Her Brother's Keeper - eARC Read online

  “Oh no,” Wade said.

  “Samseer and I were in an unmarked ground car, headed out to lunch one day. All I remember is a car pulling in front of us, and this woman standing in an open sunroof with a missile launcher in her hands. I was on the passenger’s side. The missile hit the driver’s side. Samseer was killed instantly. I don’t know how I survived. I woke up in a city hospital a few days later. I couldn’t see, I could barely hear, and I was missing my limbs. Machines were keeping me alive.”

  “I’m so sorry,” Wade managed. “That’s horrible.”

  Devree shrugged. “Is what it is. They fixed me, as you can see. My arms and legs are better than real ones. They feel pretty real to me. It’s still a little different, but it feels mostly natural when someone touches me. My new organs are better than the ones I was born with, I can run faster, and I don’t have to worry about spraining an ankle anymore. It could’ve been a lot worse. Like Samseer.”

  “You seem pretty positive about it.”

  “I have to be. My partner was killed, I was blown to pieces, and I had to drop my entire life and come out here just to be safe. I can’t dwell on all that. I’m lucky to be alive and I need to focus on that.”

  “It sounds like you’ve had this argument with yourself before.”

  “I drank heavily when I first got here. I was out every night almost. I’d go home with just about anybody, I’d start fights, I even spent a couple nights in the Aterrizaje city jail. That’s when I realized how stupidly I was acting. I quit drinking for over a year, got a job, and put my life back together. I figured I owed it to my partner to not waste the rest of my life.”

  “So what brought you on this mission?”

  “Same thing that brought you, Wade,” Devree said with a smile. “The money. Also, I’m bored. I’m not the workaday kind of person, never was.”

  “Well, if you’re interested, when we get back Marcus and I might be able to get you on the Marshal’s Service. They’re pretty shorthanded. The pay’s not great, and it’s usually dull, but it’s not a bad job.”

  “Well…one thing at a time. When we get back I just might take you up on that. And I’m sorry I told you my entire life story. I get chatty when I drink. Thank you for being a good listener. Most guys only listen to me when they’re trying to get in bed with me.”

  “Wouldn’t dream of it,” Wade said with a wry grin. Devree laughed.

  * * *

  Near the Aterrizaje fairgrounds was a large caravan park. People came in from all over the terraformed zone to attend the Stampede, and the caravan park was full. So full, in fact, of mobile homes, trucks, trailers, and other vehicles that they had spilled over into the dusty open areas beyond the park. Annie had heard about the parties that could happen out in the caravan park. Tonight was a big one. Multiple bonfires had been lit. Dozens of horsemen, cow punchers, riders, party girls, and roughnecks drank, caroused, blasted music, and had a good time. The Aterrizaje city police didn’t bother them unless someone reported destruction of property, and the fairgrounds’ robots generally stayed away as well. They were tasked with monitoring the livestock and weren’t concerned with drunken human antics.

  At sixteen standard years, Annie was below the legal drinking age on New Austin, but tonight nobody seemed to care. Young people, teenagers to twenty-somethings, gathered around a large bonfire as music played. People danced, drank, played games, and made out. Nobody asked her to verify her age before handing her a bottle of beer.

  “See? It’s not so bad,” Carlos said, sipping his own drink. Nobody was getting out of control or anything.

  “I guess,” Annie said, sipping the beer in her hand. “My dad would be so mad if he knew I was here, though.” She took another sip and frowned. “Drinking, no less. What is this stuff, horse piss? Is someone playing a joke on me?”

  Carlos looked at her bottle. “It might as well be horse piss. Try this.”

  Annie took the bottle from Carlos and took a long swig.

  “Easy there. I don’t think you drink much.”

  “I don’t drink at all,” she said, handing the bottle back. “That’s better, but…ugh.”

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing, I just think I’m done with this,” she said, pouring the remainder of her beer into the dirt. She tossed the bottle into a waste receptacle and looked up at Carlos. “So is this what people do in the city?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I live in Laredo Territory. The nearest actual town is Red River.”

  “That’s not much of a town.”

  “It’s not. It has maybe four thousand people, and it’s an hour away by road. I almost never see people my own age, you know? Or people at all, except for my parents. I guess I thought it’d be more exciting than this. I don’t know.” She looked around at the revelers. It was getting late and things had calmed down somewhat. “Everyone is just sitting around, or drinking, or making out. Nobody is talking to anybody.”

  “Parties are more fun when all your friends are there,” Carlos said.

  “I don’t have a lot of friends. Not face to face friends anyway.”

  “You had fun in the city though, didn’t you?”

  Annie smiled. “I did. You’ve been the sweetest tour guide. Thank you for showing me a good time.” Nearby, a woman, probably in her early twenties, kneed a drunk, oafish young cowboy in the balls and knocked him to the ground. A group of people cheered and laughed at his pain as the woman grabbed her hat and stormed off. Annie shook her head. “And thank you for being a gentleman, Carlos. Hey, you want to get out of here?”

  “Where do you want to go? My dad’s car has autodrive.”

  “I want to go check on Sparkles.”

  Carlos nodded. “The robots will let us in if we display our passes. Do you have yours?”

  Annie nodded, pulling her ID pass out of her pocket and hanging it around her neck. “Let’s go.”

  The huge stable was darkened, except for navigation and safety lighting, to calm the animals. As expected, a robot checked their passes when they entered, but ignored Annie and Carlos after that. They made their way along a row of stalls to number 067, but stopped when they saw a group of what looked like teenagers gathered around Sparkles’ stall.

  “What the fuck?” Annie snarled, and took off at a run, leaving Carlos to try to keep up with her. Swearing aloud, she pushed her way through the gaggle of inebriated teens to find Victoria Alexander in Sparkles’ stall. The horse was taking something from the palm of her hand.

  “What the fuck are you doing to my horse?” she said. With a push of her arms she cleared the stall door and landed next to Victoria. “What did you give her?” she snapped, shoving Victoria with both hands.

  The rich girl slammed against the stall wall, but only started laughing. She wasn’t looking so good; her hair was a mess, her clothes were disheveled, and she stank of alcohol. Her eyes were bloodshot and red. “Hey there, desert rat,” she said. “Just seeing if your horse likes to party. Want some?”

  Annie’s heart was racing, her hands shaking. She grabbed Victoria by the shirt and pulled her in close. “What did you do to my horse, you fucking bitch?”

  Her head lolling around, Victoria showed Annie a small, empty vial. “Red Eye, baby. You want some? It makes you fly, fly, fly!”

  The group of teens were watching uneasily, and no one said anything. Annie could feel the rage boiling up from deep inside her. She didn’t know if she wanted to scream or cry. Shoving Victoria aside, she turned to the group. “You let her do this? You let her? Somebody call the vet! She poisoned my horse!”

  “I’ll do it,” Carlos said, touching his handheld. “What the hell is wrong with you people?”

  An older guy, probably in his twenties, smacked the device out of Carlos’ hand. “Who you calling there, dirt farmer? You trying to bring the law down on us?” Red Eye was a dangerous synthetic drug, one of a few such substances that was banned for personal consumption on New Austin. It c
aused erratic and sometimes dangerous behavior in its users, and simple possession was a criminal offense. Carlos shoved the older guy back and bent to pick up his handheld. “I don’t give a damn about your stupid Red Eye, asshole! Her horse will die if we don’t—” Before Carlos could say anything else, the other man punched him in the face, and the fight was on.

  The group of teens formed a semicircle to watch Carlos fight Victoria’s friend. The older man was bigger than Carlos, but he was inebriated and clumsy. The young gaucho grabbed him by his shirt and flung him into the boards of the stall, following up with a flurry of punches. Some of the teens fled, but others stayed and cheered. The bigger man shoved Carlos back and came at him once more.

  Victoria was laughing uncontrollably the whole time, leaning on the stall door. Annie was on her handheld with emergency services, explaining that her horse had been poisoned. The call finished, she was about to throw Victoria out of the stall when Sparkles convulsed.

  The horse, her breathing labored and slow, fell to her knees, then collapsed to the dirt floor of her stall. Annie watched helplessly as she convulsed, cried, and kicked, foam coming from her mouth and nostrils. Annie felt sick as Sparkles suffered, vomiting up a bloody mess before lying still.

  “No…” she said, dropping down next to the animal. “Sparkles?” The fight going on right outside of her stall, Victoria, the drugged-up teens, all of it faded away as she placed her hands on her horse’s still form.

  Sparkles’ ragged breathing slowed and then stopped. She died.

  Tears streamed down Annie’s cheeks. She buried her face in her hands and wept. She was snapped back to reality when Carlos slammed the other man into the stall door again. Startled, she stood up to see what was going on.

  The other teens scattered as a trio of utility robots rolled up to the scene of the disturbance, politely insisting that the two men stop fighting. The lead robot was knocked to the ground as Carlos threw his opponent into it, sending man and machine tumbling to the stable floor in a heap. The robot’s wheel spun helplessly, kicking up dirt, as it tried to right itself, but the weight of the unconscious man on top of it was too much.

  Carlos, with a swollen face and blood leaking from his nose, stepped over to the stall door. “Are you okay?” he asked Annie, breathing heavily. “What…” his voice trailed off when he noticed Sparkles’ body on the floor of the stall. “Oh no. Victoria, how could you do this? What is wrong with you?”

  Victoria seemingly ignored him as she tried to climb over the stall door. Before she could make it over on her own, Annie grabbed her legs and shoved her over the top. The rich girl fell facefirst to the dirt floor and struggled to get up.

  Annie wasn’t about to give the bitch the chance. In a flash, she leapt over the door and came down on top of Victoria. She dragged the inebriated girl to her feet and threw her back to the ground as hard as she could. Before the robots could do anything, before Carlos could say anything, she came down on Victoria like an orbital strike. “How could you?” she said, so enraged that she was crying. “How could you?” She didn’t give Victoria the chance to answer; she sat on top of her and punched her in the face, then again, then again. “You fucking bitch!” she shrieked, hitting her over and over.

  A mechanical claw clamped down onto Annie’s arm, snapping her out of her rage. The robot ground its wheel into the dirt, pulling her off of Victoria. “Get off of me!” she said, shaking free of the robot’s grasp.

  Carlos was at her side then, and helped her to her feet. “Annie, you need to stop,” he said quietly.

  Annie didn’t say anything. She looked down at Victoria, bloodied and bruised, and felt sick. Victoria’s eyes were swollen shut, blood leaked from her nose and mouth, and her breathing was ragged. Annie’s knuckles were bloody. Shaking her head, not knowing what to do, she turned to Carlos, buried her face into his shoulder, and cried.

  * * *

  Annie opened her eyes, squinting in the dazzling lighting of the holding cell. Despite how uncomfortable the bed was, she’d managed to sleep for a while. She’d been taken into custody by the Aterrizaje Police, but they were mostly nice. They bandaged her hands and didn’t restrain her when they drove her to the station. Once they got her there, though, they did a blood test and found a little bit of alcohol in her system. They promptly wrote her a ticket for underage drinking.

  Still, they let her tell her side of the story, and said they would look at the logs from the security cameras and the robots. They said that the veterinarian had taken a blood sample from Sparkles and would be able to determine if there were any illegal substances in the horse’s system. Annie’s handheld had been broken in the scuffle, but the police said they’d notify her parents for her. This mortified Annie, but there was no way to hide this from her parents. She wasn’t under arrest, technically, but they wouldn’t release her without a legal guardian. They put her in a holding cell so they could monitor her until someone came to get her. It had been hours and hours. It had to be mid-morning already. She had no idea how long she’d been in there, or when anyone would arrive.

  Annie sat up quickly when she heard the door unlock. It slid open and her father stepped into the room. Jumping off the bed, she ran to him and hugged him tightly, trying not to start crying again. “Daddy, Sparkles is dead! She killed her!” she sobbed.

  Her father held her tightly for a long moment. “Come on now, baby girl,” he said. “Let’s sit down a moment.”

  “We’re not leaving?” Annie asked, unable to hide the fear in her voice. Was he just going to leave her here?

  “I need to talk to you about what’s going to happen,” he said. “Then we’ll go.” He seemed tired.

  “Okay,” she sniffled, sitting back down on the bed. After her father sat next to her, she asked him what was going on.

  He shook his head sadly. “I’m going to be straight with you, honey: this isn’t good. That girl you beat down, Victoria? She’s in the hospital with a fractured skull and a broken nose. You did a number on her.”

  Despite the pit forming in her stomach, Annie was defiant. “She killed Sparkles! She poisoned her with Red Eye! Red Eye, Daddy!”

  “I know, I know,” her father said reassuringly. “The city police have the video recordings from the cameras and the robots. Your friend Carlos corroborated your story, though the police told me both of you had alcohol in your system.”

  “I just tried beer,” Annie pleaded. “I didn’t even finish it. I didn’t like it.”

  “Ok, honey. Neither one of you was intoxicated. It certainly seems like Victoria was, but they’re not going to tell me the results of her blood test. They did find vials of Red Eye on her and that clown that Carlos whupped the shit out of, though.”

  “She should be the one in jail!”

  “You’re not in jail, Annie. Calm down. If she wasn’t in the hospital getting her face put back together she probably would be. Things being as they are, though, it’s not so cut and dry. Her father is an influential man with a lot of money. That son of a whore actually had the gall to call me, a peace officer, and offer me a shady deal.”

  “What?” Annie asked. “What kind of deal?”

  “He said he’d pay me a lot of money if I didn’t press charges for his daughter poisoning your horse. He said that if we didn’t press charges, then he wouldn’t either, and this would all go away.”

  “But she had Red Eye!”

  Her father shrugged. “He has enough clout to make sure she just gets sent to rehabilitation.”

  Annie was scared now. “Why didn’t you take the deal?”

  “Because it’s not right, Annabelle. Guys like that need to learn that sometimes, having money to throw around doesn’t mean you can do whatever the hell you want. If this thing just gets quashed, that girl won’t learn anything from this. Nothing will change, and she’ll grow up to be a horrible human being because she never had to live with the consequences of her actions.”

  “She’s already a horrible human bei
ng.”

  “I agree, honey, but she’s seventeen years old. Nobody’s life is over at seventeen. There’s always time to turn it around.”

  “But she killed Sparkles!” Annie said angrily. “Why are you taking her side? Now I’m going to go to jail!”

  “Annabelle Winchester, I am not taking her side, and you’re not going to jail. Calm down and let me finish. That girl’s daddy threatened me up and down. Threatened to sue, threatened to ruin our lives, threatened to get the book thrown at you, and threatened to have you tried as an adult. He made those threats and I have witnesses that saw him do it, like your Uncle Wade. I didn’t, uh, exactly tell him other people were listening, but it’s not a recording and their testimony will hold up in court if he tries anything.”

  Annie looked down at her lap. “What’s going to happen now?”

  “Right now? I’m going to take you back to your room so you can get cleaned up and get some rest. We’ll get something to eat on the way there if you’re hungry. Worst case scenario, you might be looking at a year in juvenile detention for assault.”

  Annie looked up, eyes wide, feeling sick. “A year?” She couldn’t hold back the tears anymore. “It’s not fair. You said to always finish a fight. You said.”

  “Hey now, baby girl,” her father said, putting his arm around her. “I didn’t mean you just beat the shit out of someone who wrongs you, even if they have it coming. This is the real world, honey. There are consequences for your actions, even if you thought they were justified. Juvy ain’t the end of the world. It won’t keep you out of most schools.”

  “I don’t care about schools. I want to go to space.”

  “I know. Don’t worry, some time in the pokey won’t keep you out of the Spaceflight Academy or the Defense Forces, either. You’re going to be okay.”