Mars Colony Chronicles (Books 1 - 5): A Space Opera Box Set Adventure Read online

  Mars Colony Chronicles Box Set

  Books 1 - 5

  Brandon Ellis

  BookLily Press, LLC

  Martian Plague

  Mars Colony Chronicles Book 1

  Copyright © 2021

  Brandon Ellis

  All rights reserved. Version 1.03.

  This is a work of fiction. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author. Names used in this novel do not represent the personalities, traits, or mental and physical characteristics to real persons, living or dead, with the same name.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior written permission of the publisher and copyright owner.

  Edited by Paula Lavattiata-Lopez

  Published by Knight Star Press, LLC

  Cover, branding & enhancements by Christian Kallias at www.infinitescifi.com

  Website: www.brandonelliswrites.com

  Facebook: www.facebook.com/brandonellis1212

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  1

  Ketler Asteroid, near Mars—Year 2699

  A flash of light washed over Ozzy Mack’s body.

  He jumped back, startled, and swiftly sidestepped away from the mound of rocks and dirt next to his dig. Being in a stolen military-grade EVA spacesuit was the least of his concerns right now. Getting safely off this small asteroid was his first.

  He took another step back, bumping into the base of a six-thousand-meter spire. Several of these summits dotted the asteroid.

  A second beam of light flashed over Ozzy.

  He froze.

  “Shit,” he muttered to himself.

  How the hell did he reach this point in his life? Only a few years back he was a well-known university professor, and now he was a career criminal.

  He tilted his head back and used his forearm to cover his eyes from the invading light.

  At first glance, and under squinted eyes, he saw two S-9 Mars Ministry Police ships hovering above him.

  The dreaded MMP.

  Yep. They had caught him.

  “Impossible,” he blurted out.

  A tingling surrounded his heart and traveled down into his fingers and toes. If he was caught, any chances of seeing his daughter, although slight, would fade like a fabled city on Earth. He hated being away from her, but right now he had no choice.

  He brought his gaze down to Jozi Ryan. She was standing across from him on this recent archaeological dig; a freshly dug hole with a blue kyanite crystal skull nestled inside. It was worth seven million auric credits on the black market, and that was lowballing it.

  Ozzy stiffened and narrowed his eyes at Jozi. The red and yellow glow of Mars reflected off her anti-radiation visor.

  She had been with him for an entire week, crossing Mars and the asteroid belt, looking for this kyanite skull and any other artifacts they could find to sell on the black market. She was an archaeology rookie gleaning as much information off of him as she could—as good novices do.

  But maybe there was more to her many questions. Maybe there was more to her following him around on his S-4 Jumper Class IV ship at all hours. And maybe there was more to it when she acted ditzy when he caught her taking pictures of his asteroid belt maps.

  “It was to study,” she had said.

  Study, my ass.

  He quickly bent down and grabbed the crystal skull. His heart picked up a beat and perspiration formed on his forehead. He carefully slipped the skull into a satchel belted around his waist and zipped it closed.

  He took a step toward his ship, reached for his PR-19 photon rifle, and then pointed it at Jozi. He clicked on his helmet’s com line. “I’ve been helping you out this entire time, schooling you on the archeology world. So answer me straight, Jozi. Did you notify the MMP?”

  He needed to be cautious and slow. He couldn’t turn and run. Something in his gut was telling him that Jozi was in on him being spotted. And if she was, and he turned tail now, she might pop a few photon slugs into his back.

  Jozi remained quiet and a bit more hesitant than he would have liked. He continued to stare into her blue eyes, not trusting her. She shifted on her feet and gazed at the ships hovering high above them.

  He lightly touched his index finger on his rifle’s trigger. “Answer me.”

  The MMP ships began to descend. He swallowed hard. This wasn’t good.

  “No,” yelled Jozi, slowly lifting her arms in surrender. “I didn’t call them. It’s not me. I’m not with the Mars Ministry Police. I’m not an agent, Ozzy. Trust me.”

  The MMP ships’ yellow and red warning lights blinked on and dazzled the asteroid’s surface. In a few seconds, the ships would touch down and send a party after Ozzy.

  Ozzy lowered his weapon, knowing he had very little time to get back to his ship and off this rock. If Jozi was an agent and he shot her in front of the agents making their way down to the asteroid this very moment, then he’d be thrown in prison for the rest of his life.

  He really didn’t want that as he’d probably be sharing razors and toilet paper with a fifty-inch bicep man named Bubba, Snake, or worse yet, Frankie.

  He took a few more steps toward his ship. It was sixty meters away. It was far but not too far. “Then how did they find us?”

  A crackle came over his com line. “Don’t move. This is the Mars Ministry Police. Put your weapons down and raise your hands. You are under arrest for violating excavation code 040.”

  Jozi dipped her head and dropped her hands by her side, obviously not complying with the MMP’s instructions. She took a step to the side and raced toward Ozzy’s craft. Her arms and legs pumped fast, and she took long, bouncing strides in the asteroid’s light gravity.

  “No you don’t,” Ozzy yelled, hurrying after her. “You’re not hightailing it off this rock without me.”

  The MMP ships hovered into a landing, shadowing Mars’s crimson gleam. “I repeat. This is the Mars Ministry Police. Drop your weapons and put your hands on top of your helmets.”

  The ground vibrated, telling Ozzy the MMP ships had landed.

  Not good.

  He hopped toward his S-4 Jumper; a big, two-winged boomerang ship painted space black. It was two stories high and equipped with an unknown alien stealth device he found a few years ago during another one of his archaeological finds.

  Which reminded him again. The MMP shouldn’t have found him. He should be practically invisible.

  A damn ghost.

  The way he was with Lily, his daughter.

  He pushed the thought away. Being sad during an escape would falter his focus, and that was the last thing he wanted to do.

  He bounded forward in his run, his heart pumping, his breathing coming fast and heavy.

  “…this is the Mars Ministry Police. Drop your weapon and—”

  “Shut up.” He slapped his com line off, watching Jozi hop up the S-4 Jumper’s ramp and into his craft.

  He was close behind, taking several giant leaps until he made it to the ramp’s edge. He lunged forward, landing on his side and sliding across the grated storage bay. His rifle slipped from his hand and ricocheted off a wall.

  He pushed himself up with his gloved palms and stood. He twisted around and punched a button. The ramp closed, jostl
ing the storage bay. Steam shot outward at the ramp’s seams, sealing the craft shut with a loud clang. His body became heavy, indicating he passed through the ship’s artificial gravity field. A hiss told him oxygen had been activated.

  He spun on his heels ready to head to the cockpit on the upper deck and fly his S-4 Jumper, Relic, off Ketler Asteroid and outrun the MMP.

  “Don’t move.”

  Ozzy jerked back, his body rigid.

  “You little…”

  He was staring at the wrong end of a photon pistol.

  He took a deep, angry breath, unclipping his helmet and dropping it on the floor. “And all the teaching I gave you? You’d think I’d know better by now, but I just can’t stop helping people even when I get kicked in the teeth for it.”

  2

  Ketler Asteroid

  He kept his gaze on Jozi’s gun. He studied the weapon, and his lips tightened. She held a Mars Ministry Police issued P-116 photon pistol. She was definitely an agent.

  “You double-crossing piece of Mars dung. You came here to steal my find for the Ministry, huh, sweetheart?” He hoped sweetheart stung as much as her backstabbing stung his heart.

  He doubted that it did.

  She spent every day for a damn week picking his brain on hieroglyphic translations and the best places on Mars for an archaeological dig. Heck, he had to listen to her telling him about her parent’s death when she was a little child, how she grew up in an orphanage, and how it was hard and she had no family.

  And he had sympathy for her.

  He wanted to laugh. She played him good. She wasn’t telling the truth, because in reality she was a rat for the police, most likely recording every illegal purchase he boasted about, every illegal sale, and every illegal dig.

  The weeks of lingering suspicions in the back of his mind were right, and again, if he had noticed that weapon on her before today’s dig—the first time she pulled it out—then he would have left her where he hired her—at crime boss Jonas Moon’s compound.

  Ultimately, this mess was Jonas’s fault. She was one of Jonas’s new recruits and he said she was good for the job. That she needed to be primed for his crime syndicate, which was one of a dozen crime syndicates sprinkled throughout Mars, who all constantly fought with each other and fought with the Ministry behind the scenes, vying for ultimate power.

  But Jonas was always true to his word. He hated the MMP as much as Ozzy. Jonas wouldn’t set up Ozzy with the MMP like this. Or would he?

  “Don’t move, Ozzy, and hand over the satchel.”

  Ozzy raised his eyebrows. “Not a chance.” She still had on her EVA suit and helmet. Her solar visor was drawn down, and Ozzy could barely see her expression.

  “Don’t be stupid.”

  “Let me go free, Jozi. All I want to do is get off of Mars with my daughter. You know that more than anyone. This dig was the ticket. I’ll have enough auric credits after I sell this find. You can tell your agent friends in the MMP that they won’t have to see or hear from me again.”

  “Give me the damn satchel. You’re under arrest for violating excavation code 040.”

  The craft shuddered, and a bang reverberated against the walls. Ozzy looked at the ceiling. He tightened his hands, his nails digging into his palms. “They have my craft suctioned. Even if I want to go, I can’t.” He sighed. “Thanks, sweetheart. Backstab much?”

  She extended her hand while holding her rifle in the other. “Let me have the artifact.”

  “How about I let you have an old fashioned no.” He gripped the skull in his satchel and held on to it tightly. He wasn’t letting anyone touch his ticket off Mars, even if it appeared the MMP had his craft suctioned, which in human terms, meant handcuffed. If Ozzy had learned anything in his criminal life, it was that there was always a way out of a bind.

  “Ozzy.” She pursed her lips and tilted her head.

  He knew what she was thinking. He didn’t have a chance in Orion’s hell to escape. Not now. Not ever.

  But she was wrong.

  The ship shook back and forth, nearly knocking Ozzy off of his feet. His S-4 Jumper lifted off the ground. The MMP ships had hooked their lines into the suctions and were taking him back to Mars.

  “Hand me that skull and your sentencing will be light.”

  “Let me think on that. Uh…no.”

  Jozi took a step forward and spun, kicking the sole of her boot against his chest.

  She was quick, and it caught Ozzy off guard. He yelped and fell awkwardly to the floor, slamming against the metallic wall next to the ramp.

  He reached for his rifle.

  Bad move.

  Jozi’s knee came down on his back, and he face-planted on the grate, cracking his forehead.

  Blood streamed down to the ridge of his nose.

  She grabbed his arm and slapped a cuff around his wrist and pulled his other arm behind his back, cuffing it as well.

  He grunted. He had just lost any chance of escape.

  “Ozzy Mack, you’re under arrest for violating section 114 of the archaeological binary laws and forbidden excavation code 040, and for stealing more than fifty-two million auric credits worth of ancient artifacts from more museums than I can count.” She stepped off of him and pulled him to his feet, continuing her speech, “You’ve conducted more than four-dozen illegal digs in twenty-eight no trespassing and outlawed Martian zones with estimated profits of eighty-four million auric credits. At this moment, I have you com linked to the Ministry. Right now every word you say is being recorded and streamed to the Mars Ministry Police and the Ministry High Council. Is there anything you’d like to say in your defense?”

  In his defense? If anything, the High Judge and the High Council needed their own defense for making archaeology a serious crime when the new High Judge was voted in nearly twenty years ago. And for what? Because professionals damaged a few ancient Martian ruins in 2679? There was more to it, and Ozzy knew all too well why the High Judge forbade archaeology.

  It made the High Judge a rich man.

  The High Judge would hear about a potential find, hire a professional digger, and illegally sell the artifact on the black market to the highest bidder using a secret, black market name.

  Ozzy scowled. No one knew about the High Judge’s criminal side but him. In fact, Ozzy was the High Judge’s biggest competitor. And now he had been caught, which shouldn’t have happened. He had ancient technology on board his craft that kept him invisible from all radar and sophisticated tracking equipment. No one had the ability to find him. He was practically a ghost.

  “Ozzy,” said Jozi. “I repeat, do you have anything to say in your defense?”

  “Yeah, I have something to say. If High Judge Robert Baldwin is listening,” he narrowed his eyes and blew a snot-filled loogie on the grated floor, “you’ll be exposed for the fake you are. I promise you. And, by the way, bite me you piece of asteroid mine dust.”

  Jozi tripped him to the floor, and her fist came down on his temple, slamming his head against the grate.

  “Wrong words, Ozzy.” She pulled him back to his feet. “You’re heading to prison.”

  3

  Ministry Detention Center—Gale Crater City, Mars

  Ozzy marched down a ministry detention corridor with two guards at his side. His hands were shackled at his waist, and the chains jangled with his every step. The smell of sweat and piss filled the air—quite the aromatic Martian jail.

  His sentencing was about to begin.

  “Hey, beautiful,” yelled an overweight, bald man, slamming his fist against his cell’s metal rails.

  Ozzy paid him no mind, continuing past the many more inmates yelling obscenities and catcalls.

  The prison’s blue-gray walls mirrored his frame of mind, and the spit suddenly splattering against his face from an inmate didn’t brighten his mood.

  He tried to wipe his face and turned, eyeing the culprit. A man with a heavy, jutting chin and a scar across his cheek gripped his cell bars and
went to spit again. An alarm sounded as a hoverbot flew over Ozzy’s head and zapped the inmate. The guy howled in pain and hugged his arms against his chest.

  Ozzy shook his head. Prisoners were idiots. He snorted to himself because that pretty much meant he was an idiot as well, just like Ozzy’s dad had told him nearly his entire life.

  Guess you were right, Pops.

  A holovid played next to a corridor wall, displaying the outside world to the prisoners, perhaps to remind them how horrible the situation was beyond their confines.

  On the holoscreen, a woman reporter wearing a gas mask stood in a large hospital room the size of a gymnasium. Hundreds of patients on small beds with IV’s dripping fluid into their veins were behind her. The patients had shadows under their eyes, were pale as the Earth’s moon, and looked like death had hit them twice over.

  “…and we don’t know how much longer these men, women, and children will live,” said the woman. “If we can use Gusev Crater City as an example, I’d say they have less than one week.”

  He walked by the holovid, wanting to bury his face in his hands. This was half the reason he wanted his and his daughter’s butts off this crimson crap-hole of a planet. The plague was getting worse. Lily, his daughter, might be safe in the underground city where she was living with her mother, but he didn’t want to take that risk—she might indeed get this horrific disease if she stayed on Mars with the rest of the population.

  Then there was the Dunrakee; the other reason he wanted off Mars. They were the alien race that forced humans to Mars in the first place. The war for Earth was short, or so he heard and occurred a little over a hundred years ago. Both sides, human and Dunrakee, were nearly annihilated, yet the Dunrakee won. He imagined the Dunrakee would rebuild and send an armada to end the two million or so humans on this planet someday, any day.