Breach of Containment
A reluctant hero must prevent war in space and on Earth in this fast-paced military science fiction thriller from the author of The Cold Between and Remnants of Trust.Space is full of the unknown . . . most of it ready to kill you.When hostilities between factions threaten to explode into a shooting war on the moon of Yakutsk, the two major galactic military powers, Central Corps and PSI, send ships to defuse the situation. But when a strange artifact is discovered, events are set in motion that threaten the entire colonized galaxy—including former Central Corps Commander Elena Shaw.Now an engineer on a commercial shipping vessel, Elena finds herself drawn into the conflict when she picks up the artifact on Yakutsk—and investigation of it uncovers ties to the massive, corrupt corporation Ellis Systems, whom she’s opposed before. Her safety is further compromised by her former ties to Central Corps—Elena can’t separate herself from her past life and her old ship, the CCSS Galileo.Before Elena can pursue the artifact’s purpose further, disaster strikes: all communication with the First Sector—including Earth—is lost. The reason becomes apparent when news reaches Elena of a battle fleet, intent on destruction, rapidly approaching Earth. And with communications at sublight levels, there is no way to warn the planet in time.Armed with crucial intel from a shadowy source and the strange artifact, Elena may be the only one who can stop the fleet, and Ellis, and save Earth. But for this mission there will be no second chances—and no return.
Читать Breach of Containment онлайн беплатно
HarperVoyager An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
First published in Great Britain by HarperVoyager 2018
Copyright © Elizabeth Bonesteel 2017
Cover design by Richard Aquan © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2017
Cover illustration by Chris McGarth
Elizabeth Bonesteel asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the authorâs imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.
Source ISBN: 9780008137861
Ebook Edition © January 2018 ISBN: 9780008137878
Version: 2018-02-10
For the ones we carry
Contents
T minus two daysâYakutsk
Hey, Dallas! Come have a look at this.â
Dallas turned and squinted at Martine. On the nearly airless plains, the line between Lenaâs brightness and the stardusted black of open space was crisp and painful, and the backlighting always fucked with Dallasâs eyes. Eye surgery might help, but that took money; and scavengers, even as experienced as Dallas, never made much money. The dealers made the money, and Dallas didnât understand why more didnât take their hoard and escape. After the failure of the Great Terraformer Experiment, they should have been leaving Yakutsk in droves.
Dallas wouldnât leave. Dallas preferred Yakutsk without diffuse sunshine, orbiting Lena with nothing but its thin atmosphere and meager gravity. Dallas had spent thirty years in the domes, and had childhood memories filled with jet-black days clomping across the dusty surface of the moon in weighted boots, finding discarded shipyard parts and the occasional trashâor wreckageâfrom passing freighters, starships, and even Syndicate raiders, and collecting it like gold. When the terraformers had been activated a year ago, Yakutsk had become alien, and any pleasure Dallas had felt scavenging the surface had dissolved. It seemed so wasteful, forcing a perfectly reasonable moon into a role it had not been born to play. Domes were efficient. Domes took nothing they did not need. Domes made sense.
So many people had been frightened and angry the month before when the terraformers had failed, and theyâd had to move back into the old covered cities. The days had grown jet-black and familiar again, and Dallas had been relieved.
The object Martine was looking at was also silhouetted by the big gas giant, and getting close enough to see would require Dallas to drop a large, ungainly fragment of cargo hull. Freighter wreckage was almost always profitable, if mundane; Jamyung, the trader who paid them most promptly, always said he wanted the unusual, but Jamyung bought more standard parts than anything else. Dallas had built an entire career off of spotting the ordinary and scavenging quickly, bringing in three times the salvage of other scavengers and making twice the money. Breaking down this chunk was going to take time, and the afternoon was wearing on. Taking a few moments to placate Martine might cut the dayâs payoff by quite a bit.
Martine was new. Dallas remembered what it was like to be new, and the sting of realizing you really were in it on your own.
The fragment dropped back to the moonâs surface, sinking gently in the low gravity to hit the dusty exterior with a quiet thump. Shuffling in weighted boots, Dallas crept up next to her to look at what she held in her hands.
It was cuboid, about fourteen by fourteen by three centimeters, and entirely unadorned. In the verdant light of the gas giant it was difficult to be clear on the color, but Dallasâs unreliable eyes cast it as more or less gray. What kind of reaction was Martine expecting?
