Storm Divers (Book 1 of The Fractured Republic Saga) Read online

  Storm Divers

  Book One of The Fractured Republic Saga

  by

  Terry Mixon

  Storm Divers

  Feel the Pressure!

  Diving the mighty storms of Jupiter seems like committing suicide with style to most people. For Adam Hale, the thrill of plunging his tiny ship into the unimaginable maelstroms on the king of planets helps him forget the blood-soaked tragedy that ended his military career.

  Rachel Price came to Jove Station to find her missing partner, Zane Hale, who is also an intelligence operative for the Republic. To do that, she must convince Zane’s brother—the man responsible for slaughtering dozens of her friends on Mars—to help her.

  Amid the crowds of the first annual system-wide storm diving competition, they stumble onto an insidious conspiracy that changes everything they thought they knew about each other and themselves. They must overcome the past and work as one or Jupiter will eat their bones.

  Titles by Terry Mixon

  You can always find the most up to date listing of Terry’s titles on his Amazon Author Page.

  The Empire of Bones Saga

  Empire of Bones

  Veil of Shadows

  Command Decisions

  Ghosts of Empire

  Paying the Price

  Reconnaissance in Force (January 2017)

  The Humanity Unlimited Saga

  Liberty Station

  Freedom Express

  Tree of Liberty (December 2016)

  The Fractured Republic Saga

  Storm Divers

  Armed Resistance (March 2017)

  The Imperial Marines Saga

  Imperial Marines: Recruit (February 2017)

  Want Terry to email you when he publishes a new book or when one goes on sale? Go to TerryMixon.com and sign up for his new releases notification list. Those are the only times he’ll contact you. No spam.

  Storm Divers

  Copyright 2016 by Terry Mixon

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including information storage and/or retrieval systems, or dissemination of any electronic version, without the prior written consent of the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review, and except where permitted by law.

  This is a work of fiction. All names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination, or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Published by Yowling Cat Press™

  Cover art - image copyrights as follows:

  Depositphotos.com/Kirschner

  Depositphotos.com/Maxmag97.mail.ru

  Depositphotos.com/Mode-List

  NASA

  Cover design and composition by Donna Mixon

  She may be reached at: [email protected]

  Print edition interior design and composition by John McCarthy

  He may be reached at: [email protected]

  Follow him on Twitter: @SurfsideJack

  Logo design by Emily Karnes

  She may be reached at: [email protected]

  Final proofreading by Red Adept Editing

  Find them at: http://www.redadeptediting.com

  Dedication

  To my wife Donna. I love you more than life itself.

  Acknowledgements

  Getting this book written was more challenging than usual. Life kept getting in my way, and the deadline crept ever closer. To the point to where I was less than a month away from the time I had to turn it in and only just wrapping up the first draft. The only reason I got this book done in time was because my wonderful beta readers stepped in and did their magic in a week. I am so grateful to them.

  This book is dedicated to: Alan Barnes, Tracy Bodine, Michael Falkner, Michael Goad, Cain Hopwood, Kristopher Neidecker, John Naiser, Bob Noble, Andrew Olivier, Jon Paul Olivier, Bill Smith, Tom Stoecklein, Dale Thompson, and Jason Young. You shall all be richly rewarded in the next Empire book. Thanks, guys.

  Chapter One

  “I said no.”

  Rachel Price plucked her seatmate’s hand from her leg for the third time in five minutes. That was enough. She decided she was going to make him regret being a pig in ways most men never even dreamed possible.

  The man just smiled smugly. The same as the last two times she’d warned him.

  She wanted to rip his genitals off and jettison them out the shuttle’s airlock. The frozen remnants of his manhood would eventually enter Jupiter’s atmosphere and burn up. That felt fitting.

  Alas, she couldn’t afford to draw any attention to herself, especially now. Even when provoked like this. She was on a mission, even if it was unsanctioned.

  Mister Fingers was an arrogant businessman from one of the Mediterranean Sea domes. He claimed he was sponsoring a team in some sporting event. As if that was supposed to mean something to her.

  She knew this because she’d had to listen to his nasal bragging through every meal for the last month. It made her wish she’d taken something other than a slow passenger freighter like Calypso for the trip from Earth to Jupiter.

  Oh, well. It was water under the bridge at this point. Time to make the magic happen.

  Rachel smiled sweetly at Mister Fingers and made sure to pass her breasts right in front of his face as she got out of her seat. His eyes followed.

  Creep.

  She floated back to the head quickly. If the pilot called everyone to their seats too soon, he’d ruin her plan.

  The real purpose of the trip was to get into her carry-on bag when she got back to her seat without arousing suspicion. She didn’t have to go, but washed her hands anyway, just in case anyone was listening.

  Rachel opened the bin when she was done, shielding her bag with her body. Under the folded clothes sat her service weapon, safely secured under mesh.

  That was only the beginning. The bag had her full kit. All the tools a spy working for the Republican Intelligence Service might need while defending the Republic.

  She pulled a pressurized spray can out of her kit. The label indicated it was deodorant—the kind specially made for a woman, of course—but that was a crock. It was something cooked up by the geeks down in the RIS labs.

  Something that was going to ruin Mister Fingers’s day.

  She misted just a bit on his bag before putting the can away and closing her things back up.

  Thankfully, they entered the station’s landing bay a few minutes later. She only had to endure two more gropes.

  Disembarkation generated some well-deserved distance between her and her seatmate. The perceived gravity once they went down to the customs level was about Mars normal. It felt like home.

  Not that the corporate reception and customs area was anything to cheer a weary traveler. They were the same all across the solar system, filled with industrial beige walls, crappy furniture, and suspicious customs officials.

  The one on Mercury’s Shadow Station was almost identical to this one, as a matter of fact. She had no doubt that the ones the recluses on Pluto used to keep the rest of civilization at bay would be substantially similar.

  She’d never had a chance to see what things were like in any of the extra-solar colonies, but those were undoubtedly the same. It seemed a universal constant.

  Rachel stayed close to Mister Fingers as they lined up for the inevitable customs inspection. No doubt, he thought that was due to his manly charms. In reality, she wanted to be close when things hit the fan.

  Each plane
t was part of the Republic, like it or not, but all guarded their tax bases well. They wanted a cut of anything coming in, so smuggling was something of a system-wide sporting event.

  The rules were simple: don’t let them catch you, or find someone willing to look the other way for a price. If you failed, you’d get a whopping fine and a court date to explain everything to a stern-faced magistrate.

  Getting minor things by wasn’t usually a problem. Most customs agents were willing to take cash to look the other way for harmless stuff.

  That all changed if they suspected you were a Disruptor. Everyone took those terrorist nutjobs seriously. They blew things up and killed people.

  The customs agent in Rachel’s line examined her readout as Rachel stepped forward, held her arms out, and let the scanner examine her for weapons or other proscribed items. A similar system checked her bag.

  Rachel wasn’t worried about the agent spotting her weapons or other gear. A tag in her kit triggered a hidden subroutine in the scanner. It wouldn’t have mattered if she’d been carrying a nuke. All the woman saw was a normal bag and its mundane contents.

  The only risk was if the woman wanted to perform a closer inspection. If so, it would be embarrassing when customs detained her. Nothing more. She had a RIS get-out-of-jail-free card.

  Still, there was her professional reputation to think of. If they caught her, she’d never hear the end of it from Zane Hale, her partner.

  That brought back a stab of worry that she quickly suppressed. He’d come to Jove Station to visit his brother. When he’d missed his return flight, she’d sent him a message.

  One that had gone unreturned.

  She’d contacted security, but their investigation had gone nowhere. Her partner had vanished.

  Keeping her worry about Zane under control for the month-long trip out from Earth had been a form of torture. Even though their boss had tacitly authorized this trip, she was still on her own time.

  Which was fine. Like most workaholics, she had vacation time to burn.

  A low buzz from the machine in the next aisle got the attention of all the customs agents. Rachel heard the man in Mister Fingers’s line tell the bastard to move aside for a closer inspection.

  That sounded relatively benign, but Rachel saw the agent in her line put her hand onto the grip of her sidearm and partly turn to watch the annoyed businessman. A scanner detecting explosive residue was something everyone took seriously.

  “Move along, ma’am,” the agent said. “Everyone else, please back up. We might have an equipment glitch.”

  A convenient story to get innocent bystanders away from a possibly explosive situation.

  Rachel had the pleasure of watching the agents subtly herd Mister Fingers into an exam room. Behind the closed doors, she heard muffled shouting, so he was going to get some roaming hands of his own very shortly.

  Revenge was sweet.

  They wouldn’t find anything, of course. The spray wasn’t actually explosive, and it evaporated quickly. They’d mark it down as a false positive. But not until they put the bastard through the wringer.

  Rachel smiled, grabbed her bag, and walked out of the port.

  Jove Station was huge, a spinning wheel and hub almost a mile across, so she’d want to get a ride to her hotel. Not only did the station serve as a major construction center for ships of all kinds, it was the jump-off point for the entire outer system and FTL ships from deep space. The Republic required the latter.

  Faster-than-light drives created some kind of shockwave when they decelerated from superluminal speed, akin to a sonic boom in atmosphere. Whatever was in front of them when they dropped below the observed speed of light caught the most energetic particles. A nonsurvivable event, she understood.

  She wasn’t sure how far out that extended, but no one wanted to take chances with an off-course FTL ship causing devastation in the inner system.

  It was local evening, so she’d check in and then go look up her partner’s brother. Adam Hale might be more forthcoming in person.

  Based on his uncooperative reaction to security when they’d asked him about his brother, she’d already decided to make a covert approach. She’d pretend to be Zane’s girlfriend. A role the two of them had played a number of times over the years.

  They’d tried being lovers, but that hadn’t worked out. Zane was excellent in bed, but there wasn’t any fire between them. So, they’d gone back to the way things had been. Mostly.

  In any case, Rachel had a seemingly valid reason that she could share with Hale. One she’d use to pry the real story out of him about why her partner had come to see him.

  She’d run his background, of course. Ex-Republican Army. He’d served as an officer for five years, rising to the rank of captain.

  Her stomach had churned when she’d discovered he’d been involved in the fighting on Mars a decade ago. As a native, she was intimately familiar with the Free Mars movement. The name came from an Earth novel, but the organization wasn’t fictional.

  She should know. She’d been a member on the political side.

  It had been a harmless pastime until the Free Mars action wing had crossed the line and bombed the Keller Dome.

  As the seat of the Republican government on Mars, security had protected it very well, but the movement’s idiots had smuggled explosives in somehow.

  The dome had survived. The governor and his staff hadn’t.

  The Republican Army had struck back quickly. She understood why they had to, but that didn’t excuse the indiscriminate use of force against civilians.

  Oh, they’d claimed the people they’d killed had been armed resistance fighters, but Rachel knew better. Many of her friends died when they raided the movement’s offices. It had been a slaughter.

  She’d been off on Vesta at the time, but she’d known there was no way those people would hurt a fly. It had been a cover-up. A smear campaign against the movement.

  One Hale had been involved in. He’d led the forces that had attacked the movement’s offices.

  Back then, she hadn’t had any way to learn more. And if she was honest with herself, she didn’t have the training for it. Once she’d applied for and joined the RIS, they’d kept her away from working any cases on Mars, but eventually granted her access to the sensitive files dealing with the operations there. Some of them, anyway.

  Frankly, she hadn’t expected them to accept her application. It was her half-assed idea of digging up the truth. Apparently, the RIS didn’t care. Or they wanted her data on the movement. Not that she knew much. They’d killed off all her contacts.

  Years later, that little tidbit about Hale had only come to light when she’d looked at Zane’s private papers. Adam Hale was the beneficiary of her partner’s life insurance policy. It had his service ID number beside his name.

  The same number that she’d found in a report on the Mars incident a number of years earlier, but with the names redacted.

  If she were lucky, she’d dig up something interesting to pass on to the authorities here on Jove Station. It wouldn’t make up for the deaths of her friends all those years ago, but putting Adam Hale in detention for the rest of his life would feel very good indeed.

  Chapter Two

  “Yo! You in here, bro?”

  Adam Hale looked up from the thruster he had disassembled on his workbench. “In back.”

  Jason Chang sauntered in. “I figured I’d find you here. There’s a party on, you know. People are expecting to see the one and only Adam Hale there.”

  He’d figured that was what this was about. “I don’t feel like being around other people. And I have nothing to wear.”

  “With the qualification dives starting tomorrow, there are a lot of new people on the station and they want to see the local favorites.” The smaller man waggled his eyebrows. “I can think of a few ladies that wouldn’t mind the fact you have nothing to wear.”

  Adam dropped his wrench and grunted sourly. “You’re an irritating litt
le Asian man. Has anyone ever told you that?”

  “Almost every day,” Jason said with a wide grin. “Just think, my branch of the family hasn’t seen China in something like a hundred and twenty years. I’m not sure we’re actually Asian anymore.”

  “Don’t let your grandmother hear you say that.”

  Jason’s eyes darkened. “Come on. We’ll be early for a change.”

  His friend’s reaction wasn’t a surprise. He didn’t like talking about his family. Adam knew that was because some of them were involved in things that might not exactly be legal. He let it go like he always did.

  Adam held up a grease-covered hand. “Shouldn’t I go shower?”

  “Just wash up. Girls like clean hands. Keep the scruffy look, though. It works for you.”

  He had to admit his oldest friend was right. The casually unshaven, rough-and-ready look seemed to attract women like moths to a flame. That was good, sometimes. Most times not. He had to be in the mood for feminine companionship.

  Adam dispensed some specialized soap on his hands and started rubbing the grease off. “Kira went on a tear today. She’s not happy about the delay with Javelin. She made third shift stay late and redo some buildup around the faster-than-light drive container.”

  Jason snorted. “Kira Houston is always on a tear. That’s how she took Ramirez’s position away from him. Ramirez was a racist. How he ever got put in charge of anything is beyond me. I’ll look over the FTL work myself.”

  “Are you sure you should be calling people racist? I seem to recall you giving me crap for being vanilla ice cream?”

  “Yes, but I only say that to try and change your misguided ways. You can be such a stick in the mud.”