Tyche's Deceit Read online

  CONTENTS

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  One Good Lead

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Glossary

  Enjoy this book? You can change the world!

  About the Author

  Acknowledgements

  EXCERPT: TYCHE’S CROWN

  Recruitment

  CHAPTER ONE

  TYCHE'S DECEIT

  Richard Parry

  TYCHE'S DECEIT copyright © 2017 Richard Parry.

  Cover design copyright © 2017 Mondegreen.

  All rights reserved.

  ISBN-13: 978-0-9951041-4-3

  First edition.

  No parts of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any form without permission. Piracy, much as it sounds like a cool thing done at sea with a lot of, “Me hearties!” commentary, is a dick move. It gives nothing back to the people who made this book, so don’t do it. Support original works: purchase only authorized editions.

  While we’re here, what you’re holding is a work of fiction created by a professional liar. It is not done in an edgy documentary style with recovered footage. Pretty much everything in here was made up by the author so you could enjoy a story about the world being saved through action scenes and witty dialog. No people were used as templates, serial numbers filed off for anonymity: let’s be honest, October Kohl couldn’t be based on anyone real. Any resemblance to humans you know (alive) or have known (dead) is coincidental.

  Details on how to get your FREE STARTER LIBRARY can be found at the end of this book.

  Find out more about Richard Parry at mondegreen.co

  Published by Mondegreen, New Zealand.

  For Anthony. This probably doesn’t make up for all the therapy sessions, but you’ve got to start somewhere.

  ONE GOOD LEAD

  “IT ALL LEADS back to Evans.” Nate had his arms crossed, blaster at his side, murder in his heart. The Tyche was adrift, holding in the hard black somewhere between Pluto and Neptune. Nothing out here to mine. Nothing out here to salvage. Not even rich folk came out here to see the sights anymore. It was a perfect opportunity to run silent, watching for danger. Things like: huge asteroids that were in fact alien ships that launched rocks down gravity wells. Nothing so far. Just the usual susurration of radio chatter from ten billion human souls shouting into the void, hoping someone would pay attention for a second. Nate was sure of one thing: attention was coming.

  “That little shitwipe? I should have glassed that motherfucker back on Enia Alpha,” said Kohl. “I don’t know why you stopped me.”

  “Technically,” said Grace, “he was hiring us at the time. If you’d … what did you call it?”

  “Glassed,” said Kohl.

  “Like, nukes?” said Hope. She was floating off the floor a couple centimeters, just within reach for her magboots for when it became go-time.

  “Glassed,” said Kohl, “like with a bottle. You smash it over the head of someone who deserves it, and if they don’t go down like a sack of drowned puppies, you poke ’em with the sharp end.”

  “That a foreign term?” said El. “Sounds like you imported that one from off-world.”

  “Used to run with a Glaswegian,” said Kohl. “Real asshole, used to say it a lot. Thing is—”

  “Thing is,” said Grace, “he was paying us good Republic coin. Or promising to. If you’d ‘glassed that motherfucker,’ we wouldn’t have been paid.”

  “Still,” said Kohl. “Would have saved us and ours a bunch of hurtin’.” He paced on the worn deck plates, his magboots clunking with each step. “We should have—”

  “Generally,” said Nate, “I’m not into agreeing with Kohl wholesale. But bearing in mind that taking Evans’ coin led us off a short plank with a long drop, well. Here we are. Thinking Kohl is right.”

  “I haven’t been here in a long time,” said Hope, meaning the solar system, not Kohl’s point of view. Or, at least, that’s what Nate’s mental math tallied to. Her voice was low. “A long time.”

  “You haven’t been alive a long time,” said El.

  “It’s all relative,” said Hope. “I don’t know why we came here for him. We should be on Enia Alpha.”

  “Enia Alpha,” said Nate, “is where he won’t be. No way he was a local boy. No way he was there by random chance of fate.” He put a hand on the butt of his blaster. “I think we should encourage him to tell us a little more. About the mission. About … why us. Our crew.” He met Grace’s eyes across the ready room, the hum of the Tyche quiet for a moment. “Our family.”

  “Okay,” said El. “This is all very touching, but where to first? You think he’s batting here for the home team. Nine planets. Which one do we touch base with first?”

  “The only one that counts,” said Nate. “We’re going home.”

  “Great,” said Kohl. “Just great.”

  “I haven’t been there in a long time too,” said Grace, looking down at the deck. Then she looked at Kohl. “Wait. Why don’t you want to be here? Got a warrant out on you or something?”

  “Me? No,” said Kohl. “Just, I guess I’m more of a burning bridges kind of guy.”

  “Me too,” said Hope. “The fires help light the way.”

  “Anyway,” said Nate. This is getting real maudlin, real fast. “We need a plan. If we open a comm up, say, ‘Yo, this here’s the Tyche, and we’re hunting assholes,’ we won’t get a warm welcome.”

  “Or we’ll get a really warm welcome,” said El. “Lasers and plasma, couple of torpedoes, that kind of thing.”

  “Exactly my concern,” said Nate. “So, I have this plan.”

  “Oh God, oh God, why,” said Hope.

  “Uh,” said Nate.

  “Your plans do suck a little,” said El. “I’m trying to be honest. What do they call it? Three-sixty something?”

  “Three-sixty-degree reviews,” said Grace. “You give feedback on your boss. It’s where—”

  “We can give feedback on the captain?” said Kohl. “I’m in.”

  “The plan,” said Nate, “involves an old buddy of mine. He’ll know where we can look for Evans. He’ll want a favor in return. Most like? We’ll have to lift something heavy—”

  “Fuck,” said Kohl.

  “But Harlow? He’ll do us right,” said Nate. “Leastwise, he has in the past. Most of the time.”

  “Most of the time?” said Grace.

  CHAPTER ONE

  THE RAIN WAS the best part of this place. It sure as hell wasn’t the people.

  Now, the rain: it smelled clean. It tasted clean. It washed away grime and sweat and the smell of being on a ship for weeks. It carried the smell of the sea, even though the sea was klicks away. It was cooling in the heat, although in twenty m
inutes when it stopped raining the air would turn into a kind of cloying miasma of humidity. Nate planned to be inside somewhere air-conditioned, preferably a place that served alcohol, by the time that happened. Odds were against him, because his contact wasn’t here yet. Which led to…

  The people: they were everywhere. Underfoot, like rats, if rats could be big, selfish, and loud. Actually, nothing at all like rats, because rats didn’t try and sell you knock-off holos or umbrellas that didn’t work. Nate eyeballed the man in front of him. The guy was trying to sell Nate … well, what was that thing? “Hey,” said Nate, interrupting the man’s mishmash of Cantonese, Tamil, and Russian. “What the fuck is that?”

  “Elektroshokovyy pistolet,” said the man. “Taser. Mikavum nallatu, yes?”

  Nate looked at the man, then at the bicycle the man had. It was laden with knick-knacks, odds and ends; some of it might have been garbage for a recycler. Hard to tell. Nate would have called the collection souvenirs if it wasn’t for the thing the man kept trying to shove in his face. “A taser, huh?” said Nate. He patted the blaster at his hip. “Now why would I need one of those?”

  “Fēi zhìmìng,” said the man. “Sometimes you don’t want kill.”

  “Ah,” said Nate. “For those times, I use my charm.”

  “We’re all going to die,” said Grace. She’d worked her way back to Nate through the steady throng of humanity he was neck-deep in. He hadn’t even seen her coming. There were so many people here it was hard to check all the corners. I already miss having a deck under my feet and no one for a million klicks in any direction. “But it’ll be a clean death.” She handed him an ice cream. Nate took it without comment, testing the flavor. Butter pecan. Could be a lot worse. And — being fair to their current location — getting a decent ice cream on the Tyche was out of the question. Hope couldn’t magic one up in her fab. The galley served food lookalikes. But at least there weren’t this many people.

  The man with the souvenirs gave Grace a withering glance and then pushed his way off into the crowd. “How much luck you suppose he has?” said Nate. “You know. Selling worthless shit.” He had to raise his voice over the noise of the throng around them. He gestured with his ice cream, which was getting wet. An excuse to eat it fast, if ever there was one.

  “A taser can be useful,” said Grace. She had her own ice cream, something green with flecks of black. Mint and chocolate chip, maybe?

  “Not in our line of work,” said Nate. “We live on the binary edge, Grace. Hot and cold. Yin and yang. Black and white. Dead or alive.” He shook his butter pecan cone for emphasis.

  She pushed a few wet strands of black hair out of her eyes. “Dead or alive, huh? You trying to channel Kohl or something?”

  “Speaking of whom,” said Nate, “where is he?”

  “Said he was running errands,” she said. “Can we go inside?”

  “Harlow’s not here yet,” said Nate. “Harlow is our key to not living on the wrong side of the binary edge.”

  “The death side?” she said.

  Nate frowned, playing the conversation back in his head. “Did you say,” he said after a moment, “Kohl was running errands?”

  “It’s what he said,” said Grace, looking over the crowd. “Hey. That your guy?” She used her ice cream as a pointer, drops of water and mint-chip falling to the road.

  Nate followed the direction of her gesture. Yeah, that was Harlow all right. He was being man-handled inside a building by two larger humans, one on each arm as they hustled him in. The building, in this case, was Harlow’s bar. Harlow ran a friendly place; welcomed spacers and grounders alike, served whiskey that wasn’t too watered down, and handed jobs to people like Nate when they were of interest. Nate and Harlow went back a few years, been through some shit, and in all that time Nate had never seen Harlow taken into his own bar against his will. Nate sighed. “Yeah, that’s Harlow.”

  Grace nodded. “You know those guys with him?”

  “I don’t,” said Nate. “I guess this explains why he’s late.”

  She looked at him. “Do we go in there and … I don’t know. You said he was a friend of yours. We going to help him out?”

  “‘Friend,’” said Nate. “That’s an interesting word.”

  “It was your word this morning, when you said we should come down to this particular rock and get some information. A lead.”

  Nate gave her a sour look. “I did say that, didn’t I?”

  “Yeah, you did, Cap,” she said.

  Nate patted his blaster pistol, then tossed the remains of his cone in a trash can. “Well, let’s go get that information, Assessor.”

  • • •

  “Which one of you assholes wants it first?” Nate pointed his blaster in the general direction of Harlow, the two guys holding him down, and the man who wore a surprised expression above a black suit. Grace ghosted off to Nate’s right, lithe form moving in the gloom of the bar. Nate felt a momentary pang of worry — she was still carrying injuries from her run-in with Kohl, when the Ezeroc had been using the big man like a puppet theatre — but she seemed focused. Silent. A night killer. Unlike Nate, who had a metal leg that creaked in the rain.

  Creak, creak. That was the only sound — his damn leg. That, and water dripping from somewhere. The bar — dark for the moment, empty of patrons — was silent as the grave. Perhaps not the best analogy, Nate.

  “Nate,” said Harlow, through bloody lips. “Sorry I was late for our meeting.”

  Nate shrugged, waving the blaster in a manner he hoped was both casual and threatening. A hard sea to sail, that one. “I can see your previous appointment ran over.” He tried to catch Grace’s position out of the corner of his eye, but failed — she’d vanished, like smoke in the wind. “I’m not interrupting, am I?”

  The man in black … reanimated, like he was waiting for a cue. “Who are you?”

  “I’m Harlow’s eleven o’clock,” said Nate. “Who are you?”

  “His ten o’clock,” said the man.

  “This isn’t helping either of us,” said Nate. “Look, I’m just here for some information.” He gestured with the blaster again. “I mean, I can just take it and go if you like. You look like you’re busy.”

  “Nate?” said Harlow. “What are you doing?” He spat blood onto the floor.

  “Excuse me,” said the man in black. He pulled black gloves tighter onto his hands. “I … this is very confusing. You’re not trying to … rescue our mutual acquaintance? Lend assistance to Harlow?”

  “Does it look,” said Nate, “like I’m crazy?” He frowned at his blaster. “Although I guess I have given a bad first impression.”

  “Nate?” said Harlow. “A little help.”

  “Yes,” said the man in black. “It does, at first blush, look like you are pointing a weapon with intent at me.”

  “Hell,” said Nate, “that’s just to ensure no one does anything rash. If you can give me your assurance you’ll do … well, something just not plain stupid, I can put it away.”

  The man in black looked over at the two other men holding Harlow. He gestured, palms down, at them. Nate figured that for a calm down kind of motion, so he holstered his blaster. “There.”

  “There,” agreed the man. “What is it you want to know from Harlow?”

  “Nate?” said Harlow. “Look, if this is about the ship, I don’t even care anymore. You hear me? I don’t care. You can take it. On the house! Just get me out of here.”

  “What ship?” said the man in black. He turned back to Harlow. “What ship?”

  “The Ty—” started Harlow.

  “Well, I think we’re getting ahead of ourselves,” said Nate, walking forward. This whole thing will get a lot worse. “My question is quick. To the point. Brief, almost. I’ll ask it, then be on my way.”

  “What of your accomplice?” asked the man in black. “The one with the sword.”

  “Her?” said Nate, careful not to use Grace’s name. “She’s out back, ch
ecking for surprises.”

  “There are no surprises,” said the man in black.

  There was a short scream, then a sound like two halves of a watermelon hitting the ground right next to each other, a thunk-chunk sound. “No,” said Nate, “I expect not.”

  The man in black winced. “She’s quite good.”

  “She’s borderline average,” said Nate, “but that’s not the point. I feel like we’ve got off to a distrustful start. Two people like us, in a place like this? We need a few rules, so accidents don’t happen.”

  “Hm,” said the man in black. “You look like a spacefaring man.”

  “What specifically,” said Nate, “makes one man look spacefaring and another seafaring? One man a beachfront dweller and the other a gutter rat? One man a—”

  “You walk like the world is heavy,” said the man in black, “and you are accustomed to low light. This bar,” he gestured around the room, “is dark, and yet you are having no trouble seeing.”

  “Fair enough,” said Nate.

  “Also, you are wearing a ship suit under your long jacket.”

  Nate looked down at himself, then back up. “That is another clue,” he said. “What of it?”

  “Would you happen to be Captain Nathan Chevell?” said the man in black, taking a step closer to Nate. “Of the Tyche? Former military heavy lifter, sold to the land merchant Harlow, and used in the Absalom system?”

  Nate flexed his metal fingers. “You know?” He frowned. “That is a super-specific set of questions.”

  “What I’ve been trying to say,” said Harlow. “Nate—” He hissed in pain as one man holding his arms twisted.

  “I’ll take that as a yes,” said the man in black, tugging at his suit jacket. He turned back to his thugs. “If you would be so kind?”

  The thugs looked at each other, gave each other the universal whatever-the-fuck-but-this-guy-is-paying-the-bills look, and let Harlow go. Harlow didn’t run, just kind of sagged in his chair, still trying to suck air in through a few broken teeth.