Tor (Women of Earth Book 2) Read Online Free

after.
    The battering of pebbles suddenly stopped. Feeling a slight change in course, Wynne opened her eyes and forced herself to look up and out into the great beyond. If it wasn't so frightening, it would be beautiful. It wasn't dark at all. The sky around her was bright with sunlight and directly ahead was the round ball of what had to be a planet. Darkness hid almost half of it. The rest was a mass of blue with indistinct spots of greens and browns. Clouds swirled around it and for a moment her heart leapt. She was going home.
    Her heart sank just as quickly. Whatever that round ball was, it wasn't Earth. They were days away from Earth and she hadn't been unconscious for long. She wasn't hungry or thirsty. She barely had to pee.
    She began to take stock of her coffin. It was small, but nowhere near as small as a burial container. Her seat was comfortable. The ergonomic support shifted with her when she moved and the dead wouldn't need to be strapped in. She tried to sit up and the seat moved with her. She wasn't upright, but her hands were now in reach of a control panel that spread across a dashboard just above her knees. There were other controls to her side.
    Convinced now that her casket was an escape pod, Wynne laced her fingers together in her lap, suddenly afraid she might inadvertently touch something she shouldn't. There was nothing like a steering wheel or joy stick, so the capsule had to be on some kind of autopilot. The question was to where and what kind of beings would she meet when she got there. There were a half dozen different types of beings on the Godan military base in Sector 3. She'd seen another dozen on board the Romer II. All that she'd met were cordial if not friendly, but according to Mohawk, the galaxy's inhabitants were much like Earth's; some good and some bad, and most falling somewhere in between.
    What if she was heading toward a planet of Hahnshin? They were the alien creatures that first invaded Earth and they weren't very nice at all. They killed everyone who stood in their way. And what about those awful people on the Romer II? How were they any better than the Hahnshin? What if they were all like... Prince Charming?
    He was one of them, wasn't he? Even though he'd probably saved her life, he was one of the bad guys, right? Good guys don't carry severed hands in their bags. And why did he save her life, anyway? What kind of horrible plans did he have for her?
    The seat slid back into its original position. The straps holding the padded square over her chest tightened and a soft, feminine voice spoke behind her ear.
    "Prepare for atmospheric entry."
    Prepare? How?
    Wynne stopped thinking about anything at all when the nose of her capsule burst into flames and she was suddenly engulfed in blinding white light. By the time she realized the light had no real effect on her sight or the interior of the capsule, it was all over.
    "Atmospheric entry complete. Prepare for landing."
    Really? Because that planet still looked pretty far away. Again, what was she supposed to do to prepare? She watched the ground become clearer as the pod sped toward it. No, not ground, but water, an ocean's worth of water.
    "But I can't swim!" she screeched.
    As if the control console heard her nonsensical cry, the capsule changed course to skim over the surface, but Wynne could see nothing but blue sky. Blue meant air, didn't it? Her school days seemed so long ago, but she remembered something about color spectrums and light waves scattering through molecules of air.
    This time, leaning forward wouldn't move the seat. Wynne tried to unlatch the harness that held her in place, but couldn't do that either. By pushing forward and craning her neck, she managed to peek over the edge of the pod. All she saw was water. For miles and miles to either side of her stretched a blue-green ocean of rippling water. Far ahead along the horizon, she saw the contours of a sleeping giant; the head, nose, and chin clearly formed in