Layers of Force by Lindsay Buroker

Author:Lindsay Buroker [Buroker, Lindsay]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2020-09-23T16:00:00+00:00

Bonita was in her armor with an oxygen tank and a toolkit, working on replacing wiring and hull plating on the outside of the Dragon, when a comm came in. Viggo piped it out to her through her helmet speaker.

“Captain Lopez? It’s Nalini. Are you all right?”

“I’ve had better weeks.”

“We saw the footage of the attack on Forseti Station.”

“I can’t imagine it was as riveting from a distance as it was from directly adjacent to the freighter under fire.”

“Perhaps not, but I was riveted.” Her tone took on a different note—wariness or concern?—when she added, “Were you able to drop off those soldiers?”

“Yes.”

“And will you be able to repair the damage and get away from that station soon?”

“I hope so. Why do you ask?”

Bonita hadn’t spoken with Nalini since taking on the soldiers, but the last time she’d checked, Nalini’s ship had been lingering back near the gate rather than taking advantage of the chaos to advance into the system. Maybe she could do her spying effectively from there and hoped nobody would notice her ship with everything else going on. And if she was threatened, she could flee easily back through the gate.

“Ships from other governments are entering this system now,” Nalini said. “There could be trouble.”

“More trouble?” Bonita looked around as much as she could with her armor on and while hanging from the side of her freighter. It was enough to see numerous other people and robots out repairing damage to the station and their ships.

“A lot of the recently acquired gate pieces have been stolen, and as we discussed, there’s a belief that the astroshamans are responsible—”

“They are. I saw their ship. Up close.”

“But conspiracy theories have also been cropping up, since the invisible ships stole gate pieces from all over the Twelve Systems and came here last. Some think the Kingdom and astroshamans might be in an alliance. Others are coming because they think their only chance to get their pieces back is to slip in while the Kingdom is distracted.”

“That damn gate is giving me a headache.”

“I understand the sentiment. I’m warning you because it may be safer for someone like you—for all of us—to clear out of this system. At the least, being docked at one of their major stations could be a bad idea right now.”

As if Bonita had a choice. She had to finish her repairs first. “Are you leaving?”

“I’m thinking about it, but I’m still hoping to retrieve Tristan. I spoke to him, and they’ve got Casmir. He said the planet’s launch loop is closed for now, so he’s stuck there. But if that changes, he—and your Qin too—could possibly slip away. We can leave the Kingdom to handle this mess on their own.”

“If they can.”

“Yes. I admit that I don’t know if Tristan will be willing to leave when his world is in trouble—even though they kicked him out, he still thinks of it as home—but I don’t know what he could do, besides get killed. I’m trying to disabuse him of the idea that joining their fight is a good idea.

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