Condemned (Death Planet Book 1) Read Online Free Page B

her taste. Ballbreaker , damn right. But 'hand over the eCreds or you'll answer to Alison'? Who'd be crapping their pants when you said that? 'Hand it over, or you'll answer to Brunhilde'... that worked.
    The city of Nova Stalingrad had quaked in fear at the very mention of her name, and crowds had parted when they saw her approach. Until the day someone feared too much, and turned her in to PubSafe for dozens of murders.
    Some of which, she’d actually done.
    Oh, she'd like to find him. Not to rip his head off, though. She'd start by ripping off the toes and fingers, one by one, then move on to his balls, and anything else she could find to detach.
    The head would be the last part to go.
    But that was the future. Something to look forward to. Right now, this planet's sun was setting behind the mountains, and their long, rugged shadows stretched across the landscape around her. She needed a place to spend the night. And food. And water. And a job. On a world full of criminals, there had to be demand for a girl with experience in the punishment and persuasion business. If those idiots who attacked her pod were anything to go by, it would be an easy job, too. Smack a few heads, and she'd be running the whole planet in a year.
    A drone buzzed around her face like a giant mosquito, the dark eyes of its cameras and sensors staring at her as she moved. She swung her big, furry paws toward it, and it dodged away, circling just out of arm's reach. It was bad enough that the fuckers were watching everything through her own senses with the skulltop recordings, without following her everywhere.
    She turned toward it and raised one finger.
    “Stick that in your props, metalsucker.”
    The drone's whine grew louder as the fans spun up, and it rose into the sky above her, keeping a safer distance. She raised a paw to shade her eyes from the glare of the sun. It glittered on the ocean waves a few kilometres to her right, and shone from a wide river running down from the mountains. If there was a town, that was where she would build it, down by the river with lots of water, and a harbour for transport. Just made sense.
    A faint trail of smoke rose in the distance. She squinted and followed it down toward the ground. Some brown, rectangular objects stood out on the riverbank against the black of the plain and foothills. And was that a wooden wall around them?
    Worth a look.
    A muffled, high-pitched noise floated toward her from the wood to her right. Someone yelling? She twisted her ears that way. It definitely sounded like someone yelling. The shitheads must have found some other poor bastard to capture. Probably just torturing them.
    It was none of her business. She strolled on.
    There it was again. Sounded more like a call for help than a fight. It was probably a trap. Sure to be. She should just leave them, and find a safe place to sleep. If the fucking racket didn’t keep her up all night. They yelled again.
    Crap.
    She trudged into the trees, toward the noise. At least the rain had stopped. Her fur had stuck to her skin where the storm had soaked it through, and the water sucked the heat from her body as the air cooled. She needed a nice fire to dry herself out.
    She also needed a new outfit. This ugly orange jumpsuit was a liability. Not only would they see it from a mile away, but it marked her as a new arrival, easy meat for the locals... if she wasn't half-bear, and over two hundred kilos, with claws that could rip a normal man's throat apart with one blow.
    Ah, screw it. She had fur. What did she need the suit for? Her claws made short work of the cloth, and she tossed it aside. Her naked body would be much harder to see in the woods.
    Something dripped on her head. More bastard rain. She reached up and wiped it away, then glanced at her paw. A faint red smear covered the fur. She looked up. A dead hunter’s wide eyes stared down between a long beard and scraggly mop of hair matted with blood. His arms and legs hung loose, and a