Read Drifters' Alliance, Book 2 for Free Online Page B

sleeps. It’s crazy! You should check her chest for a circuit board. She can’t be a mere human.”
    “Touch my chest, and you die,” she says through gritted teeth.
    I can’t tell if her threat is for Rollo or me, but I ignore it in favor of a little redirection. “Why don’t you give me the tour, Lucinda?”
    She shrugs. “I already gave you one, but if you want another…” She turns to go down the aisle.
    “Give me the same one you gave Rollo.” Now that I’ve had a full night’s sleep, my brain is thinking more clearly, and one thing’s for sure: Rollo is right. This is too much for one person. Hell, it’s too much for ten. How is she getting this done?
    I follow her past row after row of tomatoes. Trying to keep my eyes from bugging out at the sheer volume of food in the grid becomes more difficult as every footstep falls behind me. Some kind of miracle is going on here. There’s no way she did this herself. I start to feel uneasy as that fact settles in. Who else was involved in this?
    She’s going on about the types of tomatoes and then the squash she has growing from tubes and towers, all seeded hydroponically in tiny bulbs of cotton fibers, when I finally have to interrupt her.
    “Lucinda.”
    “Yes?” She stops walking and turns halfway to face me.
    “Who helped you build this?”
    She shrugs. “Jeffers.”
    “And?”
    “And sometimes Tam. When he has time.”
    I wait for more. There has to be more.
    She glares at me, but I wait her out. I’m not nearly as stupid as she’d like to think I am.
    “What?” she finally says.
    “What? I’m waiting for your answer is what.”
    “That’s my answer.”
    I shake my head. “Buzz…wrong answer.” I cross my arms. “Tell me the truth.”
    “I am telling you the truth.”
    “No, you’re telling me the partial truth.” I glance up at the pipes above our heads. “There is no way in the universe that you and a few crewmate helpers put this up yourselves. I respect your skills, Lucinda, I really do, but that doesn’t mean I’m an idiot. Who was on this ship building this infrastructure with you?”
    Her face turns red, but her teeth remain locked together.
    “Fine. Have it your way.” I grab her arm and start dragging her to the front of the grid.
    “What are you doing?! Get your hands off me!” She reaches out to grab something to halt her progress, but only manages to break off several leaves. She lets them fall and scatter on the floor in our wake. Giving up on that method of escape, she starts hitting my hand that is latched onto her wrist.
    Furious that she thinks it’s okay to attack me when I’m simply enforcing the rules on the ship like any captain would —in fact, in a much nicer way than any other captain would— I pause to turn around and yell at her. “Enough!” My face is mere centimeters from hers. “Touch me again, and I’ll deliver you to the brig unconscious!”
    Instead of listening to me and cowing down like a smart girl would, she tries to pry my hand off again, digging her nails into my skin in the process and notching my frustration level up about thirty degrees.
    If she keeps it up, I’m going to have to follow through on my promise to knock her out, and while I really don’t want to do that, she’s forcing me into a corner, and it has me seeing red.
    Without another thought to the consequences or her possible reaction, I slap her, right across the face. It works to stop her efforts at escape, but not before she lifts some of the skin off of the back of my hand with her fingernails.
    She’s holding her cheek and staring at me like I just killed her puppy, her arm in my possession going limp. “You hit me!” Her body begins to tremble all over.
    “Yes, Lucinda, I did. You failed to follow my orders. You resisted my taking you into custody and drew blood in the process.” We both look down at my bleeding hand. It stings like a bee got me, and I should know; I once worked in an abeillary.
    “I asked