Redemption (The Boris Chronicles Book 4) Read online

  CONTENTS

  LMBPN Publishing

  Dedication

  Legal

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Epilogue

  Paul's Author Notes

  Michael's Author Notes

  About the Author

  Other Books by Paul

  Books by Michael Anderle

  Social Links

  REDEMPTION

  The Boris Chronicles Book Four

  By Paul C. Middleton, and Michael Anderle

  A part of

  The Kurtherian Gambit Universe

  Written and Created

  by Michael Anderle

  To Kristy Ford

  For being a solid friend,

  A person I can always talk to,

  Someone who reminds me I need to look after myself

  As much as I need to keep writing

  Paul C. Middleton

  To Family, Friends and

  Those Who Love

  To Read.

  May We All Enjoy Grace

  To Live The Life We Are

  Called.

  Thank you,

  Michael Anderle

  REDEMPTION Team Includes

  Beta Readers

  John Findlay

  John Ashmore

  James Caplan

  Peter Manis

  Sarah Weir

  Joshua Ahles

  Paul Westman

  Larry Omans

  Micky Cocker

  JIT Beta Readers

  To be added

  If I missed anyone, please let us know!

  Editor

  Candy Crum

  REDEMPTION (this book) is a work of fiction.

  All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Sometimes both.

  Copyright © 2018 Paul C. Middleton, and Michael Anderle

  Cover copyright © LMBPN Publishing

  LMBPN Publishing supports the right to free expression and the value of copyright. The purpose of copyright is to encourage writers and artists to produce the creative works that enrich our culture.

  The distribution of this book without permission is a theft of the author’s intellectual property. If you would like permission to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), please contact [email protected]. Thank you for your support of the author’s rights.

  LMBPN Publishing

  PMB 196, 2540 South Maryland Pkwy

  Las Vegas, NV 89109

  First US edition, January 2018

  The Kurtherian Gambit (and what happens within / characters / situations / worlds) are copyright © 2015-2018 by Michael T. Anderle.

  PROLOGUE

  Danislav was angry with his boss. Boris shouldn’t have decided that now was the time to push the borders of his domain out farther. He sure as hell didn’t need to send an old hand like Danislav on one of the first clearance patrols.

  Damn that alliance proposal. It had pushed Boris to expand west before the signatory dates, to increase the territory that he would hold in what would become a land grab.

  There were gasps from the patrol as suddenly a pillar of smoke appeared on the horizon. There must be a homestead or village in that direction.

  He could smell the fear radiating from his patrol. Most people were sensible enough to leave Boris's domain and its borderlands alone, and they were barely ten clicks from the previously established border. It was concerning that people were attacking each other this close to the homeland It was hardly something to be afraid of for an old hand like him, though.

  He barked out several orders, and he shifted with three of the others in the platoon. The rest were to follow as quickly as possible behind the scouting Shifters after distributing the gear that those four could no longer carry.

  His anger increased at the wanton damage he found in the village that had been set alight. The only undamaged buildings in the hamlet were the inn and the town hall, which neighbored each other and were made of stone with slate roofs. It would be nearly impossible to burn them quickly, unlike the other thatch-roofed buildings.

  What concerned him most was the scorch marks from a weapon that he didn’t recognize, combined with the smell of Vampire in the air. He hadn’t smelt Vampire since the first years after the World’s Worst Day Ever.

  As he moved closer to the town hall, there were bodies scattered across the street. Many were burnt to a crisp, and only one or two had the telltale bite marks of a Vampire, despite the stench of them being everywhere. He couldn’t smell the more rancid odor of Nosferatu, but that was more of a relief to him.

  It was unlikely that any Vampires older than the fifth generation were lurking around on Boris's border. Not after the proclamation killing a pair of third gens had made, having thought they could move in on his territory. He'd sent messengers from their forces with eight body parts to travel from village to village in the surrounding lands.

  ‘Really, Boris should be sending his eldest on these patrols,’ Danislav thought. Unlike his siblings, Olaf was overprotected by modern standards. For example, his sister, Fiona, was Boris’s ambassador to the Mongolians. ‘Besides, Olaf is better suited to lead patrols against possible Vampires than I am. I’m just not a Bear, and he is. Sure, I can probably take one in a pinch with backup, but it wouldn’t be a fun tangle,’ his thoughts continued.

  “Search the town,” he ordered. “Look for survivors and look for any information to be had. Regroup at the town hall. Town hall is the operations center.”

  Once he was inside the building, he reflexively started rearranging furniture to make it as defensible as possible. His mind focused on the other problems he faced. He hoped the rest of the patrol hauled ass to the town. Even with the extra gear, they shouldn't take much longer than an hour.

  Starting to look around for any form of records, Danislav couldn’t find anything recent other than some town votes. As this place was recovering from the Fall, they had decided on a direct democratic model. He could understand the whys of that, having lived in the practicable autocracy of the Soviet Union. Not that what he saw as the corrupt oligarchy of both Russia and the United States immediately preceding the Fall had been any better to live under.

  In fact, the gentle tyranny that Boris imposed was the most pleasant political structure he'd ever been a citizen of. Danislav wanted to keep that authority intact. To do that, the heir, Olaf, needed to be respected, and he needed to find a way accomplish that.

  Rather than being spoiled, Olaf was overprotected. He was a good kid, always trying to please his father and live up to his father’s reputation. That was a big part of the problem. Boris’s reputation had a damned long shadow now.

  It had been hard being the Bear-Lord’s adopted son at a time where his reputation was only impressive. Danislav had managed to survive it, but that had come at a
cost. He never saw himself as a leader. Not an overall leader, at least.

  Lead a unit? Organize a hunting or search party? Danislav could handle that. But to have an entire people’s fate in his hands? That was beyond him.

  Even knowing that, he suspected that was precisely what Olaf desired. He was also smart enough to know that Boris was the better man for the job in Arkhangelsk Palden.

  It didn’t help that Boris never let Olaf go further than the inner patrol circuit. Olaf was nearing fifty, but he’d never even visited many of the outer farms. He led inner circuit patrols as often as he could, and no one ever complained about his professionalism or performance, though no one ever complimented them either.

  Danislav’s journey through that long-worn track of thought was abruptly ended by the entrance of most of the patrol into the town hall. After sending his two best marksmen to the roof with a spotter, he sent five to the inn, to look for food or any supplies that might be useful in fortifying the town hall for the night.

  That left him with twenty-two men in his platoon-strength force. Danislav kept two with him to continue strengthening the town hall with what was on hand. He sent the remainder out with a half-dozen digital cameras to find out what the other Shifters might have located as well as finding anything else that might be of interest to document. Lilith could download them when they got back to New Romanovka.

  This was hardly the first time one of the extended patrols had run up against an atrocity.

  In the fifty years since the Fall, they had developed their own procedure. If they ever ended up tracking down perpetrators? Those perpetrators would end up being executed after a judicial and fair trial with the collected evidence.

  Deciding to call in the shuttles was the next concern. While Lilith was a genius when it came to manipulating biology, she was far less capable when it came to physical and mechanical technologies. She could maintain their communication links and devices, but had not managed to replicate what TOM had achieved with the shuttlecraft. Nor did they have the capability to make use of the theory she knew.

  To be entirely fair, she didn’t have the industrial base to work with. TOM had access to far more when the shuttles were originally built. She had no access to a replicating unit of the size required for many of the major components of that craft.

  The squad returned to him from next door. They were carrying a barrel along with as many benches as their combined strength allowed. There was a small selection of hammers, saws, and a drill balanced on one of the benches.

  The barrel was half full of triangular iron spikes. They'd make a good substitute for nails and would allow them to shape firing ports into the cut up benches. The benches could then be fastened into the window frames. Once he got a fire burning, the wooden firing embrasures and the remaining shutters should keep the room warm. There was plenty of firewood available, either loose from the half-burnt buildings or in the chopped stack behind the inn.

  What amazed Danislav most was when reports from his exploring troopers came in. So many supplies had been left. If they'd been raiders, they'd been particularly incompetent, as most of the cellars were still full of foodstuffs. If it weren't for the fact that the buildings were burnt to the ground, five hundred people could move into the town tomorrow. With the available supplies, they could expect to survive all but the absolute worst a Russian winter could throw at them.

  Boris may yet decide to man it as an armed outpost.

  Unfortunately, that led to a more significant question. Since the possibility it had been raiders was unlikely, considering how much was left behind, why was so much damage done to the town?

  Why kill everyone in a town that was not only surviving in these times, but prospering?

  Danislav could only think of two answers, and he didn’t like either one. The first reason was that this was a demonstration of force. Being so close to Boris’s border, a response would have to be sent after it.

  The second was worse.

  The final reason Danislav could think of for such wanton slaughter was that the town had been used to test a new weapon. From the level of damage, it could only be a weapon based on alien technology that was somehow modified and advanced after the Fall.

  For years, Danislav had desperately hoped that interesting times were over for him. Looking at the damage along with the rape and destruction of this town, it seemed they were not.

  Grabbing his communicator, he called in a full report to Boris and Lilith.

  CHAPTER ONE

  Boris stood in the conference room with Janna sitting calmly in front of him at the table. Danislav’s report indicated a problem, but more than that—Lilith and some of his other advisors were at his back about Olaf. He needed a task, or he’d be seen as untrusted and untrustworthy.

  They said the protectiveness Janna and he had displayed was seen as distrust—either in his loyalty or his abilities. Janna and Boris had just had the biggest fight of their marriage. She had agreed with the concerned members of the council, if somewhat reluctantly.

  So, Boris had called his adopted son in to ask for an honest opinion. He'd been hoping Danislav would have an uneventful patrol. Instead, Danislav had left two-thirds of his unit holding a ravaged village. Two platoons had been sent under a captain to consolidate the position and start constructing some winter barracks over the ruins. Preparations were being made to house two full companies under a major in order to secure and patrol from the site and region.

  They would be digging in bunkers, making it able to expand into an administrative center over the coming years. Meanwhile, those companies were to aggressively patrol the local area. If this was a weapons test, it could originate some distance from the base.

  The Vampire Danislav had scented was the key to that. Forsaken could be brave enough in a stand-up fight, but they were cautious when unsure of having the greater force. Many would have traveled long distances to test something like this weapon. Even some of Michael's children had acted that way.

  The salvaged town would be a useful place to expand his territory from. With the growing population, more land would be needed soon.

  That was why he had started sending out the extended range patrols, after all. Arkhangelsk Palden would be the core district of a larger realm.

  Still, it was a complication Boris did not need right now. It had taken twenty-five years to reorganize his forces into a mostly ‘square’ organization. Although the tactical flexibility of three squad platoons had been retained, the rest of the force structure was four companies to a battalion, four battalions to a regiment, and a planned four regiments to the planned Arkhangelsk Palden Division.

  Two full-time regiments, two reserves. ‘Square’ military organizations were simply better for the defense of held land and for slow expansion. It also allowed each regiment to maintain support units.

  Many of the smaller settlements in the area had formed local militias that were sent to train under his commanders. There were also other various ‘independent’ militias that had formed to demonstrate an objection to some of his policies. Each type of militia could field roughly two regiments.

  Even the independent militias were considered in his planning. Just because they disliked some of his policies did not mean they refused to answer a callup.

  With the destruction of industry that accompanied the world’s worst day ever, Infantry was the only force that made good sense. So, it made sense to integrate light artillery which consisted of mule transported mortars mostly, with a few newly built, horse-drawn, light howitzers and World War One style field guns.

  His officer pool was light, however. It would remain so for at least another few years as they completed the build-up and reorganization of the held lands. Already there were diplomats from Finland, Sweden, and the relatively intact Baltic states of Estonia and Latvia asking for defensive alliances against the warlords between what the outer world was calling ‘the lands of the Bear Lord’ and their territories.

  To the wes
t of his lands lay the area they wanted help to stabilize. This new threat was coming from the South-west, with an emphasis on the south.

  Boris just didn't have the troops to spare. He also feared Danislav's likely solution. He loved his son and wanted to save him from the danger he had experienced in his own life. More, he viewed the risk through the eyes of someone who had served a Tzar, as well as considered how the Tzars had protected their heirs.

  In this new world, Lilith had pointed out, there was no way to prevent a person being exposed to the endemic violence.

  Finally, Danislav arrived. He was clean and in fresh clothes. Boris couldn't begrudge him the time to shower, change, and probably grab a hot meal. Not after more than a month in the field.

  “Lilith has brought me up to date, Boris.” Danislav refused to have Lilith ‘plug him into’ the etheric communications network. There were speakers she could access in the barracks, though. Every officer’s room had three, and despite objections over the placement of the third, one of those were in the bathroom.

  “You need to send Olaf. He needs to prove himself,” Danislav stated, leaving no room for discussion on that point.

  “Fuck your mother, Danislav. It's too hard. He doesn't have the training for it.” Danislav and Janna snorted at that explosion from Boris.

  “I never knew her, Father!” Danislav fired back. Sighing, he continued. “The problem isn’t a lack of training, Boris. The problem is all he has is the training. He has too little experience backing it up.” Anger flashed in Boris's eyes, but for the first time in decades, Danislav simply caught the gaze without backing down.

  Finally, the truth of his words, combined with the anger, washed past the oldest son of his heart and wore down the old bear. Guilt replaced passion, and he collapsed into the chair at the head of the conference table.