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  DANGER’S

  FATE

  A HOLLY DANGER NOVEL:

  BOOK SIX

  AMANDA CARLSON

  The floating city exists…

  Upon receiving the urgent missive, confirming the existence of the Flotilla, there’s nothing left for Holly to do but rush to their aid. Hundreds, if not thousands, of lives are in danger. But the government, now run by her crew, are holding back their efforts. Betraying them could mean the start of a bitter feud, just when the dark city has a chance to regain its lost resources.

  Alaria Bancroft is in the fight of her life—against her father and his trusted followers. After cutting the hydro-farms loose, they’re in jeopardy of being lost at sea. To complicate matters, the biospheres are broken beyond repair and food is rapidly dwindling. If help doesn’t arrive soon, they’ll die.

  Ari’s only option is to sneak back into the floating city, in one last attempt to save as many lives as she can. When Holly arrives, the two must work together, but when they find out what Ari’s father has in store, it might be too late…

  Danger’s Fate

  A HOLLY DANGER NOVEL: BOOK SIX

  Copyright © 2019 Amanda Carlson, Inc.

  ISBN: 978-1-944431-08-2

  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—except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews—without permission in writing from the author.

  This book is a work of fiction. The characters, events, and places portrayed in this book are products of the author’s imagination and are either fictitious or are used fictitiously. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental and not intended by the author.

  Table of Contents

  DANGER’S FATE

  About the Book

  Copyright

  Other Books by Amanda Carlson

  Prologue

  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

  Epilogue

  The next installment in the DANGER WORLD series

  About the Author

  Many Thanks

  Other Books by Amanda Carlson

  Find all of Amanda’s books on her website.

  Jessica McClain Series:

  Urban Fantasy

  BLOODED

  FULL BLOODED

  HOT BLOODED

  COLD BLOODED

  RED BLOODED

  PURE BLOODED

  BLUE BLOODED

  Sin City Collectors:

  Paranormal Romance

  ACES WILD

  ANTE UP

  ALL IN

  Phoebe Meadows:

  Contemporary Fantasy

  STRUCK

  FREED

  EXILED

  Holly Danger:

  Futuristic Dystopian

  DANGER’S HALO

  DANGER’S VICE

  DANGER’S RACE

  DANGER’S CURE

  DANGER’S HUNT

  DANGER’S FATE

  HOLLY

  PROLOGUE

  “Is anyone out there? We desperately need your help. This is Alaria. Things are about to get dangerous. We’re trying, but we can’t stop the tide. We’re talking full annihilation if the bastard gets his way. People are going to die. Do you hear me? It’s a scheduled extermination of our people. Please help us.”

  “It’s been a week since we’ve heard from her,” I said. We were all assembled in the Pleasure Emporium discussing what to do about the SOS that had come in from the Flotilla seven days ago from a girl named Alaria, or Ari as she’d been called. “We can’t wait much longer to act, or there’s a risk they’ll all be dead.” We had no idea how many lives were at stake. We’d tried hailing them, but nobody from the Flotilla had answered our calls.

  Case stood against the wall, Bender straddled a chair, Lockland perched at the edge of a couch across from me, and Daze and Darby were on the ground, Daze’s shoulder pressed against my leg. Knox would’ve been with us, but he was due back in a few hours from down South, where he’d been facilitating the distribution of the resources we’d uncovered. Tillman’s stash had been huge. The LiveBots were almost finished moving the goods from the mag-lev trains to the warehouse. The robots, retail bots programmed to provide cheerful service to customers, had done the work in much less time than any human could’ve, because sleeping and eating and normal human constraints were nonexistent. Once it was finished, and the inventory was complete, we would continue to transfer items up to the city based on order of importance. Thank goodness we had access to the mover drone. Lockland had set up an exchange with Port Station, allowing them to share in some of our goods while we borrowed their craft. Without it, we wouldn’t have been able to haul the larger items, such as the pristine-condition bio-printers, back up to the city.

  “Claire doesn’t want us to leave unless we have a definitive location,” Bender argued. Claire was in Government Square, along with Maisie, figuring out her new role as president. She’d been the overwhelming choice to serve once we’d arrived home and was doing a hell of a job. She’d reopened the Housing Division, was overseeing the Seeker Rehabilitation Program (SRP), which had already saved twenty-nine individuals who’d been infected by Plush, and was working on a new Food Dispensary system, headed by Walt. The improvements to the city were happening quickly, and the population had reacted with energy and enthusiasm. It was the most hope any of us had experienced since our births.

  “It makes sense why Claire wants us to stay put,” Bender continued, “since none of us have any experience piloting a craft over the sea for an extended period of time. We’d be flying blind, no place to land. It would be a dumbass move to head out without knowing where they are.” He gave me an I told you so look, and I gave it right back, followed by a so what? eyebrow raise.

  “Based on data from the militia members down South, who’ve had contact with the Flotilla in the past,” I said, “we should be able to pinpoint a sixty-kilometer range. They’re in an area called the Caribbean Colonies. Maisie has a detailed map in her database, and she’s already cross-checked a likely location. With the seas rising in the aftermath of the meteor, there’s only a few areas that would work as a sheltered spot between two larger islands. We haven’t consulted the tech table at the barracks, but Case and I are heading there tomorrow. I think waiting too much longer is a mistake. You heard that girl. People are dying. If we don’t act, who knows how many lives will be gone before we arrive?”

  Lockland stood and began to pace. “We understand the necessity of acting quickly and so does Claire. But she’s right. It’s too dangerous to go in without knowing what lies ahead. The ocean is unpredictable. If something goes wrong with the craft, you’re stranded out there.” Stranded was another word for dead, because if we ended up in the sea, we weren’t making a comeback.

  “We have Maisie,” I countered. “Tillman’s X class dronecraft”—which I’d commandeered as my own and had rechristened Tilly in a bout of morbid irony—“is loaded with tech. The dash has a visual flight recorder and a superb distance radar. That, coupled with Maisie’s NeuDAR and lidar, and we have very little to worry about. If we run into trouble, we can turn around and fly back. Tilly’s top speed is almost four hundred kilometers per hour, almost twice as fast as Luce.”

  “We give it one more week,” Lockland stated firmly. Before I could protest, he lifted a hand. “Complete as much research as you can, consult the maps, talk to the militia folks again, and get back to us. I give you my word you can move by then, even if we don’t hear from the Flotilla. One week.”

  “By us, I assume you’re referring to you and Claire, right?” I got to my feet, settling my hands on my hips. Claire had pretty much installed Lockland as her second-in-command without officially announcing it. It was a good choice, but it was beginning to interfere with our group dynamic. “I shouldn’t have to remind you, but this group and the government are separate entities. We work on our own. I’m all for involving them when needed, and I love Claire like a mother, but what we decide to do here isn’t up to them. It’s up to us.” I made a sweeping gesture to encompass everyone in the room. “We make the decisions about this mission, not the government.” I left out several expletives hovering on the tip of my tongue, because I was becoming polite like that. Not that Lockland really deserved the courtesy.

  “Things have changed.” There was a hint of weariness in his voice. “Now that Claire’s in charge, and we’re all playing a prominent role in the restructuring of the city, we have a larger body to contend with.”

  I began to shake my head slowly, my expression set, hands still gripping my sides. At the moment, they were keeping me rooted so I wouldn’t walk up to Lockland and swing my foot around like I wanted to.

  Case pushed off the wall, sensing the crisis tha
t was quickly taking shape. “We have time. We don’t have to decide anything yet.” His eyes flashed to mine. “Waiting a week is doable. We can handle it. More research needs to be done. We can’t fly in blind.”

  I was about to tell Lockland exactly where he could put his one-man vote, ignoring Case’s reasonable counter, when Daze scrambled up from his position next to me. “Can I go, too?” he pleaded, grabbing on to the bottom of my vest. “Maisie showed me pictures of the habitats. They look like spaceships with a big bubble on top and another bubble on the bottom.” He mimicked the shape of a globe with his hands. Maisie had shown us varying styles of aquatic farming that were popular right before the meteor struck, as well as illustrations of how our ancestors had achieved space travel. The two had been remarkably similar. Although we had no idea what Case and Daze’s grandfather, Martin Bancroft, aka Brock Shannon, had actually planned when he’d acquired a ten-thousand-hectare aquatic-farming community, we had a pretty good idea.

  The main globelike structure was made of thick plexi and was watertight and buoyant, designed to flex while partially submerged. A segmented walkway encircled the exterior, floating outward in three pieces like ripples on a pond. Each path was two meters wide, containing a half-meter gap that allowed for the farming of seaweed. Outside the last ring sat enough docking stations for twelve homes, referred to as aquatic tenements located at sea, or atlases. These smaller spheres were designed to be either single-family or multifamily. The entire thing, biosphere plus the atlases, was referred to as a habitat or a farm. Together, they formed a functioning, self-sufficient microcosm.

  I smiled at Daze, momentarily forgetting my irritation with Lockland. “You can’t come on the first run,” I told him. “Everything’s unknown, which makes it too dangerous. But once things stabilize, we’ll send for the rest of you.”

  “You’re not scared of danger, though,” Daze said. “Because it’s your name.”

  I chuckled, settling a cool gaze on Lockland. “It is my name, but that doesn’t mean I’m not scared. Helping Ari and her people is the right thing to do.”

  Bender grunted, knowing what was coming next. He rose from his chair, relocating it with a loud scrape. “One week,” he announced, throwing in his vote. “Whatever Holly finds, we go with it.” He’d directed his words at Lockland. We all knew falling into step with our government was an iron-soaked slope, one that we were going to have to navigate whether we liked it or not.

  Lockland seemed as if he was going to say something, but changed his mind. Instead, he bowed his head. “One week.”

  ARI

  CHAPTER ONE

  “Help! Help me!” a familiar voice cried from inside a small room in the only working biosphere they had left.

  Alaria Bancroft didn’t hesitate to raise her foot and smash it through the flimsy barrier. The door bounced open, the latch completely destroyed. “Don’t move,” she ordered the intruder, who had the barrel of his weapon pressed against the farmer’s chest. He wore an aged militia uniform, more tan than its original brown. Uncertainty flashed over his face, even though she knew her father had given him explicit orders to destroy everything of value, including the precious few UV lights still in operation. Ari moved forward, sensing the militia guard’s unease, using it in her favor as she raised her Blaster and leveled it at his face, where it would hurt the most. “Step back and let him go.”

  Her Blaster was technically a baby Blaster, almost too small to fit in her hand. It did nothing but spray a few pieces of whatever scrap metal she could find, but she’d gotten good at aiming it at sensitive places.

  This biosphere, even at half capacity, with most of its vegetation wilting and dying, was their only chance of continued survival. She’d be damned if she’d let her unhinged, paranoid father destroy it like he’d been methodically doing with everything else over the past few months.

  “Ari, please,” the guard pleaded. “I’m here on your father’s orders. I have to do what he says.” The militiaman’s name was Claude. He was no more than five or so years older than Ari’s nineteen. They’d known each other their entire lives.

  A large wave rolled beneath the sphere, bobbing it up a good meter. Ari’s feet were planted firmly apart, legs stable. Instability couldn’t be an issue if you wanted to survive here. “I was ordered to dismantle the UV and bring you with me,” Claude said. “None of us want to hurt you. Just cooperate. If you stay here, you’ll die.”

  “I’m well aware of my father’s plans,” Ari replied crisply. “It’s not going to happen, Claude. I’m not leaving, and you’re not shutting down this bio. It’s our only food supply.” It didn’t surprise Ari that her father had sent his men after them. Marty Bancroft Jr. had always been a hard, unyielding man, skirting the very edge of sanity. But recently something had caused him to crack, exposing even more madness. In his desperation to get back to the place he referred to as the dark city, he’d become even more of a despot—an overlord hell-bent on achieving his mission at the cost of innocent lives. He had to be stopped. “Put down your weapon and step away from the farmer. If you don’t, you’re going to pay the consequences, and it’s going to hurt.”

  Claude’s hand shook almost imperceptibly. “I can’t.” His voice held weariness. “I’m not alone. Others arrived with me. If we fail, your father will just send more of us.”

  “How far did you travel to get here?” Ari had disconnected the farms last week from New Eden, the floating city, thinking they’d finally be free from her father’s psychopathic reach. But she’d been wrong. This group of guards was the third to reach them by hydro-skis in the space of six days. “Answer me.”

  “I’m…I’m not sure,” he stammered, his fist quaking now. Feeling bad for him was not an option. “Once you blew up the connections, your father pulled anchor. We’re all drifting now.”

  Ari should’ve felt surprise that her father had done such an insane thing, but she didn’t. Even though he’d grown more erratic recently, he’d always been unstable. By pulling anchor, something that had never been done before, he’d placed everyone in New Eden at risk. And for what? To punish her for disobeying him? They were both beyond that. “Sheer stupidity,” she muttered. Claude appeared confused, but Ari didn’t take the time to explain. “The guards who accompanied you are gone. You’re the only one left.” She wasn’t going to inform Claude that three out of the five escaped, likely racing back to tattle to her father that she’d foiled his plans again. “They found their fate beneath the waves.” Around here, the sea swallowed everyone eventually. “Drop your weapon and step back. I’m not going to tell you again. You can either join us, or we can toss you over. It’s up to you, Claude.”

  “Please, Ari, don’t make me do this—” His hand wobbled, and before he could harm an innocent man, she fired her Blaster. Small pieces of shrapnel exploded outward, spraying into his neck. He tumbled to his knees, his weapon dropping as he gasped.

  She holstered her gun, yelling, “Clear!” She hadn’t allowed anyone to join her inside. Jake rushed in first, followed by two others. She nodded at the bleeding guard, who used to swap jokes with her during training sessions. “He’ll probably survive. See what you can do. Take him to the holding unit on Atlas Three. There’s a small medi-unit there.”