FORT LIBERTY: VOLUME ONE by M Orenda Read Free Book Online Page A

tunes, her fingers quick on the screens, her eyes darting over engine readings, proximity displays, tower comms. The tune never wavers.
    The Sparrow drifts starboard and lights up the burners, its image now appearing in the luminous blue ocean of the holo grid, its flight path stretching all the way to Midstation.
    The display tracks everything down to the cubic inch, complete with running time markers, accelerator calculations, fuel estimates and the beacons of other ships, all travel between Earth and Mars presented in real time.
    The dock slides away, the open arms of Copernicus falling into shadow.
    The flight deck screens aren’t sentimental. There’s no view of the mother planet diminishing behind the burn of engines, no last glimpse of its shining skies, or its vast oceans, none of which Petra has ever seen at closer than a distance of six hundred miles. Earth might be the mother of humanity in general, but it’s not her mother, and it’s got no sway in her heart or memory.
    She’s a creature of Mars, sure enough. Not of grand filter, but of the type that’s not supposed to exist and does anyway, the daughter of a willow house geisha and whatever corporate executive paid for the pleasure of her that day, an infant cast off at birth and raised by those who clean the messes and change the sheets, long ago and far away.
    She’s got nothing in her heart for that either. Way it is. The mother she’s never known appears every day in the mirror, in high cheek bones and curving eyes, in a slender frame and honeyed skin, all of it prized by the willow houses. She’s got the look of the most beautiful, but not the wit, not the grace, not the serene temperament, or the will to possess any of those things. Without them, she’s the kind that fights, the kind that survives, even when she’s battered, even when she’s almost dead… which is a point proved often enough.
    There’s a break in the whistling.
    “We’re clear,” Clara says. “Do what you’re gonna.”
    “I’m fine here.”
    “Yeah, but I don’t want you on my deck. You’re brooding.”
    “I’m not.”
    “You worked four straight shifts during loading and now you’re brooding.”
    “I’m Captaining.”
    Clara rolls her eyes. “Tell it to me simple. What for we got all the good stuff? Premium vodka. Smoked delicacies. Chocolate. None of it for selling, but just for us two, and you’re stuck in float, not partaking of your share… when the work’s done and now’s the time.”
    “Gonna save it for mid-flight blues.”
    “You will not.” Clara levels a dark look. “Mid-flight blues is what we got the Midstation for. C’mon, now you’re just pissing me off.”
    Petra supposes that’s true. Still, the rec cabin’s got no appeal for a woman in a broody mood. The vodka, however…
    “Let me know if something changes.”
    “You really have lost your mind, haven’t you? We’re on flight path in big sky, Petra. This is it. Accelerators fire at their interval times and we coast along and count days. Same as all the times before.”
    Petra nods, her attention drawn to the tiny speck that is the Sparrow on the holo grid, a glowing dot headed straight into a long stretch of dark space.
    “Nothings gonna change,” she murmurs, like it’s comfort, like she’s not gonna let it happen any other way. “Same as all the times before.”

    Voss watches the girl, searching for some flicker of consciousness. Niri drifts in zero G, released from the heavy canvas sack they’d bound her in, her hands now floating free, her hair forming a dark halo around her face. There’s no hint of the tortured wunderkind, her features now smooth, glowing, a drowning victim suspended in bright water.
    Not like the others we’ve rescued. Something else, something darker…
    His gaze strays, catching a thoughtful look from Wyatt. After so many years, the man can read him without much effort, and share his own thoughts without saying a word. A raised brow. A cocky