Read Her Brother's Keeper - eARC for Free Online

HURK! ” BLAM BLAM BLAM BLAM BLAM BLAM BLAM BLAM! Marcus had pulled his 10mm automatic, stuck it into the cyborg’s side, and rocked the trigger over and over. Whatever armor the cyborg was wearing, or had built in, didn’t stop him from dropping Marcus. The marshal fell to the dirt, coughing, hacking, gasping for air. When he fired the cyborg reflexively squeezed so hard his throat had nearly been crushed.
    Marcus was out of time. The cyborg was on top of him again, before he could bring his pistol to bear. The criminal’s augmented face was purple with rage. Then his face exploded in a mass of blood, brains, and artificial structures. The top of his head pulped, the cyborg toppled over, crushing Marcus back into the dust. The marshal, still struggling to breathe, coughed and wheezed under the bulk of the augmented corpse. Blood and brains leaked onto his armored vest, but he didn’t care. He lay on his back, staring up at the intensely blue sky, and tried to get some air.
    “Marshal!” It was Wade. “You okay? Marshal!”
    Unable to shout to his partner, Marcus simply raised a hand and waved.
    “Holy shit,” Wade said, appearing next to his partner. “I thought I got you.” He held his powerful 8mm rifle at the low ready.
    Marcus coughed. “Nice shot,” he managed weakly. The armor-piercing explosive bullet was easily powerful enough to go clean through a human head. Wade had to have angled the shot so the bullet didn’t also hit Marcus, while firing from the shoulder, and the cyborg and the marshal weren’t holding still. “Damned nice shot.”
    “Thanks, Boss,” Wade grinned. He grunted as he rolled the heavy corpse off of his partner, then helped Marcus to his feet.
    Marcus holstered his sidearm and retrieved his carbine. “You ready to call it a day?”
    Wade nodded, looking tired. “I’ve had enough fun for today.”
    Marcus shook his head, and forced himself to smile. “Call back to the spaceport and see how they’re doing.”
    * * *
    The eastern sky was on fire as the sun called Lone Star slowly sank beneath the jagged peaks of the distant Redemption Mountains. The patchy carpet of clouds exploded in shades of gold, red, and purple, and the first stars of the evening twinkled far above. The pale glow of New Austin’s twin moons, rising into the night sky, took over as the last red rays of the sun disappeared below the horizon.
    Annabelle Winchester sat on a weather-beaten boulder and sighed. “That was a really pretty sunset, Sparkles.” Sparkles paid Annabelle no mind. The Laredo buckskin mare focused her attention on the desert floor, rooting through the shrubbery for things to eat.
    As the blanket of night rolled across New Austin, the already scattered clouds cleared up, revealing the shining tapestry of stars that Annabelle never got tired of looking at. Laredo Territory was sparsely populated; there were no big, lit-up cities to hide the stars. The Izanami Nebula, only a few light-years away, filled part of the sky with its electric blue splendor. Twinkling dots, satellites and ships in orbit, zoomed silently across the sky. Annie’s eyepiece, connected to the colonial network via her handheld, displayed information on the different stars and constellations.
    Annie gazed up into the night sky with the oddest sense of longing. She devoured every text and media on space travel that she could find. It wasn’t that she’d never been to space before. She had been six years old when the Winchester family made the long voyage to New Austin, but that hardly counted. Annie could barely remember it, and they spent most of the months-long journey in cold sleep anyway.
    No, Annie wanted to really go to space. To see firsthand the engineering marvel and controlled chaos that was a spaceship. To experience freefall, to see New Austin from above, and to experience the exhilarating, mind-bending terror of translating between transit points. She longed to set foot on unexplored worlds and see for