Orphaned Warrior: Book Five of the Dragon Spawn Chronicles is scheduled to be ready early 2024, probably as early as January. Here’s preview of the first chapter:
1 – Disembark
The third-rate space liner jerked as the docking clamps grappled it into place. Despite the captain’s explicit instructions to wait for the green indicator light, the cramped passengers removed their safety harnesses and grabbed their possessions.
Jori remained seated amid the tattered cushioning of his concaved seat. Designed for an average-sized adult, it had too much space to adequately protect children like himself. He was just tall enough to fit into the adjustable head-brace and had long since gone nose-blind to its fetid odor of spoiled sweat.
Although ready to get off this crowded junkheap, his nerves twitched at the uncertainty awaiting him. A new space station, a new guardian, and supposedly one more trip before he could finally settle. But what did settling mean? He still had no idea what to expect. Would he get a new family? Stay in a group home? Or did the Cooperative have something more sinister in mind for him?
It was enough to make him want to run away. If only he had somewhere else to go.
This line of thinking only heightened his agitation so he distracted himself by studying the diversity of passengers. A lanky man with a large head set on a neck that looked ready to snap rose slowly, likely from the Avalon space station’s gravitational setting. The short, stocky woman sitting across from him appeared to have the opposite reaction when her gravity-built muscles caused her to jump rather than ease out of her seat.
A family of four in shabby clothes bickered. They had black hair like his, though theirs were dirty and unkept. Although Jori still had the fleshiness of youth in his cheeks, his face was more angular than their chubby rounded ones. The boy, who was only a year or two older than Jori, kept flicking his little sister’s ear, making her whine. His parents did nothing, even as the behavior escalated.
The boy elbowed his sister hard enough to make her fall. She cried out and he cackled obnoxiously. Jori clenched his fists, wishing he could punch the bully in the face and show him what it felt like to be mistreated. He settled for scowling at the boy instead and received a derogatory gesture in return. The father ordered him to not be rude, but that only made the boy turn the same gesture onto him.
Jori’s chest tightened. If he’d ever acted like that, his father would’ve knocked him across the deck. This was why he was here, though—safe from that violent chima and practically an orphan since he’d been taken so far from home that his parents might as well be dead.
A pang pinched his insides as he looked back on the day a commander from the Prontaean Cooperative had rescued him from his abusive father. It’d meant separating him from his mother too, but that couldn’t be helped since Father had exiled her beyond his reach.
He touched his chest, feeling the necklace hidden beneath his clothes. He’d given it to his mother long ago and found it after she’d been spirited away. He kept it as a keepsake, but in truth it was a symbol of his loneliness.
His new life with the Cooperative was supposed to be better. Ha! So far, he’d only exchanged one unpleasant situation for another. Since he was a promising warrior from an enemy race, the Cooperative Council had ordered he be sent to a faraway planet, intentionally cutting him off from the commander who wanted to adopt him. And thanks to the information kept in his file, his travels had included a series of temporary guardians who treated him like a criminal. Chimas.
Jori glanced at his current guardian who blocked him in by commanding the aisle seat. The way Lockhart carried himself, with his broad shoulders pulled back and a severe expression that brooked no nonsense, indicated he was a soldier, not a caretaker. Even when sleeping, he seemed vigilant and aware.
He had a formidable lifeforce coupled with a surly attitude that ensured none of these dubious passengers gave him any trouble. The only one this man didn’t intimidate was Jori. He’d been around warriors for nearly all eleven years of his life. While some, like Sensei Jeruko, were good men who fought for the right reasons, many were loudmouthed bullies who’d sooner put a knife in you than smile.
His stomach cinched at the thought of his mentor. Sensei Jeruko was dead, as was Jori’s older brother—two more people gone from his life forever.
A high-pitched groan like an overworked engine sent Jori’s teeth rattling. It stopped almost as soon as it started, followed by an equalization of pressure that made his ears pop. The green light blinked on, accompanied by a discordant signal that warbled like a half-dead bird.
Still, his guardian remained seated. Jori waited without complaint. It wasn’t like he had anywhere to go. After a far-flung journey of different guardians trading him off at one station after another, he dreaded the prospect of meeting yet another one.
“Let’s go,” Lockhart said when the cabin was nearly empty.
Without a word, Jori unbuckled the threadbare harness. Lockhart pulled his black duffle bag the size of that bully’s sister from the overhead compartment. Jori grabbed his meager pack from the open area under his seat.
Lockhart made him walk in front as they exited. Jori moved with a haste that kept the man from stepping on his heels but slow enough to not appear like a convict attempting to escape.
They disembarked the space liner and stepped onto the metal gangplank. Lockhart’s boots clomped ostentatiously with the implicit message that he was powerful enough to break heads. Jori stepped softer so as not to foolishly draw attention to himself in this strange new territory.
Like Lockhart, he assessed his surroundings. Eight station guards, four to either side of them, regarded the passengers with hard eyes. They all held RR-5 rifles with a firmness that defined their capabilities. But they weren’t the most dangerous people in the docking bay.
A trio of scraggly men stood apart, but Jori got the sense they were together. He’d seen them on the liner whispering, just a pair at a time, and sensed their knavish and malevolent natures.
At some unseen signal, their emotions tightened into the intense focus of predators. Still spread out, they closed in with a seemingly casual air on a man with a cybernetic arm. Jori tensed as the taller thug with mangy brown hair approached from the left while the man with round, bright-blue eyes came from the right. The third long-faced man stuck his hand in his pocket and slipped in from behind. Jori almost said something, but Lockhart’s emotions ticked up.
“Shit,” he muttered, grabbing Jori’s shoulder. “Stay here.”
The cybernetic man flinched when the brown-haired man stepped beside him and flashed a carnivorous smile. The blue-eyed man also neared and Jori sensed the prey’s increased alarm.
Lockhart stormed forward, his footsteps loud enough to create a resonant echo. “Hey! There something going on here?”
The brown-haired man put up his hands. “No trouble here.”
The guards snapped into alert and two hastened over. The cybernetic man took the opportunity to edge away. The thug with the long face shadowed him. Jori’s heart skipped at how Lockhart and the guards only fixated on the other two men.
“Chusho,” he cursed under his breath. He left his spot and weaved his way around the other travelers.
The long-faced man neared within two strides of the unsuspecting cyborg. Jori picked up his pace. The man pulled something from his pocket. A knife. Jori broke into a sprint as the man lunged toward his prey.
“Watch out!” Jori called.
The cyborg turned. The blade flashed and he jumped backward in time to avoid the jab. Jori dove in from the side and tackled the thug’s knees. They both fell, but Jori’s was more controlled as he rolled out of knife-range.
Like a dummy, his focus was entirely on the long-faced man. Someone grabbed his shirt and hauled him back.
Lockhart growled. “What the hell are you doing?”
“He has a knife!”
Two guards rushed in and disarmed the thug.
Lockhart jerked him around, towering over him with an accusatory glare. “So you jump in the middle of it, you idiot? You could’ve been killed.”
Jori yanked out of his hold. “What do you care?”
“It’s my job to look after you. You act out, I lose my job.”
Unbidden tears formed in Jori’s eyes as he fumed. Of course it was about his job.
His anger wasn’t just at Lockhart. Despite the loneliness of being taken away from everyone he’d ever cared about, he wanted a fresh start. As the son of the notorious Dragon Emperor and a skilled warrior in his own right, nearly everyone judged him. This was supposed to be his chance to become someone else. He didn’t have to be a warrior anymore. He could do whatever he wanted.
But here he was, getting into a fight—doing exactly what he’d hoped to never have to do again.
The brown-haired man hopped onto a luggage cart. “MEGAs are among us! Look at that man!” He pointed at the wide-eyed cyborg. “He’s a thief! Taking our jobs, stealing food from our mouths, destroying the lives of good honest hardworking folks!”
Jori was shocked by how vehemently this thug believed in his own righteousness. The MEGA Injunction curtailed the activities of mechanically enhanced and genetically altered persons for a reason. Thanks to a certain MEGA who’d snuck his way into a position as an admiral’s aide, prejudice against augmented persons had been rekindled. That an omnipotent cybernetic being calling himself MEGA-Man was in charge heightened their fear-borne hatred of augmented people.
A crowd gathered around the thug, many of them vigorously voicing their agreement. Four guards stepped in and ordered him down. The man complied but continued to yell insults and agitate the onlookers.
Lockhart grabbed ahold of Jori again, this time his arm. “Let’s get out of here before you create more trouble.”
Jori bit his tongue and let himself be led away. They passed the cybernetic man who dipped his head in thanks. Jori’s stomach knotted. This man had a diminished lifeforce. That meant he also had cybernetic implants in his brain. And that meant he was like the other cyborg he’d met—the admiral’s aide, Gottfried, who’d killed a bunch of people just so he could push his evolutionary ideals about the use of cybernetics.
Lockhart kept vigilant as they entered the main station. Jori did the same, glancing from side to side, looking for potential threats as well as hideouts and escape routes. The throng of people surprised him. Not even the Depnaugh space station outside of Cooperative territory had this many wretched people. From those who wore raggedy clothes and hung their heads, to gangs dressed in mismatched warrior garb and carried themselves like cutthroats, the place reeked of distress.
Aren’t Prontaean Cooperative territories supposed to be more civilized? He wanted to ask, but Lockhart never bothered with more than a few cutting words. Jori had adopted his closed-mouth behavior. Not that it was difficult. He had no reason to speak to anyone nowadays anyway.
The only person in the Cooperative he’d ever connected with was dozens of light years away. He missed the commander, but the man was better off without him. His mother didn’t need him in her life either.
Jori swept a tear from his eye and pushed his fear and loneliness aside. The prospect of a new life loomed ahead. His only choice was to be swept along at the Cooperative’s whim and hope for the best.
Fantasy/Sci-Fi Author Dawn Ross 