Cypher (The Dragon's Bidding Book 2)

BOOK: Cypher (The Dragon's Bidding Book 2)
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Praise
for Christina Westcott’s

Dragon’s
Bidding Series

 

 

"No one
does Science Fiction Romance like Westcott. Her signature style is a mix of
blood-pumping action, sarcastic humor and romance to die for. CYPHER benefits
from all three in a perfect balance that kept me turning pages well past
bedtime. Highly recommended!"

—Rhonda
Mason, author of
The Empress Game
Trilogy

 

 

“Fast-paced,
hard-hitting and fun. A Hero for the Empire has action, romance, galactic
political machinations and a snarky telepathic cat. A winning combination!”

 

—Linnea
Sinclair, award-winning author of the Dock Five Universe Series

 

 

“…there
are some pretty heart-racing adventures happening in A Hero for the Empire…. I
liked that there are plenty of surprises and a lot of action. The adventure is
great, but mostly I loved the characters in A Hero for the Empire, human, cat
and ship. If the series continues, I hope to see more of Fitz and Wolf. For
adventure, intrigue, spaceships, cybernetics, heroines, heroes and, let’s not
forget, cats, I recommend A Hero for the Empire.”

 

—Whiskey with my
Books

 

 

“(Christina) Westcott enters the world of
space operas with a rousing tale that combines romance and science fiction without
being too heavy-handed in either genre. The heroine is a kick-ass soldier
committed to doing the right thing and the hero is more than the sum of his
parts. The worldbuilding is solid, the aliens are creepy and the addition of
telepathic cats is pure genius.”

 

—RT Book Reviews

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Cypher

 

By
Christina Westcott

 

 

 

 

C
ypher.
(Late Scyran Empire—532 to 893 ER)

 

(1)
n. A secret way of writing; a code

(2)
n. A person of no importance, especially one who does the bidding of another
and seems to have no will of their own.

(3)
v. Military. To erase all records of an individual, rendering them nonexistent.

 

 

 

CHAPTER ONE

 

Wolf Youngblood tapped
his knuckles against the shuttle’s armorglass window. “Too easy,” he muttered,
but Kimber FitzWarren’s augmented hearing picked up the words. She studied her
partner’s profile and chuckled.

“Easy? You must have a
different definition of the word than I do. I recall taking a slug to the
chest. You getting shot. My ship crashing. Being swarmed by mind-sucking
parasites, attacked by giant bugs, and tangling with a pair of imperial
warships. Not to mention the past two months of non-stop political wrangling,
deal making, and ass kissing to set up a workable new government for Ari
Ransahov.”

The shuttle banked, and
through the window Fitz spotted their destination below. A crowd surrounded
Dragonhalle, the site of every Scyran Emperor’s coronation for the past two
centuries. Onlookers surged around the building and overflowed into the streets
and surrounding parks, altitude rendering their colors into a restless
pointillist painting. The people of the Empire had come out
en masse
to
celebrate the passing of their old ruler and greet the arrival of the new.

Wolf squeezed her hand.
“You know what I mean. Since we left Baldark I’ve expected to run into some
kind of resistance from the old Emperor’s cronies. Ashcraft had over two
decades to corrupt everything he touched—senators, contractors, functionaries,
even the military. I thought someone would take a shot at us.” He tapped the
armorglass again. “Not this walk in the park.”

“It’s not over yet,”
Fitz said. “I keep expecting to see Janos Tritico grinning from the crowd just
before the world blows up in my face.”

“You’ll never see Jan.
He stays in the shadows, keeps his hands clean, and pulls the strings, like a
good puppet master.”

“And I let him get away.”
Fitz grimaced, remembering that smiling face in her gun sights, and her
hesitation.

“I couldn’t hang onto
him either,” Wolf said. “Jan’s slippery. We’ll get him, but until we do, he’s
the reason all this quiet is grating on my nerves.”

“Leave it to you to get
antsy when things go right.”

Fitz guessed Wolf
wasn’t the only one spooked by the quiet. Arianne Ransahov rose from her seat
and made her way down the passenger aisle toward them. The tall, copper-haired
woman had been a legend, a hero to Fitz and every other graduate from the
Imperial Academy, but in the last few hectic months, Fitz had come to know her
as a charismatic, if flawed, human being. And a friend. As the shuttle turned
onto its final approach, Ari stumbled and dropped into a seat across from them.

“Careful,” Fitz said.
“Wouldn’t do to break your neck on the way to your own coronation.”

Not that it would
matter to Ari—to any of them, not with the alien symbiont living inside them and
healing their wounds with incredible speed. A short time ago Fitz had been
dying of Tinkerman-Kasahari Syndrome, the disease that shortened the life of
all cybernetically augmented personnel. Now she was a Lazzinair, named after
August Lazzinair, the doctor who stumbled across the life-extending procedure
decades ago. Virtually indestructible, perhaps even biologically immortal, she
could die of catastrophic injuries, but the symbiont would continue to repair
all but the most horrific damage and stave off the ravages of age for only the
gods knew how long. She hadn’t quite got used to that; the thought still made
the breath catch in her throat.

Ari’s hands twisted
together in her lap as she stared out the window at the spires and sky bridges
of Striefbourne City growing closer as the shuttle descended.

“After all this time,
it’s hard to believe that I’m back, and in a matter of minutes, I’ll be
stepping up to the Dragon Throne. It all seems…”

“Too easy?” Wolf asked.

Fitz shot him a
sideways glance before turning to Ari. “Easy or not, it looks like you might
get that bloodless coup you wanted.”

Ari’s hope to bring
change to the Empire without a protracted civil war had been little more than
wishful thinking, but when they’d jumped back to Scyr, a taskforce half the
size of their little fleet of co-conspirators had awaited them at the
hyperlimit. With the bulk of the Imperial Fleet at Rainbow, Meyerbridge, and
Beckswold, and the carrier group securing Hideyoshi Shipyards, little remained
in the Scyran system beyond a single group of outdated ships making up Home
Guard.

Fitz had stood at Ari’s
shoulder as Home Guard’s commander, Admiral Alois Pettigrew, contacted them. A
short man, his white uniform stretched across a paunch that suggested a
predilection for sweets. Whether it was seeing the legend of Ari Ransahov alive
and defiant, or realizing his current Emperor was a bent and drooling husk,
Pettigrew had sensed change in the wind and ordered his fleet to stand down and
let them pass.

Fitz’s stomach had been
a hard knot during the long fall into the system, barely able to keep food
down. She’d waited for the wail of battle stations or a pulse rifle fired from
a shadowy corridor, but they never came. She sighed in frustration. Wolf was
right—too easy, but in a few hours it would be over. Ari would be the Emperor,
and Fitz would begin her new job of protecting her liege every waking hour.

The ship’s landing
skids crunched onto the pavement, and a shudder rippled through the cabin as
the engines spun down. Fitz leaned across Wolf to the window, studying the
crowd encircling them.

A cordon of white-and-gold
armored Praetorian Guards struggled to restrain a crowd of people anxious to
get their first look at their new leader, and their last at the man who had
created so much terror and destruction in their lives. The circle tightened as
the press of humanity drove the guards forward.

“The Emperor’s Guard,”
Wolf said. “Do you trust them?”

Fitz knew that Wolf’s
interaction with the Praetorian Guard the last time he’d been on Scyr had been
less than pleasant. “Their loyalty to the Emperor and the Dragon Throne is
legendary.”

“Yes, but Ashcraft is
still Emperor for a few more minutes, technically.” He nodded his head toward
the figure slouched between two marine medics. Vladimir Ashcraft’s hands
quivered against his seat’s arms, and a drop of drool hung at the corner of his
mouth.

“Trust me, they realize
the best course for the Empire is to put him aside and let Ari take control,”
Fitz said.

“I hope you’re right. I
wouldn’t trust them to dig a latrine.”

“I’m sure they’ll do
what’s right, if only in self-interest—and besides, as Ari’s Chief of Security,
they’ll be under my command. Don’t worry. As long as I’m in charge, I won’t let
them lay a hand on you.”

His blue eyes twinkled.
“Can you say the same for their commanding officer?”

Fitz matched his grin.
“I can guaran-damn-tee you, soldier. Tonight I’ll lay way more than my hands on
you.”

“I’m looking forward to
holding you to that promise, Colonel.”

As Wolf pulled on his
black armored gloves, Fitz caught the glint of the platinum ring on his finger,
the mate to the one she wore. Exchanging rings during pair-bonding was a custom
on Willcommin, Wolf’s homeworld. On the trip back to Scyr, they’d posted an
open-ended bonding contract. Neither a dry-sounding legal agreement nor rings
made her want to spend eternity with this man, but love—an emotion few augies
ever had the chance to experience.

“Weapons check.” He
slapped down his tinted visor and stood, a tower of black armor. They each
carried an Acton Mk IV strapped under their arm and a standard military-issue
pulse pistol on their belt, along with one of the old-fashioned slug throwers.
Since tradition stated that Emperors couldn’t go to their coronation armed, Ari
had loaned Fitz her unique Koenigsagg-designed pistol. They also carried
various knives, hide-out guns, and other lethal devices—some not entirely
legal—secreted around their armor at Wolf’s insistence.

Unarmed, Ari should
have been accompanied by a phalanx of augmented bodyguards, but she trusted
only the two of them. Fitz joked about her protection unit consisting of one
and a half augies. Wolf couldn’t match her in strength and speed, his
modifications being old and long out of date, but what he lacked in cybernetic
assets he made up for in years of experience, first as an imperial officer and
then a mercenary commander.

The medics helped
Ashcraft to his feet. Before they’d left their flagship, the
Arianne
Ransahov
,
he’d been given an injection of axathyline to stave off
the ravages of the neurodegenerative disease eating away at his brain. Ari
wanted him lucid enough to facilitate the transfer of power. As he shuffled
past, flanked by his minders, a glint of intelligence showed in his eyes. And
hatred.

Fitz followed the trio
into the airlock, waiting as the outer door opened and the ramp extended. She
wanted Ashcraft to be the first out, to show the crowd what the madman who’d
terrorized them had become. Immediately after the coronation, he would be
ensconced in a plush, high-security sanitarium for whatever time his disease
left him.

A broad cross-section
of Striefbourne City’s population had turned out, judging by the whiff of
unwashed bodies and pricey colognes flowing through the hatch. Business suits
blended with gray work coveralls and thrift store rags, but at the sight of
their old tormenter, their voices united, swelling into chants and screams.

“Murderer.”

“Kill the bastard and
his augie monsters.”

The hair on the back of
Fitz’s neck bristled at that remark. This could get ugly real fast. She commed
the medics. “Get him inside. Protocol be damned. If he won’t walk any faster,
sling him over your shoulder and carry him. Move now, before someone gets
killed.”

At first the
Praetorians held the tsunami of protesters back, opening a path to the bronze
doors of Dragonhalle, but the crowd poured forward. Raised hands clenched into
fists, and debris flew out of the crowd, pelting Ashcraft and the marines. At
first only garbage—half-eaten meat pies, food wrappers, and cups, many still
full, splashed around the three, but then a rock smashed into one of the
medics, staggering him. With vengeance’s floodgates open, anger poured out as
people began stripping the nearby flowerbeds, hurling rocks and ornamental
pots.

The mob pushed toward
the object of their hatred, and one of the guards holding them back slipped,
falling to his knees. The crowd rolled over him.

With the situation
teetering on the verge of chaos, Ari brushed past Fitz and moved to the bottom
of the ramp. Only those closest noticed the tall woman, at first. Missiles in
their hands forgotten, they quieted, and a sigh rippled across the crowd as
more and more turned to stare. The marines seized the opportunity and pushed
through the wall of protesters, hustling Ashcraft into the safety of the hall.

Ari stepped from the
shadow of the aircraft’s wing and sunlight illuminated her, turning her hair
into a halo of red-gold. She reached into the crowd, squeezing extended hands,
grasping shoulders, and ruffling children’s hair. Fingers reached out to touch
her, stroke her sleeve. A white haired man in a military jacket several decades
out of date braced to attention and saluted her. Ari returned the gesture, and
hundreds of voices roared their approval.

Fitz pushed her way
through the crowd to reach Ari. Due to the noise, she could only contact Wolf
over her comm. “What does she think she’s doing?”

She could hear a
chuckle in his voice. “Being Ari.”

“If one of Tritico’s
assassins is here, she’s a tempting target.”

“If someone shot her,
she’d only get back up again.”

“And that would raise
more questions than we want to answer right now.” Fitz tried to urge Ari into
motion, steering her through the parting crowd.

“Maybe not,” Wolf said.
“Listen to what they’re shouting.”

At first she heard only
noise, but then her acute hearing began to pick out words and phrases.

“A miracle…”

“She hasn’t aged, not a
bit.”

“Great Hansue be
praised. The gods have sent her.”

They moved in the eye
of a hurricane of adoration. Hands stretched out toward their messiah, and Ari
seemed intent on touching every one of them. The trio reached the building, but
not until the huge doors clanged shut behind her did Fitz allowed herself to
heave out the tight breath she’d been holding.

“I can’t believe what happened
out there.”

“Just a little of the
old Ransahov magic,” Wolf said.

“But the sunlight. Even
she couldn’t control that.”

“She saw the
opportunity, figured how they’d react, and made the most of it. That’s what
she’s good at.”

They fell in behind Ari
as a pair of Praetorian Guards led them along a wide hallway, its plush carpet
swallowing the sound of their footsteps. Forced to move at Ashcraft’s shuffling
pace, Fitz inspected the rich wood-paneled walls and old 2-D paintings,
probably looking like a gawking tourist. Statues of heroes and emperors flanked
them, and she half expected to see one wearing Ari’s face. Admiral Kiernan had
brought her to Dragonhalle once as his bodyguard, but that had been to the
Assembly room only, not this posh area of private office suites and conference
rooms.

BOOK: Cypher (The Dragon's Bidding Book 2)
8.98Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
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