Read Brynin 3 for Free Online

entered the bridge and sat down. Near the middle of the screen, Danig magnified. We would dock in the planet’s only interstellar craft hangar in just over two hours.
    Vren complained, “Turbulence is getting worse. This is going to be a rough landing.”
    Behind me, boot heels clicked louder, and Ieeb whispered in my ear, “I’m pregnant.”
    “Great.” I flinched. An image of a smiling baby popped into my head. Ieeb hugged the child and glanced at me. Isn’t she beautiful? I love being a mom. It’s a great feeling. You’ve made me so happy. Thank you. I smiled and imagined a pretty girl in a dress, my daughter, running across a meadow.
    Ieeb kissed my cheek. “I’m going back to the passenger compartment.” She strolled away.
    “What was that all about?” Vren turned toward me.
    I scowled and told him about the conversation. “I want to be optimistic, but the idea of my son or daughter growing up on Danig…” I paused. “And I’m not even going to be around.”
    A woman’s voice, a stranger, came out of my earplugs. “ST Seven, this is Bya, an interstellar traffic controller. After Hangar Three’s roof opens, dock at Space Four. Don’t land outside the building.”
    “There’s a lot of wind-shear near the hangar. Why can’t we go anywhere else?” I thought about wind-shear, strong downdrafts that would shove any starship into the ground. Obno had never mentioned wind-shear before. That bothered me.
    Bya replied in a nervous tone, “I’ll explain that later.”
     
    On screen, Hangar Three’s roof opened and we descended. At the center of a monitor, swarms of six-inch long fly-like insects with violet wings flew over the port wing. Below the insects, text indicated that they were called Oiins—huge, venomous, ugly things.
    Vren announced, “According to recent scans, thousands of Oiins have clogged up the port vent. We’ll have to clean it out.”
    The port wing’s secondary engine slowed down because several vents were blocked. ST7 dropped to the hangar floor.
    Vren announced, “Good news. This scan indicates that the landing gear wasn’t damaged when we docked.”
    I clenched my fist, angry. “We were lucky.”
    Bya’s voice came out of my earplugs. “Don’t open your face masks; there are too many Oiin swarms inside the hangar. We’ll be using spray to clean them out.”
    I shook my head, irritated. “Acknowledged.” We left the bridge.
     
    After Vren, Ieeb and I reached the bottom of the steps, a short husky Qoowo in a sand-colored jumpsuit, a female with a wide orange face, walked up to us. “Hello, I’m Alip,” she said.
    All three of us nodded.
    Alip pointed at a door. “Hop into my giag. It’s parked right outside that exit. I’ll drive you to Rougt. We can’t fly you there because the winds are picking up. Guards will accompany us.”
    I blinked. “Alip, what are the guards for? Are there any pirates on this planet?”
    “Don’t worry about the pirates. A few days ago, thousands of Heos snakes sprouted wings. The only way to stop them is with bullets, flamethrowers or grenades. That’s just one incident among many.” She handed me a flamethrower and several grenades. She gave Ieeb a W-Nine automatic rifle.
    I began inspecting the weapons. “I’ve only used a flamethrower a few times. I’m rusty.”
    Alip, a serious expression on her face, narrowed her eyes. “You better hope your aim is good. Nobody wanted all these problems, but there’s no choice.”
    Ieeb frowned. “I need to practice. This is lousy timing. I’ve been compiling databases, I haven’t used a W-Nine in several years.”
    Alip scowled. “Good luck.”
    While we were aboard ST7, Ieeb had told me that as part of her job she would arrange billions of sedimentary, igneous and metamorphic vibracore readings, and place them on exabyte-size hard drives. As a result, software would divide the readings into HTML-like documents and use probability software to analyze the documents and determine