Edge of Redemption (A Star Too Far Book 3) by Casey Calouette Read Free Book Online Page A

Beyond them stood the remainder of the crew, looking crisp and eager. He wondered who they were, but more importantly what they were made of.
    The red light over the hatch burned brightly. The display next to it showed an array of arcs burning brightly on the edges of the hull. A cold alkaline light shone over the bulk of the hull. His hull. His ship. The very thought gave him goosebumps. A fresh from the yard beautiful... potato. He still couldn’t get the first picture out of his head. It’ll need a better name than that, he thought.
    “Mr. Huron,” William said.
    “Captain,” Huron replied.
    “What’s the status, Lieutenant?” William asked.
    Shay cleared her throat and shifted her stance. “Admiral Muir told us to wait.”
    “Tall Admiral? Skinny? Hungover?”
    Lieutenant Shay chuckled and raised her eyebrows. “Uh, yes, sir.”
    William smiled. She owed him a pastry. He turned to the rest of the crew. A bit of everything. Light skin, dark skin, men and women. Technical ranks, naval ratings, and just the bare basics to make a ship function. Were they enough?
    “Marines, Ms. Shay?” William asked.
    She shook her head, then snapped her eyes down the hall behind William. “They might be ours, Captain.”
    William turned and placed his hands on his hips. Three Marines were walking in single file with complete combat baggage on their backs. The uniforms were crisp and gray. The lead was a woman, in her mid-twenties with a face like a granite wall. Her arms were thrust out to the side and they swung as she walked.
    “Cruisin’ for a bruisin’,” Huron muttered.
    William couldn’t help but smile. The other two were almost like twins. Dark hair like burnt coffee and wide faces. Large wasn’t quite enough of a word to describe them. They looked like a pair of lost lumberjacks, or stonemasons. Abraham, his Anabaptist friend, flashed into his mind.
    “Group, halt!” The Corporal’s eyes swung slowly and locked onto William. “Group, reporting for duty.”
    “At ease, Corporal, fall in.”
    There was an ease, a gracefulness, all with an overtone of extreme violence. Her face was a mass of scars, or what remained of scars after nanites smoothed it out. It must’ve been bad, he thought, for the nanites to not remove it all. As she turned her eyes flickered red, nanite implants. William looked down to his tablet: Corporal Vale Thorisdottir.
    “Open ‘er up, Harry,” Admiral Muir said. She approached William and sized him up. “She’ll be done, or soon enough. We’ll have another day to finish it up, but you can start loading now.”
    William nodded. The Admiral didn’t look much better than before, just more awake. And sober. “I think you owe me a pastry, Admiral.”
    Admiral Muir turned and cocked her head slightly with a wide smile on her face. “Ahh, I thought you looked familiar. That was a good start to a bad day.” She looked satisfied as she turned to the hatch. A chubby civilian engineer walked over to the airlock and plugged in an oversized tablet. A dim hissing pulsed and surged from a panel next to the door. Chilled steam flowed from beneath the panel. Breathable atmosphere was pouring into the little ship for the first time.
    “She gonna hold, Harry?” Admiral Muir asked.
    Harry shrugged and stood with the tablet cradled in his arms. The light above the airlock flickered to yellow and then green. Williams heart raced faster. He stole a glance at Huron and Shay: both looked as excited as he was. He was almost leaning forward, eager to get in. There it was, just on the other side, waiting.
    “Aww fuck,” Harry spat. “Popped a weld.”
    William felt as deflated as the ship. The airlock light danced back down to red once again. He looked over to Admiral Muir with a questioning glance. She shrugged and sighed. “Why don’t you guys go get something to eat?”
    William turned back to face his crew and tried not to look disheartened. More engineers came running along with men in vacuum