Wild Nines (Mercenaries Book 1) by A.R. Knight

Author:A.R. Knight [Knight, A.R.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Black Key Books
Published: 2017-01-20T00:00:00+00:00

37

Past Friends

Phyla’s eyes wandered the small confines of Lina’s shop. A menagerie of security-related gear. There was a tiny gun that shot a sticky bead that would record and send video and audio around it for ten minutes. That’d be one way of keeping tabs on Davin and Lina’s conversation, a back and forth that’d sent itself lower and lower in volume until Phyla couldn’t even hear it anymore. She felt like the kid left to wander while the parents talked.

Hanging on the walls, above the shelves holding cameras and comm equipment, were a series of old-style pictures. Actual print photos, which these days were a retro rarity. Thing was, Phyla remembered all of them.

The one with Davin and Lina standing outside their small school, Phyla holding the camera, right here in Vagrant’s Hollow, as they completed the last grade and society ejected them, at fifteen, into whatever lives fate held for them. Phyla thought the nervous grins on their faces must have mirrored her own.

Another picture, to the right of that one, taken by Davin’s long-gone mother, had the three of them and some of their other friends engaging in one of their floor hockey games. The metal ground made a perfect surface for skipping around any spare junk they wanted to use as a puck.

She’d found the camera at a special discount. No, that wasn’t it. The man was losing everything, was liquidating all he had to get a ticket off of the station. Phyla had coin from a recent birthday and bought it. The camera was so ancient that it printed the photos immediately after taking it. The man selling it to her looked so sad as he handed it over, but when Phyla turned away, he’d asked her to wait. A moment later the man returned with a stack of thick little paper, necessary for the camera to print. Phyla asked him where to get more and the man just shook his head.

Looking at these pictures, she could never tell how badly they wanted to leave. Davin, especially, went on and on about exploring the stars. Breaking out of the bounds of Miner Prime and making his own life. Lina went along with him, egging Davin on until he left. He told them he was going and was gone. For five years.

Phyla remembered the day Davin came back, remembered him running back through their street, claiming he had a ship, that they could go with him. Breaking open their boring lives.

“Phyla?” Lina said, touching Phyla’s shoulder. “Do you want them?”

“The pictures?”

“They should be yours, really. You took them.”

“They’d just get lost on the ship. Too much movement,” Phyla said, though her eyes didn’t move away from the memories.

“If you think so,” Lina said.“Davin’s going to come back soon. He’ll ask you to go get the ship prepped.”

“Why, we just got here?”

“This station is dangerous for you. Every hour here increasing the chance of you being trapped.”

“And Davin won’t be coming with me?”

“He wants to find the source, the person who can turn off the android pursuing you.

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.