Asarlai Wars 1: Warrior Wench Read Online Free

with a clawed hand as if Vas was going to take them back.
    “Will take hours. You come back when I done.”
    Vas shrugged and walked back to the only chair in the lobby. “I’ll just wait here, thank you.” She popped open the food container and smiled as the lovely fish odor filled the room.
    “You can no eat here!”
    The squeal at the end was interesting; Vas didn’t think that the series two translators could make that sound. She grinned and bit into the perfectly cooked fish. It was just luck she got a Dliari. Her eating fish would be a vulgar insult to a member of that sea born species.
    “But I have to wait for you to find my codes.” She gave a shrug. “I can’t leave until I get them.”
    The Dliari swore something the translator couldn’t handle, and vanished into the back room.
    Vas was just licking the last of the fried fish off of her fingers when the Dliari returned. She pushed the files back across the counter.
    “There. You go.”
    Vas smiled. It seemed that everyone she encountered on this station wanted her to leave. And she was more than happy to give them what they wanted.
    “Thank you so much.” She checked the codes. They looked correct and the time stamp was good. With another smile, Vas tucked the files into her inner pocket and left the office.
    She was congratulating herself on the quickest bureaucrat interaction she’d ever had when a man lunged out of a maintenance corridor and slammed into her. The collision knocked both of them to the decking, her arms and legs tangling with his. Struggling to her feet, she considered ripping him a new one for his clumsiness, but was stopped by the look his face. His blue eyes were rimmed in white and beads of sweat ran down his face as he stared at the corridor he’d just run out of. His eyes held the panic of a man ready to jump out an airlock without a suit to get away from whatever pursued him. With a whimper, he scrambled to his feet and bolted away. Vas let her hand drift toward the butt of her blaster as she methodically—and with practiced caution—turned toward the service corridor that had ejected her clumsy assailant into her path.
    Leading with the muzzle of her blaster, she took three steps into the corridor. The barren gray walls were unremarkable and the empty corridor didn’t give her a clue as to what had caused that flyboy to flee.
    Shaking her head at yet another delay, she holstered her blaster into the gun belt then continued toward the shuttle. Thoughts of her difficult crew filled her mind as she marched through the empty corridors toward the shuttle dock. For their sakes, they all better be in the same spot. She slapped at the shuttle’s airlock control and strode onboard.
    She tried to contact her second-in-command as soon as she landed the shuttle on the planet, but he didn’t answer his comm. She briefly thought about contacting her other officers, but she wanted Deven to know about the ship first. Telepaths got touchy when others knew about things they felt they should know first.
    The days and nights on Tarantus IV went faster than her internal clock; one reason she would never pick this for a vacation spot. Although it felt like early afternoon to her, night had already fallen on this part of the small planet and the Lucky Strike space station gleamed like a third moon in the desert air. Her crew should just be getting up and about now.
    Loud gambling halls, with daylight-mimicking lights, were another reason for her dislike of this world. Tarantus IV had even less to offer for survival than her own unlamented home world. But thanks to an ingenious miner six hundred years ago, it had gambling—lots of gambling—the types of gambling that were illegal everywhere else.
    She hated gambling. Her money was earned at the cost of lives. The idea of wasting that money didn’t set right with her.
    The cool night air smelled fresh and clean once she got away from the landing pad. That is, until she approached the mass of