Syberian Sunrise by S. A. Lusher Read Free Book Online Page B

wine was good and the women you could buy were just the right level of trashy. Williamson Station was where he'd planned to stop and crash for a few days before to the planet below its orbit, Mezzanine, and burning through all the credits he'd accumulated.
    Unfortunately, it had all gone to shit. Enzo had run afoul with the local law enforcement. Some jackass had wanted to pretend he was tough in the bar during Enzo's third night there and tried to pick a fight with him. Obviously, he'd gotten the shit kicked out of him. How was it Enzo's fault that he was skilled at hand-to-hand combat? In retrospect, Enzo suspected that he probably could have delivered less of a beating, but it was a bad night. His shoulder was really burning and he was pretty drunk. On top of that, the guy was really asking for it.
    So they wanted to throw him in a cell overnight. Obviously that was unacceptable. Enzo tried to explain this, but the cops just wouldn't hear it. So he had to beat them up, too. If there was any sense of justice in the universe, he'd have been able to claim self-defense against the officers that had come for him. They'd been hassling him his whole time on the station, just because he didn't come from what they liked to call 'decent folk'.
    So they deserved it, too.
    The whole thing had amounted to him having to stow away aboard a cargo freighter bound for the Far Reach, then having to hitchhiker aboard a prison transport. And now, here he was, deep beneath the surface of a frozen world, all his credits, his gear...gone. Enzo was glad he had no personal effects, nothing he kept near and dear to his heart, or he'd probably be losing his shit right now. He was fine traveling light.
    Just him and his arm and his pain.
    The lift rose to its nest. Enzo wondered what was waiting for him as he slid into place like before, hiding to the right of the door. The higher up he went, the worse this seemed to get. What had Eve said? The ship was two levels above him? If he had to guess, Enzo would say that this level was either a research lab for the vessel and the creatures they'd apparently pulled from it or just more of the same he'd seen below.
    The lack of security seemed to indicate more of the same. Initially, he'd had the thought to just ride the elevator higher. Unfortunately, likely for security reasons, these lifts were only built for level-to-level transport. They only went up to the next section of the base. The doors opened. Enzo peered out. Nothing waited for him but blood and death. He frowned, stepping out cautiously. The amount of blood was definitely of a higher volume than below. The lobby looked like it had been subjected to a brutal firefight. Bullet holes stitched into the walls in erratic patterns, an immense pool of old blood in the middle of the room, but...
    “No bodies,” Enzo murmured.
    Where were the bodies?
    His mind flashed back to the Nest and his stomach turned slightly. He headed out of the lobby, coming to a corridor that extended straight away from him for a little bit. His stolen boots squelched in the silence as he moved down the hallway. The door at the end revealed a low, dark room of catwalks and machinery. The only way across the was the catwalks made of dark metal. They were bridges across a sea of all manner of machinery and equipment set into the ground below. Enzo studied some of it as he passed over.
    There were huge tubes, what looked like oxygen pumps placed in clusters and fat nodes of glistening technology, all hooked together in a mind-twisting confusion of a modern marvel. If he was right about the pumps, then this level was likely where they'd be keeping the atmospheric control and filtration system. Large stores of oxygen, carbon scrubbers and all the extra equipment necessary to make them run and keep the base swimming in an atmosphere that humans could survive in would make up this entire level.
    He kept moving, crossing the catwalks, constantly scanning the area. It was a nightmare