Morgan's Choice by Greta van Der Rol Read Free Book Online Page A

Nothing happened. Her nerves
screaming, she dived into the system. Status normal. No errors. Ah,
shit. She threw off her harness and leapt to her feet. The bastards
must have sabotaged the drive.
    The ship jolted sideways hard enough to have
her staggering against the hatch. Those fighters were firing and
the shields were beginning to fail.
    “ F75 stand to or be destroyed.”
    “You’ve got to be kidding,” she muttered,
forcing her muscles to move.
    The ship jolted again, from the other side
this time. Fuck. The whole fucking squadron had caught up. The ship
was surrounded.
    “ One last warning, F75.”
    Her shoulders sagged. Jones stared at her,
ashen faced. Sayvu implored with her eyes, the pupils dilated so
far the yellow rim was barely visible.
    “Sorry, guys. It’s over.” Morgan returned to
the pilot’s seat. “Acknowledge.”
    Sayvu followed her and leaned against the
bulkhead, trembling, arms wrapped around herself. “They’ll torture
us. You don’t know what they’re like.”
    Morgan swallowed. No, she didn’t. She
fired a short burst with the forward thrusters to slow the ship
down. But any other move was suicide. “Even if I fix the drive, in
this configuration I can’t go to shift-space. There are too many of
them and they’re too close, they’ll distort the matrix. We could
end up anywhere.” And she’d already done that once in Curlew , thanks
all the same.
    “ You will set this course to
return to Vidhvansaka . Any deviation and you will be destroyed. We have missiles
trained.”
    A short burst of transmission transferred the
coordinates. Morgan fed them in.
    Jones squeezed into the bridge behind Sayvu.
“Can’t you disable the fighters or something?”
    She snorted under her breath.
Idiot. Wave
your magic wand, Supertech . “I’m a Supertech, not a magician.”
    Sayvu seemed to have shrunk. But no tears.
Maybe they didn’t do tears.
    Shuttle F75 settled in the airlock, the bay
doors closed and atmosphere began to fill the void around the ship.
Jones and Sayvu returned to the crew quarters.
    Morgan stayed in the bridge. Now the race was
off and the adrenalin had drained away she felt cold. Afraid.
They’d be wanting to chat with Sayvu, she expected, to find out how
she’d organized their escape. Assuming, of course, they didn’t
already know. She and Jones… maybe they’d overstayed their welcome.
They wouldn’t kill them. Would they? The best bet was probably the
university professors. Despair hovered over her shoulder, a thick,
dark mantle ready to smother her. So close. So fucking close.
    The status panel flashed pressure equalized.
The bay’s internal door opened and a dozen armed troopers marched
in.
    Déjà vu.
    She rose and went to meet them.
     
     
     
     

Chapter
Seven
     
     
     
    Morgan wriggled her arms behind her back. The
wrist bands weren’t tight but she’d been wearing them for hours
now. They’d shoved her into a bare grey room and left. No chair, no
water, nothing. Even the sensors were switched off. She wondered
again where Jones and Sayvu were. They’d hustled them both away
somewhere else. Soon enough they would come for her. She’d paced
for a while, fought down the pressing urge to use the toilet. That
was just fear. They’d been so close to getting away.
    Leaning against the wall she closed her eyes
and let herself slip down until she sat on the floor, knees raised,
her head tilted back. Maybe this was all just a nightmare and soon
she’d wake up. Wouldn’t that be good?
    Her eyes opened at the swish-hiss of the
opening door. Fear rose like lava from her belly. She swallowed. A
tall man wearing a black officer’s uniform stepped over to where
she sat, towering over her. Somebody else put down a chair in the
middle of the room and left.
    “Up.”
    She tried, wriggling to angle her legs so
she could stand. But without the use of her hands, she simply
struggled on the floor like a landed fish. With a last effort that
sent her thigh muscles