Second Wave Read Online Free PDF

baskets full of glittering crystals, glowing pearls, and shiny seed beads as well as trays of intricate creations Captain Bates said were made with the use of a torch. Each basket was then immersed in the old-fashioned bathtub of the shop’s lavatory. Like many shops in many places, it had once been a home, and the new owners left the sanitary facilities as they were. Khorii dipped her horn in the water, purifying it, and the cleansing was transferred to the basketsful of beads as well. The shop’s books, videos, computer, and some bead looms were the only items that needed individual attention.
    The next morning, Captain Bates had presented Khorii with a beautiful blue-and-silver bracelet beaded with the pattern of the constellations visible in the night sky of Vhiliinyar. “I got the rescue team to pull up the configuration on their computer,” the captain told her. “This way you will be able to look at the same stars as your folks.”
    Khorii did not wear it all the time because she did not wish to dirty it while she was working. She kept it in her travel pack and sometimes before she went to sleep pulled it out to admire it, pretending for a moment that the silver beads were the stars of Vhiliinyar and that they would beam her love and longing to her family.
    Jaya looked balky for a moment, but she trusted Captain Bates and Khorii, so she finally said, “Okay. I guess we’d better collect Marl and get it over with so Khorii will have a chance to rest up before she has to rejoin the rescue teams again. But I want him locked up tight and guarded all the time.”
    “My thoughts exactly,” Captain Bates agreed.
    Dinero Grande was a short commuter hop from Corazon, and the Mana was fueled and ready to go with all hands on board by midafternoon.
    Captain Bates and Jaya landed in the private space dock of La Villa de Estrella, house of stars, the mansion Marl Fidd had marked as his own share of the booty. He had forced Khorii to go with him so that she could cleanse the house and anything else he wanted, but she had outsmarted him, then outrun him, leaving him shaking his fist at Captain Bates’s shuttle as it left him behind. Had he not been so awful, she’d have felt bad that she had not thought to rescue him before now, but somehow even suggesting to the Linyaari teams that there might be anyone in this area had totally slipped her mind, what with all of the other people she had to help.
    She had cleared the kitchen for him, so if he was smart, and he was, he would plant himself in there and wait for help. He would have enough to eat and drink and could sleep on the floor, but unless he got desperate enough to risk infection from the bodies littering other rooms of the villa, he was trapped with no shelter except one that offered a full fridge and a nice wine cellar.
    His lodgings on Corazon would be a big comedown.
    The recapture was uneventful. Once within Dinero Grande’s orbit, the Mana dispatched the roomiest of the three shuttles aboard, Elviiz at the helm.
    With Khorii leading the way, they left the shuttle and entered the opulent mansion, where she, Elviiz, Hap, Jalonzo, and his burly gaming buddies made their way through the grand entryway and connecting halls to the kitchen.
    Khorii blinked incredulously. There were no longer any of the blue plague dots sparkling in the air. She hoped Marl hadn’t figured it out that apparently she had either cleared the place better than she had believed or that it had somehow dissipated. But if the plague had vanished, it was the only contaminant in the air that had. The place was rotten with the stench of decay from the decomposing bodies in other rooms.
    To her relief, they found Marl in a drunken stupor on the kitchen floor. He was a far cry from the vain and elegant young tough she had deserted by hopping into the shuttle.
    He’d grown fat from having nothing to do but eat the rich food stored in the kitchen and drink the wine she’d glimpsed in storage racks