Derelict: Halcyone Space, Book 1 Read Free

who you are." She pushed off the wall, leaned down, and righted the chair. "The question is, why are you here?"
    Micah lowered his hand, studying her reactions. "Commander Mendez let me have the space for my research." Her eyes, large and wide-set in an oval face gave her a childlike look. The restless intelligence behind those eyes was anything but childlike. Her lean body didn't have many curves, and she dressed in plain, utilitarian pants and short tunic. Her hair — blonde and long — was tied back into a tail that reached halfway down her spine. An interesting contradiction.
    She nodded, but didn't respond.
    He gave her his most charming smile. "I was just heading out for the night. Care to join me for some coffee?"
    Her eyes brightened, and he felt his own expression shift to something more genuine.
    "How quaint. Coffee. Especially when you have such a lovely supply of bittergreen."
    Fuck. He wondered how long it would take him to erase any sign he'd been growing the drug here. "How did you find me?" Maybe she was bribable. He shook his head, the irony not lost on him, given his father's sorry history.
    "You're not much of an engineer, are you?" she asked.
    Damn, but her face was hard to read.
    "Increased power draw on the station grid. You're lucky no one came to investigate sooner."
    "I really am studying to be a botanist."
    "I really don't care."
    Micah slumped against the desk. "You mean you're not going to shut me down?"
    "Too much bother," she said, moving over to his computer. "But I do need to balance the power loading and mask your draw or someone will stumble in here to investigate."
    "Someone like you?"
    She gave him an odd look, pulled out her micro, and flung several rapid-fire gestures at it. "Yes. Exactly like me."
    Micah's eyes widened as her micro's readout scrolled across the display on his computer screen. Damn. She'd just blown through all his security. How the hell had she done that? She set the micro on his desk. Bringing both hands up as if she was the conductor and the computer her orchestra, she controlled his machine using gestures faster than anyone he had ever seen. He recognized the signs for save and execute, but all the rest blurred in one continuous, graceful motion.
    "Done," she said, slipping the micro back in her pocket. The computer returned to the Daedalus Station logo. "But I'd use a much better password in the future. Or maybe even some biometrics, though even those aren't infallible." She turned to go, leaving Micah sputtering.
    "Wait. I don't understand. Why are you helping me?"
    "There's plenty of room on this hulk. I might want to set up shop. And it's always good to get along with your neighbors." At the airlock, she paused to turn around. "And by the way, my name's Ro."
    He didn't need to look at his reflection in the burnished metal to know his face blazed red.
    ***
    Ro clamped a hand over her mouth to stifle the laughter. What an idiot. It wasn't surprising, given his father. She couldn't give an empty airlock's worth of oxygen about the drugs. But the ship? The ship presented all kinds of possibilities.
    Earning a journeyman's engineering rating was definitely better than being trapped in this dead-end place, but she wanted more than a series of lateral hops from job to job and subsistence living like her father. For that, she needed access to a solid Uni in the Hub. She looked down at herself and frowned at the grease stain on her shirt. An engineer's kid had about the same chance at one of the top schools as this wreck had to fly.
    She stared at the scavenged ship. If her father had bothered to investigate the problem, he had to have discovered the bittergreen lab. But instead of reporting it to the commander or balancing the power draw, all he had done was bury the problem. Either he was working with Micah or he had some other reason for keeping prying eyes away from the ship.
    That alone was reason enough for Ro to dig a little deeper.
    The ship was essentially