Double Cross: Space Station Noir Book 5 by Arthur Mayor

Author:Arthur Mayor [Mayor, Arthur]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Dark Shadowy Cabal
Published: 2022-12-07T23:00:00+00:00

TWENTY-SIX

Oh, that hurt. Like a blunt shard of iron pounded right into my forehead that skipped my chest but went right out the soles of my feet.

Normally when I wake up from a zap nap or a stim I’m able to pretend I’m still out. I keep myself from moving. It’s a trick that has saved my life multiple times.

This time I couldn’t move if I wanted to. I felt paralyzed, from the neck down and the neck up. Paralyzed but able to feel everything, and everything hurt.

I don’t know why each stim has to be different. Maybe because they’re different brands, or… yeah I have no idea. But this one sucked.

“Should I hit him again?” I didn’t recognize the voice, but it wasn’t a Station accent. Two bad signs. “His body weight ratio could be—”

“Yeah, sure.” Clive’s whistler was a little stiff, but I still recognized his voice. “I mean what’s the worst that could happen?”

I tried to say no, but my jaw didn’t even move.

Then pow bang and stars, but in a really really bad way. I screamed something unintelligible and tried to sit up.

I flailed around, partly to try and sit up, but mostly to knock the stim applicator away from me.

“I say hit him again,” Clive said. “Doesn’t see—”

“Clive,” I managed to curse. “I swear—”

“Oh, never mind. Did the trick.” Clive came into my field of view. Or maybe my eyes just started working.

My head still pounded. “How long have I been out?” I demanded. “We don’t have—”

“The situation has changed a lot since last we talked.” Clive put a lot of emphasis on that. A lot of emphasis, like he was cramming double meaning into every word, folding it around some special context and smothering it in hidden message sauce.

And I could not track it at all. “The meeting with the Castellan—”

“About that,” the Castellan said.

I almost asked for another stim pad.

I turned my head slowly. So slowly. But still too fast for my body. A fresh explosion of stars sprang into my field of view. When they cleared, I saw the Castellan, Layla, and Stacy, and two other guys wearing Observer sashes were standing at the foot of my coffin.

The coffin was Hayden’s modified loader coffin. I mean Kaden’s loader crawler. Oh, my head hurt.

“Is there something you can do for the pain?” The Castellan directed his question at the hisser standing directly next to Clive. “It seems he’s having a poor reaction to the stimulant.”

I turned my head too quickly to look at the hisser. He was in a black and yellow uniform. It took me a second to realize where I had seen it before. On the ship where we stole the boom powder and at the staging warehouse.

I tapped my pocket. Empty. Someone had taken the canister of boom powder. As casually as I could I made sure my pistol was in my holster. It wasn’t, but before the thrill of anxiety really got going, I saw it on my lap. Someone had tossed it in the crawler when they had put me in it.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.