Her Brother's Keeper - eARC Read online

  Marcus was out of time. The cyborg was on top of him again, before he could bring his pistol to bear. The criminal’s augmented face was purple with rage. Then his face exploded in a mass of blood, brains, and artificial structures. The top of his head pulped, the cyborg toppled over, crushing Marcus back into the dust. The marshal, still struggling to breathe, coughed and wheezed under the bulk of the augmented corpse. Blood and brains leaked onto his armored vest, but he didn’t care. He lay on his back, staring up at the intensely blue sky, and tried to get some air.

  “Marshal!” It was Wade. “You okay? Marshal!”

  Unable to shout to his partner, Marcus simply raised a hand and waved.

  “Holy shit,” Wade said, appearing next to his partner. “I thought I got you.” He held his powerful 8mm rifle at the low ready.

  Marcus coughed. “Nice shot,” he managed weakly. The armor-piercing explosive bullet was easily powerful enough to go clean through a human head. Wade had to have angled the shot so the bullet didn’t also hit Marcus, while firing from the shoulder, and the cyborg and the marshal weren’t holding still. “Damned nice shot.”

  “Thanks, Boss,” Wade grinned. He grunted as he rolled the heavy corpse off of his partner, then helped Marcus to his feet.

  Marcus holstered his sidearm and retrieved his carbine. “You ready to call it a day?”

  Wade nodded, looking tired. “I’ve had enough fun for today.”

  Marcus shook his head, and forced himself to smile. “Call back to the spaceport and see how they’re doing.”

  * * *

  The eastern sky was on fire as the sun called Lone Star slowly sank beneath the jagged peaks of the distant Redemption Mountains. The patchy carpet of clouds exploded in shades of gold, red, and purple, and the first stars of the evening twinkled far above. The pale glow of New Austin’s twin moons, rising into the night sky, took over as the last red rays of the sun disappeared below the horizon.

  Annabelle Winchester sat on a weather-beaten boulder and sighed. “That was a really pretty sunset, Sparkles.” Sparkles paid Annabelle no mind. The Laredo buckskin mare focused her attention on the desert floor, rooting through the shrubbery for things to eat.

  As the blanket of night rolled across New Austin, the already scattered clouds cleared up, revealing the shining tapestry of stars that Annabelle never got tired of looking at. Laredo Territory was sparsely populated; there were no big, lit-up cities to hide the stars. The Izanami Nebula, only a few light-years away, filled part of the sky with its electric blue splendor. Twinkling dots, satellites and ships in orbit, zoomed silently across the sky. Annie’s eyepiece, connected to the colonial network via her handheld, displayed information on the different stars and constellations.

  Annie gazed up into the night sky with the oddest sense of longing. She devoured every text and media on space travel that she could find. It wasn’t that she’d never been to space before. She had been six years old when the Winchester family made the long voyage to New Austin, but that hardly counted. Annie could barely remember it, and they spent most of the months-long journey in cold sleep anyway.

  No, Annie wanted to really go to space. To see firsthand the engineering marvel and controlled chaos that was a spaceship. To experience freefall, to see New Austin from above, and to experience the exhilarating, mind-bending terror of translating between transit points. She longed to set foot on unexplored worlds and see for herself the incredibly ancient ruins of one of the long-vanished Antecessor Species. In her sixteen standard years, Annie had lived on two worlds and traversed the incredibly vast gulf between them via an interstellar-capable ship. She knew it was silly to pine for space travel when, for the vast majority of all of human history, such things had been impossible and unknown.

  Yet, as silly as it was, in her heart Annie wanted to go back to space. She didn’t know when or how, exactly, but she knew she would find a way. As if to confirm her desire, far to the north she saw the unmistakable glow and fiery plume of a ship lifting off, ascending into the night sky and the endless depths of space beyond. Her eyepiece told her the ship was the MV Atago Maru, registered on the Concordiat colony of Nippon. A diagram of the ship appeared before her right eye. It was a fat, blunt monster with airfoils symmetrically poking out of its hull, and stood eighty-three meters tall on its landing jacks. Annie didn’t know where it was going, but she found herself wishing she was aboard it.

  An electronic chirp interrupted Annie’s wistful pondering. Her mom was calling. She accepted the call, and a small video image of her mother appeared on her eyepiece. “Hi Mom,” Annie said.

  “Hi honey. Where are you?”

  “I’m up on the south ridge with Sparkles. I was just watching the sunset. Is Dad home yet?”

  “He just called. He’s on his way. I guess he had kind of a rough day, so I’m going to make a nice dinner. How’s meatloaf sound?”

  Annie’s stomach growled. As she often did, she lost track of time while out on the lone prairie with Sparkles. It had been hours since she’d eaten lunch. “I’ll come straight home, Mom. I’ll be there in about an hour.”

  “Okay, dear. Be careful.”

  Annie smiled at her mother’s doting, as if she couldn’t handle herself out on the range. “See you later, Mom. Love you.” Ending the call, Annie stood up, dusted off her jeans, and took one last, long gaze into the sky full of stars.

  Sparkles lifted her head in concern at a chorus of yipping, crying, and yelping from off in the darkness somewhere. Coyotes.

  “I hear ’em, girl,” Annie said, grabbing her varmint carbine. The coyotes in Laredo Territory could be aggressive sometimes, especially to a lone horse with a lonely girl on her back. “Come on, we’d better get home.” Annie stuck a foot into a stirrup and pulled herself up into the saddle.

  Sparkles whinnied in agreement, and the two turned for home at a quick trot.

  * * *

  Annie’s eyepiece had rudimentary night vision capability, but she didn’t need it on such a clear night, even to keep watch for critters. The open desert was brightly lit by the twin moons, and Annie was able to ride Sparkles home using her own two eyes. As she crested the last ridge, the Winchester family ranch came into view below. Their single-story, prefabricated home was efficient and modern. Her parents had added onto it over the years, including a shade for her father’s armored police vehicle (which was too tall to fit into the garage) and her mother’s workshop. The roof was covered with solar panels and a backup radioisotope thermoelectric generator provided extra power if needed. There was no electrical grid in this part of Laredo Territory.

  Next to the house stood a prefabricated barn where the Winchesters kept their few livestock. Annie guided Sparkles down the ridge, and led her into the barn. Once she had gotten the mare unsaddled, fed, and put in her stall, she slung her carbine over her shoulder and headed into the house.

  Annie’s stomach growled as the wonderful smell of her mother’s cooking filled her nose. The whole house smelled of meatloaf, potatoes, and baking bread. Her mom didn’t cook often, but when she did, she went all out. “I’m home, Mom!” she announced, unloading the 4.5mm caseless carbine she carried.

  “Your father will be home soon, honey,” her mom said. “Put your rifle away and get cleaned up for dinner. It’s almost ready.” Famished, Annie locked her weapon in its storage cabinet and headed to the washroom to shower. She’d been out riding all day and was eager to wash off the grit and change into some clean clothes.

  When Annie walked into the kitchen, showered and changed, her father had just walked in the door and kissed her mom.

  “Dad!” she said, giving her father a big hug.

  “Hey darlin’,” he said. “How are you?”

  “I’m…” Annie noticed then the bruises on her father’s face and neck. “Dad, holy shit.”

  “Language, young lady!” her mom corrected.

  “Uh, sorry. What happened to you? Are you okay?”

  Her father gave her a lop
sided grin, hand on her shoulder. “I’m fine, baby. Just a rough day is all.”

  Annie noticed her mother giving her dad a worried look. They obviously didn’t want to tell her what had actually happened. He’d probably had to shoot somebody or something. They always tried to hide stuff like that from her, as if she were a little kid who didn’t know what was going on. She decided to drop it, for now. She was daddy’s little girl, she thought, grinning. She’d get the truth out of him eventually.

  Annie didn’t talk much during dinner. She was too busy devouring her mother’s homemade meatloaf. The potatoes and vegetables came from their own garden, and the bread was fresh and warm. It was much better than the prepackaged meals she usually ate when her mom was absorbed in her work or off at one of her claims.

  Taking a sip of water, her father looked over at her mother. “How was business today, Ellie?”

  “I spent all day in my workshop analyzing core samples. I’m pulling good ore out of the West Range site, but the Rocky Slope site just isn’t producing. I’m probably going to cut my losses and shut it down. We’re losing money on it just keeping it open, and putting a lot of wear and tear on my equipment.”

  Annie never had the love for rocks that her mom did. Eleanor Winchester was a geologist and miner by trade. She had several claims filed with the colonial government, and most of the family’s income came from her mining business.

  Annie’s father had a worried look on his face. “So…are you thinking about opening up the Jerome Mountain site then? You’ve been sitting on it for almost two years.”

  “I know. It’s just so remote, and the terrain out there is really rugged. Getting the equipment out there would be a nightmare. I’d have to rent some all-terrain vehicles, and I’d probably have to camp there during the season. The rock is dense, too. The drilling equipment I have probably won’t last too long. I may have to use explosives.”

  “Wade could do the demo work for you. He was an explosives technician in the Defense Force.”

  “I’d need to pay him, and buy the explosives, and get some heavier equipment. I’d need a small crew, too. My bots couldn’t handle that kind of work unsupervised, and it costs a lot of money to get a technician that far out if one of them breaks down.”

  “Ellie, you know I support you if that’s what you want to do.”

  “It is, Marcus. It’s just…I don’t know. We don’t have the money to invest in the kind of equipment I need. It’d be a lot.”

  “I could see about picking up some extra assignments,” Annie’s father suggested.

  Her mom shook her head. “No. We’re both gone too much as it is. I don’t want to leave Annabelle alone all the time.”

  “I’m okay, Mom,” Annie protested. “I can take care of myself.”

  “I know you can, sweetie,” her father said. “That isn’t the question. It’s just not good for the family if we’re gone all the time.” He looked back over at her mother. “Could we borrow the money, maybe?”

  “I don’t think so. Especially now that Rocky Slope was a bust. The bank is going to question my judgment on possible mineral sites. Everything else we have is tied up in the property, the house, paying off debt, or Annie’s university fund.”

  “You can use that,” Annie interjected. “I don’t want to go to university.”

  Her mother furrowed her brow. “Annabelle, don’t be silly. You’re not just going to live out here and be a ranch hand. You’re going to university if I have to scrub floors to put you there.”

  Annie rolled her eyes and continued chewing her food. Her mom was being ridiculous. Why would anyone pay someone to scrub floors when there were robots that did that? Anyway, she just wouldn’t listen. Going to a real university, with an actual campus, classes that assembled in person, and professors that you actually met with face-to-face was prestigious, a luxury, and one that Annie didn’t see the point of. She’d been educated by remote access learning her entire life. She didn’t understand the appeal of some old-fashioned university where everyone wore strange square hats and sat around in lecture halls or got drunk at parties. It all seemed so pretentious.

  No, what Annie really wanted was to go to the New Austin Spaceflight Academy and become a spacer. But that cost even more money than the university, if you couldn’t get a scholarship, and her mom never seemed to listen anyway. She was strongly considering just running off and joining the Concordiat Defense Force as soon as she turned eighteen, or maybe trying to get into the Survey Fleet or even the Courier Service. Anything to get out into space.

  “I don’t know what we’re going to do, Marcus. If I can’t up our revenue stream we’re going to have a very hard time making the payments on the ranch.”

  “I guess we could always try to sell the place and move back to the city. Aterrizaje isn’t anything like the arcologies back on Hayden.”

  Hayden was where Annie had been born. She didn’t remember much of it, except that she and her family lived in a massive, two-hundred-level arcology outside of a huge Concordiat Defense Force Base. Hayden’s small habitable landmass was very crowded. Pollution and crime were both high, as was the cost of living. The Winchesters decided that their daughter shouldn’t have to grow up in such a place, and emigrated to New Austin when Annie was little. Her father was correct, though; Aterrizaje, the capital city of the New Austin Colony, wasn’t anything like the congested urban wastelands of Hayden.

  Annie’s mother didn’t seem consoled by that fact. She hated living in the city, and preferred making her living in the wide open spaces of New Austin’s frontier. “I’ll probably have to close up shop completely if we do that. Aterrizaje is just too far from my claims, and there isn’t much good mining ground unclaimed anywhere close to the city. Either that or I’d have to be gone for weeks at a time.”

  “Well, don’t stress too much, Ellie,” Annie’s father said reassuringly. “This is just a bump in the road. We’ll figure it out. We always do.”

  As they were finishing up their meal, Annie idly thumbed the touch screen of her handheld, checking social media to see what her friends were doing. Her mom normally hated it when she used it at the table, but she’d waited long enough this time that all she got from her mother was a frown.

  “Hey,” she said, reading a posting on the small screen. “I almost forgot. The Aterrizaje Stampede is coming up soon. I’ve been practicing barrel racing with Sparkles all season. You guys are going to be able to take me, right?”

  The Aterrizaje Stampede was an annual rodeo held in New Austin’s capital city. It was a huge annual attraction, and Annie had been training hard for months to qualify for the junior division. “I don’t know, honey,” her mother said. “I need to get back out to my mines.”

  Annie looked pleadingly to her father. He gave her an apologetic look. “Honey, there was an, uh, incident at work today. There’s gonna be an investigation. I don’t know if I can get away.”

  “But…” she said, trailing off. Exhaling heavily, she set her handheld down and looked at her plate.

  “This is important to her, Marcus,” she heard her mom say. “It’s the only time she really gets to see her friends.”

  “I know, baby, but I told you what happened today. Can you take her?”

  “We’re losing money every day my bots sit at Rocky Slope not doing anything.”

  “Well…what if she went by herself? She’s old enough.”

  Annie’s head shot up. “Can I, Mom?”

  Her mother looked pensive. “I don’t know, Marcus. There are other teenagers, and boys, and who knows what all goes on?”

  “Mom! Don’t you trust me?”

  “It’s not that I don’t trust you, sweetie, I don’t trust boys.”

  “But Mom!”

  Marcus put his hand on his wife’s shoulder. “Ellie, she’s growing up. We let her go out on the range by herself. If she can handle the varmints out there I think she can handle a few teenagers.”

  “I can, Mom! You know I’m respo
nsible!”

  “Annie, hush,” Marcus said, before turning back to Annie’s mother. “We’ve got to let her out of the nest eventually. We raised her right. I’m not worried.” He gave Annabelle a stern look. “Do I need to be worried?”

  “Dad, no! You know me! I don’t give a shit about boys!”

  “Language!” Eleanor snapped. She stood up from the table, sighed, and told the kitchen appliances to pour her a glass of wine. “Fine, but we’re going to establish some ground rules. You’ll check in every night. No overnight parties, no boys in your room, and so help me God, young lady, if I find out you were drinking I’ll lock you in a tower until you’re eighteen!”

  “Mom, I’m not gonna drink! I’m not stupid!”

  “Sweetie, believe it or not, I was sixteen once. I know what kind of trouble a girl can get into.” Eleanor shot a scowl at Marcus, who was obviously trying not to laugh. “What is so funny?”

  “I know what kind of trouble you can get into too,” he said. “Hell, you were trouble when we met. Nothing but trouble.” He shook his head, smiling from ear to ear. “I used to have to stop you from starting fights at the club when we were dating.”

  “That…was a long time ago. And on another planet! And entirely beside the point! You,” she said, pointing at Annie, “will not get into any fights!”

  “Oh my God, Mom, I’m not going to get into fights! Will you give me some credit?”

  Marcus’ expression became more serious. “You know what I taught you about that,” he said.

  “Of course I do, Dad. You never start a fight, but you always damn well finish one.”

  He nodded in approval. “That’s my girl. See, honey? She’ll be fine.”

  Chapter 3

  The Privateer Ship Andromeda

  Deep Space, nine hundred hours out from Avalon

  Space travel is not an endeavor for the impatient. The miracle of the transit drive allows seemingly instantaneous travel between connected star systems, and this technological marvel is the foundation upon which interstellar civilization is built. But even with that kind of technology, there is no shortcut across space once a ship arrives in a star system. There’s nothing to do but slog across the void between transit points, burning up reaction mass, trying to keep busy, and hoping nothing goes wrong.