Allies and Enemies: Legacy (Series Book 4)

By Amy J. Murphy

Forgive? Forget? Never.

Six years have passed since the Guilds War ravaged the Reaches. Life has moved on for everyone except soldier-turned-bounty-hunter, Sela Tyron.

Driven by revenge, she seeks to eradicate all traces of the bloodthirsty Poisoncry Guild that once held her prisoner. When her partner draws her into a deadly conspiracy against a former ally, Sela faces a choice: Complete her quest for vengeance. Or thwart a brutal tyrant determined to conquer all. Which will it be?

Former engineer of the mighty space fleets of Ironvale, Erelah Veradin only wants to raise her gifted daughter in safety. When a mysterious alien invader destroys her home, Erelah must team up with a man from a past she wanted to forget. Can they work together to rescue her child before its too late?

Allies and Enemies: Legacy is the fourth book in this best-selling space opera, science fiction adventure series named a Dragon Award Finalist for Best Military Science Fiction or Fantasy Novel 2016 and 2017.

Praise for the Allies and Enemies series:

“Awesome space adventure! Wow! With a lot of treachery, political maneuvering, cyber implanted villains, loss and despair, this story never lets up until the awesome conclusion.” [Amazon review]

“Merciless fun. Murphy takes no hostages, keeps the action running... a fun, fast read. Enjoy the ride.” [Amazon review]

“Five stars. Science fiction at its best.” [Amazon review]

“Great sci-fi series. If you’re looking for a great sci-fi series to read, then you’ve found one. I’ve read the first three and loved them all and I’m eagerly awaiting the next one.” [Amazon review]

• Language: English
• Publisher: Amy J. Murphy
• Release date: Jun 16, 2019
• ISBN: 9780463165867

Amy J. Murphy

Amy J. Murphy is not a Jedi. (Although she’s married to this Scottish guy that claims to be one.) But, she is a fantastic liar.She discovered this power at an early age and chose to wield it for good instead of evil. (The evil part remains highly tempting.) With this power, Amy writes space opera books with kickass heroines. These books are sometimes confused for military science fiction which is an easy mistake to make. She’s ok with this as her debut novel, Allies and Enemies: Fallen, was a finalist for the 2016 Dragon Award for Best Military Science Fiction or Fantasy Novel. It so happened that her third book, Allies and Enemies: Exiles, was named a 2017 Dragon Award finalist in the same category. At some point, she infiltrated the ranks of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA).When not geeking out at science fiction conventions, she lives in Vermont with the aforementioned Scotsman/Jedi and two canine overlords. Most recently she’s been named a 2017 Kindle Book Award Finalist and her work appeared in the Amazon best-selling space opera anthology, Orphans in the Black.

Book preview

1

Sela Tyron surveyed the silent alley below her rooftop surveillance spot. Into the third hour of the stake out, she remained as still the surrounding shadows despite the long wait for her prey or the eternal damp chill of Hadelia’s weather.

As the product of careful genetic selection and grueling physical conditioning since birth, Sela was well at ease with the stealth this operation required. The same could not be said for her two teammates.

This is taking forever.

The earpiece slaved to her vox perfectly conveyed the boredom and frustration in Dex’s voice.

Two hours. Fourteen minutes. That’s how long he’d lasted before breaking coms silence. Sela was mildly surprised. It beat his prior record. Not bad, considering Dex lacked an experienced soldier’s discipline.

Moments like this made Sela miss the brother and sister Volunteers she abandoned in her flight from the Regime. A lifetime of living and fighting together with her unit had given them a sense of connectedness that was unmatched. They could communicate with a single look or the tilt of a head. They moved like a well-oiled machine.

She reminded herself Dex had never benefitted from that experience, although he claimed Volunteer stock as his lineage. He certainly looked it compared to the shorter, frailer looking denizens of the Reaches, despite his lack of discipline. Anyone else born with such physical advantages in the lawless territory could have turned predator. Yet Dex possessed a quality that Sela’s husband, Jon Veradin, would call heart or some other frustratingly enigmatic term.

Stay off the channel, brain-box. Poisoncry dregs can sniff your trans. Don’t blow this. Came the reply from Bixtrenslor.

Just opposite Sela’s position on the street level, she picked out a shock of unruly red hair and the glint of night-vision goggles. The young woman had taken a position under the stanchion of the mag-train’s raised track.

It was unlikely anyone could spot Bix, but she would be wise to cover the bright hair. Sela made a mental note to address it during the mission debrief. No longer the same discarded girl living on the mean streets of Hadelia, Bix had grown into a reliable work partner. She was a quick study and quicker still when it came to tech—an indispensable talent. Had she been born in the service of the Regime, Sela bore no doubt Bix would have made senior tech by now.

You picking up anything, boss? Dex persisted. With your… you know? Itchy bones?

That’s super-rude. Bix admonished. Don’t call it that.

You call it that.

Right, but not to her face.

Sela sighed with displeasure. A real stealth op team would not behave so. She tapped her throat mic three times. An instruction to maintain silent. They got the hint. The chatter ceased.

My itchy bones. She scoffed. As nonsensical as the term sounded, it stuck. It was a fair enough description of what Sela experienced as a sub-audible vibration, felt but never heard in the presence of Poisoncry tech.

She knew it had something to do with the implant irretrievably lodged in her brain— a tether, they called it. The devices networked the Poisoncry acolytes across impressive reaches of space, allowing them to pool intellect and employ it on a nearly preternatural level.

Sela still bore the waxy scar at her left temple where the Poisoncry surgeons made the insertion. She’d escaped before the tether’s activation. Now it served as a grim souvenir of her time as a captive of one of their acolytes, Fisk.

She rubbed the spot with her fingertips— a habit she’d not been able to drop. The scar was barely larger than a half-cred coin and did not look like much. But some scars ran deeper, no matter how well-healed.

As much as she hated it, the implant was a significant advantage for Sela when it came to tracking down Poisoncry fugitives in the years after the war between the three Guilds controlling the Reaches. Defeated by Ironvale and Splitdawn, the Poisoncry were nearly obliterated. Yet, some of their acolytes remained in hiding among the worlds they’d once enslaved.

Sela and her partners— and other teams like them— had hunted them to near extinction. With dwindling prey on the loose, Sela’s team supplemented their income with the seizure of Poisoncry tech left behind after their defeat. The Consolidated Guild Treaty banned Poisoncry’s once ubiquitous bio-mech tech and paid modest sums for what she and her team captured.

But banning Poisoncry tech did not make certain people want the implants and bio-mech enhancements any less. Black markets thrived. Faced with financial ruin left by war and a barely coping governmental structure, many inhabitants of Hadelia found it more lucrative to sell their scavenged Poisoncry items than to surrender them to Rendition Centers for disposal.

Sela found it insulting on a personal level that anyone would willingly have a Poisoncry device implanted in their bodies. They did not know what it was like to have it forced upon them. Her memories, her body, her very essence of self— all of it, altered irreparably because of what Fisk and his Poisoncry drone had done to her in that metal cell six years ago.

When sleep would not obey, that cell never seemed too far away. Her keen memory could reproduce the sharp antiseptic smell, the burning cold of the floor as it penetrated the thin paper garb, and, worst of all, the fear that saturated every waking moment of her captivity. And, with it the echo of Fisk’s oddly patient voice asking: What do you want?

A pity revenge against the dead was impossible. His execution by Ironvale was a hollow victory as bland as the decree they’d issued. Fisk had been no one of real significance to the Poisoncry Guild— a mid-level functionary, according to the incomplete records that survived the war. Learning this was somehow insulting to her. Certainly, the man responsible for so much damage in her life must have had more importance.

No one really cared except her. She was just another casualty, unremarkable. And, considering the fate of some others left damaged in their wake, she could count herself fortunate. In their retreat, the Poisoncry had left behind scores of converts. These enslaved men, women, and children had been implanted with control tethers. Devoid of purpose or meaning, they wandered the cities of the Reaches like ghosts.

Seeing them on the street, begging for scrip or food, was enough to forge a hard lesion of hatred and sorrow in her stomach. Each was a reminder just how close she had come to that end.

There but for the Fates’ mercy go I. Jon would say.

Even if it was meant to be an expression of gratitude, to Sela it seemed callous. The Fates of her husband’s religion seemed capricious in how they bestowed protection or punishment. It made little sense for him to show gratitude for such inconsistent and sub-standard guardianship.

Jon.

Something scratched at the back of Sela’s mind. She had forgotten something and it had to do with him. But what?

The act of forgetting was another product from Fisk’s tinkering in her mind. Before that, Sela had always had perfect recall. Every moment, however banal or epic or horrible, was etched in her mind with vivid detail. The splicer, Techyan, had called it an eidetic memory. The old woman had even helped repair most of the damage, but could not restore that ability.

Forgetting was not the most worrisome effect. At times Sela’s memories could overwhelm her, drowning out everything else. Anything could trigger them⁠—

The skin at the back of her neck tightened. Her breath seized.

Itchy bones.

She scanned the alley. A dark shape near the back door to a fire-gutted skinshop snagged her attention. The unmistakable scuff of boots on cracked pavement echoed in the stillness.

The hum in her blood increased. A second man disengaged from the shadow-soaked end of the alley to her right. His stride was uneven, suggesting impairment or more likely some lasting physical impediment to his gait. He whistled, a low tuneless noise, as if trying to stave off anxiety or fear. He reached the middle of the alley, slowed. Furtive little bobs of his head as he took in his surroundings.

Clearly, he was anticipating a meeting. The muscles in her back tensed. Her fingers tightened on the grip of the A4, dialed in for close quarter engagement.

At times like this, she still missed the A6, felt its absence like a missing limb.

Unbidden, the memory shoved up at her. Sela was powerless as it engulfed everything and drowned out any sense of the present—Tove’s ship. The dimly lit weapons alcove manned by the deprogrammed acolyte. The glinting silver innards of the dismantled A6 splayed open on the workbench, the brush of small hairs gracing the top of the man’s head, the smell of the gun oil, the far-off rumble of the velos driving them on a hellish burn for Hull for her mission of murder⁠—

No! Not now! She groped blindly for the roof under her knees. Her bare hands met with the texture of cold damp stone. She focused on the real sensations of temperature, texture.

Her breathing evened out. She counted. Inhale. Exhale.

She rubbed her palm against the rough concrete. Her fingers curled over the tile edges until the bones of her hand creaked.

This is real. Here and now.

She envisioned shoving the memory back and sealing it behind a hatchway. It required her full concentration but the method worked to seize back control from such "episodes" as Jon called them— a side effect from the memory repair. Over the years they’d been less frequent, but no less inconvenient.

Finally the memory lost its grip, retreating just as rapidly as it began. A cold sweat broke out on her exposed face.

She shuddered, realizing her ear piece now hung loosely from its cord. When had she removed it?

A tiny voice buzzed like a trapped insect. She jammed the earwig back into place, and her hearing filled with Bix’s hushed voice.

— tracking the target. You copy?

Sela pressed the throat mic to acknowledge. The limping man was no longer at the center of the alley. He now leaned against the wall beneath her, a mere three feet below.

She tracked more movement. A new target had arrived. He was taller, the shoulders broad under what looked like a shapeless coat. He glided closer, moving with impressive grace.

She went very still, realizing that during that brief attack of memory, she’d moved out of her hiding spot. She wore black fatigues for the operation, but the camouflage was only as good as remaining in the surrounding shadows. The two men need only to glance up to make her location.

From this angle, she could make out the features of the newest arrival. The flickering enticements from the casinos and all night entertainment clubs one block over cast errant light, flashing sometimes sickly green, sometimes yellow.

His head was uncovered, shaved to the scalp. Angled, gaunt cheekbones and darker recesses for his eye sockets. The sick light made him look cadaverous. Under that pale skin, here and there veins of molten blue-violet light glowed.

Her gut twisted. Poisoncry. A living acolyte was here.

It’d been years since she’d last seen one. The ugly itching intensified to the crawl of insects. It wasn’t tech she’d sensed. It was him.

Her earwig clicked twice. Dex started his advance at his end of the alley. The plan had been to herd any quarry toward Bix who would deploy the stunner to subdue.

These were things that would work on any ordinary being. But on an acolyte? Dex was now in full view, but was yet unnoticed.

Sela shifted her weight to the balls of her feet, crept to the edge of the roof. If she aimed correctly, she could subdue the one closest by simply landing on him and surprise the acolyte.

She coiled, ready to leap. The personal s-com band on her wrist shrilled. It was explosively loud.

The ordinary sound, greeted with indifferent annoyance at even the best of times, was the equivalent of pulling the pin on a shatter grenade.

Both men lunged in opposite directions. Sela fell, unable to stop her momentum. She hit the pavement hard, skinning her hands and rolling.

Half-balanced, she lunged at the acolyte. Her fingertips brushed the fleeing ends of this coat, claimed no purchase.

He hit a dead sprint, back the way he’d come.

The bastard was fast. Behind her, she heard/felt the impact of bodies.

She looked. Dex had their primary suspect face down into the wet pavement and was already applying the plasti-web cuffs. Fueled by adrenaline, he practically bellowed the arrest decree at his pinned quarry.

Under control.

It was instinct unburdened by forethought. Sela sprang after the acolyte, side-stepping Bix.

Wait! she called. I can use Scud to track him.

But Sela was already at the end of the alley, heart pounding, legs pumping. Up ahead, the acolyte dodged in and around the detritus of the littered street with an almost preternatural ease.

Sela was infantry: built for endurance, not speed. So far, she was keeping up, but there was no telling where the acolyte’s limits rested or what enhancements he possessed. She had to hope her knowledge of the terrain would make the difference.

He lunged right, likely meant to throw her off. She dogged him, losing speed to hurdle the sprawling leg of a burned-out culler-mech. She landed, pressed for more speed.

The distance shortened for a few heartening minutes. In hear ear, Bix suddenly shouted.

Scud’s got you. We can see you both. Damn… he’s fast.

I know. Sela panted.

Overhead, she heard the off-key whine of the tracking drone.

Get a lock?

The buildings blurred past on both sides: windows dark, doors shuttered against the night. Her quarry jagged left.

Any time, Bix.

The alley emptied out into the light and chaos of the sleepless port district. A sea of bodies— dock workers, pick pockets, buskers, vendors— meandered through the choked pedestrian mall.

He gets in there, I’ll lose him for sure.

She dug deep, pushed for more speed.

Got him tagged. Bix’s voice rang with triumph. No way he can outsmart Scud.

Sela was not so certain. Poisoncry, as a rule were slippery, devious.

It’s an acolyte, Bix. I cannot lose him.

Up ahead, as if he’d heard her declaration, her quarry glanced over his shoulder at her. His lead of three strides now became five. He dove into the press of bodies.

Sela followed, plowing through a gaggle of inebriated dock workers. The din of the crowd swallowed the curses they directed at her.

She scanned the sea of heads and shoulders. There!

Near a row of food carts and cheap trinkets, a rushing blur leaving surprised patrons in his wake. Sela easily dodged the first of the slow-moving carts. A rusty auto-mech blocked her path as it chugged along with its cargo pod.

Too late, she collided with the pod’s side. The dent in the flimsy metal cover was barely visible just under the blaze orange burst signifying a cargo of medical supplies. Considering the pain in her hip and shoulder, she could expect to sport new bruises.

A rotating yellow light popped on at the top of the carriage followed by an ear-piercing alarm.

Collision detected. Collision detected. Pedestrian, please remain calm. Medical personnel have been summoned.

With a snarl of annoyance, she bounded away. The ring of curious on-lookers nearly fell over each other to get out of her way.

The acolyte was gone.

Scud circled overhead to her left. The buzz of its suspension field perfectly mirrored her annoyance.

You ok? That had to hurt. Bix asked.

Sela huffed. Bruises healed. The pain, she could ignore. The fugitive, she couldn’t.

The street ended with a sagging fence. Beyond that lay a crumbling stone and metal wall that had once been part of a Poisoncry temple, now a scorched shell.

She leaned over, planting hands on knees to catch her breath. Deep weariness seeped into her muscles.

I’ve lost him.

Hang tight. I’m sending Scud out for a snoop.

Sela straightened as she locked eyes with a face in the crowd. There, turning away to insert herself between the tram and the buskers.

She knew that face. Chione. Fisk’s bodyguard. The fancy body armor was gone, replaced by the smudged coveralls of a dock-jockey.

But how? Chione was dead.

Her body had been identified inside the fire-gutted remains of a Poisoncry bunker right after the fall of Obscrum.

Sela had copies of the report issued by the Ironvale infantry squad on her data-slates at home. It, as well as a few other Ironvale files she was not meant to have, was in a carefully sectored datastore that even Jon didn’t know about.

She was drawn in that direction, craning to see around the heads and shoulders of the bustling crowd. A pod-tram passed temporarily blocking her view.

And, Chione—or whoever she was—had vanished.

An elderly busker stood in her place. Sela scanned the crowd. No sign of her now.

Absently, she itched at the pale scar along her temple. Had it been another memory attack?

Why was this happening? On tonight, of all nights?

Got 'em!

Sela flinched. The voice knocked her back into the moment. She scowled at Scud and, effectively, the young woman piloting it. What. Where.

Doubled-back on you. He’s headed for the terminal.

Acknowledged.

Sela pivoted, sparing one last look for Chione, before back-tracking to the nearest cross street. This time of night, the walkways would be crammed with the shift workers slogging back to their homes.

The one-way flow of foot traffic would be headed in the wrong direction if he was intent on making the landing platforms there.

She circumvented the raised walkway, weaving around the support stanchions. There were easier ways to reach the terminal level via the maintenance corridors. The area was newly constructed, better lit. It left fewer places to hide.

A row of sealed doors greeted her. A message written in three languages informed her it was the service level of the terminal’s fueling station and therefore off-limits to anyone without authorization.

She tried the key-locks for each door along the line. The last door stood ajar by a few inches.

Sela rolled aside, shoulder pressed to the jamb. She unholstered the A4. It was a cold, oily weight in her hand.

She trigged her throat mic. Stand by.

"Stand by? What the burning fields does that⁠—"

She muted the link. No distractions now.

She wedged the toe of her boot against the door and flung it aside on its tracks. Firearm aimed for center mass, she spun to face the entrance.

The hall extended for nearly a hundred meters before her, an empty metal throat. Sensors detected her presence. Pot lights flickered on in the ceiling of the passage. Only rows of gleaming pipe and nameless conduits dotting the walls.

And no acolyte.

Overhead, a tram screamed past like a raptor, drowning out all other sounds. She stepped across the threshold. The acolyte swung down from the darkness over