Bitter Angels by C. L. Anderson Read Free Book Online Page A

in the Erasmus System. Her Companion’s record indicates that her last instructions included making sure that you personally came to Moonfour to take up the mission.”
    This was why he hadn’t been impatient or angry. He knew that however I’d come in—whether red-hot or ice-cold—this would undo me.
    I remembered the cell where I lay on harsh stone in that unending nightmare darkness. I remembered the beam of white light. I squinted in bewildered pain to see the neat, square hole getting bigger and bigger where the wall was methodically dismantled. I remembered how I shrank away from the silhouette that catapulted toward me, how I couldn’t comprehend it could bring anything but more pain.
    “Easy, Terese. Easy. It’s me. I got you…”
    Easy, Terese .
    I licked my lips and I hated Misao with everything I had. But that flame burned itself out in a couple of heartbeats.
    Easy, Terese .
    “What…what was she doing in Erasmus?” Moonfour, that was the one called Dazzle. Once it had been a pleasure palace the size of Mars. Now it was the crumbling and violence-prone home for a jumbled and repressed population without options.
    Misao’s mouth straightened into a hard, thin line for a moment before he answered. “She was completing a grand tour with Captain Baijahn. Our ambassador in the system, Philippe Diego y Bern”—he paused, and I nodded, acknowledging I knew the man—“asked her to stay behind to helpwith what he felt was soon going to become a major refugee situation.”
    That wasn’t too surprising. The situation on Erasmus had stabilized for the moment (as far as I knew), but for a lot of the people there, life was eked out on the barest margins.
    “How…how did Bianca die?”
    “It seems she found her own way out.”
    Tremors traveled up my right hand, little butterfly wings brushing against my bones.
    “She was…captured?” Harsh, cold stone, the stink of my own blood, the hole, the black, silent hole brimming over with pain…
    “Abducted at the very least.”
    “How?” I asked hoarsely. “Who did it?”
    Anger flickered across Misao’s tightly controlled features. “We don’t know.”
    “But you retrieved her Companion…” The Companion should contain a complete record of her doings, whom she’d met with, where she’d gone. Everything since her last download.
    “The Companion was damaged.” Misao’s words made me go cold. “Her body had been left to rot, Terese. We got back bones and putrefied flesh, and not a lot of that because the rats had been at it for at least a week.”
    Leaving no witness to the reasons that drove her to take her own life. No one to bring her justice or redemption. There wasn’t enough anger in the world to adequately answer this.
    I looked into Misao’s tired, grieving face.
    “Can I talk to it?”
    “Are you coming back?”
    I couldn’t answer. The words dried up in my mind. Hisquestion blocked off my thoughts. I had to clear my throat, shift my weight before I could jar some syllables into place. Misao, of course, missed none of that.
    “Misao, you cannot possibly want me for this, for whatever it is. I’ve been gone thirty years!” I was pleading now, and I hated it, but I couldn’t think of anything else to do. Bianca was watching me. I could feel her, right at my back. Get me out of this, Misao. Please. Tell her I can’t do this .
    “I don’t want you,” he said flatly. “But I have very little choice right now. If the current data is correct, we are probably one year away from the Erasmans launching a war on the Solar System, and the Guardians are stretched so thin across so many hot spots we are in danger of disintegrating. If I have to bring back every discharged officer who still has a pulse to prevent that, I will.”
    “Erasmus launching a war?” I could barely frame the thought, never mind the words. “You can’t be serious. They’re scrambling for survival right now. They haven’t got the resources to launch any kind