Astra: Synchronicity Read Online Free PDF

to ask for
help, especially when she needed it most. So he snatched it away
from her and with considerable effort cracked the vacuum seal
before handing it back to her.
    "Thanks." She offered him a smile before
taking a sip. "Do you want to go diving at Blue Hole on Monterray
next month? I hear there's a toilet at the bottom."
    "That depends. Will you be diving in just
your bikini again?"
    She smirked. "It's the only way I know
how."
    He hated diving. During an advanced diving
course, his regulator decided to stick 100 meters below the
surface, and while the disaster didn't give him the bends, it did
scare the shit out of him. The incident still gave him nightmares.
He endured the hobby because of her.
    The two had been friends since their Academy
days. Every year, she bought him a knife for his birthday to add to
his gargantuan collection. She flirted with everyone and never
apologized for it. And for some reason they never drifted apart—odd
for a man who preferred solitude.
    The wind caught a puff of his smoke and blew
it in her face. She fanned the odor away and coughed. "I don't know
how you can smoke those things. You know you're killing yourself,
right?"
    Rashad smiled after taking a long drag. "I
don't want to live forever. Anyone who does is either too young or
too stupid to know better."
    "Yeah? So what about psions? You've seen the
pictures of Aliane that show she hasn't aged a day since the
Exodus, right?"
    "I couldn't live like that. I'd blow my damn
head off. All of those mind-rapers are soulless monsters. Every
single last one of them, and if I had the opportunity to kill them
all, by Astra I would." His hate for the psions penetrated his soul
to its core. At their best they were nothing but trouble, strumming
chords of anxiety in every human settlement. And at their worst
they were murderers.
    "Who exactly are we waiting for? Do you
know?"
    The commander threw what remained of his
cigarette to the ground and used the toe of his boot to crush it
into the snow. "The second lady of Chara. That's why we landed on
this damn planet."
    She clenched her brow. "Isn't she a
psion?"
    A transport rounded a corner and approached
them from the direction of the capitol. Flags of the UE adorned the
sides of it, like all their presidential vehicles. Dark windows
obscured their view of the passengers. It hovered over the lot
toward them and came to a halt twenty meters away.
    "Yes," Rashad said as the doors of the
transport opened. "Yes, she is."
    Nadine Taylor stepped out of the vehicle, and
several officers of the Royal Guard followed her with an arsenal of
suitcases. She wore a white overcoat to shield her from the wind as
she teetered toward them on yellow heels. Her expression conveyed a
sense of perfect serenity. Or contempt.
    Nothing about the woman struck him as normal.
Her intense make-up enhanced her ghostly pallor, making her look a
shade more alive than the snowy earth. She might have been
beautiful if she'd lived five hundred years ago during an era that
valued appearances more than substance.
    She stopped near Rashad and Carmen while the
guardsmen continued onto the ship; they set the bags down in the
aft hold before returning to the transport. He clenched his jaw and
stared at the ground, where he dug through the snow to the mud
below. No one spoke until the three were alone.
    She flipped up her dark sunglasses and handed
Rashad a comtab. Her scarlet nails reminded him of daggers dipped
in fresh blood. "I'm expected back in Northampton as soon as
possible."
    He scrolled through the information. "I'm not
heading to Chara. I'm supposed to be on Pisa tomorrow for a pick-up
before heading out to the Vega system. This delays it until next
week."
    "I didn't make the schedule," Nadine said and
combed back an errant hair to the black crown of sleek curls
adorning her head.
    "As long as it doesn't conflict with AC
time-tables, I'll do what I can." He handed the computer tablet off
to Carmen.
    "It's been authorized by the