Fox Hunt (Fox Meridian Book 1) by Niall Teasdale Read Free Book Online Page B

full bust. Her hips, she thought, could have been wider, but they were solid and her waist was neither excessively narrow nor too wide. The Army had helped her physique a little with muscle enhancements, but they only really showed when she put effort into something.
    Someone had told her once that she had hard features. Her jaw was firm and she had wide cheekbones over sunken cheeks, but her nose had a nice curve to it and her lips were full. Her eyes could be a little icy, but there was a slightly green tint to the blue, which she thought took the edge off. Quite why the comment had bothered her she was not sure since she took pride in being as tough as anyone she worked with, male or female, but it had stung a little…
    Oh, and there was her hair. Her hair was why people called her Fox. Orange-red at the crown, it was an untidy mess which refused to stay properly combed, but it feathered out as it descended around her face turning to a paler, near-white as it went. When she was a child, someone had told her she looked like she had a fox on her head, and she had broken their nose and split their lip. Her parents had grounded her for a month and told her that violence was never the answer, but it had made her feel better. The nickname had still stuck and she had grown to like it.
    ‘The body has been sealed in a bag for return to Earth and placed in the medical bay,’ she said, resuming the transcript process. ‘I suggest a full autopsy, though I doubt we’ll get any useful details out of it. This seems too well planned for a random kill, and no serial is going to risk trapping themselves in an environment like this… Well, unless they’re escalating in the hope of being stopped, but I don’t have any data on a killer with this kind of MO. That leaves a hit, but why would someone want to hit a salesman for MarTech?’ Jackson might know, but she was not going to bother him unless she was really assigned to the case, and this pretty clearly fell under UNTPP’s jurisdiction. ‘Personal effects have been placed in secure storage by the ship’s security officer and can be retrieved when required. The only noteworthy item was an unidentified data stick found plugged into the console. The contents remain unverified.’
    Closing the file, she signed and encrypted it, dropped it into a transmission envelope, and had her implant pass it off to the ship’s comms system for immediate transmission to NAPA. Then she flicked open the internal comms access and put a call through to Morris.
    ‘Inspector Meridian? I see we’re transmitting an encrypted message for you.’ Morris’s voice came through the room’s speakers, sounding slightly irked.
    ‘Nothing much to report and the encryption is standard. He was shot with a fairly large gun, using an explosive round. If someone can sneak something like that aboard then they can hide it from a search, but you’re welcome to try finding it. My guess is we’ll end up quarantined on arrival until they can sweep the ship and question the passengers and crew.’
    There was a sigh. ‘That was what I was expecting. Thank you for your efforts, Inspector.’
    ‘I’ll let you know if they send anything back before we arrive. I’m going to try to grab some sleep.’
    ‘Sleep well.’
    15 th January.
    She did not. There were nights when sleep was not her friend and, apparently, this was one of them. The nightmares were never identical, but they were always the same, always about the same event: the last op she had ever done for the UNTPP. The Dallas operation. The reason she had a custom handgun designed and personally built by Jackson Martins.
    Waking with a start from another burst of automatic weapons fire which had never, in fact, claimed her life, Fox rolled out of the bottom bunk and stumbled across to the sink to splash cold water on her face and, hopefully, get rid of some of the sweat. The water was not really cold enough, but her brain started to function a little as she