Read Owner 03 - Jupiter War for Free Online

the moisture below his eyes. In this state of meditative recall, replaying memories in order to analyse tactics and learn from mistakes, it all seemed so immediate. But he knew his tears weren’t due to the sharp memory of dust in his eyes.
    ‘It was confusing at first,’ Messina continued. ‘There I was, with no memory of my past – doing what I was told while trying to understand the hatred directed at me. I was assaulted frequently, and nearly got killed on the last occasion. But now my confusion is gone.’
    ‘It’s gone?’ said Alex, noncommittally.
    ‘They tried to keep it from me, of course, but the image of the face I possessed before is not something that can be concealed for long.’
    Alex looked round to see Messina up on his knees now and gazing back, resting his shoulder against the penetration lock.
    ‘I know who I was,’ he said – a little sadly, Alex thought.
    ‘You were Chairman Alessandro Messina, ruler of Earth,’ Alex stated firmly. Then his gaze strayed to what he assumed was a chunk of debris sailing through the air towards them. It took him half a second further to realize his mistake.
    Alex shuddered, his body trying to respond to something that had happened just a couple of standard days ago now. He opened his eyes and surveyed his surroundings as he prepared himself for the worst memories. His small cabin was located in a workers’ dormitory fixed between lattice walls. The door was locked and, for now, this place had become a prison. But Alex felt fine with that. The cabin was comfortable enough, and the medic had already seen to his various wounds. He had some bottles of drink and even some food, a hammock and a combined zero-gravity toilet and shower unit, the latter of which he had used and as a result felt the cleanest he had felt in a long while. This was substantially more than had been available to him for the many months during which he had scrabbled to stay alive, trapped in a zero-gravity hydroponics unit. He was okay with the solitude, too, because he needed to straighten out his thinking. He closed his eyes again and returned to the not too distant past.
    ‘Grenade!’ he shouted, heaving himself to his feet and reaching for Messina.
    The erstwhile ruler of Earth stood up, ready to throw himself clear, then took a couple of steps, forced forwards by the impact of the bullets hitting his back and blowing chunks of flesh and rib out of his chest. Alex rolled aside, firing at a half-seen figure, coming back up onto his knees as the same figure staggered, then he sighted properly and emptied the new clip into it. He saw bits of his target flying away, before the grenade detonated and picked him up in a hot fist.
    Screaming somewhere . . .
    This was where it got difficult. The blast had thrown him into foliage, where he finally slammed to a halt against a solid branch. With his ears ringing, he had dragged himself back to the penetration lock. There he had found the Chairman’s remains slowly revolving in the air above him, like some grotesque expanded sculpture constructed of offal. He had gone into the trees and found the assailant dead, cut in half, but that hadn’t been enough.
    He didn’t care about his own life any more. Chairman Messina was dead and there had to be payment. Firing ahead . . . Not even trying to take cover, Alex propelled himself through the trees to where the floating debris mostly consisted of chunks of hardening breach foam. A penetration lock protruded from the ground, three of the assault force from the
Scourge
gathered around it. As one of them turned towards him, Alex braced himself against a trunk and fired his rifle from the hip – half a clip, picking them up and sending them tumbling, blood misting around them.
    The next attacker he found opened fire on him from concealment in thick bushes, branches shattering all around him. Alex threw himself towards those bushes, emptied the rest of the clip, inserted another and kept his finger on the