Collateral Damage by K.S. Augustin Read Free Book Online Page B

hand, expecting the firm surface of her mattress, but felt something else. Warm silk over steel, rhythmically beating against her palm. Gods, it was Waryd! Meyal wanted to grin at her recollections of what they had got up to last night, both before
and
after their heated shower, but the warning continued to sound.
    Beside her, she heard a male groan, but levered herself up and was half-dressed before Waryd had time to ask the inevitable question: “What the hell is that?”
    Meyal was about to answer but, at that moment, the door to her bedroom slid open. She froze, one foot still stuck halfway in the leg of her trousers, and looked up.
    Her first thought was that she had been boarded by pirates. The suit the intruder was wearing looked bulkier – and more lethal – than her own. The subdued lighting in her room flashed across its solid metal finish, highlighting a mass of fine criss-crossing score marks. Meyal didn’t think she wanted to know where those marks had come from. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Waryd sit bolt upright, the thin blanket slipping from his body to show a bare torso.
    The intruder stood still in the doorway and, with the visor reflecting the light, no face was visible. But Meyal couldn’t mistake the surprise and anger in its voice when it said, at the same time as Waryd, “What the
hell
are you doing here?”

    Meyal paced the length of the Space, occasionally looking at Waryd and the young woman who had finally deigned to remove her imposing-looking helmet. Waryd was seated at the dining table, while the woman was leaning against the kitchenette counter.
    “So you’re Waryd’s
sister
?” she asked, for the second time.
    “The only person who knows how to crash a wonderful party,” Waryd added, clearly unhappy. “Meyal, may I formally introduce my baby sister, Callin Gosin.”
    The woman called Callin threw her arms into the air. “Excuse me for busting all thrusters to get here,
dearest
brother. The minute I picked up a missile coming in hot from outside the system and extrapolated its trajectory, I knew you were in trouble. I thought I was rescuing you from a certain death, only to find your orbital so much charred shrapnel and you, on the other side of the planet, engaged in Happy Time with a complete stranger.”
    Meyal didn’t know whether to die of embarrassment or get fired up with righteous anger.
    “It happened then?” Waryd asked, his tone serious. “My orbital was destroyed?”
    Callin referred to a display built into the forearm of her suit. “Only eight hours and forty-seven minutes ago.”
    Waryd had the grace to look abashed. “Ah. Well. We, er, appear to have missed that.”
    Meyal raised her voice. “What is going on?” she demanded. “You,” she pointed to Callin, “how did you know Waryd’s orbital was going to be destroyed? And you,” she pointed to Waryd, “what does all this mean?”
    Neither answered for several long seconds, then Waryd beckoned to a chair. “Sit down and I’ll explain,” he said.
    Meyal looked at the encouraging smile on his face, the grim features of his sister, and slowly approached the table, gingerly pulling a chair a little farther away from Waryd than was polite.
    “All right,” she said, seating herself, “you can explain now.”
    “My sister and I run a small, um, operation, out near the edges of the established creases. We dabble mostly in tradeable tech, stuff that usually only the big guys have. And we make a good living at it.” He shot a quick glance towards the counter, but Callin remained silent.
    “You’re freelancers,” Meyal stated.
    “That’s right. We’re freelancers. About a year ago, we decided to go for something big. Something nobody had attempted before. Mineral analysis.”
    Meyal frowned. “Mineral analysis? You mean, like what we’re doing here?”
    Waryd nodded. “Up till now, we’d only dabbled in small stuff, like thruster modifications and shield algorithms. It brought some