Fractured Stars by Lindsay Buroker

Author:Lindsay Buroker [Buroker, Lindsay]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2018-09-26T05:00:00+00:00

As soon as McCall stepped out of the warm underground facility and onto the icy landing pad, she wanted to turn around and go back in. The snow had stopped, but frigid air blasted her, freezing the cilia in her nostrils and all the way down to her lungs. The chill burrowed right through the cold-weather clothing she and the others had donned on the stairs. Would the gear be sufficient for a days-long trek in these temperatures?

The sky was clear, the stars as brilliant and abundant as if they were looking out the Star Surfer’s porthole. McCall would much rather have been aboard her ship and admiring them from there. Specifically, from the sauna in her lavatory. It had a lovely porthole and was deliciously hot.

She peered around the landing pad, relieved when she didn’t see Scipio’s broken form lying in the snow. Nor did she see any frozen dog bodies. That didn’t necessarily mean he and Junkyard were safe, but at least Axton hadn’t hurled them out a hatch and flown off on his own.

He wasn’t a pilot, Dash had said. She hoped that proved true and that he had needed Scipio. And that Scipio had found ways to delay or even defeat him. It would be convenient if her ship was in orbit overhead right now, Scipio in NavCom, waiting for her to find a way to make contact.

“Let’s march,” Rose said, sounding more like a military commander than a professor. “They’ll figure out how to get the lights on before long. We need to get long gone by then. Who’s got the compass?”

“Here, ma’am.” Marco waved his mittened hand.

Next to him, Walters, now bundled in a parka and snow pants, leaned over, gripping his knees with gloved hands. He straightened as soon as he noticed people looking in his direction. Nobody said anything, but McCall wondered if his injuries would cause trouble for the group on the march.

“The closest city is in Dome Seven,” Rose reminded everyone, “and it’s across the tundra and over the mountains. Lead the way, Marco.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Dome Seven doesn’t have a space port, does it?” someone asked. “We’ll have to buy a train ticket to another dome?”

“That’s right,” Rose said. “We’ll either sneak aboard or send a message so someone can come pick us up.” She waved toward the starry sky.

“That should be fun when we have no money and we’re wanted felons.”

“We’ll worry about it later, when we’re warm.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Marco said.

McCall let the Alliance people go first. With her netdisc and a satellite link, she would have no trouble finding her way through the wilderness, but she had doubts about her abilities with low-tech survival gear.

McCall wasn’t upset when the leaders set off at a jog, boots crunching through a thin layer of windswept snow. They needed to get as far away as possible as quickly as possible. On the open tundra, all it would take was someone in a low-flying shuttle to spot them. They could only hope the

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.