DarkStar Running (Living on the Run Book 2) Read Online Free PDF

that of the
Trog with him. Closing the gap, hours counted down to minutes, minutes counted
down to seconds, and seconds to gunfire.
    Stan tried to maneuver, evade, and dodge the barrage of
bullets of his own men’s guns as they, without a second thought, used all their
skill to try and kill them, him and the albatross in the back seat.

Chapter Four
    Harnessed into the jump seat, Lilia sat behind Stan. Although
she couldn’t see the Dart fighters pursuing them, bombs exploding all
around Stan’s ship, buffeting them like a pinball, left no room for any
illusion of safety.
    Knocked about, and unprotected by a proper space suit, the
straps bruised and cut into her shoulders. She held tight, but twisted in her
seat to peek over Stan’s shoulder. Seven blips on the scanner said that, behind
them, the Darts were gaining, but she couldn’t tell how long it would
take them to catch up. To her right, big and red, sat Chagwa’s moon. The planet
Chagwa itself was dead ahead.
    With a rapid heart and sweaty palms, Lilia tried to hide her
concern with a look of demure acquiescence— in case Stan looked back —but
the muscles in her neck, tight and stiff, were making that difficult.
    Stan had kept a cool head, but his own men hunting him must
have terrified him, she thought. Certainly his years of experience and training
as an Enforcer couldn’t have prepared him for this, ungodly situation they now
found themselves in. And although he said otherwise, Lilia knew he had nowhere
to escape this time around.
    She guessed that, with her added weight, he had to muscle
his Dart more than ever before. All the while in the back of his mind he
must have known that once his own men caught up to them they’d see him dead.
    The white snow covering Chagwa subdued her terrain, but it
still looked rough.
    He barrel rolled, dodged, and jinked hard, but still his own
crew caught up to him, firing all the while. “I haven’t taught you guys this
one yet,” Stan muttered. Almost immediately, his Dart jerked into a
complicated maneuver.
    Lilia’s heart lifted, and, for a second, she thought they
just might escape.
    It was not to be. One shot, one lousy little errant shot and
his Dart jerked to the right, shimmied, and shook like a wet dog.
    Just one shot.
    His starboard engine spit smoke, burst into flames and down
he and Lilia went, spiraling out of control toward Chagwa.
    Lilia’s heart was in her throat as the out-of-control Dart fell like a hunk of lead.
    “Move!” Stan shouted as he harangued the controls. Still
falling, the craft leveled. He managed to coax his ship into the atmosphere of
the ice planet toward a level patch of wasteland.
    If he could coax the ship to nose up just a little, just a
smidge, Lilia thought, they’d have a chance. She hoped the snow would soften
their crash . . .
    . . . so they could what, freeze to death
instead?
    The friction of re-entry heated the Dart’s nose and
the wings’ leading edges.
    Stan muscled the controls. “Move! Come on baby, up, already,
pull up.”
    The ground rushed up at them. Stan held the controls firmly.
    Slowly, straining under its own weight, the Dart ,
level on the horizon, began to nose up.
    Too late.
    The ground—
    A sudden flash of white powder—
    Then all went black.
     
    Stan Archer regained consciousness.
    Light and shadow blurred in a confusing riot of images that
clashed and divided and melded once again to form objects only to melt away.
    Stan blinked.
    The cockpit controls and instruments abruptly came into
focus.
    He looked back.
    Lilia, eyes closed, reached up to a small cut at her
hairline. Stan reached under his dash and pull out his med-kit. Snapping it
open he grabbed a sterile pad of gauze. “Press that to your head, Woman. Any
other injuries?”
    She looked up, took the gauze, tilted her head back and
rolled it to loosen stiff neck muscles. “I’ll be okay,” she said pressing the
gauze to the cut. “Where are we?”
    Stan felt his jaw tighten, and