Tyche's Gravedigger: Tyche Origins, #6

By Richard Parry

A scream for help across the hard black, then silence.

That was the start of Chad Forradel's bad day. One minute he was checking out a planet of bug corpses, the next he's catching a ride on an old heavy lifter, bound for a system infested with pirates.

When Chad reaches New Haven, he finds the space terraforming platform all but destroyed, all hands lost. The insect-like Ezeroc have returned, and this time they have subverted a Navy corvette. One guy — charming, handsome, and good with a blade, but still just one guy — against a whole warship is hard enough. But the Ezeroc are after an esper hidden on the pirate ship, a human newly awakened to their mental powers. If the Ezeroc get their hands on the esper, they will make a monster capable of toppling the Empire.

So. Get in. Kill the pirates. Kill the space insects. Save the baby esper. If Chad can't, everyone everywhere will die, horribly. If he does, he'll probably have to babysit some kid for the rest of his life.

What could go wrong?

Tyche's Gravedigger is the final story in Richard Parry's gripping Tyche Origins hexalogy. If you like page-turning space opera with great dialogue and heart-pumping action, grab your copy. Also in the Tyche Origins collection.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Mondegreen
• Release date: Dec 3, 2018
• ISBN: 9780473454692

Book preview

Tyche’s Gravedigger

Tyche’s Gravedigger

A Space Opera Adventure Story

Richard Parry

Mondegreen

Contents

Get On The List

Before You Begin…

Shout at the Void

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

About the Author

Also by Richard Parry

Glossary

Acknowledgments

EXCERPT: TYCHE'S DEMONS

Something Wicked

Chapter One

TYCHE’S GRAVEDIGGER copyright © 2018 Richard Parry.

Cover design copyright © 2018 Mondegreen.

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All rights reserved.

ISBN-13: 978-0-473-45469-2

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First edition.

Future Forfeit Reading Order

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.

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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 clever 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.

Published by Mondegreen, New Zealand.

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Before You Begin…

This story was originally published as part of Pew! Pew! Volume 5: A Fist Full of Pews. Since A Fist Full is no longer available digitally, Tyche’s Gravedigger is presented — for you! — as a standalone story.

If you haven’t read AFF, you’re in for a fun ride where a reprobate recruits a starter-edition pirate to save the universe.

— R. P.

September 2018, Wellington

Shout at the Void

Chad leaned against the big windows. They were a sandwich of polymers, designed to take a good, solid wartime beating. The windows were also useful at keeping oxygen on his side, the hard black on the other side. New tech, shipped out of some Guild research facility or other to arrive here at Breakwater.

More like Backwater. Breakwater Station was the most recent armpit of space he’d found himself in. It still had that new station smell, ozone and baked ceramics, underlaid with the faint scent of burnt metal. The good news, if there was some to be had in a place that floated in space while still being constructed and thus threatened to kill you, was that the research facility hadn’t picked up any sign of life from the crust below them. Absalom Delta, once a paradise by any measure — unless that measure was gravity, because 1.1Gs sucked — was a ruin. Up here in space? It looked kinda pretty, the raging firestorms on one side of the planet the yin to the eternal ice storms’ yang on the other.

Chewing the straw of his cocktail, Chad wondered if Earth had looked as fucked-up as Absalom Delta way back when the dinosaurs had their extinction event. Fire and ice. Drop a big enough rock, and even the roaches had a problem.

In this instance, roaches sucking ash was good. Those insect-like Ezeroc assholes might be masters of hijacking humans like sock puppets, but they didn’t like skies filled with fire and ice either. The Emperor suggested Chad come out here — sure, we’ll call it a suggestion — to make sure that a) the bugs were gone from this particular rock and b) that the new terraforming platform of New Haven was coming together nicely.

It was related to that second point Chad had sent the message through the Guild Bridge. When the boss said, get your ass to Absalom, then get your ass to New Haven, you got your ass going. Small problem with getting to New Haven? The ride he’d come here on had left. Still not enough starships to go around human space. Chad figured as the head of the Empire’s Bulwark he might have had a little pull, but maybe folk still had a sour taste in their mouths on account of the whole mind readers are evil asshats thing. Still, Chad shouldn’t complain. The captain who’d dropped him here had left him with his luggage, at least. Now it was a waiting game, sucking down bad cocktails at Blackbeard’s Cantina, because there were no other handy starships.

Another? called the bartender.

Chad turned, watching Blackbeard push a rag around the metal bar top. Blackbeard wasn’t the man’s real name, but he did sport a fine bush of black face fur. It was the sort of face-beaver that promised the man was a silverback to boot. I dunno, said Chad. You going to put any alcohol in the next one?

Hey, said Blackbeard. There’s plenty of booze in those drinks.

Sighing, Chad walked the short distance back to the bar. Station time says three PM, he offered.

Blackbeard scowled. You can tell the time? That’s really neat.

Eh, said Chad. Wait for my next trick. See, three PM is the time that enthusiasts like myself drift in here, wanting to bask in the warm glow of an early drink. He turned to look at the empty bar. Ain’t no one else here, Blackbeard.

Most folks are still on shift, said Blackbeard.

One truth for every two lies, said Chad. I get it. Keep people guessing.

Hey—

First lie was your name, said Chad. "Your real name is Norris Faith, and I’ll agree Blackbeard sounds a little more suitable for a bar. Can’t really slap Faith’s Cantina on the holo outside, it’d lead to all manner of disappointment. So, we’ll just keep calling you Blackbeard. I’m fine with that."

Now wait a minute—

Second lie was claiming alcohol in these drinks. You were, not fifteen minutes ago, wondering how much more you could water down the spirits before people noticed. Chad held up a hand to forestall Blackbeard’s objection. Your specific thought was, ‘I hope no one notices that I’ve watered down the Europan whiskey twice already.’ He nodded at Blackbeard. Right?

Uh—

Don’t worry, said Chad. I know it’s right. It’s okay, Blackbeard. I know that getting a bridgeliner out here is difficult. It’s hard! No one wants to come out to the perineum of space where the bugs first attacked to deliver you more whiskey.

That’s right, said Blackbeard. See—

"The good news is that you told the truth at least once. Most folk are still on shift, trying to get this research operation back on track. When I asked the boss why he was poking at this burnt cinder at the edge of human space, Nate said to me, he says, ‘Chad, I want the fucking bugs to know the line’s drawn here.’ Chad finished the dregs of his cocktail. I think he wants to terraform it again. Can you believe that?"

The boss, said Blackbeard. You said ‘boss’ and ‘Nate.’ Emperor’s name is Nate.

It is, agreed Chad. The really good news for you, Blackbeard, is that I’m more thirsty than angry, so when I sent my message through the Guild Bridge, and here, he stabbed a hand at the windows, out of which the newly constructed Guild Bridge was a tiny spec in the distance, saying the bugs were attacking, I also asked for more booze.

Blackbeard’s eyes went wide. The bugs are back?

Relax, said Chad. "The bugs are nowhere near here. And no, they’re not back."

Thank God, said Blackbeard, relaxing.

The real truth is that the bugs never left, said Chad. "We dropped all our nukes on their homeworld, but we’ve figured on other