Dark Space Read Online Free PDF Page A

I’m sorry.”
    Alara shook her head. “No, you’re wrong, there is another option.”
    Before Ethan realized what she meant, she’d slapped the control panel, and the inner airlock door was cycling shut.
    Ethan lunged for the narrowing gap, but airlock doors were made to open and shut quickly, and he wasn’t about to risk having an arm chopped off for his trouble. So instead, he devoted himself to the control panel on the inside of the airlock, but as soon as he tried to key it open with his password, it spat out an error message and beeped angrily at him. With a dawning horror he realized his mistake. He’d thought Alara’s silence along the way had been out of sadness, but hers had been a vindictive silence, and somehow, when he hadn’t been looking, Alara had changed the ship’s entry codes. He tried waving his wrist over the identichip scanner, but the control panel sounded with another error beep.
    Ethan looked up to see Alara smiling and waving at him through the small square of transpiranium set in the top of the airlock door. He pounded on it with his fists. “Let me out!”
    She cocked her head and regarded him dubiously. “Are you sure?” she mouthed. The airlock was soundproof.
    Ethan gritted his teeth and hit the door one more time for emphasis. The dull thud of his fist echoed through the ship, and abruptly Alara seemed to make up her mind. She tapped another sequence into the airlock controls, and the outer door cycled open. Alara gestured to it meaningfully, and he scowled back at her.
    She was stealing his ship. He couldn’t believe it! It wouldn’t get her anywhere, though. Even selling it, he wouldn’t have been able to pay off the entire debt to Brondi, and he’d been willing to use the entire sum of money to pay off Alara’s half of the debt, so this really wasn’t any different to him, except that now he didn’t need to find a buyer and haggle for a decent price. He’d miss some of his personal belongings, but he didn’t have a lot of those. As a prisoner on Etaris, he’d gotten used to keeping all the important stuff with him in the old brown travel bag which was already slung over his shoulder.
    Ethan cast a quick look to the open airlock behind him and the waiting docking tube, then he turned back to Alara, pursed his lips, and nodded. If that’s the way she wants it, fine. He gave her a curt salute, and then turned and walked away.
    Chapter 4
     

    E than didn’t look back. Alara hadn’t expected him to, but if he had, he would have seen the tears running down her cheeks, and then maybe he would have understood that she wasn’t being hateful or spiteful; she was trying to save him from himself. He’d catch up with her later, after he realized what a mistake he was making, and then she’d return his ship to him, and they’d go on as they always had—
    Together.
    When Ethan disappeared from sight, Alara turned and walked back through the ship. Rather than go to the cockpit and fly off immediately, she went to the lounge and lay down on the sofa bed to quiet her racing thoughts.
    What have I done? was the first thought which ran around in circles in her brain. He’ll be back, was the second. And with that thought, she managed to calm herself enough to fall into a troubled sleep.
    * * *

    Once Ethan started down a road, he never looked back. It was looking forward he sometimes had trouble with—whether that meant moving on from his wife, Destra, or simply looking to the future with something more than abject pessimism. He hadn’t always been like that, but being sent to the mines of Etaris, ripped away from his wife and son, and being forced to face facts with a life sentence for smuggling stims, Ethan hadn’t become a big believer in hope. Then the war had come and ripped the galaxy to pieces, so pessimism seemed like a good bet.
    The fact that he still maintained some small bit of hope that he might someday run into his wife and son again was the one glimmer of optimism