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

Even I could tell she was lying. Adisa was even less impressed. “You have two dead crew members, a criminal operation going on for months that you never noticed, and now you’ve got somebody running around with autonomous weapons that have been illegal throughout the system for twenty-five years. Am I supposed to believe that you’re so fucking shit at your job that you know nothing about any of it?”

Sigrah pushed Adisa’s hand away. “Get that out of my face.”

On the map, the crew was gathering in Res. There was nobody in the cargo tunnels near the warehouse. Nobody had passed through the exits into other parts of the station. The security system wasn’t scanning the killer’s ID anywhere. The suit had to be blocking the chip—that was the only thing that made sense. I was going to have to find them the old-fashioned way.

“Overseer, are the ID scans in the tunnels working? Show me the live surveillance. Every camera in the tunnels.”

The Overseer answered with a flash of the words: Data access restricted.

Right. Fuck. I needed to be back in the systems room—I needed access beyond what I had already been granted. Without that, all I had to go on was the map of the station, and the map wasn’t telling me anything. I focused again on Ops and Res. There were only eleven crew on the station, and Ping was dead, and Sigrah had been with Adisa, so that left nine to account for. Delicata was in the junction. Melendez was leaving the assay laboratory as van Arendonk approached in the Ops corridor. Yee was in her quarters, as was Vera. King, Balthazar, and Dietrich-Yun were in the common room. Dolin was in the exercise room.

I looked again. Counted heads.

He and his little friend, Ping had said.

“Hunter,” I said. “It’s Hunter.”

Adisa cut off whatever he was saying. “You’re certain?”

“She was in her quarters. She’s not anymore.”

“Hugo, do you have eyes on Neeta Hunter?” Adisa said. “Has anybody seen her?”

Neeta Hunter, with her expensive blue eyes and her expensive silver hair, her tears that flowed so freely. With her powerful connections and her friendship with David even she hadn’t seemed to understand. It was so fucking obvious in retrospect. If anybody on Nimue had the contacts that would make corporate espionage lucrative, it was her. And she had already blamed Mary Ping for David’s death.

“She’s not here,” van Arendonk said.

“Where the fuck is she?” I asked. “Where is she? Overseer, show me Hunter, for fuck’s sake.”

I was expecting another restricted access warning, but instead the Overseer answered: the map shifted to show Neeta Hunter as a solitary dot amid a bewildering labyrinth of lines.

“Where is that?”

Sigrah leaned over for a look. “Level 8. She just stepped off the lift. Why the hell would she be down there? She’s not authorized—”

“Marley, with me,” Adisa said. He turned on his heel and started walking.

“You’re not authorized!” Sigrah said, rushing after him. “You can’t just go into the facility without escort. It’s an active mine. The safety bond does not cover—”

“Can we secure the level to make sure she doesn’t leave?” Adisa asked, talking right over her.

She kept trying. “I have to go with you. This is a liability. You can’t—”

Adisa whirled to look at her as we all reached the door. “You are going to stay here with the rest of your crew. Can you secure the level to keep her there?”

“You do not have the authority to make such a demand,” Sigrah said.

“Add it to your list of complaints for HQ.” Adisa stepped into the junction, where van Arendonk was waiting. “The crew— and the foreperson—are restricted to this section. Get Ryu to watch them.”

Van Arendonk hesitated for only a second. He was looking at Adisa. “Right. And you’re going to . . . ?”

“We’re going to go find Neeta Hunter,” Adisa said. “Marley?”

I was already entering the security access code to enter the mine.

FIFTEEN

Only when the lift doors closed and the carriage began to move did I realize Adisa was still holding the crushed bot.

“Is that safe?” I said. I could see my blood staining the ends of its thin legs.

He plucked at one of the legs, twisted it, broke it free. “It’s harmless now.”

“Um. Okay. What is it?”

“We used to call them spiders.” He dropped the first leg and twisted another off. His voice was strangely flat, and he didn’t look up from the bot as he spoke. “Or Sorrells, sometimes, because they were built by Sorrell-Larkin and used by their mercenaries. Haven’t seen one in years. The UEN used them during the war.”

Sorrell-Larkin was, these days, yet another company mining the asteroid belt, but I had some vague recollection that they had gotten their start as an arms manufacturer and private security firm during the war. “What for? For bombing? Or starting fires?”

“Oh, they’re much more versatile than that, yeah? Good for fires and explosions, aye.” He turned it over. “Poisoning food and water supplies.” Peeled off the thin metal carapace on the underside. “Contaminating medical aid shipments.” Ripped the insides out with a single smart tug. “Burning fuel reserves.”

Adisa gripped another leg and snapped it off. It was disconcerting to watch. He was so focused, like a child with a bug he had captured under a glass. I hadn’t realized until that moment how calm his gestures usually were, not until I saw his hands now in constant, nervous motion.

“Assassinations,” he added, after a moment’s pause. He did not raise his voice, but there was a tightness in his words that made me tense, made me want to edge away from him in the lift.

A memory from my childhood on Earth: a thin-lipped teacher at the front of the classroom, his mustache trembling as he sniffed and said, The UEN did not conduct assassinations. Most of those events were false flag operations carried out by Martian suicide bombers. The war had been over for a few years