Planet Killer (Star Kingdom Book 6) Read online

  Planet Killer

  Star Kingdom Book 6

  Lindsay Buroker

  Copyright © 2019 by Lindsay Buroker

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Contents

  Foreword

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Epilogue

  Foreword

  Greetings, good reader! As you’ll soon see, Planet Killer starts up shortly after the events in Book 5, Gate Quest. I did want to let you know that I wrote a side novel called Knight Protector that takes place in another system around the time the two previous books (Crossfire and Gate Quest) are occurring.

  Knight Protector introduces the characters of Tristan and Nalini (and Prince Jorg), who also appear in this adventure. If you’re curious about their story, I hope you’ll check out their novel. That said, I tried to write this in such a way that you won’t be confused if you didn’t pick that one up.

  While we’re chatting and before you jump into the story, let me thank my team for their help: my editor, Shelley Holloway, and my beta readers, Rue Silver, Cindy Wilkinson, and Sarah Engelke. They’re all great about making time for me, even though other things are going on in their lives. Also, thank you to Jeff Brown for the cover illustrations for this series, and thank you to Kim and Tarja at Deranged Doctor Design for the print formatting.

  Planet Killer is the longest book in the series to date, so you may want to grab some popcorn or chocolate or whatever your pleasure is, and settle in for the read. Thanks for following along with my Star Kingdom adventures!

  1

  Chasca sniffed loudly, stuck her snout between crates overflowing with compost, and thwacked her gray tail against the potting bench like a teenage drummer trying out for one of Zamek City’s street bands.

  “The robot groundskeeper cleans in here every morning,” Princess Oku informed her dog. “I’m sure there aren’t mice in the greenhouse.”

  Thwack, thwack, thwack.

  Oku smiled, glad the war in the system hadn’t dulled her girl’s hunting instincts. Oku wished she could so easily find distraction. She kept thinking about the conference she was supposed to be attending this week in Shango Habitat and the bags of her new hybrid triticale seeds that she’d promised to bring, seeds proven to germinate and grow well on space stations.

  Princess Tambora would forgive her for not coming, since System Lion’s wormhole gate was currently blockaded by a hodgepodge army with an alarming number of ships, but Oku knew Shango Habitat had been struggling with the rising costs of food from the agrarian planet in their system and needed to decrease their reliance on outside sources. Her seeds were needed and would have been appreciated.

  Oku drifted to her dirt-smudged tablet and pulled up her inbox with a swipe of an equally dirt-smudged finger. If nothing else, the war had caused the cancelation of the Tidal Waters Ball that week, so she wouldn’t have to spend hours primping to make a suitably royal appearance on some nobleman’s arm. She had numerous technologically advanced scrub brushes and body cleaners, but as a soil and seed specialist who preferred gardens to parlors, she struggled to keep her fingernails clean. Much to her father’s chagrin. King Jager was certain that no prince, king, or emperor would agree to marry a woman with dirt under her fingernails. Which was perhaps one of the reasons Oku spent so little time with those fancy scrub brushes.

  It had been three days since an armored fast-courier ship had made it through the blockade to deliver mail from the rest of the system. Unfortunately, that was still the case, so there was nothing new from Princess Tambora. Or Casmir.

  Oku had stopped thinking of him as Professor Dabrowski sometime after the third or fourth message they’d exchanged. She hoped he didn’t mind. Her finger strayed to his last message, one she’d already played several times.

  Chasca snorted at something and shifted position, trying to find a route around to the back of the crate. The thwacks turned to pawing sounds.

  Oku glanced at the closed door, ensuring her bodyguards were outside the greenhouse instead of standing inside where they could watch, then tapped the video file. It wasn’t as if Casmir sent her anything scandalous—she doubted it would even cross his mind—but their exchanges tended to be light and playful, and she could imagine the dour-faced men who trailed her around thinking them silly. Even her loyal female bodyguard of many years, Maddie, would quirk an eyebrow.

  The video played, showing the empty deck of a spaceship cabin and then a circular robot vacuum whirring across it. She grinned in anticipation of what was coming.

  The vacuum started depositing purple flower petals on the deck, spelling out the words BEE MINE? with slow precise consideration.

  Oku wondered if that meant Casmir and Scholar Sato were finding time to work on her bee project. She couldn’t imagine it, not from the snippets of information she’d managed to inveigle out of Chief Superintendent Van Dijk of Royal Intelligence, who walked through the courtyard and passed the greenhouse on the way to meet with the king in the castle every morning.

  Civilian advisor Casmir and the warships that had been sent to System Hydra had been very busy. But Oku did hope to deploy bees on Shango Habitat, as well as the other stations and habitats in the Twelve Systems that could benefit from natural pollinators. The triticale didn’t need insect pollinators, but the stations’ orchards of dwarf fruit and nut trees craved them. Oku wished her father were willing to negotiate with the invaders and do whatever it took to get them out of the system and restore travel and trade, but the last she’d heard, he’d sent the Kingdom Fleet to the gate to do their best to annihilate them.

  “Are you sure that’s not too forward?” a female voice said in the video, the speaker off-screen.

  “No, it’s charming and clever,” Casmir’s familiar voice said.

  The robot vacuum finished spelling out the words, stopped, and started quivering on the deck. In Oku’s imagination, smoke wafted from its belly and steam whistled from the little orifices that looked a bit like ears.

  “What’s wrong?” the woman asked—Oku was fairly certain that was Scholar Sato, though she never appeared in the video.

  “I’m not sure.” Casmir sounded concerned. “I had to override its foundational programming to convince it to distribute debris rather than pick it up. I may have put it at cross-purposes with itself.”

  “Casmir, are you saying that robot is having an identity crisis?”

  “Something like that.”

  “It is difficult when one is asked to disobey one’s foundational programming,” a new male voice said—Oku was certain that robotic baritone belonged to Zee, since he’d been featur
ed in several of the videos. “Such as when the human that one has been programmed to protect insists on repeatedly putting himself in danger while ordering a particularly fine crusher off on some menial task.”

  “I was trying to save lives by having you keep the mercenaries and marines from shooting at each other,” Casmir said.

  “They are lesser humans,” Zee said. “My creator’s life is of paramount importance.”

  “Ah,” Casmir said. “Thank you, Zee.”

  “Did your crusher just call himself particularly fine?” Sato asked.

  “I believe so. He’s not wrong, is he?”

  “No,” Zee said firmly.

  Oku grinned.

  The robot quivered harder, then hopped slightly, and vroomed back across the deck, slurping up the offending petals until there was no trace of the message.

  “Hm,” Casmir said.

  “Did you get it recorded first?” Sato asked.

  “Yes.” For the first time, Casmir leaned into view of whatever camera he’d used to record. He smiled at Oku and waved. “I hope you’re doing well, Your Highness.” He always kept things formal, and Oku wondered what it would be like to hear him say her name. “I apologize for being punny, but it was difficult to resist. Uhm, if you felt that was too forward—” Casmir waved to the now immaculate portion of deck where the petal message had been, “—then you may assume that the message was from the robot vacuum to Zee, who is looking particularly fine today, as he said.”

  The camera shifted over to focus on the six-and-a-half-foot-tall tarry-black crusher. Usually, Zee looked like a walking wrecking ball ready to destroy space stations and fleets of soldiers. Today—or when Casmir had recorded this—Zee wore a blue-and-green plaid beanie and a tie made from some officer’s sash. The costume failed to make him look less like a killer, but Oku wouldn’t say so aloud.

  “As you can see, Zee is currently dressed well enough to attract all of the robots, androids, and smart appliances on the ship.” Casmir smiled again, but it faded, his expression growing more somber. “I wish we were there with you to help with things at home. I mean, I don’t know what I would do, but maybe I could do something small. I hope you’re safe and that the warships don’t make it to Odin and threaten the capital or anyone there. Do you think the Fleet can handle them? I would like to think so.” Casmir paused and his eye blinked a couple of times in what Oku believed was a nervous tic. “There’s also something I wanted to ask you, assuming this message gets to you before we’re able to find a way home…”

  Casmir paused again, and Oku waited. The first time she had watched this, she’d felt a tingle of nervous anticipation in her belly, because she’d thought he might ask something else, like if she wanted to go on a date when he got back. She wasn’t sure why she’d thought that, since he’d been discussing the war, but she’d been trying to figure out what her answer would be in the seconds before he’d gotten to his question.

  She enjoyed the messages they had been exchanging, and Casmir seemed like a fun guy, even a little quirky like she considered herself, but it wasn’t as if they could really… do anything. Be anything. She’d always known, because her father had made it clear, that she would be married off for some political alliance. And her mother had agreed that was the way it was, since her own marriage to the king had been arranged for political reasons. So there wasn’t any point in Oku having a relationship with anyone else, even if the various single knights and nobles who came by the castle and tried to woo her hadn’t gotten that message.

  She shook her head as the Casmir in the video continued on, and reminded herself that he hadn’t asked for a date.

  “I know I don’t have any right to impose on your time or ask for favors, but if things seem like they’re going to get hairy in the capital there… and if you have the power and the opportunity, would you mind checking on my parents? There’s nothing wrong with their health or anything, but I don’t think that old apartment building they live in would hold up to modern warfare if there was an attack on the city. I…” Casmir shrugged. “I guess it’s not right to ask for special privileges. Maybe I’ll just record them a message and beg them to be safe, not stubborn. They can be stubborn, you know. Staying to help people instead of taking cover. Kim’s father and brothers would be like that too.” He rubbed his face, looking distressed as he envisioned unpleasant scenarios.

  Oku imagined Casmir might also be stubborn and one to prioritize helping others over himself. Especially if… She thought of Zee’s earlier words. What ever had Casmir been doing to find himself in the middle of a firefight between mercenaries and marines?

  “Just take care of yourself, please, Your Highness. I do hope to see you again in person one day.” Casmir looked down as the vacuum whirred between his legs, then smiled and waved again and ended the video.

  Oku paused it before his face faded away.

  He looked so much more haggard in this last video than in his earlier ones. Wan, tired, maybe even sick. Had he been wounded in that battle?

  Her fingers twitched, as if she could smooth his brow on the video. She wished they could talk in real time, so she could find out what he’d been doing. It bothered her that her father had ordered him out with those Fleet ships, even though he was a civilian. She still didn’t know what her father thought a robotics professor could do out there or why Casmir was even on his radar, other than the obvious reason.

  “Oku?” her mother asked from the doorway, stepping into the greenhouse.

  Oku turned without closing the video, and her mother’s gaze drifted toward it, her neatly plucked eyebrows rising. Her black hair was swept up in a perfect bun with a pair of carved-ivory prongs keeping it in place. Whenever Oku tried that with her own hair, the prongs drooped like flowers wilting in the heat. It took a few thousand painfully tight pins to make it conform into something elegant.

  Her mother’s gaze lingered on the video, her dark eyes difficult to read, and heat crept into Oku’s cheeks. She doubted her mother would care if she was pen pals with Casmir, but faint horror burgeoned at the idea of her discussing it with her father. He had a tendency to overreact when it came to men. He liked to remind Oku that virgin princesses were a lot more enticing for arranged marriages. She’d never had the courage to tell him that he couldn’t honestly assign that product feature to the wares he planned to peddle, though she found it puzzling that he wouldn’t presume she would have experimented at some point during her twenty-six years. For some reason, he trusted all of his knights to be gentlemen who would never dally with a woman out of wedlock.

  “Is that Casmir Dabrowski?”

  “Yes.”

  Oku had almost forgotten that her mother knew Casmir, probably better than she did, if from a distance. Oku had only learned of his existence when she’d chanced across one of his publications years earlier and shown it to her mother, wondering at the author’s resemblance to the deceased David Lichtenberg. Oku and her brothers had visited the Lichtenbergs several times when she’d been growing up, and Jorg had raced bikes with David, driving Jorg crazy because he refused to bow to custom and let the prince win.

  Oku’s mother had told her about the cloning and how David had been survived by a twin brother. A twin brother who had numerous medical issues that would have made it, her father believed, a waste of time to invest anything in him. Oku remembered immediately feeling a connection, since she had medical issues and her father also hadn’t wanted to invest anything in her. Girls weren’t important, he’d always implied.

  But Oku had forgotten about Casmir after that, until he’d startled her by walking into the courtyard with Sir Asger that day. For a few seconds, she’d thought there’d been a mistake and that David hadn’t died. It hadn’t taken long for her to realize the truth—and that Casmir was a very different person, despite the strong resemblance. Oku hadn’t disliked David, but she found Casmir much more affable and appealing.

  Her mother pursed her lips. “After I realized the terrorists ha
d discovered who Casmir was cloned from and were after him, I’d meant to bring him to the castle and tell him everything, but he was chased off the planet before I had a chance. At least Asger was able to track him down. I understand Casmir was trying to arrange an appointment with me while I was on the southern continent, but the political situation kept me busy down there longer than I expected, and Jager sent Casmir off on this current mission before I returned.” Her mother strolled across the greenhouse, pausing as dirt from the previously packed earth floor flew across her path.

  “Chasca.” Oku clapped her hands.

  A mouse scurried from the opposite side of the crates where Chasca was digging. It darted to the door her mother had left open. Chasca’s gray head jerked up, long ears flapping, and she sprinted out after the mouse. One of the bodyguards cursed as she bumped him on her way past before disappearing into the courtyard.

  “Some botanists keep their compost outside,” her mother said mildly.

  “I’m putting it in pots, not the castle gardens.” Oku waved to the potting bench where she’d been mixing soil, compost, and fertilizer earlier. “Do you know why Father sent Casmir with the Fleet? Van Dijk has been evasive with me when I’ve asked.”

  “Probably because you’ve never previously shown interest in military matters.”

  Oku still had no interest in military matters, though she supposed she should change that attitude now that they were at war, but she was curious about Casmir. And worried about him, she admitted, glancing again at his wan face in the paused video.