Alien Shores (A Fenris Novel, Book 2) Read Online Free

tell.”
    Cyrus watched the monitoring device. The Attack Talon was teardrop shaped and at the edge of the scanner’s range. The needle-ship was hardly bigger than the dot and almost touched the huge mass of Jassac.
    “How much time until we reach the moon?” Cyrus asked.
    Skar tapped the controls, reading alien symbols. “We should reach the atmosphere in another two hours.”
    “How about if we don’t bother braking first?” Cyrus asked.
    Skar’s head twitched. “I have computed for a meteoric landing.”
    “Uh . . .” Cyrus had to decipher mentally for the idiom again. “Oh, okay, you mean we’re going to slash into the atmosphere as we descend at high speed?”
    “That is a possibility,” Skar said.
    “What is? Why don’t you make sense for once?”
    “One possibility is that we will slash into the atmosphere like a meteor,” Skar said. “The other is that we will skip like a stone off water and head back out into space.”
    This isn’t good at all . Cyrus scratched his left cheek. The situation had turned ugly fast. Maybe Skar was right with his decision. It was time to gamble with their lives because capture likely ended everything. In other words, it would be better to burn up in the atmosphere than to let the Kresh grab them. The aliens had things like agonizers and mind extractors.
    Cyrus suppressed a shudder and squinted at the dot on the scanner, at the missile already gaining on the needle-ship. “I’d have figured they would want to capture us. The way they’re doing it now—”
    The comm unit squawked, signaling a caller. Were psi-masters somehow reading his thoughts?
    Skar’s left index finger hovered over a receive switch on the screen. “What should I do?” he asked.
    Cyrus had been through this before on Teleship Discovery . The aliens had hailed them, and when the captain had opened channels, he had made it a thousand times easier for the enemy psi-masters to mind attack Discovery ’s crew. Somehow, the comm signals helped the telepaths. The psi-masters liked to freeze people, as they had just done to Skar a moment ago, or put them to sleep. What should he do? What was the best decision?
    Cyrus hated indecision. It was death during a knife fight. He knew how to play it then with the flash of vibrating steel. Now . . . if he answered, it might amplify another psi-assault. If he ignored them, the missile would keep gaining on the ship.
    “What should I do?” Skar asked.
    “Can you answer without putting them on the screen?”
    “Of course,” Skar said.
    Cyrus bit his lower lip. Capture was the worst scenario. Dying came in as a bad second. If he died, Earth would never learn about the Kresh. Earth had to learn or . . . what? If the Kresh got the jump on the solar system, that might mean the end of free humanity.
    “Let’s roll the dice,” Cyrus said.
    Skar gave him a look of incomprehension.
    “It’s not so fun when the shoe is on the other foot, is it?” Cyrus asked.
    “I do not understand you,” Skar said. “What should I do concerning the comm hail?”
    “Answer it,” Cyrus said. “Let’s see what they want.”
    Skar tapped “Receive,” but the comm unit simply hissed with noise. The soldier hunched over the panel, adjusting the controls.
    Cyrus tried to relax. He had to keep rolling his shoulders as he waited for another psi-attack. The null was a superb tactic, especially for someone of his limited abilities. If he’d been Venice or Jasper—
    The hissing quit and a man’s voice came online. “You must immediately cease acceleration and await a boarding party.”
    Skar stiffened.
    How did they get to him so fast? I didn’t even feel the psi-attack this time . What happened?
    “You have launched a missile at our vessel,” Skar said, hotly. “That is an aggressive enemy action. Detonate the missile and give us a reason why we should comply with your demand.”
    Oh. Skar isn’t being controlled, he’s just angry .
    “You fool,” the man said.