Read Online Outriders by Jay Posey - Free Book Online

nine years since and even though her current assignment was the furthest out she’d ever been, it didn’t feel nearly far enough. She hoped that by the time she was her parents’ age, people would finally take space travel seriously and really find a way to get out there amongst the stars. For some reason, her great-grandparents’ generation had celebrated just for getting off Earth, and her grandparents’ generation seemed to think colonizing Mars had made them a space-faring race. To Piper, that was like moving to the house next door and patting yourself on the back for being well traveled.
    Still, she was off to a good start. Right now she was sitting about sixty-five million miles from Earth, and, as far as she was concerned, maybe infinity miles from home. She really ought to call her parents, she thought with mild guilt. But talking with them always had a way of pulling her mind back Earthward, to oppressive humidity and too much rain, and to promises broken and hearts too often betrayed. Here, sitting in front of the crystal-clear projection where the perfect image made it seem like the hull of the hop had been sheared cleanly away, she could almost believe space was embracing her, inviting her further out, promising only hope, and discovery, and joy. She loved her parents. She did. She’d get in touch with them soon. Maybe not today, but soon.
    Piper cleared her head with a shake and settled in to work. The console in front of her glowed softly with subdued blue lines, gentle traces in the darkness of Hari’s preferred display configuration, the colleague she’d just replaced. Piper glided fingertips over the surface, waking it and calling up the sensor suite. The console recognized her prints on contact and instantly reconfigured the layout of the screens to her liking. A message appeared in the main interface.
    Hello Piper.
    “Hey, Gus,” she said. Her coworkers argued both with her and amongst themselves as to whether Piper was a technophobe or just old-fashioned for disabling the voice features on the console, but they all agreed it was a strange choice. Neither side was right, of course. She was just an introvert and always got more than her fill of chat down on deck. The bubble was her one place of solace on the whole station, and she didn’t see any reason to clutter it up with unnecessary chatter. Gus was the perfect gentleman, only speaking when spoken to, and then only in text.
    Piper ran through her checkpad of diagnostics, making sure all the sensor systems were in shape and tracking. Technically it wasn’t necessary; it was part of end-of-shift protocol to ensure the next watcher had everything they needed. Hari had reported all systems green before handing the station over to her, but Piper always double-checked. It’s not that she didn’t trust her coworkers. She just knew how routine too often led to complacency, and the fact that nothing had ever been out of order in the four years she’d been on station made it all the more likely that everyone else had just gotten used to assuming things were working fine. She wasn’t confident that everyone was keeping a close eye out. And Piper always kept a close eye out.
    Satisfied, she settled back into the mesh chair, situated herself for a long shift. Someone had adjusted the armrests. Again. Piper loved that chair. She’d spent hours searching out its most-guarded mechanical secrets, learned the ways of every knob, switch, lever, and slider. Weeks of testing and experimenting had unlocked a comfort she’d believed, like sunrises and ocean waves, she’d lost forever. The adjustment was only moderately annoying, though. There generally wasn’t much else for her to do anyway.
    The hop she was assigned to was officially designated Veryn-Hakakuri Station YN-773; VH was a minor corp in the grand scheme of things, and YN-773 was pretty out of the way even for them. It wasn’t along any of the main trade routes. She’d only seen three big