The Saga of Seven Suns: Veiled Alliances Read Online Free PDF

of them, however, kept tight holds on their clubs, waiting until they caught her.
    She reached the open door of an empty conference room and ducked inside, knowing she could barricade herself in there. With angry people in front of her and behind her, and more filling the halls each minute, she saw no place else to go.
    Chrysta closed the sliding metal doors as a fusillade of hand-thrown projectiles smashed against the bulkhead. She punched the electronic lock controls to seal the door, a privacy setting for confidential meetings. Catching her breath, she wiped a forearm across her brow, adjusted the red headband, and decided the lock was not sufficient, so she fired her blaster at the control panel, melting it down in a surge of sparks. The blast also cut power to the room, plunging the chamber into total blackness, except for the faint glow from the cooling panel.
    She hunkered down in the corner on the far side of the room, ready to wait them out. Outside, she heard the crew hammering at the sealed door, first with fists, then with hard and heavy metal. The blows echoed like cannon shots inside the sealed room. The mob did not sound as if it would calm down anytime soon.
    Chrysta closed her eyes, although it made very little difference in the pitch black. This was bad, very bad. She clutched the blaster in front of her, pointed it toward the door. She waited. . . .
    She had never set out to become captain—no one in their right mind would, considering the bad shape the Burton was in—but after being urged on by a small group of vocal supporters who called her “a hero in the making,” she had accepted the title, sure that she could do a decent job of it.
    The ship’s previous captain had resigned in disgrace after serving only two years, following the failure of three successive life-support systems due to lack of proper maintenance, a scandal involving missing vital parts. He had surrendered the captain’s seat to Chrysta Logan, convinced that if he didn’t do so voluntarily, he’d be lynched. Chrysta should have taken the situation as a warning. Now among the unruly mobs, she had noticed many of the same people who had cheered her four years earlier.
    She was a strong young woman, a success story with a cocky personality and no patience for fools. At seventeen she had lost both parents to lethal doses of radiation they’d received while rushing in to replace a piece of damaged reactor shielding that would have contaminated three decks. In truth, it had been her parents’ job to spot the problem before it became an emergency, but after their brave sacrifice, all was forgiven.
    When her name was proposed as the next captain, the colonists onboard remembered who Chrysta’s parents were. Despite their impossible hardships, they clung to any faint hope and tried to remain optimistic. Unfortunately, they also had very short memories.
    Now the noise outside the conference room door grew louder as the people brought more tools to bear—prybars, cutting torches. Someone breached the gap between the two halves of the sliding hatch by inserting a wedge and prying the doors apart to let a thin yellow shaft of light into the room.
    Fingers appeared, pulling the door open farther. It wouldn’t be long now. Chrysta held the blaster, unwavering.
    The shouting crew were like baying hounds that had cornered their prey. Through the widening gap, she saw them shouldering one another aside, wanting to be the first to charge into the room. Cornered, Chrysta pointed the muzzle straight at the door and the crowd beyond. Either they didn’t see the weapon, or they just didn’t care.
    The hatch gave way, both halves sliding into the recessed wall, and people surged in toward her. Chrysta’s hand tensed on the firing stud of the blaster. What was that clichéd old phrase? This would be like shooting fish in a barrel. She could stun them by the dozens, massacre them before they reached her. But more would keep coming, and that would