Dark Beneath the Moon by Sherry D. Ramsey Read Free Book Online

she was as good as her word, buying the newest VR training program and starting in on her lessons. With Yuskeya to act as tutor when needed, I felt confident she’d do well.
    The only one I didn’t have much control over was Hirin, but I didn’t really need to worry about him. He bought a whole new database system for the ship and set to work installing and configuring it, hoping it would give him access to more data on the scurrilous dealings of PrimeCorp. He and Viss disappeared for a few hours one afternoon on Mars, and when they returned he had several datapackets that I didn’t ask questions about. His was the only obsession I didn’t see fit to interfere with, and I freely admit it was because I wanted to see those PrimeCorp bastardos get what they deserved, too. If Hirin could facilitate that, he surely had my support, for all that they’d put the two of us through. To say nothing of Mother.
    I’m not saying that hard work solved all the problems–it didn’t. Viss still wasn’t speaking to Yuskeya unless necessary, Rei seemed to cycle through periods of grim irritability, and Hirin and I sidestepped carefully around the question of who was the real captain of the Tane Ikai , without ever really addressing it. Everyone was simply so busy that they didn’t have much time left over to dwell on their problems, or clash with anyone else over them. Just as I’d hoped.
    So it was a peaceful, quiet, clean, and overhauled Tane Ikai that arrived at the main spaceport outside Heliosin on the planet Anar a week later. In light of what happened later I’d like to claim prescience, but in reality it was plain dumb luck.
     
     
    IT’S NOT OFTEN that I find myself nervous. I’m eighty-four, for goodness’ sake, despite still looking thirty thanks to my mother’s efficient little nanobioscavengers. I’ve had all the experiences, and more, that one might expect for an octogenarian far trader captain, wife, and mother of two. But two things bothered me about collecting this Lobor historian. In the first place it was her specialty—the Chron were a sort of bogeyman for those of us who hadn’t been alive during the Chron War. It was difficult to separate fact from fiction, and myths abounded about these terrifying figures who had come to the brink of destroying humanity (as well as Vilisians and Lobors). It felt disconcerting to meet someone who knew so much about them. It brought them closer than I wanted them to be.
    And in the second place, I had spent surprisingly little time around Lobors. Although the wolflike aliens had been our allies since the time of the Chron War, I simply didn’t know much about them. I’d encountered them occasionally in business dealings, but the interactions had always been very casual. I’d never had one on my crew, although it wasn’t by choice, simply chance. So I’d never known a Lobor very well, and now I felt that lack very keenly.
    I went to meet Cerevare Brindlepaw with more than a little trepidation.
    I’d studied the ship’s database on everything Lobor, but words on a screen can only tell you so much. In theory, practice is just like theory, but in practice, practice is not at all like theory. So while I was prepared for Cerevare’s springy step and the fervid heat of her paw-like hand when she offered it to me, I was surprised by the twinkle of humour in her liquid brown eyes and the disconcerting way a smile stretches over a muzzle. Evolution on Nanear had obviously favoured something that might have resembled a German Shepard or a wolf on Earth.
    “Captain Paixon,” she said with a nod, and I gave her points immediately for pronouncing it correctly, pay-zon . I took her offered hand, skin the colour of raw umber and lightly furred on the back with soft golden-brown hairs, prepared for the fervent heat all Lobors radiated. She wore the loose, linen-like garments that Lobors had preferred since humans first encountered them, as survivors of a spaceship wreck on the