Rising Tomorrow (Roc de Chere Book 1) by Mariana Morgan (essential reading txt) 📕

carefree Elite is enough to shake anyone. With the often outward hostility of those around me, saying I felt lonely is a huge understatement. I wasn’t even allowed into the Centroeastern District to visit my family until my basic training was over.’

‘Can they do that to Elites?’ Eloise asked softly. Some part of her brain might have been running its usual VR programmer’s calibration, but not even a trace of that dispassionate side of her was visible.

‘Yes and no.’ Rivas laughed. ‘My family has more money than power. Their financial resources are relatively new and they haven’t managed to break into the cream of the Elite. And probably never will. Money is all good, but it can only take you so far. To have real power you need to have something others want.’

Eloise nodded with understanding. It wasn’t something she had concerned herself with over the last three decades, but she had grown up absorbing the intricacies of Elite life on a daily basis.

‘I used to be a dumb and carefree teenager, and that attitude continued well into my adulthood. I grew up in Dubai, in one of the huge mansions in the northern suburbs that screamed wealth for no other reason than to make a point. My life revolved around drinking, doing nano-narcs and trying to impress my mates. A senior managerial position in my father’s booming civilian aviation business was waiting for me whenever I wanted it, but there was no rush, so I dicked around, wasting my life away. By the time I was twenty I had lost track of how many fines my parents had to pay to dig me out of trouble. In my twenties I only got worse.’

He paused, forcing himself to look at Eloise. There was no point saying what he was about to admit to if he couldn’t look her in the eye.

‘One spring night in 2713, my mates and I had too much to drink, mixing various narcs as we went along. Just some dumb youngsters showing off. We all had our private Kookoomeres, though mine was the newest and most powerful of all, courtesy of my father’s business.’

‘Oh God.’ Eloise rolled her eyes. ‘The speed with which they were putting new versions of Kookoomeres in the air drove me bonkers. They wanted a new training VRP every time!’

‘That’s my father for you. Always wanting the best and the newest. That’s how he tripled the family fortune, by staying a few weeks ahead of other designers. Basically, the Kookoomeres were evolving at blinding speed, integrating Stealthy specs, which were quickly being declassified after the Wars, minus the armaments, of course. They were purely a civilian design. Most of the private aircraft cruising above Lyon and other cities in the Alliance are either Kookoomeres or similar derivatives.

‘I loved that aircraft. My father had it configured especially for me and it felt as if it could read my mind. Of course, it had an autopilot, but we were stupid and heavily intoxicated and we disabled it that night.

‘We took turns flying over the southern part of Dubai’s slums, two in each of the three Kookoomeres we had out, daring each other to do crazier and crazier stunts. One of my friends dared me to graze a building. Not with the wing, of course. If you time it just right and turn at the right moment, you can burn a mark by ejecting superheated fumes and using your engine to light them up.’

Memories of the flight above Lyon’s slums came back to Eloise, and she winced.

‘Yes, there were Leeches in that building,’ Rivas admitted. ‘We thought it was funny. I was so high and drunk I barely remember what happened. I must have aimed wrong. My Kookoomere crashed into the building. The walls folded as if they were nothing but rotten wood, which they might well have been, and the roof came crashing down. We were still laughing, dazed from the impact and the crazy amount of booze and drugs, when the rescue team cut us loose of the wreckage.

‘My Kookoomere was wrecked, but the reinforced plating and my pilot suit protected me. There was some nasty bruising, but I was virtually fine, able to walk away from the crash as if nothing had happened. My friend had a mild concussion. The seventeen Leeches in the building weren’t so lucky. Fifteen died on impact, the remaining two shortly after because the rescue team focused on us, leaving the Leeches under the collapsed building until it was too late.

‘But there were other people in that building too—three young Elites, one guy and two women working for a charity. The guy suffered a bad neck injury. He was in a nano-induced coma for weeks while they had to re-grow his spinal cord. He nearly didn’t make it. Nano-tech patched up the other two much quicker.

‘Next thing I knew, my lawyers were recommending to my family that I plead guilty. It meant prison—for the grievous injury to the Elite man, not because seventeen Leeches died. I was promised they would arrange the best conditions possible. With the money we had, we could afford a place for me on Sicily Island. That’s the poshest Elite prison. Heck, it’s not really a prison, it’s a vacation resort. You have access to all the luxuries and can bring whatever possessions you want with you. I could have lived an almost normal life. An infinitely better life than those of the Leeches I killed.

‘My parents gracefully accepted my lawyers’ advice. I was twenty-nine, but I don’t remember anyone asking me what I wanted.

‘The judge at my preliminary hearing was an old Elite woman. Possibly old enough to remember better times from long before the Freedom Wars when Leech life still mattered some. The prosecutor made an offer of three years on Sicily commuted to house arrest after six months on good behaviour, but she rejected it. She had her own choice ready for me. Military service or the rest of my