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  REDEMPTION’S SHADOW

  ©2019 RICK PARTLOW

  This book is protected under the copyright laws of the United States of America. 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 be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser. Any reproduction or unauthorized use of the material or artwork contained herein is prohibited without the express written permission of the authors.

  Print and eBook formatting, and cover design by Steve Beaulieu.

  Published by Aethon Books LLC. 2019

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

  All rights reserved.

  Contents

  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

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  FROM THE PUBLISHER

  Also by Rick Partlow

  About Rick Partlow

  Prologue

  Dawn clawed its way up into a sky still scorched and scarred by the brutal impact of a fifteen-megaton airburst, hiding behind roiling clouds as if it couldn’t bear to see the damage to Revelation.

  Not enough damage.

  Primus Pilus Alvar kicked aside the charred wreckage of a small, all-terrain rover, the tree-trunk leg of his Nomad strike mech sweeping it out of his path with a shriek of rending metal. The streets at the outskirts of Revelation City were littered with the burned-out corpses of cars and humans, and the blackened debris of destroyed buildings…but only the outskirts.

  Praefectus Magnus had done the best she could. They’d been forced to detonate the warhead before the city’s air defenses could intercept it, but it had been just a bit too far away to totally destroy the city. The air defenses were gone, of course, along with the assault shuttles and drop-ships at the spaceport, nothing but row upon row of twisted metal. At least a company’s worth of mecha had been destroyed at the port as well, toppled like dominoes, their armor melted and stripped away, leaving only the skeletons of the war machines they’d once been.

  Beyond the port, the outer edge of Revelation was a coal-black line of destruction all the way up the valley and a few blocks into the town. The fires had reached further than the shockwave, overwhelming the fire-suppression equipment with the sheer power of the thermal flash, the Electromagnetic Pulse burning out the electronics of the cheaper, unshielded systems. The flames had burnt spider-web patterns into the heart of the city, more visible from twenty meters up in his mech cockpit than they would have been at ground level with the infantry.

  He pushed a wall over with the muzzle of his ETC cannon and bricks tumbled downward, bouncing and cartwheeling off the cement floor below, but the opening revealed nothing. No corpses in this building, not enough in the ones the infantry had already checked out. He’d counted on the fusion blast to do most of the work for them, but again, as usual, it would come down to boots on the ground.

  “Primus Pilus.” The voice crackled in his helmet earphones, distorted by the static charge still thick in the air, so mangled he couldn’t identify it without checking the communications display in his cockpit. It was Centurion Juha, the infantry commander, and his beacon showed him deep in the center of Revelation City, near the operations and control center for a mercenary unit that called itself Wholesale Slaughter. “We’ve found something. Two humans, alive.”

  “I am on my way,” he told the male. “Centurion Turo,” he said, switching channels to address his second in command. “Take First and Second Centuriae around the perimeter of the city and check for signs of survivors. The rest of the cohort will come with me through the center of town.”

  “It will be done, Primus Pilus,” Turo responded immediately, his voice a low grumble.

  The younger male’s hulking Golem assault mech lumbered away to the left of Alvar’s Nomad, trailed by nearly two dozen others as the two centuriae of cataphractii, what the humans would have called two companies of armor, pulled out of their double wedge formation and funneled into a single-file line. Alvar watched the mecha pass by his position and scowled in distaste, bothered as he always was when the Jeuta were forced to make do using human technology. Nomads and Golems, Agamemnons and Reapers, Scorpions and Goliaths, they were all human designs, looted from human armories, their cockpits and controls reconfigured to better suit the Jeuta.

  We can’t make our own.

  It galled him, should have galled all Jeuta, though he knew it didn’t. Others in his command structure, even the Legatus Jouko himself, cared little that their warships and mecha were manufactured by the enemy, by the enslavers. The Purpose decreed they should not be looters, scavengers living off the humans, that it was shameful. Yet it was so much easier this way. Fusion reactors were as common as dirt in the human Dominions and mecha were always available as salvage after a battle. Jeuta warriors who would never have considered carrying one of the weak, small-caliber human rifles didn’t even think twice about climbing into a mecha built on Stavanger or Sparta.

  He shook the concern off. As the Purpose stated, what could not be cured must be endured. If this worked, if his operation could bring down Sparta itself, maybe things would change.

  “Spread out on all the through streets,” he ordered the other cataphractii centurions. “Make sure we miss nothing.”

  Alvar kept to the center of the formation, leading them through the middle of the city, scanning each building with thermal sensors. Embers still smoldered in the smoking rubble of a line of rowhouses, and here and there a corpse smoldered among them, most likely killed by the heat of the warhead’s flash. Too many had gotten away and he needed to know where they’d gone. And more importantly, he needed to know if Logan Brannigan had been among them.

  The closer Alvar came to the center of town, the less fire damage he saw, though some smaller, less durable structures had collapsed from the pressure wave even this far away from the detonation. A few civilian vehicles were parked askew, abandoned in the streets where they’d stopped, undoubtedly immobilized from the EMP. Military transports would be shielded and none of those were evident, though he could still see their tracks leading out of the city.

  The infantry company was spread out in a security perimeter around the Operations Center, a grand name for a low, one-story structure built from local wood and brick, its most high-tech feature a satellite antenna on the roof. Juha was in the street just outside the front entrance to the building, a small team of infantry securing the open doors while another controlled the two prisoners.

  One was male, the other female, and the differences between the sexes were obvious after dealing with so many of them through his career. He thought it seemed unnatural for there to be so much sexual dimorphism, but it was hardly the only thing about humans he found disgusting. Both of the
m were dressed in the gray fatigues he’d seen in the intelligence briefings he’d received, the uniform of Wholesale Slaughter. He bared his teeth in satisfaction. If they were military, they’d have information.

  The Nomad shut down with a familiar routine of half a dozen switches being flipped and his helmet was off and the cockpit canopy open before the whine of the turbines had faded. He swung out onto the emergency access ladder and clambered down, dropping off the machine once he reached the upper thigh of the machine and landing in a crouch. He felt a slight twinge in his knees, but it was important to show his subordinates he was still young and vital enough to handle all challengers.

  “We found these two hiding inside,” Centurion Juha told him, motioning at the humans with the muzzle of his rife.

  The man’s head jerked around at Juha’s words, but his eyes remained unfocused and unseeing. He had flash blindness, Alvar deduced. He must have been looking towards the port when the warhead had detonated, which was damned unlucky for him. His vision might return eventually, if he lived that long. The woman was small, even for a human female, but she seemed more worried for the man than for herself. She spared a fearful glance at Alvar, but mostly she stared at the man, chewing on her lip and not even attempting to pull against the loose but firm grip of the soldier holding her arm. She’d stayed to protect the man, which was, he thought, something he might be able to use.

  Neither human seemed badly injured and he supposed they hadn’t resisted or his troops wouldn’t have been so gentle. Time would tell how long that would last.

  “You, man,” Alvar said, speaking the language humans called Basic. It felt unclean on his tongue, but it was necessary to know your enemy. He punctuated the words with a jab of his finger into the human male’s shoulder. The man flinched, trying to jerk back away from the touch but coming up against the chest armor of the soldier behind him. “What is your name?”

  He didn’t answer right away, but Alvar didn’t lose patience. The human was blind, probably confused and terrified and he needed him talking rather than blubbering. He grabbed the man’s shoulder and squeezed just slightly, enough for the human to gasp in surprise more than pain.

  “What,” Alvar repeated, “is your name?”

  “His name is Wesley!” the woman interjected in a desperate shriek. “Wesley Newton! And I’m Shannon Pritchard.”

  Alvar turned slowly towards the woman, his hand coming off Newton’s shoulder and casually swatting backwards. Her head snapped back, blood flying from her split lip and she grunted in shock and pain, collapsing against the soldier who was holding onto her arm.

  “I was speaking to him,” Alvar said, not changing his tone or volume. “You will not talk unless I ask you a question. Do you understand?”

  The woman blinked, wiping blood off her face, then nodded. Alvar raised his hand again.

  “I understand!” she insisted, raising a hand to shield her face.

  Alvar lowered his fist and turned his attention back to the man.

  “Wesley Newton, what is your rank and area of responsibility in the Wholesale Slaughter mercenary organization?”

  “I’m a warrant officer second-class,” Newton stammered, finally getting the idea. “I’m a mech-jock. I drive a Golem.”

  “A most efficient machine,” Alvar acknowledged. “Tell me, Warrant Officer Second-Class Wesley Newton, is your commander, Logan Brannigan, on this planet?”

  Alvar was not a master of reading human expressions. To him, they always seemed to be twisting their faces into some strange shape, exaggerated and ridiculous, and he could never be sure what they meant. But he had the sense the sudden loss of color in Newton’s face wasn’t a good sign.

  “I can’t tell you that.” He was trying to sound firm and brave, but his voice broke in the middle, ruining the effect.

  “Centurion Juha,” Alvar said in Jeuta, “please break this human’s left forearm. Single break, not too brutal. We need to have something to threaten him with next.”

  Juha’s lips peeled back from his teeth, indicating how much he enjoyed this part. He grabbed the blinded man’s arm and twisted it with brutal efficiency before Newton had a chance to pull away. The crack was too loud and Alvar knew immediately Juha had broken both of the bones in the human’s forearm, and dislocated the breaks as well, by the distorted shape of the arm.

  Newton screamed and tried to fall, but the soldiers held him in place. Alvar watched the woman’s reaction, noted she didn’t try to pull away from her guard, simply went even paler than the man, her mouth working silently. She was scared, either for Newton or for herself. Good. This would go even faster using one as leverage against the other.

  Alvar stepped closer to the man, grabbing his face between his fingers and holding it still, forcing it out of the agonized grimace into something more ridiculous.

  “Let me ask you again, Wesley Newton, is Logan Brannigan on this world? And where are the other residents of this town who survived the blast?”

  Newton was trying to talk and Alvar let loose of his face to allow it.

  “General Brannigan,” the man gasped, cradling his arm, “is in…”

  Newton’s face distorted and the air went out of him. It took Alvar half a second to notice the small bullet hole in the man’s temple and register the sound of the gunshot. He spun around, hand going to his chest-holstered pistol, hearing three more shots in quick succession and expecting one of them to kill him.

  It had been the woman. Where she’d hidden the gun, he didn’t know, but it was small and slim and easily concealable. The first shot had gone into Newton’s head and the next two had taken out the soldier holding her. She’d tucked the pistol under his chin and fired upward, possibly intuiting the small-caliber pistol wouldn’t have been able to penetrate his body armor. The soldier was still toppling backwards, as if in slow motion, and everyone else seemed to be standing around, unwilling to fire with so many of their own people in the way.

  Alvar knew what her next move would be and he lunged at her, trying to catch her hand, but he was too late. The gun was already going into her mouth, her finger tightening on the trigger. The report was sharp and startling despite the fact he’d known it was coming. Blood began to pour from her mouth and nose and her eyes rolled back into her head. Half a dozen soldiers charged into her, grabbing at her arms and pulling the gun away, far too late.

  Alvar spat on the blood-soaked ground and walked away, letting them go through their pantomime, pretending to do something useful while both of the human captives lie dead in the street, along with one of their own. Juha stepped up to him, head down, eyes averted, arms at his side.

  “Primus Pilus,” he said in a rehearsed, formal tone, “I have failed in my duties and I wish to surrender myself for discipline.”

  “You’ve failed to adequately train your troops to search thoroughly enough for hidden weapons,” Alvar acknowledged. “For which I should have you publicly flogged, and may once this is over, but I have no one capable of replacing you at the moment so you will resume your duties.”

  “I will not allow any of my troops to fail you again, Primus Pilus!” Juha assured him, straightening into a salute.

  Alvar sneered at the one who’d been assigned to guard the woman. He was still stretched out behind her, ignored and untouched, as if he’d contracted some dread disease and none of the others wanted to chance catching it.

  “Well, that one certainly won’t make the same mistake again.” He shifted his shoulders, as if shrugging the problem away to be dealt with later. “Centurion Juha, see to it that every building is thoroughly searched before we move on to the next settlement. I need to know where these people went. And I need to know where Logan Brannigan is.”

  1

  I don’t think I’ve ever seen this place before,” Commander Kathren Margolis said softly, as if there were anyone around within fifty kilometers who could hear them.

  It was beautiful, she thought, in a desolate sort of way. The waves lapped
against the rocky shoreline with a restful murmur filtering across the gently rolling hills, lost in the cushion of thick scrub grass. The dirt road wound through the hills, the only man-made thing they’d seen since they’d left Revelation City two days ago, shining in bright contrast under the light of the irregular, pockmarked moon.

  Well, the only man-made thing until now.

  “It’s an algae farm,” General Nicolai Constantine said, nodding toward the unadorned, sheet-metal warehouses at the water’s edge.

  The water was black, glinting only where the captured asteroid Revelation had claimed as a satellite reflected off it, but she’d seen the images of the algae mats floating raft-like in the relatively still and shallow seas. They provided a good amount of the food for the planet’s residents, along with enough surplus to sell on the open market. They couldn’t compete with any of the suppliers in the Dominions, but out on the Periphery, there were plenty of buyers who didn’t want to risk traveling into more civilized territories.

  “Do you think they’ll have any food?” Corporal Beck wondered.

  Katy glanced aside at the Ranger who’d been their driver before the airburst had flipped their car and left the man with a broken arm. She wondered if she should be concerned at how drawn and exhausted the man was or feel relieved that he still had an appetite.

  “They should,” she told him, “unless the workers carried it all off when they heard about the invasion.”