Asbaran Solutions (The Revelations Cycle Book 2)
Asbaran Solutions
Book Two of the Revelations Cycle
By
Chris Kennedy
PUBLISHED BY: Chris Kennedy
Copyright © 2017 Chris Kennedy
All Rights Reserved
Get the free prelude story “Shattered Crucible”
and discover other titles by Chris Kennedy at:
http://chriskennedypublishing.com/
* * * * *
License Notes
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only and may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
This book is a work of fiction, and any resemblance to persons, living or dead, or places, events or locales is purely coincidental, except for the Red Shirts, who have given me their express permission to kill them in all sorts of wicked, nasty ways. The other characters are productions of the author’s imagination and used fictitiously.
* * * * *
I would like to thank Beth and Patty, who took the time to critically read this work and make it better. I would also like to thank my mother, without whose steadfast belief in me, I would not be where I am today. Thank you. This book is dedicated to my wife and children, who sacrificed their time with me so I could write it.
* * * * *
Cover Design by Brenda Mihalko
Original Art by Ricky Ryan
* * * * *
“And there went out another horse that was red: and power was given to him that sat thereon to take peace from the earth, and that they should kill one another: and there was given unto him a great sword.”
― Revelation 6:4
* * * * *
Table of Contents
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
Epilogue
Asbaran Solutions Roster
About the Author
Titles by Chris Kennedy
Connect with Chris Kennedy Online
Excerpt from “Winged Hussars:”
Excerpt from “Wraithkin:”
Chapter One
Planet Moorhouse, Kepler 62 System
“This is bullshit,” Sergeant James Wilson grumbled. The tall, dark-haired trooper spat, the betel nut chew making his spittle a bright crimson on the sun-bleached sand.
“What’s bullshit?” Private Dave Daniels asked, his pale brows knitting. “This is only my second contract, but it seems like pretty good duty to me. Walk some fence line, guard a mine, and get paid a ton of credits? Seems pretty soft. No one’s trying to kill me, and I can go down to the bar after my shift. Sure, the locals look like anteaters, but they pay well enough so I can afford some of the overpriced beer they’ve imported.”
“Naw, that ain’t what I’m talking about, at all,” the sergeant replied. He spat again. “Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy not getting shot at as much as anyone. Having actually been hit a couple of times, I may even enjoy it more. What I’m saying is that this whole contract’s fucked up.”
“Why’s that?”
“Do you see the bird on our crest?” Sergeant Wilson asked, pointing to where the Asbaran Solutions company flag hung limply from the staff in the humid, breezeless air.
Private Daniels nodded his head, then wiped the sweat from his eyes the motion caused. “Yeah. There’s a bird with the company’s motto, ‘Kill Aliens. Get Paid.’”
“Do you know what kind of bird that is?”
“Nope; it looks like some sort of griffin.”
The sergeant stopped and glared at the junior enlisted. “Do they not teach unit history at basic any more, or are you just too fucking stupid to remember? It ain’t no damn griffin, boy; it’s a huma bird.”
“A huma bird?”
“Yeah. It’s a type of bird that never lands; it lives its entire life flying above the clouds where you can never see it.”
“Wow, that’s pretty cool. I’ve never heard of a bird like that.”
“That’s because it doesn’t exist, you dumbass,” the sergeant said, cuffing the private in the back of the head. “It’s mythological. The point I’m trying to get through your stupid fucking head is that us Asbaran ain’t for sitting around guarding shit. We’re mobile; we strike from above and crush our enemies. We don’t hang around waiting for them to hit us while we’re sitting on the damned toilet in a guardhouse on some godforsaken planet at the ass-end of the galaxy.” He spat; another red stain marked his passage. “If the Founder could see us now…”
“What? What would he do?”
“If the Founder could see us now, he’d probably come back and kill every single motherfucker in management. This ain’t how we’re supposed to be used. It don’t play to our strengths…and it just ain’t right!” He sighed. “It ain’t what I signed up for anyway.” He spat again, hitting his first mark dead center. “I signed up to be up there,” he continued, pointing up to the sky.
Daniels looked where the sergeant pointed and squinted. “Hey, what’s that?” he asked. “There’s something up there.”
Sergeant Wilson looked up. A miniature boomerang shape could just be seen, silhouetted against the clear green sky. “Fuck!” he grunted as he broke into a run back toward the shelter. “Incoming! Get under cover now!”
He had only covered half the distance to the bunker when he heard the tell-tale shriek of the banshee bombs, and he knew they weren’t going to make it.
* * * * *
Chapter Two
Room 117, Neptune Hall, College of the Atlantic, Virginia Beach, Virginia, USA
Nigel Shirazi winced as Mr. Jamison walked toward him with the graded test papers. Reaching Nigel’s desk, Jamison paused to inspect the number written on the old-style paper, even though Nigel was sure Jamison knew it by heart. A sneer twitched across Jamison’s lips as he slapped the paper on Nigel’s desk.
With a “Hmph!” he thrust his nose in the air and proceeded to the next student in the row. “Excellent work, Miss Beach,” he praised before continuing down the row.
Nigel’s twitching fingers found the page, and he risked a look, but Jamison had put the paper face down. Of course he had.
Bastard.
Jamison would want to make it as demeaning as possible; in fact,
he was probably watching from the back of the aisle, just waiting for Nigel to take a look.
Nigel spun around in his seat. Sure enough, he caught Jamison staring back at him from the end of the row. “Is there a problem, Mister Shirazi?” He smiled, daring Nigel to reply. “Is your grade not what you expected?” The sneer was back now, in full force.
Always the emphasis on his name, as if he didn’t belong. Wasn’t it bad enough that the aliens had glassed his home country of Iran into oblivion 100 years ago? When was everyone going to let that go?
Nigel turned back around, more slowly this time, and he glared at the paper as if to read the grade on the opposite side with x-ray vision. Based on Jamison’s reaction, Nigel doubted he needed to flip the paper over.
He already knew the grade; he had failed.
It had been a battle all semester. Someone had told Jamison who Nigel was, and Jamison had delighted in making Nigel’s life miserable. The son of Sargon Shirazi, Nigel stood to inherit the family business when he graduated from college.
If he graduated from college.
Having been kicked out of his previous three institutions, this was Nigel’s last chance. Although they used the polite term, “disenrolled,” what they really meant was, “thrown out on his ass” for poor grades and fighting.
Nigel sighed. Waiting wouldn’t make it any better. He flipped over the paper aggressively, like ripping off a used stim patch…something he was becoming more and more unlikely to ever do.
At the top of the paper was the number that ended his career as a mercenary before it ever began. 36%. In red pen, Jamison had written, “Never Is Good Enough,” underlining the capital letters.
Nigel’s pulse throbbed in his ears and temples, and a red haze came across his vision. He’d kill the motherfucker. He exploded from his seat, flinging it into the next student over, and spun toward the back of the classroom to give Jamison the beating he deserved. He made it two steps before the security officers tackled him.
He got in a good elbow strike on one of the officers, whose nose exploded like an overripe melon, but then the other one hit him with a stun wand. Everything went black.
Dean’s Office, College of the Atlantic, Virginia Beach, Virginia, USA
“Well, at least you didn’t yell, ‘I’ll kill you!’ this time, so they can’t bring you up on murder charges,” Steve Rath noted with a smile as he walked out of the dean’s office with Nigel. His best friend, Steve had shown up to help plead his case, but it had been for naught; as expected, Nigel had been “disenrolled” again. “At least you’ve got that going for you. It shows you can learn, after all.”
“Yeah, ha ha,” Nigel replied. He put on a pair of sunglasses to hide the black eye one of the guards had given him after he was stun-locked. “I’m sure my father will appreciate the irony. I prove I’m not stupid by getting thrown out of school again. I doubt he’ll buy it.”
“So what’s your plan? Find another school?”
“My plan? I don’t know. It was hard enough to get into this school. I think Father promised them a million-credit endowment if they’d take me. I doubt anyone else will give me another chance, or that the company could afford to buy off another school.” He sighed. “Besides, this was my last chance. Father told me if I didn’t pass this time, I would be ineligible to take over the company.”
“Why’d you have to go after Jamison, then? Sure, he’s a prick, but that pretty much killed any chance you had of staying here.”
“I don’t know, sometimes I just…lose control. He baited me into it, almost as if he wanted me to come after him.”
“Obviously, he expected you to, or he wouldn’t have had the security force present.”
“Yeah, that was a nice touch on his part, wasn’t it? I end up with a black eye and disenrollment, and he gets a promotion for dealing with ‘such an unruly student.’ It makes total sense.”
“I still don’t understand why you had to go after him, though.”
Nigel shrugged. “I was bullied plenty as a child in Chabahar, New Persia, where I grew up. When I went to tell Father, he told me to take care of it myself. If I couldn’t deal with little things like that, how did I expect to deal with something like running one of the Four Horsemen?”
“That’s kind of callous. What did you do?”
“I took a bunch of abuse. Even more once the other kids learned that Father wouldn’t do anything. They used to say, ‘You know what Nigel stands for? Never Is Good Enough Loser.’ It built up in me, more and more, and finally one day I’d had enough. We were playing cricket, and I got put out, and one of the other kids said it while I still had the bat in my hand. I snapped, and I beat him down with it. Hard. The kid was a couple years older than me and big as shit, but I took him down with the first swing. Probably would have killed him too, if some of the other kids hadn’t tackled me. I don’t know. I remember doing it, but I wasn’t in control of myself.”
“What happened?”
“Dad paid off the kid’s parents and took care of all of his hospital bills, and I was brought to America to grow up. That part was okay. I got to spend a lot of time with my grandfather, who was totally cool. I’ve been back to Chabahar a few times, and it really sucks. The family estate is nice enough, I guess, but the rest of the city isn’t much to speak of, despite all the money Asbaran Solutions and my family has put into it.”
Nigel shrugged again. “Anyway, that nickname has followed me around ever since, no matter where I go or what I do. I thought I’d finally escaped it, but Jamison wrote it on my paper. No idea how he knew about it, or if he even meant to do it, but I was under a lot of pressure—I needed that class to graduate—and the combination of the bad grade and the note he wrote…I don’t know…I just snapped, like I did on the cricket field that day.”
“And every other time you’ve been kicked out of school?”
“Yeah.”
A black limo pulled to the curb in front of them, and Nigel sighed. “That’s probably for me.”
“You don’t sound very excited about it. Is it your family?”
“I suspect so. Remember you asked what I’m going to do now? The person in that car is probably coming to tell me what is required of me, now that I’ve failed them again.”
“Well, good luck,” Steve said as a short man in a dark, impeccably-tailored suit got out of the car and held the door open for Nigel. “Let me know how it turns out.”
Nigel got into the car and saw he was alone with the man. Normally a family member was present to admonish him or make him feel better, or whatever tactic they were using at the moment. He wasn’t sure what that meant.
The man took the seat facing him, and the car pulled away from the curb.
“Your father is sorry to see that you have let your temper get the best of you yet again.”
“Yeah, well, it was nice of him to send you to tell me that, rather than coming here himself.”
“You may not be aware, but your father runs one of the largest and oldest mercenary organizations on this planet. Its yearly budget could buy almost any country on Earth. He should be excused if he has more important matters than seeing to a son who has once again demonstrated his lack of self-control and inability to follow instructions.”
“Yeah, everything’s more important than me. Always has been, and it always will be.”
“Despite your inability to do what he asks of you, he still loves you; however, at this time your father is currently off-planet, so he couldn’t have attended this meeting, even if he wanted to. He left instructions for what to do with you before he left.”
“What? He was so sure I’d fail that he left instructions for what to do with me when it happened? What the fuck?”
“Well, sir, I’m sure even you can look at your own track record and see that what happened was a possibility.”
“Fuck you, too.”
“I understand you are having a difficult time at the moment, but there are still some matters that need to b
e addressed, based on your continued inability to graduate from college.” He opened up a briefcase on the seat next to him and pulled out a slate and a stack of papers.
“Like what?”
“There is the matter of disinheritance from the family business which must be attended to.”
“Disinheritance from the family business?” Nigel fell back into the seat, stunned.
“Yes, sir. As you were previously advised, if you did not graduate college, you would not be given the opportunity to inherit Asbaran Solutions when your father passes.” He handed the slate to Nigel. “Please sign at the ‘X,’ indicating I have advised you of this termination.”
“But, but…” Nigel sputtered.
“Come, come, Mr. Shirazi, you have been told repeatedly this day would come if you continued down the path you trod. You have now arrived at your destination.”
All emotion drained from Nigel, and his face went pale. Barely aware of what he was doing, he signed his name.
“Very well, thank you.” The man put the slate back in his briefcase. “As I mentioned earlier, your father truly does care for you. Although you won’t be given the opportunity to receive the company, he has offered you a number of other opportunities with the company. Failing that, he intends to provide funding for you to live a luxurious life, as long as you do not embarrass him, your family, or Asbaran Solutions.”
“A luxurious life?”
“Yes, a large sum will be deposited into your account every month, as long as you do not give your father the reason to terminate this benevolence.”
“So just stay away, stay out of trouble, and do whatever the hell I want?”