Assassination Protocol: An Intergalactic Space Opera Adventure (Cerberus Book 1) Read online

  An image winked to life on the monitor in garish hues of white and green.

  “There,” Agent Styver said, his tone dangerously flat and emotionless as he turned the screen toward Nolan. “See him for yourself.”

  Nolan’s gut tightened as his eyes locked on the video feed. Taia enhanced the image, zooming in as much as the grainy footage allowed, magnifying the figure on the other side of the camera. The man was younger than Nolan, floating in a tank filled with clear, viscous fluid, a headset covering his eyes and ears.

  Nolan recognized the man’s sharp chin, so like his own, at first glance. Jared.

  Thin, clad in the white skinsuit of a Vault prisoner, his brother had seen better days. Far better days, long before the Empire arrested him on charges of Blitz smuggling, murder, and treason. Whether they were trumped-up or true, Nolan hadn’t yet been able to discover. And he’d tried, spending as much as he could afford without drawing the wrong sort of Imperial scrutiny. He hadn’t believed Agent Styver’s account of what had happened—a drug bust gone wrong, with IAF forces winding up dead and Jared being the trigger man—but until he could find evidence otherwise, he was his brother’s only lifeline.

  “According to the Reformation Specialist charged with his care,” Agent Styver said, though his voice sounded distant through the filter of the helmet’s external sensors, “his reconditioning is proceeding well. By the time his sentence is fulfilled, there is full hopes that he will be a model Imperial citizen.”

  The words sent a rush of ice and fury deep into the core of Nolan’s being. “Reconditioning” was the fancy term used to describe the horrible cocktail of mind-altering drugs and nonstop bombardment of psychotherapeutic and subliminal imagery used to “treat” Imperial prisoners. Recidivism among freed convicts was nearly non-existent because those who came out of the Imperial “Reformation” system rarely did so with their full intellect intact.

  A shudder ran down Nolan’s spine. He remembered the feeling of being so strung out nothing existed but the peaceful, empty void and the overwhelmingly calm sensation of Blitz. But Jared’s situation was worse. Far worse.

  Nolan’s hand twitched. He ached to reach through the screen, to touch his younger brother and reassure him that someone still cared. Nolan was all Jared had left; they’d been on their own since Nolan was nine and Jared six.

  “I want to see him for real,” Nolan growled. He tore his eyes away from the grainy video feed and locked them on Agent Styver. “Not through some stupid monitor. In person.”

  “That can be arranged.” Agent Styver inclined his head. “Upon the completion of your next assignment, that is.”

  Nolan resisted the urge to drive his fist into Agent Styver’s face. Doing so would feel immensely satisfying, but it would do little to help Jared. Or him, for that matter. His relationship with the Protection Bureau was fraught enough without adding a dead agent to his record. All it would take was one well-placed message from Agent Styver—or whoever replaced him after Nolan finished turning his head into a bloody pulp—and all of Cerberus’ past hits would be traced back to one Nolan Garrett.

  If that happened, Jared would rot in the Crypt until he died. To give his brother a chance at a life—any kind of life at all—Nolan had to toe Agent Styver’s line.

  “Fine,” he growled. “Give me the assignment and let me get it over with.”

  “Tomorrow.” Agent Styver took a seat behind his desk. “The usual place.”

  “And the usual fee?”

  “Of course.” The Bureau agent nodded, not looking up as he removed the energy cells from his desk. Irritation flashed across his face as he spotted a speck of something dark—blood, perhaps—staining the pristine white surface. But instead of using the desk’s smart filaments to clean the surface, he drew out his handkerchief once again and set about scrubbing away the stain.

  When long seconds passed and Agent Styver didn’t look up, Nolan realized the absence of further conversation was his dismissal. That grated on him, set his teeth on edge.

  But all it took was one glance at the video footage still displayed on the right-hand wall, and he cooled his temper.

  I’ll get you out, Jared, he silently told the emaciated figure floating in the Reformation tank. No matter what it takes, I’ll get you out.

  The image of his brother—drugged, suffering, floating in the Reformation tank—consumed his mind as he turned and stepped back into the elevator that would take him up to the surface of New Avalon.

  Chapter Four

  Nolan skimmed across the flat, asphalt-covered rooftops of Grove District, silent as a wraith, a blur barely visible in the brightening glow of the blossoming day. Exodus’ sun was as slow to rise as Lunarus, the early morning moon, was to depart. They both hung low in the sky—Solaria to the east, Lunarus just barely peeking its pale face over the western horizon—and their light cast long shadows across the city.

  “Taia, tap into the security feed and make sure we’re in the clear.”

  “Sure thing, boss.” A second later, half a dozen images popped up on the outer edges of his HUD. Empty rooftops, debris-littered back alleys free of their usual assortment of drunks and Blitzed-out junkies, and clear skies above.

  “Check the footage for the last twelve hours,” Nolan said. “Make sure no one’s paying us any unwanted attention.”

  The rooftop’s edge raced toward him, ending abruptly at the broad street that separated the lower-income, tenement-filled Grove District from the glitz and glimmer of Shimmertown. With a mental command, Nolan kicked the anti-gravity setting of his boots up twenty percent, just as he leapt off the edge with all the power built into the combat suit. He hurtled through the air and landed noiselessly on the rooftop twenty meters away, the anti-grav function kicking in to keep him gliding across the flat roof without so much as a dent of the corrugated steel.

  Taia automatically turned down the anti-grav to ten percent at the same time—just enough to keep Nolan’s weight suspended a few centimeters above the roof. Without his combat suit’s wings, he’d had to resort to the slower means of getting around the city.

  He’d picked up the trick years ago, using the magnetic repulsion in the anti-grav thrusters to not just lift his body off the ground for stealthy movement, but to actually skim-skate across long distances. The anti-grav boots essentially locked onto anything with enough density to push off, and Taia adjusted the thrusters’ magnetic polarities to repel off the steel, aluminum, and titanium used in the construction of New Avalon’s buildings. She also kept him stable and upright using the suit’s built-in gyroscope sensors—millions of calculations per second that balanced him and controlled his direction as he skated over the rooftops. All he had to do was think of where he wanted to go, and Taia would adjust his suit’s ankles, knees, and boots to change direction.

  Skim-skating was far less efficient than using his combat suit’s glider wings or any of the unregistered vehicles he’d stashed around New Avalon, but he hadn’t wanted to bother going that far out of his way. Better just to head straight home. Thankfully, the trek between the Protection Bureau’s Bolt Hole location and Shimmertown was just thirty kilometers—half an hour at his breakneck speed.

  “All clear,” Taia said into his helmet speakers.

  “Copy that. You know what to do, Taia.”

  With a wordless chirp, Taia took control of the combat suit and adjusted Nolan’s stance, just enough to bring him skimming to a stop—like a powerslide those Old Terran ice hockey players loved to use to show off—in front of a broad billboard. The image of some ridiculous-looking animated figure—he couldn’t tell if it was a cloud or white snot—flashed glaringly bright even in Solaris’ light, and Nolan was thankful that the HUD’s sensors blocked out whatever catchy phrase the thing spouted.

  Boots still on anti-grav setting, Nolan glided around and between the billboard’s electronic panels. The ancient displays used the neon lights that had been phased out of use in the rest of New Avalon nearly t
en years ago. The hideous animated figure was a distraction for anyone looking for him with cameras, and the waves of heat generated by those neon lights concealed him from any infrared sensors.

  Which was exactly why he’d paid a small fortune to keep those antiquated lights operational.

  The space between the billboards was cramped, barely broad enough for his combat suit to squeeze into. But he didn’t have far to go. A few meters in, a metallic panel hissed open at his approach, revealing a wide durasteel shaft that dropped four stories straight down. The rungs on the shaft were old—so old that he didn’t trust them to bear up under the weight of his combat suit—dating back to their original purpose: running contraband.

  All of Shimmertown had been originally built around one of the first factories set up on Exodus VI. When digital automation and AI-run industry had left every one of the thirty thousand workers unemployed, the neighborhood had found ways to earn credits any way it could. Shimmertown had become the place in New Avalon where anything—literally—could be found for the right price.

  The Imperial Defense Forces—the Nyzarian Empire’s personal peacekeeping force on Exodus VI, and every other planet they annexed—had tried to clean up Shimmertown. For a while, they had. All of two hours, perhaps, before enterprising individuals had come up with new and more creative ways to skirt Imperial laws.

  Shimmertown had become an anthill of tunnels, underground passages, secret doors, and back ways in and out. The perfect place for an assassin to make his base of operations.

  Nolan dropped into the tunnel, letting Taia and the anti-grav boot thrusters slow his descent. At the bottom of the four-story shaft, three passages branched out to the east, south, and northwest. Nolan turned down the south tunnel and skimmed through the darkness on silent, hovering boots. Two more intersections, two more changes of direction, always careful to avoid the trip wires and hidden mines, then he reached a door. Made of durasteel with a lock that not even Taia’s algorithms had managed to crack, it was just one of the many layers of defenses keeping out the unfriendlies.

  Being the Empire’s hired hitman tended to make one more enemies than allies. Some of whom, it turned out, liked to shoot back, or hire their own squads for revenge.

  Price of the job, I suppose. It had been much the same way in the IAF and the Silverguard. There’d always been some new Old Terran unit that thought they could take on or take out Warbeast Team. That had kept Nolan and the other Silverguards sharp, made them the best of the best.

  A quiet whirring echoed from within the lock, and the red light flickered to green. The door slid open without a sound.

  “Welcome home, Nolan.” Taia chirped in his helmet and through the speakers built into the wall within his home. “Time to strip and let me do my thing.”

  Nolan cocked an eyebrow. “Buy a fellow a drink first, Taia.”

  “But you don’t drink.” The AI’s voice was confused. “If you want, I can put in the order for a case of—“

  “No, no, forget about it.” Nolan gave a little chuckle as he triggered the door lock. “I know what you meant. It was just your words.”

  “My words?” Again, confusion hummed from the chip in Nolan’s brain. “I don’t understand.”

  Nolan grinned. With all the human traits, speech patterns, and mannerisms Taia’s programmers had written into her code, he sometimes forgot that there was a great deal for even AIs to learn about human behavior.

  “We live above the Spacer’s Paradise, Taia.” Nolan pulled off his helmet and set it onto the table in his workshop. The stink of burned metal, overheated engines, and well-used tools hung thick in the room. “Play it in Mimi or Jadis’ voice and you’ll see what I mean.”

  A moment later, a husky, sultry tone spoke through the speakers set into the wall. “Time to strip and let me do my thing,” Jadis’ simulated voice purred. It was the sort of breathy murmur she’d grown very good at using to separate Shimmertown visitors from their hard-earned chips. Even now, after nearly two years of regular interactions with Jadis, Nolan couldn’t help the little shiver running down his spine.

  “I think I understand,” Taia chirped. “Said that way, it simulates sexual desire, yes?”

  “You nailed it.” Nolan grinned; it felt strangely odd explaining innuendo to Taia. “But I understand what you were trying to say. So let’s get this armor off so you can do your thing.”

  Four robotic arms anchored to the walls of Nolan’s workshop—a machine-filled room five meters wide and across—came to life and reached toward him, setting to work stripping off the heavy combat suit. Taia started with the chestplate, pauldrons, and greaves, then removed the Balefire, the backplate, and finally the combat pack. The pack offered storage space and a protective shell for both the fuel cells that powered his suit and the five-centimeter cylindrical device that stored Taia’s mobile operating system.

  While the chip in his brain had incredible computing power for something so small, it was little more than the communication matrix hard-wired into his brain. The AI worked best when wirelessly connected to her full system, installed in the special liquid-cooled servers in the tunnels outside Nolan’s workshop and scattered in strategic locations throughout New Avalon.

  Nolan grimaced as the robotic arm set the backplate and energy pack on the steel table occupying the center of the workshop. “Damn, that’s worse than I thought.” Every inch of steel had been charred and blackened in the REMP and RPPG explosions. Shards of glass and steel clattered onto the table, and more than a few dents and dings were visible on the energy pack. A long, jagged piece of shrapnel remained embedded in the pack, less than two centimeters from the upper edge of one of its two energy cells. “Too bloody close for comfort.”

  “Agreed.” Two of Taia’s robotic arms set about clearing the debris off the table and removing the shrapnel from the energy pack, while the other two worked at the belt cinching the legs of the combat suit around Nolan’s waist. “Thankfully, the rest doesn’t look too bad.”

  Nolan felt that momentary tension in his muscles he always got when Taia removed the combat suit’s legs. He knew what was coming, and he hated himself for the dread that coiled in his stomach. He should be stronger. Others from Warbeast Team hadn’t gotten off so lucky. And yet he couldn’t help the instinctive reaction, the tightness that gripped his spine from neck to lower back.

  One of the robot arms wrapped a strap around his waist while the other pulled the combat suit’s legs free. Instantly, the weight of Nolan’s upper body sagged against the straps. It was only by glancing down that he could tell whether his feet rested on the floor or hung in the air. He couldn’t feel the armor tugging free or the boots slipping off his feet. The cool temperature within the room didn’t so much as send a prickle through the bare skin of his legs. He felt nothing. Nothing at all. Not for the last five and a half years, not since that Old Terran RPG shattered his spine—and his life as a Silverguard.

  The arm lowered Nolan into his wheelchair—one of those older models with two pneumatic-tired wheels and none of the electronic, AI-controlled bells and whistles that came with the latest design upgrades. Rolling around under his own power was the closest he got to a sense of control.

  With a sigh, he settled back against the chair’s comfortable armrest. There’d been a time when he had hated the idea of being trapped in his wheelchair. Back then, he’d have given anything to walk again—or to forget the misery of his situation. He’d drowned himself in everything he could find to dull the anguish and, in doing so, had taken risks that got people killed.

  Now, years later, he had come to terms with who he was—both inside the combat suit and outside. Some might call it the “serenity to accept the things he couldn’t change.” He just called it dealing with the hand life had dealt him. Things could always be worse.

  Pushing aside the thought, Nolan wheeled his chair closer to the steel workbench. Taia, as always, lowered it to just the right height.

  “Give them a once-over for
me, Taia,” Nolan told the AI. “And don’t spare the bad news.”

  The four robotic arms whirred and clicked as it arranged the combat suit’s various components, and a camera on a sinuous steel neck slithered down from the overhead lights for a scan of the armor and rifle.

  “The Balefire’s mostly fine.” One of the robotic arms snaked toward the rifle and Taia’s smart filaments connected with the Balefire’s internal hardware. “Though that firing mechanism’s going to need replacing.”

  Nolan snorted. “No kidding.” In the heat of battle, he hadn’t noticed the crack running through the stock. The fall must have been harder than he imagined. And, it seemed, the Mark 2.1 lacked the Mark 1.8’s durability.

  “As for the armor,” Taia continued, “you’re looking at a new pair of wings, a new shell for the energy pack, a recharge for the energy cells, upgrade of the steel nanites on the backplate, and…”

  Nolan’s scowl deepened as Taia rattled off a long list of repairs the armor would need. The hardware German French’s goons were packing had evidently done more damage to the combat suit than he’d realized. Just one more reason to find out how the hell they got their hands on IAF-grade weapons and armor. Whoever had broken into the IAF armory needed to be tracked down, and a long list of their clients extracted from them. New Avalon’s already got problems enough without that kind of firepower floating around the streets.

  Agent Styver’s bland face flashed in his thoughts. Nolan had to hope the Protection Bureau agent lived up to his word and actually looked into the matter as promised. The man was certainly capable enough, with more than sufficient resources—the whole Imperial government on Exodus VI—to deal with it. The question was whether he’d give the matter the priority it deserved.