The Saga of Seven Suns: Veiled Alliances Read Free Page A

fruits and vegetables. Many of the gorgeous moths and jewel-toned beetles were edible and savory. With such natural bounty, Theroc provided everything the colonists from the generation ship Caillié could possibly want. The people had been delighted to make their home there for the past five years.
    Thara Wen ran through the underbrush tearing branches aside, crashing through the leaves. She screamed, but no one could hear her.
    Thara tripped among the weeds, clawed her way through the branches, dodged around the bole of a huge tree, and stopped for a moment to catch her breath. She clutched her long, ebony hair, which was now tangled with leaves and the fluff of seeds. A small condorfly droned past her face, attracted by the beads of perspiration running down her forehead. It hovered there, staring at her with multifaceted eyes, then thrummed away.
    Shaking with terror, Thara caught her balance against the tree trunk, heaved huge breaths, and then kept running. She longed to hide, but she needed to keep running. She raced deeper into the untracked forest.
    And he kept following.
    Thara wore only a simple shift over her thin body; she had no weapon, though if she had stopped to think about it, she might have found a sharp stick and tried to defend herself. She couldn’t take the time. Each second allowed Sam Roper to get closer.
    He was strong and bloodthirsty, and she didn’t think she could fight him, didn’t want to fight him. He had chased her far from the colony village now, and Thara had no hope that someone would hear and rescue her—she was on her own. His loud voice, sharp as an axe, cut through the thick forest. “Thara Wen, come here, if you know what’s good for you, girl!”
    Roper had short brown hair, broad shoulders, and eyes that never met another’s directly—the sort of person who was always there, but never noticed . . . the sort of person who had far too many secrets. “What are you worried about?” he shouted into the trees. “I won’t hurt you.” He paused for an edgy second, then added, “I promise.”
    He had caught Thara on the outskirts of the village, grabbed her by the arm, pulled her into the trees, but she scratched his face, got away, then took off into the impenetrable Theron wilderness—the wrong direction. She was only fourteen and wasn’t sure exactly what Sam Roper wanted from her; at the moment, it wasn’t important. She could make guesses, but did not want to find out if any of them were correct. All she knew for certain was that her instincts told her to run.
    She burst through a thick barricade of shrubs, barely feeling the thorns cut her bare thighs and arms. In an open meadow, she came upon one of the weed-overgrown cargo-box shuttles that had been dropped down from the Caillié years before. The thick jungle had swiftly reclaimed its territory, and by now vines had crawled up its sides; rust and moss covered the outer plates. No one could fly the craft anymore; the engines had deteriorated due to neglect, but the cargo box’s hatch was partly open, and the dim interior had become a place for small creatures to make their nests.
    Thara ducked inside, desperate for a sheltered place to hide. Armored insects as long as her forearm scuttled out in panic as she pushed her way in, knocking aside blown leaves and forest detritus. Avoiding the shaft of sunlight, she huddled against the hatch.
    In the distance, she could hear Sam Roper still calling her, still taunting her. The man didn’t expect her to respond; he was just doing this to frighten her—and he succeeded. She covered her mouth and her nose to muffle her loud breathing. She drew her knees up to her chin and shrank farther into the shadows, willing him to go away.
    “Nobody out here to help you, you know,” he called. “We’re too far from the village.”
    She froze inside the dim, stifling cargo box, forcing herself to stay as still as she could, but she trembled uncontrollably.
    Earlier that day, Thara