Lady Grace & the War for a New World (Earth's End Book 2) Read Online Free PDF

looked at the chronometers over each body before folding the steel doors. They said different things, indicating that from 120 years to 2753 years had passed. Her own timepiece was shattered and hanging off the wall, as was the general’s. They had the most reliable timepieces of the bunch, but they had both broken. Why had their cryogenic mechanisms worked, but their clocks failed?
    She had an eerie feeling that someone had broken into the vault and changed the clocks and broken theirs. And turned off the others’ cryogenic machines. The general and her machines were better than the others’, but not that much better. At least one should have survived.
    The idea that someone had broken in was crazy. The general had been obsessive in his security while they built the bunker. Who could get in? Who knew the codes? The general’s son was the obvious answer. But why would he leave them alive? He hated his father. Who else could it be? She didn’t know.
    If someone was outside, their instrumentation would have registered the little periscope she’d raised. They’d notice the systems below starting up. She jumped up and turned off the heat. The satellite connection she couldn’t shut down. She needed that.
    Veronica looked around frantically. She had to get out of there and find her son.
    She knew something about where he was. Veronica knew that Jeremy had gone off world to escape the atomics. Everyone in the bunker knew it—they had watched on computer screens as Jeremy and the others had left.
    Jeremy’s spectacular departure had filled the bunker with cries of dismay and amazement. The eastern sky around the estate had lit ultra-bright, and a huge, shimmering golden ball had docked against the cliff. Veronica had watched them leave: a lovely girl, a dancer, leading the way. Jeremy followed, yelling “Geronimo!” when he jumped into the ship. Mel Adams, Jeremy’s teacher from the Hermitage Academy, and his partner were next, holding hands. And Henry and Lena. Her chest caught even thinking of them. Henry was her first husband Chaz Edgarton’s half brother. He and Lena had watched out for Jeremy for most of his life.
    The last time she’d seen him, Jeremy had bragged about his surveillance skills, saying he had “the village wired for sound—and sight.” He would be surprised to know that he wasn’t the only one. The entire estate was hooked into the general’s system, including the interior of the underground shelter. Because of that, Veronica and the others had eavesdropped on the tour of the shelter Jeremy gave the night before everything blew up.
    How could she contact the golden planet to get him back? Veronica had a few tricks of her own. She’d had Jeremy’s room at the academy bugged for years—and had had the contents of his computer sent to her in Russia. It was the only way she could keep track of her reclusive son.
    Veronica pulled a transparent cylinder from a hidden pocket of her uniform. Though tiny, the apparatus held the contents of Jeremy’s personal computer and all of its internal settings. It essentially was Jeremy’s computer. Jeremy’s driver and guard, Arthur Romero, secretly had made the cylinder and had it smuggled to her before she went into cybersleep.
    Inserting the tube into a port in one of the lab’s computers, Veronica waited a few moments for it to download. An icon labeled “Jeremy’s Computer” appeared on her screen. She double clicked it and read down the contents. Sure enough, he’d recorded the coordinates to which he’d broadcast and the number of times he’d sent messages to each.
    Now all she had to do was contact outer space.

5
    Veronica straightened her hair and put on the expression she wore for public appearances. Quickly adjusting the focus of her computer’s camera, she broadcast to the top frequencies from Jeremy’s list.
    “Hello, people of the golden planet. This is Veronica Edgarton of the planet Earth,” she said into the microphone. She