Tilted Axis Read online

  Tilted Axis

  Orion Axis | Book 1

  David Ryker

  Daniel Morgan

  Ryker’s Rogues

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  Wanted - Book 2

  Lockdown - Book 3

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  Contents

  I. The Capital

  Orion Colonial Axis - Timeline of Recent History

  Historical Archive Information

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  II. The Hunt

  Historical Archive Information

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  III. The Catch

  Historical Archive Information

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  IV. The Gate

  Historical Archive Information

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  V. The Noose

  Historical Archive Information

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  VI. The Drop

  Historical Archive Information

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Available Now

  With special thanks to our fantastic beta readers

  Joseph Palmer

  Reesa Tatro

  Hoke Wilcox

  Joe Cunningham

  Owen Van Straten

  Keith Dodd

  Jason Carroll

  Bernie Allen

  Ray Lee

  Lawrence Jacobson

  Michael Thomas

  David Price

  Narendr Khandel

  Rob Rowley

  Rebecca Davis

  Part I

  The Capital

  Orion Colonial Axis - Timeline of Recent History

  2197 AD - Terraforming pods of unknown origin enter our solar system

  2199 AD - First terraforming pods land on Mars, releasing vast quantities of CO2 into the atmosphere

  2218 AD - Water remains liquid on Mars

  2219 AD - “Gods Moss” algae begins to grow rampant across the surface and oxygenation begins

  2242 AD - Martian colony ship (future designation: “The Gate”) enters our solar system

  2243 AD - First contact with the “Martians”

  2244 AD - Martians begin widespread colonization of Mars

  2245 AD - “The Gate” is unveiled to humankind along with other advanced technologies

  2247 AD - The “Orion Colonial Axis” is forged between the United Nations of Earth and the United Martian Republic

  2251 AD - Widespread colonization and exploration of our solar system

  2256 AD - First colonization vessels traverse “The Gate” to nearby systems via Beacon Data Link

  2278 AD - “Axis Frontier Lawful Trade & Mining Act” is passed

  2280 AD - Corporations begin off-world colonization, mining, and exploration efforts

  2286 AD - First corporate colonization effort occurs on an exoplanet

  2291 AD - First recorded instance of hostile invasion of another colony in the Axis by a corporation is recorded

  2299 AD - OCA places “Peacekeepers” initiative into effect, a widespread municipal force to stem growing violence across the OCA

  2304 AD - Issues of corporate espionage and privatized war become endemic across the OCA

  2309 AD - Earth’s “Axis Intelligence Agency” gains new funding and places greater emphasis on waging a shadow war across the OCA in an effort to halt the continuing instances of corporate violence

  2317 AD - Initial colonization of all six exoplanets reachable via The Gate is complete

  2321 AD - Colonisation of Mars by the Martians nears completion

  2327 AD - OCA Census reveals Martian population reaches forty million across the Axis

  2328 AD - OCA Census reveals Human population reaches eighteen billion across the Axis

  2332 AD - OCA agreement that something drastic must be done to combat growing corporate issue in the Axis, by any means necessary

  2335 AD - OCA “Thessaly Treaty” is signed, sanctioning greater use of force and OCA resources to halt the growth and exploitation of colonies and colonists in the OCA by corporations or separatist factions

  2336 AD - The “Ganymede Incident” occurs

  2336 AD - Michael Ward Miller is loaned out to the Security Bureau on Mars as a show of good faith from the AIA

  2342 AD - Present day

  Historical Archive Information

  Extract Retrieved From:

  Dr. Edgar Irving’s “A Brief History of Martian Colonization”

  Published, May 2317

  The “Martians,” of course, were not “Martians” at all, and nor were they Humans, despite looking uncannily so. They, in fact, came from an exoplanet at the other end of the Orion Arm of the Milky Way — on our galactic doorstep, practically — in search of refuge. Their star, on the verge of becoming a red giant, threatened to engulf their planet. Luckily for them, a planet existed just a few light years away that was guaranteed to support life. And next to it, another one — a little red terraformable ball of dirt that the locals to this particular solar system adorably named “Mars.”

  1

  Eudaimonia, Mars

  2342 AD

  Bodies thronged in the streets, the glittering towers overhead catching the distant afternoon sun like shards of a mirror plunged in the earth.

  Martians and Humans moved as one, a single crowd flowing between the buildings, walking the same route that Tremel Chang, the first Half-Breed prime minister of the United Martian Republic, would follow in just a week’s time on his return to the capital after a three-year-long tour of the Orion Colonial Axis.

  Anna Sadler surveyed the scene from the herd, her eyes fixed on Eudaimonia’s shining skyline, her hands turned outward to feel the people moving past.

  She took a single step forward, a brief smile flickering across her colorless lips, and then she sagged to a knee and collapsed beneath the feet of the people.

  A scream rang out, footprints in blood trailing around the body. Some stopped, others ran, but no one knelt to help, and as the pool of blood widened, Anna Sadler died beneath the glittering towers.

  Nearly sixty kilometers away, Michael Ward Miller stood on the porch of his UMR provided domicile, staring out across the plains at the flat green carpet that ran endlessly toward the horizon.

  Martian bison grazed in herds, moving
slowly, eating their way toward sundown.

  Ward sighed and shivered, a cool wind blowing across the mesa. It was an unseasonable breeze that pulled at the skin on his arms and made his shaggy hair sway a little. He took another sip of lukewarm coffee, scratched at his stubbled neck, and then tossed the rest out onto the grass speckled dirt at the foot of his front step.

  He narrowed his eyes and turned a full one-eighty, the gentle knocking of the windchimes hanging off the porch overhang the only sound for a kilometer in any direction, and stared into the warm interior of his single story home.

  The isolation felt good. It suited him. It’d been three years since his handler had checked in and he was as good as a UMR citizen for real now. Sure, the UMR Security Bureau called him up every now and then to consult on something or other — to analyze an attack somewhere in the Axis, determine if it was Human separatists or Martians, or someone else. Or to advise on how best to take back a colony outpost based on who was holding it hostage. Or for something else that needed the sort of knowledge he’d acquired during his career in the military and Axis Intelligence Agency.

  He rolled his shoulder, swinging his arm in circles to loosen it. Though it was Martian tech, built just for him, to reconstruct the missing portions of his right side after the brush with an IED on Ganymede, it was still stiff at times. Their med-tech might have been centuries ahead of what they had on Earth, but he still missed his real arm. There was no replacement for actual flesh and bone, and there’d been no time to consult with him about whether he would have preferred to have had one grown.

  That particular Martian-Human joint-op had been just one more in a long string of them. The Dharwan Corporation’s private army had been terrorizing colonies all over Jupiter’s moons, sore they weren’t able to buy into the operation. They thought a little bit of unrest might drive down the stock prices of the mining companies, get some of the investors to jump ship, make an opening for them to buy up as much as they could before anyone was any the wiser.

  The Axis didn’t take kindly to that sort of thing. Not since the Thessaly Treaty was ratified, at least.

  Ward sighed and waved his hand over the door sensor, sending it hissing closed behind him.

  The villa was modest but ample. Yet he was still bored out of his mind up there. The jobs had stopped coming all together since Valvet Moozana had taken over Eudaimonia’s Security Bureau, but that was just because he was a known puritan. Mars is for Martians and all that bullshit. Not like Ward wanted to even be there.

  He looked around, wondering how long they’d let him keep it. He figured eventually some UMR guys would turn up with an eviction notice, telling him his services were no longer needed. But it hadn’t happened yet. The Earth-Mars relationship was fragile, to say the least, and if Mars booted Earth’s military envoy off the surface, then… Well, it wouldn’t do the Martians any favors diplomatically, and it’d also mean Earth would lose one of its spies in the capital. Still, some things just couldn’t be helped. He was stuck until one side decided his time in purgatory was up.

  Ward’s footsteps filled the wooden house, the aroma of Martian pine lingering in the air. He never got tired of smelling it. It was something, at least.

  His terminal beeped in the corner and lit up, a curved panel of glass.

  Ward approached quickly and ran his hand over the surface, a window opening up. Party poppers exploded, sending ribbons of color across the screen. “Congratulations!” it said. “You’ve won a free meal for one at Brannigan’s.”

  Ward laid his hands either side of the panel and hung his head. “Shit,” he muttered.

  Looked like the three-year hiatus was over.

  He grabbed his coat from the hook next to the door and stepped out into the fading sun.

  He let himself down off the mesa on his solar cycle and ten minutes later the sharp points of the Eudaimonia skyline lanced through the horizon.

  He got the hammer down on the flat and picked up speed, leaving a cloud of dust in his wake.

  Ward pulled into the city just before dusk, slowing at one of the entry checkpoints and flashing his badge. He touched his hand to his shoulder, the gesture sending the tiny projector in his UMR jacket to life, causing his credentials to appear in the air just in front of his chest — his position, rank, official identifier, and a not so flattering picture they wouldn’t let him change. He didn’t bother to stop. There was no barrier and the magic eye at the gate registered it as he passed.

  He accelerated away toward downtown, peeling off the main stretch of solar-celled conductive roadway and onto one of the ring roads that circled the metropolis.

  It wasn’t like the city was fenced in or anything, so it wouldn’t be hard to slip in without anyone noticing, or without the UMR database knowing you were inside the city limits, but it wasn’t worth trying for most. It was too difficult to stay off their radar for very long, and if they caught you in the city without having passed one of their entry points, there’d be lots of questions. And Ward didn’t have time for that. It was nearly impossible to stay out of their way forever — the street cleaning bots, the surveillance drones, doorways into any legit business or official building — all rigged with readers that scanned the biometric profile of whoever they came across. And if it flagged up you hadn’t come in through the proper channels, or even worse, that it didn’t recognize you — that you weren’t registered on the OCA, the Orion Colonial Axis, database, then you were a ‘shade’, and that was even worse. Shades caused trouble wherever they went. There was no other reason to not be on the OCA registry. It wasn’t like it cost anything, and it allowed you unfettered access to basic amenities all over the OCA.

  Basically, if you got caught somewhere without having checked in, or you didn’t officially exist, well, that was the fastest way to bring a slew Security Bureau sentinels down on you faster than you could think about shitting yourself.

  Even as the thought crossed his mind he passed one of their patrol craft, a car-sized thing with a pellet-shaped body and downturned wings where the wheels could have been. He caught the jet wash as it passed, hovering along like wasps with a curved-down ass glowing blue courtesy of the miniature fusion reactor stuck up there. The two sentinels in their domed black helmets, faces obscured by opaque visors, followed him as he rode by, their heads turning robotically until he was in their rear view. The magic eye on the front bumper had already scanned him, locked in his details, and detected that he’d checked in as he should have. It didn’t need to be asked. It was always looking.

  The sentinels kept going, zipping down the near-empty highway, patrolling the outer-limits looking for who-knows-who. Urchins picking photovoltaic cells off the roadways to trade in the city, scrubbers fighting to the death over their hauls on the salt ring that circled the city, wildlife that was getting too close. Whatever. It didn’t matter. They were basically glorified security guards, packing stun rifles or foam cannons. It was the sentinels whose faces you could see that you really had to worry about. They carried the real firepower, and knew how to use it, too.

  Ward cut left and hauled ass over a rising bridge that swept across the salt ring, fed by canals from the plains bringing in minerals. The industrial sector ran on molten salt energy, and needed regular deliveries of salt to keep it running. Scrubbers collected the salt and sold it back to the city. It was how the city kept people in work and out of trouble. It had been one of Chang’s chief policies during the election, and lo-and-behold, homelessness was at an all-time low, as was larceny.

  Hundreds of them moved around below, figures bent double with trowels and brushes, pulling up the salt crystals off the surface and shoveling them into their knapsacks. The city would pay six credits a kilo — or at least that’s what the rate was the last time Ward was there. It wasn’t much for a day’s work, but then again there was no freeloading in Eudaimonia. Nowadays, you worked or you didn’t live there. There wasn’t any other option. Some didn’t like it, but for the most part, it was conside
red a positive change, even if it wasn’t a glamorous living to make.

  The roadway wound down into the buildings, the outermost ones blasted orange by the dust coming in off the plains.

  Brannigan’s wasn’t too far away, thankfully.

  Ward’s mouth started salivating at the thought of their hot wings. He hadn’t eaten Humanese for a few months and he was getting a little sick of the Martian diet. The only food dispensaries that did drone deliveries so far out of the city didn’t deal in Human food, so he’d had to make do. Still, the opportunity to slouch into Brannigan’s and eat his fill was a welcome reprieve, even if it was a bit of a ride.

  Though the food wasn’t the reason he was going there. Not really, at least.

  He eased off the throttle and slowed to a stop on a residential street that looked like it could have been Brooklyn. The Human Quarter in the city was a good place to come when Ward was missing home, though the UMR didn’t like him mixing with Humans too much. It made them nervous, so he kept his distance. He didn’t really want to go through the whole process of convincing them of his allegiance all over again. Especially when he was lying through his ass to do it.