Fractured Era: Legacy Code Bundle (Books 1-3) (Fractured Era Series) Read online

  Get your free Legacy Code prequel story now at AutumnKalquist.com.

  FRACTURED ERA: LEGACY CODE

  Better World

  Legacy Code

  Paragon

  Short Story Prequels

  318

  Decode

  Protecteds: Origin

  (AutumnKalquist.com Exclusive)

  LEGACY CODE Soundtrack

  "Crash and Burn"

  “Artificial Gravity”

  “Better World”

  Copyright © 2015 by Autumn Kalquist

  Lyrics from the song “Crash and Burn” copyright © 2015 by Autumn Kalquist

  Cover design by Damonza

  Editing by Erynn Newman

  All Rights Reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner without the written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Diapason Publishing

  www.AutumnKalquist.com

  Publisher’s Note: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are a product of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual people, living or dead, or to businesses, companies, events, institutions, or locales is completely coincidental.

  Better World / Autumn Kalquist—1st ed.

  For Avalon.

  Control.

  That’s all Maeve wanted, but in the fleet, no one had that. Every day you woke sweating in a too-warm metal box, wondering if this was the day the fleet used you up for good. So after thinking about it long and hard, she’d come up with a solution. There was only one choice—one way to control her fate.

  She had to kill herself.

  Today was Maeve’s eighteenth birthday, and what better day to end her life than on the day she’d come into it? A creak sounded, and Maeve jumped and took another furtive glance down the dark corridor. Here on the London’s sublevels, lume bars at half-power cast flickering light on dented metal walls and grease-stained floors. She let out a breath. Just the complaint of an ancient ship carrying them on their relentless journey through space. No one was down here—almost everyone should still be sleeping, and the first shift buzzer wouldn’t sound for another half hour.

  The power core made it so bloody hot, her skin was practically melting. She wiped her forehead and wiggled in her suit as sweat ran down her back. The stolen shift card bit into her palm, and a familiar wave of darkness swept over her, making it hard to breathe. She’d be in deep kak if they caught her here.

  Too bad. Can’t lash a dead person. She let out a laugh, and with new resolve, swiped the card across the panel. The door slid open in front of her, revealing the maintenance airlock beyond.

  Her mirth faded as she entered. Red, blue, and green buttons lit up the control panel, and through the clear glasstex viewing pane, she could see the porthole in the airlock. Out there, a distant red planet spun in orbit, growing larger by the second. Soren.

  Her heart jumped a little with that old hope, but it wasn’t enough to overcome her despair.

  There is no hope. Humanity had been searching for a new Earth for 300 years, and Soren was just another stop on the journey to extinction. Her parents had died too young getting here, and how many more lives would be lost once the fleet started mining that planet? Even if it had the metal they needed to build the next jump gate… the odds were against them. The next jump would just send the decaying fleet to another barren section of the galaxy.

  This was the end. Humanity would die out, and their empty ships would drift forever through endless night. And who would be left to care?

  Not me. Maeve swiped the card across the rusty scanner and activated the countdown sequence with a delay. Her heart sped up as she set the card down, so there could be no chance of changing her mind once she entered the airlock.

  The warning alarm went off, and she hurried through the sliding door. It locked with a clack of finality behind her. Red lights flickered on and began blinking in time with the alarms. In sixty seconds, the airlock would open, and she’d be swept into space. No more darkness. Just a moment of pain, and then the blissful end.

  Her fear and anticipation mounted with each cycle of the alarm. How much would it hurt? There were an infinite number of excruciating ways to die on this ship… and this was supposed to be the easiest way to go. Would it be?

  She clenched and unclenched her fists and stared out the porthole, at the red planet ahead, trying to clear her mind of everything. But fear and doubt grew within her, making her shake.

  Amazing how long a minute felt when you knew it was your last.

  Come on.

  Any second now.

  The red lights abruptly shut off, and Maeve whirled, her blood pumping even harder as she sought out the intruder on the other side of the glass. Fierce anger rushed through her that she’d lost control again, but her rage fled when she glimpsed his face.

  The blood drained from her cheeks when they made eye contact, and her determination to die wavered.

  Dritan Corinth.

  Brown skin, handsome features, his expression a mask to conceal his feelings. But the betrayal in his intense hazel eyes gave him away. She dropped her gaze to the scuffed metal floor, focusing on the line of rivets down the center of it as the door slid open.

  “Maeve.” Dritan walked over and grabbed her hand, swallowing her small one in his. The touch made her flinch, and her eyes burned as she finally looked up. Her choice had clearly hurt him, but her blood still churned with anger that he’d stopped her.

  “Come to wish me a Lucky Birthday?” she asked brightly, ripping her hand away.

  He narrowed his eyes at her and pushed a strand of her short black hair off her face. “I had to hack the panel to follow you in here,” he said, his voice tight. He held up their enforcer’s card, retrieved from the control room. “Fenton’s?”

  “Yeah. Fenton’s. Should learn to guard his pockets better.”

  She’d waited until their new enforcer had been stumbling back to his bunk with the others, all of them stupid off bootleg. Then she’d plucked the card right from his pocket. It was the bravest thing she’d ever done.

  Ironic, considering only cowards airlocked themselves, robbing the fleet of a colonist who could work. But fuck the fleet. It’d robbed her of her parents. And so many people she’d known, dead too soon. Now that she’d lost the last thing she cared about, there was really no reason to continue suffering, trying to live with the dark pain every damn day. Maeve cast a longing glance through the porthole, at the red planet in the distance. She should be out there right now.

  “We gotta go,” Dritan said roughly.

  Maeve slammed her fists into his chest, shoving him off-balance. “You can go. I’m staying right here.”

  A flash of anger lit up Dritan’s face as he grabbed her arm. “We’ll talk about this out there.”

  Maeve’s eyes burned as he half-dragged her out of the airlock, through the control room, and back out into the corridor.

  The panel was off out there, wires ripped apart and twisted together. Dritan had risked everything hacking in. Messing with card access was practically treason, though they wouldn’t kill him if they found out. They’d just lash him hard enough he wouldn’t walk straight for a week.

  She stood beside him, arms crossed over her chest as he squinted in the dim light, unwinding wires and returning everything to its former state. Maeve shook her head. He was too smart, meddling with hardware that shouldn’t be hackable, fixing it all, even when none of the right parts were available.

  After
replacing the panel, he turned to face her—towering above her, like everyone did. That, along with the way he stared her down, made her feel like a kid in caretaker sector again.

  “Don’t look at me like that.” Her chest tightened as she forced herself to hold his accusatory gaze.

  He grabbed her by the shoulders, gently, and stooped so he was at eye level with her. “I won’t ask why. I don’t have to… I get it. But at least tell me this… Is it out of your system now?”

  “I dunno.” Maeve shrugged. “Am I still here?”

  “Dammit, M!” He squeezed her shoulders and let go, running a hand through his short curls, pulling on them. “We can’t be down here right now. We’ll get back to singles sector before the buzzer and drop the card outside Fenton’s bunk. He’ll think he just lost it.”

  He took a deep breath and nodded to himself. “Then everything will be fine.”

  Oh, Dritan. Always expecting the best, even when every possible outcome was awful. Not that Maeve had the heart to remind him of that.

  Dritan gave her one last veiled look, then pocketed Fenton’s card and gestured for her to walk. She whirled and strode down the corridor, her heart pounding as each step took her farther from her planned escape.

  At least Dritan had shut up. Others would have judged and turned her in to the enforcers. But Dritan wasn’t like that.… He never wanted to shame anyone. Since the day he’d arrived on this ship, an unwanted orphan, he’d always had her back. Yet she hadn’t given him a single thought tonight. Guilt niggled at her, but she pushed it away.

  They reached the stairwell and ascended the worn metal stairs, leaving the deep hum of the power core behind. Fresh air cooled Maeve’s overheated skin, and the temperature continued to drop the deeper they went into singles sector. As they hurried past dozens of doors, all she heard was the creaking of the ship and the ceaseless whirring of the air recyc fans.

  Their boots sank into the foam flooring with every step, masking their passage. The newness of it contrasted sharply with the old metal walls. Those were scuffed, dented, even rusted in places, despite the fact that the London manufactured all the fleet’s sheet metal. Kind of hard to make enough metal to replace what needed replacing when the only metal they’d seen in two decades came from asteroids.

  A toilet flushed in the shared lav to their right, and Dritan quickened his pace. He put a hand on Maeve’s shoulder, urging her onward. The deka was waking up. Soon the first shift buzzer would go off, and all the unpaired workers would flow from their cubics for first mess.

  The unpaired enforcers were at the back of the sector, with the best and biggest rooms and the most comfortable bunks, or so Maeve had heard. Not that any of them appreciated their luck. She flared her nostrils and ripped the card from Dritan’s grasp to drop it outside Fenton’s door.

  As they turned to go, Maeve heard the awful whisper of a well-oiled door sliding open.

  “What the fuck you two doing here?” a voice slurred.

  They whirled to find Fenton standing there, and Maeve’s chest seized with fear. It took all she had not to look at the card where it lay mere inches from his boots.

  Fenton glared at them with puffy blue eyes in that squinty, suspicious way of his, his mussed red hair sticking up. His gaze flicked from Dritan to Maeve. It slid down her face and body, lingering on the slight curves visible through her suit. Her skin crawled at the way he was looking at her. Like he was starving, and she was galley grub.

  “Why are you here?” he said, drawing the words out.

  Dritan looked like he was getting ready to lie, but Fenton hated Dritan even worse than Maeve. Better for her to take the blame.

  “I had to take a kak,” she said. “Our lav had a line. Yours didn’t. When ya gotta go, ya gotta go.”

  Fenton’s mouth twisted with disgust. “Sub halfs don’t get to kak in enforcer lavs. Do it again, you’ll get a demerit.”

  “Yes, Sir.”

  Dritan pressed his lips together, amusement in his eyes.

  Fenton noticed. “And you, Corinth. What’d I tell you? You don’t fix that uniform, it’ll be another demerit and reduced rations.”

  Dritan’s green suit was as tattered and grease-stained as Maeve’s. No help for it when the Vancouver, their textile ship, was overloaded with orders. But Fenton had hated Dritan since caretaker—since a day years ago when Fenton had tried to bully Maeve, and Dritan had stopped him. Having him as their new enforcer was bad news.

  “Yes, Sir,” Dritan said. “I’ll clean and patch it again tonight.”

  “Good. Now get lost.”

  Maeve and Dritan didn’t need to be told twice. They turned and left, walking as fast as they could.

  Once they were out of sight, Maeve nudged Dritan. “When he finds that card, he’ll know—”

  “He won’t know,” Dritan said in a near-whisper. “He can suspect all he wants, but he can’t prove anything. And if they do notice it got used, they’ll blame him. He can’t admit he lost it.”

  “You know…” Maeve rubbed her stomach, groaning in fake pain. “I have the strangest urge to take a kak in an enforcer lav right now.”

  Dritan suppressed a grin and shook his head.

  “We only allow enforcer asses on our seats,” Maeve slurred. “Take a kak again—face a demerit.”

  They both laughed, and the earlier tension between them vanished. The buzzer went off, and halfs began flowing out of their cubics—a sea of mostly sublevel workers in green suits mingled with techs wearing black. Most were apprentices, ages twelve to eighteen, but a few older faces joined the rush, halfs like Maeve—between eighteen and twenty-one—who were late to pair. The unwelcome thought of pairing, having to choose a husband, made Maeve’s stomach turn.

  “I heard the rationing will be over soon,” Dritan said. “The Meso may have fixed their root rot problem.”

  “Wouldn’t bet on it. We should hurry before the cooks run out.”

  As they headed for the stairs, a dozen enforcers in navy suits arrived, and everyone jumped out of the way to let them through. Fenton was among them, and he shot Dritan and Maeve a dirty look as he pushed past.

  Enforcers always acted like they deserved to live and eat up on executive level. But only the head enforcer got to do that, and only colonists born on exec-level could get the job. Fenton and his like were just glorified sub workers with inflated heads. All you needed to do was get the right people to favor you, or like in Fenton’s case, be born to enforcer parents.

  For Maeve and Dritan, sub parents meant a sub’s life. Just about every one of them would die early from some terrible accident or accelerated power core sickness. Any control the colonists thought they had over their lives was an illusion.

  A mistake of birth decided your entire life on this damn ship.

  Maeve’s despair crept back—a cruel nothingness that sapped her energy and dulled every sensation.

  When they finally reached the stairs, Dritan wrapped an arm around her, and her throat closed at the feeling of his strong arm on her back.

  “Things will get better,” he said low in her ear. “I promise. They will.”

  He released her, and she gave him a small smile, nodding like she believed him. The look of relief on his face was worth the lie.

  But was she glad he’d stopped her from airlocking herself?

  No.

  If he’d come for her a few seconds later, she’d be done with all this, floating free in open space. Darkness churned within her, death still beckoning.

  And when death called, it always got an answer.

  “Soren.”

  “First landfall.”

  The words were on everyone’s lips as Maeve and Dritan headed for first mess. The undercurrent of excitement in the stairwell and galley were palpable—a nervous energy flooding the deka and putting her on edge.

  The main galley was an enormous open space with long metal tables and enough benches to seat thousands. The level filled up fast, dividing into the usual g
roups. Nearly six hundred techs sat at their tables at the far end, and more than twenty-five hundred subs sat at the other. The enforcers numbered two hundred and fifty and usually sat at the two long tables between the techs and the subs—not important enough to get tech work, but too good to mingle with the subs they oversaw.

  In the far corner of the sub section, the maimed and useless gathered. The Outcast. Missing limbs, ill health, twisted minds. Unable to really do their duties, yet still using fleet resources. If they airlocked themselves, no one would care or complain.

  The cooks had already started plating the hot quin, and the smell made Maeve’s mouth water. She and Dritan got in line, but as they did, she accidentally bumped into a sub in front of her.

  The half she’d touched whirled around. It was a blond sub half named Bea—they’d known her in caretaker.

  “Watch yourself.” Bea wrinkled her nose.

  Maeve held up a hand of apology, and the girl turned back to talk to her friends.

  As the line moved, Bea’s next words filtered back to them. “…still unpaired. Deevy glitch.”

  Maeve’s nostrils flared at the insult, and she balled her hands into fists. Dritan grabbed her wrist swiftly, giving the barest shake of his head.

  He was right. Bea wasn’t worth it.

  Face flaming, Maeve aggressively grabbed a full tray from the line and stalked toward their usual table. Fucking glitches. Who were they to call her a deviant? They knew nothing. Population Management regulations gave her until age twenty-one to pair. And if she didn’t make a choice by then… they’d choose for her.

  She slid down on the bench at her crew’s table and tried to throttle her anger by shoving the bland quin grain down her throat. Dritan didn’t say another word, thank Infinitek. If she could just get through today without snapping, she’d spend tonight coming up with a new plan of escape. And next time, she’d do it right—she wouldn’t get caught.

  A few minutes later, the rest of the crew showed up at the table. Quiet Hyun and her husband Vinay sat across from them. The new crew leader, Kevan, smacked Dritan on the back in a friendly hello as he settled on the other side of him.