Searching for the Fleet by Kristine Kathryn Rusch

Author:Kristine Kathryn Rusch
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: WMG Publishing Incorporated

TWENTY-THREE

Yash let out a small breath, her heart pounding. So far, two students had failed, and the class had just started the first exercise.

She had wanted hands-on. She hadn’t expected to be leaning in front of a coffin-size container, a dead anacapa drive at her feet, with Bellier watching closely, hoping everyone would fail.

Yash ran her fingers along the top of the container. She felt tiny differences in the surface where the storage lids had closed, but those differences were not visible to the naked eye.

The top of the container was surprisingly warm, which made her heart rate increase. She wasn’t sure what she would find inside if the exterior was that warm.

But she wasn’t to that stage yet. She just needed the damn gloves.

She swallowed compulsively again, wished she had some water to get rid of the sour taste in her mouth, and then squatted down again, peering at the controls.

They claimed that everything inside the container was normal, including, she assumed, the gloves.

The controls also claimed that the advanced security measures had been shut down.

She was going to have to trust that, going to have to believe that no other traps awaited her.

She used the tip of her right index finger to activate the control that opened the storage lid over the gloves. The lid slid back.

She removed the multipurpose tool from her pants, turned on its penlight function, and peered at the motion sensors.

They were dark. So were some of the other chips nearby, chips she hadn’t even seen when she had looked the first time.

She shivered. So if she had deactivated the motion sensors but left the other security measures on, she would have tripped some other kind of alarm.

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Bellier shift slightly. Bellier was still watching her, maybe even watching more closely than she had a few moments ago.

Yash tried to ignore that. She had to wipe her sweating palms on her pants again. Even though the room was cold, she wasn’t anymore. A thin layer of sweat covered her everywhere.

She wasn’t sure she had been this nervous since she had gone through her initial testing for engineering school.

She started to reach for the gloves, stopped, wiped off her sweaty palm again, and cursed silently. If she failed, she failed.

If she failed now, then she deserved to fail.

Yash eased her hand over the top of the container until her palm was above the gloves themselves. Then she lowered her hand, expecting something to snap closed or some alarm to go off.

But nothing happened. Her hand sank into the depression and brushed the surface of the gloves. They were rough, as if they were made of scales rather than fabric.

Her fingers closed around the gloves, and she pulled them free.

“Well, brava, Zarlengo. You are the first. It only took you ten minutes to do such a simple task, but you managed it.”

Yash expected the sarcasm, but that didn’t make it sting less. She had just completed a not-so-simple task.

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.