No Shelter Here

---

No Shelter Here - book excerpt

Prologue

As winter drew to a close, the rains came less often, and the skies above Denabria began to clear up. When Jack looked through his therapist’s window, he saw only thin clouds over skyscrapers that glittered in the faint sunlight. The weather would be improving soon. That should have made him feel better, but it didn’t.

Bracing his hands against the window-frame, Jack leaned forward and peered through the glass. He was nervous. His rational mind knew that therapy was a good thing, but there was some part of him that feared the prospect of revealing his deepest thoughts and anxieties. Confess too much, his inner jerk told him, and he would end up in an asylum. Summer was annoyed. She hated it when he resorted to hyperbole.

“Agent Hunter?”

Dr. Holeen was only a misty silhouette as she came through the door behind him: a vaguely human-shaped cloud of fog that looked out of place among the cheery, yellow walls and white furniture of her office. He had never seen her before, and so his mind did not know what colours to apply.

When he turned around, he saw that the doctor was a short woman with tanned skin, a bob of short, brown hair and thick glasses. “What brings you by this afternoon?”

He forced a smile, then closed his eyes and bowed his head to her. “Where do I begin?”

Of all the worlds Kayla had visited in her short career, Telorin was the bleakest. The planet was located near the edge of Antauran Space and was home to a munitions depot that supplied their outer colonies. It was also a wasteland.

Lightning flickered in the ever-present clouds that loomed overhead. She kept thinking that a stray bolt would strike her fighter, but if she kept her altitude low and her shields up, she should be fine. Beneath her, the ground was nothing but barren rock with ridges that rose as much as a hundred feet into the air and pits that were at least twice as deep. Bleakness take her, it was ugly.

Six dozen Leyrian Pyro-Class fighters flew in a grid along with an equal number of Antauran dread-wings forming a moving wall of aircraft that advanced on the Ragnosian drones who had come to threaten the base.

Kayla observed the heads-up display on her window.

The SmartGlass enlarged the image of nearly a hundred small craft with two pointed prongs in front, each one about half the size of her fighter. For the tenth time since launching, she wished that her government had allowed the development of automated weapons.

The two fleets met in the air.

A Raggy fighter came straight at Kayla, releasing a stream of green plasma from its prongs. It splashed against the nose of her ship, triggering the shields. Flickering static made it hard to see, but she trusted her instruments.

When the light died down, she saw that she was on course to ram two more of them who flew side by side and made no effort to avoid a collision. Robots had no instinct for self-preservation.

She rolled to her left, pointing one wing down at the ground and the other skyward, slipping between the two drones with barely an inch to spare. She leveled off and continued forward, but there was nothing but flickering clouds in her window.

With a quick tug on her flight-stick, Kayla pitched the fighter one hundred and eighty degrees so that she was flying upside down and backwards. She saw the backside of the retreating bots.

And she squeezed the trigger.

Orange plasma erupted from her wings, two bolts of it that converged on the Raggy and blasted it to pieces. She was about to cheer when something pounded the upturned belly of her ship.

She was pushed toward the ground.

Frantically clawing at the flight-stick, she performed a snap-roll to properly orient herself. She was still descending and flying backwards. A quick tug on the throttle fixed that. The Pyro’s gravitational drive kicked in.

She stopped falling and began to rise.

In the window, she saw that some of those robots had turned around to engage the enemies who had slipped past them. Another drone was coming at her, its prongs glowing with verdant menace.

A splash of blue hit the robot from above, destroying it before it could fire. Metal debris exploded in all directions, and Kayla flew right through the fireball. She had a brief glimpse of the dread-wing headed in the opposite direction, and she waved to the pilot who had saved her.

The mess hall aboard this little scout ship was a clean, almost sterile place. Bright lights in the ceiling shone down on round, white cables that were polished so well they glistened. Three rectangular windows looked out on the emptiness of space.

Seated with his feet propped up on the table and crossed at the ankle, Craxis looked out on the darkness and grinned. He had come to appreciate his new features: his strong chin, sharp blue eyes and brown hair with messy, crisscrossing bangs. Not for what they were but for what they could do for him. “Quite remarkable, isn’t it?”

Valeth stood by one window with her hand against the reinforced glass, seemingly lost in thought. “The ship?” she asked.

“The war.”

Gracefully, she turned to face him and smiled at the adoring smile that she reserved just for him. Yes, this one was smitten. He didn’t mind. “I should think, my lord,” she began, “that the Inzari getting their way is anything but remarkable. And you’ve let the mask slip once again.

“Quite right.” He shut his eyes tight, trembling as he shoved the frustration down into the pit of his stomach. “I mean, ‘Yeah, whatever.” That sounded like something Hunter would say.

Valeth glided toward him like wind brushing the surface of a lake; all the while, her smile never wavered. “You will learn the role in time.”

He leaned back in the chair, clamping a hand over his chin and stroking his jawline. “Yes,” he murmured. “I suppose I will. And we have time.”

“Why this form?” Valeth asked. “Of all those you could choose from…”

Craxis sat up, blinking at her. “Vengeance, of course.” He rose with a sigh and flowed around the table, approaching her cautiously. It wasn’t that he didn’t trust Valeth, but he had come to learn that even the most trusted subordinate could betray him.

With a feather touch, he tilted her chin up so that he could stare into her large, brown eyes. “He defies me,” Craxis said. “For that, he must suffer.”

He took a step back and frowned down at the garments that he was forced to wear. Blue jeans and a black T-shirt with the letters AC-DC on it. In over two thousand years of living, he had never felt as foolish as he did right now. “Vengeance is worth a little indignity.”

“How shall we proceed?”

“Go to Leyria,” Craxis said. “Isara will have further instructions for you there.”

“And you, my lord?”

He answered that with a wolfish grin. “My task will be much more unpleasant.” Gesturing to the table, he summoned the tiny ball of flesh that he had left there. It rolled toward him and leaped up into his hand.

The bright lights in the briefing room hurt Telixa’s eyes. She had gotten very little sleep last night, and the throbbing headache that no amount of painkillers could get rid of drove her to distraction.

She kept the space neat and functional: no paintings, no plants, nothing that could get in the way. Just a long, rectangular table and four cream-coloured walls. Her officers kept rushing in and out, delivering reports. The slight hiss the door made each time it opened was becoming a nuisance.

She noted the presence of Admiral Toran Jaal who stood with his arms folded, frowning at nothing in particular. He had come to discuss strategy, for all the good that it would do them.

Telixa sat with her elbow on the table, her face buried in the palm of one hand. She rubbed her eyes with the tips of her fingers. “You needn’t stay,” she croaked. “I will keep you abreast of any developments.”

“I have no pressing engagements,” Toran murmured.

On her right, the double doors parted once again to admit a young ensign with red hair that she wore up in a clip. “The latest reports from the front lines, Admiral,” she said, offering a tablet.

Telixa took it with a nod of appreciation. As she suspected, the situation was deteriorating. The war was being fought on multiple fronts. Her people attacked targets in Leyrian and Antauran Space while the enemy did the same here. The raid on Telorin had failed, as had similar attacks on Petross Station and Vonare. Meanwhile, three Ragnosian supply depots had fallen. No, the situation was not good.

As soon as the ensign left – offering some small semblance of privacy – Telixa threw the tablet down on the table. “We’re spread too thin!” she declared. “Those damn SuperGates! They attack targets on one side of our territory, and then two hours later, they hit us on the opposite side! We can’t get enough ships to each battle on time!”

Turning partway around, Toran looked over his shoulder and narrowed his eyes. “Our space is vast,” he said. “Nearly five thousand lightyears from end to end. We have no way of anticipating which targets they will hit; so, we must spread our forces evenly.”

“We need more ships.”

“Perhaps we should pull back our forces from enemy space,” Toran suggested. “Concentrate on defending our own territory.”

Despite her anger and fear, Telixa found herself smiling. “Ever the pragmatist,” she muttered, shaking her head. “We cannot retreat. If we let this become a defensive war, we’ve already lost.”

Toran claimed the chair across from her and leaned forward with his hands on the table. “I don’t see that we have any other options,” he said. “Our shipyards are working as fast as they can. They cannot produce battlecruisers out of thin air.”

Wheeling her chair backwards, Telixa stood up and began to pace alongside the table. “What we need is a victory,” she growled. “Something to motivate our forces. An attack on Leyria, perhaps.”

“Are you mad?”

“We entered this war for one reason and one reason only,” she told him. “To destroy the moon that hosts the organisms from which Justice Keepers gain their powers. This piecemeal approach is not working.”

In a heartbeat, Toran was on his feet again, his face red, his eyes wild. “Leyrius is one of the most heavily defended systems in the galaxy. We would have to commit the bulk of our forces, leaving much of our own territory undefended.”

“If we continue on this current path, we will lose.”

“I knew you were aggressive, Telixa,” he mumbled. “But this…”

She waved away his objection. Not because she was ready to abandon her designs, but there was no sense in arguing when it would only solidify his resolve. Rallying support for an all-out assault on Leyria would require no small amount of effort, and making an enemy out of Toran would transform a difficult task into an impossible one. “Go back to your ship,” she urged him. “We will meet again tomorrow morning. Perhaps a good night’s sleep will allow new ideas to present themselves.”

She very much doubted it, but there was little that she could squeeze out of her brain in this state of exhaustion. What she wouldn’t give to have the last three months back, to avoid that confrontation in which Slade had injected her with the virus. But there was no going back. This was her life now.

She ushered Toran out of the room, into a hallway where a man in unrelieved black leaned against the bulkhead. Arin was a tall fellow, slim and lean with dark skin and buzzed hair. He came to attention as soon as he saw her. “Shall I take our guest to the SlipGate, Admiral?”

Telixa nodded.

Gesturing to the lift at the end of the hallway, Arin flashed a toothy grin. “If you’ll just follow me, Admiral Jaal,” he said. “We’ll get you back to your ship in time for evening tea.”

Toran looked nervous – no one liked being alone with her tame Justice Keeper – but he did not protest. In truth, Arin had never been a Justice Keeper. Slade had given him the modified symbiont that allowed him to mimic their powers. Slade had also betrayed him. She and Arin had that much in common.

The walk back to her quarters with long and draining, but it gave her time to think. She had turned in half a dozen blood samples to half a dozen doctors in the past three months, hoping that someone might devise a way to counter the virus. She had to rely on physicians that she trusted implicitly; if the wrong people found out about her condition, it would mean more than just the end of her career. Life imprisonment would be one of the better options. So far, no one had been able to help her.

The fury she had felt upon first learning about her condition had died down to a simmering hatred. One day, she would make Grecken Slade pay. One day.

Her quarters were dark, but she didn’t bother turning on the light. The instant she was alone, she changed out of her uniform and into a black, silk robe. And she waited. Ten minutes later, the door chime rang.

“Enter.”

The door opened to reveal Arin as a silhouette against the light that’s building from the hallway. “Admiral Jaal has returned to his ship,” he said. “He sends his regards and looks forward to your meeting tomorrow.”

“Excellent.”

Arin stepped into the room, and the door slid shut behind him, allowing her to see his face in the dim light. He was smiling. “Is there any other service that I can provide, Admiral?”

He found her sitting on the couch with one leg crossed over the other, illuminated only by the candle that burned on her small, glass coffee table. “Yes,” Telixa said. “And you know what it is.”

He strode across the room, and lifted her off the couch with terrifying ease, kissing her lips with glorious hunger. Goodness, these Justice Keepers were strong! Of course, she already knew that, but knowing something to be true and experiencing it first-hand were two very different things.

The robe slipped off of her as he carried her to the bedroom.

Several hours later, she was lying in bed with the blankets pulled up to her chest, gasping as she tried to catch her breath. Her face was flushed, and her hair was damp. The sheets were all tangled up.

Curled up on his side, Arin smiled lovingly at her. She half thought that he might profess some growing affection for her, but the man knew better than to rise above his station. “Shall I remain with you tonight, Admiral?”

“I think I would like to be alone.”

That was how she answered every time he asked that question, and he never failed to ask. It was such a polite way of saying, “Get out.” Having him with her as she fell asleep might be pleasant, but the chances of him being seen walking out of her quarters were smaller if he left in the middle of the night.