Shadower by Catherine Spangler Read Free Book Online

this without food, she reminded herself. A lot longer. A worthless father's drinking addiction didn't leave much money for necessities.
    She pushed the nightmarish memories away. Instead, she focused her thoughts on Risa, and on Celie, resorting to the mental diversion she'd used since childhood. When her father had been on one of his drunken rampages, Moriah would hide with Celie, and try to recall their mother's loving face, a memory fast fading with each passing season. "Don't think about what's happening now," she would tell Celie. "Think about good things, and nothing can hurt you." How wrong she had been. Yet the silly habit had remained with her all these seasons.
    The increasing vibration and sudden sharp angling of the ship jolted Moriah back to the present. They were descending to land—finally! She grabbed the handle of the shower stall and wedged her feet against the opposite wall to keep from sliding around. Once she was on Star Base Intrepid, she'd be able to contact someone from the group. She steeled herself to remain patient as the ship connected to the pad with only a small jolt. Not a bad landing for such a decrepit craft.
    At least Travers had a ship. The loss of her own spacecraft would have serious repercussions on the group operations. Moriah heaved herself to her feet, determination filling her. Nothing she could do about it now. She'd find another ship, even if she had to confiscate one.
    She was quite skilled at breaking into security systems, thanks to her father—another line of thought she didn't care to follow. She stretched her cramped muscles and waited. Sudden voices came from nearby. She froze by the lav panel, listening intently.
    "All these crates in here go, too," Travers said, just on the other side of the panel.
    She heard shuffling noises, and assumed the crates were being lifted. She waited, while the voices and footsteps returned several times. Finally, silence prevailed. Moriah waited a while longer and then emerged cautiously. The cabin was empty, but she didn't know if Travers had left the ship. Surely he would take advantage of being on a major star base to restock supplies and avail himself of the entertainments offered there.
    She opened the cabin panel enough to peer down the corridor. Seeing no one, she slipped to the airlock, then cracked the portal cover and looked out. Sabin stood a few meters away, talking to a group of people. He faced away from her, but she knew it could only be him.
    The arrogant way he braced his legs apart, his weapon-laden belt riding low on his lean hips, the broad expanse of back, his midnight hair tied with a leather thong—he stood out like a towering Yarton tree on a desolate plain. The people around him looked out of place for being on a sophisticated star base. Moriah's inner alarm went on alert.
    She studied the ragtag group, noticing the leather bracelets worn by several of them. Where had she seen bracelets like that before? Recognition nagged the edges of her memory, until the answer came to her in a startling jolt. Shielders!
    The persecuted race was known to wear custom-tooled leather bracelets, tracing their ancestry. Moriah had seen such bracelets on Shielder children being sold as slaves. But they didn't usually wear items so blatantly declaring their race outside the safety of their settlements. They'd never wear the bracelets on a star base, where they would be identified and arrested. Then this group of people couldn't possibly be Shielders, unless…
    She shifted her attention to the outside terrain. Instead of being inside one of the well-engineered landing bays found on Star Base Intrepid, the ship sat on a dirt pad, obviously outdoors. Bare mountains rose in the distance, no trees or greenery to soften their starkness. Star Base Intrepid boasted no such mountains.
    Where were they? She strode to the cockpit to learn their coordinates. Travers' computer system was as archaic as the rest of the ship, and she readily accessed