Zero Magnitude (Galaxy Mavericks Book 3) Read online

  Zero Magnitude

  Galaxy Mavericks

  Book 3 (Devika Sharma)

  Michael La Ronn

  Copyright 2017 © Michael La Ronn. All rights reserved. Published by Ursabrand Media.

  This book is a work of fiction. All characters, dialogue, and incidents described in this publication are fictional or entirely coincidental.

  No part of this novel may be reproduced or reprinted without permission of the publisher. Please address inquiries to [email protected].

  Cover designed by Yocla Designs (www.yocladesigns.com)

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  SCIENTIFIC DISCLAIMER:

  I cannot guarantee that any of the following in this series are accurate:

  Physics

  Astronomy

  Chemistry

  Algebra

  Geology

  Quantum Mechanics…

  OK, pretty much every area of science probably got bastardized in some way while I wrote this book. Any and all errors were made lovingly for your reading enjoyment.

  Chapter 1

  “Run faster, Devi!”

  The trees blurred by as Devika Sharma ran barefoot through the dark forests of Coppice. Thunder shook the ground and the rain fell in great drenching slants.

  She wore plastic beads around her wrists, and they shook in frenzied rhythm with her steps.

  She didn’t know how much faster she could run. She hated the never-ending trees, the shadows, the wetness.

  She could hardly see.

  “Come on!” a little boy’s voice shouted.

  And then she spotted a dark hand reaching out for her.

  Rajinder—a little boy her age. Nine or ten. His black hair was matted in a wet clump over his face, and his red cricket jersey was soaked.

  He grabbed her hand forcefully.

  “We have to keep going!” he cried.

  Devika found renewed strength and followed him. His hand was wet and slippery.

  They slid down a muddy path. The mud went up to Devi’s ankles. Her feet burned from running across soil and rock.

  Then the ground sloped upward again. They climbed a small foothill as if it were a mountain. Twice Devika slid backward, but Rajinder grabbed her and pulled her up. They used the trees as support, clawing through the mud until they reached the top of the hill.

  Through the broken trees, they spotted a soup of orange lights blinking in the darkness like bokeh from an unfocused camera.

  “We’re almost there,” Rajinder said.

  “Do you think he’s still following us?” Devika asked, panting.

  She looked back. The forest was as dark as the night. The brownish white trees were dull in the rain, like rows of evil teeth.

  “Too hard to tell,” Rajinder said, hands on his knees. “You going to be okay?”

  She leaned on his shoulder to catch her breath. “If it’s just a little while longer, I’ll—”

  A squeal stopped her.

  She whimpered as Rajinder grabbed her.

  The ground shook, this time from another kind of thunder. Not too far off, several thick trees snapped like twigs.

  And then snorting.

  Sniffing.

  And more squealing. Guttural, gut-wrenching squealing.

  Devi fell face-first into the mud. She pulled herself up but slid forward, her back hitting a tree.

  The beads on her wrist got stuck on a branch. She tried to untangle them, but the smooth surface of the beads was covered in mud.

  Rajinder helped her up.

  “Let the beads go,” he said.

  She clutched them close to her chest. She couldn’t let them go. Not the last traces she had of her mother and father. Without them, she’d have nothing to remember them by.

  “No!” she cried. “It’s the only thing I have from my parents!”

  “You’ve got your memories,” Rajinder said. “It’s more than I have of my parents.”

  “Please, don’t take them!”

  “Devi, they’re making too much noise!” Rajinder said. He ripped the beads off her wrist, and she screamed as they landed in the mud.

  She dove for the beads, but before she could grab them, a black boot stomped the ground, covering them.

  Boots.

  The smell of strong musk, body odor and crusted sweat.

  Devi looked up slowly, past the boots, past the potbelly covered in leather and rings, past the chains and shackles hanging from a belt, past the chainsaw gripped by two bulky arms… to the face of an Argus.

  A pink-skinned pig with floppy ears, a silver ring in his nose, and two sawed off, broken tusks. Its orange eyes were like fire in the rain, and it snarled at them as it revved its chainsaw.

  Devi and Rajinder screamed.

  Devi jumped up and found herself on her feet, running down the hill as the Argus swiped the chainsaw at her.

  She glanced back.

  The beads had sunk into the mud.

  Gone forever.

  She wiped away tears as she ran, following Rajinder between trees.

  The Argus squealed as it ran after them.

  The trees tumbled in the pig’s wake, the chainsaw’s roar louder than the squealing.

  “Bok, bok, bok, bok!” the Argus said.

  Rajinder tripped over a broken branch. Devi bumped into him and they both fell to the ground, tangled in each other. They scrambled up, holding hands.

  “Bok!” the Argus cried.

  “What’s he saying?” Devi asked.

  “Who cares!” Rajinder said.

  “The city isn’t far,” she said, pointing through the trees. “As soon as we get out of the trees, the police will see us, and—”

  The Argus squealed again and the two children yelled, running side-by-side.

  The rain fell harder and faster now. The thunder growled. The chainsaw whirred and screamed. The Argus’s footsteps quaked the ground below them. The slanted trees looked like they were about to fall over.

  Lightning struck, illuminating the forest ahead for a split second.

  “We’re almost out!” Rajinder said.

  One more hill… one more slant downward.

  And then the sound of rushing water. Like a river.

  A creek had flooded, and a river of sticks, rocks and debris intersected their path.

  “No!” Devi said, tears in her eyes.

  “We’ve got to swim,” Rajinder said.

  Behind them, the Argus cut his way through the trees, and they toppled in his wake.

  Devi froze. “I-I can’t swim.”

  “What do you mean you can’t swim?” Rajinder asked.

  “I never learned.”

  The Argus reached them. Lightning struck again, and its yellow teeth gleamed in the rain.

  “Bok-bok pa-bwok.”

  Rajinder took Devi into a hug.

  “I won’t leave you, Devi.”

  She hugged him back and closed her eyes.

  She couldn't lose him.

  He was the only one who understood her. He wasn't even her brother, yet in these past nine months he'd acted like one as they lived like paupers in the streets.

  The Argus turned off the chainsaw and cast it into the mud. It motioned for them to come.

  “Leave us alone!” Rajinder said.

  The pig motioned for them again.

  “Bok bok chain bok,” the pig said, unhooking the chains from his belt.

  “You’re no
t going to take us!” Rajinder said.

  Branches snapped. Water splashed.

  Rajinder gasped. Devi, who had her head nustled against his chest, heard his heart skip a beat.

  Two more Arguses emerged from the woods, grunting and snorting.

  “I won’t let you take us,” Rajinder said, grabbing a stick.

  Devi grabbed his arm. “Raj, don’t—”

  “Devi, run. And don’t look back.”

  The boy ran at the Arguses, yelling.

  Devi screamed as the Argus backhanded him, sending him into a nearby tree.

  “I told you to run!” Rajinder said, sliding down the bark.

  An Argus grabbed him by the ankle and slammed him on the ground, knocking him unconscious.

  “Raj!”

  The tears came. Her entire body trembled.

  Her heart raced. She backed away as the three Arguses approached her, grinning.

  She had to do something.

  Behind, the orange lights of the city glowed. She wished she were there.

  She wished someone would save her.

  She took several more steps back.

  Her feet landed in water.

  Rushing water.

  The river. It flowed behind her, impenetrable and strong.

  The Arguses laughed at her. On the ground, Rajinder lay unconscious.

  “I hate you!” Devi shouted to the pigs.

  She turned and dove into the water.

  She held her breath, but water entered her nose and mouth.

  She speared her arms and legs at the water like she’d seen other people do. She kicked her legs rapidly, imagining them propelling her forward.

  She wished she could be like a fish or a dolphin or anything that would carry her across the water and back to the city where she would be safe and warm and protected.

  But her throat filled with water.

  Her nose burned.

  And then she felt two thick, leathery hands on her ankles.

  The Arguses pulled her out of the water.

  She screamed as a net collapsed around her. She grasped the net with her fingers as the pigs dragged her away, the orange lights of the city growing dimmer through the trees and the rain.

  Her screaming was cut short when the Arguses slammed her head into a rock.

  ***

  Devika woke up panting and covered in sweat.

  Her long black hair hung down in unruly strands across her eyes.

  She was in her bed. In her spaceship. In a cramped living quarter with no window and brown walls.

  She wasn’t a little girl anymore.

  But she felt like it.

  She put her hand to her head. Parting her hair, she fingered a round, boulder-like scar where the scalp met the hairline.

  She rolled out of bed and fell to the carpeted floor. Sputtering, she crawled into the bathroom and ran the faucet. She splashed water on her face and looked at herself in the mirror.

  She was twenty-nine years old and the nightmares still tormented her.

  She gripped the bathroom sink and shook. Her legs trembled.

  Then she punched the glass, screaming loudly as she cracked it.

  ***

  She dressed.

  Jeans tucked into a GALPOL-issue blouse. She tied her hair up into a bun.

  The humidity in the spaceship overnight had been unbearable. She was sweating like she had never sweated before.

  The air-conditioning was gone, ruined in the crash. She was grateful she still had water.

  She grabbed her black trench coat from the base of the bed and wrapped it around her waist.

  Then she loaded her handcoil magazine carefully and methodically and hooked the gun onto her belt.

  “Computer, are you online?” she asked.

  No answer.

  Computer was still down.

  “Damn,” she said.

  She exited her bedroom into the hallway of the ship. The acrid smell of smoke stung her nostrils.

  The ship listed to one side, and somewhere, metal creaked and groaned.

  A steel door covered a rectangular window in the hallway. She inspected it, sighing with relief when she determined that it had held and hadn’t been tampered with.

  She had placed it there last night to stop someone—or something—from infiltrating the ship. And if the door had moved, she would have heard it and shot whoever was coming with her handcoil before they knew what happened.

  She placed her shoulder at the edge of the door and breathed in several times to gather energy.

  Then she pushed, straining against the weight of the door.

  The metal screeched. She winced.

  CRASH!

  The door tumbled away from the broken window. It crashed through foliage and branches and clanged several feet below on the ground.

  She stared through the opening as birdsong swept through the inside of the ship.

  Outside, a lush, green rainforest stretched out as far as she could see.

  The trees and ground were wet from rain.

  She jumped out of the window and landed on the door she had pushed out.

  She looked back at her ship. An old corsair.

  Completely destroyed.

  Vines twined around the ship as if the forest were already swallowing it. Only now did she have the time—and daylight—to see the damage.

  The cockpit had hit the ground first, caving in upon itself. The left wing was broken in half, the other half lying among a ragged path of felled trees behind the ship.

  She shook her head.

  There wasn't much left, but it was her best chance at shelter. The ship had taken a massive hit in the planet's orbit. All the critical systems had burned up on descent.

  It was a miracle she was alive.

  It was a miracle no one had come looking for her.

  Yet.

  Someone was going to come sooner or later. Now that the night couldn't protect her, and the severe thunderstorms of last night had passed, someone would almost certainly be coming to find her.

  They would be coming to find out why she, a GALPOL agent, was sniffing around the laboratories of the Zachary Empire, and why she had decided to make its lead scientist the subject of a human trafficking investigation.

  She hadn't even made an arrest yet.

  But she'd made a bad choice in following her mark. She’d followed the guy into a quadrant of the galaxy where she shouldn’t have gone. The scientist spooked and called in private security. When they'd asked her to identify herself, she’d refused, and they’d shot her right out of space, down, down, down into the jungle atmosphere of Coppice.

  She’d plummeted through a thunderstorm, and the ship had become a giant, falling lightning rod. The high voltage wrecked her heat shield and threw her systems offline.

  And now she was here, on this godforsaken planet with no idea what to do next.

  A purple parrot in a nearby tree looked at her suspiciously before flying away in a dazzle of violet.

  She squinted through the trees.

  She could hear water running.

  Sighing, she started into the rainforest.

  Chapter 2

  Devika climbed a gnarled banyan tree.

  The branches were wet and rough but she avoided cutting her hands.

  Foot by foot, she inched herself up the warped bark, trying not to pay attention to the insects crawling on the wood.

  And the heat.

  God, it was hot.

  And it was only early morning.

  She didn't want to think about what the heat would be like at noon.

  Her fingers slipped off a branch and she gasped as she fell backward. Quickly, she reached out and grabbed a vine and swung haphazardly into the air.

  She slammed into the body of the tree and sighed as the vine supported her weight.

  She hung, suspended in the air. The vine creaked and popped.

  She hadn't even realized how high she'd climbed.

  She was at l
east a hundred feet up.

  All those roof-climbing sessions as an orphan living in the streets had helped her. Really, it was as simple as one hand over the other, feet following, and not looking down.

  Not looking down at all. Only up.

  Yet she found herself looking down now.

  The forest floor lay impossibly far below.

  If she fell, it would all be over in a few seconds.

  Using her legs to get a running start along the base of the tree, she swung herself to a nearby branch and embraced it with both arms. Then she rolled onto her back and stared up at a kaleidoscope of leaves and sunlight.

  Water droplets dripped on her forehead. She closed her eyes, counted to ten, and listened to the birdsong and buzzing insects.

  The tree branch swayed in a strong breeze, and she took that as a sign to keep going.

  She steadied herself and walked across the thick branch to the trunk of the tree. She climbed farther up.

  The top of the tree wasn't as wet.

  She felt warm sunlight on her hands as she pulled herself upward into the crown of the tree.

  A nest of monkeys in a nearby tree gibbered as they swung down into the canopy.

  Devika parted two leafy branches and climbed onto the topmost arc of the tree.

  Sticking her head above the treetops, she felt the warm, humid breeze against her face as she observed the forest.

  Trees. Bushy, green treetops. Colorful flocks of parrots flying over them.

  Forest for miles.

  She'd expected that.

  She listened for the water.

  A soft rushing.

  A valley, not too far off. It had to be a river.

  Her throat was dry. She wasn't hungry yet, but she'd forgotten all about thirst.

  Suddenly she wanted to drink as much water as her stomach could carry.

  She licked her chapped lips as she traced the winding valley in the trees toward the horizon.

  Nothing.

  She turned and followed the river in the opposite direction.