Read The Lazarus Particle Online
Authors: Logan Thomas Snyder
The Lazarus Particle
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
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.