Free Dark Space: Avilon by Jasper T. Scott

copilot’s seat, wearing a plain black under suit. His Peacekeeper armor with its depleted power core lay in a gleaming pile in the back of the hover, while the man they’d rescued lay on the back seat, bleeding from myriad injuries, but still breathing. He was unconscious from a blow to the head, but at least he wasn’t bleeding out.
    “Where to?” Farah asked from the pilot’s seat beside him.
    Bretton considered that, frowning over his shoulder at their mysterious passenger. “Let’s take him to Dag.”
    “We don’t even know if he wants to be a Null.”
    “Well, we can’t ask him without Omnius realizing he hasn’t gone through The Choosing yet. Peacekeepers will come and get him before we have a chance to learn anything.”
    “What are you hoping to learn? Never mind—it doesn’t matter. He’s not our problem, Bret. Tara Halls, remember? She’s our meal ticket, and she’s the one we were sent to find—not some runaway survivor from the war.”
    Bretton shook his head. “We can get back to chasing rich brats another day. Right now, we need to find out more about this guy. How did he get here? What’s going on in the rest of the galaxy? Where did he come from, and are there any other survivors? Those are things the Resistance needs to know.”
    “The Resistance doesn’t pay our rent, Bret.”
    “They could if we enlist.”
    “I don’t want you to get yourself killed.”
    “You remember what you told me about why you enlisted in the ISSF all those years ago?”
    “That was another lifetime. A lot’s changed since then.”
    “You said everybody dies, but not everybody dies well.”
    “I’ve already died well. Maybe this time around I want to live.”
    “So why did you join me in the Null Zone? You could have stayed a Peacekeeper, lived forever in Etheria.”
    “I don’t want to die of boredom either. This way I got the best of both. I’m forever young, immortal, and I don’t have to live in an insufferably perfect paradise.”
    Bretton snorted. They’d both been resurrected by Omnius when they died near the end of the war. After that, they’d become Peacekeepers in the hopes of rejoining the fight against the Sythians. Instead, they’d been sent around Avilon chasing crime before it happened. That might have been good enough, but Bretton hadn’t been resurrected alone. His wife had already been on Avilon waiting for him when he’d arrived. Almost nine years after that happy reunion, something terrible happened, and Bretton had left her, paradise, and Peacekeeping for good in order to become a Null. His niece, Farah, had followed him for reasons only known to her. And both of them had taken a souvenir with them from Etheria—they had already been resurrected. That meant they had perfect clone bodies and they would never die of old age. Of course, in a place as dangerous as the Null Zone, old age probably wouldn’t have killed them anyway.
    “Well, if we’re going to get him de-linked, then you’d better stun him before he wakes up,” Farah said. “Dag will kill us if we bring him a live wire. ”
    Bretton opened a dash compartment and withdrew a hefty pistol. Setting the weapon to stun, he turned it on the back seat and pulled the trigger. A dull screech sounded, and a flash of blue light dazzled his eyes.
    “That should keep him from waking up until Dag’s through with him.”
    “What if he gets upset when he finds out he could have lived forever in paradise?”
    “Too bad. I saved his life. That means I’m calling the shots. Besides, if I’m right about him being from the Imperium, he won’t even know what he’s missing until we’ve already gotten all our answers from him.”
    “That’s cold, Bret. Even for you.”
    “It’s a cold world. Getting colder every day. When’s the last time you saw the sun?”
    “That’s not what I meant.”
    He shook his head. “Down here we don’t have the luxury of being soft. There’s more lives at stake than his.”
    Farah