Shades of Dark by Linnea Sinclair Read Free Book Online

of bank transfers that I’m sure Gregor thought he’d deleted. Lesson one: nothing is ever really deleted in a system—especially a system keyed to keeping you alive in deep space. Even after Berri Solaria had loaded a near-fatal worm program into the Karn, Sully and I were able to retrieve or re-create almost all the lost data.
    I created another kind of tracker worm to record all of Gregor’s communications and transmits—internal and external—from this point on, with the external actually being sent only if Sully or I cleared it. If he requested a slice of pie, we’d know about it. If he sent data to the Farosians, we’d know about it.
    We had the proof. And a little more than four days to Narfial. In every sense of the word, Gregor’s days were numbered.

    With the basic question about Gregor and the Farosians’ appearance handled, Sully left the cabin to make his usual rounds. Even though it was his ship, he wasn’t a passenger. Neither was I. We both had duties beyond our mission to find Hayden Burke’s jukor labs and try to stop the Empire from spiraling into what could be a vicious civil war: Takas against humans and everyone against the Stolorths. Part of me still believed the Empire was worth fighting for and that Prew—Emperor Prewitt III—was capable of governing wisely with the help of the Admirals’ Council.
    Sully was more—in his own words—pragmatic. Prew was a puppet, but if the Empire fell and xenophobes like Tage and Burke took over, the worlds and colonies on the rim would suffer horribly. A high percentage of the population on the rim was Takan. And young Gabriel Sullivan, alone in the midst of his parents’ lavish, palatial estate, found the only ones who really cared about him were Takan. His role as a smuggler had been a guise by which he helped those most desperately in need.
    And, of course, annoyed those in authority for whom he had no respect.
    I brought up the ship’s locator log on my screen. Gregor and Marsh were still on bridge duty. Verno was sleeping. Ren was in the hydro for his required soak—Stolorths’ aquatic heritage required them to absorb water into their bodies through their gill slits every forty-eight hours. Aubry was off in the gym. The galley’s power grid icons glowing at 90 percent told me Dorsie was cooking. Baking, probably. The short, jovial woman—who was also Marsh’s aunt—turned up her nose at sustenance replicators. The scents of cinnaspice, sweet basmatt, and flowery kevar often wafted tantalizingly through the Karn ’s lower deck.
    Aubry had finished repairs to the secondary power grid. I scanned his report with less of a practiced eye than Sully would. Aubry’s repairs looked fine. And I knew Sully would double check them because if Gregor had a friend on board, it was Aubry.
    Not that I’d consider them close, but Aubry tolerated Gregor more easily than Marsh, Dorsie, or Verno did. And Ren…Well, Gregor hated Ren with a passion, as he hated all Stolorths. That the animosity wasn’t mutual meant nothing to Gregor.
    So in essence, Aubry—a short but muscular man in his late thirties—was Gregor’s only friend. But enough of one to assist him with the Farosians?
    Computers and codes were something I was good at. Fifteen minutes later I’d cleared through Aubry’s transmits and found nothing noteworthy. Aubry might be Gregor’s friend but I found nothing to state his loyalty wasn’t to Sully.
    I went back to the rest of my duties, reviewing ship’s status and performance. Then, when Gregor logged off the bridge, I waited a few minutes for him to clear the corridor before exiting the cabin and heading for the command sling.
    “All’s quiet, Captain Bergren,” Marsh said when I stepped over the hatch tread.
    While not as warmly friendly as his aunt, Marsh Ganton had treated me with respect from the moment I boarded the Karn . His relationship with Ren had cooled since the crew interrogations, but his allegiance to Sully was