Rogue Stars: Purgatory by Jaime Castle

Author:Jaime Castle [Castle, Jaime]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Aethon Books
Published: 2024-03-12T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 13

MALIK

My mom was an introvert. Big-time.

While she was probably one of the most outstanding surgeons in the Lenzaaban Collective, she didn’t do it for the fame or the reward. She did it because she was terrific at it. She had a gift with a scalpel that couldn’t be taught, trained, or rivaled. When she was in a surgery suite, she was without peer. Dad would have these giant parties for his political buddies. They would seek her out just to heap mountains of praise on her for extraordinary achievements such as the nano-botic heart valve replacement surgery she’d pioneered—featured in The Lenzaab Medical Journal—or the time she’d saved one of the prime ministers after a near-fatal stroke.

She also did it because in that suite, even if surrounded by nurses and assistants, it was just her and an unconscious patient. She valued alone time.

My mom was evidence that if you are good enough at something, the spotlight will always find you.

“Deejee! Thirty percent booster for three seconds and then hard stop!” I shouted into the comms. Of course, I didn’t need to yell. The Combat Controller AI could hear the slightest whisper, but my adrenaline was pumping like a well after my encounter with the spider-legs up top.

The mech boosted from the forest floor, rocketing on lifter jets in its calves and hips. At the same time, the engines in the back flared hard to throw us from the jungle canopy into the open expanse above the crater. I experienced a moment of weightlessness as the rockets cut off, that second before gravity demanded you obey, where everything just floated, and there was quiet, except for the light brush of wind racing across the armor.

I was alone for just a second or two. But, in that moment, I could see more of the planet than I’d seen so far. It was expansive and beautiful. In the far, far distance, a mountain range that appeared to be cut from amethyst or some other purple rock rose high into the cloudless sky. The river where I’d encountered croc-o-face sparkled and split into a hundred different tributaries.

Gravity took hold, and I fell toward the incline leading to the crater floor. The robot’s feet pounded into the dirt, sending me on a grinding, rock-strewn slide toward the bottom of the crater. Deejee’s legs struck a large boulder hiding beneath the sand, prompting me to jump so the machine didn’t turn into a sled after face-planting into the hill. Rapid taps of the control thrusters pushed the frame where it needed to be so I could recapture my balance. Feathering the lift boosters, I watched the attitude indicator level out. Then I slammed the machine into the bottom of the crater in an all-out run.

“Predaxes, this is Malik! I’m in Durin-Grail-Six, moving straight to you. Two platoons worth of us are making for the crater floor from opposite sides of the hole,” I said, watching the tactical mapping software flash across the cockpit. Guards and

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