Out of Orbit- The Complete Series Boxset Read online

  Copyright © Chele Cooke 2019.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other non-commercial uses permitted by copyright law.

  Publisher’s Note: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are a product of the author’s imagination. Locales and public names are sometimes used for atmospheric purposes. Any resemblance to actual people, living or dead, or to businesses, companies, events, institutions, or locales is completely coincidental.

  Cover Design © Chele Cooke 2018

  Dead and Buryd / Chele Cooke. -- eBook 2nd edition, mobi.

  For Moa & Susanna

  To the Interitus girls,

  Writing with you both has made me a better storyteller.

  You're the best!

  - Days that came Before

  - The Quarter Run

  1. Buryd in the East

  2. Ships and Supplies

  3. Absent from the Guard

  4. Down the Way

  5. Freed-Up Time

  6. The Kahle in the West

  7. Love and Loss

  8. The Friend in the South

  9. Deal on Delivery

  10. Taking Them Down

  11. A Twisting of Wills

  12. A Promise Sold

  13. Guilt in Hiding

  14. The Side You're On

  15. Blood and Choice

  16. Games of Escape

  17. Question of Delicacy

  18. Into the Northern Quarters

  19. Still Not Grown

  20. Behind the Bar

  21. Wrench in the Works

  22. Who She Was

  23. Pillars of a Plan

  24. The Supply Scout

  25. The Other One

  26. One of Their Own

  27. One Dead, One Drysta

  28. Colourful Truths and Excuses

  29. Keep Him Dead

  30. Avoiding the Arrangement

  31. Back Before Sunset

  32. Running into Oppression

  33. Lies in the Dust

  34. The Preceding Void

  35. The Lightning Commander

  36. Hopeless Apparition

  37. The Inmate and the Influential

  38. From the Outside In

  “Grandda’,” the young boy asked, pushing his blanket back impatiently and gathering his stuffed toy horse up in his arms. “You tell me a story?”

  Lyle lifted his head, looking away from the knife and half-carved wooden block in his hands. A small, tired smile slipped over his lips, and he gave a gentle nod. It was already a long way past the boy’s bedtime, but he could hardly blame him for being restless. The heat had set in, and the thick air remained uncomfortable long after the sun had set.

  Pushing himself up from his chair, Lyle moved over to his grandson’s bed, fixing the blanket neatly across the end before he sat down. The bed was low and it made his joints ache to sit on the soft mattress, but the boy would only complain if he remained on the other side of the room for the story.

  “Which story would you like?”

  The boy thought for a moment, nuzzling the horse’s soft flank as he blinked sleepily.

  “Ships!” the boy answered finally, sitting up.

  Reaching out and leaning across the bed, he gently pushed his grandson back down onto the mattress and brushed his dark brown hair away from his eyes. If he was going to tell him a story, the boy could at least pretend to try to sleep.

  “You had that one last time, Brae,” he reminded him.

  “It’s my favourite.”

  Lyle rolled his eyes. He was sure that he’d told Braedon the story of the ships the last half-dozen times. Just like his son, Braedon’s father, his grandson never tired of hearing the tale of their past.

  “Alright,” he answered with a slow nod.

  He leaned away from Braedon, placing his knife and the block of half-whittled wood down on the floor before looking back at his grandson. With his son, Halden, working long hours so often, it was a regular arrangement that he put Braedon to bed. Lyle didn’t mind. In fact, he rather enjoyed it. The young boy was almost as enthralled with his stories as his own children used to be. Though they were both grown now, no longer needing stories at bedtime, when they even came home at all.

  “Long, long ago, Os-Veruh was a beautiful and rich planet,” Lyle began, smiling back at the grin spreading across Braedon’s face. “The Veniche people lived in one place, they had everything they could ever want, even if they sometimes complained that they didn’t.”

  Braedon rolled onto his side, knees drawn up towards his chest as he hugged the horse tightly and turned it in his arms so that the toy could hear the story better.

  “Men fought for more, to see more of the skies. So they spent years building big ships that could float on air instead of water.”

  “Grandda’, you forgot the men who look up!” Braedon whined.

  Frowning, Lyle shook his head.

  “I was getting to it,” he answered. “Os-Veruh had everything, from men who examined the deepest oceans, to those who looked at the furthest stars in the night sky. One day, one of the sky watchers saw something. He saw a shooting star heading towards Os-Veruh. The Veniche people panicked. No one knew whether the meteor would hit the planet or sail past, but the sky watcher said it would collide with them, and they had to believe him.

  “The big sky ships were almost ready, and all the people argued and fought over who would be allowed onto them. Men argued using their power and their money, claiming that those things made them more worthy of saving. Others asserted their intelligence and skill, saying that those things should be what mattered.”

  “Like Gianna?” Braedon asked.

  “What?” Lyle asked, thrown from the rhythm of his story by Braedon’s sudden question. In the times he’d told his grandson the story, he’d never asked that before.

  “With the med’cine.”

  Lyle reached up and scratched his cheek. He had to admit, he didn’t know. He’d never stopped to think about which skills would have been prized above others back then. He could only imagine that the people on the ships would have needed medicines and medics to administer them.

  “I guess,” he agreed finally. “Yes, probably.”

  “Good, I want to save her.”

  A quiet chuckle came out in a breath as Braedon nodded resolutely and settled himself back against the pillow. Lyle blinked, the interruption having dragged his thoughts from the flow of the story.

  “Where was I?”

  “The arguments.”

  “Oh, yes, I was,” Lyle agreed. “The arguments and battles over who had places on the ships continued until the final days, and then one year before the meteor was set to hit the planet, the ships took off with as many people as they could carry.”

  “Into the sky to search for new places,” Braedon said with an enthusiastic nod against his pillow.

  “That’s right. The ships went in all directions. Each ship carried a machine that could talk to the others even over millions of miles. If one ship found another planet, they could tell everyone else.”

  “But the meteor didn’t hit us!”

  Lyle frowned, pursing his lips as he looked down at his grandson. Halden and Georgianna, his own children, had not jumped ahead in the story every chance they could. Then again, it could have been that he just didn’t remember. It had been a long time ago. Halden with his b
right green eyes and dark hair like his own, Georgianna with her honey-gold curls that were always in a mess. He missed them as children, hanging on his every word like Braedon did now.

  “No, it didn’t,” he said. “The meteor went straight past Os-Veruh, colliding with the planet that circled between Os-Veruh and the sun. That planet was destroyed, broken into thousands of pieces which would become meteors of their own.

  “The Veniche who remained on Os-Veruh were relieved, and celebrated that they had been saved. However, as the days and months passed, they realised that things were not the same. They were travelling closer to the sun than they had before. They realised that the other planet had been keeping them away from the sun. The people began to suffer: some were killed and others driven mad by the heat. Some people fled north where the heat was less, hiding inside their buildings and creating tunnels under the ground to escape the sun.

  “Next came the freeze as the planet moved further from the sun again. The snow froze everything it touched, and people ran south to escape as much of the blizzards as they could.”

  “I don’t like the freeze,” Braedon complained in a small voice.

  “No, many didn’t,” he answered. “But families banded together, set on helping each other through the worst of it.”

  “Tribes! Tribes!” Braedon chanted, his dislike of the freeze forgotten as he pushed himself up.

  Lyle reached out and settled the boy back down before he continued.

  “Yes, Brae. All across the land, families joined together to share their skills, forming tribes who travelled together.

  “The Kahle, one of the biggest tribes, had two settling grounds, Adlai in the north for the heat, and Nyvalau down south for the freeze. The Kahle built up these grounds, creating sturdy homes and even tunnels in Adlai to escape the sun.”

  Braedon was getting sleepy, Lyle could tell. After looking after the boy for most of the heat while his father went off to find work, he was getting pretty good at telling when the youngster was ready to doze off. The tight ball he’d curled his body into loosened a little, and lifting his weight from the bed for a moment, Lyle tugged the blanket out from underneath him and draped it over Braedon.

  “It was decided by the elders of each tribe that a ledger would be kept,” he continued, setting back into his spot at the end of the bed. “When people joined in love, when children were born and people died it was written down, so that, like the Veniche before them, they could remember the past.”

  “Grandda’,” Braedon mumbled. “Who has our ledger?”

  Lyle smiled.

  “I do, Brae,” he explained. “I’ll show it to you tomorrow.”

  “Okay,” the child yawned. “Finish the story.”

  Lyle wasn’t entirely used to being ordered around in the telling of his bedtime stories, especially not by four-year-olds. However, being his only grandchild, he let Braedon off with a lot of things he knew he shouldn’t.

  “For generations, they lived this way. Travelling between the two grounds, the Veniche people lived in peace.”

  Braedon rolled himself further onto his stomach, burying his face into his pillow.

  “Then the Adveni came,” he mumbled through the material.

  “Yes, Braedon,” Lyle said as he got up from the bed. Leaning over Braedon, he smoothed the blanket across his grandson’s small body and kissed him gently on his temple. “And then the Adveni came.”

  He made each turning the same as he had the last time. He’d been warned against it and told to take a different route through the buildings on each journey, but he liked the routine of a well-trodden path. He liked knowing exactly where the blind spots were on a journey and where he had to be extra careful. The sprawling training grounds were best avoided entirely. There were too many eager young Adveni who wanted their first capture. He knew the routes that caused the least problems, so while it made it easier for others to follow, he took those every time.

  High above, the sun made a slow progression towards the horizon. In the Adveni quarter, the polished stones of the buildings shone like the sun themselves in the suffocating heat. The buildings’ occupants were as deadly as the close, mid-heat sun. Perhaps more so, as it didn’t take days for an Adveni to kill. It took moments, minutes, or hours… depending on their wishes.

  Sweat clung to his skin, his shirt plastered against his back. At his wrists and neck, the skin was already turning pink, and he could only count himself lucky that he knew a good medic to ease the burning flesh when he returned home.

  The building stood halfway along the perfectly laid Adveni road. It was easy to spot amongst the other buildings. The design was similar, its colours uniform with the rest of the street, but this building was larger, more impressive, and slightly more terrifying for what waited inside.

  He lengthened his stride, making brisk progress down the road towards the building. He wouldn’t be going inside, he never did, but it wouldn’t change the fact that he didn’t have long. Pass offs had to be made quickly and without fuss. With their situation, they couldn’t risk being caught.

  He was almost opposite the building before he could look up into one of the front windows, able to spot the sky-blue shirt hanging behind the glass. He smiled, stuffing his hands into his pockets as he turned towards the house, making his way through the gap between the buildings.

  The contact he’d been coming to see was a drysta, a slave to an Adveni, so he wasn’t able to venture far from his owner’s house. The drysta was already outside by the time he rounded the back corner of the house. He stood against the wall, a cigarette hanging from his fingers, and a fresh bruise blackening his cheek. A collar shone around his neck and numerous small scars snaked out from underneath it. He glanced up. At the sight of his visitor, he grinned.

  “I wasn’t sure you’d make it.”

  “When have I ever let you down?”

  The drysta tilted his head to the side as he rubbed his hand against his shoulder, ash dropping from the end of the cigarette and sprinkling down into the grass.

  “You got anything for me?”

  A brief shake of his contact’s head as he leaned forward, glancing through the back door which stood open just enough to warn them of an approach.

  “No, he’s been in a particularly bad mood,” he said, pointing towards his eye. “I’ve been keeping a…”

  The low thud of a footstep cut him off, and the drysta quickly stood up straight, turning to peer in through the gap. They both listened, expecting the steps to fade into the other sounds of the house, but they came closer, and seemed to multiply.

  “Go!”

  He didn’t need to be told twice. Turning on his heel, he made his way back around the corner to the gap between the buildings. The door was wrenched open so hard that it smacked into the wall. Though he knew that only one Adveni lived in the house, he heard at least four men pour out through the door.

  “Who was here?”

  The drysta’s howl of pain seared through the air as the only answer.

  Breaking into a run, he didn’t need to look behind him to know he was being followed. The drum of footsteps evened out into a constant beat against the pavement. If it had been any other situation, he might have laughed that the Adveni were so well trained that they couldn’t even run out of unison.

  Another scream of pain echoed between the high walls. Even through the percussion of footfalls, he could hear the drysta claiming he didn’t know anything, that it had been no one. He rounded the corner, guilt following at every turn.

  The wide street was the worst place to run from an Adveni. He knew that if even one of them chose to stop running and aim a weapon, he would be dead or captured in an instant. He had to get into some of the narrower streets, or somewhere he could try to lose them, instead of listening to them slowly close the gap.

  Launching himself around a corner, his shoulder collided with the wall. His shirt caught on a rough patch of brick, tearing through the material and scraping the flesh
beneath as he pushed off the wall and sprinted along the thin alley.

  A shot smacked into the pavement by his foot, bouncing away in the glare of the evening sunlight. It was a warning shot, an order to stop. The next one would not miss.

  He couldn’t be taken in alive. He knew too much. He’d never fully considered his ability to withstand Adveni torture, but he wasn’t about to risk finding out. At least he’d learned something from the shot: they were firing metal, not copaq bullets. They were aiming to kill.

  The road was taking him further through the Adveni dwelling quarter. There were so many roads to take. He didn’t usually come this far into the quarter. He hadn’t memorised the routes. Tall buildings obscured his view and disorientated him. The footsteps were getting closer as he hurled himself into an alleyway. High walls threw him into the shadows.

  Blinded by the harsh sun as he came out into the next street, he squeezed his eyes closed. He didn’t care where he put his feet as long as it was away from the Adveni behind him. He blinked and shook his head. The glare of the sun on his left blazed across his eyes. He was heading north, further from the city, he knew that now.

  A shot nicked his shoulder with a sizzling burn. He gritted his teeth and pushed harder. For a moment, the briefest soaring moment, he gained some ground. He ducked into the next alley he came across. His eyes widened at the sight of a metal fence at the opposite end. A bark of gruff laughter followed him along the tunnel. Through the blood pounding in his ears, he could hear that the footsteps had slowed. There was no use in running. They’d caught their prey.

  Through the bars of the fence, he could see the open plains of the northern land. He’d reached the outer ridge of the quarter. There would be no protection, and given time, the heat would be as ruthless as the Adveni behind him. There was nothing for it. Time was not to be argued with, and he had run out of it.

  He didn’t break stride as he hurtled down the alley. It was no different from jumping onto a horse, right? Hands up, swing your leg over, and hope you went high enough. There was no stirrup. It would be a big leap. The Adveni realised what he was doing. Two of them pelted after him as the other took aim. He didn’t slow as he ran straight at the fence. Grasping the top, he launched himself up, the top bar of the metal digging into his stomach as he swung his leg over. The shot blew off the heel of his boot as he swung his other leg over the fence. Pushing himself up from a stumbled landing, he set off running from the Adveni, into the merciless sun.