Mercenarys apprentice, p.1
Mercenary's Apprentice, page 1
MERCENARY’S APPRENTICE
DIPLOMAT’S APPRENTICE™
BOOK FIVE
LJ DIX
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FOREWORD
BY KEVIN MCLAUGHLIN
It’s not every day someone gets asked to introduce one of their mother’s first published stories. I wanted to do this justice, so for mood music I’ve settled on the soundtrack to Star Trek: the Motion Picture.
Why that? Because in December 1979, six-year-old Kevin and his mom attended a premier showing of the movie in New York City. Now, I’d been to movies before.
I’d never been to a movie with a standing ovation before.
I’ve still never been to a movie with two standing ovations since.
Here I am, forty-four years later, writing science fiction novels for a living. A cautionary tale, parents: Be careful which movies you take your kids to when they’re young and impressionable! You, too, might end up with an author for a child! (Gasps of horror!)
The wonderful thing about the story above is that I am sure I got at least one detail wrong. I’m equally sure my mother will want to correct me on it. I’m triply sure she doesn’t get to do that here, so this story will go to print precisely the way I wrote it. Why?
Because it isn’t really the truth of stories that matter so much as it is the emotions the stories convey.
For me, that silly movie was formative. I was already hooked on SF, thanks to Star Wars, Godzilla, and other stuff. But being present for the energy in that theater was awe-inspiring for a bright kid. I could feel the intensity of emotion in all the adults around me. That was all because they were united by a story—or rather, by the emotions behind the story. It was maybe the first time I realized that stories could change the world, and I’ve never lost my interest since.
It was maybe a year or so later that Mom gave me her old manual typewriter so I could begin writing my stories. She was trying to write back then, too. I’d go to sleep at night listening to soundtracks and the tack-tack-tack of an electric typewriter. She wrote some great stories! But sadly, they never saw publication.
Until now, anyway.
The book you’re holding is a story I was told when I was young. I still remember Mom telling us this one many times on long drives in the car. The other stories set in this universe, the tales of Anwyn and her friends, are a piece of my childhood as well. Of course, Mom rewrote these things because people change over time, so all her experiences over the past forty-ish years have been poured into the new versions of the stories.
Stories carry weight. They change the world. The story you’re about to read was one that helped change mine. I hope you enjoy it and all LJ Dix’s other books as much as I did!
To all the amazing animals I have loved.
They are so special and with us for such a short time.
Adding some of them to these books helps keep their memory alive.
This book is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Sometimes both.
Copyright © 2024 LJ Dix
Cover Art by Jake @ J Caleb Design
http://jcalebdesign.com / jcalebdesign@gmail.com
Cover copyright © LMBPN Publishing
LMBPN Publishing supports the right to free expression and the value of copyright. The purpose of copyright is to encourage writers and artists to produce the creative works that enrich our culture.
The distribution of this book without permission is a theft of the author’s intellectual property. If you would like permission to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), please contact support@lmbpn.com. Thank you for your support of the author’s rights.
LMBPN Publishing
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Las Vegas, Nevada 89119 USA
Version 1.00, July 2024
ebook ISBN: 979-8-88878-970-4
Print ISBN: 979-8-89354-261-5
THE MERCENARY’S APPRENTICE TEAM
Thanks to our JIT Readers:
Dave Hicks
Zacc Pelter
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Jeff Goode
Christopher Gilliard
Dorothy Lloyd
Diane L. Smith
Jan Hunnicutt
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Daryl McDaniel
Editor
SkyFyre Editing Team
CONTENTS
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
Epilogue
Author Notes
Connect with The Author
Other LMBPN Publishing Books
CHAPTER ONE
Evan was wounded, possibly dying. And he was too heavy to carry much farther.
The litany of regret and worry cycled through Owen’s mind as he continued his exhausted run. At this point, he thought wryly, it was more of a stagger. Evan was slung over his shoulder and no matter how well he’d maintained his fitness, he was no longer young, and his friend was heavy. The ambush had been so sudden that neither had much time to respond.
Evan had been faster to react. He had stopped a bullet meant for his lifelong friend and the man he had pledged to protect. Now Owen was carrying his oldest friend, and it wasn’t certain that either would survive the night.
The running man whose life Evan’s sacrifice had extended was Owen Owens. He was head of the diplomatic corps of his home planet Mythrys, an esteemed League of Free Planets Council member, and in line to be the next Council president. He was also the future head of state for the influential planet Mythrys.
Running from an apparent group of assassins in the back alleys of the port city of a non-League planet was not on his usual diplomatic schedule. However, the meeting his contact asked him to attend was important from a League standpoint, so he’d taken the chance.
I should have brought a larger security contingent. It wasn’t the first time he had thought that. Evan might not have been wounded if he had.
Owen dodged around another corner in the warren of winding back streets where he was trapped, laying Evan down for a moment to catch his breath. He carefully looked around a corner behind him and dodged again as a bullet splintered the building’s rough edge. A small chip flew off and scored a gash on his cheek before he could react. He lifted Evan over his shoulder and ran, hoping to gain ground on his pursuers.
A second concern accompanied the constant refrain of worry about his good friend. Where was Veraz?
He dodged around another corner with the attackers still close behind. You’re getting winded, getting too old for this. A short, stocky, middle-aged man, he prided himself on remaining fit, continuing the military-style training he’d done as a younger man. With each passing year, he realized age was making that more difficult. Other diplomats had meetings in embassies or elegant hotels, not back alleys of disreputable port cities.
Still, Veraz had requested this meeting. Owen, or rather the League, had hired Veraz and his small team of specialized mercenaries to handle an investigation. He assumed the team had learned what the League needed to know and wanted to disclose the information secretly, selecting an out-of-the-way location on the backwater non-League planet of Midway.
Now he wondered if Veraz and his team had already been waylaid and were lying dead somewhere. If so, how long before he and Evan joined them?
He skidded around another corner a fraction of a second fast enough to avoid being shot but knew he had nearly reached the end of his reserves. He looked for a place where he could make a stand. If he was going to die tonight, he would make whoever wanted him dead pay dearly for the privilege.
Owen rounded another corner and realized his pursuers had split into two groups and trapped him between them. He set Evan on the ground, checked his weapon and the one he’d grabbed from Evan’s hand, and prepared to fight.
One pursuer darted forward, looking for a better angle to target him.
Owen fired carefully and accurately. The man dropped. One less of whoever they were. He grinned savagely. Then he heard the buzzing sound of a stunner, glanced behind him, and saw a second pursuer fall. What?
“If you can get the ones in front, I have the ones behind you.”
Anwyn? Here? He’d learn how that had happened soon enough if they both survived. In the meantime, he felt renewed energy with the knowledge he wasn’t alone and the odds of getting out of th is had improved.
In the back of his mind was the added worry that now three of them could die in this alley instead of two. Not the end he would have chosen for himself, his good friend, or his favorite niece.
He headed toward where she hid inside an open doorway, firing once at his pursuers. The door was open but led nowhere with only a small lobby and a locked interior door. As he entered the tiny space, Anwyn fired quickly once in each direction. He couldn’t see her targets, but her sharp “Yes!” indicated she had hit at least one.
“What are you doing here?” He was still breathless from his run. “Where’s Veraz?”
She ignored the question. “How badly injured is Evan? Are you hurt also?”
He felt the sharp pang of worry again. “I’m not hurt, but I’m guessing Evan’s in bad shape from the amount of blood I’m wearing. I haven’t had time to check. He’s still alive.” He placed one hand on Evan’s throat for reassurance. Thankfully he still felt a pulse. “What are you doing here?”
“He called for help on his implant when you first came under attack.” She darted out far enough to send another stunner beam toward the group to their left.
“You’re not on the Mythri military implant link!” He glanced at her in puzzlement and leaned forward enough to fire a far more deadly round at the same group, who had grown bolder under stunner fire. He might as well give them a reason to stay farther back.
“No, but Gwyllem is.”
Gwyllem was Owen’s long-suffering chief of staff whom he had left behind, per the directions he’d received for this meeting.
“Evan contacted Gwyllem when you first came under fire,” she continued. “Gwyllem reached me through the implant you gave me back at the circus nearly a year ago, and I reached Veraz since they were just landing.”
“I was supposed to meet with Veraz,” he protested. Then the realization struck him. “Veraz never asked for this meeting, did he?”
“Yes, he did. But not here. He requested a meeting tomorrow on their ship. Someone tapped communications on your end, according to Shir-ella. She says someone changed the meeting’s time and location.”
She was a supreme hacker and talented undercover agent. If Shir-ella said the tap was on his end, it probably was.
“Where’s Veraz?” he finally thought to ask.
“On his way, Uncle Owen. They only got word of the changed meeting time and location when they arrived on-planet.” She paused to take another shot, but her stunner’s charge had dropped to the point it would no longer do any serious damage.
“Damn,” she muttered, dropped it in her holster, and pulled out a second stunner. This one had decorative scrollwork engraving and was small enough to hide in her hand. He had sent it to her several months ago.
“I got here sooner because the circus venue is closer to here than Veraz and the team. They’re on their way from the spaceport.”
She no sooner finished talking than they both heard additional gunfire coming from both directions in the alley, along with some shouting. “That would be them.” Anwyn grinned at the sound of gunfire and its sudden cessation. Then he felt her arms around him, hugging him tightly. “Oh, Uncle! Thank Merlin you’re safe! I was so afraid I wouldn’t get here in time!”
He hugged her, warmed to see that along with the competent young woman who had come to his rescue she was still the caring niece he had helped to raise.
“Good to see at least two of you are still in one piece,” someone drawled from the entrance in a mildly sarcastic voice. Drew, a member of the small mercenary team run by Owen’s old friend Veraz, stood there with his gun in one hand, not quite smiling. He was tall enough that his sturdy frame almost seemed slim due to his height, in direct contrast to Owen and his niece. He stepped into their alcove and lifted Evan as gently as possible, although the man groaned at being moved. “Come on!” He gestured toward one end of the alley with his gun.
Owen motioned Anwyn to go first and followed her. Drew carried Evan close behind. Veraz and Mark, another of the mercenaries on his team, awaited them at the corner. With them was an injured man. Mark held him upright against the wall of a corner building.
“Most of them are either dead or ran off,” Veraz informed Owen. “We saved one for you to question.”
Owen moved closer to the man Mark was holding. He looked carefully and drew back in surprise. The man was a member of the Hrithain military. He wasn’t trying to hide it unless the uniform was to fool anyone who caught him.
He also bore the look of the Hrithain homeworld’s race—tall, solidly built with pale amber skin and startlingly bright blue eyes. His long blond hair fell from under his knocked-askew helmet in the complex warrior braid pattern favored by the Hrithain military.
More tellingly, he wore the black star-shaped tattoo between his eyebrows that no one without a death wish would dare to counterfeit. This man was not only military. He was a member of the Imperial Guard.
Owen paused in reflection. His planet, Mythrys, had been settled by a combination of the Syrithii race and Welsh settlers from Earth. The Syrithii helped found the League of Free Planets, a political and trade alliance. While Owen was under no illusions that the League was perfect, individual planets within the League had the freedom to rule their homeworld as long as they followed the League charter’s general guidelines.
The Hrithain were the League’s polar opposite in many ways. A multi-planet empire ruled by a single large and convoluted family, every planet within the Empire followed the same rules under the same basic government. In Owen’s mind and many others, the problem was those rules were anything but fair.
Several races within the Empire were held in bondage or close to it. The Hrithain were expansionist, driving across the galaxy with little thought about the wellbeing of the planets they conquered or coerced into joining their Empire. As all this ran through his mind, he stepped closer to the prisoner. “What are you doing here?”
The man was wounded and obviously in pain but didn’t reply. He glared at Owen.
What are you thinking? Owen asked himself. When this man got his imperial tattoo, he chose to live or die by the Hrithain military code. There was no way they would get any information from him. Truth drugs would kill him. Torture would be useless, even if Owen condoned it, which he most decidedly did not. He looked at Veraz.
“We might as well bring him along. From the looks of him, if we turn him loose, he’s likely to die before he gets back to wherever he came from.”
Mark nodded, and he and Owen took one arm each and half-carried, half-dragged the prisoner toward a small military-style flyer that lowered from above the buildings to land at the end of the alley. Piloted by Shir-ella, the final member of Veraz’s team, it stopped in a hover less than a meter above the pavement.
Shir-ella leaned out and urgently called, “Get in! They didn’t go far, and I think they’re on their way back with reinforcements.” She grinned at Owen. “My boss would get upset if we lost another flyer. These things aren’t cheap.”
Owen tried to hide his smile but couldn’t quite manage it. It wasn’t that the destruction of their previous flyer had been humorous. Mark had risked himself and destroyed the flyer to buy them time. It had helped to stop the escape of a drug cartel and the rescue of the cartel’s young hostage.
Shir-ella’s teasing was part of his memory of the long-gone days when he, Veraz, and Shir-ella had been part of a different mercenary team. Besides, he knew that although the man would try to hide it, Veraz would also be smiling.
He and Mark hoisted the wounded Hrithain soldier aboard after stunning him to prevent him from attempting escape. Drew gently placed Evan inside and hopped into the front seat along with Veraz. Drew took over the piloting while Shir-ella slipped into the rear. As the team’s medic, she began first aid for Evan.
Mark sat near Anwyn and took her hand. There was another thing he would need to think about at some point. His niece was about to become the newest member of Veraz’s team. She had formed a relationship with Mark during their several previous meetings.
Owen worried about them, first because of the risks Mark took in his employment. He didn’t want to see Anwyn hurt if anything happened to the man she cared about. Owen had once suffered a similar loss. Anwyn had taken enough hazardous gambles lately. Her recent decision to join Veraz’s team would increase those instances enough to worry him.
