The Lazarus Particle Read online

  ALSO BY

  LOGAN THOMAS SNYDER

  The Disappeared (A Silo Story)

  This Mortal Coil

  ANTHOLOGIES

  WOOL Gathering (A Charity Anthology)

  THE LAZARUS PARTICLE

  LOGAN THOMAS SNYDER

  THE LAZARUS PARTICLE

  LOGAN THOMAS SNYDER

  All rights reserved. Except as permitted under U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or private retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the author.

  Cover design by TheCoverCollection.com

  For all the wannabes.

  The world deserves your story.

  Don’t ever let anyone tell you otherwise.

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  PART I

  01 • THE FUGITIVE

  02 • THE ADVOCATE

  03 • THE HUNTREX

  04 • REPRESENTATION

  05 • GODMONSTER

  06 • UNDER REVIEW

  07 • VENOM

  08 • BEDSIDE MANNER

  09 • RAD SPIKE

  10 • BREAKOUT

  11 • ESCAPE

  12 • OVERCOM

  PART II

  13 • FRONT LINES

  14 • STIRRING THE POT

  15 • DISCORD

  16 • FATALISM

  17 • FRUITION

  18 • AFTERMATH

  19 • TURNABOUT

  20 • FAIR PLAY

  21 • REUNITED

  22 • COLLABORATION

  23 • B.F.B.

  24 • LAZARUS

  PART III

  25 • FALLOUT

  26 • CLANSTRIKE

  27 • KALIFKA BAZAAR

  28 • REPRISAL

  29 • TRANSGRESSIONS

  30 • EDEN PRIME

  31 • POLITICS

  32 • BEDFELLOWS

  33 • BANSHEES

  34 • TIER ONE

  35 • PTSVY

  36 • WAR GAMES

  PART IV

  37 • BUTCHER’S BILL

  38 • ANOMALIES

  39 • NEW BLOOD

  40 • HOMECOMING

  41 • INCURSION

  42 • COMPLICATIONS

  43 • DEFIANCE

  44 • ATTRITION

  45 • PROXIMITY

  46 • SINGULARITY

  47 • COMEUPPANCE

  48 • THRESHOLD

  EPILOGUE I / EPILOGUE II

  PART I

  01 • THE FUGITIVE

  Fenton drummed a pensive beat atop the holobar. He watched, transfixed by the whorls of color blooming across the touch-sensitive surface depending upon the rhythm and weight of his strikes. He could have just as easily busied himself with bar games or a feed of local system news or any number of other things. In his current state, though, he far preferred ambient mode. Between the booze and the kaleidoscope-like dance of pretty colors, it gave his mind license to wander.

  Because he hadn’t done enough of that over the last six months, after all.

  “Here you go, chief.” The graybeard working the bar placed a large beaker glass before him. A series of pale blue rings rippled away from the bottom of the beaker like a puddle disturbed. A soft chime indicated the drink had been added to his already substantial tab. Inside the beaker, a cloudy green liquid the color of sea foam sloshed from side to side as it settled into place.

  “Thanks,” Fenton murmured. He reached for the beaker with a trembling hand.

  The bartender arched a brow, eyeing Fenton’s shaky grip as he brought the beaker to his lips. “You look about ready to call it a night there, chief. How about you go ahead and settle up?”

  Fenton had already killed half the contents of the beaker, twin streams trickling down his chin as he upended the rest. It tasted like rocket fuel and went down about as smoothly as broken glass. Not that he was complaining. Thumping the empty beaker back onto the bar with a grimacing swallow, he nodded. His head was swimming in all that green booze and all he wanted was to hit the rack in the room he’d rented in the housing block across the concourse. “Yeah, that’s probably a good idea.” He was searching his pockets for his bitcred stick when he felt a hard protrusion dimple the small of his back. His posture straightening and his jaw stiffening, Fenton lifted his eyes to see the graybeard reaching beneath the bar none too subtly.

  “I would not,” a throaty voice purred from behind him. “Just one of these flechette rounds will make cat food of his insides before it punches through his belly into your own. It would take all of a second, two if you are lucky.” A note of amusement crept into his assailant’s voice as she added, “Tell me, are you feeling lucky?”

  The bartender lifted both hands slowly, fingers splayed wide and empty. “I don’t want any trouble, lady.”

  “Nor do I.”

  “Kid does owe me, though.”

  Fenton stood stock-still, gripping the bar as a lick of exasperated breath unfurled upon the back of his neck. After a moment of tense deliberation a hand flicked out from behind him, almost too quick to be seen. The holobar chimed brightly, indicating a bitcred transaction in the wake of that too-quick movement.

  “I trust that will cover the balance of his tab, as well as the cost of your silence.”

  The graybeard grinned crookedly, wiping his hands of the situation. “And then some. Pleasure doing business with you.”

  “Likewise.”

  “Son of a bitch,” Fenton hissed.

  “What can I say, chief? She’s a better tipper than you.” He gave a shrug that would have almost passed for sincere but for the hefty payday he had just earned off of Fenton. “Better luck next life.”

  Fenton hawked and spat after the bartender as he made a hasty, obsequious exit into the back room. Not surprisingly, he came up well short of his intended target. He sighed as the realization he had finally been captured began to sink in past the layers of alcohol his brain was currently marinating in.

  “So,” he wondered of the mysterious woman behind him, “what’s the plan?”

  “The plan is I deliver you to Commander Orth on Orbital Station Tau and collect the price on your head. Then, I move on a very rich woman.”

  Fenton inhaled sharply through his teeth. “Gotta say, I’m not a big fan of that plan…”

  “Shame for you I have no interest in hearing what you are a big fan of.” She dug the muzzle deeper into his back. “Now, step away from the bar and keep your hands where I can see them.”

  Fenton had no choice but to do as she ordered. He walked one foot back behind the other, hands held out before him. “Flechette rounds, huh? You must not be aware there’s a pretty hefty bonus if I’m delivered alive.” On the one hand, Fenton wasn’t much looking forward to being delivered to his former employers alive or dead. On the other hand, he was even less keen on having his guts turned into cat food or confetti or whatever else in the process. On balance, anything he could do to keep himself part of the walking-talking set seemed like the best possible play he could make. At least in the short term.

  “On the contrary, I am quite aware,” the woman corrected him. “The flechette rounds are not for you. They can be if you make a scene, however. Start walking.”

  As he was led through the deserted bar at gunpoint, Fenton scanned its interior for anything he could use to turn the tables on his captor. His first thought was literally the tables themselves. There was no shortage of them: tall, top-heavy things he could upend to create a distraction and give himself space to make a break for it. Yet even if he did manage to surprise her and get a head start, there was still the hard reality of her firepower to
confront. No matter how far and how fast his legs took him, he would almost certainly be cut to ribbons by the swarm of flechette rounds she loosed in his wake.

  Needless to say, it was an outcome which flew very much in the face of his ‘stay alive’ ethos.

  His next thought drifted toward the empty bottles and heavy glass ashtrays scattered atop the very same tables. Part of his brain mounted a compelling effort to convince him he was possessed of the superhuman speed and dexterity necessary to grab one of those vessels and bring it to bear upon his captor before she could react. In reality, though, he knew any attempt he made for one in his current state was sure to be clumsy and awkward. That, and the second he tried she would pull the trigger. Again, not exactly the desired outcome.

  His third thought was toward the self-pitying despair known to all drunks from one system to the next. After nearly six months on the lam, he had been captured. His life, for all intents and purposes, was over. He was a payday waiting to happen.

  Whoever she was, she had turned up in the right place at the right time and was destined to reap the reward for such serendipity.

  Or so he thought. A trio of silhouettes rounded the corner just steps before the threshold of the bar’s lone entry, stopping them in their tracks. Mistaking them for station security, Fenton felt his heart leap—only to deflate just as quickly when the man in the point position announced himself.

  “Well, well, well. If it isn’t my old friend Xenecia. What brings you to my neck of the nebula, Xenny? Other than poaching my fare, of course.”

  “Stand aside, Quint.” Her voice was cold and sharp, slicing the air between them like folded steel.

  Short and stocky though he was, Quint cut a menacing figure. He smiled a feral, bloodless smile, his hand dropping to the cross-draw holster positioned beneath the sloping swell of his belly. His cronies followed suit. “You know I can’t do that, Xenny,” he informed her, coal-black eyes twinkling maliciously. “Looks like we’re going to have to settle this the hard—”

  Before he could finish, Xenecia lifted her mare’s leg carbine from the small of Fenton’s back and fired over his shoulder. The round struck the ceiling above Quint, raining a whistling hail of deadly shrapnel down upon him and his boys. Of the three, only Quint was graced with the good sense to dive out of the way when she raised the carbine. The other two were perforated from head to toe. They bled out quickly, barely able to fish their pistols from theirs holsters before they went limp and the light left their eyes.

  Dazed and doubled-over from the force of the blast, Fenton barely registered the wild shot Quint sent vectoring back at them as he dove for cover. It grazed the top of his head, carving a fifty-caliber channel through his ginger-brown hair along the way. Xenecia pulled him to the ground behind the nearest booth as the firefight began in earnest a moment later. With each booming report, her modified mare’s leg automatically chambered another round. It easily kept pace with Quint’s oversized revolver while the two traded fire from nearly point-blank range.

  The maelstrom that ensued turned the interior of the bar into a bonafide war zone. Glasses exploded into razor-sharp sprays of shrapnel, tables and chairs were reduced to mere kindling. At one point the graybeard bartender emerged from the back to see what all the commotion was about. His curiosity earned him a ricocheting slug through the neck and jaw. He collapsed behind the bar, choking on his own shattered teeth and the frothing arterial blood rushing to escape his dying body.

  The bar.

  His head clearing, Fenton remembered the bartender’s clumsy attempt to reach beneath it when Xenecia appeared behind him. There had to be a weapon back there, he reasoned. Something he could use to defend himself.

  Fenton scrambled to his feet. As he sprinted and dove for the bar, he caught a fleeting first glimpse of his would-be captor. Even kneeling in a half-crouch, the woman called Xenecia was a willowy creature, at least six feet tall, and blessed with a sinewy grace. She wore skintight black leggings and a light tactical vest with a combination carbine holster/bandolier slung over her right shoulder. Her skin was of a deep amethyst hue, her features familiar yet distinctly alien. Her face was long and lean with depressed, angular nasal passages. From what would have been the bridge of her nose, two alabaster ridges emerged to form a cartilaginous crest resembling a mohawk fanning back from the top of her forehead to the nape of her neck. The dark, mirrored lenses she wore over her eyes protected them from shrapnel as well as from view, contributing to the otherworldly air of command she possessed.

  Aside from the fact she was intent on capturing him and claiming the bounty offered by his former employers, she was one of the most striking creatures he had ever laid eyes on.

  Of course, none of that mattered as he landed behind the bar with a hard whump. Fenton was under no delusions. Striking or not, she wanted to steal what little remained of his life from him, to trade it away for her own personal gain.

  Something had to be done about that.

  Scanning back and forth from one end of the bar to the other, Fenton spotted it: an old—check that, very old—16-gauge shotgun. Not that old necessarily meant bad; far from it in this case. He palmed the stock, grinning darkly. All he had to do was pump and shoot.

  A sudden lull in the shooting told him that Xenecia and Quint must be reloading. It was now or never. He pumped the shotgun’s forestock, the familiar chik-chik sound like music to his ears.

  Just like in the holos, he thought.

  Springing up from behind the bar, the last thing he saw before everything went dark was the butt of Xenecia’s mare’s leg coming full-speed square at his face.

  02 • THE ADVOCATE

  Between the soothing hum of the shuttle’s ultralight ceramic engines and the shifting panoply of starlight expanding beyond the viewport, Roon had allowed herself to be lulled into a kind of thoughtful trance. Thinking, thinking, and more thinking…

  “Miss McNamara?”

  She blinked, giving her head a clearing shake. “I’m sorry, hmm?”

  “We’ll be docking with Orbital Station Tau in a matter of minutes, ma’am. You asked me to notify you?” the decorated ensign at the helm prompted helpfully.

  “Yes. Yes, of course. Thank you, Ensign Cassel.”

  “Ma’am.” Ensign Cassel returned her attention to the brightly lit console before her.

  Tugging at the hem of her jacket, Roon straightened herself in her seat as best she could. She hated the five-point harnesses required of shuttle travel. They always played hell with her choice of garment. As a civilian employee of Morgenthau-Hale’s nonprofit wing, her manner of dress was not restricted to the high-collared hunter-green uniform of her pilot counterpart. Not that that was an altogether enviable position. She did so little actual traveling as part of her job that once again she had forgotten not to wear her ‘advocate’s best’ while in transit. Her jacket was rumpled, the blouse beneath visibly worried and wrinkled. Meanwhile, the heavy-duty construction of Ensign Cassel’s uniform remained crisp and confident even through the tight hug of her five-point harness.

  For a fleeting moment, she hated the woman for it.

  Only for a moment, though. Just as quickly, her mind snapped back to more important matters. Namely her newest… client? She still wasn’t sure how to think of the man. She hadn’t been hired to represent him so much as ordered, so perhaps client wasn’t the right word. Her charge, then? Her ward? Somehow neither of those seemed quite fitting, either.

  In a way, that absence of certainty was a reflection of how underutilized she was in her position. Morgenthau-Hale retained her services as an advocate, yet so rarely was she actually called upon to act in that capacity that even the verbiage of the position remained vague, a thing understood but largely undefined. To date, her job description mostly entailed honing her solitaire game to perfection and collecting a paycheck.

  At least it had until Fenton Wilkes’ file dropped into her inbox. A tersely worded note from her supervisor informed her it was her
new top priority.

  Roon lowered her eyes to the flexpad sitting atop her lap. Once again she found herself skimming Fenton’s file. She wasn’t exactly sure what she was looking for. Still, she kept returning to it, almost compulsively. It didn’t help that it was conspicuously slim on details. She had read through it half a dozen times in the last hour alone. It was that short. Just the photo from Fenton’s security imprint and a cursory outline of his career and eventual falling out with Morgenthau-Hale.

  Roon couldn’t decide what was more compelling, the photo or the remarkable lack of specificity. According to the file, Fenton James Wilkes had received advanced training in biomechanical engineering through an indentured scholarship with the corporation, not all that uncommon given the staggering amount of cash required to obtain such an education privately. It was what some referred to as a 20/20 contract, owing to its terms. In exchange for the training, the recipient was expected (read: obligated) to provide the corporation with no less than twenty years of service at a garnished wage of twenty-percent annually. (Depending on who you asked, it was also a backhanded reference to the timeworn adage that hindsight is 20/20.)

  After completing training and receiving his accreditation, Fenton went to work immediately in the Applied Sciences Division of Morgenthau-Hale’s Biotech Development Initiative. By all accounts he was exceptionally gifted, rising quickly through the organizational structure to head up his own research team. Together, he and his team were assigned a number of mid to high-priority projects, all of which were developed to the satisfaction of his superiors—to say nothing of being delivered on time and under budget. Those successes led to his team being cherry-picked for a project with a classification level so high she wasn’t even aware it existed before coming across the designation in the file. What that project was, no one could—or would—say. What they would say is that unlike his team’s previous projects, this latest one was marred by costly delays and mistakes. Fenton refused to be deterred, repeatedly assuring his superiors they would come through with just a little more time.

  That is, until one day some six months previous when he disappeared—“absconded,” in the parlance of the file—with a “cache of proprietary corporate information.” What exactly that information was the file left wholly to the imagination. She wasn’t even sure what it was the Biotech Development Initiative actually did—well, other than give her a case of the heebie-jeebies as creepily and vaguely defined as the initiative’s name.