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  Iron Legion

  Books 1-4

  David Ryker

  Daniel Morgan

  Ryker’s Rogues

  Available Now

  Check out all the other titles currently available in the Iron Legion series, and download your FREE copy of the Iron Legion Novella, Veteran!

  If you’re a fan of military science fiction, why not check out my other series, Fugitive Marines, co-written with Douglas Scott. It’s the A-Team, in space, and the first four books are available now!

  Fugitive Marines

  Framed - Prequel

  Breakout - Book 1

  Wanted - Book 2

  Lockdown - Book 3

  Uprising - Book 4

  But that’s not all! Dan Morgan and I have also just released a brand new Sci-Fi Thriller series, Orion Axis. Think Jack Reacher in space! You can get your hands on Book 1 now.

  Orion Axis

  Tilted Axis - Book 1

  Contents

  Recruit

  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

  Soldier

  Prologue

  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

  Epilogue

  Hunter

  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

  Warrior

  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

  Epilogue

  Available Now

  1

  Planet: Genesis-526

  Earth Date: 2734AD

  All the glasses on the table rattled as a freighter swung around our little dustball and slingshotted into deep space.

  I sighed and watched the surface of my drink settle, drumming slowly on the side of it with my index finger.

  “All’s I’m saying is that,” Zed belched, “Ninety-Three could definitely benefit from a Sim-Stack.” He shrugged and drained his last dregs of beer before slamming the cup down. He was a skinny guy, a Tuber like me — grown for purpose — with a shaved head.

  Sybil squinted at him, one eye half closed. He was older, Ex-Federation Ground Corps. Dishonorable Discharge. I watched him choose his words, fishing drunkenly for them in his after-work haze. It was crazy that, for anyone from off-world, getting shipped to Genesis-526 and being put on terraforming duty was just about the worst punishment conceivable, but for us Tubers, it was a career. And a life-long one at that. I smirked abjectly at the thought. Not like we had a choice, though. I stared at the flat surface of my beer, watching it bubble slowly. I wasn’t much in the mood for drinking. I wasn’t much in the mood for anything.

  “Sim-Stack, eh? You just want to,” Sybil hiccoughed, “get your digital di—”

  “Hey!” Zed cut back in, beating on his chest with his fist. “I appreciate the fine form of a woman as much as any guy — probably more so considering how few of them the almighty goddamn Federation saw fit to grace this barren rock with — but that’s not what I’m talking about.”

  “For once,” snorted Crash, the ex-Federation cargo pilot who’d ploughed into one of the moons off Zebox while he was flying shitfaced. They called him Crash for obvious reasons.

  “I’ve never been off this fucking planet, alright?” Zed snapped, sucking on his empty cup. “I’ve never seen anything other than fucking dirt and algae. I don’t want to die here, not without seeing somewhere else, something else.”

  I grimaced but stayed quiet. I knew that ache.

  “Listen, kid,” Sybil kicked back in, sighing, “the universe ain’t all it’s cracked up to be, alright? Terraforming for a colony planet’s not a bad gig. It’s safe, secure, and you’re making a decent—”

  “You developed Stockholm Syndrome, or are you just a fucking idiot, Syb?” Crash drained his beer and cocked an eyebrow.

  I looked at the three of them, an utter bunch of misfits, and wondered how the hell, firstly, that it was our responsibility to turn an entire planet into something habitable, and secondly, that I’d somehow managed to throw in with three guys I could barely stand. I shook my head. I could already see how the conversation was going to go — Syb and Crash would start arguing about the Federation, both ragging on it and defending it at the same time, angry at themselves for fucking up their lives and getting stuck down here. And Zed would just get shitfaced, and then cross them both, and then they’d brawl, get kicked out, and we’d get stuck with the bill for the damages. And I’d have to foot my part, despite not being involved at all. I was sick to my back teeth of it — of them. And then, after all was said and done, they’d stagger home and fall into bed, wake up hungover and bruised, go to work, pretend like everything was aces, and then go do it all over again.

  I left my drink untouched and stood up, pulling on my jacket.

  “And where d’you think you’re going?” Zed piped up.

  I tried to smile but found it hard. I knew this was my lot in life, but I didn’t want to get reminded of it every single night. “I’m not feeling drinking tonight. I’m gonna see if I can’t squeeze in some overtime.”

  I watched as their faces contorted into looks of utter disapproval at my intention to do any more than the bare minimum required by the Federation. In truth, my options were either stay and listen to their bullshit, head back to my cramped little hab and lie in bed staring at the ceiling until sleep swallowed me up, or get back to work and earn a few extra credits. At least the last option might afford me a little bit of luxury that might
just make my existence slightly less unbearable. The salary we got was hardwired into the central system from the Federation protocols that governed the universal currency — Federation Credits. It was practically impossible to earn enough money to do anything other than sleep and eat. And if you wanted to drink, you had to forgo one of the others. Syb and Crash, for all their bickering, shared a hab like a pair of kids, freeing up enough cash to get drunk enough every night in a bid to forget they were consigned to this life until they both died of old age — or cirrhosis, whichever came first. Any way you spun it, things were spread thin. But I guess that was the point. It’s how the Federation wanted that. It kept us in line — kept us from going anywhere or doing anything. Kept us controlled.

  “Overtime?” Crash laughed. “Fucking scab.” There was venom in his voice, like it was an affront to him. If he wasn’t so sour about his own sorry life, or didn’t have a habit that needed quenching, he’d probably be out there too. They all would. But he did, and they did, so it was easier to try to make me feel like shit than to own up to the misery of their own damn lives. I just let it roll off my back. I was used to it.

  The others mumbled in agreement. I shrugged and turned away, waving over my shoulder. Before I even reached the door, they were back to talking about the Federation, and how it was fucking them three ways from Sunday. Underpaid. Overworked. Underappreciated. Because, of course, who wouldn’t want three discontented and semi-violent drunks on the payroll?

  The Federation didn’t care though. They were just making noise — Crash, Syb, Zed — blowing off steam. They were just one group in a thousand just like them that haunted every settlement from here to the poles and back. Genesis 526 was about as far as things got from a happy planet. But that wasn’t to say there wasn’t a certain sense of solidarity. The Federation fucked everyone equally, at least. It’s what they did, and no one could do a damn thing about it. They just about ran half the settled universe.

  I walked the length of the steel catwalk outside Marcy’s, the worse of the two bars in Ninety-Three, which was the abbreviation of ‘Settlement #93’, just one of the hundreds of terraforming settlements on Genesis-526. The place itself was a mess of stacked habs — aluminium blocks that passed for housing — loaded on top of each other, tied together by catwalks and walkways, covered by a huge dome. In a couple hundred years, the dome would come off — but for now, the air outside was lethal, so the dome stayed, keeping us safe, keeping the air in. Keeping the stink in. I hacked it out of my throat and spat over the railing, watching it sail into the murky depths below. It splatted on the ground with a dull slap, hidden in the darkness. A grunt of indifference rang up, like a half mouthed swear word. People lived on the ground — but no one bothered with them. They were fade-outs. We called them that because that’s what they did. They just faded out. Either they stopped working, or retired, or just pissed away their credits until they couldn’t cover hab-rental. Either way, they lived under tarps, sleeping on anything that kept them off the ground, sludgy and algae-covered as it was. No one went down there if they could help it. The fade-outs didn’t take kindly to workers. They’d shiv you for a couple of credits. They had nothing and the Federation wouldn’t do shit about them — nothing except scrape them up and toss them outside the dome when they finally did fade.

  I pushed the thought out of my mind and kicked down off the catwalk onto another one, clearing the miniature ladder connecting them. The fade-outs didn’t need thinking about, or pitying. Everyone was scrabbling for what they had and there wasn’t enough left over to even consider charity. They were just the ones who’d given up. I grit my teeth and kept moving. My Blower was calling. It was the only place I felt comfortable. Most ‘formers hated the claustrophobia of it, but for me it was the opposite. I liked the isolation, the feeling of protection, the feeling of power, of moving something big like that, of having so much strength at my fingertips. Helped to balance the powerlessness I felt the rest of the time. It was a prison without bars.

  I went on autopilot, and before I knew it I was scanning myself into the airlocked hangar of one of the surface ports using the Federation barcode on my arm. The Blowers, terraforming machines like snowcats, with treads and autonomous arms, were lined up in a row — mine, Zed’s, Crash’s, Syb’s. I headed across the catwalk suspended over them and dropped onto the roof of mine with practiced ease.

  I popped the hatch and climbed into the cockpit, a windowed bubble equipped with a chem shower for decontamination following a walkabout, and not much else. I pulled the hatch shut after me and basked in the silence as it sealed.

  The hangar was dark and still, and the only light in the cockpit was coming from the clock on the center console that told me it was about two hours to sundown.

  I settled into the driver’s chair, sponge bulging from the cuts and gouges in the fabric, and pulled on my headset. I pushed the ignition switch and the system buzzed to life, the console lighting up. Telemetry and readouts filled the glass in front of me, and then settled into the corners, and a big smiling face popped up in the middle of the screen.

  “Sal,” I sighed, at ease at last.

  “Good evening, James,” she said in her dulcet tones. “A little late for work, isn’t it?”

  Sal was about as close to a woman as I’d ever been. The settlement wasn’t exactly a hotspot for them. Without them there, it was one less thing for the drunken, dishonorable terraformers and traders to fight over. As such, they were few and far between — one worked at Marcy’s, but she wasn’t into guys, and didn’t take shit from them either. I’d seen her beat more than a few in fist fights, so no one really gave her a second look. Other than that, I wasn’t sure I knew another one. But it didn’t really bother me. You couldn’t miss what you’d never had. Sal was the closest I’d ever come, and that was alright for me. I shrugged. “Never too late to earn some money.”

  “If you say so. What would you like to do?”

  I took a breath and reached for the joysticks, pushing into the throttles with my heels — one for each track. “Pull up all the available overtime jobs.”

  “Of course.” The screen filled with a list of titles and descriptions, none of which seemed appetizing.

  “Prioritize those with the highest pay.”

  “What’s the magic word?”

  “Please,” I laughed. Sally was full of sass for an AI. Her old driver must have been more polite. Or maybe she just liked to remind me who was in charge.

  “Sorting.”

  The jobs rearranged and I expanded a few, casting them aside with a swipe of my finger. I wasn’t looking for anything hard, or dirty. “Any suggestions?”

  “I can see that a radio relay is in need of repair.”

  “How far out?”

  “Thirty-one kilometers.”

  “That’s a trip.” I rubbed my eyes. The other option was just going back to the bar, and the thought of that was even worse than trekking thirty kilometers into the desert at seven at night. “Screw it.” I tapped on the job and marked it ‘IN PROGRESS.’ Sally pulled up the coordinates and plotted a course. The telemetry showed up in a dotted line on the windscreen. A tiny green blip flashed in the distance, somewhere beyond the hangar doors.

  “Whenever you’re ready, James. Systems are all functioning correctly.”

  “Thanks, Sal. How about some music?”

  “What would you like?”

  I smirked. “How about some rock?”

  “Martian?”

  “Earth, for a change.”

  “Would you like me to choose?”

  I hit the button for the airlock doors and they began to part in front of me. The cab rocked gently as the air washed out and normalized the pressure. “Sure. Make it a classic. Pre-Expansion.”

  I planted my feet and we rumbled into the desert beyond Ninety-Three just as Born to be Wild kicked up.

  It took almost an hour to reach the coordinates. It turned out that it was a simple enough thing — a cable exchange t
hat needed rerouting. Usually, it was droid’s work, but just like everything on Genesis-526, the droids seemed to be too broken down to do their jobs. The Federation was supposed to take care of all that — delivering supplies, providing new equipment, but they didn’t. It was a big job, looking after a thousand planets, and some little dust ball at the edge of an undeveloped system wasn’t at the top of their priorities list. So here I was, doing droid work. And yet, the peace and quiet was almost nice. And of course the extra credits were a welcome bonus.