The void, p.1
The Void, page 1
The Void
By Timothy S. Johnston
2403 AD
It would be easier to kill him than to trust him.
Transporting a serial killer might seem like a simple job for CCF Homicide Investigator Kyle Tanner. After spending years apprehending murderers, he’s ready to hang up his pistol. Babysitting a prisoner will bring him to Alpha Centauri, where he can search for a way to escape the CCF forever.
If he makes it.
When his ship breaks down in deep space and a CCF research vessel comes to his aid, Tanner realizes he’s in terrible danger: the scientists onboard have blocked his distress call. And when Tanner’s prisoner escapes, he begins to suspect that the proximity of the research vessel had nothing to do with luck and everything to do with the CCF’s relentless reach.
Facing near-certain death by his own organization, Tanner must unravel a tangled skein of vengeance, duplicity and murder in deep space. But he’s being held at the will of master puppeteers, and if he can’t cut the strings, he’ll dance straight to a gruesome, excruciating death...
A Tanner Sequence Novel
106,000 words
Dear Reader,
This month I’d like to take a moment to thank all of you who read, review and recommend. Word of mouth is so critical to the success of a book, and we so appreciate not just those of you who write reviews on retailers, review sites, and your personal blogs, but also those who have a love of talking books, as I do, and recommend the things you enjoy to friends, family and fellow readers in conversation, on social media, and at parent/teacher conferences (yes, I’ve done this!). Thank you, you help us grow and thrive!
Speaking of books to review and recommend, I hope you find something in this month’s lineup that inspires you. First, we’re pleased to introduce two debut authors. In Time Served by Julianna Keyes, eight years in prison have left Dean insatiable, and a decade apart isn’t enough to stop Rachel from surrendering any way he asks. Don’t miss this sexy contemporary romance debut!
For those who have longed for something different in historical romance, Pamela Cayne delivers in The Fighter and the Fallen Woman. In Victorian London, Lady and King, a prostitute and a street fighter, are kindred souls, each trapped in their own hells. Both owned by a ruthless businessman, they have no chance at love if they don’t first risk death.
Also new to Carina Press this month is a brand new male/male space romance series from author duo Jenn Burke and Kelly Jensen set aboard a Firefly-esque freighter, following a cast of misfit super-soldiers who have been through intergalactic hell and offering up a delicious and unexpected reunion romance. Don’t miss the first book in the Chaos Station series!
For those who love revisiting favorite authors, HelenKay Dimon’s Chain of Command is available in March 2015. Special ops Marine Sawyer Cain is ready for civilian life, trading danger for more stability by opening a gun range with his friends, but first he needs the land and that means going through Hailey Thorne...and nothing prepares him for her.
A drunken kiss between an out gay man and his supposedly straight best friend awaken long-repressed feelings that neither man is able to ignore in fan favorite A.M. Arthur’s Getting It Right.
Proving that all good things come to an end, we’re sad to say farewell to urban fantasy series Monster Haven from R.L. Naquin. In Phoenix in My Fortune, Zoey must stop the terrifying Shadow Man from breaking the ancient Human/Hidden Covenant and taking away all the Hidden in our world forever—including Zoey’s family.
Hunted by a killer, Layna Blair knows trust isn’t a mistake she can afford, but the six-foot-four Marine makes her an irresistible offer—her freedom, his rules, no questions asked in Impossible Promise by Sybil Bartel.
Author Kate Willoughby delivers another sizzling contemporary romance in Out of the Game. Alex Sullivan may be the San Diego Barracudas’ resident playboy, but he’s never forgotten his kiss with Claire Marzano. When he sees her again at a teammate’s wedding, he can’t think of anything but spending more time with her. Preferably naked.
Last, we wrap up two science fiction trilogies this month. In The Epherium Chronicles: Echoes by T.D. Wilson, Captain James Hood and his ship, the Armstrong, survived the battle of Cygni, but the victory at the new colony puts humanity in more danger both in space and on Earth.
And from Timothy S. Johnston’s science fiction mystery series the Tanner Sequence, described as Agatha Christie meets Michael Crichton, Homicide Investigator Kyle Tanner is on an emotional journey as he hunts killers in a society plagued by violence and brutality. Stranded on a disabled vessel with a hostile crew that includes at least one serial killer, he must rely on the love of a remarkable woman in order to decipher the clues and solve the mystery in The Void.
Coming in April 2015: a hot erotic romance, two new debut authors and the launch of a new male/male new adult trilogy.
Here’s wishing you a wonderful month of books you love, remember and recommend.
Happy reading!
~Angela James
Executive Editor, Carina Press
Acknowledgments
I would like to acknowledge Dr. E. Tugaleva, MD, FRCPC, of London Health Sciences Centre, for educating me about the postmortem. Dr. Tugaleva is a forensic pathologist, and her expertise added authenticity and realism to Tanner’s story. For that I am grateful.
I have the utmost respect for forensic pathologists. They provide answers amid tragedy. They uncover and solve mysteries every day. They give closure to grieving families.
They solve crimes.
“Invention, it must be humbly admitted, does not consist in creating out of void, but out of chaos.”
—Mary Shelley
“Men have died from time to time, and worms have eaten them, but not for love.”
—William Shakespeare,
As You Like It, Act 4, Scene 1
From Timothy S. Johnston and Carina Press:
The Furnace (2013)
The Freezer (2014)
The Void (2015)
Join Lieutenant Kyle Tanner on his brutal journey as he travels near-Earth space and investigates murders in dangerous and claustrophobic locations. What he discovers about the evil that condemns the guilty will pale in comparison to the darkness that lurks within us all...
www.timothysjohnston.com
Contents
2403 AD
Prologue
Part One
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
CCF Research Ship Phoenix
Part Two
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Part Three
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Part Four
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Part Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Four
Epilogue
About the Author
Copyright
2403 AD
Prologue
His first victim was the easiest.
At that point, no one knew that the killer was out there. No one suspected his agenda. No one knew that he was watching, biding his time, waiting for the right moment to make the kill.
To slaughter the guilty.
The victims had felt secure and confident in what they had done, never thought judgment was coming for them.
He knew better, of course. He was smarter than they were.
And he would make them suffer.
* * *
The first was a captain in the Confederate Combined Forces. He had been living a sedentary life on the fourth planet of the Alpha Centauri System. A fat, disgusting, loathsome creature who commanded the troops under him with a sadistic and cruel hand. Punishment for infractions bordered on torture, and the soldiers who devoted their lives training in his battalion detested him. Despite their hate, they were the best. They drove themselves to be the most physically fit in the CCF, the hardest workers, the most diligent in the ranks. They did not do this because they respected him—they did it due to fear. There were rumors of sexual abuse and molestation used as consequence on that CCF base. Fear of corporal punishment is one thing. Fear of anal rape another on e entirely.
And so they worked until near collapse, with more than a few mental breakdowns as a result, but despite this the captain received accolades for his work.
He was ill-trained and slobbish in appearance. Triple-chinned with greasy, thinning hair and sweat forever beading his face. A belly that spilled over the belt of his black pants.
Fat and bloated.
The serial killer knew that the captain’s innards would soon cover the walls of his cabin. Intestines would dangle from the ceiling. His scalp, painstakingly peeled from his skull with a six-inch blade, would adorn the lamp next to the bed. The killer did as much as he could while the man’s heart continued to beat. He even saw it after he cracked the sternum with a sixty-centimeter pry-bar that he had brought to the cabin along with other tools and bindings prepared just for that evening. The organ pumped blood furiously through the captain’s body, continuing its work even though the agony of that night would be his last. There was even a ventilator to keep the lungs working long after they should have ceased.
It was while the killer was working on the captain’s right arm that the heart finally stopped. He had already skinned and removed both legs, and the screams had become less and less powerful as the hours passed. Screams became moans became whispers became rasps begging for mercy.
He ignored them all.
When death finally took that first victim, the killer stood over the gory mess, bloody up to the elbows, covered with bits of flesh and tendon and meat, and vowed that he would keep the next alive for longer. Draw out his kill for as long as possible. He hadn’t suspected how exciting it would be to actually watch a heart beating within a rib cage.
He wanted more.
* * *
Over the next months there were three more victims. The killer grew more proficient at killing, better at prolonging the suffering, and learned how to clamp important arteries to prevent spilling too much blood at the start of the kill. That would come after the heart stopped.
And then he’d paint the bulkheads.
News spread—citizens managed to circulate a single picture of the killer, outfitted in a black vacsuit and tinted visor, taken outside the first victim’s apartment—and then Security Division obtained video of the second and fourth killings.
The second was thirty hours.
The fourth was forty-one. When that victim had finally died, he’d been nothing but a torso with some organs spread around it, loosely connected with important arteries and veins.
It was horrifying.
The populace in Alpha System took to calling the killer The Grim Reaper. Some labeled him The Man in the Black Vacsuit because of the way he treated the kill as a job and the practiced manner in which he had dispatched his victims. Instead of a briefcase with datachip readers and memory chips, however, his bag held implements far more sinister.
The Reaper’s fourth victim had been in Home System. Authorities discovered the body on 10 December, 2403. His killing spree didn’t last long, however, for the CCF had recently stationed someone extremely important at Pluto CCF Headquarters.
Someone vastly more skilled at catching killers than the killers were at hiding.
For at Pluto from June of 2402 until December of 2403 was Lieutenant Kyle Tanner, CCF Security Division, Homicide Section.
And when Tanner set his steely gaze on the video of the fourth victim’s massacre, and watched all forty-one hours in one marathon session, it was The Reaper whose days became numbered.
For Tanner had a reputation that overshadowed even The Reaper’s.
Tanner always caught his man.
Part One:
Capture and Departure
Chapter One
The Reaper was on a steel bench in the seating area directly behind the pilot cabin in the small jumpship. There was a bar running along the seat, which shackles locked his wrists and ankles to. He was staring at the deck now, his face blank, and he said nothing.
He didn’t seem worried that death had him in its sights.
His name was Phillip Paul Petrov. A corporate employee, he had worked at the CCF colony ship construction facility at Alpha Three. A civilian. He had coordinated construction workers and nano-engineers to build the ships. He had disappeared from all CCF records in August of 2401, and suddenly reemerged on a commercial jumpship traveling from Alpha to Home System.
His hair was dark, his build medium. Physique toned and muscular, but not so much that his reflexes would slow. He was six feet tall and probably one hundred and ninety pounds. His eyes were dark, and he had five days of stubble on his face.
I had found him in the FTL Comm Array six hours from Pluto. It was a transmitter five kilometers wide that beamed signals out to nearby colonies and received transmissions in a delicate tapestry of faster-than-light communications that connected the billions of humans in the Confederacy. He was staying by himself in a cabin in the array’s living module. There were eighty thousand people there, but Petrov was the one who had caught my eye.
After taking his third victim in Alpha System, he had suddenly packed up and left for Home System. When he killed his fourth at the Comm Array, it had been too close to me.
The ramp raised and sealed with a clang as the jumpship’s systems booted and the maneuvering thrusters quickly warmed. The gravtrav powered up as well, and the hum of ventilation fans echoed through the ship. It was a simple transport, roughly the size of a small bus, but only meant for travel within the system. There was no interstellar drive on this vessel.
Before I departed the Comm Array, I placed two black duffels on the deck near Petrov, along with one cardboard box. He finally shifted his attention from the deck to see what I was doing.
It took only a minute to go through the two bags. They had been in Petrov’s cabin at the time of capture. The smaller held items for hygiene, three changes of clothes—form-fitting coveralls of the type a manual laborer might wear—and a datachip reader. There was no personal information on it as far as I could tell, though I would have an expert examine it once back at HQ on Pluto.
The other bag was more telling. I unzipped it and an instant later turned my eyes to Petrov’s.
Killing tools. Cleavers. Knives. Scalpels. Clamps and bone cutters. Tape and rope for binding.
He met my cold glare with one of equal intensity.
I said, “If I check these tools, will I find your fingerprints? Or your DNA?”
“Undoubtedly.” His voice was coarse. Gravelly.
“You admit to being The Reaper?”
“Absolutely.”
I snorted. At least he made things easy. He would be dead within eight hours, without much question.
“You couldn’t have brought these items on the transport from Alpha. Did you buy them here at the array?”
“Yes. I even used my real name when purchasing them.”
I frowned at that, then turned to the box. I ripped open the top. “Security Division found this in your closet.” I pulled out the black helmet and then tipped the box so he could see the vacsuit within. Jet black. A heavily tinted helmet visor. Impenetrable.
His voice was as dark as his killing outfit. “It’s mine.” Then he turned his gaze back to me. “It took you three days to get here.”
“What do you mean?”
“They found Alshadi on the tenth. You should have come immediately, Tanner.”
I hesitated. He knew my name when I hadn’t mentioned it. Still, I was known in the confederacy. “I wanted to watch the holovid. Your fourth victim. Transport had stopped...I hoped it confined you here.”
His lips finally pulled back into something of a thin line. A twisted grin perhaps. “Did you enjoy it?”
I felt like killing him right then and there. No one would question me. However, regulations required delivery to CCF HQ, and I wouldn’t betray my loyalty to the service. I believed in rules and regs.
“No,” I finally managed. “I didn’t.”
And then something happened which wouldn’t normally have. Usually I would have just piloted back to Pluto and ignored the man. There was no point to conversation.
