Read Reavers (Book 3) for Free Online Page B

a death sentence.  A massive tomb that silently waited for him to breathe his last.  Tardos was lucky the Freeport had even let him dock in the first place.  Turned out his old business partner Duda had pulled some strings to get him on board.  Duda even helped him get a job in maintenance.  It was a dirty job, but it paid well enough and kept him away from anyone who might know him.
    After a couple of months, everyone had completely forgotten his arrival.  To those who lived on the Freeport, he was just another nameless maintenance worker.  It was a miserable existence compared to the one he had once known, but it was better than nothing.  His luck started to change for the better when Kevin showed up.
    At first he hadn’t liked him.  Kevin was overly private and never spoke.  However, he was still better than nothing.  Being an unassuming maintenance worker was a dreadfully lonely existence for someone like Tardos.  Silent pipes and conduits made poor substitutes for the brave and spirited crews he had served with in his past. 
    Naturally, he had taken advantage of having someone to talk to.  After a week of one-sided conversations, Kevin had spoken up, only to silence Tardos’ ramblings.  Despite the rocky start, the two of them eventually grew to be friends.  As they worked they would pass the time with idle chat.  Well, Tardos would chat idly and Kevin would throw in comment or two.
    His new friend’s full name was Kevin L. Catron.  He had run away from home at an early age and promptly fallen in with a dangerous crowd.  One seemingly meaningless mistake led to another, until his new friend had joined the ranks of those lowlifes collectively known as pirates.  It was a tale Tardos had heard over and over.
    If Duda hadn’t gone out of his way to inform him of the periodical recruitment drives, the pair would most likely still be in the access tunnels of the Freeport.  He couldn’t be sure if Duda was doing him a favor or simply attempting to rid himself of an irritant.  Whatever the case, Kevin and Tardos would attend the various recruitments like clockwork.  Each and every time they were turned down. 
    A doddering old man and a quiet young man who never answered strangers were never the most promising candidates.  After each failure it was harder and harder to convince Kevin to try again.  When captain Dubois docked at the Freeport, Duda had practically demanded Tardos attend her recruitment.  It was a good thing they were both accepted; he had barely managed to convince Kevin to come with.  If they had been turned down again, Tardos doubted he’d ever be able to convince the young man to try again.
    “Keep your mind on the job at hand,” a soft whisper pulled him from his idle thoughts.
    He instantly recognized Kevin’s voice.  Silently cursing himself, he got back to work.  It seemed the older he got, the more his mind roamed.  In his defense, it wasn’t entirely his fault.  Andreas had assigned them the most mind-numbing job possible - scrubbing the ship by hand .
    There was no doubt an automated system for that.  If the captain had gone to such lengths to customize her ship, she would want it spotless at all times.  Doing the work of an automated process was practically begging Tardos’ mind to wander freely as his hands went about the dull routine.  It had been a shock to him that the ship even had such arcane things as mops and buckets.  In fact, the mops even had wooden handles, of all things.  Apparently, when Andreas wasn’t humiliating young girls he was inflicting medieval torture on the crew.
    As Tardos shook his head disapprovingly at the task, he realized his hands had come to a stop again.  Hopefully, Kevin hadn’t noticed yet.  Oddly, pushing on the mop didn’t accomplish anything.  Shaking his mind from its idle rambling, he studied the stick in his hands.  Following its length with his eyes, he found the squid-like end was tangled up in another