The Betwixt Book One Read Online Free Page B

the answer.
    ‘ Ghost ship?’
    ‘ It's a term for a ship that's found drifting without a
crew—’
    I knew what a ghost ship was, but I wasn't about to interrupt
him when he was forming sentences of longer the four
words.
    ‘ It floated in at 0800 this morning. Distress signal hadn't
been activated, life support was functioning, scans didn't show
anything wrong with the engine core. She was in order.’
    ‘ Well,’ I caught a hold of my ponytail and twisted it,
surprised to see Cole's eyes flick to it before flicking away.
‘Couldn't the crew have just escaped in the life pods? Perhaps
they—’
    ‘ Escape pods are still on the ship. She was a cargo ship, and
the computer records show she made her last contact at 0730 this
morning. Only half an hour before she was found, abandoned,
drifting in space.’
    My hands stopped twisting my hair. ‘Maybe it was pirates,
maybe they faked the contact —’
    ‘ Where was their ship, where did they escape to? Long-range
scans have confirmed that ship was alone out there, no vessels
within range, except for the one that found her,’ the Commander
interrupted again.
    ‘ Well . . . perhaps someone remotely accessed
their com-link, made it look like they were on board when they were
systems away?’
    Commander Cole's half-smile was firmly tugging at one side of
his jaw. It wasn't clear whether he found my suggestions amusing,
ridiculous, or cute. ‘Now why would someone bother doing that? She
was a freighter, cargo was space junk being taken to the recycling
depot at Central. Worthless.’
    I parted my lips, waiting for another objection to come to
mind, but nothing came. And the Commander's half-smile was starting
to get me more and more flustered. ‘Well, what does everyone think
it is then? Pirates, a malfunction, a—’
    ‘ Twixts,’ the Crag rumbled from beside the Commander, and I
jumped just a little at his unexpected boom.
    The Commander gave a brief laugh. ‘Twixts? Doesn't sound like
something a Crag warrior would suggest.’
    ‘ Crew's gone. No way off that ship. Not pirates, not mercs, not
anything. Twixts.’
    Commander Cole shook his head, but I was curious to note that
his face had become stiffer, his lips barely moving.
    ‘ What's a Twicks?’ I was starting to show my alarming lack of
knowledge in front of the Commander again. For a girl who worked in
a space diner, my knowledge of the galaxy was barely enough to get
by. Blame it on not having parents, or growing up in isolation –
but I didn't follow half of the conversations that would flow
through this diner.
    ‘ Twixts,’ the Commander corrected, ‘and they're nothing, a
fairytale designed—’
    The Crag snorted, and it sounded like an elephant sneezing.
‘We call them the Death Shadows. Can't see them till it's too
late.’
    Listening to a Crag talk about anything at all was usually
dramatic, but the menace this one put behind his words sent a
palpable shiver across my back. It felt like the frozen depths of
space collecting down my spine. ‘Shadows?’ I repeated, voice an
appropriate whisper.
    ‘ Worse than shadows. Can see shadows. These are between things,
in the gaps between.’
    A part of me knew I shouldn't be so accepting of the Crag's
show, but the rest of me was shaking behind my tightly tied apron.
Perhaps the Commander could see, because he leaned in
closer.
    ‘ Ignore him, it's a myth. It's some story space bums and
recruits throw around to scare themselves on long voyages. Only
thing you have to worry about in this galaxy are pirates, scum, and
rogues. Which is enough.’
    But I was stuck on something. I honestly felt like the world
had solidified either side of me and was funneling me forward with
no option to turn back. ‘They exist between things?’
    ‘ Can't see em, can't fight em,’ the Crag bit into the last bit
of rotting flesh from his meal, and the juices of it splashed onto
his stained vest, ‘ then you're dead.’
    ‘ But, but where did the bodies go