Dark Tempest Read Online Free PDF

me and Rogan stepped on board, the place was unlit and freezing cold. The air was deoxygenated and unbreathable. We had to go in with oxygen tanks.”
    Jed interrupted in alarm. “You dare commit this act of sacrilege on an Archer’s ship?”
    “I was ordered to! And the Archer turned out to be dead, so how could she mind?”
    Jed rose, drawing herself to her full height. Wolff’s words sent hot acid churning in her stomach. “You have defiled the tomb of one of my ancestors and my clan!”
    “I’m just telling you the story! I can’t change what happened! How was I to know your laws?”
    Breathing hard, Jed sat again with an enforced calmness to her motion. How dare he desecrate the Code of the star Archers? But logic told her she needed to know what had happened here.
    “May I continue?”
    Jed, her hands clenched in fists on her lap, said tersely, “Yes.”
    “The manager was annoyed when we reported no chimaera haul—he’d paid over the odds to the ship’s finder and gambled on there being some. So the ship was broken up. The manager sold everything.” Wolff paused, his face betraying an uncertain apprehension. He chose his words carefully. “The frozen body went to a science museum. The ship’s computer had to be gutted, for it was so intrinsically wired to the Archer’s mind it had died with her, and the ship husk with its drive components intact were sold on.”
    “You disgust me! You disturbed the resting place of a venerable and worthy Archer and stole the components of her ship and sold her body to a freak show !”
    Wolff held up his hands in a conciliatory way. “I was acting under orders. I would not have done such things of my own will.”
    Jed flung her shoulders against the back of the seat. “What is the name and location of this salvage station? As soon as I resume control of this ship I will go there and raze it and kill everyone aboard!”
    “You know I will not tell you that,” said Wolff. “Permit me to continue with my story instead.”
    After a pause in which Jed gave no indication of assent, Wolff went on. “I was sixteen when my sentence was complete. An adult by the standards of many. Rogan wished me luck and told me to make something of my life. He said I was worth more than this place, and that if he ever saw me again he’d wring my neck.
    “So off I went, with the new skills I’d learnt. I travelled around a bit, fixing machines for food and small pay. This was how I found myself, a fortnight ago, on the orbital complex Hesperus , a few hundred acres of floorspace occupied mostly by pubs, casinos, hotels and shops.
    “That was where I met Taggart. He found me hacking the bank ATM. He got me drunk and I bragged about my exploits as a bail slave. I boasted of the escapade with the synchrotron cannon, and how I’d stepped on board an Archer’s ship.
    “The Archer’s ship seemed to interest him immensely. He wanted to know everything about it—the layout, the console, the airlocks. Then we went to this casino. Taggart put the money in, and it didn’t take me long to work out the computers there, and Taggart was stuffing credits down his trousers. He kept buying drinks, and I don’t remember very much after that. I woke up in a hotel room the next morning. As I was leaving, four men burst into the room and arrested me for theft.
    “I assumed Taggart must’ve been working for the bank, and that the masquerade the night before had all been a foray for evidence, and he’d taken recordings of me mucking about with the casino machines and incriminating myself, but when they hauled me into the complex’s justice station, they revealed that I’d actually been accused of snatching a bag, and then they searched me, and they found all these bloody cards and credits inside my coat, belonging to someone called Amelia Jeffries. I don’t know how they got there. At first I believed I must’ve been so drunk that I did steal a handbag and I couldn’t remember doing it, and