Red Sky at Night (Home in the stars, #0.5) Read Online Free PDF Page A

deal. She didn't even have to say yes. He pulled back to kiss her the way he'd wanted to since he'd left.
    He wasn't lying though. He'd flown a couple of pretty fast ships, felt that pull after launch, known he was at the stick of something powerful and deadly. It still didn't give him the thrill he felt with his hand holding her head still as he took her breath, or the sense of peace and accomplishment that followed him around after he made her smile or laugh, or moan.
    Speaking of that....
    *
    A ri slammed a pot onto the cook stove one more time. "Ari," their Da said with a sigh. "Those things aren't cheap."
    "Sorry, Da."
    Arden and his father shared a look. Caden had been gone for a couple weeks, and hell had rained down on them all. Nearly the moment Caden stepped on the transport, their Da had been informed his services were no longer required at the maintenance facility. They were currently rationing out the bonus pay Arden had earned from his last job. Ari was a wreck, a tearful, angry mess, and it was killing their Da that he didn't know what to do to help her.
    Arden watched his father stand up from the table before saying, "I'm going out for a little while, Arden. Look after your sister, would you?" He looked toward the kitchen. "See she stays out of trouble."
    "Where you going, Da?"
    His Da grabbed up his battered old hat. "I'm gonna go see a guy about a job. Be back in a while."
    Arden turned his head toward the sound of his father's footsteps as he left. He wondered sometimes how the old man stayed so optimistic when the whole planet was swimming in bad times and bad people.

CHAPTER FIVE
    *

    The call came in a few hours later from a fellow he knew over at the Carnes Security office. Arden clicked the comm, unable to process what he'd heard after the man had advised him to go off speaker.
    He grabbed up his hat in the hallway just as Ari came out of the kitchen with a glass of mollic milk and her hair pulled up in a spiky, messy tail on top of her head. She looked like the little sister he had always known.
    "Where you going? What is it? You're pale as a sheet."
    "I'm going to find Da." It was a miscalculation on his part. She'd been worried since he'd told her he'd gone out.
    "I'm coming." She put down the milk and went to the closet for a coat. He opened his mouth. She said, "Shut up. I'm coming."
    He really didn't want her to, but he needed to get there fast, and, gods help him, he didn’t have the guts to tell her. Da was hurt bad, according to his buddy from academy.
    Opening the apartment door, he ran down the stairs ahead of his sister. They'd have to rent a moto to get there.
    *
    H e pulled up with a slight spin to the tail end of the two seater moto, and he and his sister took off the helmets and stood before the Carnes mansion.
    What the hell had he been doing here? He thought it, but, down deep, he suspected he knew. There had been no guards on the front gate, so they ran up to cue the intercom which said politely in a robotic voice, "One moment please."
    A formidable man wearing a marshal's star opened the door. "You're relatives of the deceased, I take it." His manner was cold, businesslike.
    Ari gasped behind him. "Deceased!"
    She ran through both of them like a charging vilerbeast, a type of wild desert boar common around the wastes. Arden hurried after her.
    Her anguished cry filled the corridor. Da lay on the expensive foyer tiling in a thick pool of blood. On the landing of the grand staircase above, he saw Alec Carnes and the local marshal deep in discussion as though there weren't a man dead at their feet, as if they were discussing the weather.
    Arden looked from them to the body on the floor that had been their father. Something in his mind couldn't reconcile all the blood and the pale skin with his Da, the warm, lively man everyone loved.
    Ari noticed Carnes, and let out an inhuman howl. He caught her small frame around the waist as she hurled herself toward the old man shouting epithets