Dead Space by Kali Wallace (top romance novels txt) 📕

days of failed tests, it was swimming off to do its job, and it was going to do it alone.

“What did you do?” Grieg demanded. He leaned down to get in my face, blocking my view. I leaned away from the coffee smell of his breath and angry spray of his words. “What did you make it do?”

I didn’t bother answering. He wouldn’t have believed me anyway. I had not taught Vanguard to do that. I had not trained it in any task that involved identifying competition and eliminating it. I had not told it that it needed to disable Grieg’s machine in order to perform its own exploratory tests.

All I had done was tell it to make me proud.

“Marley.”

Adisa’s voice broke into my reminiscing. My breath caught, and I blinked rapidly, hoped it was not obvious how distant I had been, how lost in the past and close to tears. I missed Vanguard so much it ached, but most days I was able to ignore the ache, the same way I ignored the imbalance in my limbs, the glitches in my eye. Mary Ping had found that ache and pressed on it as though it was a fresh bruise.

“Sorry,” I said, my voice rough. “I was just thinking.”

I considered, for a moment, telling Adisa about David’s message. I knew that admitting I had been in contact with the victim meant I could not be on this investigation. I knew that concealing such evidence would endanger my job. But the pressure of carrying David’s message around in my mind, trying so desperately to tie it to everything we learned, looking for secrets beneath secrets without any help, was growing harder the longer we were here.

“We’ll talk to Neeta Hunter next, yeah?” Adisa said.

The impulse passed. It’s a good job, he had said, about working here on Nimue, under Parthenope’s watchful eye and controlling thumb. He was not going to help me. Nobody in Parthenope’s employ would help me, because it would mean endangering themselves.

“Sure,” I said. “I’ll get her in here.”

TEN

I had never seen eyes like Neeta Hunter’s before. She hadn’t been close enough for me to notice in the airlock earlier, but I could see them clearly now. They were big and bright, an unnatural electric blue, with thick lashes and overflowing tear ducts.

“I don’t understand what’s going on,” Hunter said. She wiped at her tears and took a shaky breath. Her accent was upper-class Yuèliàng, even crisper than Hugo van Arendonk’s. “Nobody knows anything. What happened in the optical array? Did David do something? What does the surveillance show?”

“We’re still trying to work that out,” Adisa said. “We need to ask you some questions about David.”

“Oh, god. I can’t believe he’s gone.”

I wondered if the cosmetic surgery had damaged her tear ducts or if the excessive moisture was part of the alteration, something she had requested to make her look bright-eyed and dewy, perhaps, even younger than her twenty-one years. To make those startling blue eyes shine. To let her turn on the waterworks on command.

If so, she had certainly got her money’s worth—and it had been a great deal of money. Both her eyes and her shiny silver hair cost far more than a Parthenope asteroid miner could afford. But Neeta Hunter didn’t need to worry about money. According to her personnel file, she was a Hunter of Hunter-Fremont, one of the largest and most powerful family-run corporations in the system, with a near monopoly on industrial shipping in the inner system. Her mother was Leonora Hunter, one of Yuèliàng’s genetically engineered heirs; her grandfather had just been elected for a third term as Imbrium’s vice chancellor. Neeta Hunter’s inheritance was probably worth more than several small orbitals and colonies combined. Her family might not be able to buy Nimue outright, but they would at least be able to bring Parthenope to the table.

I did a quick check on Parthenope’s public reports: Hunter-Fremont was among Nimue’s many powerful investors; they had a heavy stake in the shipyard on Badenia. No doubt they were hoping to expand their shipping empire into the asteroid belt and beyond.

Neeta Hunter’s background explained her ability to purchase absurdly expensive cosmetic enhancements. It didn’t explain what an heiress to one of the system’s wealthiest families was doing repairing bots on Nimue.

“Take your time. What was David like?” asked Adisa.

“I liked him. We came here at the same time, so we’ve always kinda been a team. He was fun to talk to. He knew a little bit about everything.”

“What did you talk about?”

“Oh, everything. Mostly work. He was brilliant with robots, just brilliant. We talked about music and media too—he knew a lot more about late lunar surrealism than most people. We were going to try to get to the Tandy Tschovek show on Vesta next year. It was fun to get him going on about indie artists versus corporate acts and all of that.” Hunter laughed, a bit self-consciously. “We argued, but it was always for fun, you know? It all seems so silly now. I know none of this helps you.”

“You were close, yeah?” Adisa said.

“I guess.” Hunter took in a quick, wet breath and rubbed at her nose, a gesture that made her look about fourteen years old. “Not like that. I mean, yes. We were friends. But I wasn’t shagging him or anything. I don’t know if he was interested in people like that.”

He had been, before. Female, male, nonbinary, as long as they were beautiful and clever and laughing, he had loved them all, and they had loved him right back in whirlwind romances that ended as soon as they began, but rarely with bitterness. I felt a sudden, overwhelming pang of homesickness, to remember how easy it had once been to laugh and flirt and laugh some more, to come into work after a weekend knowing David would be there with a story and a