Atoned Chapter 1

For those of you who like to read the first chapter before one of my books is out, here’s the opening chapter for Atoned. Pre-order links at the end.

Chapter One

Sabas  Gossard

Two-dozen large dorsal fins broke the water as fourteen people in military-spec combat armour stood on the bank of the lake tossing bodies in, the strong current immediately carrying them toward deeper waters where the sharks waited for their next meal.

Sabas Gossard watched the gruesome display from atop a stone bridge, a hundred feet above the lake itself. He continued to watch as the bodies were thrown into the lake. It was horrific and terrifying, but Sabas couldn’t turn away. He watched as the town of Onnab’s dead became food for those monstrous creatures beneath the darkness of the water. 

A forest nestled beside the lake, and the barren tundra to the south stretched for hundreds of kilometres. Onnab had been built to allow the population to mine the nearby mountains, and they’d done a good job. Being so far from anything close to civilisation also meant they were in an excellent place to be manipulated into doing exactly what Sabas’ partners needed them to do.

Onnab had been home to a little over four thousand people. One of the few towns on the planet of Ocrion, the majority of which were all there to mine the vast mountain reaches. Men, women, and children living in a thriving mining community in a quiet part of Union space. 

All dead. 

When Sabas had been informed of the deaths, he’d assumed something a lot more dramatic than the empty streets he’d walked though upon arriving. He’d wondered why there were no corpses. No blood. No scent of death. Although there was a sharp, pungent odour he couldn’t quite place. 

Doors to homes were open, food on tables that had been left to rot explained the caustic scent. Visi-screens showed nothing but static as the satellite system for the city of Onnab had been destroyed. No one had been able to get a message out about what had happened, and the vast distances and general distrust between towns meant people minded their own business. A saving grace.

It had been eerily quiet. 

Sabas had the sudden need to be off the bridge but this was where he was told to meet her, and he was not about to become the first living meal for those monsters in the lake. 

He was still a little unsure exactly what had happened to the town. He’d heard that everyone had died, and been told to come to the planet quickly, but no one had explained what he would be walking into. They’d said it was safe, but that was the extent of their imparted knowledge. 

While Sabas had arrived on-planet with his three bodyguards, he’d left them back at the small space port. Two ships had been moored there, both squire corvette’s—sleek, red and chrome ships with seats for four—and both with extensive plasma burns around the engines and wings. Neither would fly again. 

He was a little sad about that. The ships had done nothing wrong, and both looked like something he would have enjoyed flying. He cared little about the human or alien population of Onnab, but destroying expensive property for no reason just seemed… wasteful. If there was one lesson he’d actually learned from his father—other than shoot first—it was to not be wasteful.

It was a fifteen-minute walk from the port to the meeting point. Onnab was a warm city on a mostly warm planet, and the walk was almost entirely up a gentle incline. Sabas was not a small man. Prison had given him time to do little else but train his muscles, his mind, and devise ways he was going to kill everyone who had put in him in his cell. He stood six-and-a-half-feet tall, and weighed nearly three hundred pounds of almost solid, albeit surgically-enhanced muscle. 

Sabas removed his navy jacket, and rolled up the sleeves on his white shirt, the latter of which was probably a size too small. Colourful tattoos covered both arms, depicting mythological creatures of a time when stories told of heroes testing themselves against such things. He’d always wanted to prove himself against the best. He’d done just that for several years before his arrest, although the vast majority of people he’d encountered just hadn’t lived up to expectations. 

The sun was high in the cloudless blue sky, and it was as hot as it was going to get. Sabas wanted to be done by nightfall, when the temperature plunged and the creatures that lived in the nearby forest came out to hunt. He ran a large, tanned hand over his bald head, and wished that his contact would hurry up. Although, he would never tell her to do such a thing. 

Then Sabas spotted his contact, and her own bodyguards. Alastia Sark was about as close to a monster as Sabas had ever actually met. She was probably the only person who genuinely scared him. 

The woman was slight of build, with pale skin, and wore dark ion-armour—a lightweight plating useful against projectiles, but almost pointless against bladed weapons—with several buckles across her chest and stomach. The colour was a stark contrast to her white-blonde hair, which cascaded over her shoulders. A sheathed sword hung from her hip, and she wore two magnus bracers. 

Sabas stared at the dark-brown, leather-fibre bracers covered in metal rivets – they gave an imposing look. About halfway up each bracer sat a gemstone roughly three inches in circumference; both were currently dark as there was no power being used. 

He had not met Alastia in person for the entirety of his five years in prison, but he’d never forgotten she was a Sage – powerful beings, capable of using aether. This inherent power gave them a connection to The Aperture, a dimension of pure energy that sat alongside their own. The magnus bracer allowed Sage to control their aether. Without the bracer, the aether would be wild and unpredictable, dangerous to its user and everyone around them. 

The gem in a magnus bracer was dark until the Sage activated their aether. Once that happened, the gem glowed a different colour—the same as their eyes—depending on the type of aether used. 

There was a time when sage meant someone who had obtained wisdom. Sabas was certain not all Sage could be considered such things, but he did know that every single Sage was dangerous. 

“See something interesting?” Alastia asked, her tone conversational with a hint of amusement at Sabas’ obvious discomfort. 

 “The people of Onnab?” Sobas asked, glancing at her trio of bodyguards. They wore predator-armour, specialised helmeted suits designed to protect the wearer from all but the most powerful of ordinance. They were all black, with three warm-grey slashes across their helmets and chests, as if a large creature had attacked them. The armour was heavy, and slowed the wearer, but it was quite literally designed to take a beating and hit you back harder than you could imagine. 

All carried coil rifles, each one capable of firing a dozen incendiary projectiles within seconds. They were the weapon of choice for the Union military; reliable and accurate used to great effect over the centuries the Union Empire had been in power. 

The three bodyguards looked over at Sabas, the red lenses on their helmets flashing as they stared. They made Sabas uncomfortable, not just because they were taller by at least a foot, and heavily outweighed him. Not because he didn’t have anything on him that could do little more than scratch them. And not even because they neither spoke nor removed their helmets so he could see their faces. What made Sabas uncomfortable was that no one should be able to get predator-armour except the highest ranks of the Union Empire. Even then it was kept to the military. How did someone like Alastia get hold of high-grade military tech? It was a question Sabas had asked himself often over the years. 

“Had to get rid of them somehow,” Alastia said, leaning against the bridge parapet to watch the feeding. “The sharks here are voracious. I don’t actually know their type. I assume big shark is probably not their name.”

“Was this necessary?” Sabas asked, motioning to the town of Onnab. “Lots of dead.”

“Do you know why we work with you and your people?” Alastia asked. 

“Because I’m rich, I have connections, and I don’t ask…” Sabas nodded. “Yes, fine, but on this occasion, you called me here.”

“A fair point,” Alastia agreed. “Walk with me.” She looked over to her guards. “Stay here.”

All three nodded once.

It took every ounce of self-control for Sabas not to stare at them as he walked by. 

“You were in jail a long time,” Alastia said from where she walked at his side along the lengthy bridge. “But five years for killing a Warden is much shorter than I’d expected.”

“I was innocent,” Sabas said in a tone of someone who had repeated it so often he’d actually started to believe it. “They found the guilty party. They’d left an authenticated suicide note when the guilt finally got to them.”

“Your father pulled strings then,” Alastia said with a slight chuckle. 

“My father,” Sabas said, his patience tested. “Did fuck all to get me out of prison. Do you plan on answering my questions, or is this some kind of therapy session?” The words left his mouth with more force than he’d meant, and fear rippled through him.

Alastia stopped walking, turned to Sabas and laughed. “If I didn’t find you so entertaining, I’d have killed you by now. Anyway, you’re right, I asked you to come here. Explanations are in order.” 

“And the sharks?” Sabas asked. 

Alastia’s smile made Sabas’ skin crawl. “I wanted to ensure you understand the order of things. Why am I here?”

The question caught Sabas by surprise, and he stayed confused for several seconds. “Isn’t that what I just asked?”

Alastia sighed. “A decade ago, we entered into an agreement. We both wanted the same thing, neither of us asked why the other wanted it, but that’s not the point. We needed muscle. We needed power. Onnab was chosen partly because of its relative size and population density, partly because the mayor here is a corrupt piece of horseshit, and partly because… well, because of what these idiots found.”

Sabas couldn’t help himself. “You’re talking about the catacombs?”

“I am,” Alastia said. “We have been taking people from this city for a decade. People who were officially stated as having died in the mountains, or from sickness. We took those the mayor said were drafted by the Union. Others without families who came here to work and earn a living, who wanted to escape Union eyes. We spiked their water, their food, we conducted experiments on this city unknown to a single inhabitant. We took the animals from their forests and did unspeakable things to them. The city of Onnab treated us well without ever really knowing it. We made them better humans, gave them enhancements that made them sleep less, eat less, work harder. We pumped hundreds of millions of credits into this little place. And the whole time we had no idea they were sat on something so… important.”

“I assume you’re not going to tell me more than I already know,” Sabas said. 

Alastia looked over at him. “I could tell you, if you’d like, but then you’d have to go for a swim.”

Sabas glanced down at the fins again and decided quickly. “I’m good.” 

Alastia looked slightly disappointed. “Smart man. I called you here to inform you that our deal is done. We have a gift for you, and it will be sent to your ship on your agreement. Other than that, we have concluded our involvement. We will remove all traces of your company, Expedited Systems, from this planet.”

“That’s it?” Sabas asked, struggling to stop his irritation despite how unwise it was. “I gave you vast amounts of money to make a weapon for me.”

“Which we have done,” Alastia said, her voice calm. “We gave you the preliminary findings years ago. You went to prison, and we continued in earnest to work on the project. We have made great strides in that time. The weapon, and all of the research we conducted on it, are yours. You will never come to this planet again. You will never mention this planet, or my name, or anything about our agreement. To anyone. Ever.”

Sabas knew Alastia was unarmed with conventional weaponry, but he also knew that she could kill him with a click of her fingers. He looked back at the trio of bodyguards, who were staring at them both. Sabas had been brought halfway across the Union Empire to be told his services and his money were no longer needed. Alastia had done this to show him exactly where he stood in the pecking order, and exactly who was in charge of this operation. She’d threatened his way of life. He hated and admired her for it.

“How’d you kill everyone?” Sabas asked. “Idle curiosity.”

“They killed themselves,” she said. “One of the strains we’d gotten into their system was designed to kill them should we need. Combined with a toxin we created and pumped into the atmosphere, we killed everything in that town in about three minutes. We took those we wanted out first, of course. The mayor for example. Those we felt could advance our work. Everyone else was expendable.”

“It’s been a pleasure,” Sabas said, unsure what else to say, and offered his hand.

Alastia stepped forward and shook his hand firmly. “If you ever speak of what was done here, I will personally hunt you down and make you watch as I kill your entire family.”

Sabas stared at Alastia’s smiling expression and tried to pull his hand away, but she kept a tight hold. 

 “And when I’m done,” she continued. “I will give you to our greatest scientific minds and they can flay you alive while you undergo every conceivable surgery to see what happens.”

“I understand,” Sabas said, no longer sweating just because of the heat.

Alastia’s smile widened, and she released his hand, stepping away. “Good. We’ll sort all of this out. There won’t be a trace, I assure you. Thank you for your assistance over the years, please do enjoy our gifts.”

Sabas couldn’t have gotten off that planet quicker. 

Atoned: The Warden’s Book 1. Out 22nd September 2023 (Paperback will be out on the same day, no audible version yet).

Pre-order

Amazon.com

Amazon.co.uk

Amazon.au.com