Mostly, she just wanted to be left alone to do her work.Īnd she had been-for the eight years since she’d earned her degree.

Her professional colleagues were all she needed for companionship. She’d been orphaned as a child and raised by a grandmother who’d died ten years ago. She spent all her time at her digs-usually on obscure aging planets where civilization had died out centuries ago. She was on staff with an Earth university but hadn’t been on campus for nearly four years. Which was the way Riana had always preferred it. Archeologists weren’t particularly valued at present-as they provided neither power nor money for those in authority. So she minded her own business and flew her expeditions under the Coalition radar. And there wasn’t anything anyone could do about it. The Coalition Council, the ruling body of civilized space, made up of representatives from all the major planets, wasn’t known for using its authority in a fair or enlightened way.īut it wasn’t something Riana had wasted any time or indignation on. She’d heard horror stories-as everyone had-about people unjustly incarcerated and permanently caged up like animals. There were any number of prison planets in the Coalition now, and Riana had never given them a second thought. Genus 6 was hell, as far as Riana was concerned. Even if a convict managed to get through the structural barriers and the guards, there was no way to survive the ocean. The prison hold was built beneath that ocean. The surface of Genus 6 was covered by a volatile ocean that was poison to human life. So, instead of colonies, the Coalition had assigned otherwise uninhabitable planets as primitive and inescapable prisons.

The Coalition had given up on those long ago, when too many exiles managed to escape and make it back to the civilized planets-sometimes even as far as Earth. She knew they were intended as a kindness, and in her gut she knew they were true.

Give yourself to him in return for protection.

Hold by claire kent read online