Reunion Read Online Free

a moment when everyone’s attention was diverted. Waiting impatiently while a door scanner read her retinas, she hurriedly slipped him through the resultant opening. No alarms sounded. As long as an on-duty officer accompanied them, guests from specialist repair technicians to visiting politicians regularly made use of such portals.
    While Elena made her concluding presentation and individual farewells to the other members of the tour group, Flinx found himself in the empty locker room, checking idents on each individual cubicle until he found the one she had specified. Entering the unsecured module, he found himself surrounded by items that identified it as hers. Electrostatically suspended in a corner was a tenantless security officer’s uniform. As he slipped into the one-piece garment he found himself wondering how she had acquired it. Borrowed it without asking, she had whispered naughtily to him, without going into details.
    These did not really matter. He was
inside.
Idly examining the other items within the cubicle, he tried not to watch the time as he waited for her. Beneath the upper part of the uniform, Pip stirred against his shoulder. She sensed his nervousness, and he had to repeatedly murmur soothing whispers to quiet her.
    After what seemed like an interminable wait but in reality was no more than a few minutes, Elena reappeared and beckoned for him to follow. Exiting the locker room via a different portal, he soon found himself within the heart of the Surire hub.
    “Remember,” she whispered to him, “if anyone challenges us, leave the talking to me. If someone addresses you directly, tell them that you’re a transfer from Fourth Sector. There’ve been a lot of personnel changes there recently.”
    He nodded, only half hearing her. The greater part of his attention was devoted to the facilities they were passing, from small privacy-screened offices to larger chambers occupied by busy, silent technicians wearing identical absorbed expressions. Occasionally they would encounter another security officer. Elena would invariably smile at them, or wave in their direction. Once, she saluted. But no one challenged them.
    They were now deep inside the ring of bone-dry, barren, ash-brown peaks that surrounded the flamingo-infested, alpaca-browsed salt lake that gave its name to the installation they were roaming. Outside, the sky was a painfully bright blue. Located five thousand meters above the not-very-distant, crowded beaches below, the Surire hub might as well have been on the moon. No towns congested its borders, no major transport venues meandered close to its high valley. It flaunted the exceptional isolation that was the hallmark of every one of its sibling facilities scattered around the planet.
    Scanning their surroundings, she directed him quickly into an unoccupied office. In response to her softly murmured code string, the cubicle promptly erected a privacy screen, cutting them off both visually and aurally from the rest of the installation. Gathering unease showed in her face and he hastened to calm her.
    “There you go.” She indicated an empty chair. “Hurry up. I checked the work schedule last night, and this office is supposed to be unoccupied for another week. The tech who uses it is on vacation. No one has registered to use it in her absence, but you never can tell.”
    “I won’t be long.” He sounded hopeful as he settled himself into the chair. Slipping the induction band over his red hair, he glanced back at her. “I’m ready.”
    She nodded, the curtness of the gesture surprising her, and recited a string of verbal commands. Flinx felt the familiar slight warmth at the top and back of his head as the band read his E-pattern and established the requisite neural connection between himself and the station. On board the
Teacher,
he preferred to speak directly to the resident AI instead of using a wave band because he enjoyed hearing the sound of another voice besides his own. Here,