Darkship Renegades Read Online Free Page A

Eden. It shouldn’t have. Underground houses have never quite taken on Earth for two reasons: first, because humans prefer natural light if they can get it; and second, because even with the most high-tech materials, it was truly impossible to make anything underground completely proof against the inevitable leaks. Construction on Earth was, ultimately, bound by the dictum that water flows downhill.
    On Eden, water didn’t flow anywhere unless you paid for it to flow. Everything was underground—or everything above ground, however you chose to look at it—since everyone lived inside an asteroid and sunlight could be piped in anywhere. That meant that everyone lived at various levels. There was no reason to have the house at street level. So, most people didn’t. They burrowed under the plot—real estate contracts were for cubic space, not linear—and left a garden or a pasture or an orchard above.
    We opened the door artfully concealed by rose bushes and went down a staircase enclosed in walls with niches, where fragrant plants grew. Entering the Denovo house involved going through a riot of smells, a symphony of perfume. Most of the time, just coming home made me feel better. Not this time.
    Despite what Kit had said, about this being the safest alternative, it didn’t make it a safe alternative. He’d never said he’d be perfectly fine. That was because he couldn’t be sure, and my darling hated to lie.
    It all felt wrong. I loved the Denovos, who had taken me into their family as if it were perfectly normal for one’s son to bring home barely controlled human wrecking balls born and raised on Earth. But they were Kit’s family before they were mine. And he should be here with me, when I came back. The fact he wasn’t was at least partly my fault.
    At the end of the entrance tunnel opened a small hall, which led into a much larger hall. The Denovo compound didn’t look like any normal house on Earth. It was closer to a public park—with an even carpet of grass underneath, plants everywhere, and even the occasional statue. Though they had sofas and chairs in other rooms, in the public areas people mostly flopped down to the grass floor, children and adults alike, reclining to eat or to work. Little robots I called “turtles” roamed around picking any object left out of place and cleaning it or returning it to where it was supposed to be.
    I was never sure that what was underfoot was really grass. It felt like it: cool, soft and alive. I was sure on the alive part, because Kit had once made a comment that any crumbs dropped or even skin cells sloughed off would get eaten by the floor covering. But, unlike grass, the carpet didn’t seem to grow on dirt, but on some cushiony surface that gave and adapted under one’s weight. And it never needed mowing.
    This time, the entire Denovo family, or at least all the adults, were crammed into the tiny front hall to receive me. There was Kit’s eldest sister, Anne, old enough to be his mother, who was a navigator by bioengineering and profession. Next to her was her husband, Bruno, a tall, olive-skinned man, with dark brown Cat eyes.
    Then there was Kath’s Navigator Eber, a man so well grounded, so thoroughly calm and self-contained that people often wondered—sometimes even in Kath’s hearing—why she didn’t roll over him and completely silence him. But she didn’t. I’d known them now long enough to realize there was a fund of extreme stubbornness in Eber that was a perfect match for Kath’s more ebullient forcefulness.
    Standing just behind him were Kit’s parents. Jean—his name was pronounced Je-ahn in the ancient French way and routinely butchered by strangers—looked a lot like an older, male version of Kath, but was one of those people who always gave the impression of being quietly sure of themselves. So quietly sure that they didn’t need to project outward, or make a big fuss out of anything.
    Not implying that he was smug. He wasn’t. He