Alliance, p.1
Alliance, page 1
part #1 of Fringe Colonies Series
Copyrighted Material
Alliance Copyright © 2020 by Jess Mountifield
Book design and layout copyright © 2020 by Jess Mountifield
This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living, dead, or undead, is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved.
No part of this publication can be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without permission in writing from Variant Publications.
1st Edition
Alliance
Book 1 in the Fringe Colonies Series
Jess Mountifield
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
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
About the Author
For Dylan. I might never have written a word if it wasn’t for you and the pirate captain you became. You’ll always be my pirate king and captain.
1
Her finger hovering over the launch button, Kit paused.
She was leaving the space station and heading off to Ephren, a much smaller hub in the depths of the sector, with every item she possessed. She’d told herself that she’d be back, had even promised the three leaf sisters, but she knew it wasn’t going to happen.
It was time Kit moved on and found somewhere she felt she could settle. Somewhere she belonged.
“Ready?” Barien asked, clattering his boots against the base of the control console as he sat down in the gunner’s seat.
It was the trigger she needed. After flicking him a grin and pushing her jet-black hair out of her face, she jammed her finger down on the button and locked in the coordinates.
Ephren, here I come.
And then she waited. The docking bay around her wasn’t at its busiest, but it wasn’t empty either, and it appeared as if everyone else had decided to try and leave at the same time. Half an hour later, someone finally got to them and designated a flight path out into the vastness of space.
“Last chance to get off and stay behind,” Kit said as she glanced at her friend, noticing the sadness in his brown eyes.
“Nah, it’s cool. I’ll come with you.”
“You sure?”
“Completely. We both know you’re considering not coming back. This way we get one last epic memory for sure.”
Frowning, Kit found she couldn’t look his way again. Was this goodbye? Did he know how she truly felt?
If so, he wasn’t the only one. The leaf sisters had shown similar understanding. Somewhere in the massive cargo area of the ship was a typical leaf dress: white, with roses embroidered on the cloth. For a few months she’d worn something a lot like it, day in, day out, as everyone did in their crew, but it just wasn’t her. They’d bought her the new dress right before she left. Now it would be a memento, but she didn’t hold much hope for ever wearing it.
Sitting behind the console of the ship, Kit now wore canvas pants, boots, and a denim jacket. Much more her style. And infinitely more comfortable.
While she considered the possibility of never coming back, the dockhand finally waved her forward. Larger than the average cargo ship, yet still too small to be used for much else, her vessel, the Jaunty Camper, wasn’t exactly the best model in the dock, but it should get her where she needed to go.
“Nine kellians to go,” she said as they lifted off the launchpad and she pushed down on the throttle.
“Want to take a break while I watch the ship?” Barien asked.
Shaking her head, Kit motioned for him to take the time off instead. A moment later, she heard him sigh.
“What?” she asked as she tucked a stray strand of hair behind her ear.
“I wasn’t sure you’d actually leave.”
“One of these days, I won’t,” she replied, but she didn’t know if even she believed those words. What would it take to make her stay somewhere? She had no clue.
Before she could even think about it, an alarm blared, making her jump.
“The alert system works, then,” Barien said.
“What do you mean, ‘it works, then’? Didn’t you test it first?”
He shook his head, tousled blond hair spinning along with it.
“I know you said this was cheap, and I’m grateful you found me a ship at all, but seriously, you didn’t think of checking the security features and making sure they all worked before we set out?”
Barien shrugged.
Sitting up even farther, she checked the ship’s monitor, wanting to know what might be wrong. The culprit was obvious. The back hatch to the main cargo bay wasn’t shut completely. Two-thirds of the main bolts designed to keep the contents safe in the vacuum of space had failed. Only six held it in place, and now they and the cargo would be in danger.
“We’d better not get into a bad fight,” she said. “The back cargo hatch isn’t going to hold against even the slightest hit. We’ll need to be careful not to get blown sky-high or lose our atmosphere.”
“Want me to see if I can fix it?” he asked, no doubt feeling guilty, but she shook her head. It wouldn’t be easy while flying along, and she didn’t want any delay. The longer they were in the gap between the space hub and the small space station, the more likely they were to be attacked or have something go wrong.
Frowning, Kit decided to run full diagnostics, something she should probably have done before leaving. Almost immediately, warnings and lists of ship parts doing strange things came up on the monitor.
“Sorry,” Barien said, reading through it over her shoulder. “Best I could do.”
“Don’t start feeling guilty or ashamed of it again,” Kit replied. “You bought me a ship. Hunk of junk or not, it’s still giving me something no one else ever has.”
Barien raised his eyebrows.
“Freedom,” Kit explained, trying to hide her frustration at having to. He meant well, but she needed some more people in her life who got her. And going to Ephren was another attempt at finding that.
While the ship compiled a list of things she needed to fix—in a handy order, with the most important at the top—Kit stared into the vastness of space. There was almost nothing nearby; stars were twinkling from thousands of light-years away.
Motion looming to port caught her eye. Moving closer to the window, she stared out.
“Another ship,” she said, wondering why she hadn’t been alerted by the radar.
“You sure?” Barien asked, scooting over to the radar himself, but there was no blip on it to let them know they weren’t alone anymore.
She nodded, pointing to the obvious moving object. At first she couldn’t be sure if it was growing, but eventually it became clear that it was, and it was coming in their direction.
“How far are we from the asteroid belt?” he asked.
“Too far,” she said. “They’ll be on us before we get close. Battle stations.”
Barien threw himself into the gunner’s seat, already briefed on what she’d need him to cover if they were attacked. She flicked the ‘ON’ switch on the ship’s single repair bot and strapped herself into the navigation seat. For now, she planned on avoiding them and using a few shots to keep them at bay, but who knew if it would work.
Although she took the throttle, she kept the ship on autopilot and merely watched the approach. No one was in range. There was still a chance they’d stay that way and give her ship a nice wide berth as they went somewhere else entirely.
But with each minute that passed, it became more clear. They weren’t heading somewhere else. Kit’s ship had caught their attention.
“Want to hail them?” Barien asked.
“Feel free.” Kit pushed the comms to him. “I don’t think it’ll make any difference.”
“Hello, unidentified craft. This is the Jaunty Camper. Please state your intentions,” Barien said as Kit rolled her eyes. Not only was the name silly, but if the other ship did contain pirates, there was no way they planned to directly say so.
“Ahoy there, Jaunty Camper. Pleased to meet you and your ridiculously named ship. We’re in a bit of a hurry and you’re evidently new around here, so I’ll explain this as quickly as I can. You probably want to prepare to be boarded. And if you could arrange your cargo so the valuable stuff is nice and accessible, that would also be helpful.”
Kit almost dropped the drink she’d just picked up. Turned out some pirates did declare themselves after all.
“What do you want to do?” Barien asked.
Tilting her head to the side, Kit didn’t even look his way. Although she’d been given some of her own projects to oversee while working with the leaf sisters, she hadn’t encountered pirates much, keeping within friendlier waters. She didn’t have a clue how to handle this, other than try and not get boarded.
Kit waved for him to hand the comms back and jammed her finger down on the button.
It made her grin, even if it was a silly response. Sometimes being a bit antagonistic was satisfying.
“Push the engines to max and make sure the guns are ready, in case they catch up,” Kit said to Barien once the channel was closed down.
“Yes, ma’am,” he replied, immediately pressing buttons and making himself look busy.
“And you’ve got a personal shield on and charged, right?” Kit asked, knowing most people had this, but wanting to check after everything else she had just discovered was broken.
“Aye. As always. I’m not getting shot. Anyone wants to hurt me, they’re going to have to use something far slower.”
“Good,” Kit replied. Most people said the pirates didn’t use guns anyway—life was considered more valuable and ships more important this far out on the fringe. You didn’t want to kill people often when so few lived out in your area of space as it was—but it only took one person to decide to use a gun, and everyone could end up scuppered.
Focusing on one task at a time, Kit took control back from the autopilot and pushed the throttle. They were still a long way from the first asteroid belt, and she wasn’t sure if she could even navigate inside one.
It had been something she’d been told to practice. Knowing how to skirt the edge of one could be helpful at times, but she’d been so busy with setting up her moonshine business that she hadn’t had a chance. With no working radar, she was even less keen to.
Despite weaving around space debris in the area and pushing her ship to the max, the pirates were gaining on her.
“Gonna have to send a few shots their way, see if we can discourage them a bit. Warm the guns up. Let them know we mean business,” Kit said, hoping Barien didn’t ask what they’d do if that didn’t work. She had a sword at her waist, but she wasn’t that great with it yet. Her parents had never let her learn, something about it being unfitting for a woman.
The thought made Kit grin. If only her parents could see her now.
As the pirate ship came within gun range, she grabbed the throttle again.
“Hope you’re strapped in tight,” she said only a fraction of a second before she slammed Camper into a quick turn, bringing the guns around to fire on their pursuers. Barien grunted and did his best to time the shots at the right moment. Two plasma bolts shot out from the side of the ship, but they both missed.
“Sorry,” Barien said. “Not had as much practice at this as I’d like.”
Kit tried not to roll her eyes. Although he wasn’t perfect, Barien was trying to do his best. Instead of replying, she merely flung the ship around one-eighty to bring the other two guns to bear.
Barien fired again, getting the timing much better. But as she watched the bolts move across her radar, she soon noticed the pirates had changed trajectory as well, either preparing to fire or as a dodge of the molten plasma. Both extra shots went wide.
“Frell,” Kit said, and pushed the ship back into a forward motion, the straps of her seat digging in momentarily.
There was no reply from Barien, and when she glanced over, his head was down and he was concentrating. Guns weren’t something either of them found easy, but she’d hoped to have hit the other ship with at least one of the four bolts.
Imagining the pirates laughing at her, she held the throttle in full position while she waited for the guns to be ready again.
Their gunner evidently faster, the ship in pursuit swung side-on once more and two of their own missiles came hurtling through space.
With the distance between both parties so large, the shots went wide with only a slight nudge to trajectory from her, but she decided to carry on.
“Fire,” she said, hoping Barien could deliver.
This time he seemed to have his act together, and the two bolts flew out from the Camper with enough precision and lack of warning that one of them struck well, and the other grazed one side and shield.
“Yes!” Kit yelled, hoping the feeling of scoring a hit would never get old.
But she didn’t know if the joy was to be short-lived; the ship still followed them.
“Get the guns ready again, fast,” she said.
“I’m trying.” Barien’s reply came out muted, as if spoken through gritted teeth. As the pirates got closer and closer, Kit swung back the other way for the second time, also trying to give the other ship the message. No matter what, she wouldn’t make it easy.
For the next few minutes, they flew circles around each other and fired when they could. Kit got another hit in, but it must have been something inconsequential, because it didn’t even seem to slow the other ship.
A knot grew in Kit’s stomach as the distance between them got smaller and smaller, until she was sure she’d be boarded. She couldn’t let pirates onto her ship. Everything she owned was on board. Everything. And she wasn’t sure she had the ability to start all over again in another part of the galaxy. She’d tried it once. Once was enough.
Somehow, she had to make her ship safe. But she was out of ideas.
2
The sound of many voices filled the marketplace on Ephren. Used to blocking out noise, Dante listened for the only voice that mattered. His ship, the Catalpa, had some battle damage that needed repairing. One of the stallholders had promised to source the part he needed, but only for a set price. An exorbitant amount of money.
After some haggling, Dante had gotten it cheaper, but he needed it, and both of them knew that.
There was a queue to get to this particular mechanic, although he’d never been sure entirely why. The man running the stall was unpleasant, busy, and barely acknowledged a bunch of requests, but he usually delivered eventually. And in some cases, late was better than never.
“Here, for that matrix enhancer and everything else we agreed on,” Dante said, pulling out his wallet.
The stall owner, Varun, looked at him for a moment, as if trying to remember his face, although for the last two years Dante had been coming here to get his parts.
When the man frowned and went to the back of the stall, Dante tried not to get impatient. Behind him, he could feel the stares of everyone else waiting. They’d all been there for long enough. No one wanted this to take a long time.
Eventually Varun came back, a small box under one arm and a matrix enhancer in the other hand. In front of everyone, he opened the box and showed the contents to Dante.
“A reconditioned kerlin drive and a matrix enhancer, just as you asked.”
“Fantastic,” Dante said, relieved that the man had actually gotten the parts he wanted the way he wanted them. That alone was an improvement on some previous transactions.
“That’ll be a thousand credits,” Varun said as he put the item back in the box, pulling it out of Dante’s reach in one smooth move.
“A thousand? We agreed on six hundred only a week ago.”
“We may have, but I always make it clear prices change. Parts are hard to come by out here. My cargo runners have to get past pirates and all sorts of dangers. I can tell you a quote for that day only. This is a week later, and this is what it cost to get the part here.”
“Come on, man, you can’t be telling me it cost twice as much to get it here as you thought it would. Even my worst crew member can make a run better than that.”
“Then you’re welcome to send one of your own crew for a part,” Varun replied. “It’s a thousand credits or I’ll sell it to someone else.”
Dante’s fists clenched until he was aware of his knuckles hurting and his fingernails digging into his palms.
