Greenshift Read Online Free

subtle scent which reminded her of green tea leaves. She’d do anything
to have him close enough to smell right now and far away from the threatening
contractors.
    “You should be nicer, a
little more respectful,” she chided Sean, but her speech was slow and
pitchy, no longer able to hide her apprehension.
    “Why?” Sean asked.
“Because he’s my elder?”
    She thought she caught a twitch
at the edge of Sean’s mouth. So maybe he was teasing her, trying to take
her mind off the escalating scene in front of them.
    “ Because ,” she
said. “He convinced the dockmaster to give us a berth space even though
Shiraz wanted to put us off for another week.”
    Sean remained unimpressed.
    “We could have
starved.”
    “We wouldn’t have
starved,” Sean said in that apathetic tone that he knew irritated her.
    He was probably right, though,
considering the number of small docks within a few hours’ ride via a
terrestrial or aquatic transport. “Well, we would have had to shuttle all
of this stuff hundreds of kilometers. Or buy all new supplies, and some of us
don’t have a lot of money to spare.”
    Sean didn’t say anything to that,
having spotted her for the rent on her suite for the second month in a row.
    “Besides, this berth is
nice. So close to all the activity that we don’t even need to take a transport
or monorail to be in the middle of it all. It’s just a walk or a ferry ride away.”
    Then she added, “David’s
just a little older than you.” Which was a stretch because Sean was around
thirty or thirty-five or something, and David’s formal Embassy bio put him four
months shy of sixty, though most people wouldn’t have guessed it by looking at
him.
    “Try twice as old as me.”
    “He’s not even middle age,
and have you seen him with his shirt off?”
    Sean’s expression said that that was
the last thing he was thinking about.
    “His body is fantastic.”
She couldn’t stop the volley of nervous words coming out of her mouth. “I
guess the physique is an inherited Armadan trait. We didn’t have any Armadans
around where I grew up. Geir was the first Armadan I ever met, although he
isn’t as muscled as David, so maybe it’s the military training. Do you know why
Geir became a scientist instead of joining the fleet? That’s more of a
Socialite job. I never wondered about that until David came on board.”
    Sean’s posture tensed as the
latest arrivals strode closer to David.
    “I know you’re itching to be
in on this fight,” Mari said. “Why don’t you go over there? David
would probably appreciate the back up.” Though maybe he didn’t need any
just yet, the way the contractors stayed out of his reach.
    When David raised his voice and
an arm in objection to something the closest man said to him, all four
contractors casually pulled their cenders from their thigh holsters and held
the weapons at their sides.
    Mari nudged Sean’s arm.
“Okay, you really should go over.”
    “One more person in the mix
won’t be good for anyone. Besides, David knows they won’t fire their
cenders,” Sean said.
    “How does he know that? How
do you know that?”
    “Too many voyeurs hanging
around and taking in the action.” He gestured to the half dozen small
floating balls of telescoping cameras and directional microphones that gathered
in a circle above the uneasy scene.
    A white gull attempted to land on
one voyeur which had been hovering patiently over the area, but the bird
thought better of it when two cameras extended from the voyeur in a fast snap.
    Giant Media screens perched above
the docks from well-positioned kiosks picked up the live feed and broadcasted
the confrontation for not only those within the immediate vicinity, but also on
several channels across the system. Had Mari’s family been tuned into these
particular channels out of the millions available, they would be able to see
the man she was so enthralled with—thick, dark hair, prominent jawline, and
long legs