The Lost (The Maauro Chronicles Book 3) Read online

  The Maauro Chronicles

  By

  Edward F. McKeown

  An Imprint of Copper Dog Publishing, LLC

  The Maauro Chronicles: The Lost

  Copyright ©2017 Copper Dog Publishing

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, write to the publisher, addressed “Attention: Permissions Coordinator,” at the address below.

  Moondream Press

  An Imprint of Copper Dog Publishing LLC

  537 Leader Circle

  Louisville, CO 80027

  www.copperdogpublishing.com

  Ordering Information:

  Special discounts are available on quantity purchases by corporations, associations, and others. For details, contact the publisher at the address above.

  Printed in the United States of America

  Credits:

  Author: Edward F. McKeown

  Managing Editor: Michael H. Hanson

  Creative Director: Helen H. Harrison

  Editor: Laura Jean Stroupe

  Proofreader: Julie Harrison Saunders

  Proofreader: Catherine Van Sciver

  Cover Art: Pat Ventura

  ISBN:

  978-1-943690-14-5 (Paperback)

  978-1-943690-15-2 (Kindle)

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2017941757

  Fiction: Science Fiction

  Dedication

  This book is dedicated to my friend,

  Sifu Chris Facente,

  and all the gang at

  Mint Hill Kung Fu School

  of Lai Tung Pai.

  All the Best,

  Sifu Ed

  The Lost

  The lost are never forgotten,

  so anchored in our memory,

  sweet miracles once begotten,

  that fate led on some dark journey.

  The lost are more than life’s echoes

  or ache forever lingering,

  they are the truth lost in the throes

  of destiny’s malingering.

  The lost are beacons yet unseen,

  pale torches burning in the night

  and all the blackness in between

  stars beckoning like candlelight.

  I’ll seek you always and an age

  however far

  nothing will bar

  my lonely love and righteous rage.

  —Michael H. Hanson

  Contents

  Dedication

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 1

  Overhead, a dark-gray Confed cruiser roared defiance of gravity as it gradually climbed into the great bowl of the sky. The vibrations penetrated the plas-steel windows of our office. Unusual to see such a large vessel in atmosphere, I thought, as I looked toward the bay where our own small ship, Stardust, sat. From the third story tower that housed Lost Planet Expeditions it was only possible to see Stardust’s slender atmospheric nose. All about her, dozens of ships sat, or were being serviced all the way to the horizon of Star City’s main spaceport.

  The window also reflected my face back at me. I wasn’t bad looking for a dark-haired, brown-eyed human male in his mid-twenties. My age, even more than with most spacers, was an approximation and compromise. Almost thirty-two galactic-standard years had passed since my birth, but I had only lived twenty-six of them. Most of two had been spent in cold sleep when I fled my homeworld of Retief. Five more years passed when Stardust ventured inside the gravity well of the ancient Infestor Artifact ship, only days had passed for us, but the universe had moved on.

  Movement interrupted my reverie. From the city side of the field a slender figure approached. To most eyes Maauro would seem to be a girl in her late teens or early twenties, about five-feet-four. Black hair tumbled to her waist and bounced in a pony tail gathered with a yellow silk bow. She appeared to be wearing a dark jump suit with orange panels, but that was an illusion. The suit was merely the outer casing of her armor, textured to look like clothing.

  The eyes were the big giveaway. Maauro’s eyes were almost three times as big as a standard humans’. She had patterned herself on a game simulation in my computer after I found her, stranded for 50,000 years on a wrecked asteroid base. She claimed she could not change her basic matrix without undue risk. I thought she had just grown used to her new face. I couldn’t blame her for that. Her appearance was one of the first choices she’d ever made for herself.

  “Watching your mechanical girlfriend?” a throaty voice sounded in my ear. I turned from the window to face Jaelle Tekala. She smiled to take the sting out of the comment, though with fangs resting on her full lower lip the effect was still alarming. The Nekoan was a creature of the sun—golden skin, yellow eyes. Her hair was a leonine pile topped by two large cat-like ears. Her ancestors had been omnivorous creatures resembling a Terran lion. The human mind wanted a pattern, so it said cat. Jaelle’s small features made her surprisingly human in appearance, which worked out well for me. Our consortship was only six months old, though we had been a couple since the bad old days on Kandalor.

  “Jaelle, you know I love you,” I replied, looking her straight in the eyes, she stood only slightly shorter than my own six-foot height.

  “Yes, me and her.”

  “Different ways.”

  She yawned. “What a discriminating anatomy you have, male-of-mine.”

  “My anatomy’s irrelevant when it comes to Maauro.” I sighed inside. Jaelle was my lover. Maauro, whose gender was an appearance she had elected for herself, was …well, what was Maauro? A combat android and quantum computer from a long vanished alien race? The only self-aware artificial intelligence known to exist? She was also the closest friend I had ever had. Maauro knew me as no other being did, including secrets and flaws I had not fully shared with Jaelle.

  Jaelle gestured with her delicate and pointed chin. “Here comes Dusko.”

  A tall, angular shape followed Maauro toward us. The Dua-Denlenn, with his pointed ears and pupilless blue eyes, looked like a woodland elf gone bad.

  “Yeah,” I replied. I’d forgiven the fourth member of our team, former Guild crime lord, for his persecution of me when I had been a broken spacer doing odd jobs around Kandalor. He’d joined us as a prisoner, betrayed the Guild to stay alive and had won grudging acceptance from the rest of us.

  Jaelle left my side to drop into a chair and stretch her long, leather-clad and booted legs out on the table.
I walked over to the small kitchen and fished out soft drinks and fruit juices for everyone.

  The door slid open. Maauro entered with Dusko on her heels.

  “Hello, Wrik,” Maauro said in a high voice that complimented her appearance. Her face held its usual gentle, contemplative look, but I always felt there was an extra degree of animation in it when she looked at me. I couldn’t stop my answering grin and I slid one of the soft drinks she enjoyed in front of her as she sat opposite Jaelle. Maauro turned all things she ingested to energy, but nevertheless favored anything sweet.

  “Good morning, Jaelle,” she added.

  “Hello, Kit-sister,” Jaelle returned with her pet name for Maauro.

  Dusko and I exchanged nods, and I let him get his own drink and join us at the table.

  “I am glad you were all able to come this morning,” Maauro said.

  “What was it you wanted to talk about?” I asked.

  “About the next mission of Lost Planet Expeditions,” she said.

  “Does there need to be a next one?” Jaelle said, her face revealing little. “We’re well set after Confed paid us off on the Predictor matter. Not to mention the profits I make with our legitimate shipping interests.”

  I shifted uncomfortably. Even in our office, protected by Maauro’s best cyber-defenses, the open mention of our last mission with its potential to start an interstellar war was unsettling. We had destroyed the Ribisan Predictor technology, ending a threat to Confed’s peace, a peace that, with the waning of Earth’s influence in the Confederacy, seemed increasingly chancy.

  “Wealth was not the objective of our agency,” Maauro countered.

  “For you perhaps,” Jaelle returned. I suspected Dusko agreed with her, but was cautious of appearing to oppose Maauro. “For those of us mortals of flesh and blood, it’s nice stuff to have, along with security and comfort.”

  “True,” she acknowledged, “but when we founded Lost Planet after escaping from the Infestor Artifact, we wanted to make some greater use of our talents than mere commerce.”

  “Truth be told,” I said, “it was greater use of your talents, Maauro.”

  She shook her head and the glossy black hair bounced. “No, we are a team; a whole that is greater than the sum of its parts. Each of us at one time has been the factor that saved the others and the mission. Wrik, I wish you could come to believe this as I do.”

  “Keep on him, Kit-sister,” Jaelle said, quietly but with force. “We’ll make him believe it someday.”

  I looked away. There were failures in my past that had never removed their claws from me. Perhaps they never would.

  “That said,” Jaelle continued. “I do not see why we should concentrate on espionage for the Confederacy as opposed to commerce.”

  “Trade is second nature to you, Jaelle,” Maauro said, “and fulfilling.”

  “But not to you, Kit-sister.”

  “No. For all that it pleases me to see you succeed, Jaelle. I’m even pleased for you, Dusko, so long as your violations of the law remain minor and result in no injury to innocents.”

  Dusko raised his glass in mock salute. “It is useful to keep our contacts in the Guild and other such organizations active,” he said, his face blank as usual, but his voice betraying a touch of anxiety.

  “You haven’t brought this up casually,” Jaelle said, her cat-irised eyes narrowing.

  “You are correct. Late last night a message reached me from Candace Deveraux.”

  We groaned. Deveraux was the Confederate spymaster and our secret employer. Unable to seize Maauro, whose deadliness belied her small frame, she’d settled for extracting a promise to work for Confed Intelligence. In return, we received Confed commissions and Maauro was recognized as a citizen in data hidden in many places.

  “Espionage,” Jaelle said the word as a curse.

  “Not this time,” Maauro said. “Though the contact comes through her, this is more in the nature of what we planned for Lost Planet, something of a rescue or recovery mission.”

  Jaelle’s frown lessened. “What are the details?”

  “We’ll find out this afternoon at 1300 hours. A visitor will attend us and brief us on this prospective mission. Candace says this one is our option as to whether to accept or not.”

  “Now that’s the most unusual thing I’ve heard this morning,” Dusko said, then sipped his drink.

  “Is she coming?” I ask,

  “No,” Maauro replied, “which I regard as unusual. She hinted she would see us another time.”

  “Odd,” Dusko said.

  “I wish for us to have some time to talk before this person arrives,” Maauro began. “We have been through many dangers before. I want to be sure everyone is willing to face more, before we entertain the client. Between recovering from our last mission and celebrating Wrik and Jaelle’s consortship, it has been quite a while since we were last active.”

  She looked at me and I at her and Jaelle.

  “Lost Planet was my idea as well,” I said. “I don’t see a reason to change.”

  Dusko surprised me by speaking next. “I’m as happy attending to my own affairs and supporting what we do here. However I know the Guild would make short work of me if Maauro’s protection is lifted. In return I do what you need of me.”

  We all looked at Jaelle as the silence lengthened. “I’ll hear what this mission is before I commit,” Jaelle finally said.

  I felt a sinking sensation in my stomach. I couldn’t be sure if it was because I felt Jaelle might not come with us, or because she would. I rarely felt fear for Maauro’s safety, never for Dusko’s, but since I had found Jaelle, I lived in terror of something happening to her, or of her drifting out of my life. Nekoans were independent creatures and Jaelle was an off-the-charts rebel, even by her people’s standards.

  “That is fair,” Maauro conceded. “It might even be reasonable to have someone here full time to run the trade business and its employees. Though, if you become much more successful, our cover business may displace our true function.”

  Jaelle’s expression told me that she’d entertained similar thoughts.

  “Why don’t we have some lunch while we wait for our mystery visitor,” I said. “There are some frozen lunches from Asteroid Asia in the fridge.”

  We ate and talked of the adventures we’d survived and what the future might hold and it became even more apparent to me that a split was coming. Jaelle’s interests lay with us, but not in the dangerous business that Maauro favored. Why should that be surprising? Jaelle took second place to no one in courage, least of all me. But she was neither as close to Maauro as I was, nor as dependent as Dusko. She’d been raised in a trading family before her father’s involvement with the Guild caused an irretrievable break. Nenan Tekala sold us out to his partners in the Guild on Kandalor. The resulting ambush cost me my small ship, Sinner, and Maauro her original left arm. It also cost Jaelle’s father his daughter’s respect and allegiance. We’d made good the losses later, but only after many bad days.

  An aircar slid into view through the window, followed by two more. They landed in a triangular formation in front of our office and a mix of humans and others spilled out. Diverse as they were in appearance, their brisk and efficient movements practically screamed security.

  I popped up our outside cameras and focused one on the biggest vehicle.

  A woman got out. She stood tall and straight for all that her banner of hair, long as Maauro’s, alternated bands of silver and black. Her face was striking, beautifully symmetrical, with ivory skin, yet it was a mature beauty.

  “Oh my God,” I managed. “That’s Captain Shasti Rainhell!”

  Chapter 2

  “It has been a long time since Shasti Rainhell has commanded a starship,” I reply to my biological companions as I study Wrik’s astonished face. “She now commands the Olympia
n Security Section on her homeworld. Her husband, Mikhail Vaughn is the current president, but many suspect her of being the true power on that world.”

  “You don’t understand, Maauro,” Jaelle finally says. “That’s a living legend walking toward us. She and her ship saved my kind and the Skurlock from the Evolvers. Hers was the first Confed vessel to find the old Concordiat.”

  “She must be a hundred years old!” Wrik adds. I note the wonder and enthusiasm in his voice and face, how it makes him look younger than his twenty-six elapsed years. I know he has studied the voyages of Rainhell and Fenaday. A model of their blood-red ship sits behind us on the shelf. Wrik built it on one voyage.

  “As best it can be determined,” I reply, “she is ninety-four years from the date that she was decanted in the eugenics laboratory where she was created.”

  “Gives you something in common,” Dusko says dryly.

  “In a way,” I reply. “We were both designed for conflict by our creators, she from genetic material and I from silicon and ceramics and armor. Both of us have also slipped the hands of our makers. It will be interesting to meet her. Wrik, why don’t you go down and greet our potential client?”

  Wrik nods eagerly and heads for the door. While we were conversing in the slow time of biological life, I extended my cybernetic net to embrace the area behind our office building. I detect and infiltrate, on a basic level, the Confed security force surrounding Rainhell. I could intrude further, but only at the risk of leaving some indication or having to spend a considerable amount of time to erase my tracks by reprogramming the network.

  Beyond the immediate area I check my traps and regular intrusion paths. I detect only a SWAT detachment nearby in an airvan, a standard precaution that does not concern me. No Guild or other intelligence forces are targeting us within the range of my detection. I complete my multi-level scan and surveillance before Wrik reaches the door. I would not have allowed him to proceed further without confirming his safety.

  I walked to the elevator, trying to compose myself so I didn’t look like a schoolboy, but it was hard to control my feelings about meeting a childhood hero. The elevator doors dinged and opened and there she stood. To my surprise, she was alone.