Variant: A science fiction thriller (The Predictive: Deep Space Fringe Wars Book 2) Read online

  CONTENTS

  Title Page

  Copyright

  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

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-One

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Chapter Forty-Three

  Chapter Forty-Four

  Chapter Forty-Five

  Chapter Forty-Six

  Chapter Forty-Seven

  Chapter Forty-Eight

  Epilogue

  About the Author

  Punished

  Trained For Their Pleasure

  Prey

  Ravished

  Omega Awakening

  Bad Boss

  VARIANT

  L.V. Lane

  Copyright © 2021 L.V. Lane

  All rights reserved.

  ISBN: 978-1-92263001-8

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author's imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  All rights reserved. This book or parts thereof may not be reproduced in any form, stored in any retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or otherwise—without prior written permission of the author.

  CHAPTER ONE

  One hundred standard-years later…

  Landon

  I WAS AWOKEN from stasis immediately after essential medical personnel. Recovery was brief and uneventful. Reported to be in full health with no lingering side effects. I was approved for active duty.

  Thus allowed to leave medical, I made my way to the operations room along corridors that were eerily quiet. The ship wouldn’t remain this way for long, and over the coming days and weeks, the rest of the 10,000 colonists would be awoken and report for duty.

  As I entered the operations room, I was gripped by a notion of skewed time. My brain thought I had been in here yesterday. Over a hundred standard-orbital-years had passed.

  Soft, dull lighting enveloped the area, and the viewer wall displayed the ship schematic with status reports against the various sections. The detailed data didn’t mean much to me, but everything was green, and green was good.

  “Display Coulter-416.”

  Nothing.

  Frowning, I walked over to the console before the viewer. It would be just my luck for there to be a glitch before the technical team were roused.

  “Show me Coulter-416.”

  Nothing.

  What the hell was wrong with it?

  “Monitoring report.”

  An alarm blared, the happy green ship image disappeared, and a barrage of obscure data filled the viewer.

  I blinked a couple of times and jiggled a finger in my ear just to be sure I wasn’t suffering some sort of post-stasis sensory hallucination. No, the alarm was still blaring, and the stream of data garbage was all still very much there.

  I tried a basic hand gesture. The viewer transitioned into something even less useful.

  Great!

  I was the least tech-savvy person I knew and possessed no more than cursory skills with gestures.

  Literally five minutes alone and I had created chaos. Tapping my communicator bud, I called through to our stasis expert, Brent.

  “Sir, we’ve got alarms here in medical!” he said, voice high and anxious.

  “We have alarms everywhere,” I replied. And I’ve no idea what they mean. “Wake Riley up.”

  “But that’s not the designated order.”

  “Start Riley’s recovery, now, and get Eric up and in the command center.”

  “Eric’s only sixteen hours into recovery,” Brent replied. “He’s not approved for duty.”

  Brent wasn’t long enough in my company prior to the launch to understand that when I gave a fucking order, I expected it to be implemented without any backchat. “That’s an order. Get Eric up and send him over ASAP.”

  Brent’s muttered confirmation followed, almost lost under the droning alarm. I paced the room, tried another hand gesture… which returned the screen to the happy green ship schematic. At least that was looking good.

  I paced some more.

  An indeterminate amount of tension-filled time passed, and finally, a groggy Eric pitched into the room.

  His parents had apparently been enamored with Viking legends and had picked his name after meeting their blue-eyed, blond-haired baby boy. It was fair to say that Eric had ‘grown’ into his name.

  “Why didn’t you get Brent to help you?” I asked.

  “Have you seen Brent?” Eric hung onto the doorframe briefly before staggering further into the room and propping himself against the nearby wall. “I’d crush him and his ant-like assistant… Can we kill the fucking alarm?”

  He had a good point.

  I indicated the viewer. “I can’t work out the gestures.”

  Eric scowled at me. “Just speak. Did the stasis bake your brain or something?”

  My look was flat and deadly.

  Huffing out a breath, he made a series of complex gestures.

  As the drone ceased and blissful silence ensued, Eric staggered forward and collapsed into the nearest chair. “What the fuck is happening?” Planting his elbows on the console top, he massaged his temples. “You know motor skills don’t function properly for the first twenty hours. That’s why they call it a ‘recovery’ period.”

  “The voice commands aren’t working.”

  Eric looked up at the viewer, rubbed at his brow, and performed another series of gestures. “Your training is sorely lacking… Well, shit.” He froze mid-gesture.

  A planet filled the wall viewer. They had referred to Coulter-416 as Aterra’s new hope in all the pre-launch paraphernalia that goes with such a momentous event. Cheesy, but I’d been as happy as the next person to go along with it. Coulter-416 wasn’t a hope, new or otherwise, anymore. More a source of great confusion that was slipping with exponential speed toward despair.

  It was still a planet, just not our planet.

  No, someone else had got there first.

  Forty-eight standard hours had passed since my awakening. Propping my ass against the console, I crossed my arms as I stared at the wall viewer. The dull illumination of the room emphasized the planet’s radiance.
Under any other circumstance, I might have thought it beautiful. We had awoken essential technical personnel to deal with the pressing ship issues. Voice commands were still eluding even Riley’s impressive technical skill, but given what we had discovered, the inconvenience of losing voice commands was the least of our concerns.

  There were satellites around Coulter-416.

  Lots and lots of satellites.

  Eric, my second-in command, stood beside me—looking more stable now—and his troubled gaze was similarly settled on the viewer. “We don’t know if there’s life yet, but there are satellites, and one usually accompanies the other.”

  “Do we have any idea how this could have happened?” I asked.

  “No, none. Time has gone by, over 17,000 standard years in this planet’s case since a probe identified Coulter-416 as habitable.”

  “The heady era of discovery,” I said.

  “Has a lot to answer for,” Eric finished.

  The flippant comment masked a more serious undertone. It was the age of discovery that became the catalyst for the Fringe Wars, which, in turn, gave rise to the era of advancement when the great genetic and technological breakthroughs were made.

  We could not be here but for those advances, and would not be here but for the Foundation Wars that had picked up the hopeless and the greedy alike in the voids left after the Fringe Wars broke society down.

  “Are you going to abort?”

  Eric’s question dragged me from my brooding thoughts. “No. We need to find out what we’ve stumbled onto. What did Riley have to say?”

  “She doesn’t recognize the technology, but it could be a splinter group. We know many groups and sub-factions broke away from the Federation. The final push was brutal and indiscriminate, and some must have slipped the destructive net. What you see before you has no discernible signature that Riley is familiar with. There are no signals coming off it. Spooky quiet by all accounts.”

  “A splinter group, then, or we are dealing with a new civilization. Neither option is good.”

  “I know they say better the devil you know, but honestly, I prefer anything but the Federation,” Eric said with bite. “Talking about devils, are you going to wake up Eva?”

  “No.”

  Eric smirked. “Chicken.”

  “Don’t go there.”

  “I’m already there. You’re just delaying the inevitable. She’s not going to be impressed if you delay her revival. And while she irritates the shit out of me at times, you’re going to need her insights to get through this.”

  “I know. I’ve already given the order to bring her revival forward. I just wanted to wallow in denial for a few more seconds.”

  Eric barked out a laugh. “You’re in command. You don’t get to wallow in denial.”

  I nodded at the viewer. “Tell the medics to accelerate the stasis recovery and wake up the remaining colonists.”

  “You still think we can colonize?” Eric cut a look toward me. “You think it might be abandoned?”

  I shrugged. “I’ve no idea. We came to colonize a planet. That’s what I intend to do. Get a probe out, see what readings we can pick up.”

  Eric brandished a cynical smile before stalking toward the door. “Let’s hope our squatters are friendly.”

  The door swished shut behind him, leaving me alone with that troubling sight.

  What has happened?

  Were we too late? What unknown events had unfolded while we were in stasis? Was it travel or technological advances that put us somehow behind?

  I had no answers, a myriad of questions, and 10,000 people waiting on my direction.

  Another 90,000 colonists were en route.

  I had no answers, and I needed to start making decisions.

  The survival of the colony, and of every man and woman arriving over the next ten years depended on those decisions.

  I sighed. In twenty standard hours, Eva would be released from medical, and I would use that breathing space to gather as much intel as I could. After, the one person who might shed some light on this quagmire of a situation, would be making my life hell.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Eva

  WAKING FROM DEEP sleep was always a challenge. I had never made a jump this long before though, none of us had.

  And none of us ever would again.

  The initial lethargy was familiar; the sensation of not being in command of my body while my brain grappled to process what was going on. As the minutes ticked by and the lethargy remained, I fell prey to a burgeoning sense of panic.

  Finally, and just as I became convinced that something was terribly wrong, my eyes fought their way open. They revealed the smiling face of a medic. His name was Bart or Bailey… it began with B. It was the same young man I had seen immediately prior to stasis, and who had placed me into the deep sleep.

  Heat flushed my body, and my head began to pound like someone had taken a hammer to my skull. The post-stasis recovery had always hit me hard, but this was bordering on insanity. My lips formed a flat line as soon as my face muscles loosened.

  “Everything okay?” A worried frown marred his boyish face. He was wearing white and blended into the stark white walls behind him. “It can be disorientating when you first wake. Try not to move or talk yet. With such an exceptionally long sleep, the recovery will be slow.” He offered another encouraging smile as he pressed a shiny, white medical scanner against my forehead. “You’re awakening is a little out of sequence. We’ve had to bring a few people forward.”

  After the fiasco at Nammu, followed by the awkwardness between Landon and me, I imagined him deriving great pleasure in leaving me in stasis. “Cycles until arrival?”

  “Hold there!” The medic pressed a gentle hand to my shoulder when I tried to rise and offered an apologetic smile. “Let me get you a drink. It helps with the disorientation if you can get fluid in your body the natural way.”

  Wishing he would cease the meaningless chatter, I inspected the stark room. It was a recovery cell, but empty other than whatever his name was and another young woman who was studying a viewer with her back to us.

  “I guess you knew that,” the unidentified ‘B’ person said with a rueful grin. “There’s been a lot of excitement and a rush to get all the revivals underway.”

  I blinked in confusion. “Rush?” My words came out as a hiss, and that was as much as I could say since he shoved a straw in my mouth and instructed me to drink.

  I sucked some down, wondering at his sense of timing.

  Why were revivals being rushed? And excitement? The way he’d said excitement left an unpleasant aftertaste even with my befuddled post-stasis brain.

  “A little more,” he said with that encouraging smile.

  Glaring with the promise of retribution, I sucked another gulp down.

  His smile faltered, and he withdrew the straw. “Yes, that’s enough for now.”

  “Where is he?” I clenched and flexed my fingers, willing my body to begin to work. There was only one person who could give me the needed answers.

  Notably, he was absent. If Landon thought I would sit here meekly for however many hours I was due to spend in this white prison, he would be sorely disappointed.

  “He?” Bart enquired (he looked like a Bart), but his attention was on the readout and a small frown formed again. “Your blood pressure and breathing rate are a little elevated. I’ll need to sedate you until we can get this under control.”

  Sedate me? “Don’t,” I said in a deadly tone. “Call the Commander and bring him here immediately.”

  The other medic’s head popped up, while Bart’s eyes widened in a way that might have been comical had I not been so incensed. “The Commander?” he stammered as if terrified by the request.

  “Yes, the Commander. Here. Now.” I used my best authoritative voice, the one that got me what I wanted promptly.

  “He’s—err—I believe he’s—” He swallowed. “I’ll put a call through to his 2IC.”

&nb
sp; “Not him,” I hissed, but B-man appeared not to hear and hastened to the other medic. A whispered conversation ensued of which I heard only the occasional word.

  What did they need to confer about? My legs started to feel heavy, an indication I was recovering, and I fought to sit, determined to have answers, even if that meant crawling out the room to get them for myself.

  Not Bart (I was entitled to change my mind) hurried to tend to me while his confidant cast a harried look my way before she scurried out of the recovery cell.

  “Communicator?” I muttered, baffled that one of them had left the room instead of using a communicator to put a call through. Wavering, I clutched the pod side in a death grip lest I collapse again.

  “You know we can’t reconnect you until a standard twenty hours of observation. You shouldn’t be sitting up!”

  That wasn’t what I was asking! “What has happened?” Having found relative stability sitting, nausea kicked in.

  “I think we should wait for the Commander to brief you,” he said evasively while smoothly handing me a sick bag. My glare was nasty. He was closer now though, and squinting at his name badge, I finally read Brent.

  Groaning quietly, I palmed my stomach. Being sick was so undignified, I was determined not to succumb to the urge. Still, I felt very off. Maybe Brent giving me the sick bag wasn’t so insulting after all.

  As I contemplated the indignity of hurling into a plastic bag, the recovery cell door swished open and Eric strode in.

  “You’re awake,” Eric said, like this wasn’t obvious.

  Brent kindly offered me a disposable cloth. I took it without a word. Through the hammering in my head, I tried to remember why I had signed up to spend the remaining years of my life in a remote colony with Eric.

  “Welcome back,” Eric said on reaching my pod side. “You look terrible.”

  I wasn’t in the mood for Eric. Even Brent had made himself scarce. Quashing my simmering anger with impressive self-control, I presented Eric with a neutral smile.

  “Works every time,” he concluded with a smirk. “Landon’s on his way.” He winked. “Thought I’d get you warmed up before the main act arrived.”