The Chosen Sin Read Free Page A

habitable planets had already been discovered. Perhaps there’d be a place for them somewhere in the black?
    But the Chosen had never managed to find a world to call their own. Outnumbered and outmaneuvered by human law, their requests had always been denied or they’d been stymied by politics and lobbying groups. They’d been forced to join in the rising tide of human immigrants leaving Earth to find a better world. A better world than one that had barely been saved from global warming and was stuffed to the gills with swelling humanity, locusts who devoured every resource in their path without thought for the future.
    Then had come the big find of the Nabovsky Galaxy, and a solar system supporting not one, but four habitable planets in close proximity, some large, some smaller.
    Angel One was perfect—lush, green, and verdant, like Earth before humans had messed it up. Though the sky was not blue, but a pale green yellow. That planet had become the “capital” of the Angel System and to this day was the most civilized.
    Luckily there were strict environmental laws on Angel One that prohibited sprawl from the urban areas and protected the wild places. The urban areas, especially New Chicago, where he and Daria lived, were built high into the sky because of the anti-sprawl laws, though with ample areas of vegetation to enjoy within the confines of the city.
    Another planet, Galileo, was small and covered mostly with water, though there were two sizable landmasses that had been colonized. With seas rich in edible fish and sea life, it was a place inhabited by fisher people and their families who worked for the two big food processing plants that served the quad planets, as they were called.
    Darpong, where they were now, didn’t have much water at all. It was a desert planet, hot during the day and cold at night. It was a medium-sized world and very friendly to humans, though the lack of water made it an unpopular choice. It was a vacation and party spot, mostly. Lawless and wild, it attracted the same. Nabovsky Galaxy’s very popular gravsport competition was held here every year, an extreme sport spectacle with a high casualty rate.
    With the amount of sun on Darpong, it was ironic that Sante had chosen it for his commune since vamps couldn’t walk in sunlight, although if the stories were true, the dome protected the solar-sensitive occupants from the punishing rays.
    Songset, named for the man who’d discovered her, was tidal locked. Without season, tide, or rotation, it simply existed. One side of the huge planet was caught in perpetual high summer, with temperatures reaching 120 degrees Fahrenheit nearly every day. The other side was caught in perpetual winter, temperatures dipping into the minus 50 region.
    Most of the immigrants who’d elected to colonize Songset lived on the band circling the planet, where the climate was most hospitable, though some lived on the “day” and “night” sides under large man-made domes. Songset was a mining world, ravaged for its rich mineral deposits.
    There had been noises about allowing the Chosen their own rock, perhaps the dark side of Songset, but, as usual, that had never come to fruition.
    Alejandro watched Daria walk to her dune bike, which was a far more pleasing sight than their arid surroundings. Her newly blond hair was cut close to her head. It was so short you might think she was a man from behind, until you dropped your gaze and saw that long, slender neck, the delicate shoulders, and a nicely shaped ass. There was no mistaking her body for anything but 100 percent female.
    Her face, as well as her hair, looked different. The surgeons had done a good job. Sante wouldn’t recognize her. Her eyes were the same, although they held a hardness that hadn’t been there when she’d been a newly graduated patroller.
    Was it Christopher Sante who had stripped Daria of her youth so fast and hard? Or had it been