Breakeven Read online

  Breakeven

  Michelle Diener

  Copyright © 2018 by Michelle Diener

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Created with Vellum

  Contents

  The Story so Far . . .

  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

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Excerpt: Sky Raiders

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Also by Michelle Diener

  About the Author

  Acknowledgments

  The Story so Far . . .

  Readers don’t have to have read Breakaway to enjoy Breakeven, but they will understand the references to what happened to Dee on Garmen better, and understand exactly what’s happening at the start of the book, which opens in the middle of a Caruso attack.

  Throughout Breakaway, Dee and her boss, Leo, discover that the Core Companies of Garmen have made a devil’s bargain with the Caruso, a warlike alien race. Dee is on the Deck of Felcitos, Garmen’s tethered way station, to warn Leo’s business associate, Ruanne, of an impending Caruso attack on Ruanne’s planet, Lassa, but before that happens, the Caruso attack Garmen, trying to take the Deck to gain control of the whole planet.

  Breakeven opens just as Dee takes cover after the Caruso open fire . . .

  Chapter 1

  There was very little sound to the massacre.

  Dee thought it should be louder, but the laz fire, shooting out in uninterrupted streams from the massive weapons wielded by the Caruson soldiers, simply created a buzz.

  There weren't many screams, either.

  There had been at the start, when the Caruso had suddenly appeared in their midst on the Felicitos Deck, but people soon worked out screaming just drew attention.

  Those who could hunker down and get out of sight, did. And they kept quiet, too.

  Just like her.

  She angled herself so she could see out of the door of the pleasure cruiser she'd taken cover in. A Caruson soldier walked past, his body and his gaze facing away from her.

  Initially, the Caruso had attacked the workers and traders dealing with ship maintenance and the loading of goods, but as soon as the Cores had gotten over their shock at the assault, they'd sent a unit of guards up to the Deck to engage the attackers.

  The move forced the Caruso to deal with armed, trained fighters, a little more challenging than the civilians and deck crew they'd ambushed minutes before.

  Dee waited until the Caruson soldier was out of her line of sight, and then glanced behind her, down the long, narrow passageway of the cruiser. She'd heard nothing from within, and had the sense she was alone on the ship, but she didn't want to be taken by surprise from behind.

  All she knew about the crew and owners was this was a Lassian Cores-owned pleasure cruiser, and one person who worked on the ship was a member of the Lassian resistance.

  She knew this because the leader of the Garmen resistance, Zyr, had arranged to meet him today. To warn them of a potential Caruson attack on Lassa.

  Dee's mouth gave a wry twist at the irony.

  She was on the Deck for the same reason, to pass what she knew about a Caruson attack on Lassa to the head of the largest independent contractor on Lassa, Ruanne.

  She and Zyr had come up together, although she'd passed him without acknowledgment as she'd walked over to meet her contact, while Zyr was busy talking to his own.

  Little had they known Garmen was first on the Caruson attack list, not second.

  Alternatively, the Caruso could be attacking Lassa at this very moment, as well. A double action that would take out both Breakaway planets at the same time.

  While the Garmen Core Companies, who'd invited the Caruso onto Garmen in the first place, must have been taken by surprise at this attack, they'd been very quick to mobilize their troops in response.

  Her boss, Leo Gaudier, had long thought trying to overthrow the Cores with a military conflict would be too costly in terms of loss of life, and it looked as if he'd been right.

  The Cores were more ready to fight and kill at a moment's notice than even she'd imagined, though.

  The laz fire, which had died down for a few minutes, started up again, blinding and smelling of ozone.

  Her comm set buzzed, and she slid back a little into the cover of the cruiser's entryway, and accepted the contact.

  “Dee?”

  It was Leo.

  She looked behind her, checking again there was no one sneaking up on her from behind. “Yes.”

  “Are you somewhere safe if the enviro and grav fail on the Deck?” Leo's voice was a little faster than usual--an edge of panic to it which she'd seldom heard before from her boss. “If not, find a place, because Sofie's about to flick the kill switch.”

  “That's . . . good.”

  That was very, very good. Dee'd heard about the fabled kill switch that could shut Garmen's tethered way station down. She hadn't realized Leo's lover, Sofie, had access to it. “I'm in the Lassian pleasure cruiser. Look for me afterward.”

  She cut off the connection.

  If Sofie was about to flip the switch, that meant the enviro and gravity generator would shut down. The Deck sat like a hat at the top of the tethered way station, just poking out of Garmen's lower atmosphere.

  When the power went off, there would be no air, no gravity.

  The only way to survive would be to get the pleasure cruiser's door closed, and time was wasting.

  She checked outside one last time, and saw a woman running toward the ship.

  Long dark hair streaming behind her, arms waving, the woman foolishly screamed as she ran. Her eyes were wild, but with a glassy sheen, as if she was drugged as well as terrified, and she was wearing an outfit that Dee could only describe as fantastical.

  It was dark blue and sheer, a body suit that was tight in places, ruffled in others.

  She was wearing one high heeled shoe; the other foot was bare, and she ran in a strange, off-kilter stride, not just because of the missing shoe, Dee thought, but possibly because she'd never had to run before.

  She didn't know how.

  Dee thought for a moment they looked a little alike, although, if this pleasure cruiser belonged to her, the woman and Dee had nothing else in common.

  Dee hesitated a moment, wondering if she should stay by the door, help the woman in, when she noticed a man running beside the woman, laz out, his stance protective.

  Bodyguard.

  She would know, she was one herself.

  And then the guard went down, taken out by the heavy firepower of the Caruso.

  He pitched forward, body caught in mid-stride, and as he knocked into the woman, she was thr
own off balance. She stumbled, fell, her legs caught beneath his body.

  She rose up on her elbows and tried to get out from under him, her screams even more panicked and high pitched.

  Dee took a single step forward onto the ramp, about to run and get her, when the woman suddenly fell backward, body dancing a little under the onslaught of hits.

  Too late.

  Dee shrank back, out of sight, and edged deeper into the cruiser. Then she turned and ran for the bridge.

  If the grav and enviro cutting off didn't kill her, the Caruso might.

  It was time to lock this cruiser up tight.

  The Verden, the Lassian pleasure cruiser he'd been tracking for days, had landed early.

  Sebastian led his small team around crates of goods and dodged the utility carts piled with ore, weaving his way through the obstacles toward his goal, keeping low to avoid laz fire.

  The Verden's early arrival had initially messed up his plans, but he should have been bracing for it.

  Nothing Rina Fattal did should surprise him by now. Her mercurial and changing whims had made kidnapping her difficult. This stopover on Felicitos had been something he'd had to scramble to take advantage of, and he was determined to make it work.

  Early arrival or not. Caruson attack or not.

  Although, he conceded, the Caruson attack had come out of nowhere, and was one thing he couldn't blame on Rina Fattal.

  No doubt she was hunkered down, nice and safe in her executive suite onboard the cruiser, paid for with the blood and tears of the Lassian people, throwing back drinks or sniffing up drugs.

  He would have to find out from his intelligence how they could not have heard even a whisper about Caruson interest in Garmen, but that was for later--he pushed it aside and focused on what was a months-long goal.

  To grab Rina Fattal and use her to manipulate her scumbag of a father.

  The Caruson attack might even work to their advantage. It might just make it easier to get onboard the Verden and slip away in the chaos.

  “Seb.” Lucia touched his shoulder, and the dread in her voice caught him by surprise.

  She was pointing in the direction of the pleasure cruiser, and as he followed her gaze, he saw what had caught her eye.

  Harvey lay sprawled on the ground near the pleasure cruiser's back engines.

  Sebastian crouched lower, and did a visual sweep of the area.

  Toward the front of the pleasure cruiser he saw the flash of laz fire, and he motioned the team to follow him to the rear of the ship.

  Harvey had been going to open the maintenance hatch for them to sneak aboard from the back, and as he reached the fallen informant, Sebastian saw the hatch was still closed.

  He crouched beside him, and then looked up at Lucia and shook his head.

  The man who'd been their inside informant was dead.

  Karr moved over to the hatch and started fiddling with the keypad, but after a minute he stepped away, frustrated.

  From his position beside Harvey's body, Sebastian could see through the Verden's struts to the front of the ship. The laz fire had stopped, the Caruson soldiers had obviously moved on to engage with the Cores guards who were still spilling out of successive hovers coming up the hoverway.

  “We go in the front?” Lucia asked.

  He took in the team; Lucia, Karr and Vavi all dressed in the dark gray standard ship crew overalls that made them indistinguishable from any other crew on the Deck, and gave a nod.

  If the maintenance hatch was closed, there was no other choice but the front ramp.

  He rose up and moved around the side of the ship facing away from the hoverway. It gave them cover from the laz fire that was still lighting up the indigo sky of Garmen's lower atmosphere.

  As he edged around the ship, he glanced outward and saw the Deck's viewing platform and the planet of Garmen below.

  This was his first time on the tethered way station, and he had to admit that Felicitos was a wonder of the galaxy. An achievement he would have to begrudgingly give to the Garmen Cores.

  He stopped at the final corner of the ship and peered around, then drew back in surprise as three crew ran up the ramp.

  He'd thought most of the crew would stay onboard, given Harvey had told them Rina was here to do a false trade--stopping on the pretext of picking up something small from the Garmen Cores, but really here to buy something illicit from another ship, also here on the pretext of genuine trade.

  The fact that there were other Lassian ships on the Deck meant the less anyone saw, the better.

  But the mystery of what the crew were doing outside was something he'd have to deal with later, because the ramp started retracting.

  “Go, go, go.” He sprinted along the front of the ship, and leapt onto the ramp, relieved to hear the thump and reverberation of the others landing behind him.

  He flung himself into the ship and everything darkened as the ramp closed behind him.

  They were in.

  Chapter 2

  Dee heard shouts and the thunder of footsteps past the closed door, and pressed herself against the wall, waiting for someone to burst into the haven of luxury and excess she'd found herself in.

  The room was beyond anything she'd ever seen, and she'd worked for one of the richest people on Garmen, Leo Gaudier.

  But then, Leo was from her home town, Phansi, Garmen's mining center, and had grown up just like her.

  He'd never wasted his money on ridiculous fripperies, but whoever lived in this room certainly did.

  She'd found herself here because she couldn't get onto the bridge to close the ship up.

  It had been locked tight, and there was no way she was getting into it. She'd been overly optimistic to think it would be open and would have no bio or code locks.

  The only door that had slid open at her touch had been this one, which didn't make sense at all, as it looked like the master suite, but she wasn't going to complain.

  If the grav and enviro went on the Deck, she'd at least have enough air to survive for a few hours.

  It was better than nothing.

  A lot better.

  She heard the hum of the ramp retracting and relaxed a little, because that meant the onboard enviro would kick in, providing air no matter what happened on the Deck.

  Whoever was onboard had obviously gone straight to the bridge.

  As she straightened, though, she was sure she heard more footsteps.

  Some last minute arrivals. They must have just made it in before the ramp closed.

  She kept very still, but they moved past the door as well, although far more quietly than their colleagues, and she waited until it sounded as if they'd moved on before she moved herself.

  Her first stop was the door lock.

  The laslock hadn't been set, and she gave it a try, swiping her finger through the narrow band of pink light.

  The system flashed once in acceptance, and she stared down at it in surprise.

  She hadn't expected it to work, but now, she was able to stay locked in here, and no one could get in until she allowed them access.

  Safe for the moment, she turned to face the rest of the room.

  The bed took up most of the far wall. It was an impractical oval, but large enough for at least three adults to sleep comfortably.

  The rest of the space was furnished with plush couches in various shades of teal, and strewn over everything were clothes and accessories, none of which Dee would ever consider wearing.

  She began picking the clothes up, clearing the space to see what might lie beneath them.

  She suddenly remembered that Carver was up on the Deck, keeping watch from the hidden passageways Leo's lover, Sofie, had given them access to, and worry gripped her at the thought of him or anyone else on her team stepping out to help those in trouble from the Caruso attack.

  She looked over at the blank wall to one side of the room, and then walked over to it. She ran her finger down the pale pink line of light that was set into
the wall about halfway down, and the solid cream of the upper part of the wall faded away, to reveal a window out onto the Deck.

  The fight still raged.

  She stood for a long moment, carefully looking at all the fallen bodies that littered the ground, but there was no sign of Carver, Sam, Finkle or any of her other colleagues.

  The ground beneath her feet suddenly vibrated, and Dee widened her stance to brace for take-off, but it wasn't the ship starting up, she realized. Suddenly everything not tied down was flying, sucked into space, including the ship she was on.

  She was flung across the room as the cruiser cartwheeled upward. She slammed into the top of the wall, and then slid down to lie dazed as the world spun.

  She reached out her hands and grasped the leg of a table that seemed to be bolted to the floor, drew herself into a ball, and rode it out.

  Taking the Verden had been easy.

  Sebastian had been braced for more than just three panicked crew all focused on getting the cruiser ready to fly.

  By the time he and his team reached the bridge, systems had been engaged.

  He stepped in, laz raised, and all three crew froze.

  Their gazes skipped over Sebastian to the three other team members behind him, and he could see the moment they gave up.

  “Let us get clear of the Deck, then we'll take the lifepod, and you can have this thing.” There was defiance, but also desperation in the eyes of the woman who spoke up first.