Darkship Renegades Read Online Free

watched over by his father, Jean—were also hers.
    Kath looked nothing like Kit. This made sense, when you realized he’d been adopted in utero and was no biological relation. Of course, they both had Cat eyes, hers in dark blue. She now lowered her eyelids halfway as she drove unerringly through the confusion of traffic in Eden Center, where flyers crisscrossed at all altitudes and in every possible path.
    I confess that when I’d first come to Eden, I was horrified that they had no traffic regulations at all, no beacons tracking altitude, no enforcement of any kind. Of course, how could they have those when they didn’t have anything resembling authority? But still, I expected that they’d have accidents every three seconds. I’d swear that we barely escaped being smashed into about ten times on any run through Center. But it turned out accidents were very rare. Kit said it was because other people were actively trying not to hit us or be hit by us.
    So, I knew this, mentally. But I couldn’t make my gut believe it. Going through the chaos of Eden Center felt like it should be lethal and I had trouble nerving myself to fly it. But Kath and Kit could do it without even giving it full attention.
    Kath seemed to be deep in thought, though not about driving, something that happened more or less automatically, as her hands tapped lightly on the controls as we dipped and soared. I suppose once you drive a powerpod collection ship through the explosive coils of the powertree ring, driving through Eden is child’s play. “I agree with you,” she said, “on his dying screaming, but perhaps it is actually impossible to strangle a man with that part of his anatomy.” She gave me a sheepish look. “I don’t think it has enough elasticity.”
    I tried to smile, but it wouldn’t quite gel. I made myself clasp my knees, instead of balling my hands into fists, but I suspected my fingers were leaving marks on my knees through the fabric of my pants. “What is his name?” I asked.
    “Who? The president of the Energy Board?” she asked.
    “Is that who Blondie is?”
    A fleeting smile, while she brought us out of the traffic, and took one of the side streets. No. One of the side tunnels , only it didn’t look like it, because the tunnel was broad and showed neatly planted gardens and plots on either side of the road. Each of the gardens and plots would hide an entrance tunnel. Eden’s houses were always dug down or into the raw rock of the asteroid, from the tunnels that served as streets. Made logical sense, in an environment where rain and leakage were no danger.
    Above, the stone was masked by a convincing holographic rendition of a sky with fluffy clouds. It turned out humans reacted better to that than to being enclosed in rock. “I like Blondie as a name for him, though it might give the impression he’ll be easy to defeat. He won’t. There’s poured dimatough under the patrician good looks.”
    “I gathered,” I said drily.
    “His name is Fergus Castaneda,” Kath said. “And his family have been members of the Energy Board for as long as Eden has been Eden, though usually in minor positions. He’s the first Castaneda to be president of the board.”
    I absorbed this. It made a certain sense. Perhaps his resemblance to Caesar wasn’t simply external. When you ask why people do things and your only answer is “money,” you miss that more people want power than money. To many people, power is an aphrodisiac that money could never be. In fact, to many, if not most people, money is a way to power, not the other way around.
    “I still want him to die screaming,” I said, sullenly.
    “But only after he screams a long, long time,” Kath agreed dreamily. She drove down the street, turned into another street, which brought us to the profuse and spacious garden that covered the Denovo compound.
    This idea of gardens covering the entire plot, with the house underneath, had puzzled me when I’d first come to