Dark Space: The Invisible War Read Online Free PDF

woman’s eyes narrowed. “Where’s your son?”
    “He’s . . .” Destra hesitated. “He’s gone.” Tears sprang to her eyes, and the woman’s expression softened immediately.
    “Oh, I’m sorry. I thought—” The woman assumed gone meant dead along with the rest of the evacuees aboard the transport, but Destra didn’t correct her. It would be easier travelling together without the burden of that woman’s jealousy.
    “Well, there’s no accounting for justice, now is there?” the man with the gash in his cheek said, still talking about the evacuees’ transport. Either he hadn’t heard their conversation as he’d walked around the back of the hover to the passenger’s side, or else he was being deliberately insensitive. Destra decided to ignore him. He climbed in beside her, and in the rear viewscreen Destra noticed the woman and her son climb in the back. As soon as the doors had shut, she gunned the throttles. Justice, she thought, thinking about that man’s remark. There’s no justice in any of this. Just death.
    The road wound around the mountains, and Destra followed it as best she could despite the depthless blue of the infrared overlay. The trees alongside the road appeared as a scraggly black and blue wall.
    “Where are we going?” the woman in the back asked.
    “May as well head to the mines with the rest,” Destra replied.
    “That’s a great idea,” the man said. “Gather everyone together in one place so it’ll be easier for the Sythians to kills us.”
    “You have a better idea?” Destra asked, turning to him with a scowl.
    “Yea, we go south until we reach Covena.”
    Destra frowned. She vaguely recognized the name of the town. “How far is that?”
    “It’s about three hundred klicks from here. We’ve already burrowed underground up there, so we’ll be safe—for a while.”
    “Underground?”
    “A bunker of sorts. We built it to keep our operations out of pryin’ eyes, if ya know what I mean.”
    Destra turned to him with narrowed eyes. “You mean smuggling?”
    “Sharp, girlie. Yea, smuggling. I managed supply-side operations—brewin’ the stims, that is.”
    So he was taking them to a stim lab. “I see,” Destra said, wondering if he just brewed the batches of stim or tested them, too. There was something off about him. Destra was surprised she hadn’t heard of a stim lab in Covena before. Ethan must have known of it. He’d been a smuggler—before he’d been caught and exiled to Dark Space. “So why aren’t you hiding there now?” Destra asked.
    “It’s got supplies to keep us goin’ for a few months, you know—not forever. My associates found their own way off Roka, leavin’ me to fend for myself, so I thought I’d try my luck smuggling myself onto the next ship outta here, but no go. Well, guess it was my lucky day, since that bird got shot to frek anyway. Serves the frekkers right.”
    “Okay, okay—you’re giving me a headache. Punch the destination into the nav. I can’t spare a hand from the controls right now.”
    “Whatever you say, girlie,” the man said, smirking as he leaned forward to fiddle with the nav. “Name’s Digger, by the way.”
    “Digger, huh? I’m Destra. What about you two?” she asked, looking up into the rearview screen. The woman and her son were very quiet. Both of them looked very pale—shell-shocked. At first they didn’t reply, so Destra yelled, “Hoi! Wake up back there!”
    The woman started and said, “I’m Lessie. My son’s Dean.”
    “Okay. You two fine with hiding out in Digger’s stim lab for a while?”
    Lessie’s already wide and staring eyes grew wider still. “A stim lab? What about the mines?”
    Destra shook her head. “Digger’s right. We stand a better chance hiding out on our own. The fewer people to give us away, the better.”
    “Smart girlie.”
    “Anyone else hiding up there?” Destra thought to ask of Digger, suddenly uncomfortable with the thought of being surrounded by