A Duel Among Friends E-Book

Filip Wiltgren

• Herausgeber: LVE Press
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Serie: Warded Gunslinger
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024

Seitenzahl: 108

Beschreibung

The gunslinger on a mission of mercy. The friend willing to help him. And the noble who'd set them against each other.

“No,” I told Riina. “Out of the question. I will absolutely not do it.”

“You will,” she said, so softly that I had to lean in to hear. Nothing soft in her voice, though. It was like tungsten gravel laced with pure fluorine. “Not because I say so, not because you would do it anyhow if you just thought about it, but because if you don’t, everyone on board the Belithain will starve, and then they will freeze, and then they will suffocate. Think about that.”

Jake – the Warded Gunslinger – doesn’t enjoy mingling with the rich kids. Not his style, not his battlefield.

But when going begging from one of the Galaxy’s most notoriously thin-skinned group of nobles, he’d better shut up, dress up, and put up. Either that, or figure out how to gun down an entire planet.

A Duel Among Friends is a short novel of guns and magic in a distant future, where dragons are real, warp-stone ships roam the galaxy, and too much money means slights of honor are settled with cold, hard steel. It’s got cowboys and touchy, gun-totting nobles, found family, true companions, and magitech in a sprawling space opera.

A Duel Among Friends is the fourth standalone novel in the Warded Gunslinger series. Get it now!

Leseprobe

A Duel Among Friends

A Warded Gunslinger Short Novel

Filip Wiltgren

LVE Press

A Viking Funeral by Filip Wiltgren

Published by LVE Press www.lvepress.com

Copyright © 2024 Filip Wiltgren www.wiltgren.com

All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced in any form without permission from the publisher, except as permitted by copyright law.

This is a work of fiction. Unless otherwise indicated, all the names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents in this book are either the product of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

Chapter 1

"No," I told Riina. "Out of the question. I will absolutely not do it."

Her smile remained glued to her face, gentle and impassive, a larger crease among all the wrinkles. The image of a perfect lady, if the lady had forgotten to iron herself this morning. Riina had more wrinkles than crumpled tinfoil.

"You will," she said, so low and gentle that I had to lean in order to hear. Nothing gentle in her voice, though. It was like tungsten gravel laced with pure fluorine, heavy, cutting, and so full of bite that it would have made a void wyrm shy away. Very much at odds with her sing-song accent. "You will behave," Riina said. "You will nod in the right places, you will stay silent, and you will dance when I tell you to dance."

My knees trembled, which made me voidmunchingly mad. I turned that anger on Riina, but her glare blew it away. I might as well have tried shooting a star with a plasma cannon.

"You will," she said. "Not because I say so, not because you would do it anyhow if you just thought about it, but because if you don't, everyone on board the Belithain will starve, and then they will freeze, and then they will suffocate. Think about that."

I did, for all of a tenth of a second.

"I still don't like it," I said.

"You don't have to like it," Riina said. "You just have to do it. Now shush and smile and look poor but interesting."

"The poor part will be easy," I said. "Should have gotten a proper jacket instead of this ridiculous brown vest."

Whatever Riina was about to say next got cut short by a booming crash as the two golden doors before us opened.

No, not golden. Gold. Solid gold doors. My ears rang from the impacts as they struck the brick walls. What crudmuncher thought that was a good idea?

Probably the same crudmuncher who thought it was a good idea to have eight big guys in red tunics and green tights shove them open instead of using a normal electro-mag control. Rich people. Proof that money rots your brain. That, and dancing.

But I had to give it to them, the hall behind the doors was impressive. From the outside, it was nothing but a ten meter wall of red brick topped by a completely black, glossy, perfectly smooth dome. Probably made of glass, too, the crazy mungers.

Inside, it was a jungle. Literally.

I've lived on terraformed, Goldilocks-zone planets. I've bathed in seas of water so vast that they ran beyond the horizon. I've been chased by an animal with teeth bigger than my fingers, and smelled spices so fragrant they would fill your dreams.

The Hall of Unity on Dromond wasn't quite that, but it was a close second. It opened up to a single room, larger than the Belithain's eight-hundred-meter cargo bay. I couldn't see the far wall. And the room was filled with life. Platforms, fifty to a hundred meters wide, filled with red-, green-, and golden-leafed trees festooned with finger-thin lianas hung with drooping white flowers. Other platforms contained clear-walled aquariums full of fat red-and-white fish large as my arm. Sometimes, one overflowed into another, creating waterfalls. Paths of smooth, black rocks meandered between small plazas paved in blue, white, red. Primary colors, sharp hues, all of it floating on multiple levels.

I must have gaped, because Riina's elbow found my ribs, and I jerked into action, moving smoothly to take her arm like I'd been taught, and let myself be guided into the Hall's magnificent garden. The doors crashed shut behind me, but I was almost too overwhelmed to notice. This could not have been built by mere technology. I conjured a thread of force, closing my eyes and feeling around with it on the closest platforms. No wards, no magic. It was all engineering.

"Crud," I said. "That's some fancy garden."

The air was clean, crisp. Cool, not hot and humid as I'd expected. A bare hint of wet mulch in the air, a tad of flowery fragrance. A gentle wind caressed my face, coming from the ground. Ventilation. You could probably walk through the Hall with raging allergies and not feel a thing.

Riina gave my arm a tiny jerk, and I realized she'd been talking.

"Didn't you read the brief?" she said, looking at a map on her small, discreet com readout.

I almost considered lying, but Riina didn't deserve it. She was good people.

"No," I said. "Skimmed the introduction on our way down."

I didn't add that I'd spent most of the trip warding new armor for the Belithain until I had a daily migraine, when I wasn't warding leaks in its hull, or attempting to create a transmission tower and a sensor net so we wouldn't be both blind and deaf, or trying to help Riina's Kylians reboot a faulty hydroponics pump because Hao wasn't available, or had collapsed at her work table in engineering. Even the hatchling had to fend for itself, munching on buckets of kibble the times it woke up alone in my cabin.

Riina didn't comment on my lack of preparations. She'd been working just as hard. I was amazed that she managed to stand up, let alone move.

We walked past a waterfall, but only a few warm droplets made their way to my skin. A bird with brilliant-green, incandescent plumage flashed past from tree to tree.

Riina had been adamant we get on the Dromoni's good side. I was beginning to agree with her. If this was their top notch, then their bargain bottom would still be lightyears beyond what we could do ourselves. We might accept scrapings from the barrel, but it would transform the Belithain from a hulk to a ship that could feed and sustain our ten thousand Kylians.

Also, Dromond was the only planet we could reach with our limited supplies, and the three warpstone engines that powered the Belithain. On the Bucket, they'd been powerhouses. On a nine hundred meter long-hauler, they were barely enough to gain a few c of speed.

"Follow my lead," Riina said, her tone soft, almost like singing a lullaby. "Don't talk. Smile when spoken to. Bow to anyone who wears jewelry. Think you can do that?"

I nodded.

"As long as there's no dancing," I said.

Riina gently patted the hand I was holding her arm with. Then she clamped her hand over mine, and turned, twisting my wrist just enough for a twinge of pain. She looks so much like a kindly grandmother that I tend to forget that she worked her way up from green recruit to becoming a major in the Kylian security forces.

"You," she said, her voice back to gravel and acid, "will dance when I tell you to dance. And you will do it well."

"Right," I said.

"That better not be sarcastic," Riina said. "This is our last chance. We need a handout, badly, and these people might give it to us, if we behave."

I nodded, not adding that I'd discussed it with Hao. Our true last chance was ripping out the engines from the Belithain, mounting them on the Bucket, and going off to do some creative piracy of some Federation logistics hub. Then running like the cold void and praying we'd live. I didn't add it, because Hao figured it was a ten million to one chance.

She was a pessimist. I only pegged it at a million to one.

Chapter 2

Ihad time to wonder where the Dromoni were before we crossed a small plaza, our hard-soled shoes slapping against the blue and golden lapis lazuli it was floored with. Another crudmunching idiot thing to do. And they were supposed to dance that way? It would sound as bad as the gold door. The Dromoni might be great engineers, but their habits were crud.

Happy thoughts. I'd better change them before they made their way to my face. Rich people get affronted by the stupidest things.

Riina let me past a clump of trees, their leaves a blackish red wave of motion, each leaf as big as my pinkie nail, shivering in the slight wind, and we were assaulted by a cacophony of speech.

I'd expected the Dromoni aristocracy to be as colorful as their gardens, but their clothes were downright somber. Hose and shirts of blacks, deep browns, dark blues. Everything very form-fitting. The Dromoni rich either spent an inordinate amount of time working out, or they had great cosmetic surgeons. I was willing to bet on the later.

Muted jewelry, thin chains of silver or platinum studded with tiny diamonds that shone with fluorescent reflections, the only splashes of color coming from small rubies, sapphires, emeralds, other stones in yellows, blacks, and oranges that I had no words for. Shoulder length, straight hair, slightly longer on the men.

The men had guns and the guns were ridiculously long.

Riina had bought us what I'd thought of as an overpriced, crude experimental pistol. Twenty milliliter, single action, breech loaded, one shot only, no rifling, no sights, just a tiny jut of steel at the end of the muzzle. The five cartridges we'd gotten with it had a laughingly low powder mass for that size bullet. I'd thought that the barrel was ridiculous, cast iron and long as my thigh.

It was on the short side.

All the men wore guns, almost all on the right hip. I had mine in an ornately tooled but obviously worn leather holster, which wasn't a bad thing, if you're the one who'd caused the wear. I hadn't and the holster made me wish for my warded, leather stockman hat, which rested comfortably in the Bucket while I pranced around in brown tights and someone else's holster. Not a noble's, though. The Dromoni's holsters ranged from jewel-studded leather to something that looked like a warded ship armor plate in miniature, made out of platinum.

Of course, everyone here was aristocracy. The regular, working slob Dromoni looked a lot different. They didn’t carry guns, for one. And they had style.

An elderly gentleman, about Riina’s age, approached us. He could have been a mortician, or a belly dancer. The Dromoni dress codes were all strange to me, the black lightning on his brown suit as alien as the void wyrm hatchling I’d left in Hao’s care.

"Mistress Riina," he said, bowing slightly. I didn't like the emphasis on mistress. It sounded strange to my ears, possessive.

"Master Ardon," Riina said, replicating the shallow bow.

A young woman with striking violet eyes sauntered over, stopping just shy of Master Ardon. He extended his elbow slightly, and she slipped her hand over his arm, holding it just like I held Riina's. Then she stood stock still, smiling politely and not saying a word, while Riina and Ardon exchanged meaningless pleasantries. Only when Ardon inclined his head to her did she lean forward and whisper in his ear.

It gave a whole new meaning to the word 'master.'

I leaned in to ask Riina about it, but she gave my hand a sharp tug. Don't talk. Right.

What was I supposed to do? Stand there and look beautiful?

Crud. I should have stayed on board the Belithain, warding the voidmunching hulk against micro-meteorite impacts. Then I'd be doing something at least.

"I will see what I can do," Ardon said, giving us another shallow bow. Again, Riina replicated it perfectly.

"What just happened?" I hissed after Ardon had retreated, leaving us alone on the black-cobbled path.

"Master Ardon is a broker," Riina said. "Mainly of information, but also of power. He will judge how valuable we are, then introduce us to the right people, people who might be willing to help us."

"And the woman?" I said.

"His protégé," Riina said.

"Didn't look like a protégé," I said. "The way she kept fawning on him."

"That's what a protégé does," Riina said. "Waits on their master's every need."

"Or mistress?" I said.

Riina gave a soft laugh, her normal, melodious tone back.

"I thought that would give you pause," she said. "Don't worry, I won't require you to do anything demeaning."

"Except dance."

Riina tsk-tsked, as if I'd been a misbehaving toddler.

"You volunteered, Jakob," she said. "Remember?"