An excerpt from No Refuge for the Lightning Touched, Book One of The Claire Protocol.
Chapter One
The refugee ship was crowded. They always are.
I glanced around at the grimy open compartments. Were there even ten seats installed on the entire deck? This barely classified as a passenger ship. With a sigh, I hoisted my duffel onto my shoulder, the weight pulling at my bra strap, and moved toward the back. Dozens of families already crowded the deck, most huddled up against the available bulkhead space. I moved past a group of spiky-headed Lonarians, careful not to let my clothing catch on anything. Lonarians are extremely sensitive about their spikes. As soon as I cleared the group, I spotted an alcove still unoccupied, probably because of its lack of proximity to a viewport.
I immediately made a beeline toward the niche, reaching it at the same time as another woman pulling a hard-sided suitcase whose hover device appeared to be broken. She was a few centimeters taller than me, her long, dark hair tucked under a knit cap. The woman gave me a small smile and shifted all her weight to one side. She glanced at the alcove.
“Want to share?” Her voice was friendly, maybe a little flirtatious. Definitely amused.
I considered her for a moment, noticing the tenseness of her shoulders, the way she peered behind me at the rest of the ship. I shrugged. “Sure, there’s enough room.” I gestured for her to take the corner. I had a feeling she would feel more comfortable with two walls at her back.
She settled down on the decking, pressed her left shoulder against the bulkhead, and placed her suitcase at her feet like a bulwark. I let my duffel slip off my shoulder with a thump, then dropped next to her, pulling the bag against my side.
She rolled her head toward me and held out a hand. “I’m Kari, by the way.”
I took her hand. “Gillian.”
“What made you leave Promosia, Gillian?” She said my name slowly, like she was savoring it. I gave her a sideways glance. She watched me, amused.
I shrugged. “Work dried up.” It was close enough to the truth. With the Legion of Order moving in, it was only a matter of time before I would have to leave. Better safe than sorry. “You?”
“Same, I guess.” She sighed. “Plus, I’m bored with this place. Time to see another part of the galaxy. A friend told me these ships were the best way.”
“Some friend,” I murmured.
Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed the flash of a uniform and turned back to the main compartment. Three Legionnaires moved through the crowd, checking boarding passes and travel documents. Two wore the gray with maroon piping of the newly minted Promosia Legion or ProLeg. The third wore the signature baby blue of the Legion of Order. My heart rate ticked up as the Legionnaire in blue proceeded methodically toward our little niche. C’mon, move away.
Located in the Pryt system, Promosia was a corporate-run planet and a member of the Consortium, one leg of the Terran Triad Imperium, the messy, disjointed amalgamation of planets and governments that ruled over the human corner of the Andromeda Galaxy. A mixture of corporations that ran entire planets and the more traditional nation-state star systems, the Imperium would have broken into its various factions if not for the threat of colonization by the other major inhabitant of the Andromeda Galaxy, the Tarsi Union, a league of alien civilizations united under Tarsian rule.
The Imperium’s military was perfect proof of this amalgamation. By charter, each member of the Imperium was required to maintain a standing military that could provide a space-based and a ground-based defense. Sometime ago, before I was born or when I was very young, the Chancellor praised the Ken Badra system’s military, the Legion of Order, as the premier fighting force throughout the Imperium. He endorsed their training of other forces. Any military that engaged the Legion of Order for training and retrofit earned the designator of Legion and became part of the Triad Legion, no longer a provincial military.
I laid my hand flat against the decking and sensed for the data fibers threaded throughout the ship. The data stream filled my mind, but I was careful not to slip beneath the surface. The Legion of Order soldier kept moving my way, and I had little time. I accessed the passenger registry and generated a random clearance to attach to my transit codes. With a glance at Kari, I generated a second code and pulled out the microscroll that contained my documents.
The Legionnaire stopped in front of us. “Documents, please,” he asked. At least, I think it was a he. The reflective face mask of his helmet hid his features, and his voice came out in a mechanical monotone. I handed up the scroll without comment, careful to keep my body language relaxed and nonthreatening. My reflected image, distorted by the curve of the helmet, showed my nose and full lips looking larger than normal.
Kari shifted next to me, and I glanced down to see her slip a blade from her pocket. I casually reached over and placed my hand over hers, holding it against her thigh. She looked over at me, no longer amused.
The Legionnaire finished scanning my documents and held the scroll out to me, already looking at Kari. “Documents, please,” he said. As I reached up to take the scroll, I deliberately brushed my fingers against his glove. I palmed the scroll and pressed it back into his hand, releasing a fraction of my control. I felt the shock travel from my fingers to his, then he jerked back suddenly.
“Here you go,” I said. I sensed the computers in his helmet spinning, glitching on a copy of my papers, and nudged the system to confuse them with the image capture of Kari his helmet took. I attached the generated clearance code.
The Legionnaire stood there uncertainly for a moment, then handed back my scroll and continued on. Next to me, Kari relaxed slowly. I lifted my hand from hers. Sharp steel pricked my side.
“That’s a poor way to say thank you,” I said.
She gave me a hard, uncompromising look. “Legionnaires don’t just walk away from a security check. Who the void are you?” she demanded.
I shrugged carefully, very aware of the knife at my side. “Just a traveler.” I quirked an eyebrow. “Just like you.”
Kari’s eyes narrowed. “What did you do to him?” She glanced briefly toward the main compartment.
My gaze followed hers to see the Legionnaires exiting through the gangway. “I showed him your papers.” I turned back to her with a small smile.
She hesitated, then pulled her knife away from my side and slipped it into her pocket. “Why would you help me?”
I studied her before answering, trying to understand the instinct myself. “Because you’re scared,” I said finally. “And I know what it’s like to be scared.”
Her jaw tightened, but before she could say anything, the intercom crackled to life. Kari turned away as the captain announced departure and instructed all passengers to strap down loose items and ensure their restraints were secure. I looked around at the complete lack of straps or restraints and huffed. Beside me, Kari quirked a smile and moved closer to the bulkhead.
I leaned my head back and gave Kari a sideways look. “Wake me when we escape the atmosphere.”
She stared disbelievingly. “Are you serious?”
I ignored her, just looped the strap of my duffel around my arm to keep it from sliding away and closed my eyes.
***
The rumbling of the ship had smoothed out when I woke an hour later. To my surprise, a panel in the bulkhead on the far side of the deck slid open, revealing a food counter just wide enough for a single vendor. I had expected the transport company would leave us to fend for ourselves. I pushed myself to my feet, knowing the line would be impossibly long in a few minutes.
“Where are you going?”
I glanced over my shoulder at Kari. I thought I caught a hint of anxiety in her eyes, but it was gone as soon as she saw me looking at her.
“I’m gonna get some food,” I told her. “I don’t feel like starving for the next three days.”
“Oh,” she said, and her gaze flicked past me to the growing line at the food counter. “Food. Right.”
I joined the line, contemplating the choices scrawled on a beat-up piece of blackboard. I touched the palladium coins in my pocket. I had enough Llad. The prices were higher than the food warranted but not the gouging ones they would have been in a commercial personnel transport. The sellers had to balance against what refugees could afford, after all. I had some protein bars stashed in my bag, but I had learned early on to stock up on food when it was available. I peeked at Kari out of the corner of my eye. She was staring hard in the opposite direction of the food counter. The prices weren’t that high.
Kari looked up in surprise when the bag of crackers, cheese, and jerky landed in her lap. “What’s this?” she asked.
“Your food,” I said, holding out a water cartridge. I dropped next to her, picked a bag for myself, and stuffed the rest in my duffel. “You watched my bag. I got you food.”
She sat silent for a long moment while I ignored her, concentrating on my dry meal. “Thanks,” she said finally.
***
Much later in the standard day cycle—at least five hours after takeoff—Kari asked again, “Where are you headed?”
The cabin lights had dimmed half an hour before, and the other passengers had settled into their carefully staked-out territories across the deck. Some were already asleep; others were only pretending. A Quanobi in the middle of the deck eyed a peaceful family of Jooris against the bulkhead, and I considered how much I wanted to tell the woman I had just met.
Itxaro. That was my ultimate destination, but could I trust her with that information? Would she even take me seriously or just laugh in my face?
I’d been hearing about Itxaro for a few standard years now, in hushed conversations in back storerooms or mutterings into ale mugs after one too many drinks in smoky bars late in the evening. The first time I’d heard of it, it’d sounded like a fanciful mirage of an idea pulled from some dense old Earth Prime book like Paradise Lost. But I’d kept hearing about it as I moved from place to place and repair shop to service center, always skirting the edge of the Legion of Order’s reach.
It sounded too good to be true, this minor planet, hardly large enough to have its own moon. Itxaro was located just outside of official Terran territory in a buffer zone between the Imperium and the Tarsi Union.
Itxaro’s appeal lay in its position in the no-man’s-land between the two giants of the galaxy. Little more than a hundred thousand kilometers wide, this swath of space was an unofficial neutral zone between the Imperium and the Union. Both entities refrained from making incursions into the last few systems that existed between them, knowing that doing so would bring them into direct conflict. A conflict neither side was interested in at the moment. The rumor said Itxaro’s neutrality made it a haven for anyone, for the sort who didn’t—or couldn’t—find a home in either the Imperium or the Union.
It was a stupid story. I’d scoffed the first time I’d heard it. Itxaro probably didn’t even exist. But the more I heard of it, the more I wondered. And then Promosia invited the Legion of Order to train the local militia on Promosia. Wherever the Legion of Order was, the higher a chance Veris would catch up to me. And suddenly, Itxaro sounded like the answer to all my problems. Not just the next safe destination to head toward but the last destination. Somewhere the Legion’s reach couldn’t extend. Somewhere I could finally be safe.
So, I plotted my hops and bought the cheapest passenger ticket off planet on one of the budget transports, whose spare design, stripped amenities, and general lack of comfort made it a favorite of those displaced by corporations and led to the moniker “refugee ships.”
And now I headed to Itxaro. To my version of paradise.
The lights stuttered, suddenly bright in the dimness, and snapped me from my thoughts. “What are you running from?” I asked, flipping Kari’s question back on her.
“Who says I’m running from anything?” She huffed and turned away, leaning closer to the bulkhead.
I dropped the interrogation. “Go to sleep,” I told her.
“Shouldn’t we set a watch or something?” she mumbled, and I could hear the tiredness.
“I’ll keep watch.”
Continue Gillian’s story in No Refuge for the Lightning Touched.
No Refuge for the Lightning Touched
The Claire Protocol — Book One
January 23, 2027
Preorder now on Amazon.