Galactic Rift (Star Mage Saga Book 8) by J.J. Green

Author:J.J. Green [Green, J.J.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: InfiniteBook
Published: 2022-12-17T16:00:00+00:00

“I’M GOING TO KILL CHI-tang when I see him,” Pamuk seethed. “Slowly.”

She was lying in the bed across the room from Carina, her ankle wrapped up. A medic had attended to Carina’s foot, too, and she was in less physical pain.

She was lying on her side, facing the merc. She was angry with Chi-tang too, but even if he had met them in the hall as planned, things would probably have gone the same way. “We should have closed the front door,” she replied dully.

“Huh?”

“If we’d closed the front door the guards wouldn’t have come into the house until later, after they heard the noise of the cabinet breaking. Maybe they wouldn’t have heard it at all and we could have snuck away.”

“There’s no point in speculating, I guess. But Chi-tang might have thought to close the door. He deviated from the plan, like a moron.”

“He isn’t a merc, just an engineer, and a young one.”

“He’s older than you.”

Carina had no answer to this. Their pick-up from Lakshmi was older, in his early twenties. Yet in many ways he was younger than her. Young and naive. “We might not see him again anyway. He could have already shacked up with his new girlfriend.”

“It’ll be lucky for him if he does.”

Carina understood how Pamuk felt. To be betrayed by a teammate was devastating and infuriating, especially when someone had died. If Chi-tang had been a Black Dog and had no good excuse for his behavior, at the very best he could have expected a severe beating. But she couldn’t share Pamuk’s anger. She was too heartsick for Bryce, her brothers and sisters, and Viggo. Over their time on Lakshmi Station, the Lotacryllan had become a friend. She had lost too many friends.

“What do you think was wrong with that person in the bed?” Pamuk asked.

“No idea.” Carina turned onto her back. “Whatever it was, it was bad. They looked barely alive.”

“Yeah, and they weren’t gonna get better. No one comes back from that. If I’m ever like that, I hope someone does me a favor and pulls the plug.”

“Me too. I don’t get it, though. Why wasn’t that person in hospital? Why were they being kept in that room?”

“They’d been brought home to die, of course. The same thing happened to my uncle. He lived on Ithiya and caught the plague. When he got too sick and the splicers couldn’t help him anymore, my cousins took him home so he could die in peace, surrounded by the people he loved.”

Carina turned onto her side again to stare at Pamuk. “Your uncle had Ithiyan Plague?”

“You’ve heard of it?”

“Yeah, I...” It was the disease Ma had died of and that Bryce had suffered from until his parents found him and paid for his treatment. But she didn’t want to go into her personal history. “I’ve heard of it. I’m sorry.”

“Don’t worry about it. We weren’t close.”

A fellow merc stuck his head in. “Chi-tang’s back.”

Pamuk leapt from her bed and then gave a yelp as her twisted ankle hit the floor.

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