Trapped: Chaos Core Book 1 (15 page)

“Me too,” said one
of the rescued slaves behind him, her green eyes peering through a
mask of filth and scabs. “I know I can be useful.”

All but three of the
rescued slaves volunteered. “I’d like to stay too,” Della said.

“Even after that?”
Spin said. “This won’t get easier.”

“I look at these
people and think about what my masters do,” she said. “I want it
to stop, I don’t want to see another teenager snatched from the
street like I was six years ago, and I think I know where we can hit
them.”

“So do I, Della,”
Mirra said, setting the stretcher down beside Travis’ body. “We’re
both with you, Spin.”

“You’re going to
have to follow her,” Spin said, pointing at Sun. “She’s better
at this than I am. I was a glorified cabin girl for her.”

“Cabin girls don’t
save a compartment full of people,” one of the slaves said. “But
I’ll follow her if you tell me that she’s your creature, and
doing your work.”

Spin recognized the
voice immediately, but couldn’t quite put a name to it. It took her
several seconds to see through the dirt and scabs, but then she
remembered who he was. Governor Dantor, from New Parisia, one of the
richest cities in the Core Worlds. “We met right before the tragedy
that led to your first escape, it is good to see you free, Aspen. I
was your Countess’ captive for over a year while she tried to use
me to twist governments to her will. When I stopped cooperating she
sent me here, so they could put me in that swamp until I was near
death, treat me, then put me back. She’s used my own position to
disgrace me in the meantime, I’m sure.” He pulled his hood aside,
revealing deep gouges where flesh had to be removed and scabs that
looked worse than anyone’s. “You’ve ended my suffering, treated
my wounds and offered free transit to a civilized port. I may be out
of government, but I must still have some power, and I’ll use it to
help you crush her.”

“All right,” Sun
said. “Then we need to get another ship fast. Are you sure you have
enough, Aspen – I mean, Spin?”

“I have enough,”
Spin replied.

“How?”

“Kidnapping. I had a
few extra minutes and an opportunity I couldn’t pass up.”

Della’s emphatic
nodding almost made the comment seem comical. “Best kidnapping
ever,” she said.

“Okay, and I have
someone we can buy one from, maybe,” Sun said.

“I can get you clean
registrations, multiple transponder codes, and permits for weapons,”
Governor Dantor said. “Maybe. They might not be good for more than
a couple months.”

“So, this becomes
clear,” Sun said. “We’re outlaws and information sellers at
best, scavengers and runaways at worst.

“Wait, how do we get
out of this? How can we get off this wanted slave list?” asked one
of the passengers.

“We get the Countess
to release us by buying our own freedom, or by killing her and anyone
she willed her property to,” Sun said.

“Money doesn’t mean
anything to her,” Spin said. “Killing her is our only option for
freedom, it’s also the hardest. She has children, and people who
would inherit her property. We can hide, try to live our lives in
shadows, or we run so far that no hunter will come after us.”

“Like to the Sercil
Sector?”

“No, outside
civilization, where humans haven’t been before,” Spin replied.

“Hell, no,” Nigel
said. “We hide until the sector gets calm and outlaws slavery
everywhere, or until we see an opening and we kill the Countess at a
family reunion. Slag the whole inbred bunch of fuckers.”

Spin could barely
believe it, but Nigel’s idea wasn’t terrible, just next to
impossible. It did lead her to an idea that rested within the realm
of possibility. “We could give this away,” she said, pointing at
the computer display on her skin and the database of information it
held. “Take a cut from anyone who uses this information to hurt her
and her companies. We make her companies such open targets that every
crime lord, small government, slavery opponent and rival corporation
takes a bite out of her. We do it until she either has no power left,
or until she releases our slave bonds.”

“That’s genius,”
Sun said. “Outlaw thinking.”

“But what about the
meantime? We need cash for protection, food, ships, what about us?
We’re runaways, outlaws with a mark on our backs,” Nigel said.

“We’ll take it,”
Spin said. “No, let’s make sure no one sees us that way. If
people have to know about us, see us, deal with us at all, let’s
make sure everyone knows that we’re only one thing: pirates.”

* * *

Thank you for reading!

Here are two sample
chapters from Book 2 of the Chaos Core Series: Cool Pursuit, coming
in 2016!

The weapon had become
an artefact. Objectively, it was a nice gun, with well-polished metal
surfaces, a brute spinning calendar inside another atop a trigger and
handle. The clip carried only fourteen rounds. It should seem like
just another object in the bottom of Spin’s bag, but it was the
weapon that murdered Larken.

A few of those
engineered frack rounds spun from its barrel, broke apart and put
great big holes in his torso. She could have put him in stasis with
medication if another one hadn’t ricocheted and torn through the
back of his head. That should have been the end, but he was just
conscious enough to look her in the eye, tell her how much he loved
her, that she should move on, and then he died in unimaginable agony,
squeezing her hand and grinding his teeth together so hard that she
could hear the squeak of the enamel.

That weapon reminded
her of his last moments. When she thought of him, tried to reach
those happy memories, those blood soaked minutes got in the way. She
could only see him suffering. The weapon was an artefact, it had
become something special, unique. No other thing in the universe had
done what that had done.

“Retiring the
shredder?” asked Sun as she leaned into the doorway of the quarters
Aspen had borrowed for their two-day journey.

“Just saving it for a
special occasion,” Spin replied. “I found a multiplier pistol in
the arms locker. There wasn’t much else in there, a few stunners, a
bandolier of EMP grenades and a dermal printer.”

“High res or?”

“High resolution
enough to print new dermal computers, communication links, and
whatever else. I already printed a comlink on my jaw. Can you see
it?” Aspen asked.

Sun took a look at
where Spin pointed at her right jawline. “I can’t see it at all,
it blended right in.”

“I doubt all but the
best scanners could pick it up. We’d better keep the printer away
from Nigel, or he’ll burn it out adding display surfaces to his
skin.”

“Good thinking, he’s
already got two comlinks printed somewhere on his face, and both his
forearms are stitched up with intelligent displays, so he doesn’t
need any more upgrades.”

“He got the other arm
done?” Spin asked.

“Yeah, and most of
his back.”

“I never understood
the need to get a display surface printed into your back. You’re
the only one who can’t see it.”

“Ah, he’s just a
modder junkie, like those people with tattoos in old holos and period
flicks.”

“I guess so,” Spin
said. “We’re almost in the Diori System?”

“Yeah, a few minutes
from emergence,” Sun replied. “I’ve been meaning to ask, are
you okay? I heard who Larken was to you, Della told me about it last
night. You never talked about him.”

“I thought I did. I
thought I told you about him. Doesn’t matter, when I was on the
Cool Angel, I was sure he was dead,” Spin said. “I took over a
year to move on, and even then I thought about him every day. Less,
you know how it is, but still, every day.”

“I don’t really
know how it is, he was like your other half, wasn’t he?” Sun
asked. “You’ve also been off on your own a lot, and sleeping half
the day.”

“I took something,
it’s taken care of, at least for another three weeks. The sleeping,
well, I’ve mostly been thinking, dreaming.” More like brooding,
preparing, Spin thought. “Running a lot of katas, doing a lot of
yoga to clear my head.”

“You don’t have to
do it alone,” Sun said. “And you shouldn’t take more of that
stuff. Those drugs are for the worst cases, catatonia, constant panic
attacks, hypervigilance and delusions.”

“When I took that
little pill my mind had stopped. I hated everything around me so much
that I almost spaced Mirra and Della along with the body of the pilot
who killed Larken. Della’s tears brought me back to my senses just
enough to stop me from doing something horrible, and Mirra calmed me
down enough to start thinking a few minutes ahead. If it weren’t
for this drug, I would be curled up in a ball right in that corner,
and I bet you’d still be waist deep in toxic sludge.”

“Sounds like you owe
more to Dell and Mirra than to any pill.”

“Maybe, but I’d
rather take a pill every few weeks to dull my grief for Larken and be
as useful as I can be for all the time I have left than spend the
rest of my life suffering for the loss.” Spin closed her duffel bag
and walked past her into the corridor. “I’ll be fine. Oh, and if
you want to practice anything, just ask. I’m sure the whole crew
could use it to clear their heads.” She continued on to the stairs
leading up to the cockpit where Nigel watched the scanners.

“That’s not the
point, everyone wants to support you while you get through this.”

Spin turned and faced
Sun at the top of the stairs. “I’m fine. I can’t see what
anyone could do to help. The meds take the edge off, I can focus on
what’s important. When I’m not busy with that, I can mope and
feel sorry for myself in private.”

“Um, coming out of
FTL in a few seconds here,” Nigel said, getting out of the pilot’s
seat. “I’ll fly this thing if you want, but I’m no pilot.”

“No worries, we were
finished,” Spin said as she dropped into the chair. “I’ll take
the controls, Sun’s distracted by my lack of wailing and whining.”

“I think I’ll go
see if our passengers are ready to go,” Nigel said, hastily
escaping from the cockpit.

“I’m just watching
out for you,” Sun said. “If you say you’re all right, then
okay, but if you need someone to help you through this, I’m here.”

“Okay, got it,”
Spin said. The Fleet Feather emerged from the wormhole and new sensor
information was added to the preemptive scans that were already under
way. Their destination, Genna Station, was only minutes away. “It’s
an old colony ship,” Spin said. “Shouldn’t we be picking up
energy readings at this distance though? Maybe some port traffic?”

“Yeah, Genna’s
always busy,” Sun said, adjusting the scanners. “There are
usually hundreds of ships around. There’s usually an old British
Alliance carrier around too, it’s the main defence.”

Spin increased the
range of their scans as she and Sun watched the results come in.
There was some wreckage spread across thousands of kilometres, but no
active ships or buoys.

“This isn’t bad,
it’s whoa-crazy bad,” Nigel called up from below. “I’m
watching the scanners, and I’m only picking up basic life support
on the station. There are no ships around it, a holy-fuck-ton of
damage to the port side, and a few cargo containers tucked in to an
open section.”

“Is that a metric
holy-fuck-ton, or an Issyrian standard measure holy-fuck-ton?” Sun
asked as she scanned through the data.

“Either way, I don’t
think your boy Quino or his people are here. If they are, they must
have gotten slagged along with whoever was unlucky enough to see this
go down first hand,” Nigel said.

“The scrambling field
is still up,” Sun said. “Just enough signal noise to make small
life signs inside impossible to pinpoint. There could be scavengers
aboard, we wouldn’t be able to see unless there were thirty, maybe
forty of them in a small area.”

“I’m sure there
are,” Spin said. “If those containers weren’t sign enough,
there are still computers in there,” Spin said. “Navigational
guidance computers, small ones. Our antenna’s picking a few of them
up, so the cherry pickers and bigger outfits probably haven’t found
this place yet.”

“Excuse me,” asked
a female voice from below. “We aren’t going there, are we? From
what I’m overhearing, it sounds bad.”

It was one of their
less useful passengers, a young woman who was sent to the work camp
by the Countess as a punishment. Spin hadn’t taken the time to get
to know most of them, especially since they were only waiting, eating
their food and breathing their air until they reached a somewhat
civilized port. “Della,” Spin said into her comm.

“Wow, your new
communicator’s nice and clear. Yes, Spin?”

“Can you make sure
our passengers are comfortable?”

“Miss? Are we going
there? It sounds dangerous?” the woman at the bottom of the stairs
pressed.

Della was there a few
seconds later. “Don’t worry, they know what they’re doing. Just
have a seat and we’ll tell you what we’re doing once we know for
sure, okay?”

“I’m just,” the
woman stammered. “I have to contact my brother, you know, he’ll
want to know what the Countess did to me. He’ll need to know where
I am so he can come for me.”

“I know. We’ll get
to civilization soon.”

Sun shook her head and
leaned away from the scanner displays. “There’s maybe a handful
of people in there, the scramblers keep me from finding out where,
but we won’t be alone if we go aboard.”

“This may be worth
checking though,” Spin said. “If I can get one or two of those
navigational nodes, the small ones, I could use them to make new
hardware transponders. Maybe even add a security layer to our next
ship.”

“That could save us
hundreds of thousands of credits,” Sun said. “But I don’t want
to take too much of a risk. I’m thinking we should move on, leave
the vultures to pick at this.”