Scattered Suns Read Online Free Page A

nearest emergency station and grabbed masks, tugging the straps to secure them firmly over mouth and nose. Hands on his hips, Crim grumbled through the mask, “Even if he did manage to distract them for more than a nanosecond, none of our evacuation ships could outrun those EDF vessels.”
    True to his word, Admiral Stromo responded with deadly force. Two jazer beams lanced out from the Manta, played across the small ship’s hull, and ripped it open.
    “Shelby,” Crim mumbled in disgust as his wife moaned. “The man wasn’t fit for recycling. Now he’s made it worse for all of us.”
    Nikko grabbed his mother’s arm. “I’ve got the Aquarius . It won’t take many people, but we can still—”
    Marla turned an intense, determined look on her son. “You’ve got the wentals aboard, Nikko. You have to get away. Think what the Big Goose might do if they got their hands on something like that.”
    “Probably pour them down the drain,” Crim said with a snort.
    Incensed by Shelby’s ineffective harassment, the EDF invaders fired a single jazer pulse at the main greenhouse dome. It was probably meant to be a warning shot, but the beam ruptured the armored glass.
    The wave of explosive decompression sent a thump through the dome. A hurricane of escaping atmosphere ripped plant trays and hydroponics tanks off their racks. Nikko’s ears popped. The wave of cold struck him like a sledgehammer. The air grew thinner with stomach-lurching rapidity.
    Air geysered into space with the force of a rocket engine, sufficient to nudge the greenhouse asteroid off its rotational axis. Thrown to their hands and knees, agricultural workers cried out in dismay.
    Caught in the vortex of escaping atmosphere, the aerogel clouds spun, clumped together, and then covered the blasted opening. The polymers and resins that made up the ultralight material broke down upon exposure to vacuum; like gauze packed into a wound, the artificial clouds filled the rupture, providing enough protection for the people to survive. The seal was imperfect, though, and leaking air shrieked through gaps in the aerogel plug.
    Crim saw many of his plants already withering, the pots tumbled about as if a giant hand had scattered them. His angry curses were drowned out by loud alarms in the thinning air.
    Marla pushed Nikko urgently away. “Run to your ship. Don’t wait for anybody. Just fly out of here and take the wentals. Take the wentals!”
    “I can’t just leave you here! Come with me—”
    “We need to stay with our people.” Marla gestured to the Roamers around them. “But you’re too important.”
    “Then let me gather a group. I can fit maybe a dozen or so aboard—”
    “You’ve got a responsibility.” His father cut him off as shadows of more EDF ships closed in overhead. “Seems to me that if you lose even a minute, you’ll never get out of here.”
    Marla met her son’s flustered expression. “Don’t worry, the Eddies have to take us somewhere. At least we’ll find out what happened to all the POWs from Rendezvous and Hurricane Depot.”
    When Nikko still hesitated, his father bellowed, “Go now, Nikko—and don’t let us down.”
    In the low gravity, flashing lights, and shrieking wind, Nikko ran.
     
    Chapter 3—KING PETER

    Despite the newsnet footage of the “triumphant destruction” of Rendezvous and the gala celebration of the EDF victory, King Peter did not see much cause for joy. General Lanyan was beating his chest, proclaiming a clean and decisive win, but it was in a battle that had never needed to be fought. Peter knew that from the inside, but no one in the Hansa government had listened to his objections. After all, he was only the King .
    Riled up, the Hansa citizens had been primed by months of skewed coverage, reports, and rumors that painted the Roamers as shifty, unreliable, greedy. No reason had been given for the clans’ refusal to provide stardrive fuel to the war effort, though Peter knew that the Roamers