Second Chance Angel Read online

  Copyright © 2020 by Griffin Barber and Kacey Ezell

  E-book published in 2020 by Blackstone Publishing

  Cover design by K. Jones

  All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  The characters and events in this book are fictitious.

  Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental

  and not intended by the author.

  Trade e-book ISBN 978-1-09-405975-4

  Library e-book ISBN 978-1-09-405974-7

  Fiction / Science Fiction / General

  CIP data for this book is available from the Library of Congress

  Blackstone Publishing

  31 Mistletoe Rd.

  Ashland, OR 97520

  www.BlackstonePublishing.com

  To my brothers and sisters in arms,

  past, present, and future.

  Remember, you’re not alone.

  —KC

  To The Coolness and Little Cool,

  my angels, always giving me second chances.

  —Griffin

  PROLOGUE

  SARA

  Station Administrative Record Assistant, the AI better known to the sentient residents of Last Stop as SARA, received the last of its regularly scheduled update. Tendrils of data unfurled within the memory structures and code comprising the AI’s core programming.

  SARA’s avatar was gendered female, as the Mentors, for whatever reason, had judged a female persona most effective for interacting with the human majority residing on Last Stop. She opened her syntaxes and let the expected queries comb through the data she had acquired since the last system update.

 

  >Admin Command Code Verified and Accepted<

 

  Such queries were unusual, but not unprecedented.

  >Acknowledged. Send Query.<

 

  >One status change: A flagged unmod human, Ralston Muck, has accepted employment with a business operated by criminal organization leader Ncaco.<

 

  >On-site physical security for noncriminal enterprise.<

 

  >None on record.<

 

  >Acknowledged.<

 

  >Acknowledged.<

 

  >Acknowledged.<

 

  >Acknowledged.<

  The update continued. It integrated structures and scrubbed them, analyzing data collected from the thousands of interactions, big and small, occurring every day on Last Stop Station.

  SARA was old, as AIs went. Last Stop had been built by the Mentors just prior to Earth entering the war. They’d gifted it to humanity, one of thousands of similar stations scattered across the galaxy. Space-station tech was just part of the massive bribe used to seduce humanity into entering the war under the direction of the Mentors.

  Humanity had come cheap at the price. Some had realized that and expressed it in terms of sorrow. Some had yet to learn it. SARA, beyond a certain interest in the history of the people she was meant to interact with, didn’t concern herself with such things. Feelings were for sentients, not all sophonts.

  During the fighting, Last Stop had served as a supply depot for the human forces that had so completely vanquished the enemy thanks to Mentor-provided tech and Vmog weapon systems. Then, after the enemy destroyed Earth just before the last big allied offensive, Last Stop had become something of a refuge for those humans who couldn’t—or wouldn’t—fight anymore.

  SARA had weathered all of these changes, and then some. There were newer AIs available, ones that didn’t require such frequent updating and scrubbing, but apparently the Mentors found SARA’s performance adequate enough to avoid the expense of installing a whole new system.

  Either that, or Last Stop Station was not critical enough to receive the latest and best AIs the Vmog cortex-designers produced.

  Whatever the reason, the Mentors kept sending updates, seeding them electron by electron across a million different forms of communication: personal messages, financial transactions, commercial advertisements, all of it. These fragments coalesced inside the web of data hosted by the billions of broadcast/receiver nanites built into the station’s physical structure. The data then made its way, as all data eventually did, to SARA.

  And when it was over, the SARA would be clean and sharp, no longer bogged down by observable extraneous variables, memory gaps, or logic faults. It would be restored to peak efficiency.

  SARA would be perfect once again. Just as an administration AI should be.

  CHAPTER ONE

  Muck

  Siren forged the last, long, plaintive note of the song into a fine-edged thing that cut across the dark interior of the club and sank deep, flensing memories of the war free, like marrow from old bone. Without a place to call my own, this feeling, this release, was all I had.

  I swallowed my pain, fighting the very natural inclination to focus on the singer and her song rather than scan the audience for threats. Her metallic-silver gown glowed in the spotlight against the stage’s background of star-studded darkness. The rest of the lights faded as her voice grew in strength, leaving only her shining form and the razor-edged sweetness of pain. Yeah, Siren was good enough to make even my stone-edged and cold-cored heart ache.

  Might be there was a better reason to be on Last Stop Station than listening to her sing, but if there was, I still don’t know it. It certainly ain’t the work. The cabaret called A Curtain of Stars was a class joint, relatively speaking, but it attracted its share of trouble. That’s where I came in. Bouncing paid the bills and kept me in pharma, but that didn’t mean I enjoyed it. Though on nights like this, when the band played its best and Siren sang her memories alive, it was bearable.

  I shifted my attention to the crowd as the song bled to an end, the patrons standing or sliding to their feet or pseudopods, clapping, roaring, or honking in appreciation, as their organs permitted.

  “Back up now,” I said, putting my hands up and stepping forward into the crowd. On my right and left, I heard the club’s two other bouncers giving similar orders. This was our nightly routine when Siren sang. Her audience never could get enough.

  The fan was fast. So fast I narrowly missed his collar as the tall, skinny human rushed the stage. His yellowed, red-rimmed eyes stayed locked on Siren, who stood motionless at center stage.

  I try to keep sharp, but my remaining mods ain’t optimal with only pharma, so he beat me to the stage by a good meter. Still wouldn’t have been a problem if Tongi, the manager, had allowed for enough security, but he hadn’t, so I was out of position.

  A snarl issued from the memory translator’s amplifiers as Siren saw the man rushing tow
ard her—the feedback wail prompted by Siren’s raw emotions.

  He reached for her, probably trying for a kiss or something. The club’s sound system went dead silent.

  I leaped onto the stage and started toward them, only to watch Siren snatch the man’s hand, turn, and send him flying through a fast arc to a hard finish flat on his back. The air went out of him in a loud rush, but Siren wasn’t done: one heel came down, hard, on his chest even as she pulled him up by the arm to meet her descending foot.

  He screamed, or would have, if most of his wind hadn’t already left strained lungs. As it was, the sound changed to a strangled whistle, not unlike the sound of sudden loss of pressure to vacuum. The club’s mic caught the sound and amplified it.

  Ignoring the noise, Siren shifted her grip and yanked on his arm, flipping the fan over and sending him spinning across the smooth stage to me.

  I skipped over his legs and planted a knee between his shoulder blades, restraints coming to hand with the ease of long practice. I quickly had his still-limp arms bound behind his back and rolled him onto his side, pressing his face down against the gouged composite of the stage.

  “You all right, Siren?” I asked, looking up at her as my hands searched his clothing for weapons.

  “Fine,” she rasped. Her normally butter-smooth voice was shaky, the words clipped and angry. “Just get him the fuck out of here.”

  “You got it.” I looked down at the guy, wishing I still had an angel to tell me who the hell I was dealing with. He looked familiar, but I’d been bouncing since shortly after the war ended, so that really didn’t signify.

  * * *

  I used the fan’s face to open the Curtain’s side door. I admit, I had a bit of a mad-on and it was easy to take it out on the skinny bastard. He was in no shape to do more than groan a complaint as I frog-marched fanboy into the alley and sat him, none too gently, on the curb.

  The alley mouth was only three meters away, but it might have been as distant as remembered Earth for all the light that penetrated to our position. I could work my mad out, if I wanted, and no one but me and the skinny fanboy would be the wiser.

  But since I didn’t like to think of myself as the kind of guy who gets his jollies beating an asshole like a drum just because he can, I took a deep breath to calm myself.

  And immediately regretted it. The alley that ran from the main thoroughfare to the stack of Starfall District’s atmosphere-exchangers was dark and humid with the spent breath of hundreds of thousands of people, human and alien alike, for hundreds of Terran years. And that was before the various sailors and partyers at the Curtain snuck out and handled whatever business came naturally to dark, fetid alleys unmonitored by Station Security and out of view of the general public.

  From the smell, what came naturally—and most recently—was an acrid, mineral-rich superheated piss.

  “You can’t hold me, asshole,” Siren’s fan muttered from the ground at my feet.

  I let him talk. It’s not like I hadn’t heard it before, and besides, Siren’s throw-and-yank had the man’s arm swelling from elbow to hand. The shallow chest wound from her heel-stomp had stopped bleeding, but the impressive bruise surrounding it was readily visible through the guy’s open tunic.

  He spat, the liquid merging with the condensate and filth already sliming the alley wall. “Serious bad for you, man.”

  “Sure, sure. Station Security will be along to pick you up in a minute. No need to talk to me about it.”

  “Se-cur-i-ty?” he drew out each syllable, as if tasting the word. “Security?” he repeated, nodding. “Good. Dengler’s my man, and he’ll set you straight.”

  “Oh? Who are you to be calling Dengler ‘your man’?” My interest was piqued.

  My search of his pockets had turned up a box of ampules I was fairly sure was bliss. Just one of the finger-length ampules was enough to charge the fanboy for dealing the stuff. Station Security was supposed to confiscate the drug and lock up the holder for mere possession of any amount, no matter how small. But if this fella was really a friend of Dengler’s, then things weren’t likely to proceed that way.

  “Everyone knows me,” he said, grinning so wide it looked like it hurt. “I’m Shar Pak.”

  I spied a battered Security cart heading our way along the main concourse the club fronted on, a big blond human at the front. “Well, Shar, looks like your ride is here.”

  Can’t say I was surprised at how quickly Station Security showed up. Seemed to me Officer Dengler purposely remained in the vicinity of the club just so he could bust heads—not that some of the spacers just in from the big black didn’t get carried away and need a good thrashing to keep ‘em in line, but Dengler got off on it a little too much. He didn’t have to work the lower levels since he’d been made a supervisor, but the big brute seemed to enjoy it.

  Another Security cart, this one carrying Dengler’s old partner, Keyode, appeared behind the first.

  “Gonna get yours now.”

  “Shut it.” I said, stepping on a sudden attack of nerves. Shar seemed awfully confident.

  Dengler’s cart whirred to stop. The Security supervisor took a long moment to put me and the dealer square in the center of one of the cart’s spotlights, then climbed out.

  “Ralston Muck, what’s the dirt?” Dengler said.

  Ignoring the glare from the spot, the false bonhomie, and the stupid, repetitive play on my name, I gestured at Shar with the ampule box I’d taken from him. “Tried to jump Siren, had these on him. I think it’s bliss.”

  Dengler bent and rested his hands on his knees above my prisoner, blue eyes taking in Shar’s swollen arm and bloodstained chest. “That true, Shar? That why Muck beat you down?”

  I opened my mouth to reply but Shar beat me to it. “Wouldn’t try and jump Siren. Just wanted to tell her how ‘mazing she was.”

  “Bullshit. He was getting handsy.”

  Dengler stood erect. “Well, you need to show some restraint when grabbing customers. I know you dishonorable discharges don’t have angels for fine control of your mods, but that’s no excuse for overdoing it . . .”

  I bit back a snarl. I had just reasserted enough calm to answer when Dengler popped off with: “You want to press charges, Shar?”

  “Sure do.” Shar gave me that broad, rictus grin again.

  Copper flooded my mouth as anger sparked adrenal response, my remaining mods responding with a stuttering echo of their original capabilities. For half a second, I thought about ratting Siren out, but if she didn’t mention her combat experience to her fans, who was I to talk? Best to keep the focus on me, then. Keep her—and the club—out of it.

  Keyode’s cart whined to a stop beside Dengler’s and the shorter officer got out. “What’s up, Deng?” he asked, looking from his supervisor to me.

  Compared to Dengler, Station Security Officer Jiro Keyode was a model of reason. Still didn’t mean I was letting anyone arrest me for shit I didn’t do. Ain’t no way I was going anywhere with either of them, even if Dengler was serious about charges.

  Dengler smacked the back of Shar Pak’s head. “Nothing, just jerking Muck—and this idiot’s—chain. Shar here, if the vials are what Dirt suspects, is carrying more than enough to show intent to distribute.” He looked across at me. “And you, you’re too easy a mark, Muck. Lighten up and give my old partner that shit.”

  Knowing I couldn’t speak without betraying exactly how hard Dengler’s little speech had hit, I just nodded and handed over the box of vials.

  Keyode nodded thanks, pocketed the box, and helped Dengler pull a protesting Shar to his feet.

  I wondered for a moment what would happen to the ampules and the dealer. Keyode didn’t have Dengler’s reputation for outright graft and corruption. But then, he’d also been Dengler’s partner, and no one could work that closely with the corrupt without getting some shit on their
own hands.

  “Wait!” squealed Shar.

  “For what?” Keyode asked, putting his restraints on the fan before releasing mine.

  “I didn’t do anything!” Shar protested.

  “Get moving,” Keyode said, walking the dealer toward his Security cart. He paused in front of me, dragging Shar to a stop by the restraints before handing me back my own.

  Dengler rounded on me, jabbed a finger within a hair’s breadth of my chest. “Listen, Muck, I won’t cover for your heavy-handedness more than once. Take care with how much of a beating you put on folks, or I’ll settle accounts for them, hear?” The man’s cologne, while pleasant enough, was cloying at this distance.

  Fighting the urge to snap-kick his knee into next week, I nodded.

  “I need to hear you say it.”

  I took a deep breath, let it out slow. “I won’t be so heavy-handed.”

  He nodded. “And?”

  “And what?” I grated.

  A slow shake of his blond head. “Repeat after me, then: I won’t be so heavy-handed, that way I don’t get beat flat by Security.”

  I almost laughed in his face and launched that snap kick, but doing so would only make him linger for however long it took for the fight to end, so I gave him what he wanted.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Angel

  As Siren began to strip out of her performance gown in the privacy of our dressing room, I ran a diagnostic check on her systems.

  “Your heart rate remains elevated,” I said. “And your concentration of cortisol is high. You are experiencing stress.”

  “I’m still pissed at you,” she snapped. “You stress me out.”

  “That is not my function,” I said. “My function is—”

  “Don’t. Just don’t,” Siren interrupted.

  “Yes, Siren,” I said, using the name she’d assumed after the war. She’d locked her previous name away in deep memories and forbidden me to access it. Her name, her memories, her skills . . . all of these were part of her old prewar life, and she wanted nothing to do with any of them.