Forged (Star Breed #10) - Elin Wyn Page 0,6

the plexi, and I watched her, as curious about her as I was about the station I’d been sent to investigate, then she wrapped her arms around her torso and shivered.

“Are you cold?” I asked.

She glanced over her shoulder at me. “I know it’s silly, station temperature is constant no matter where you are. But there’s something about looking into the Void that always chills me just a bit.”

“Here.” I shrugged out of my jacket and wrapped it around her shoulders. It swallowed her, hanging almost to her knees.

“Thanks.” She walked up to the edge of the plexi and pointed. “Do you see here? That swirl of purple and red?”

I stepped closer, watching the planet below, wondering what I was looking at.

“It’s a storm that’s raged for thousands of years, with no signs of slowing down. Everything we do, everything the corps have ever done, is a flicker of time as far as that storm is concerned.” She laughed quietly. “Well, if the storm was aware of anything.”

I watched it for a moment, streaks of what looked like white clouds swirling and crashing with the violence of an alien ocean.

The silence grew between us and I glanced down to find her stifling a yawn.

“You said everybody worked around the clock here?” I carefully placed one hand on her shoulder. “When did your shift start?”

“More hours ago than I’d like to think,” she admitted. “But there are more places I could show you.”

“No, I’ll have my official guide do that.” If he’s ever off babysitting duty, I thought. “If you don’t mind, I’d like to see the workers’ quarters, then we’ll call it a night.”

She tilted her head, eyes narrowed. “I’ll show you the outside of my quarters,” she said dryly. “But that’s it.”

My face burned as I realized how she must’ve interpreted my words. “No!” I blurted. “I mean yes. The outside! That’s all I meant.”

She laughed, handing me my jacket as we left the observation dome and reentered the lift.

Moments later, the door slid open and she bowed forward, arm waving in front of her in a grand gesture. “Our final stop of the tour will be the capsule level D4.”

Both walls of the hallway were divided into a grid, each square a little over a yard on a side, stretching on until the corridor curved out of sight.

A few steps from the lift, Yasmin rested her hand on the wall, and I realized the slight indentations in the surface that ran vertically between each column were a series of ladders.

I glanced down the hall again, calculating.

“These are all micro capsules? How many workers does the station hold?”

“Only a few thousand,” she said, shrugging “It’s not that there’s so many on the station, they just don’t have much space to allocate for workers’ quarters.”

That was interesting.

On a station this size?

They could have raw materials and fabricators stacked in a dozen cargo bays and still have plenty of room left over.

What did they need the extra space for?

Yasmin

“Work, dammit,” I whispered as I pressed against the side of the corridor.

Usually, no one came down to the observation dome.

But with my luck, tonight would be the night someone decided to move the party out of the hub.

For the fourth time, I swiped the hastily cloned access card across the reader. I’d never tried to use the cloner without watching my hands before, but Hakon had been only mildly interested in the gas planet below.

A twinge of guilt and regret ran through me. He’d seemed like a nice man.

No. That wasn’t exactly right.

He seemed like a dangerous man, but with a sense of honor.

Someone I might have liked getting to know, once upon a time.

But time wasn’t something I had a lot of anymore.

And certainly not right now.

PING!

“Dammit,” I whispered.

But no one seemed to notice the happy chime of the secondary control room as it slid open for my illicit explorations.

I hurried inside, sliding the door closed behind me and studying the control panel.

Not one I was used to, but I’d be able to figure it out easily enough.

First step, block any notification that the access point was in operation. Commander Serrup ran a sloppy station, but Alcyon was no slouch.

If it hadn’t been for his over-the-top security protocols, I would’ve been finished with this mission months ago instead of trapped here, making endless widgets while I looked for a way into the company’s records.

Task completed, I started carefully working through the files, learning their structure.

Orders for parts and fabrications, internal comms