Read an extract of The Last Contract of Isako by Fonda Lee

TO SERVE IS TO LIVE. TO LIVE IS TO DIE. ⚔️

Fonda Lee is back with an action-packed science fiction epic! When legendary swordswoman Isako is offered a mission she can’t refuse, she finds herself thrust into a world of corporate espionage, duty-bound duels, and shadowy secrets. What she uncovers will change humanity’s existence in the stars forever…

Exclusively read chapter one of The Last Contract of Isako below:

ONE

Fuck Earth.
—the last words of Captain Janus Brady, 44 AF

Monday evening, 4‑Week, 500 AF

Two names remain on Isthmus Isako’s list of wagemen to dismiss from the Company.

Only two, thank all the gods of old Earth that Isako doesn’t believe in. She’s sick of handing out notices, of being the bad guy, even though it’s part of her job, the part that people know and hate her for. At this stage in her career, she ought to be settling into some sort of comfortable wise-​elder role, one that affords undisputed respect yet pleasant anonymity.

Things didn’t work out that way.

She finds both men drinking in quiet dread together in a dive bar at the north end of Tenacity Cityhab, where none of their former colleagues in Astrocommunications might recognize them. The stench of stale beer and leafsmoke assaults her nostrils as soon as she walks through the doors of the Oxygn Bar. She does a quick, instinctive threat assessment, but there’s no ambush lying in wait. Just a couple dozen wagefolk huddled in small groups over muted conversation and mugs of heated ale. They lift faces bland with disinterest until they catch sight of the triggersheath strapped to her thigh.

Contractor.

Isako doesn’t need to hear the word on their lips to sense the nervous hostility. If these were better times, she’d be met with nods of respect. If she were in an Astrocom neighborhood, if this were a year of peace and expansion, she’d be greeted by name and they’d make room for her at the bar and someone would offer to buy her a drink, angling to get on her good side, maybe have her put in a word for them with the boss.

Now they turn their eyes away. War’s over. They know why she’s here.

Dew Loren and Wolf Wyatt are at a small round table in the back. She recognizes them from the photographs in their personnel files but also because they’re old-​timers in the division. Isako pulls a chair over to the table, not too close, and sits down on the edge of it, both feet firm on the floor.

“Would you rather do this here, or go somewhere more private?”

She keeps her voice professional but considerate. Lowered, but firm. What’s happening to them isn’t personal, but they need to understand it’s nonnegotiable.

Loren, the curly-​haired older man, raises eyes that’re weary and bloodshot but unsurprised. He shrugs. “Might as well do it here. What does it matter?” He doesn’t bother to keep his voice down. Nearby bar patrons look over at their table in pity, but he ignores them. Loren’s always been like that. Straightforward. Unflinching. Not afraid to point shit out for what it is. Isako likes that about him, always has.

She doesn’t know much about Wolf Wyatt. Thirty-​six years old, unmarried, no kids. Short but muscular, lifts weights and takes protein supplements and wears tight shirts to show it. Reputedly the best futsal player in the division, even used to play on the Astrocom Stars, back when they still had a team worth watching. She’s heard he’s a great guy to work with if you get along with him and an asshole if you don’t.

Wyatt’s leaning around the table, the glare he’s fixing on her as fierce as his kith namesake.

Don’t do it, Isako thinks at him. Don’t try. We all knew this was coming. There’s nothing any of us can do about it except keep our dignity.

She can tell when a wageman’s reached a breaking point and is about to do something stupid. It’s a feeling she gets, the way some people who work beyond the airshield say they can feel in their bones the coming of a drystorm. Isako takes off her hat and gloves and lays them on the table.

She doesn’t see steam as she exhales. Springtime, a new year after seven months of winter, finally warm enough for her to feel all her fingers and toes, even in the low-​heat-​ration areas of the cityhab. She pulls a screen from the inside pocket of her jacket, begins to unfold it on the table.

She brings up Loren’s dismissal notice first. “Dew Loren,” she says, keeping her voice the same, her expression unchanged. “I regret to inform you that your position as senior—” Wyatt lunges.

He chooses the moment when her hands are busy, her attention on the screen and the other man. Figures she won’t be able to react quickly, not before he gets to her with the shiv he pulls from his sleeve.

Isako’s chair flies backward as she explodes out of it. Muscle memory takes her from a still, seated position directly into dynamic Fourth Stance—Meeting the Storm—back heel planted, weight low and forward, angled away from the path of her attacker. She has plenty of time to get there, relatively speaking—a whole second, with the curve of the table between them.

The heel of her left palm pops the top of the triggersheath forward. Automatic motion, faster than thought. The long knife ejects with lethal silence into her waiting right hand. Forty-​five centimeters of high-​carbon Aquilon steel slashes down across the inside of Wyatt’s forearm, severing tendons and spasming the makeshift weapon from his fingers, before reversing and driving upward under his ribcage.

She barely has to push; the wageman’s momentum helps her, impales his heart onto the blade. She looks into his face— contorted with fear and pain and oddly trusting relief. His hands come up and paw weakly at her shoulders as she strains against his weight. He’s not as tall as her, has to raise his chin for them to lock eyes.

“Sorry,” he whispers.

He slumps forward into her. Isako lowers him to the ground gently. She pulls the longknife free and wipes it on a square of black microfiber cloth she carries in the inside breast pocket of her red peacoat, then sheathes it without looking, drawing the back of the blade across the mouth of the triggersheath, then sliding it in until it clicks back into place.

Every set of eyes in the bar is drilling hatefully into her back. A man just tried to skewer her with a sharpened iron spike, but she’s the one they see as a murderer. She’s tempted to turn around and point out what a bunch of fucking hypocrites they are. As if they aren’t glad it was him and not any of them. As if Wyatt didn’t choose suicide by trac, the coward’s way out, putting blood on her hands instead of doing the respectable thing and accepting his fate, which is what it is—no one’s fault.

But she’s been around long enough to know berating these wagefolk won’t change anything. Certainly won’t make them despise her any less. She’s just the messenger, but people have a long tradition of shooting messengers.

She lifts her collar and places a call to Cityhab Services.

The Oxygn Bar starts emptying out. Nothing like a dead man on the floor to ruin the vibe.

Dew Loren has gone pale as a summer sky and sweat has broken out on his brow, but he hasn’t moved from his spot. He looks down at his colleague’s body before sorrowfully finishing off the last of the beer in his mug. “I tried to talk him out of it.”

“I appreciate that.” Isako rights the fallen chair and sits back down zanshin in exactly the same way—on the front of the seat, feet planted, spine straight, enough space between her and the table that it won’t be in her way if she needs to move suddenly. She doesn’t think Loren will try anything, but she’s a longknives‑woman and this is how she always sits in public settings, how she was trained to sit by her kithfather ever since she was a little girl. “I wish he’d listened to you, but it’s not your fault he didn’t.”

“Have a lot of folks been taking it badly?”

“Only a few.” Eleven out of two hundred, including Wyatt. Not so bad. It wasn’t as if anyone was shocked by the dismissals. That’s what happens when a division loses a war and gets taken over. Anyone who can transfer out of Astrocom has done so already. Loren’s like her, though. Been in the same place too long to have anywhere else to go.

He gestures at the screen impatiently. “Get on with it, then.”

Isako reaches back over and pushes it toward him. She starts again, wanting to do it right. “Dew Loren, I regret to inform you that your position as senior communications technician is being eliminated. Be assured this decision was made after careful consideration for the long-​term health of Starhome Exploration Group and the future of human settlement on Aquilo. Unfortunately, at this time, the Company does not have another open position that fits your experience and qualifications.”

Loren doesn’t respond. Just stares straight at her while she talks, making her feel like shit.

“In recognition of your many years of hard work and service, the Company is pleased to offer you and your family a voluntary resignation package consisting of three years’ worth of wages, along with additional bonuses based on seniority and division performance, as detailed in the provided agreement. Should you accept the terms, you’ll be granted seventy-​eight hours to leave Company premises. If you choose to decline, your employment will conclude, effective immediately, and all prior legal obligations between you and the Company are deemed null and void. On behalf of the Executive and the Board of Directors of Starhome Exploration Group, I commend you on your successful career and your longstanding commitment to our shared vision of a more prosperous and secure future for all of humankind.”

That’s where the speech ends. She’s doled out the formal Companyspeak claptrap so many times she’s sure she knows it better than whoever in Human Resources wrote it.

Maybe it’s the quiet sufferance on Loren’s face; maybe it’s the fact that his daughter and Maya used to go to the same dance class when they were little girls and Isako remembers laughing with him in the theater lobby after the year-​end recital about the money they were both wasting; maybe it’s Wolf Wyatt’s body on the floor next to their table. Whatever it is, Isako goes off script.

“I’m sorry, Loren. I really didn’t want to see your name on the list.”

It’s why she left him until the end. She told herself she was giving him the gift of more time, when really, she’s been putting it off, and the days he’s been forced to wait for her arrival have probably been more cruel than kind.

She doesn’t say that part. She’s said more than necessary already.

His stiff mouth sags, like bread deflating. Loren has the soft, creamy complexion of an officer-​class wageman who’s spent his life within the airshield and comfortably indoors, undamaged by the planet’s harsh winds or radiation. But his voice is rough as gravel. “You know, I hoped Greves would give me the news himself. After thirty-​eight years in the division, you’d think I’d earned that much at least. Hell, I was working for him long before he was a director.” He snorts in self-​contempt. “Stupid of me to think he wouldn’t send a fucking contractor, like they all do.”

“It’s my job, Loren.”

He sneers. “I’m sure you’ve been busy.”

“Not for much longer.” A reminder that she might not escape the purge either.

Some of the anger leaves Loren’s expression. He pulls Wyatt’s half-​empty mug of beer toward himself. Why not? The other guy’s not finishing it. Isako has the strong urge to order a drink for herself, but she doesn’t think the lone remaining bartender would serve it to her. Or maybe he’d poison it first.

Lore chuckles darkly. “How old are you, Isako?”

“Fifty.” Fifty-​three in Terran, but who uses the unflattering homeworld calendar these days.

“I’m sixty-​three,” he says dully. Only two years short of Company-​sponsored retirement. “I’ve spent my whole career in
Astrocommunications. My father did the same. I have ancestors who were Astrocom techs on the Great Ships. I don’t have any skills that other divisions would want and I’m too damn old to learn new ones. What chance would I have as a freelancer? I wouldn’t even last a year.”

Isako doesn’t argue.

“Wyatt didn’t hold anything against you, by the way,” Loren says. “He called you a tough old cookie, said he’d be surprised if he got the jump on you, but he was going to try anyway, because what did we have to lose? Said he’d rather go down fighting, and if he did manage to take you out, well, that’s one less murdering trac out there. That’s the way he saw it.”

Sad, twisted logic on Wyatt’s part. What wagemen seem to conveniently forget is that contractors can be quickly replaced. Wyatt’s dismissal notice wouldn’t go away if she were dead. It would simply be handled by someone else.

“You don’t see it that way,” she reminds Loren gently.

“I’ve got family to think of.” Earlier, he was staring daggers at Isako but now he blinks quickly and looks away. His voice turns thick, as if his throat is closing up. “My baby girl Tessa’s going to have a baby of her own this summer. My first grandkid. How time flies, you know? Seems like yesterday that she was running around in a diaper. You have a daughter, too, don’t you?”

“Yeah. She was in the same dance class as Tessa for a year.”

“Oh yeah, I remember that now.” Loren’s face brightens. “What a long time ago. Tessa didn’t stick with dance for long.”

“Neither did Maya.”

“She took to running instead. Was really good at it, too. Tri-division champion in the four hundred and the eight hundred meters. She says the baby’s kicking so much that it’s another runner for sure.” Loren’s eyes go soft, and he looks as if he’s going to brag some more, perhaps ask Isako about her own daughter, so the two of them can reminisce together, but then he seems to remember where he is, and why they’re here.

He sits back. Blinks slowly to clear away the memories. Closes his mouth like shutting a heavy door.

“Sounds like Tessa grew up to be an incredible young woman,” Isako says.

This is part of the job, too. Sometimes it’s the longknife. Sometimes sitting and listening. Offering the right words to help people accept responsibility. The art of DTE—dismissal, termination, and eviction—is only one aspect of a good contractor’s skillset, but an important one, because unfortunately, it’s what many wagefolk think of first when they think of tracs.

“I want to do the right thing,” Loren says. “I’m not going to become one of those sad sacks on the street, begging or stealing for scrip, using up oxygen and water past my due. I won’t make my kith ashamed of me like that. I want Tessa’s kids to have a name‑place they can visit and be proud of.” He raises his chin and meets her eyes. “I’ll resign.”

Isako inclines her head in appreciation. “Thank you for your bequest.”

Loren pulls the screen over, scrolls to the bottom, and hovers his finger over the biosignature box. “I don’t need to read all this, do I? It’s the standard stuff? You’d tell me if it wasn’t, wouldn’t you?”

“It’s all the usual,” she assures him. “Everything will go to Tessa and her family.”

She turns her face aside to give Loren a sliver of privacy as he touches his finger to the screen.

“I guess that’s it, then.” His voice is weighed down with finality, but it’s brisk and steady, almost eager. “When’s everyone else going?”

Isako takes the screen back from him and pockets it. “There’s going to be a group of about a dozen on Freeday at Easthatch. It’s up to you. Some people want to be together. Some would rather go it alone.”

“Are you going to be there?” The touch of plaintiveness surprises her. Not because, beneath the stoic acceptance, he’s afraid. Everyone is. But because he doesn’t hate her. She’s surprised by how much that means to her.

For the first time, she offers Loren a smile. She’s been told she looks younger when she smiles, which is a shame, as she hasn’t had much reason to smile for the past two weeks. She’s smiling not only for Loren’s sake, but because she’s finally done. She can rest for a while. The prospect is delicious.

“I’ll be there,” she promises. It’s the least she can do.

She always did like Dew Loren. Now she respects and envies him. At least he knows. His mind can finally be at ease. All that’s left to do is prepare. She can’t say the same.

Like Loren, she’s too entrenched in Greves’s organization. If her client is moved to another role in the Company, she’ll go with him. If not, she’ll be in Loren’s position soon. Only there won’t be someone sitting down with her to deliver the news. Contractors aren’t given exit packages. All she’ll get is an impersonal notice that her services are no longer required and that her contract has been canceled.

A couple of Cityhab Services workers in official orange parkas come into the Oxygn Bar and begin maneuvering Wolf Wyatt into a body bag. Isako doesn’t feel like sticking around for that. She collects her hat and puts on her gloves; her fingers are cold again. Her knees twinge in stiff protest when she stands.

Loren reaches out and stops short of taking her by the coat sleeve. “I’m glad it was you after all.” His reddened eyes shine up at her through the yellowish, leafsmoke-​clogged air. “You’re a contractor, but you’ve still got a heart, Isako. That’s rare, you know?” Isako has nothing more to say to that. She goes outside and stands on the sidewalk where the dry air hurts her face. She calls her client. “It’s all done. Where are you?”

A moment of silence before Greves says, “I’m at the Observatory.”

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