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Chelsea Handler Chelsea Chelsea Bang Bang (epub
Brit Brinson [Dia of the Dead Dia of the Dead (epub)
Cody Goodfellow [Radiant Dawn Radiant Dawn (epub)
Cate Tiernan [Immortal Belove Immortal Beloved (epub)
C J Busby [Deep Amber 01] Deep Amber (retail) (epub)
Carl Ashmore [Time Hunters 01 The Time Hunters (epub)
Drew Hayes [Super Powereds 02 Super Powereds Year 2 (epub) i
Beth Harbison [Shoe Addict 02 Secrets of a Shoe Addict (epub)
Cara Lynn Shultz [Dark World The Dark World (retail) (epub)
Cleo Coyle [Coffeehouse Myste Latte Trouble (v4.0) (epub)

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.The Imperium wanted to cease colonial expansion.The Brahar were the instigators of the coup, preying upon those officials in the Major Species who fed on greed.They changed the way things were done in the galaxy.First, it was the razing of planets, which was unheard of in the past.They started with the planets that housed simple organisms; they went in and took every resource, rather then earmark them for expansion by Minor Species.Then they took worlds where there was potential for intelligent life to bloom; where the League of Worlds would leave those planets alone, the Imperium did not.And there were rumors of culling the planets of the species that they determined to be less desirable.Under the Imperium, every species was out for itself.Brother Blue had managed to get Earth to avoid the Imperium razing by exploiting the five-planet loophole, making it seem as though Earth was fully Minor.Only there didn’t seem to be any Human colonies at all.That’s what I’d inadvertently discovered when he stranded me here, and what made him ask me to kill my friends Reza and Caleb.I hadn’t done that, of course.I’d put them into cryocrates and shipped them off to the Outer Rim.Everyone, including me, was afraid of the Imperium.No one could travel freely anymore without a special pass.No species could speak up without being silenced.It was seemingly unstoppable.Tournour and Thado worked undercover, collaborating with the Imperium to keep us safe on this far outpost.“Tournour works quite hard at making sure the Yertina Feray isn’t even a blip on the Imperium radar,” I said.“I’m thankful every day for that,” Thado said.“He makes my unfortunate collaboration with them bearable.”I nodded.“Be safe, Thado,” I said.Living in space was not safe.One could only hope that the metal that housed us would stay together and protect us from the dangers we faced daily.“As you,” he said.I knew he was giving me a blessing in his language, but the nanites that swam in my bloodstream and in my brain to help me translate sometimes failed when it came to sayings, idioms, or songs.Universal Galactic was not a poetic language, so when an alien wanted to give you a truism, they spoke their mother tongue.The nanites helped to fill in those gaps.The nanites still amazed me.To think that I had small intelligent nanobots swimming through me regulating the gases in my lungs and attaching to my brain stem to help me translate and speak to other species was nothing short of a miracle.Every species had their language, and sub-languages, but the standard for all aliens to use was Universal Galactic.Universal Galactic was not easy to learn, but for almost all species it was doable.The nanites helped with the precise understanding that was necessary when negotiating or governing.They were expensive to get, though, and not everyone had them.I only had them because my old Hort mentor Heckleck had stabbed me with his barbed tongue to inject me with them.I was lucky to have them.It gave me an advantage despite being a Human, a species that most aliens disliked dealing with.Thado and I parted ways.He went up, and I went down to the underguts.I could have chosen to be assigned, like him, to the shelter where the more affluent waited out these kinds of cosmic events in luxury.Instead I chose to remain assigned to the station’s underguts shelter where there were too many aliens crowded into too small a space.The underguts was where all of the rabble like I once was ended up.It was housed in the very bones of the station.It was a shantytown of metal bins and desperate aliens who had no means to live in the residence rings and no currency or way to leave the Yertina Feray.Most of them would beg for jobs from the few ships that docked here.They may have been looked down on, but I knew that they were the backbone for the whole underground economy here.I had lived there for my first two years on the station, scraping together an existence first by being an errand girl for Heckleck, and then striking out on my own dealing in barter and favors.I felt a pang for a minute thinking about Heckleck.Were he alive, he would not go to an underguts shelter if he could help it.A good time to get a good price for things is when people are facing their mortality.Rich people have the most to barter when they think they are in peril.Heckleck was always looking for a good deal.The underguts shelter was no place of luxury.It was the dregs of the station, near the shantytown.Even though I had gotten myself out of the underguts, when a lockdown happened, I always threw my lot in with them.I had a soft spot for the forgotten and overlooked.Because once upon a time that had been me.In a way it still was.When I got to the shelter, a thick-metal-walled room deep in the center of the station, I could smell the fear on everyone.Aliens were sitting everywhere they could.There were no beds in this shelter, so aliens would string up hammocks and put makeshift bedding on the floor.It was crowded and uncomfortable.I didn’t have to check to know that there was not one Human in the bunch.When I first arrived on the Yertina Feray, it was nearly two years before three Human Youth Imperium cadets became stranded on the station.That was when everything changed for me.When I discovered the depth of Brother Blue’s betrayal.But those Humans had been gone for over a year, ever since I sent Reza and Caleb, who had become my close friends, to the Outer Rim, frozen in deep sleep in cryocrates.I had no choice—I had to save their lives, although my fear was that those crates had become their coffins.The third one, Els, had met her death here on the station.Brother Blue had killed her for what she knew and because he thought she was me.I squared my shoulders.This was not the time for regrets.This was the time to make sure that I made it through another day.I signed in with the Brahar guard and tried not to shudder when her reptilian-like scales brushed my hand.They reminded me of a purse or a belt.The Brahar were cold blooded and cold hearted.It was their world that had set the Imperium into motion, and so they seemed to always be in charge whenever there was an emergency.“We’ve run out of salt paks,” she said.I knew that this shelter had probably never had them.She waved me away as the next aliens checked in and the long last siren wail signaled that shelter doors would now close.There was no leaving now until the all clear sounded.I walked around the shelter and began handing out the trests to the aliens holed up in there with me.We would be huddled together for at least thirty hours, and the aliens in the underguts were always lacking in the essentials that I now had [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]