The Jack's Story (BRIGAND Book 2) by Natalie French, Scot Bayless Read Free Book Online Page A

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CHAPTER EIGHT
    We docked in the morning, local time, not like morning meant much in the Belt. The main dome of Mundus is huge, so big it has a real atmosphere, with weather. Unfortunately, the trade guilds that run the place are big on saving energy (for themselves mostly), so Mundus is perpetually cold. Like frosty breath and ice on the walls cold. Kill you in an hour cold.
    I wanted to leave Trig on the ship, but the boat would have to stay drives-hot to keep life support up and I didn’t want to spend the fuel. I told her to get ready and meet me in the lock. A minute later she showed up wearing the same tight black outfit, with that little skirt, that I’d seen her in for the last week, at which point I realized what a dumbshit I’d been. It wasn’t like she’d brought luggage with her.
    "You’ll freeze in about thirty minutes, dressed like that." I popped open the airlock’s storage bin.
    She threw me a little shrug and flipped up the skirt up over her head like a shawl.
    "Yeah. That’s not gonna help."
    I grabbed a couple of unmarked military parkas from the bin and thrust one her way. She shrugged out of the wrap and draped the heavy coat over her shoulders.
    "That’s ballistic cloth over some very expensive nanite environment control layers. It’ll keep you warm without making you sweat. Stops most small arms too."
    I explained the temperatures and the need for her to stay covered. What I didn’t say was that I also wanted to camouflage that body of hers. Mundus was a hardassed place and there were plenty of hardassed Belters who likely hadn’t seen a woman at all for a very long time, much less one who looked like Trig. I didn’t need a riot on my hands.
    "I can barely move in this thing" She groused as I pulled the parka’s hood up over her glossy hair, burying her face in shadow. But now she might pass for just another transient, bundled against the cold. That made me feel a little better.
    Trig grumbled that her clothes were fine. That she could handle the cold. Something about conscious metabolic regulation. I had no doubt she could, but then that wasn’t really the point.
    I tugged her hood down over her forehead. "You still stand out. Your eyes. You still look too, I don’t know... Wraith."
    With that she closed her eyes for a few seconds. When she opened them, the irises appeared duller, normal almost.
    "How’d you do that?"
    She stepped out of the ship into the docking corridor. I followed close behind her.
    "Just an adjustment."
    Simple enough, but it was a reminder of what she was, what she could do. Given how little time had elapsed between my ‘retirement’ and her appearance, it didn’t seem all that likely Trig had been sent to find me. And, if she had, there’d been plenty of opportunity for her to just take me out. But then a Wraith would make a pretty formidable bounty hunter. How much would the Confed pay to get me back alive? That thought made me feel a little sick.
    I wanted to trust her, even though that could be a mistake. If it was, I’d end badly, in blood and pain. But then again that had been my fate for a very long time. Didn’t matter much how I came to it. I shook off the thought and led the way. She had to jog to catch up with me.
    She fell in step beside me and her shoulder brushed my bicep. I wondered what would happen if I did have to fight her. Would I be able to crush that slender throat? Smash that delicate nose? Gouge those hypnotic eyes?
    I was doomed.
    As I mused, the ship’s servbot whizzed past our heads.
    Trig ducked and watched it fly past. "Bot’s coming?"
    "Yeah." I followed the little machine into a waiting shuttle, one of a fleet of self – driving electric vans that crews use to get from the docks into Mundus proper.
    "Why do we need a person? Why can’t we just get another bot? That seems... less complicated."
    It probably would be. Fewer people, fewer entanglements, fewer mouths to feed, fewer histories like mine – and Trig’s.