Artemis Files 0.5: Lexington Read online

  Lexington

  A Story from the Artemis Files Universe

  Bradley Warnes

  The Artemis Files Universe: Lexington A Story by Bradley Warnes

  Copyright © 2013 Bradley Warnes

  Published by Taslian Empire Publishing

  All Rights Reserved

  All characters, businesses and institutions in this publication other than those clearly in the public domain are fictitious, and any resemblance to a real person, living, dead, or yet to be born is purely coincidental.

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook 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 reader. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your favourite online ebook retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author

  KDP v01.01

  For Nadia & Alexandra

  Table of Contents

  Prelude

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Epilogue

  Afterword

  About the Author

  Prelude

  Galway System, Britannic Kingdom

  December, 4283

  Glittering lights were cast across the sky, sprinkled as if a giant hand had thrown them asunder so all could admire such wondrous splendour. Blinking, he tried to count the many shades and variations in colour, but there were too many and he quickly gave up at the futility of trying to measure such a miracle. Familiar smells of mulled wine and scented pine trees streamed across his face, carried upon a winter breeze so chilling it hurt the eyes. If it were warmer, it might have been perfect lying under the stars to reflect on life and the beauty of winter.

  When an acrid smell of burning plastic, rubber, and flex wafted over him, he blinked in surprise. It was at odds to the surroundings, disjointed with the harmony of shining stars above. Mixed in to the aroma, ozone and oil caught his attention to break the spell of idle contemplation.

  Turning his head to the side, he felt the hard surface of gravel and rock digging into his face, mixed with wet slush and the cold press of ice. A blinding sign sparked to life, obscuring his vision of the stars above for a moment until the sign went dark again. Dragging a hand to his face, he felt it scrape along cobblestones to bring grit and iced-water to his face.

  Puzzled, he sat up and felt pain shoot through his left shoulder, running up the neck and into the base of his skull. Lightning flashed in his vision and a wave of dizziness threatened to send him back to the ground. Breathing deep and ignoring the frosty mist when he exhaled, he fought against rising nausea from the pit of his stomach.

  “Where am I?” He asked aloud, the voice as gravelly as the surface beneath his body.

  New aches and pains began assaulting him, and combined with everything else he just wanted to close his eyes to pretend it was a dream. His knee was skinned, the flesh cut open by gravel and oozing blood that was dark in the night. He didn’t know if that hurt more than the pain in his shoulder and head. Pulling the hem of his kilt aside to stop it from brushing over the graze, he absent-mindedly reached down to pull up the white socks.

  “Ye feckin gobshite! Ye killed me da!” A voice shouted in frustration. Her tone was dripping with anger and hate, the accent from the poorer parts of the city.

  Spinning his head around, he groaned when a new torrent of pain shot into the back of his skull. While his eyes took in the sight before him, awareness came back in a rush.

  It was carnage.

  An armoured limousine lay crumpled against a row of parked cars with the front third collapsed beneath the weight of a large delivery truck. The rear door of the limousine was hanging open, and on the other side he could make out ragged edges of metal and fractured armoured flexi-glass where the rear of the passenger section had been blown open. It was supposed to be armoured against all but the heaviest of anti-tank rounds, and with the smoke rising through the air from the torn open section, he wondered how they had gotten their hands on one.

  Bodies lay sprawled in what remained of the limousine. The woman’s evening gown stained with blood and the remnants of her partner’s body where he had thrown himself over her in protection from the blast. A quick glance showed they were both dead, the unreal angle of their heads and ripped open bodies confirming it. The driver of the limousine sat half inside the vehicle, pinned under the crushed remains of the engine compartment while his glass-splattered face registered shock at an intruding length of metal impaling the centre of his chest.

  But there was someone missing, he realised with the fog slow to clear from his mind.

  Ciara had been telling them about the pending visit in the morning by her father, Lord Andrew, the Duke of Exmouth. Her face glowed with pleasure while sharing that her father was in the system with his Armoured Cruiser and upset that he couldn’t make it down in time to join them at the ballet. Speaking in rapid bursts, she told them that he was staying for Christmas before heading home to Britannia and his wife.

  The man hated him. Every time they met, Lord Andrew never hesitated to let it be known to all and sundry how displeased of the fact that his daughter was dating a commoner. It was as if the man cared not that his precious daughter had been saved from a Ukie prison camp by the commoner now engaged to her these past six months. The lord’s wife, a Taslian noble rescued after a failed diplomatic mission several years ago was more understanding. She at least, never cared whether he was noble by birth or not, and accepted him at face value.

  Shaking his head, he looked around wildly as a single, sharp gunshot rang out, the sound making a whizz-crack tone with each pull of the trigger. The slugs ricocheted off cobblestones by his leg, causing small chips of stone to rattle against the ruined car and galvanising him into action. Rolling to the side, he ignored new stabs of pain and found his fingers latching onto the grip of the pistol.

  It was slick with blood, but he tightened his grasp and forced his eyes to focus. Beside him, another body laid stretched out with a series of holes stitched across the midriff, a military issue gauss rifle still held in an arm stretched out to one side. It was one of the attackers. With the pool of blood spreading from beneath the body, he discarded it as an immediate threat.

  “I'm gonna kill ye, so jest stop will ye?” The owner of the voice announced again, the strong accent reminding him of the run-down Liberties area of the city. “Come here, ye feckin traitor, I got a present fer ye.”

  Sirens blared in the distance, but they were too far away to make a difference. At the end of the ruined limousine, he saw a figure raising a pistol in the flashing of brilliance from the sign. Her long dark hair hung in lank, oily strands that reflected the light with dullness, while the pasty white skin of her face blared hatred. It was a rounded face, almost moon-like in form and the dark eyes searched for him as she brought the pistol around to aim in his direction.

  Squeezing the trigger of his own weapon, he sent a burst of gauss slugs to strike the rear of the limousine. It sent a shower of sparks past her face from the impact and ricochets, but none hit. Ducking for cover, the movement gave him enough time to pull closer to the open door he'd dived out after the collision.

  The door on the other side was blown open but there was no sign of his fiancée. She’d been sitting there before the truck had struck them, but was missing now. The body near his feet a reminder to his slowly recovering memory that he'd already used the pistol to take out one of the attackers. Presumably the woman�
�s father according to the curses she continued to throw his way.

  Through the window, he caught sight of his attacker creeping around the rear to shoot from the other side. Ducking his head lower, he saw the ground-skirt on the limousine blocking his sight-picture of her feet. Rising back up, he forced himself to his feet and saw her crablike crouching movements clearly. Her body was highlighted against the shop windows in the background where stunned onlookers watched the assassination attempt unfold, no one daring to intervene. Releasing his breath, he fired another stream of gauss slugs and watched as the top of her head exploded like a melon, fragments of bone, hair and flesh spraying into the cool night air.

  Sliding back down to the road, he checked the clip in his pistol to see how many rounds remained. The illuminated display on the magazine gave a dim blue glow at the press of his finger on the indicator. It was half-full, ten rounds remaining.

  There were three people in the truck that hit them, a dim memory surfaced while he rubbed his chin. One carried a rocket launcher that ripped open the armoured limousine after the collision, but he had been caught in the blowback from the weapon and killed by shrapnel in the blast. The other two with gauss rifles and pistols were down, but there was one more… the one who had been watching from the park when the attack unfolded.

  He had been looking out the window at the time, studying the snow-lined trees and walls, thinking how nice it would be to wander through the gardens with Ciara after the ballet. Just a quiet, romantic moonlight walk in the snow-covered park to finish the evening; that was what he had been thinking. The sight of the watcher with a gauss rifle slung over his shoulder was so unexpected that he did a double take at the image. Before he could yell a warning, the truck hit them and it became a jumbled mess of noise, pain and screams. That man was still out there now, the fourth amongst however many other attackers.

  Pushing to the rear of the limousine and the now dead female assassin, he kicked the pistol away from her lifeless fingers. Swivelling eyes around he looked quickly for signs of where the fourth attacker was hiding. Seeing no sign of the man or Ciara, only an ever growing number of onlookers, he slid back down to the road’s icy surface. There was only one other place they could be, the park.

  Pulling out his comlink, he cleared his throat as he hit the connect button.

  “Duty Officer, this is Commander Montclare. Terrorists have attacked Governor Blaise and the limousine has crashed. We’re on All Saints Road near the corner of Hilton Terrace… two blocks west of the Opera House.” He spared a glance at the bloodied remains inside the vehicle and sighed. “The governor and his wife are dead. Duchess Langford is missing and I’m going in pursuit of the remaining attackers. Get the duty marines down here with medical assistance, have them lock onto my comlink for location.”

  So much for a quiet evening at the ballet to see ‘The Nutcracker’, he thought, as he climbed back to his feet. Holding the comlink up, he slipped through menus until the holo-display lit up with a map of the area. Zooming in, he saw the icon of Ciara’s device showing she was behind him in the park. Pushing off, he launched into a sprint toward her location, leaping over the low gate at the edge of the park and feeling soft snow crunch beneath his dress shoes.

  Wearing only a formal kilt and dinner dress uniform jacket, he wasn’t prepared for the cold. It hit him hard, bringing pain to his lungs as he gasped for breath in the chilled air and raced through the mist of his breath. Each step on the snow crunched loudly, it was only a few inches thick and as he ran around a corner of the path, he felt himself sliding out of control. The weather planners had promised four weeks of snow for a White Christmas, and despite cheering the news last week, he was now cursing them when he fell to the ground.

  Wet and covered with the fine powdery snow on one side, he pulled himself back up and studied the surroundings. The park wall was parallel to his path, and beyond that the scream of sirens with a blazing trail of light above highlighting the duty marines dropping from one of the orbital stations in a Landing Boat. They’d be another ten minutes at least, too long to help his fiancée. It was all up to him.

  Sliding along the path, it was less than a minute later that he saw her. The attacker dragging her by the hair toward another gate with the rifle slung over a shoulder and a pistol pressing against her side, forcing her to move in ungainly sidesteps with his long paces. The man had long dark hair that matched the woman he’d shot, unkempt and oily in the reflected moonlight.

  Ciara was in her lace evening dress, barely reaching mid-thigh and the top sliding off her shoulders. The cloak she’d been wearing had been discarded or lost, leaving her to shiver in the cold wind with no outer covering. In the tall heels, she tottered along giving feeble struggles against her captor, the mass of blonde hair bouncing in the breeze at her movements. The gold and gems of her jewellery shone in the moonlight, casting bright reflections to the snowy ground in radiant patterns that bobbed with her steps.

  They were close to fifty metres away, stumbling along with Ciara giving out whimpers as she was pushed and shoved along the path. Noting the man’s clothes were normal street wear with no body armour or protection, he gave a silent breath of relief. The clip in his gauss pistol contained only flechette rounds, perfect for unarmoured flesh but hopeless against anyone in a combat skin or armour.

  Without hesitation, he brought the pistol up and fired as the sight picture developed in his head, all movement completing in a planned reflex action. He’d practiced more times than he could remember and it was now a part of the muscle memory, each movement fluid and calculated without thought.

  The gauss slugs cascaded in a rising row over the man’s back, from hip to the back of the neck, throwing him forward into the snow. Ciara fell on top, dragged with the body as it fell. Surprised and shocked by the action, she wailed in terror. Still screaming, she pushed away from the body and turned with wild eyes to see who had been shooting. When her eyes fell on him, she scrambled into his arms with tears streaming down her face.

  Folding his arms around her, they waited for help as she cried into his chest. Clutching her tight, his eyes swept around the surroundings. Watching for any more threats, he warily pulled them off the path and into semi-concealment of snow-covered trees. With pistol in hand, he turned around on the spot as she sobbed against him.

  “It’s okay, honey, the marines are coming. I’ve called Government House and the alert force will be here soon.”

  Pushing back and wearily looking for his eyes, she sighed. “All I wanted was a night at the ballet.” The breath escaped her lips in a pale cloud, her hands making fists against his chest. “Just one night where I could relax and have some fun. Why did they have to spoil it?”

  Staring over to the body, he gave his own sigh. Nothing would be the same, not now. He could feel it in his bones with a gut instinct that never failed him. Change was coming and like always, he didn’t know where it would lead them.

  Patting her on the back, he whispered encouragement while watching for help. “We’ve been through worse than this in the prison camp… it’ll be okay, honey, honest.”

  Chapter 1

  Blinking to stay awake, he stared up at the chandelier and focussed on the blinding light from the crystal arrangement. There were delicate shades of the rainbow displayed, reflecting from finely ground crystal that probably cost more than his yearly salary.

  Ciara spun around, the action drawing his attention with the full brandy balloon spilling its contents from her motion. Ignoring the stain spilling down her robe and across the carpet, she thrust the glass toward him.

  “Just one night, that’s all I wanted, Bren!” The words dripped with the Merovingian accent from her finishing school, never quite lost over the years.

  The accent appealed to him, although she might be shocked to learn that it was because of another woman long before their relationship flowered. After graduating from the naval flight school, his first tour in a torpedo boat squadron had been on deployment
to the Merovingian worlds to lend support in a border war against neighbouring Franks. Over those long months he’d come to love the sound of the language while he and his fellow crews defended a key system and mixed with the local population. It had left a deep impression upon him, and was one of many reasons he’d been attracted to Ciara when duty and the navy brought them together on deployment.

  Pulling his mind back to the present, he dragged himself up from the plush chair, ignoring the nagging ache of his earlier wounds. Taking the glass from her, he made to pull her close but she evaded him. Pushing her hand into his chest, she kept him at bay. Light framed the blonde curls like a halo, hiding the bleary red-rimmed eyes from his sight.

  Taking a deep breath, she regained her composure after the outburst. “Listen, daddy called when you were in the bathroom. He’s popping down in the morning. Apparently, it’s all over the news-streams.” She lifted her own glass of brandy and drank large gulps of the dark amber fluid as if quenching a parched throat. “He was ready to send all his marines down as well, bless his heart.”

  “Honey, I’m sorry.” He said, taking a measured sip from his glass. “I know it was my idea to go with the governor tonight, but if I had known there were….”

  Poised, with a hand on her hip, she regarded him through that piercing stare her family seemed to have mastered. “It’s not as if it was your fault… however daddy told me what they’re saying. Those assassins had Britannic military issue weapons and they knew the route we were taking… so everyone is speculating that an insider helped them.”

  He felt his chest go tight as her words sank in, knowing what she was going to say next. In a cold voice, he spoke before she did. “And because I’m from Galway and was involved with the rebels when I was a kid, they’re thinking it was me?”