Dark Runner: LodeStar 3.5 Read Online Free PDF Page B

also sent gifts like bottles of Cremarté, packages of charnelle, a chocolate so hot only Serpentians could eat it, and the flame red cashmere robe lying across the foot of Scala’s bunk. Scala leaned to grab the robe and slip it on, sighing with pleasure as the kiss-soft warmth enveloped her skin.
    “As much coffee as you could ever drink,” Kiri said, with a pitiful attempt at a smile in return. “Listen, Scala. I’ve inquired—or at least Joran Stark has inquired for me—he’s a sheriff on Frontiera now, y’know. If you can help me—us—we intend to get you a pardon.”
    A pardon ? What the hells? Scala nearly laughed at the absurdity of such a far-fetched claim. But then her attention snagged on the name Kiri had spoken.,
    “Joran Stark?” Scala asked, her amusement gone. “As in, related to your boyfriend, the man who had me tagged as a criminal in the first place?”
    Kiri winced. “Yes. Logan’s younger brother.”
    Suspicion turned to anger, and it was all Scala could do to sit calmly and not tell Kiri to shove her ‘deal’ into the nearest orifice, preferably the least comfortable. Since she’d gotten herself tangled in a scheme to steal from Logan Stark, she’d been shamed before her peers and the rest of the galaxy, lost the respectability she’d finally managed to grasp, and been thrown into the space version of purgatory, with no one to miss her.
    “What do the mighty Stark brothers want with me?” she sneered.  
    The reminder of the contrast in their stations bit deep and painfully—Kiri had all Stark’s wealth and power at her fingertips, while Scala toiled on an endless caravan of the worst kind of space travel.
    Kiri leaned forward, her gaze full of pain. “Oh, Scala, Logan has disappeared. We believe he may be on Earth II, even back in New Seattle where he came from. But no one can find him.”
    Scala stared, astonished. “Stark has disappeared? You mean he’s been shanghaied? Have you had ransom demands?” The man was certainly wealthy enough to warrant a kidnapping, but he also had a stellar security force that watched over him wherever he went.
    Kiri shook her head. “No, no demands of any kind.”
    Oh, quark. Kidnap attempts went wrong all the time. Maybe there was no longer enough of him to ransom. “What makes you think he’s still alive?” Scala asked as gently as she could.
    “He’s not dead,” Kiri said, her brows snapping together in a fierce scowl. “Commander Navos and his wife Nela know Logan quite well. They’ve been using their Indigon powers. They believe he’s alive. The best information we have says he’s on Earth II. It’s just that ... we can’t find him.”
    “Can’t they go there and search more closely? Hone in on him with their psychic powers, or something?” Indigons had to work at fairly close range, everyone knew that.
    Kiri shook her head. “Nela’s about to give birth and Commander Navos won’t leave her side or allow her to travel. The pregnancy has been difficult.”
    “There must be other Indigons you trust.” Although she wouldn’t trust the intellectual beings any farther than she could kick one. Manipulative and cold as ice, the lot of them.  
    She’d never forget Commander Daron Navos staring down his long nose at her after she’d been arrested, while his psychic power burned an icy laser path through her mind to determine how much she’d known about the attack on the Orion .  
    He’d declared her innocent of mass murder, but not of complicity in attempted theft. Because of his words, she’d been stripped of her guard status and thrown on an IBI transport, where she’d been injected with the chip that guaranteed her alienation from every civilized planet, including her home, Serpentia.  
    She’d hated his kind ever since.  
    “Yes, but there are also a few billion people crowded onto Earth II, and the other Indigons don’t know Logan as well as the Navos’. They might not find him in time.”  
    Forcing her