Son of Orlan (The Chronicles of Kin Roland Book 2)
Read Son of Orlan (The Chronicles of Kin Roland Book 2) Online
Authors: Scott Moon
SON OF ORLAN
Book Two in the
Chronicles of Kin Roland
Scott Moon
Copyright © 2014
Scott Moon
All rights reserved.
No part of this
publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by
any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical
methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the
case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other
noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.
This is a work of
fiction. All of the characters, names, incidents, organizations, and dialogue
in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used
fictitiously.
DEDICATION
This book is dedicated to fans old and new,
because sharing a story is an honor and reading takes time in a world where
there is little to spare. You may never know what your participation in this
imaginative journey means to me. Thank you for coming this far.
Table of Contents
ORLAN strode boldly down the
corridor, not as a man but as a titan of potential violence. Red lights flashed
on the floor, reminding crewmen, troopers, and marines the ship was in
trouble—in case the earsplitting klaxon wasn’t a clue. Track lights pointed
toward battle stations for soldiers or safe areas for noncombatants, though the
ship had yet to sustain damage. So far as Orlan knew, there wasn’t an enemy in
sight.
No enemy, but plenty of impact alerts.
Orlan hated debris fields. Before long, smoke would pour from
vents and wall panels, sparks exploding from damaged circuits, and gravity
would fail like Commander Westwood’s common sense.
“Out of my way!” He shoved a marine lieutenant against the
wall and stepped past, heedless when the man fell to one knee and cursed.
The officer struggled to his feet and stabbed a finger
forward, losing his balance as the ship lurched. “Take that man’s name.”
Orlan stopped, turned, and stalked toward seven wide-eyed marines
with twitching trigger fingers. He didn’t have time for this, but there were
too many officers who thought they could give him orders.
I’m the Hero of Man
.
The group edged back, hands reaching for sidearms. Orlan
quickly assessed each by size, apparent fitness level, arrangement of weapons,
and glimmers of misplaced confidence or justifiable fear in their eyes.
“Take my name, Lieutenant. Take it and shove it up your
ass.” Orlan glared at each man in turn as the lieutenant sputtered nonsense. He
pointed a thick finger at the leader. “I’ll see you planet-side.” He leaned
forward, introducing his jaw to the officer’s face. He paused. He turned and
sauntered away, listening for a challenge that never came.
Public address systems blared. “Planetary assault personnel,
report to the armory. The ship is entering atmosphere. Assault personnel,
report to the armory for equipment and deployment orders. Welcome to Crashdown,
people.”
Orlan stopped. He turned in a circle as though he might see
bulkheads exploding or gravity generators failing. Orion’s Gift, a Type IX
battlecruiser and 4th Fleet’s Flagship, didn’t do landfall. The monster rarely
came near a world unless Planetary Forces needed to get some troopers killed in
an assault. The battlecruiser was strictly a space vessel. Captains liked to
talk about the invulnerability of their ships, bragging they could set any
craft down safely if it came to that, despite what happened to Admiral Horn
when he tried.
The fool would live forever in the annals of history, even
though he died in a tangle of molten steel and shattered ceramic heat shields
with all hands.
Billy!
Orlan knew the boy was smart, but nothing could prepare the
stowaway for what was about to happen.
Officers, troopers, and marines swarmed toward Orlan. They
poured out of their holes, every half-assed one of them moving the wrong
direction.
Go ahead. Run to your stations. I’ll still be first in
the fight
. Orlan spat over his shoulder without slowing his pace.
And
I’ll be saving your asses, unless you’re stupid
.
He didn’t waste time with troopers or marines who picked the
wrong fight and got jammed up in a suicide mission. Was it his fault boys
wanted to be heroes? Overestimating their abilities; believing the boot camp
propaganda; thinking
they
could be the Hero of Man?
And girls. Don’t
forget girls. Rebecca is the worst glory seeker of the lot. What had she
thought to achieve putting Kin in that coffin?
Another group streamed out of the cafeteria—yelling, asking
stupid questions, begging friends for reassurance. He smashed the first man to
the ground, hesitated as he stared down at the Academy educated boy, then
stepped into an alcove as the panic-parade rushed by. He wasn’t hiding. Anyone
could see him. A few made eye contact as they strapped on safety equipment and
hurried forward.
Orlan yelled as they passed, but didn’t join them. “Is this
the only God damn hallway on the ship? Your instructors didn’t explain about
getting blown to hell when a ship goes down?”
A marine sergeant, a man who thought he had a reputation
because he’d been in a dozen engagements, slowed to stare at Orlan. An order
crawled up his throat and parted his lips.
Orlan cocked his head sideways. “What are you looking at?”
The press of the crowd moved the man away. His face bobbed
in the river of people, looking back, shoving crewmen ineffectually, his
expression reddening with each attempt to shout down the Hero of Man.
“Idiot.”
When he couldn’t tolerate another second of the pathetic
wannabes, he stepped into the flow of men and women. He shoved people out of
the way, two or three at a time like they were children. Before long, he didn’t
have to push, because humanity parted for him. He strode toward his quarters,
cursing the size of the ship and the chaos that slowed him.
Billy nearly died the first time Orlan went after him. Of
course, he’d likely die now, but Orlan had to do something. He had to fight.
Had to explain his will, his intentions, his demands to the universe.
I’m
Jack Washington Orlan. You better watch your ass
.
Everything came back to Hellsbreach. He spent the reward he
received as the only living Hero of Man. Lesser soldiers would’ve made the
money last weeks, even with drinking, whoring, and gambling. Roland would’ve
retired in luxury with his sweet Becca. Course, he was floating across the
void, probably frozen solid and shot through with solar radiation.
Orlan had gone straight to Tabatha. One night, that was all
it took to leave him a pauper. It’d been a damn good night, no arguments there.
By morning, he believed he’d slept with every female officer on
Orion’s Gift
except Becca.
And now I have a son
.
Tabatha didn’t love him; it wasn’t in her job description.
Maybe she feared him. Respect wouldn’t be too much to hope for. Women liked
strong men—men that kept them safe, made them feel beautiful, put them so damn
high on a pedestal that gods were jealous.
It seemed like it should be easy.
Should be, but wasn’t. Orlan had no luck with women. He
always left them crying—cursing sometimes, but never happy.
He grunted as he neared his quarters, striding forcefully
onward, slowing as his mind replayed memories, but still stalking the corridor
in a broad-shouldered attitude of strength.
Thoughts of betrayal added fifty pounds to each arm and a
ton to his legs. He pushed away visions of Hellsbreach and his failure.
Escaping a thousand bloodthirsty Reapers wasn’t betraying his buddies; it
wasn’t anything but staying alive. Looking back, it felt like betrayal.
Fuck
that. I didn’t fail Billy, did I? Didn’t betray him? I found him when no one
else gave a shit
.
The door had exploded when he kicked it. Clouds of noxious
dust and computer parts scattered the floor as he punched the Iron Death
Gangster in the throat—something more like Roland would’ve done, aiming for a
man’s weakness instead of overpowering him.
To hell with that
.
Orlan should’ve killed the guards. If he’d known what they’d
done to Billy, he wouldn’t have hesitated.
“Get up, Billy. You’re coming home.”
The boy stared, amazement and gratitude flooding his
expression. Orlan wished he could feel the spine-tingling rush one more time—the
shining gleam of hero worship in his son’s eyes.
Doubt killed the moment. He didn’t deserve such adoration.
He couldn’t have fathered this beautiful child. Monsters didn’t make angels.
Killers didn’t give life.
Maybe he wasn’t the kid’s father, but who else could’ve
gotten a million-credit prostitute pregnant? Who besides Orlan, the baddest
mother-fucker to survive Hellsbreach?
“You came,” Billy said.
“I never leave a man behind.” Orlan’s stomach soured as he
untangled Billy from computer cables connected to his spine. Even as he ground
his teeth at the sight of his son equipped as a digital pleasure slave, he
suffered images of Colossal Class Battle Tanks on Hellsbreach and his squad
screaming.
“Help me Orlan!”
An arm flew across the desert landscape.
“Help me Orlan! No, no, NO!”
But Roland never screamed. The arrogant jerk was still
fighting, trying to pull his unit together, facing Reapers who had destroyed an
armored column.
Stupid
.
Orlan found it easier to consider what gangsters had done to
his son than remember his buddies being dragged into holes. At least he could
kill the Iron Death thugs. He could kill them and any living creature in this
universe that thought Orlan’s son was to be messed with.
Fuck these gangsters. Fuck the universe
.
Orlan flung the boy over one shoulder and turned to leave. A
dozen gangsters blocked the door. Two held military pistols. One had a shotgun.
Rows of them waited behind the front line with knives and clubs, tattoos
scrawling over muscle, rings and pins piercing flesh, and eyes leaking chemical
stimulants.
Orlan placed Billy on the floor and stepped forward. He
cracked his knuckles. The thugs shifted backward.
“Might as well do this now,” Orlan said. He loosened his
neck, tilting his head right, then left and narrowed his gaze. “Save me a
trip.”
Earth Fleet klaxons blasted apart Orlan’s violent memory. He
bent at the waist, still walking despite the pain forcing him to squat and
clench every muscle in his body. He covered his ears and exhaled, hoping to
make the damn noise go away.
“Stop blowing that fucking horn!” He rushed past the
directional cone of sound.
Orlan knew how the klaxons worked. They wouldn’t kill or
maim him, because that would make him a casualty and casualties lost battles.
But the device made it hard to finish his personal mission. He realized he was
on his knees, tears squeezing between closed eyelids. All he had to do was move
the other direction and the noise would cease—an immediate reward for
compliance.
But this wasn’t his first deployment. Sooner or later there
would be crewmen and troopers following the path required by standard operating
procedures. That would cause the anti-deserter horn to stop. He stood, pressing
against the sonic blast until people came toward him.
One laughed at his posture and red face. Orlan made a mental
note of the man’s name tag, Corporal Raif, and tried not to puke. As the
dedicated men and women of
Orion’s Gift
went to their assignments, the
klaxons dropped fifty decibels until the sound was music to his ears.
Get up. Rush through these order-obeying sheep
. He
reached his room, slammed his palm on the reader, and rushed inside as the door
slid into the wall. “Billy!”
Billy flung his legs out of his bunk and sat up holding a
book. He was small, nothing like Orlan.
Tabitha. I wish he were my son. I wish I meant more to
you
.
She’d been an angel of mercy when he needed it most, and a
seductress when he could forget his nightmares and push aside the guilt he felt
for everything he’d done. The boy couldn’t be his, but Orlan played the game.
Why not? I’ve never been a father. Never had one either.
How hard could it be?
“Is the ship going to crash?” Billy asked.
“Ships don’t crash, boy, they blow up.” Orlan checked the
room, deciding Billy couldn’t remain here. He needed to get his son in a safety
harness. When the ship went down, he would bounce around the room until he was
dead. The image of his broken face attacked Orlan like a Reaper, relentless and
terrible.
“I didn’t think battlecruisers were meant to enter a
planet’s atmosphere.” Billy held up the book as though to support his theory.
“What is that? A Fleet manual? Didn’t think so. You don’t
know shit.” Orlan handed Billy a jumpsuit to cover his regular
clothing—clothing Orlan made by hand. He couldn’t just ask the quartermaster to
outfit his fourteen-year-old, stowaway son. “Put this on. I’m taking you out.”
“You told me not to leave the room.”
“Like I said, you don’t know shit. This is an emergency. I
can get you into the midshipman’s technical area, but you have to be quiet and
stay out of the way. I’ll strap you in a chair near the wall. You’ll sit there
and shut your mouth until I come for you.” Orlan glanced at the novel,
Last
Stand in the Yano Quadrant, Book Three in the Marine Commandant Brighten Saga
.
He read it the first time when he was Billy’s age. The story was about as
stupid as real life.
Billy retreated. “Commander Westwood will put me off the
ship.”
“Put on the jumpsuit!”
Billy crossed his arms. “I’ll wear it if you call me
William.”
Orlan snatched the boy off the ground with one hand and
ripped free the shirt and pants with the other, ignoring the kicking and
thrashing. Dropping his naked son felt like another sort of betrayal. Sour heat
bloomed in his gut.
“Get up. Do I have to dress you too?”
“My name is William.”
“Roll up the legs and sleeves.” Orlan moved to the doorway
and peeked out. He drew back his head, charged his pistol, and held it ready as
Billy glared.
“I don’t know why I have to wear this.”
“Because it’s mine. Anyone who sees you in the jumpsuit will
think twice before locking you in the brig, where there isn’t safety gear.”
The walls, floor, and ceiling began to vibrate.
“Move your ass, William.”