraged and with the Bliss reaching the atmosphere it was now a race against the patrols. Quinn intended to win it.

  The surface of the planet was rapidly growing larger and more detailed in the view screens. The colony had its own defenses, enough to discourage attackers getting too close. However, landing would mean getting as trapped as the poor souls below, and Quinn wasn't going to let that happen.

  "Receiving transponder frequency," Dela said, bringing up a map on one of the bridge screens.

  What was left of the colony was mostly built into the sides of three clustered mountains. Judging from the transponder they wanted the supplies dropped into one of the valleys between. It made sense, with good defenses in place protecting the colonists heading out and retrieve them, and they might even be able to provide the Centauri Bliss some covering fire if they came in hot.

  Quinn adjusted the heading. Thirty-three seconds out, time enough.

  "Open hatch and dump in twenty-eight," Quinn said.

  Taki and Kara were in the hold and bundled up in heavy thermal suits and magnetic boots. They were going to get buffeted hard when the hatch was open.

  Quinn eased off on the burn as they approached the drop site. The patrol craft closing on them were moving to intercept. Quinn didn't intend to be there to meet them where they expected.

  Dela was on the comm, reaching out to Tamara and Mara. "You two get what we needed?"

  "Bad data discipline. We'll be ready," Mara's crisp voice answered.

  "Did I say this was a bad plan yet?" Dela asked.

  "You might have mentioned it once or twice," Quinn said.

  They were over the drop site. Quinn triggered the side thrusters to spin them about and hit a quick burst of the burn again. The Centauri Bliss staggered in the air, the maneuver putting a lot of strain on the hull as the ship came almost to a standstill.

  On one monitor Quinn observed cargo crates tumbling down. Medicine, energy cells, ammunition, all the things that little colony needed to keep fighting one more day.

  The clock was ticking and the interceptors were closing.

  "Time to close up," Quinn called.

  "Hatch jammed. We picked up too much heat on entry, Kara is forcing it. Thirty seconds," Taki replied.

  "Captain ..." Dela said.

  "I know," Quinn said. The plan had been to dump the cargo and then bounce right back into orbit. Every second delayed meant patrol craft drawing closer. The plan only worked if they didn't realize he intended to head straight back up, not land.

  Precious seconds ticked away and more ships altered their heading, moving to cut them off.

  "We're clear," Taki said, and a light on the console indicated the hatch closed.

  Close. Too close maybe, but it was either set down or stick to the plan, and setting down really would mean being trapped.

  Quinn fired the burn and was thrown back in his seat as the ship climbed towards space and escape. His fingers strained to enter a few last-moment course corrections, a burst of the side jets mostly getting them clear of one of the attacking interceptors.

  Minor hull damage only, and on a pillar of fire they were soon out of range, the planet becoming smaller behind them. It wasn't into safety yet—they might have tak
en the cruisers by surprise before, but now blockaders knew exactly where the Centauri Bliss was coming from and that it would be headed towards the Runestone gate and out of the system.

  "Time to make a fuss," Quinn said into the comms.

  The lights on the cruisers flickered. Several airlocks on both opened, gusts of atmosphere erupting. It was nothing too dramatic, at least from the outside. Hopefully inside was another matter.

  Data security. Mara had been fixated on the subject ever since coming aboard and was in the process of giving the ship's systems a thorough review. Most long-range communication systems had ample firewalls and security in place, but ships often didn’t prioritize their short-range and internal communication networks.

  Those like Mara who could penetrate such networks were few, and the opportunities were rare considering that any ship close enough and hacking their network was surely hostile and facing sustained fire.

  The Centauri Bliss's sensors had scanned the cruiser’s networks on the way down and the time above the surface was enough for Tamara and Mara to put their brains, and cybernetic implants, together to find a way into those systems.

  The cruisers opened fire. It wasn't with all their guns, perhaps only twenty-percent shooting, and they were sporadic at that. It was still a lot of firepower. Quinn avoided most of it, losing only some port-side armor and one of the thrusters.

  "They're still firing on us," Quinn said.

  "The primary grid on the Razorclaw went down. Terrible maintenance, although in this case it meant everything switched over to manual. An error in their favor, they'll have more guns soon," Mara said.

  "We can speed past?" Dela asked.

  "Soaking fire all the way? We won't make it," Quinn said.

  Putting in a new course Quinn checked the timer. Their recommended burn time was up.

  "Mel? How firm was that two minutes?" Quinn asked.

  "You got a bit more, Captain, but we push too hard we risk a fire and the engine," Melody answered.

  It could be held in reserve, just in case.

  The hull took several more shots with nothing critical damaged—yet. Then the incoming fire faded as the Bliss passed beyond the second cruiser hanging dead in space and was effectively protected by its bulk.

  Quinn figured that made for the perfect shield. Staying directly aligned like this would be suicide, if the second cruiser’s weapons were operational, since they were in a prime firing arc.

  But they weren't, and the Bliss wasn’t sticking around until they were fixed.

  The cruisers were left behind as they headed for the system’s Runestone.

  "Ready?" Quinn asked with a look over to Dela.

  "Wish I weren't," Dela said.

  "Extended jump in twenty seconds, people. Hold onto your lunch." Quinn announced.

  The instant a console light indicated they'd hit the perimeter Dela triggered the jump and the world dissolved in a patchwork of magical blue.

  Quinn vanished into the delusions of the jump. For a time he was married to Taki—it had always been Taki and never Kat. Then, for a time, he was a lake. It was peaceful being a body of water. Until the local star went nova.

  2

  Two jumps later and the Centauri Bliss was coming up on Fonor Three. It wasn't much of a world, barely supporting agricultural industry and not having much in the way of ores to be worth mining. A few colonies had tried, and failed, to make it. Still, hope never died and there were always new colonists willing to repeat the mistakes of the past.

  The Bliss kept its distance from the planet as the family ate dinner. Melody had somehow managed to cook up fish and chips at the same time as preventing the engine from exploding.

  "We do have things other than fish you know," Tamara said.

  "But we've got a lot of fish and you liked it last time," Melody said cheerfully, going around the table and filling plates.

  "Perhaps not more than three days in a row?" Taki said. She sounded exhausted and suffered some serious bruising along one arm.

  "Tough time in the hold? I can have a look at your arm," Jinx said, digging heartily into her meal.

  "One of the crates caught her good," Kara said, attacking her own food with fervor to match Jinx's. They both had heightened metabolisms. Jinx was pregnant and magic. Kara was just an alien who ate a lot.

  "Don't worry. A lesson to be more careful," Taki said.

  Healing put a strain on Jinx, and they were all being extra sensitive given her condition.

  "I really like this, by the way. Dinner time," Mara said with a flash of a smile.

  "We're making it a tradition. Decide to stick around you'll have a lot more of it," Tamara said with a pointed look.

  They'd offered Mara membership in the Centauri, but she hadn't accepted, yet. Whatever secretive organization she was a part of had given its approval, however Mara was the sort that took her obligations seriously. For now, they hadn't pressed the point. With her skill-set she was useful to have along, even if she wasn't family.

  "Everyone did great work with the drop," Quinn said.

  "We take much damage?" Tamara asked.

  "Bit. Some hull damage and one of the thrusters," Melody said.

  "How does this impact the bottom line?"

  Quinn forced a smile. Tamara hadn't been happy about taking this job. "It makes it tight. We should still turn a profit."

  It was true. Although not a particularly large profit after replacement parts were taken into account.

  "If they pay us. We should have gotten more up-front," Tamara said.

  That Quinn couldn't disagree with. They'd gotten twenty percent up-front of six hundred total to do the job. A low advance for a low-paying and risky job.

  "You know we didn't have a choice. Nobody else was hiring. Better than sitting on our tails doing nothing," Dela said, jabbing at her fish with a fork.

  "She's not wrong though, sir. This could be a problem," Taki said, serious.

  A small deposit didn't just suggest the risk of not getting paid at all. With the job accomplished and most of the money still to be paid, that was a lot of incentive for the hiring party to do something sketchy instead of paying up.

  "We know anything about the meeting point yet?" Quinn asked.

  "This is dinner, not a meeting," Melody complained.

  "I think in this case it’s both. We'll have a nice one tomorrow," Tamara said.

  Mara placed a small device on the table and a holographic projection appeared rotating in the air. Mara did have the best toys. "We've got the directions. I was going to talk about it. The location concerns me."

  There was a good reason for that. The meeting was marked down for a valley between some long rocky ridges.

  When you were not exactly trustworthy and you wanted a fair meet, you arranged it in the wide open spaces. Both parties needed to feel they could see any threats coming—you wanted that so nobody got jumpy and drew a weapon at the slightest provocation. A location like this screamed ambush, or maybe that you didn't care if somebody drew a weapon, because you were already planning to draw first.

  "Why can't they just make it easy?" Quinn asked.

  The skirmishing and resulting blockade over the colony of Hope's Reach was an ugly one. Technically it was an Imperium colony, but the Imperium didn't have a lot of influence in Anawari space. They were deep on the Rim, close to where the star charts and Runestone network ended and everything beyond was simply labeled "the Deep" and far from the Core worlds where the Imperium ruled almost absolute.

  The efforts to capture the colony were funded by the Coalition, a group of over a dozen impoverished rural worlds. Not wanting to be seen opposing directly against the Imperium, they were using mercenaries, and in turn without the resources to counter the attacks, the Imperium hired the crime families of Arkstone.

  It was a war neither side was willing to lose much over, and any sane person stayed well away. Quinn took the job of smuggling in supplies because it was one of only a few they'd bee
n able to get.

  "If they are planning to screw us over, why show up at all?" Kara asked. "They realize I'll kick their asses, right?"

  "They probably want the ship," Quinn said, frowning. "Unless any of our individual enemies have tracked us down out here?"

  "I haven't seen any bounties for any of us come across and I've been watching," Tamara said.

  "There have been a few enforcement reports suggesting that the Bliss is still operating in the Core. I wouldn't worry about it for the moment," Mara said dryly.

  "That is the easiest to establish or not," Tamara said.

  "At considerable expense, though. You have a point, but it is my enemies who are the most likely to be interested in finding you—and they will have a hard time confirming anything," Mara said.

  Interesting. Originally Quinn had been hired to transport Mara's "sisters" to a Rim world. Wasn’t that an isolated case? Quinn would have to ask Tamara about it when he had a chance. However good he might think he was at conspiracies, Tamara was better.

  Taki squinted at the hologram image. "They'll expect us to come down on the south end. Room for a ship there."

  Kara nodded. "Yeah, if it were my ambush I'd have a few snipers up on the hill. Show up to the meet, open fire and block the exit route somehow. Shoot up whoever has the big guns—that’ll be the people on the ground involved in the meeting—while another team takes the relatively undefended ship."

  "Do we show?" Dela asked.

  "They have our money and they might be legit. That means the real question is, if they are planning something, can we come out ahead?" Quinn asked.