Her Last Run Read online

  HER LAST RUN: Part 1

  Escape from Rockwall

  A Science Consortium Novel

  by

  Michael Penmore

  A MICHAEL PENMORE book.

  First published in Great Britain in 2019 by MICHAEL PENMORE

  Book first published in 2019 by MICHAEL PENMORE

  This book published in 2019 by MICHAEL PENMORE

  Copyright @ MICHAEL PENMORE 2019

  Cover image by Juan Jose Padron

  The moral right of Michael Penmore to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1998.

  All the characters in this book are fictitious, and any resemblance to actual persons living or dead is purely coincidental.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor to be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published without a similar condition, including this condition, being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  First Edition

  http://michaelpenmore.com

  CONTENTS

  Dedication

  Cast of Characters

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Epilogue - Chapter 1

  Epilogue - Chapter 2

  Last Word - Leslie Nielsen in Underpants?

  To the power of Imagination

  which turns reading into such

  unique and individual

  experience.

  I’d like to thank my family for the patience, advice, and timely distractions. This book would not be what it is without you.

  Special thanks to my beta readers:

  Jeffery Hildebrand

  Kurtis McDowell

  David Myers

  Michael Shelton

  Some characters you will meet on the pages of this book

  Isabel Rocarion – the sassy razor-sharp gunrunner (don’t call her a smuggler) who, after half a decade of supplying arms to the beleaguered Colonial resistance, is looking forward to finally retiring from the dangerous game and settling on the ultra rich medical colony of Procyon. And not a moment too soon! With the Colonial War drawing to its inevitable conclusion, and her repertoire of tricks almost entirely depleted, Isabel must be more careful than ever. She may have fed snippets of intel to the resistance’s enemy - the triumphant Earth Expeditionary Forces aren’t known for treating gunrunners nicely, so she should hope those lubbers in uniforms understand the rules of quid pro quo.

  Nadine Chu and Rhys Dreyfus - the problematic couple returns soon after the events of Prox Doom (Fall of the Space Marine) and five years before Sigma Protocol (Jane Poole Genesis). Nadie, still a Colonial Army Corporal, is trying to deal with the emotional shock of losing the war. Rhys, the dishonourably discharged Captain of the now defunct US Space Marine Corps, is a man on the run, charged with a host of crimes. Together, they become Isabel Rocarion’s stalwart companions on her last run, even though the gunrunner thinks Rhys is as hollow as a pegleg, and keeps twisting his last name to ‘dredge fuzz’.

  Leon the chamonkey - the only chameleon-monkey cross known to man, Leon is Isabel’s faithful animal sidekick. She is fiercely protective of him, but with the invisibility cloak of a chameleon and sharp teeth of a capuchin, he can take care of himself when needed. Whether he’s an alien creature or the result of genetic manipulation, who knows? One thing is certain: Earth’s military would give its right hand for a way to copy the chamonkey’s cloaking ability.

  Jacob Pace - the Arbiter of the Colonial Congress and High Command. When his fellow Colonial leaders go quietly into Earth’s custody, Pace is the one to give Earthers the slip aboard Isabel’s ship. Melancholic, morose and mysterious, the Colonial spymaster has the task of guiding the gunrunner and her ‘cargo’ to the legendary free world of Libertalia.

  Honorary mention: Specialist Crawley - always the usher, never the groom, the man who made history (by accident, no less) and never got the credit he deserves - except here! Specialist Crawley’s a hapless, stress-eating, stress-talking Colonial Army conscript who pops up by chance and stays down by choice. He’s Pumbaa to Timon. He’s Sullivan to Gilbert. He’s... just Crawley.

  Prologue

  Beacon 139, Colonial shield barrier, Wolf 359 System

  Specialist Crawley ran. He ran like he’d never run in his 46 years of doing that hard-but-addictive thing called life. He wasn't a great runner, so he was coughing and spewing saliva all the way. He was no soldier either, just a conscript in the Colonial Army. The fighters needed him for his technical skills. Maintenance jobs on the shield barrier were numerous and mundane. Most of them were just caretaker assignments, anyone could do them really. But a few turned out to be more than that and that's when he was indispensable.

  If only there was a way to tell which flare up was a glitch and which wasn’t. Sadly, there wasn’t; he wouldn’t be neck deep in this shnitz if there was. He did everything in his assigned stretch of the forcefield. If the barrier ever went offline, the Earthers would invade Wolf 359 faster than a boy runs out of school at the end of the day. They'd bring their superior numbers and just take over. It would be the end of the resistance.

  Crawley didn’t care much for the resistance. But he cared for his life. So he gave the job the best he had in him. The best was in his head, not in his legs.

  Routine maintenance job! Simple computer glitch! That good head was shouting at him now. I should have known a flicker in the coaxial phase alignment wasn’t an accident! That it was some sneaky Earthers flimpsing with the settings on the dashboard!

  He cannon balled through a dark corridor. Admittedly, he was more of a ball than he was a cannon but Crawley really tried. Red markers on the floor led him to the exit. The passage should be lit but he flipped the power off in hope of delaying his pursuers. The control room had turned out to be flooded with Earthers so he simply pulled a bunch of cables off the wall one by one until the blackout happened.

  In the dark, he stumbled upon a couple of Earthers. And now he was running. He could hear even breaths and firm boot steps behind his back. His own breathing was all chopped up and raspy. He thought he wasn’t going to make it.

  “Hey! Stop! We just wanna talk!” a voice called after him and Crawley felt the icy spear of fear plunge into his chest. He sped up. His lungs were threatening to burst like two balloons filled to overflowing with liquid nitrogen. His legs were made of lead. His fat body was failing but his mind was telling it to go, go, go!

  Crawley heard the stories about the EEF - Earth Expeditionary Forces treatment of prisoners. It was anything but nice. His mind kept looping the image of hands reaching out from behind, grabbing him by the shoulders and pulling him back. He wished he had a protection detail, but he worked alone. He wished he hadn’t left the blaster on his runabout. He hated shooting. His pursuers didn’t share his reservations, he was sure.

  “Oh, come on! I didn’t come all this way to do this much running!” the same voice grumbled from somewhere near.

  Crawley was certain he was dead meat. Then he saw a light at the end of the tunnel. Specifically, the shimmering red emergency light surrounding a door. He had reached the corridor’s end. The door was an airlock. Specifically, the airlock behind which his ship was waiting.

  Crawley believed that his body did a lift off and flew above ground for the la
st fifteen yards. With the last of his strength, he pulled out a keycard and swiped it across the door’s lock. Red turned to green and the door parted with a hiss. He stepped past it and swiped the keycard again from the inside. The door closed. He collapsed in a heap. He made it!

  WHAM!

  Someone slammed into the door from the other side and it shuddered ever so slightly. Crawley’s exhausted body jerked on the floor. It had no energy left to react in any other way. Thankfully, the door was made of sturdy metal and kept standing. It had to. It protected the substation from the vacuum. But how long would it last?

  “Oh come on, Stevie. Open the door. I just wanna chat with ya, nothing else.” The voice outside was falsely sweet.

  “How do you know his name is Stevie?” asked someone else.

  “Shut up and give me the plasma rifle. You brought the plasma rifle, right? Oh, come on! Why do I have to do everything by myself? Stupid punker. What are you standing here for? Go and fetch it! I mean the rifle, you idiot!”

  Crawley remained still on the hard floor of his maintenance vessel and wheezed. He was on his runabout, safe for now. All his muscles and bones were aching from the run, so he just listened to a string of abuse from the EEFer on the other side. Sometimes, it was lined with dishonest promises and pleas. More often it was just pure cussing, cursing and mockery. Then one bit came that jostled Crawley out of inaction:

  “We got 100 nuke ships coming!”

  Crawley sat up. Nukes? That was an empty threat, for sure. Nukes were banned in space. Even the EEF henchmen wouldn’t bring them back. Space Marines, maybe. Those hotheads were capable of anything if the rumours were true. But Space Marines had got the chop, right? And EEFers were a different sort, more by the book. Or so he had thought. The one knocking on his door now certainly gave him cause for doubt.

  “OK, sit still, Stevie. The rifles are coming. We’ll cut through this door and then through ya. You’re not coming out alive unless ya open this door right now, ya peasy traitor Colon shnitz!”

  That was enough. Crawley had to act. He grabbed some piece of equipment and pulled himself up. The runabout was very small, there was nowhere he could hide. He went looking for that blaster and found it wedged between a wall and the back of his water dispenser. He dusted it off and turned it on. The sound of energy pooling in the chamber reassured him somewhat. But what next?

  “You got that rifle, mop stick?”

  “Yeah, Ramsey.”

  “Don't use no shonking names, ya prattlebat! Give it here! Ya hear me, Stevie? Gonna cut this open now! Last chance to come out like a good an’ polite boy ya should always be!”

  Crawley wasn’t that stupid. He smacked himself on the face and his forehead hurt slightly as he forgot he was holding the blaster in it. A minor setback that didn’t detract him from the thought: he was in his ship! He could just detach and fly away!

  The hapless Specialist worked his way into a chair that was almost too small for his frame and started pressing buttons. The blaster rolled off the instrument table, landed on the floor and landed in the other direction, disappearing from view. It wasn’t Crawley’s biggest problem.

  “No! Nonononononono!” He found out that the energy moorings wouldn’t give. The Earthers must have found a way to keep them permanently latched on to the landing gear. He couldn’t pull it back. He was stuck.

  “You asked for it, Stevie. Let’s cut this cheese!” The impertinent EEFer turned on his deadly appliance. Crawley heard the sound of a high yield energy weapon firing and holding the charge constant. He saw a small red point appear on his side of the door. The metal was heating up. It would melt away soon and then he’d be exposed to the Earther’s fury.

  “What to do, what to do!” He didn’t know. His hand dropped on a set of controls and accidentally opened a radio channel. A low murmur of people talking surprised and elated him. Someone was nearby! What luck! Frantic with fear and excitement, Crawley yelled into the airwaves, “Can anyone hear me? It’s Specialist Crawley from Beacon 139! The EEFers are here! Can anyone hear me? I need help!”

  The murmur stopped. After a few seconds, Crawley repeated his call: “I’m Crawley from the maintenance division! EEF is here! Come and pick me up!”

  Then someone responded, thankfully: “Hey there. Take it easy, Crawley. You’re on Beacon 139, you say?”

  “YES!” Crawley jumped up and down in the chair, making it creak. “I’m here! Crawley! Come quick and get me out! I can’t disengage from the airlock and Earthers are trying to get in!”

  He opted to look past his shoulder to check on the door and regretted doing it. A plasma burst chose exactly this moment to cut a small hole in the door. A bright ray of fizzling light briefly touched the wall of the runabout, leaving a black smear before the rifle operator adjusted his aim and continued cutting downwards through the door plate. The laughs and taunts of the EEFer standing in the substation corridor grew louder. The hum of the plasma beam distorted his words beyond any human’s recognition but Crawley knew the gist: he was shnitzwocked.

  “They’re getting through! Help me!”

  “Relax. Keep on talking. I’m getting your bearings as you speak.”

  “Getting my bearings?! What kind of talk is that! I’m on the beacon! On the big bright thing with the number 139 on it! You know where it is!”

  “I do now, thank you. If you look out now, you should be able to see us coming.”

  The runabout had no big windows. Crawley had to get up and jog to a tiny porthole of the port section. Outside was space, and something else. Something huge. A ship. Crawley smiled. Then Crawley stopped smiling. No. It wasn’t a single ship. A lot of ships. Big ships and small ships. Cigar-shaped ships and disc-shaped ships. A whole fleet of ships stretching as far as Crawley’s eye could see, and all of them dreadfully obvious in their purpose: to make war. The nearest ones came so close that he could recognise the marks on their canon-bristling hulls; three stars above a spaceship, the symbol of the Earth Expeditionary Forces.

  From hope to flabbergast, to despair, Crawley reeled back, gagging. He tripped himself and landed painfully back on the floor.

  “NONONONONOOOOOOOO!!!”

  “Calm yourself down, Colon. Thank you for guiding us to the hole in your shield. We overshot and were full 4 million clicks off the mark. But now we’re here and it will all be over soon. For all of you,” the man on the radio said with a vaguely concealed conceit. “I guess I should introduce myself now. EEF Naval Lieutenant Commander Strackett on EES Bandolier here. I salute you, Specialist Crawley. Fleet Admiral Stoyanov himself would salute you. You have ended this stupid and useless war once and for all.”

  This guy - Sprockett, Crockett, whatever his name - was right. The resistance was going to fall and it was all Crawley’s fault. He had flipped the power off, just to extinguish the lights, and he hadn’t thought for a minute about the wider consequences. He must have had created a wide gap in the energy shield. Now doom was flowing freely through the hole. The Earth Expeditionary armada had arrived.

  * 1 *

  Rockwall, Wolf 359 System. Seat of the Colonial Congress and High Command

  War. War never ends. It changes places and rules and ownership. For as long as there are people in this universe, there will always be war. Because people are selfish and quarrelsome. They fight, they lose, they never win. The only ones that win are those smart enough to play both sides.

  This was Isabel Rocarion’s philosophy. She was ready for her own war games to be over. The conflict which sponsored her for the last six years was finally wrapping up, and not a moment too soon. She had run out of cards to play.

  When she accepted that first small job for the resistance six years ago, little did she know the fighting would go on and on and on, and would demand so much creativity on her part to keep ahead of a constantly changing game. But let’s be realistic. A group of thinly-spread rabble-rousers couldn’t compete with the might and clout of Earth’s military machine. They gave it their bes
t and their best wasn’t quite enough. It was, however, lucrative for her business. Selling guns.

  As her clients faced the final curtain, all Isabel had to do was enter the last bastion of the resistance, get what’s hers and get back out. Oh, and make sure the man dubbed the godfather of the resistance didn’t make a run for it. The peace-loving assembly of the Earth Expeditionary Forces armada squatted in high orbit, waiting for their ultimatum to run out. They wouldn’t like the enemy leader hightailing. That would make tempers skyrocket and Isabel might be assigned the blame. She had a grand total of 55 minutes to secure the best outcome for herself. Piece of cake.

  It started in a boring way: a tediously long ride down to the underground shelter. How much time was she supposed to spend looking at her own reflection? Within the first minute, she had ensured all was in order. The eyes naturally fell on the blue lapels of the graphite-grey coat, donned over matching trousers, matching pair of leather knee-high boots laced to perfection, matching pair of suede gloves covering her hands. The first bit of skin, slightly paler than what some would call ‘normal complexion’, was on her neck. Her face was framed by a shock of blue hair with fringes starting by the left cheek, going all the way round the back, finishing over the right cheek. She loved this hairdo. It gave her attitude, as did the two purplish mirrors over her eyes; the round augmented glasses ensured no one looked her in the eye directly.

  There was a more practical reason for wearing them. The last time she’d shown someone her true eyes, they ran away, leaving a long trail of screams in their wake. She wasn’t going to repeat that mistake anytime soon. Isabel needed the resistance convinced they were dealing with a simple no-nonsense gunrunner. She needed them calm, if such a thing was possible from a family of rabbits hiding in a deep hole from a pack of wolves carrying shovels.