Project Starfighter by Stephen J Sweeney Read Free Book Online

being softened up somehow, being given a
false sense of security before something terrible happened ...
    ... like she had felt back home on
Ceradse that time just before she had been mugged.
    “Home is Ceradse, isn’t it?”
Jane asked. “The city of Rella?”
    Ursula came to a halt and gaped.
    “Ceradse,” Jane repeated. “You
and Phoebe were both born there?”
    “How did you know that?”
    “You told me.”
    “When?”
    “Just now. Or perhaps my husband
did.”
    Ursula looked around again, her
heart beginning to thump hard. She ran her hands over the black
evening gown she wore. This wasn’t her, she shouldn’t be here.
She wasn’t actually here.
    “This isn’t real,” Ursula
said. “None of this is real.”
    Jane swore. “Damn it! She’s
twigged!”
    “What the hell did you do?”
Skillman demanded. The man was suddenly by his wife’s side, having
seemingly materialised out of nowhere. “You’re supposed to just pluck at her thoughts, not rip them out and shove them in her
face!”
    “You’re WEAPCO,” Ursula said
to the man. “You’re Lance Skillman, the CEO. You’re not his
wife, either. You’re just one of the ... board members or
something,” she added, looking at Jane. Ursula began to back away,
tripping over the rising steps at the other end of the terrace, but
pulling herself quickly to her feet.
    “Now come along, Ms Lexx,”
Skillman cajoled, raising a hand in a gesture of good will. “We
only wish to know where your sister is, that is all.”
    That’s a lie! Don’t trust
them!
    Ursula said nothing, shaking her
head and continuing to back away, up the steps.
    “We’re not going to harm you.”
A man’s voice came from behind. “Either of you.”
    Ursula whirled to see Kline Kethlan
stood at the top of the small steps. The three had her hemmed in.
Almost. She looked over the edge of the terrace to the rocks below,
just visible amongst the dark crashing waves.
    “Don’t! You’ll die!”
Skillman warned.
    “No, I won’t,” Ursula said.
And in a single bound she was over the parapet.
    There was much cursing from the
terrace, shouts of irritation. Ursula caught snatches of words as she
fell.
    “Reset her!”
    “She hasn’t been up long enough
yet!”
    “How long until we can?”
    Ursula didn’t hear the rest, the
waves rushing up to meet her. At the last moment they parted,
revealing the smooth black forms of the rocks beneath them. The
impact wouldn’t hurt, she knew, and neither would dying.
    In this place, it never did.

Chapter 4

    T he
dead woman had been one of Sid’s neighbours. She lived one floor
down, almost directly beneath Sid’s own flat. In these kinds of
building, people mostly ignored one another. They would nod as they
passed in the hall, or as they stood silently in the lift together,
but otherwise would make little effort to get to know one another. In
the past, Chris had found this lack of community spirit to be an
indictment of a selfish society, where people cared little for those
around them. But today, he was glad of it.
    “She knew me from when I helped
fix her entertainment systems,” Sid explained as he and Chris
quickly set about trashing Sid’s living room, emptying a few
bullets from the woman’s gun into the wall, to make it appear as
though there had been a struggle. A good thing the woman had fitted a
silencer to her gun.
    “Do you think she bought the gun,
especially?” Chris asked, as he replaced the firearm by the dead
woman’s side, keeping with him the dishcloth he had used to handle
it.
    “No,” Sid said. “From what I
understand, she works in personal security; gun for hire, that sort
of thing.”
    “How did she know who you really
were?”
    “I told her my first name by
mistake one day,” Sid admitted. “She must have put two and two
together after seeing my picture on the news.”
    “They’ve got a picture of you?”
    Sid nodded solemnly.
    “There will be others,” Chris
said, glancing uncertainly at the