Read Online Drifters' Alliance, Book 3 by Elle Casey - Free Book Online

I’m really interested in the leaves on the nearest plant and wait there for her to arrive. Less than a minute later she’s there, flustered.
    “I didn’t hear you come in.”
    “Yeah,” I say, staring her down, “I’m sneaky like that.” You have no idea how sneaky, you greedy bitch.
    Her chin comes out, but she doesn’t say anything.
    “I need some things to bring our Alliance friends. One gift basket each.”
    “So … four?”
    I nod, confirming for her that the rumors are correct.
    “Anything special?” she asks.
    I put on my most innocent voice. “Oh, I don’t know. Don’t share all your best things. We want to keep those for special occasions, right? Family gatherings and such?” I wait for my words to sink in, but see no sign that she’s picking up on my double meaning. It’s kind of deflating not to be able to share my knowledge with her, that I know she’s planning all kinds of bullshit behind my back and that she kind of wished I’d been blown to bits on the flightdeck.
    She shrugs. “Whatever you say. How much should I pack?”
    “Enough for their crew to have a meal of it.”
    Lucinda nods. “Fine. I could use some help.”
    I turn around to head out. “I’ll send Macon.”
    “Am I safe with him?” Lucinda asks.
    I hesitate in the doorway, not bothering to look back. “Safer than I would be.”
    Leaving the biogrid, I’m seized by a melancholy that makes me want to turn my ship around and blast us out into the Dark where no one will ever see us again. We won’t need water again for a few months. We could disappear and hang out nowhere. Somewhere I could lick my wounds.
    As I make my way back to my bunk, I consider all that I’ve figured out about my life today. I may or may not have actually won this ship; it’s possible the whole scenario is a high-stakes con designed by someone who wants to see me go down in flames. There are Romanii living onboard who think they own the most valuable part of the ship. My long-lost friend who I almost killed and who I thought was long gone snuck on here maybe to kill me, or maybe just to screw me over, who knows. There’s a shadow in my brig, and I have the entire crew of the WS Baltimore waking up to the fact that they were all zapped by some technology they didn’t know existed before —at least I think they didn’t know it existed— and I’m the one responsible.
    So, yeah. I don’t need Adelle to do an analysis of this shit storm for me. My odds of survival are painfully clear: five out of a million. I’m totally screwed. Perfect.
    If it had been just Overshine who took a sleep-dive courtesy of the schlafhammer, I might not have had too much to worry about; at the very least, his ego might have stopped him from seeking me out, because then he would’ve had to admit I got the drop on him. But he wasn’t alone. His entire crew and Drake were there, and there’s no way in the universe that Drake will let that slide. He planned to watch Macon and me fight to the death, and we took that event from him. He’s going to be determined to find us and force a rematch, and I won’t delude myself into thinking the winner will be allowed to live after. Not to mention the fact that he’s going to want to straight-up punish me for getting away by taking him down to snoozetown. How embarrassing that’ll be, when he calls the event in to his superiors. Drake doesn’t do embarrassment well. No, Drake is going to be a big problem for me, unless I can come up with one hell of a story that he’ll believe as to how he was knocked out and I was left to disappear into the Dark. Nothing is coming to mind.
    On top of all this, I have bombs planted all over the place, listening devices, trackers … the list of headaches I have to deal with goes on and on. And I don’t even know what the Alliance is going to want from me. Food for one thing, but what else? The idea behind our group is to protect one another, to help each other survive out here, but I