Boneyards by Kristine Kathryn Rusch Read Free Book Online Page A

was profound. She could hear her own breathing, and it sounded raspy. The Dane was cold—she had just gotten here, just started it up, just moved away from the station—
    —and she hadn't moved far enough. In her desire to see the station explode, she had put herself at risk. God knows what would happen when that place went, with all the malfunctioning stealth tech on board. How many interdimensional rifts would open? How many pulses would plume along with the debris?
    She slammed her palm on the control panel, her fingers grasping for the FTL command. It took four movements to launch FTL, and her shaking hand made all four hard. It felt like the movements took forever, even though it probably only took a few seconds. Still, she had to get out of here.
    The Dane winked out, the images vanishing from the screen, and as they did, she collapsed in the command chair, hands to her face. Her heart was pounding, and she was feeling just a little queasy.
    She had pulled it off, and no one died.
    “You want to explain to me what the fuck just happened?”
    The male voice made her jump. She had thought she was alone. She had assumed she was alone. She hadn't even checked to see if anyone had gotten into the Dane. The Dane would have masked a heat signature from the station's control board. She would have had to ask the Dane as she got into the airlock, and she had been in such a hurry, she hadn't thought of it.
    She was such an idiot.
    She dropped her hands slowly, making herself breathe as she did so. She wanted to seem calmer than she was, even though he had seen her jump.
    She recognized the voice—how could she not? She had lived with it for years, and when she heard it again, even after the loss of decades, it was as if she had never been away from him.
    Quint.
    She turned her chair toward him.
    He leaned against the entrance to the cockpit, arms crossed. He had probably explored the entire ship, not that there was much to see. Two cabins, a full galley, some storage, and of course, the area she called the mechanicals, where most of the things that ran the cruiser or helped its passengers survive lived.
    She hadn't checked any of it. She had assumed that her locks would hold, that no one would access this ship. She certainly hadn't expected anyone to get on it in the middle of a crisis.
    Her mistake.
    She felt it in the small cockpit. Even though he stood at the entrance, he wasn't that far away from her. He had seen her stare at the screens, heard her raspy breathing, saw her momentary panic.
    And he knew her well enough to know what all of it meant.
    She knew him well too, and she had never quite seen him like this. Blood had dried on his face, black and crusty, outlining the wrinkles he had allowed to appear on his skin over the decades. He had managed—in his escape from the station—to find his uniform jacket. It covered the ripped shirt, although she could still see bits of fabric folded strangely across his chest.
    He probably hadn't looked at his reflection. He probably didn't realize the blood was still on his face, if he had even known it was on his face in the first place.
    The fact that he was on her ship surprised her. Not because he had figured out it was hers, but because it took some stones to avoid the evac ships and wait for her, stones she hadn't realized he had.
    She hadn't answered his question. He raised his eyebrows, silently asking it again.
    “The station blew up,” she said. “Or it was blowing up, just like we knew it would. I just hit the FTL. The last thing we want is to be near that part of space. There's a good chance that explosion could open an interdimensional rift.”
    He frowned. “A what?”
    She almost smiled, but she didn't. She had distracted him. He hadn't really been asking about the station before.
    “An interdimensional rift.” She swallowed. “The stealth tech was unstable.”
    “It's always been unstable,” he snapped. “You know that better than most.”
    She nodded.