That would be quite a day indeed.
Sura took another swallow of her tea and gripped the helmet as if to steady herself with the distant presence of her husband. They had succeeded in finding their share of the good life, had enjoyed it for several years, and Sura hoped hard that their time together was not yet ended.
“Come home soon, Reaper,” she said aloud, as if saying it not just to herself, but to the world at large.
Orion and Cragg emerged from the forest and Sura could hear the familiar low drone of an all-terrain skiff approaching the valley. Whether it was her Samuel astride the skiff he’d taken with him or someone from the village returning his corpse remained to be seen.
Sura took a deep breath and stood with her hand on the helmet, knowing that she would have her answer soon enough.
UNTIL THAT DAY
Thank you for taking this grim adventure alongside the Reapers of Grotto Corporation.
There are no easy answers in this age of industry, none more elusive and critical as a person’s place in the world. Do we abandon a broken system to forge a new path on the edge of the frontier or do we endure the status quo until we can change it from within?
Nothing to do but take up your rifle and make a choice.
This is the final novel of what you could call the “Reaper Trilogy”, and I invite you to continue adventuring with me in an expanded universe. This series will continue in the form of stand alone novels depicting the lives and struggles of a variety of characters, some familiar and some brand new, all inter-connected in the great web of commerce and combat that is Necrospace.
Read on for a free sample of The Void
It was the single most disconcerting sight Vichna Lashke had ever seen in her life. On one side of the bridge’s view screen she could see a field of stars, the entire expanse of the Milky Way and every star system humanity had ever visited or colonized. The other side was dark, inky blackness, a true void that her mind had trouble comprehending. Sure, if she looked in the right places she might see tiny smudges of color, all that the naked eye could see of other galaxies in their own corners of the universe. Except those were few and far between, doing little to relieve the disquiet from the reminder that she was quite literally on the edge of nothingness.
She could tell that the four hired mercenaries currently on the bridge, all official members of the crew unlike her, had similar feelings. The captain, Mart Lersson, sat in their chair absently picking at a piece of skin on their thumb. It was the quietest Vichna had seen Captain Lersson since meeting them thirteen standard days ago. On the other hand, the pilot, Elric Gregs, was uncharacteristically chatty, his voice providing a constant running commentary on everything from their speed to life sign readings. The latter, of course, was completely needless out here, but simply saying that there was nothing, or that nobody could live out here, seemed to help him deal with that fact.
Like Vichna, the two remaining people on the bridge didn’t have to be here for this part. Also like her, they apparently hadn’t been able to fight their curiosity. Both Bas Merton and Lussa Dakkenspear were here as security, the reason Vichna’s backers had hired this particular mercenary team. They were the firepower in the unlikely event that they all came across something during the mission that required itchy trigger fingers. Vichna had protested using a team that included so many ex-marines and fleet members when she was helping put the mission together, but in the case of Lussa, at least, Vichna was glad her backers had outvoted her. In the previous two weeks, they had become close, even sharing a bed on occasion when the boredom of deep space got to them and they needed something (or someone) to do. Bas was a different story. Vichna couldn’t exactly say she disliked him, but he came from a planet with some very old-fashioned views not shared by the rest of the mercenary crew. All attempts Vichna had made at talking to him had been tense, like at any moment he expected her to say something offensive so he could chew her out.
The only other person on the ship was Deck down in the engine room. He was an odd one, preferring to spend his time tinkering with the space-fold drive rather than hanging around anyone else, but during the few times Vichna had interacted with him, he’d been pleasant. Captain Lersson said he was the one on the ship with the experience in these deep space missions, and the sight of all the blackness had done strange things to his personality. Experiencing the emptiness herself now for the first time, Vichna could understand.
Captain Lersson looked her direction and must have seen something worrisome on her face. “It’s not always this disturbing,” they said. “You get used to it.”
“How many times have you been out this far?” Vichna asked.
“This is my second time,” Lersson said.
“But I thought you said Deck had been to the edge several times.”
Gregs was the one who answered her. “Deck wasn’t with the marines. He was with the fleet. He served on the Merv Swansson for three years.”
Vichna certainly recognized the name of the ship. She should, considering the role it had played in the Violet and Lily Wars, which had been the subject of many of her studies. It annoyed her a little that they had such a notable veteran with them this whole time, yet no one had thought to tell her before now. Although part of that was her own fault, she supposed. The team knew that they’d been hired to escort her to find something, but to maintain secrecy, none of them had been told exactly what yet. Now they were here, though, practically on top of it from a galactic standpoint, and completely out of range for any kind of space-fold contact with any ship, colony, or inhabited planet.
“These are the correct coordinates I gave you?” Vichna asked the captain.
“We’re coming up on them. Can you finally tell us what exactly we’re looking for?”
“If you find something out here, anything at all, then obviously that’s what we’re here for.”
“Then maybe we were paid to come out here for nothing, because I’m not seeing anything.” There was a very clear note of frustration in the captain’s voice, and Vichna couldn’t blame them. All the people on the ship were right now on the very edge of the known galaxy. Here there were no outposts, no emergency supply caches, no help of any kind. It would have been dangerous if there were even anything out here to be afraid of, unless she counted the emptiness of space itself. If they went out any farther, they would vanish into the literal nothingness of the universe.
Which, of course, was why someone long ago had decided this would be the perfect hiding place.
“Finally picking up a faint radioactive signature,” Gregs said from his console. “It’s not much stronger than the background radiation. Probably wouldn’t have noticed it if we weren’t looking.” He turned to Vichna. “Is that it?”
“I think so,” she said. She actually knew so, but after so long searching for it, she almost felt afraid to jinx herself at the last moment.
“Visual?” Captain Lersson asked Gregs.
“It’s still pretty far away,” he said. “But whatever it is, it’s big.”
“How big?” Vichna asked.
“Similar to a decent-sized asteroid.” He looked to her for confirmation that was correct, but Vichna couldn’t speak. For most of her life, nearly one hundred and thirty-two years, she’d been looking for this. Granted, that only made her middle-aged, but sometimes it had felt like longer.