Caught between two powers locked in a cold war a hundred years old, Lucas Ross and the Resistance struggle to maintain the safety and independence of the Borderworlds. The arrival of a new ally and the capture of an old one set Ross on a collision course with his past and revelations that could doom humanity–or save it.
Redeemer is the second book in the Epsilon series, a sequel to 2011’s Broken Stars. The tale is narrated by Lucas Ross, Resistance leader, ER doctor, and former Imperium officer.
What follows is the opening chapter from the third draft of Redeemer–this has been one of those projects that has suffered several re-starts, much like its predecessor. Enjoy the preview.
One
21 January 2261
Perie, Caldin – Borderworlds
“What took you so long?”
I shook my head, scrubbing a hand over my eyes. It still smelled like the disinfecting soap I’d scrubbed my hands down with three times before I left the ER, but at least it didn’t smell like blood and vomit and worse. “You don’t want to know,” I muttered as I fell into step with her, heading down the street from the hospital to Gamgee’s. “Were you starting to worry I was pulling a double without telling you?”
“Fuck that, there’s stuff on the newsvids you need to see. Shit’s starting to hit the fan again like it did when the Imperium took Taerlan and Carmiline.” Samantha Cooper stuffed her hands deep into the pockets of her jacket, hunching slightly in the bitter wind. “And Kara’s here.”
I stumbled a step, not certain I’d heard her right. “What?”
Why would Jason’s right hand be here instead of with him? I looked at Sam, but my second-in-command avoided my gaze, instead keeping it fixed on the sidewalk ahead of us, taking one step at a time on the slick pavement.
“Sam.”
“You heard me, Luc. Don’t act like you didn’t. She got here an hour ago and we’ve been waiting for you to get off work. She wouldn’t tell me why she’s here but she’s not acting right, either. I think something bad happened.”
A shiver that had nothing to do with the weather crept down my spine. For all that I led the Resistance in this area of the Borderworlds, I didn’t have many friends beyond a finite area of space. Though there were eight of us directing the activities of the Resistance in various sectors of the Borderworlds and we were supposedly all in this together, I couldn’t really rely on help from any of them, either for me or for the Resistance in my sector. Jason Parker—known as Quintilian in Resistance circles—was my only ally in that position of power, a fellow sector leader whose respect and friendship I’d earned and one who was widely regarded as the heart of the Resistance by our fellow commanders. Once upon a time, that particularly dubious honor might have gone to Sam’s older sister, Korea, but those days ended when Korea had vanished, leaving me in command of what had been her sector. Jason’s position in the Resistance made him a target, but he’d always been careful about concealing his identity, his role.
What the hell is going on? “Who’s with her?”
“She came alone,” Sam said. We were getting close to the bar now. Wind sent some snow swirling across our path. My second squinted up at the sky for a moment, then shook her head slightly. “Ren’s keeping her entertained.”
I winced. If I’d had a choice, I wouldn’t have put our newest recruit in that position, but I knew why Sam had done it. Ren didn’t really have any secrets to tell and Kara would probably find her—and her case—fascinating.
Or suspicious. “I assume you made introductions?”
Sam nodded. “Of course. I’m not an idiot, Luc.”
“I didn’t mean—”
“I know,” Sam said. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t be like this, not with you. You’re probably thinking what I’m thinking anyway and what I’m thinking isn’t good.”
“Agreed,” I murmured, then squeezed her shoulder gently through her coat. She gave me a weak smile before she tugged Gamgee’s front door open, holding it for me.
“Anything from the Scarlet?” she asked quietly as I slipped past her into the bar.
“Nothing,” I said. “If I hear anything from them, trust me, you’ll be the first person I tell.”
“Good. They’ve over there, corner booth.”
My gaze drifted in that direction and sure enough, there was Kara Burkewicz sitting with Ren at the booth tucked in the corner next to the bar. Kallyn, the owner and bartender at Gamgee’s, was keeping watch on them out of the corner of her eye—I couldn’t say for sure if that was Sam’s doing or if Kal was doing it on her own initiative. She’d taken an immediate liking to Ren as soon as they’d met and while she knew Kara well enough to say hello, she was probably a wild card as far as she was concerned.
Kara was leaning forward with a furrowed brow as I headed toward the booth, unzipping my jacket and scrubbing a hand over my face again. My eyes felt gritty. Truth be known, all I’d really wanted today after my shift at St. Mikhail’s was a hot drink and a nap—maybe even a solid eight hours of sleep, regardless of what time that meant I’d be up in the morning.
Usually don’t get what I want, though, do I? Ren was saying something quietly that I couldn’t hear even as I drew closer. She was seated with her back to the wall, the one between the kitchen and the dining room. Her gaze flicked toward me for a moment and one corner of her mouth lifted toward a smile.
“Looks like you don’t have to wait anymore,” she said, gesturing in my direction. Kara frowned for a split second, then stood up when she caught sight of me.
“What the hell took you so long?” she asked, her brow furrowing. “Sam said your shift was done over an hour ago.”
“That would assume that shit didn’t come up and let’s be honest, we both know that shit always comes up.” I moved to hug her and she let me. I dropped my voice to just above a whisper. “What are you doing here?”
“Jason sent me,” she murmured, squeezing me for a second. “Where can we talk?”
I nodded toward a doorway. Kal had a series of private rooms off the main dining room, one of which was always blocked for me in case I needed it. “C’mon. Bring your drink.”
Ren stood up from her chair. “Do you want me to send Sam?”
I glanced at Kara. After a brief hesitation, she shook her head. “I think I’d better tell you first,” she said, her voice barely audible over the bar’s ambient noise. “After that, it’s your call.”
“Right.” I looked at Ren, who smiled faintly.
“Message received. Want me to bring you coffee?”
“With some whiskey in it,” I told her, shrugging out of my coat as I headed for the private rooms. Kara trailed behind me, shouldering a duffle bag that I hadn’t seen tucked under the table she’d been sharing with Ren. “If anyone else needs anything while we’re busy, tell Sam to handle it.”
“Roger that.”
We were three steps down the hall to the private rooms when Kara asked, “Who is she?”
“Ren?”
“I’ve never seen her before.”
“She’s new,” I said, hoping she’d let it go at that. It was a vain hope, of course, but at least I could say I’d tried. I opened the door to the room at the end of the hall and waved her inside. It was big enough to seat two dozen people, but usually, it hosted less than half that many. Kara dropped her bag just inside the door, staring at me as I locked up behind us.
“You two seem to trust her a hell of a lot for someone who’s new, so I’m going to ask you again—who is she, Luc?”
I exhaled and pulled out a chair, sinking into it. “We call her Renegade. That’s who she is.”
“Are you trying to piss me off? Because it’s working. I don’t want to ask again but I will if I have to.” She stood in front of me, crossing her arms. She was more stern soldier than research scientist when she struck that pose but with definite hints of the latter playing the former. Ordinarily, I’d have laughed, but there was something about the set of her jaw and the rigidness of her carriage that gave me pause.
“What happened?”
“Lucas Justin Ross, are you going to answer my question or not?”
“Fuck,” I breathed, leaning back in my chair. “Fine. She escaped from the Noah Walker with Conrad King—Thomas’s older son, the med student—and ended up here. She doesn’t remember who she is and I’m going to try to help her figure it out.”
“Okay, that gives me part of a picture,” Kara said, her arms slowly uncrossing. “But it doesn’t tell me why you seem to trust her with more shit than I’ve seen you trust any new recruit with. For god’s sake, she seems to know a shit-ton more than some of your cell leads do, and that says a lot considering you and your goddamned secrets.”
“I learned the secrets thing from your husband.”
“And I know it and he’s the reason I’m here—and those fucking secrets of his.” She yanked a chair out from the table and fell into it, staring at me with intensity she usually reserved for people she was suspicious of—it was a look I hadn’t gotten from her in years. “Why is she so damned special, Luc? Just tell me so I can fucking understand. This isn’t about the Noah Walker—or Special Projects—is it?”
I made a ‘sort-of’ gesture with my hand and sighed. “Part of it is. Most of it’s not. She doesn’t know who she is, but some of us do and that’s enough for us to make the call to trust her.”
“This has to do with all of that military-grade materiel you’ve been running out to us, doesn’t it?”
“It does.” It wasn’t a lie—but at the same time, it wasn’t the whole truth, either.
You knew that eventually she’d have questions even if Jason was willing to take all of this on faith. Her history’s too close to yours for her to be entirely comfortable without knowing.
“I wondered where you were getting all of it.” Her lips thinned and she finally seemed to realize she’d left her drink on the table out in the bar when she glanced around, looking for it, and didn’t find it. “What did you step in?”
“I didn’t step in anything,” I said. “Remember when Carmiline fell, somehow Sam’s entire cell got clear before they could get swept up by the Imperium?”
“Yeah, I remember thinking it was some kind of miracle. I was relieved—I didn’t want you to have to go through losing Sam, too.” She grimaced, looking down. “I mean—”
“It’s okay.” The sting was still there, and the ache was bone-deep if I let myself feel it. Korea’s disappearance still ate at me and not knowing where she was or having any sort of confirmation that she was actually still alive was the sort of thing that could keep me up at night. Dwelling on it, though, that didn’t do me or the Resistance any good, and I owed it to her to be at my best for the sake of the Resistance. She had given her entire adult life to trying to protect the Borderworlds and their people from the Imperium and it was as much my fight now as it had been hers, maybe even moreso. “I know what you meant and I’m glad I didn’t lose her, either. She’s my right hand and I don’t know what the hell I’d do without her.” I closed my eyes for a moment, trying to choose the next words carefully. I was keenly aware of Kara’s eyes on me and the low-level buzz of her emotions—her thoughts were tightly leashed, but I could still get a sense of agitation, worry, concern, relief, and nervousness all at once.
“What are you so afraid to tell me?” she whispered. Her tone was gentler now, the worry and concern the strongest emotions in the mix. My stomach felt hollow.
“It’s a complicated story,” I finally said. “But the short version is that when Carmiline fell, there was a pair of Alliance operatives there, and they made sure that Sam and her cell got off-world.”
I opened my eyes to see Kara staring at me, her expression slack, shock and pain in her eyes, as if she was trying to piece together what it all meant—and to some degree, failing. She leaned forward slightly. “So they were helping us back then?”
“They’re still helping us now,” I mumbled. “You heard about Castion?”
“I heard we won. How the hell did that go down?”
“Sam was there,” I said. “I sent her. Didn’t expect shit to happen the way it did, but I’m glad she was there.”
“So Sam’s responsible for Castion?”
“Why did Jason send you, Kara?”
She flinched, recoiling slightly. I caught a spike of anger from her and then nothing. “Ross—”
“Just tell me,” I said. “If you’re even trying, you know that I’m sick to my stomach right now trying to figure out what the hell you’re doing here. What’s going on?”
“After I tell you, you’ll tell me about Castion and where you were going with all of this talk about the Alliance helping at Carmiline and where you’ve been getting all that gear? God knows it’s not Jack’s doing—is it?”
“No. No, it’s not, he’s just been helpful in that regard.” I glanced at the door. What the hell was keeping that drink?
Kal’s letting you have time to talk first, probably. She’s not new to this.
“Someone planted a bomb at my office at the university.”
Cold shot through me and my eyes snapped to hers. There was a tendril of fear and worry in her voice, in her expression, and the deep-seated, old terror in her eyes. I took a deep breath.
“Because of your past, or because of the Resistance?”
“Jason is pretty convinced it’s the latter—that’s why he sent me here. He thinks you’ll be able to keep me safer than he can right now.” She looked down at her hands, fingers fidgeting. “There’s been threats against him, too, but nothing as big as a fucking bomb in my office.”
“And it was real?”
“Oh yes,” she said. “It wasn’t some dumb prank being pulled by a student disgruntled about a grade. This was a legitimate threat against me personally.” She shook her head. “I took a leave of absence but I think we both know that I’m probably not going back.”
“I’m sorry, Kara.”
“Fuck, it’s not your fault,” she said. “I just—I didn’t want to leave. I wanted to stay and help him figure this out but he told me to come and find you because maybe you’d be able to help.” She swiped angrily at a tear that had won free of her lashes and started a trek down her cheek. “Except I know that was a lie. He wanted me somewhere safer than Robinsworld because he thinks some serious shit is about to go down in our sector and sending me to you was the only way he could think of to get me out of the line of fire. Damned fucking stupid hero complex.”
“I’ll talk to him,” I said.
“He thinks it’s someone inside the Resistance that’s responsible, Luc. I don’t know that talking to him is going to help anything unless you can convince him to do—I don’t even know what. Bailing out isn’t going to do the Resistance any good. He’s where he needs to be even if I hate the fact that he’s there and I’m not and I can’t watch his back from here.”
For a second, I tried to put myself in Jason’s boots, wondering what I would have done if I’d been in his place—and it only took a second for me to realize that I’d never been in his boots. I’d been Kara, though, and Korea had been Jason. While things had never gotten quite as serious as a bomb for her and I—or a potential betrayal from within—she’d made a similar hard call. I’d ended up on Caldin and she’d stayed behind on Carmiline to raise her little sister and run the Resistance. Sometimes the hardest choices to make were the ones that hurt but were necessary.
“It sucks,” I murmured. “I felt the same way back when I left Carmiline. I know it’s not the same, but to some degree I know what you’re feeling.”
She shook her head, staring off into nothing, at a random spot in the corner. “I don’t know what the hell to do. I feel like I’m flailing in every direction, trying to find some kind of something to hold on to and I’m not finding it. I should be with him, I should be there to help him and he won’t let me be there.”
“Sometimes knowing that the person you love the most is safe is the greatest help you can get,” I said, feeling an ache that was both old and new rise inside of me. It gnawed at my guts, accusatory and born of guilt. Wil Terrel had said that to me and he’d been talking about Ren. I swallowed hard. “You wanted to know about the materiel.”
“Fuck yes.”
I nodded. “It’s being funneled to us through some Alliance friends.”
“Friends,” she echoed. “The same ones that helped Sam?”
“One of them,” I said. I stood up, starting to pace. I was tired as hell and sore from the long day, but moving helped loosen the knots and ease the building lethargy. “There have been some keeping an eye on operations out here and fucking with the Imperium on the down-low without any real input from us. Then there’s Wil.”
“Wil,” she echoed. “Sam mentioned him, though only pretty briefly. Who is he?”
“If I’m honest, if Sam’s my right hand, he’s the left.” I turned to look at her, watched her expression carefully. “He’s also with Alliance SpecOps.”
Horror warred with hope and concern on her face, in her eyes. She stood up slowly and walked toward me. “Are you fucking crazy?”
“Probably, but that doesn’t have anything to do with Wil.” I took a deep breath and shoved my hands into my pockets. “He belongs to us more than he belongs to them. Trust me when I say that.”
“No guarantees,” she said, shaking her head. “He’s with the Alliance and he’s your left hand? What the hell, Luc? The only side the Alliance is on is its own. How can you trust him?”
“Because I’ve been inside his head and you can’t fake what he feels about all of this.” I set my jaw, staring at a spot beyond her shoulder for a moment before I met her gaze again. “He lost his partner on Carmiline—she was captured by the Imperium. That’s not his cover story, either, it’s the truth.”
She watched me, confusion starting to overtake horror in her expression. “I don’t understand.”
“Ren was his partner. She’s the one who made sure that Sam and Jack and the others got off-world. Wil was with Sam on Castion. He’s the one who helped her stop the Imperium there. I trust him with my life, Kara, and you know how short the list of people I trust is.”
“Fucking hell,” she said, shaking her head. “I don’t know if you’ve lost it or if I’m missing something in translation here. You just randomly decided to trust not one but two people because they helped save Sam on Carmiline? Despite the fact that they’re both Alliance officers—wait a second. Why didn’t the Alliance take her back? Do they even know she’s here?”
“It’s a long story,” I muttered. It was also one I didn’t want to get into, not right now—maybe not ever, if I could avoid it. “The short version is that yes, they know and the powers that be decided that the best place for her is out here—just like the best place for Wil is out here, too.”
“None of this makes any sense to me,” Kara said. “How much of this does Jason know?”
I winced and she swore again.
“He knew, didn’t he?”
“Some of it,” I said. “He knew about Wil.”
She closed her eyes, tilting her head back. I knew she was mentally counting upwards toward ten, possibly so she could curb any urge to strangle me—or her husband. “Let me guess,” she said after a few beats. “It was need to know.”
“He is the only one outside of a very small circle here that knows,” I said. “I swore him to secrecy, Kara. Don’t blame him for your not knowing. That was my doing.”
“Well, at least I know who I need to punch.” She shook her head again and slumped into her chair. “So what do we do now?”
“What do you mean?”
“About what’s going on out in my sector—about the danger Jason’s in, that the Resistance is in out there. How do we fix it?”
“I think I need to talk to him.”
She snorted. “I think that goes without saying. He will probably tell you more than I was able to because it seems like you’re privy to more shit than I am.”
“Kara.”
“It’s okay,” she said. “I’m just being a bitch about all of it. I know why he does it—he wants to protect me. It’s his instinct and sometimes I appreciate it but right now, I honestly don’t. I wish he’d let me stay, I wish he’d let me help him, but he didn’t. He sent me here—he sent me to you.”
“He just wants to make sure you’re safe. Knowing that’s going to give him a little more freedom to act.”
“I know. I still hate it, though.” Kara closed her eyes and tilted her head back. “How the hell did you handle it?”
“When Kory sent me here? Not easily, not at first. It got easier after a while, but I’m not married to her.”
One corner of her mouth quirked into a brief smile. “Honestly, for as close as you guys were, you might as well have been. I’m sure you talked about it.”
I didn’t say anything right away. Instead, I got up and went to unlock the door, knowing it was only a matter of time before Sam or Ren came looking—or Kal, or someone else. It was something I didn’t want to think too hard about—the should-have-beens with Korea Cooper, the plans we’d made, everything we’d intended.
“Are you okay?” I could feel Kara’s eyes on my back. I nodded.
“Better than you are,” I said, knowing it was the truth. I turned back toward her and caught sight of a rueful smile that crossed her face and then faded.
“True story,” she said, then fell silent for a minute, looking contemplative. “Do you really think that the Alliance is going to keep giving a damn about what happens to us, Luc? Do you think that they really actually care?”
“Some of them do, at least,” I said, sinking back down into my chair. “At this point, that’s all I need to know. I have the commitment I need and I’ll take advantage of whatever they’re offering me for as long as I can—and I’ll keep on spreading out what I can to the other sectors because it’s the right thing to do. We’re all in this together, regardless of what some of the others may want to think.”
“Still with the trust issues?”
“Not on my end—not all of it, anyway. A lot of them plain, straight-up don’t like me and I get that, but at the end of the day, I’m the one running the sector out here and the strip of space I’m trying to keep track of is bigger than most and touches both sides of the border. I will take whatever kind of added advantage I can get if it’s going to help me do what I’ve always said I’d do.”
“Maybe the win at Castion will help,” she said.
“Maybe,” I echoed, though I had a feeling that it wouldn’t change much, if anything.
“We can hope, right?”
A soft snort escaped me. “Yeah. Sometimes I think it’s all we’ve got.”
“That’s because it is,” Kara whispered, staring at her hands. “That’s because sometimes, it is.”
