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

one of its mining operations. Every one of its executives and any investors in the know could be prosecuted for war crimes on Earth and Yuèliàng.

Parthenope was doing it anyway. Nimue was hiding a factory that was making highly advanced mech suits, nimble and explosive spider bots, and who knew what the fuck else. The company wanted to turn itself into a military power in the asteroid belt, and probably beyond, should the company ever decide to end twenty-five years of system-wide disarmament and launch into a war. All the analysts and economists wondering if Nimue would be worth Parthenope’s investment in the long run—they hadn’t counted on the fact that the company was also building the means to aggressively expand its territory not by mergers, not by acquisitions, but by conquest.

Adisa let out a sharp breath and shook his head. “Fuck. The discrepancies your Prussenko found in energy and resource usage—it’s all going toward a hidden part of the station, yeah? They’ve got a rotten big UEN base just sitting there and not being used for anything else.”

“One of the crew, Vera, he mentioned that David had been looking into fuel leaks in the unused lines leading to the base,” I said.

“The base has been condemned, hasn’t it?” Hunter said. “It’s completely closed off. You can’t get there anymore.”

“Are you sure of that?” I asked.

“That’s what . . .” She laughed hollowly. “That’s what Sigrah told us. She told us the Overseer doesn’t even know the base exists, because it’s outside of its stewardship responsibilities. And where the Overseer can’t see, we aren’t authorized to go. It would violate the liability terms of our contract, you know, the usual. And of course we just fucking believed her. Katee and I were talking about going to explore during some downtime, right? Not to look for anything. Just to poke around. Sigrah flipped her shit. She said she didn’t want an accident or a lawsuit on her hands. We thought she was overreacting, but it wasn’t worth the headache of trying to argue with her.”

“I think we need to ask her about it,” I said to Adisa. “And Vera. I should have asked him more about what David was doing.”

With the station under lockdown, I wasn’t entirely sure how we would do that. Every asteroid mine had a way to get miners to the surface if all the mechanical systems failed and the crew was left with no computers, no comms, no power, no air. It didn’t have to be easy or efficient. It just had to exist without depending on any higher system that might fail.

And in this case, that meant climbing three kilometers up to Level 0. Three fucking kilometers.

We decided, naturally, to see if there was some way to access the lift instead. I was thinking about bypassing the lockdown again, about Adisa’s helpful youthful skills, but that all turned out to be unnecessary.

As we approached the lift, its control panel, which had been dark before, blinked on. A single word appeared.

Ready.

I stopped short.

“What? Is it functional?” I said.

Our radios crackled, making us all jump in surprise, and a woman’s voice came through. “Hello? Are you out there?”

“That’s Katee,” Hunter said excitedly. She grabbed her radio to answer. “Katee! Is the lockdown lifted?”

A pause, then Katee King replied, “We’ve got the lift working. You should come back.”

“Is everybody okay? What happened?” Hunter asked.

“You should come back,” King said again, her voice strangely flat.

She was upset, I thought. Still scared. Wary about something.

Adisa spoke into his own radio. “We’re on our way.”

The lift doors slid open.

EIGHTEEN

The lift carried us swiftly upward. There was no more radio communication from Level 0, and the Overseer was completely silent and unresponsive for the entire journey. No vocalization, no messages on the control panel, no reaction to our repeated attempts to access the controls or comms. It felt incredibly risky, to be riding a lift without knowing if the AI that controlled it was functioning or not, but the choice between remaining deep in the mine with no idea what was happening or rejoining the others to face it head-on was no choice at all.

The lift glided to a stop when we reached Level 0. The doors opened to reveal the junction. The lights were on.

The first thing I saw was the body.

“Shit. Fuck,” Adisa breathed. “Fuck.”

In the doorway to the cargo warehouse, Ned Delicata was jammed between the door and the frame. The door was crushing his upper chest and left shoulder as it tried to close; the mechanism ground and strained as it pressed into him.

“Oh, no. No, no, no.” Hunter darted forward and dropped to her knees beside the man. “Can you hear me? Ned?” Her voice rose to a near shout. “Is he— I can’t tell if he’s— Can you hear me? Ned!”

Clinging to Delicata’s burned skin and shredded jumpsuit were the mangled remains of a silver spider bot. His head lolled when Hunter gently shook his shoulder.

“No, no, no,” Hunter said. She was growing hysterical now. She stood up, turned around, dropped to her knees again. “What happened? Where is everybody? Katee? Katee!”

Adisa reached for his radio. “Avery? Hugo? Do you copy?”

There was no answer. I couldn’t tell if the comms system was picking up the radio or not. I leaned around Hunter and over Delicata to try to stop the door from squeezing him, but the control panel was unresponsive. The cargo warehouse beyond the doorway was dark. I could not see or hear anybody. No voices, no footsteps, no crackle of radio. A black storm cloud of doubt filled my mind.

Adisa stepped closer and put a hand on Hunter’s shoulder. She started, cut off her babbling at once with a sharp inhale.

“Is he breathing?” he asked.

“I don’t know. I can’t tell. I can’t—I can’t—” Hunter sucked in another breath, clearly trying to get ahold of herself. With a shaking hand, she reached out to touch the