Read Hunted for Free Online Page A

announced.
    “Okay,” I said. My breath came out steamy—I’d asked for the bridge to be cooled like the lounge so the bodies didn’t go bad. “Do I just talk or what?”
    “Connecting now.”
    The vidscreen on the command chair lit up with a young man who started to say, “Greetings, Willow, this is—” Then he broke off and gawped at his own screen, staring at the face of the dead woman in the chair.
    I should have thought of that. Now I’d gone and scared the poor boy on the other end of the line.
    “Sorry,” I said, as I nudged the woman aside and pushed my own head in front of the vidscreen. “I didn’t mean to startle you,” I told the boy, “but we’ve got a problem up here.”
    “Is she…” The boy stopped himself, gave his head a shake, and went all professional. “State your problem, Willow.”
    I told him about everybody being dead. Then I told the same thing to his commanding officer. Then I told the base’s Commander of Security. After that I spoke to a doctor who kept talking like the people on Willow had died of a disease. To me that was just plain foolish—if several dozen humans and a hive-queen die in the same second while crossing the line, you don’t need to be a genius to figure out why. But next thing I knew, everyone at the base had latched onto the disease idea, and they told me I’d have to stay quarantined where I was till the Admiralty could fly in an Outbreak Team. Whenever I tried to point out what really happened, the base personnel cut me off, saying maybe I was delirious with the plague myself.
    “No,” I told a Security captain, “I was delirious for a while but now I’m better.”
    “What do you mean you were delirious?” she snapped in surprise. Then suddenly, she said, “Oh. Right. You were delirious. Thank you, Explorer York, that confirms our disease hypothesis. Thank you.” She gave me a relieved smile before she cut the connection.
    After chewing my knuckle a bit, I figured out why she’d acted that way. People at the base wanted to pretend there’d been an outbreak, because otherwise they’d have to admit the truth: a whole navy ship had done something so horribly bad, the League decided to execute everybody. And when I’d talked about getting delirious myself, the Security captain thought I was helpfully playing along.
    It was so strange. Something important had happened, and the whole starbase staff just wanted to hide their heads in the sand.
    I wasn’t too happy being part of the lie, but Samantha used to tell me, “If everyone else is denying an obvious truth, you go along with them, Edward, okay? Because the Admiralty sometimes plays games, and if you spoil the game, they’ll be mad at you.”
    I didn’t want anyone mad at me. Even if this particular game seemed stupid. And dishonest. And cowardly.
    Maybe it all made sense if you had the big picture.

    While I waited for the Outbreak Team to arrive from some other starbase, I used the captain’s vidscreen to watch outside the ship. I didn’t see much—nothing came or went at Starbase Iris, not even in-system shuttles. Once I noticed a merchant vessel passing within range of Willow’s hull cameras, but it didn’t come very close; it was aiming for the planet Celestia, a light-minute nearer the local sun.
    After two more days of waiting, another navy ship popped into view with that gorgeous FTL effect: the ship appears without warning and then you see a streak trail out behind it. That’s light from where the ship used to be, catching up with where the ship is.
    Through a nearby speaker, my ship-soul announced, “Heavy cruiser Jacaranda of the Outward Fleet.”
    “Is it hailing us?” I asked.
    “No. It’s communicating privately with the starbase.”
    Jacaranda chatted with Starbase Iris for half an hour…and according to my ship-soul, they were using higher-than-normal levels of encryption to keep anyone from eavesdropping. I wondered if they were worried about being overheard