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

in Mary Ping’s eyes, to feed the hunger she felt when she looked at me and saw only gleaming metal, never pain. She didn’t know anything. She believed she understood something nobody else was smart enough to grasp, but all she could see was her own desires, distorted and reflected back to her, in everyone she met. David was dead. Ryu was hurt. I had no answers. I was sick with anger for how pathetic and grasping she was.

“Last chance,” I said. “Do you know something about David’s death or not?”

“I know why he died.”

“Sure you do. So tell me.”

“The others were talking about what you and the Martian asked them. You think David stumbled into something important and dangerous in his work.”

“It’s a possibility.”

“You’ve got it backwards. He and his little friend didn’t find something hidden in the data. What he found is the data.”

I studied her face carefully. “What does that mean?”

“Safety Officer Marley,” she chided. “We are intelligent women. You know what I mean.”

My mind was already racing. Fuel shortages. Energy fluctuations. Geological assays. Facility efficiency. Misplaced cargo. Everything David rightfully had access to as sysadmin. Boring station bullshit. Details about what Parthenope was mining. How much progress they were making. How much water they extracted. How efficiently they produced fuel. How much product they shipped away.

My heart skipped with excitement. Ping was saying that all the boring bullshit David spent his time going through wasn’t beside the point. It wasn’t the haystack in which the lone valuable needle had been hidden. All that boring bullshit was the point.

Nimue was meant to be the jewel in Parthenope’s growing crown. Its lineup of powerful investors, its decades’ worth of productivity and profit projections reaching into the future, the nonstop PR campaign to convince everybody they were reshaping commerce in the asteroid belt, it was all tied up in Nimue’s success. They had, quite literally, bet the entire company on it.

“It’s all a lie, isn’t it?” I gestured to the massive room around us; Ping’s eyes followed the track of my metal fingers. “This whole fucking facility. It’s supposed to be completely self-sufficient and so efficient that it’s already exporting fuel. But it’s not, is it? It’s not anywhere near what Parthenope is claiming it should be. That’s what David figured out. The whole facility is a huge fucking scam, and the company will collapse if anybody finds out. Does everybody know? Who else knows?”

She was so tense I could see her cheek muscles twitching, her hands trembling. “You’re thinking too small. David made the same mistake.”

“What do you mean? What mistake?”

“He thought he could reveal the truth for his own uses.”

All of my excitement turned cold and congealed in my gut.

“He told you that?” I asked.

“He couldn’t see anything outside his own life. His own selfish unhappiness.”

I felt queasy. “When did he tell you that? When did you talk to him?”

She stepped closer suddenly and grabbed my arm. I tried to pull away, but she wouldn’t let go. “I wanted him to understand. I was going to show him, make him see how beautiful it can be, if only he allowed it. But it was a mistake. He was fixated on what the company is doing—what the humans are doing. He didn’t understand that sometimes sacrifices are necessary. Some things are so much more important than one man’s ideas of right and wrong.”

I could barely speak. “What did you do?”

“I can explain. Let me show you. I can show you what I wanted to share with him. Everything’s going to change soon. I know you’ll understand when you see it. You more than anybody.” Her eyes were shining and wide. “I never expected you to come here. I didn’t even think it was possible. This is better than I thought it could be.”

“Is that—” Her fingers were wrapped tight around the prosthetic humerus of my left arm. Her voice was breathy and fast. I struggled to keep up. “Is that what you said to David? What did you say to him? When you arranged to meet him?”

“I offered to show him the truth. But he was afraid. He was not being rational.”

“What truth? Is there proof that Parthenope is lying about this facility? David was going to find it, and that’s why you attacked him?”

Mary Ping’s mouth turned in a slight frown. “It didn’t have to happen like that.”

I shoved her away from me. “You killed him.”

“He didn’t understand. You’re making the same mistake. Don’t let your small, scared little mind control you. You have to listen to me. I didn’t want to hurt him. He could have just waited. Only a few days, that was all I asked for. He was going to ruin everything. I didn’t want to—”

She stopped abruptly. She was looking past me, her eyes wide. She stumbled backward a few steps, as though I had pushed her again, but there was a good meter between us.

“No,” she whispered. “What are you doing here?”

I turned, my gecko boots squeaking faintly.

There was somebody else in the warehouse.

They were no more than a silhouette, the outline of their body traced by the sparse light: a gleam on the edge of a shoulder, a reflection on the side of a helmet. It was that reflection that held my gaze. They were wearing some sort of space suit, one that obscured their face behind a flat shield and enclosed their trunk and limbs in a hard black carapace. It was a mechanical suit, powered and armored but not as bulky as those used for cargo maneuvering or spacewalks. I couldn’t see it well enough to make out the details.

They were still, so still they might have been a statue, a slice of dark against the shadows.

Then, in a heartbeat, they were coming toward us.

They moved with such astonishing speed it took my breath away. The suit was so well balanced their loping stride wasted not a single motion, with no noise greater than a gentle whir. Within seconds