Soldier of Fortune
Chapter 1

Morton Barrens

Maximum Security Penitentiary

February 9, 1449 After Landing

Gideon Quinn considered the cards in his right hand.

Given said cards were so faded he could barely see the original suits, and what was visible tended to waver in the glare of the setting suns, they required serious considering.

While he considered, his opponent—a Nikean the outside world had known as Dr. Ephraim Rudd, but in Morton answered to “Doc,” “Prisoner 64326,” or, “Hey, you!”—shot one finger out to catch the drop of perspiration sliding from his nose and brought it to his tongue.

Gideon, long since sweated dry by the day’s labor, tried not to envy Doc the pittance of moisture.

The two men were perched on opposite sides of a stone slab that doubled as their table, two tall men with touches of silver in their hair despite the fact that Gideon was at least a decade younger than Doc.

They were both lean, as might be expected of those living on the Barrens’ rations, but where the doctor merely looked underfed, Gideon’s spareness was of a harder, more feral nature, as if all excess had been burned away by the same suns that left him covetous of another man’s sweat.

“Anytime, now,” Doc prompted as, a dozen meters away, a slap of wood against pineapple leather was followed by the cheers of a team who’d scored a goal in an evening game of net the queen. A short cackle drifted from a pair of inmates walking the circumference, and on the far side of the yard, nearest the cell blocks, a wail of sorrow rose from where Lonnie’s theatrical troupe was rehearsing a production of Dream of the Red Chamber.

At least it wasn’t Romeo and Juliet, Gideon thought. “I’ll see your bet, and raise,” he said to Doc as the cheers of the queen players receded.

“Raise with what?” Doc gestured to the pot, in which Gideon’s three ration bars and an old newspaper shared the space with six of Doc’s tea packets and a tin of mint pastilles. “Since I’m fairly sure I see all your worldly goods before me. Unless you’re willing to put Elvis in the pot?”

Hearing his name, the draco currently stretched on the hot sandstone next to Gideon’s thigh raised one of his lids.

“Elvis is off the table.” Gideon gave his reptilian companion a gentle scratch between the folded wings until the half-open eye closed again. “Okay, technically he’s on the table, but you know what I mean.”

“I think I can grasp the metaphor,” Doc replied with a smile before continuing. “But that still leaves the question of what you have to bet?”

In response, Gideon produced a thin sheaf of grubby pages from his back pocket. “Got chapters six through nine of Curse of the Amazons,” he said, laying the pages in on the table.

“Honey from the keepers,” Doc judged, eyeing the well-worn pages of the dreadful with anticipation. “Call.”

“Quinn!”

Gideon’s eyes darted up to spy two corrections officers approaching.

Dust puffed like smoke as they crossed the yard, making it appear as if the entire prison were on fire.

“Warden wants you upstairs,” CO Milton, who was new to the Barrens, barked loudly enough to startle Elvis.

“Can’t it wait?” Gideon soothed the hissing draco with one hand and waved his cards with the other. “I’m sitting on an apiary, here.”

“You’re sitting on a full hive, at best,” Doc reproved mildly.

“Only one way to replace out.” Gideon grinned at the other man.

“Cut the crap, Quinn.” CO Finch spoke with the weariness of familiarity. “You know what day it is. The review board is waiting.”

“It’s your anniversary?” Doc blinked in surprise.

“I wasn’t paying attention to the date,” Gideon said.

“Liar,” Finch muttered.

“Still,” Doc said, glancing at the corrections officers, “best get on. I’ll watch Elvis.”

“And take a peek at my cards?”

“I wouldn’t dream—”

“That’s enough, Doc,” Milton cut in. “And you . . .” He grabbed Gideon by the collar. “On your feet, drone.”

At which point Milton, who hadn’t been on the job long enough to know any better, found himself flat on the ground.

Finch, who had been on the job long enough to know better, snapped his shock stick to life while Elvis reared on his haunches. “You’ll want to stand down, Quinn.”

Gideon looked at the prone Milton and sighed, set down the cards, and dropped to his knees with his hands placed on his head. “Stay,” he said to Elvis, and the draco relaxed onto all fours, hissing quietly.

“Guess that’s the game,” Doc said as yet more guards flowed from the inner gates.

“Dammit, Quinn.” Finch shook his head at the prisoner as Milton struggled to his feet. “Are you trying to tank your chance at parole?”

“Grow up, Finch,” Gideon said flatly. “They’re never going to grant me parole.”

“As of this day, February ninth, 1449 After Landing, it is the determination of this august board that Prisoner 66897, Gideon Quinn be granted parole, effective immediately.”

Gideon stared at that august board. “I have to say, I did not see that coming.”

“Quinn.” Finch whispered the warning from Gideon’s left.

It was twenty-some minutes after the kerfuffle in the yard, and Gideon was standing in front of the Honorable Warden Simkins, two members of the Corrections Board, and a ranking officer from the Corps.

And not just any officer, as General Kimo Satsuke had presided over Gideon’s court-martial.

She hadn’t changed much, he thought. Perhaps there were a few more lines accenting the sea-green eyes, and more silver shone in the black of her tightly braided hair than the day she’d sentenced him to life in the Morton Barrens.

“May I ask why?” he asked.

Finch made a small hiccuping sound.

“Ask the Corps,” Warden Simkins replied, giving the general a glance.

Gideon turned his attention to Satsuke.

“It should be enough to know that your case has been reviewed and the sentence reduced to suit the discoveries,” she told him.

Gideon felt his jaw tighten because it was absolutely not enough, and he opened his mouth to press for more detail when he caught Satsuke’s stare.

The general possessed what could best be described as a very speaking gaze.

What her gaze was saying now was shut your trap.

He shut his trap, opening it only long enough for a terse, “Thank you.”

“Don’t thank me.” Simkins slapped the folder in front of him closed. “I’d as soon see a traitor like you in the fields until crystal takes root in your eyes.”

“I’ll miss you too,” Gideon said. Finch gave him a less than gentle nudge of the elbow, and Gideon added a belated, “sir.”

Simkins was unimpressed. “The transport departs at twenty-one hundred hours. Dismissed.”

Gideon found Doc waiting in his cell, keeping Elvis company and reading the chapters of Curse of the Amazons that Gideon had left in the pot.

“Odd, the board turning around your sentence like that,” the older man observed. He was now leaning in the open door of the cell while Gideon changed into the civilian clothes he’d last worn when he arrived in the Barrens.

Gideon, buttoning the trousers, which fit a bit loosely, swore he could hear Doc not ask the question, Did you do it?

Since Gideon had no intention of answering the unasked question, any more than he expected Doc to suddenly admit to having murdered his wife, he gestured to a matchstick reproduction of the Nikean Central Library sitting on the cell’s lone shelf. “Do you want to keep that? I don’t think it’ll survive the trip.”

“One of Nyal’s,” Doc murmured, studying the miniature work of art created by another inmate who’d been paroled some years earlier. “I’ll put it in my office, and thanks.”

While Doc fetched the sculpture, Gideon slipped on his shirt, adjusted his suspenders, and reached for the Infantry long coat.

But as he grabbed the coat, his gaze caught and held on the six names carved into the wall next to his bunk.

Eitan Fehr, Estelle Carver, Bertie Walsingham, Anya Duvagne, Juster Siska, and Nbo Mulowa—half the Twelfth Company, immortalized in the dull stone of the Barrens.

As if, he thought, he needed the reminder of who they’d been.

Or how they’d died.