Path of Tyrants (Backyard Starship Book 13) Read online

  Copyrighted Material

  Path of Tyrants Copyright © 2023 by Variant Publications

  Book design and layout copyright © 2022 by JN Chaney

  This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living, dead, or undead, is entirely coincidental.

  All rights reserved

  No part of this publication can be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without permission in writing.

  1st Edition

  CONTENTS

  Don’t Miss Out

  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

  Epilogue

  Glossary

  Join the Conversation

  Connect with J.N. Chaney

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  About the Authors

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  1

  I smiled as the comm lit up with B’s face.

  “Hello, B. What can I do for my favorite bug?”

  She waved her antennae in a gesture that somehow seemed vulgar. Then she beamed at me, her smile brilliant and wide.

  “Wish it was a social call, but—"

  “Hit me. No sense wasting sugar on me.”

  Her smile fell, but not entirely. “I just got a report from a contact on Spindrift, that he intercepted from a traffic control buoy on the edge of the system. There’s a ship heading outbound at about one-third light-speed, going nowhere in particular.”

  “Okay, and?”

  “And, I was hoping you could check it out.”

  I frowned and glanced around the Fafnir’s cockpit. “We’re en route to Pont Alus Kyr. We’re bringing them the latest version of the Calamity-Killer patch for their systems, since they’re still working under the old quarantine rules. Can’t someone else do this?”

  She gave me a look of apology. “I’d take care of it myself, except I’ve got a cooler full of vaccines headed for Gajur Prime. They’ve got a bad outbreak of Beta-hemorrhagic fever, and we want to nip it in the bud so it doesn’t set back their Calamity recovery efforts.”

  “That’s a nasty fever.”

  “Lethal. And I do mean lethal. It cooks the Gajur in their own skin, and this strain attacks children first, adults later,” she added, her eyes hooded with sadness. B had treated masses of people in her decades as a physician.

  And she’d lost a lot of them, too. It stayed with her. I could see it in her eyes.

  I exhaled, slowly. “I get it. But… what’s so important about this particular ship anyway? Is it an active target for us? For the Guild?”

  “No, but it is headed roughly for Altair, where it should arrive in about four hundred years. In other words, it’s an anomaly. And I don’t think I need to point out how anomalies in our post-Calamity world make people nervous.”

  I blinked at that data. “Netty, how far out of our way is a Spindrift detour? And maximum fuel economy, please.”

  “If we don’t need to enter the Spindrift gravity well, then not very far. Say two hours, plus whatever time we spend there.”

  “This rogue ship is outside the gravity well,” B clarified.

  “Okay. But you owe me a—call it a minor favor, anyway.”

  She managed a respectable leer. “Oh, I can pay you back. You just say where and when.”

  Torina looked up from her workstation and cleared her throat, then pasted a bland smile on her face. “Yes, dear, you just say where and when.”

  I changed my voice to a stage whisper. “Cool it, B. She’s wise to us—ouch. Uncalled for, and unbecoming an officer of your standing, love.”

  Torina examined the hand she punched my shoulder with. “You’re too lean for a good punch. Gotta thicken up, babe.”

  Perry leaned in between us. “Excuse me, I would like to point out that this is an official Peacemaker ship on official Peacemaker business. These hijinks are inappropriate.”

  “Yeah, you’re poisoning my workplace,” Icky added from her own workstation.

  I glanced at Perry. “Hijinks? Really?”

  “Escapades? Shenanigans? Antics?”

  Funboy added a derisive sniff. “Violence leads to the dispensation of body fluids, and I cannot abide that.”

  Gabby leaned around her chair, teeth bared in her cartoonish smile. “I think you got the wrong f word, Funboy. It’s not fighting that does that, it’s—”

  Funboy stopped wiping his hands and smiled. “Perhaps I was wrong. I tend to be hasty with my, ah, assertions, and—anyway. You were saying?”

  I snorted and pointed Funboy toward his chair. “Take your station, lover boy, and leave the nuances of language to me for now. B, we’re on our way this instant. I’ll report back with our findings.”

  “Thank you kindly, my dear,” she replied, then gave Torina a warm smile. “As a friend, and a woman with some understanding of, ah, the male libido—”

  Torina arched a brow. “Yes?”

  B’s grin turned wicked. “Let Funboy pursue his… passion.” She cut her eyes at Gabby’s area, then waggled her brows. “B out. Good hunting. To all of you.”

  The comm cut, leaving us laughing at B’s jab.

  I turned to my crew, who waited for orders. “Looks like it’s yeehaw, kids. Let’s go rope a little dogie.”

  “That’s… a reference to the terrestrial genre called Western, correct?” Funboy asked.

  “Yes. Yes, it is.”

  “Ah. Well, then. Let us don our Jetson hats and cowboy up.”

  “Stetson hats. Jetsons are a futuristic family with a talking dog.”

  “Astro, yeah. I think he’s descended from Scooby-Doo,” Perry added.

  Rab, who’d been silent for some time, opened his mouth to speak, thought better of it, then broke his silence while shaking his head. “This is the weirdest crew I’ve ever worked with.”

  I grinned as Netty ran the pre-twist checklist.

  Icky belched, then scratched idly at one huge foot as Funboy watched in mild disgust. “Rab, buddy, you ain’t seen nothing yet.”

  I watched the tactical overlay as we closed on the rogue ship. She was traveling at about point-three of light-speed, her course straight, with no acceleration.

  “Where the hell is she going?” I asked no one in particular.

  “B said Altair,” Torina answered, then tagged the route on our main screen. The faint blue line went on into eternity, if not for the gravity well of Altair.

  Netty spoke, even as she highlighted Torina’s route prediction. “Actually, on its present course, and taking into account foreseeable gravitational effects, she will slingshot around Altair and continue in the general direction of a star called TNS-8974A, where she will arrive in about three thousand years. In other words, nowhere fast.”

  We were banging away with active scanners, painting a detailed picture of the ship. She was about two-thirds the mass of the Fafnir but had a strange thermal signature. A section of her hull was markedly colder than the sections forward and to the rear. She had a working reactor, and therefore power, but she hadn’t reacted to our sensor pings at all. Nor had she responded to any of our comms, or really emitted anything of note at all.

  I felt my own chill of unease and caught Perry’s eye. He dipped his beak, head tilted in curiosity. He might have been made of different material than me, but he felt the same twinge of danger.

  We edged closer. Now we were close enough to capture some detailed imagery, which Netty put on the master display.

  “Those viewports in the cold section—are they covered with ice?” Torina asked.

  “Looks that way,” Perry replied.

  “Why would part of the ship be frozen?” Rab asked.

  “Maybe different environments for different passengers?” Torina offered, shrugging.

  “Well, let’s find out. We’ll use the Frankie to board her—me, Icky, Perry, and Funboy. Full suits, of course. Torina, you, Rab, Netty-P, and Gabby watch the fort here.” I started to unstrap but stopped. “Netty, we’re still in the outer reaches of the Spindrift system’s Oort Cloud, right? There aren’t any collision hazards coming up?”

  “Frankly, Van, I’d be surprised if this ship hits anything of substance anytime in the next billion years or so.”

  “I’ll tak
e those odds,” I said, standing. “Let’s go.”

  “I guess that frozen section over there means we should… stay frosty,” Perry said as we headed aft.

  I gave him a look. “Netty, post a listing on the Guild marketplace. For sale, one bird. Stale jokes and mild sass. Price negotiable. Joke book from 1987 included.”

  Funboy spoke up after gracing us with his horrific attempt at a friendly grin. “I thought it was a laudable attempt at levity. It isn’t often that states of matter figure prominently in humor.”

  Perry stopped, perched on the galley table. “Okay, if sourpuss likes it, I definitely need new material.”

  I clapped my hands. “Congrats, Perry. You’re growing as a comedian. Slowly, but definitely growing.”

  We tried to mate the Frankie to the rogue ship’s universal docking adapter, but an unseen issue prevented latching or forming an airtight seal. That forced us to back out and do it the old-fashioned way, crossing to the mysterious ship—

  —and breaking into her. With force.

  “We’ve confirmed the registry of this thing,” Perry said as we prepared to exit the Frankie and cross to the other ship. “It’s a so-called ‘bugout tube,’ a non-twist-capable ship used as a big escape pod. It has a high output fusion drive that can accelerate it to about one-third of light-speed, so it can be used to quickly escape a station facing a catastrophe—like if Spindrift was about to explode, they could use these things to bug out. What it’s not built for is trips into the big black on random trajectories.”

  “It could be argued that every ship is built to do that. Whether they’re intended to, though, is another matter,” Funboy said.

  Perry stared at him. “Uh—yeah. Baron Von Nitpick here has shown me the error of my ways. I stand humbly corrected.”

  “You know, I’m starting to lose track of which of you is the pedantic, soulless AI,” Icky said, snapping her helmet into place and glancing from Funboy to Perry.

  “There is nothing A about my I. In fact, I am quite I. I’ve been tested,” Funboy replied.

  Icky sniffed. “Smart and sexy. Hold me back.”

  Funboy eyed her thick frame. “With what? A tugboat?”

  Icky grinned, then flexed a massive leg. “Thank you.”

  I closed the Frankie’s inner airlock door. “If we’re done with the banter, suit integrity checks, please, so we can get this show on the road.”

  I depressurized the lock, opened the outer door, and pushed myself toward the other ship, which was hanging about a hundred meters away. Once I could unlimber my maneuvering unit, I puffed it and aimed myself at the other ship’s lock.

  I moved aside when we reached it, giving Icky space to work. She was going to try to pick the lock. If she couldn’t, then I’d use the Moonsword to literally hack the lock. I’d rather avoid that, though, because I didn’t want to risk depressurizing the ship if there were still crew—possibly injured, or even incapacitated—on board.

  Icky poked at the external lock controls while the rest of us clung to nearby bits of the ship. Time passed, then she grunted.

  “Okay, plan B,” she said, extracting a combination tool from her harness. She used it to open the panel, then she fiddled around inside with one of her smaller, more dexterous hands. After a moment of that, she grunted again, this time in satisfaction as the lock slid open.

  “Totally off-the-shelf hardware—and just the manufacturer’s default password, to boot. Easy-peasy,” she said.

  I nodded inside my helmet. “Good work, big girl. I’ll go first,” I said, pulling myself from one stanchion to another, closer to the airlock, snapping my tether from one to the next as I went. “Icky, you follow, then—”

  Without warning, I abruptly fell away from the ship and plunged toward the Frankie as weight slammed through my arms. My fingers ripped free of the stanchion, and I plummeted away from the ship, before stopping with an “OOF!” as my tether went taut.

  I barely had time to even begin reacting before Torina’s voice hummed in my ears.

  “We’ve just been lit up by another ship, about ten thousand klicks to starboard high and—shit, missiles inbound!”

  I cursed and gripped my tether, but I was effectively trying to pull twice my weight up a rope using only my arms. The bug-out ship was maneuvering, thrusters flinging propellant spaceward in pale cones.

  I cursed again.

  If its main drive kicked in, our tethers likely wouldn’t hold, and we’d be stuck with whatever velocity we had at that instant, meaning we’d be sailing off in some random direction into deep space.

  Assuming we weren’t vaporized by the exhaust.

  Funboy’s voice hummed in my ears. “Oh, dear.”

  “Funboy, you okay?” I hissed through gritted teeth, still desperately trying to pull myself back to the ship. If I couldn’t in another few seconds, I was going to have to unhook my tether and hope for the best.

  “For the moment, I’m fine—and by fine, I mean on my way toward the galactic core. I was repositioning my tether when this happened.”

  I caught a glimpse of him out of my peripheral vision, already a small, suited figure starkly alone against the stars. Then he slid out of my view.

  “Damn it! Perry, where—”

  “Heading back to the Frankie. I’m going after sourpuss.”

  “Sourpuss appreciates it,” Funboy said.

  I pulled in a breath. “Icky?”

  “Just—a sec—” she replied, her voice taut with strain. I turned my head and saw her stuck on the end of her tether like me. Unlike me, though, she was actually dragging herself back to the spinning ship, all four of her arms yanking her, a bit at a time, to the airlock.

  I finally gave up and put my hand on my tether release. It would probably be easier for Perry to retrieve me the same way he was going after Funboy. First, though—

  “Torina, SITREP!”

  I could see the Fafnir in the distance, streams of point-defense tracers pouring from her. A second or two later, she opened up with her swarm launcher and loosed a torrent of small, guided projectiles at her attacker, which was much too far away for me to see, of course.

  “So far—”

  A dazzling flash pulsed from her direction, momentarily washing her out of my sight. I gasped, but Torina spoke up.

  “—so good, though that one was close.”

  “Torina, we’re going to—”

  A new voice cut me off.

  “Torina? It’s your mom.”

  “Mom? What—?”

  “Are you busy, hon?”

  “Uh—yes, I’m fighting a space battle!”

  “Oh. Well, call me when you’re done.”

  “I—yes, sure, okay!”

  “I hope you’re not just saying that. You said you’d call last time, too, and you never did. There’s always something—”

  “Mom! Space battle! Missiles, guns, lasers, explosions! I will call you back!”

  “Fine.”

  “Parents, am I right?” Perry asked.

  Icky had reached the airlock and pulled herself inside. All I could do was hang on the end of my tether as the bug-out ship swung and spun. I saw the Frankie slide past on its way after Funboy. Another explosion pulsed from the direction of the Fafnir, and a few seconds later, something streaked past me maybe two meters away. Shrapnel, from the detonation.

  “For future reference, gang, I much prefer watching one of these space battles from inside a ship, thanks,” I said, trying to force some levity into my voice when what really prodded at the back of my throat was a wild cry of frustrated, helpless rage—

  But the ship pulling me along suddenly halted in a staccato ripple of thrusters, the acceleration abruptly vanishing. Momentum left me sailing directly toward the now-stationary hull.