David Drake - [Reaches 02] - Through The Breach

Back|Next

Contents

Through the Breach

To Allyn Vogel

Most of my friends are smart, competent,

and unfailingly helpful to me when

I need it. Allyn is all those things.

She is also a gentle and genuinely good person,

which puts her in a much smaller category.

BETAPORT, VENUS

7 Days Before Sailing

"Mister Jeremy Moore," announced the alien slave as he ushered me into the private chamber of the

Blue Rose Tavern. The public bar served as a waiting room and hiring hall for the Venus Asteroid

Expedition, while General Commander Piet Ricimer used the back room as an office.

I'd heard that the aide now with Ricimer, Stephen Gregg, was a conscienceless killer. My first glimpse of

the man was both a relief and a disappointment. Gregg was big, true; but he looked empty, no more

dangerous than a suit of ceramic armor waiting for someone to put it on. Blond and pale, Gregg could

have been handsome if his features were more animated.

Whereas General Commander Ricimer wasn't . . . pretty,say, the way women enough have found me,

but the fire in the man's soul gleamed through every atom of his physical person. Ricimer's glance and

quick smile were genuinely friendly, while Gregg's more lingering appraisal was . . .

Maybe Stephen Gregg wasn't as empty as I'd first thought.

"Thank you, Guillermo," said Ricimer. "Has Captain Macquerie arrived?"

"Not yet," the slave replied. "I'll alert you when he does." Guillermo's diction was excellent, though his

tongueless mouth clipped the sibilant. He closed the door behind him, shutting out the bustle of the public

bar.

Guillermo was a chitinous biped with a triangular face and a pink sash-of-office worn bandolier fashion

over one shoulder. I'd never been so close to a Molt slave before. There weren't many in the Solar

System and fewer still on Venus. Their planet of origin was unknown, but their present province was the

entire region of space mankind had colonized before the Collapse.

Molts remained and prospered on worlds from which men had vanished. Now, with man's return to the

stars, the aliens' racial memory made them additionally valuable: Molts could operate the pre-Collapse

Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html

machinery which survived on some outworlds.

"Well, Mister Moore," Ricimer said. "What are your qualifications for the Asteroid Expedition?"

"Well, I've not myself been involved in off-planet trade, sir," I said, trying to look earnest and superior,

"but I'm a gentleman, you see, and thus an asset to any proposal. My father—may he continue well—is

Moore of Rhadicund. Ah—"

The two spacemen watched me: Ricimer with amusement, Gregg with no amusement at all. I didn't

understand their coolness. I'd thought this was the way to build rapport, since Gregg was a gentleman

also, member of a factorial family, and Ricimer at least claimed the status.

"Ah . . ." I repeated. Carefully, because the subject could easily become a can of worms, I went on,

"I've been a member of the household of Councilor Duneen—chief advisor to the Governor of the Free

State of Venus."

"We know who Councilor Duneen is, Mister Moore," Ricimer said dryly. "We'd probably know of him

even if he weren't a major backer of the expedition."

The walls of the room were covered to shoulder height in tilework. The color blurred upward from near

black at floor level to smoky gray shot with wisps of silver. The ceiling and upper walls were coated with

beige sealant that might well date from the tavern's construction.

The table behind which Ricimer and Gregg sat—they hadn't offered me a chair—was probably part of

the tavern furnishings. The communications console in a back corner was brand-new. The ceramic

chassis marked the console as of Venerian manufacture, since an off-planet unit would have been made

of metal or organic resin instead, but its electronics were built from chips stockpiled on distant worlds

where automated factories continued to produce even after the human colonies perished.

Very probably, Piet Ricimer himself had brought those chips to Venus on an earlier voyage. Earth, with

a population of twenty millions after the Collapse, had returned to space earlier than tiny Venus. Now

that all planets outside the Solar System were claimed by the largest pair of ramshackle Terran states, the

North American Federation and the Southern Cross, other men traded beyond Pluto only with one hand

on their guns.

Piet Ricimer and his cohorts had kept both hands on their guns, and they traded very well indeed.

Whatever the cover story—Venus and the Federation weren't technically at war—the present expedition

wasn't headed for the Asteroid Belt to bring back metals that Venus had learned to do without during the

Collapse.

I changed tack. I'd prepared for this interview by trading my floridly expensive best suit for clothing of

more sober cut and material, though I'd have stayed with the former's purple silk plush and gold lace if

the garments had fit my spare frame just a little better. The suit had been a gift from a friend whose

husband was much more portly, and there's a limit to what alterations can accomplish.

"I believe it's the duty of every man on Venus," I said loudly, "to expand our planet's trade beyond the

orbit of Pluto. We owe this to Venus and to God. The duty is particularly upon those like the three of us

who are members of factorial families."

I struck the defiant pose of a man ashamed of the strength of his principles. I'd polished the expression

over years of explaining—to women—why honor forbade me to accept money from my father, the

Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html

factor. In truth, the little factory of Rhadicund in Beta Regio had been abandoned three generations

before, and the family certainly hadn't prospered in the governor's court the way my grandfather had

hoped.

Piet Ricimer's face stilled. It took me a moment to realize how serious a mistake I'd made in falsely

claiming an opinion which Ricimer felt as strongly as he hoped for salvation.

Stephen Gregg stretched his arm out on the table before Ricimer, interposing himself between his friend

and a problem that the friend needn't deal with. Gregg wasn't angry. Perhaps Gregg no longer had the

capacity for anger or any other human emotion.

"About the manner of your leaving Councilor Duneen's service,Moore ," Gregg said. He spoke quietly,

his voice cat-playful. "A problem with the accounts, was there?"

I met the bigger man's eyes. What I saw there shocked me out of all my poses, my calculations. "My

worst enemies have never denied that their purse would be safe in my keeping," I said flatly. "There was

a misunderstanding about a woman of the household. As a gentleman—"

My normal attitudes were reasserting themselves. I couldn't help it.

"—I can say no more."

The Molt's three-fingered hand tapped on the door."Captain Macquerie has arrived, sir."

"You have no business here, Mister Jeremy Moore," Gregg said. He rose to his feet. Gregg moved with

a slight stiffness which suggested that more than his soul had been scarred beyond Pluto; but surely his

soul as well. "There'll be no women where we're going. While there may be opportunities for wealth, it

won't be what one would call easy money."

"Good luck in your further occupations, Mister Moore," Ricimer said. "Guillermo, please show in

Captain Macquerie."

Ricimer and his aide were no more than my own age, 27 Earth years. In this moment they seemed to be

from a different generation.

"Good day, gentlemen," I said. I bowed and stepped quickly from the room as a squat fellow wearing

coveralls and a striped neckerchief entered. Macquerie moved with the gimballed grace of a spacer who

expects the deck to shift beneath him at any moment.

I knew that arguing with Ricimer and Gregg wouldn't have gained me anything. I knew also that Mister

Stephen Gregg wouldliterally just as soon kill me as look at me.

* * *

There were more than thirty men in the tavern's public room—and one woman, a spacer's wife engaged

in a low-voiced but obviously acrimonious attempt to drag her husband away. The noise of the crowd

blurred whenever the outer door opened ontoDock Street and its heavy traffic.

I pushed my way to one corner of the bar, my progress aided somewhat by the fact I was a

gentleman—but only somewhat. Betaport was more egalitarian thanIshtarCity , the capital; and spacers

are a rough lot anywhere.

Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html

The tapster drew beer and took payment with an efficiency that seemed more fluid than mechanical. His

eyes were sleepy, but the fashion in which he chalked a tab or held out his free hand in a silent demand

for scrip before he offered the glass showed he was fully aware of his surroundings.

I opened my purse and took out the 10-Mapleleaf coin. That left me only twenty Venerian consols to

live on for the next week, but I'd find a way. Eloise, I supposed. I hadn't planned to see her again after

the problem with her maid, but she'd come around.

"Barman," I said crisply. "I want the unrestricted use of your phone, immediately and for the whole of the

afternoon."

I rang the coin on the rippling blue translucence of the bar's ceramic surface.

The barman's expression sharpened into focus. He took the edges of the coin between the thumb and

index fingers of his right hand, turning it to view both sides. "Where'dyou get Fed money?" he demanded.

"Gambling with an in-system trader on the New Troy run," I said truthfully. "Now, if you don't want the

coin . . ."

That was a bluff—I needed this particular phone for what I intended to do.

The tapster shrugged. He had neither cause nor intention to refuse, merely a general distaste for

strangers; and perhaps for gentlemen as well. He nipped up the gate in the bar so that I could slip through

to the one-piece phone against the wall.

"It's local net only," the tapster warned. "I'm not connected to the planetary grid."

"Local's what I want," I said.

Very local indeed. The tool kit on my belt looked like a merchant's papersafe. I took from it a device of

my own design and construction.

The poker game three weeks before had been with a merchant/captain and three of his officers, in a

sailors' tavern inIshtarCity . The four spacers were using a marked deck. If I'd complained or even tried

to leave the game, they would have beaten me within an inch of my life.

The would-be sharpers had thought I was wealthy and a fool; and were wrong on both counts. They let

me win for the first two hours. The money I'd lived on since the game came from that pump priming.

Much of it was in Federation coin.

The captain and his henchmen ran the betting up and cold-decked me, their pigeon. I weepingly threw

down a huge roll of Venerian scrip and staggered out of the tavern. I'd leftIshtarCity for Betaport before

the spacers realized that I'd paid them in counterfeit—and except for the top bill, very poor counterfeit.

I attached to the phone module's speaker a contact transducer which fed a separate keypad and an

earpiece. The tapster looked at me and said, "Hey! What d'ye think you're doing?"

"What I paid you for the right to do," I said. I pivoted deliberately so that my body blocked the tapster's

view of what I was typing on the keypad—not that it would have meant anything to the fellow.

Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html

On my third attempt at the combination, the plug in my ear said in Piet Ricimer's voice, ". . . not just as a

Venerian patriot, Captain Macquerie. Allmankind needs you."

The communications console in the private room was patched into the tavern's existing phone line. The

commands I sent through the line converted Ricimer's own electronics into a listening device. I could have

accessed the console from anywhere in Betaport, but not as quickly as I needed to hear the interview

with Macquerie.

"Look, Captain Ricimer," said an unfamiliar voice that must by elimination be Macquerie, "I'm flattered

that you'd call for me the way you have, but I gave up voyaging to the Reaches when I married the

daughter of my supplier on Os Sertoes. Long runs are no life for a married man. From here on out, I'm

shuttling myBahia between Betaport andBuenos Aires ."

"We mean no harm to the Southern Cross," said Stephen Gregg. "Your wife's family won't be affected."

With Macquerie, there was obviously no pretense that the expedition had anything to do with asteroids.

Os Sertoes was little more than a name to me. I vaguely thought that it was one of the most distant

Southern colonies, uninteresting and without exports of any particular value.

"Look," said Macquerie, "you gentlemen've been to the Reaches yourself. You don't need me to pilot

you—except to Os Sertoes, and who'd want to go there? It's stuffed right in the neck of the Breach, so

the transit gradients won't let you go anywhere but back."

"Captain," said Ricimer, "I wouldn't ask you if I didn't believe I needed you. Venusmust take her place

in the greater universe. If most of the wealth of the outworlds continues to funnel into the Federation,

President Pleyal will use it to impose his will on all men. Whether Pleyal succeeds or fails, the attempt will

lead to a second Collapse—one from which there'll be no returning. The Lord can't want that, nor can

any man who fears Him."

A chair scraped. "I'm sorry, gentlemen," Macquerie said. His voice was subdued, but firm. Ricimer's

enthusiasm had touched but not won the man. "If you really need a pilot for the Reaches, well—you can

pick one up on Punta Verde or Decades. But not me."

The door opened at the corner of my eye. The Molt standing there stepped aside as noise from the

public bar boomed through the pickup on my earpiece. Captain Macquerie strode past, his face forming

into a scowl of concern as he left the Blue Rose.

"No one just yet, Guillermo," called Piet Ricimer, his words slightly out of synchrony as they reached my

ears through different media.

The door closed.

"I could bring him along, you know," Gregg said calmly in the relative silence.

"No," said Ricimer. "We won't use force against our own citizens, Stephen."

"Then you'll have to feel your way into the Breach without help," Gregg said. "You know we won't find a

pilot for Os Sertoes at any of the probable stopovers. There's not that much trade to the place."

"Captain Macquerie may change his mind, Stephen," Ricimer replied. "There's still a week before we

lift."

Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html

"He won't," snapped Gregg. "He feels guilty, sure; but he's not going to give up all he has on a mad risk.

And if he doesn't—what? The Lord will provide?"

"Yes, Stephen," said Piet Ricimer. "I rather think He will. Though perhaps not for us as individuals, I'll

admit."

In a brighter, apparently careless voice, Ricimer went on, "Now, Guillermo has the three bidders for

dried rations waiting outside. Shall we—"

I quickly disconnected my listening device and slipped from behind the bar, keeping low. If Ricimer—or

worse, Gregg—saw me through the open door, they might wonder why I'd stayed in the tavern after they

dismissed me.

"Hey!" called the barman to my back. "What is it you think you're doing, anyway?"

I only wished I knew the answer myself.

Back|Next

Contents

Framed

Back|Next

Contents

BETAPORT, VENUS

6 Days Before Sailing

The brimstone smell of Venus's atmosphere clung to the starships' ceramic hulls.

Betaport's storage dock held over a hundred vessels, ranging in size from featherboats of under 20

tonnes to a bulk freighter of nearly 150. The latter vessel was as large as Betaport's domed transfer

docks on the surface could accommodate for landings and launches.

Many of the ships were laid up, awaiting parts or consignment to the breakers' yard, but four vessels at

one end of the cavernous dock bustled with the imminence of departure. The cylindrical hulls of two were

already on roller-equipped cradles so that tractors could drag them to the transfer docks.

I eyed the vessels morosely, knowing there was nothing in the sight to help me make up my mind. I'd

familiarized myself with the vessels' statistics, but I wasn't a spacer whose technical expertise could judge

the risks of an expedition by viewing the ships detailed for it.

I supposed as much as anything I was forcing myself to think about what I intended to do. I rubbed my

palms together with the fingers splayed and out of contact.

Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html

A lowboy rumbled slowly past. It was carrying cannon to the expedition's flagship, the 100-tonne

Porcelain. The hull of Ricimer's vessel gleamed white, unstained by the sulphur compounds which would

bake on at first exposure to the Venerian atmosphere. She was brand-new, purpose-built for distant

exploration. Her frames and hull plating were of unusual thickness for her burden.

The four 15-cm plasma cannon on the lowboy were heavy guns for a 100-tonne vessel, and the Long

Tom which pivoted to fire through any of five ports in the bow was a still-larger 17-cm weapon. The

Porcelain 's hull could take the shock of the cannons' powerful thermonuclear explosions, but the guns'

bulk filled much of the ship's internal volume. The most casual observer could see that thePorcelain

wasn't fitting out for a normal trading voyage.

I ambled along the quay. Pillars of living rock supported the ceiling of the storage dock, but the huge

volume wasn't subdivided by bulkheads. The sounds of men, machinery, and the working of the planetary

mantle merged as a low-frequency hum that buffered me from my surroundings.

TheAbsalom 231 was a cargo hulk: a ceramic box with a carrying capacity as great as that of the

flagship. She was already in a transport cradle. Food and drink for the expedition filled the vessel's single

cavernous hold. Lightly and cheaply built, theAbsalom 231 could be stripped and abandoned when the

supplies aboard her were exhausted.

The expedition's personnel complement was set at a hundred and eighty men. I wondered how many of

them, like the hulk, would be used up on the voyage.

A bowser circled on the quay, heading back to the water point. Its huge tank had filled thePorcelain

with reaction mass. I moved closer to the vessels to avoid the big ground vehicle. I walked on.

TheKinsolving was a sharp-looking vessel of 80 tonnes. A combination of sailors and ground crew

were loading sections of three knocked-down featherboats into her central bay. Though equipped with

star drive, a 15-tonne featherboat's cramped quarters made it a hellish prison on a long voyage. The little

vessels were ideal for short-range exploration from a central base, and they were far handier in an

atmosphere than ships of greater size.

What would it be like to stand on a world other than Venus? The open volume of the Betaport storage

dock made me uncomfortable. What would it be like to walk under an open sky?

Why inGod's name was I thinking of doing this?

The last of the expedition's four vessels was the 80-tonneMizpah, also in a transport cradle. She was

much older than thePorcelain and theKinsolving. Clearly—even to a layman like me—theMizpah

wasn't in peak condition.

TheMizpah 's main lock and boarding ramp amidships couldn't be used because of the transport cradle,

but her personnel hatch forward stood open. On the hatch's inner surface, safe from reentry friction and

corrosive atmospheres, were the painted blazons of her co-owners: the pearl roundel of Governor Halys,

and the bright orange banderol—the oriflamme—of Councilor Frederic Duneen.

TheMizpah wasn't an impressive ship in many ways, but she brought with her the overt support of the

two most important investors on the planet. If nothing else, theMizpah 's participation meant the survivors

wouldn't be hanged as pirates when they returned to Venus.

Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html

If anyone survived. When I eavesdropped on the private discussion between Ricimer and Gregg, I'd

heard enough to frighten off anyone sane.

Thomas Hawtry—Factor Hawtry of Hawtry—stepped from theMizpah 's personnel hatch. Two

generations before, Hawtry had been a name to reckon with. Thomas, active and ambitious to a fault,

had mortgaged what remained of the estate in an attempt to recoup his family's influence by attaching

himself to the great of the present day.

He was a man I wanted to meet as little as I did any human being on Venus.

Hawtry was large and floridly handsome, dressed now in a tunic of electric blue with silver lame trousers

and calf-high boots to match the tunic. On his collar was a tiny oriflamme to indicate his membership in

Councilor Duneen's household.

Hawtry's belt and holster were plated. The pistol was for show, but I didn't doubt that it was functional

nonetheless.

"Moore!" Hawtry cried, framed by the hatch coaming two paces away. Hawtry's face was blank for an

instant as the brain worked behind it. The Factor of Hawtry was a thorough politician; though not, in my

opinion, subtle enough to be a very effective one.

"Jeremy!" Hawtry decided aloud, reforming his visage in a smile. "Say, I haven't had an opportunity to

thank you for the way you covered me in the little awkwardness with Lady Melinda."

He stepped close and punched me playfully on the shoulder, a pair of ladies' men sharing a risque

memory. "Could have beenve -ry difficult for me. Say, I told my steward to pass you a little something to

take the sting out. Did he . . . ?"

Lady Melinda was an attractive widow of 29 who lived with her brother—Councilor Duneen. Hawtry'd

thought to use me as his go-between in the lady's seduction. I, on the other hand—

I would never have claimed I was perfect, but I liked women too much to lure one into the clutches of

Thomas Hawtry. And as it turned out, I liked the Lady Melinda a great deal more than was sensible for a

destitute member of the lesser gentry.

"Regrettably, Ididn't hear from your steward, Thom," I said. No point in missing a target of opportunity.

"And you know, I'm feeling a bit of a pinch right now. If—"

Not much of a target. "Aren't we all, Jeremy, aren't we all!" Hawtry boomed. "After I bring my

expedition back, though,all my friends will live like kings! Say, you know about the so-called 'asteroids

expedition,' don't you?"

He waved an arm toward the docked ships. A hydraulic pump began to squeal as it shifted theAbsalom

231 in its cradle.

"Captain Ricimer's . . ." I said, hiding my puzzlement.

"Andmine," said Hawtry, tapping himself on the breast significantly. "I'm co-leader, though we're keeping

it quiet for the time being. A very political matter, someone of my stature in charge of a voyage like this."

Hawtry linked his arm familiarly with mine and began pacing back along the line of expedition vessels.

Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html

His friendliness wasn't sincere. In the ten months I knew Hawtry intimately in the Duneen household, the

man had never been sincere about anything except his ambition and his self-love.

But neither did Hawtry seem to be dissembling the hatred I'd expected. Irritated at his go-between's

lack of progress and very drunk, Hawtry had forced the Lady Melinda's door on a night when her

brother was out of the house. The racket brought the servants to the scene in numbers.

I, the gentleman whowas sharing the lady's bed that night, escaped in the confusion—but my presence

hadn't gone unremarked. The greater scandal saved Hawtry from the consequences of his brutal folly, but

I scarcely expected the fellow to feel grateful. Apparently Hawtry's embarrassment was so great that he'd

recast the incident completely in his own mind.

"I'm going to take the war to the Federation," Hawtry said, speaking loudly to be heard over the noise in

the storage dock. He accompanied the words with broad gestures of his free hand. "And itis a war, you

know. Nothing less than that!"

A dozen common sailors examined thePorcelain 's hull and thruster nozzles, shouting comments to one

another. The men weren't on duty; several of them carried liquor bottles in pockets of their loose

garments. They might simply be spectators. Ricimer's flagship was an unusual vessel, and the expedition

had been the only subject of conversation in Betaport for a standard month.

"Asteroids!" Hawtry snorted. "The Feds bring their microchips and pre-Collapse artifacts into the system

in powerful convoys, Jeremy . . . butI'm going to hit them where they aren't prepared for it. They don't

defend the ports on the other side of the Mirror where the wealth is gathered. I'll go through the Breach

and take them unawares!"

Hawtry wasn't drunk, and he didn't have a hidden reason to blurt this secret plan. Because I was a

gentleman of sorts and an acquaintance, I was someone for Hawtry to brag to; it was as simple as that.

Of course, the proposal was so unlikely that I would have discounted it completely if I hadn't heard

Ricimer and Gregg discussing the same thing.

"I didn't think it was practical to transit the Breach," I said truthfully. "Landolph got through with only one

ship of seven, and nobody has succeeded again in the past eighty years. It's simpler to voyage the long

way, even though that's a year and a half either way."

Interstellar travel involved slipping from the sidereal universe into other bubbles of sponge space where

the constants for matter and energy differed. Because a vessel which crossed a dimensional membrane

retained its relative motion, acceleration under varied constants translated into great changes in speed and

distance when the vessel returned to the human universe.

No other bubble universe was habitable or even contained matter as humans understood the term. The

sidereal universe itself had partially mitosed during the process of creation, however, and it was along that

boundary—the Mirror—that the most valuable pre-Collapse remains were to be found.

Populations across the Mirror had still been small when the Revolt smashed the delicate fabric of

civilization. Often a colony's death throes weren't massive enough to complete the destruction of the

automated factories, as had happened on the larger outworlds and in the Solar System itself.

For the most part the Mirror was permeable only to objects of less than about a hundred kilograms.

Three generations before, Landolph had found a point at which it was possible to transit the Mirror

Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html

through sponge space.

Landolph's Breach wasn't of practical value, since energy gradients between the bubble universes were

higher than ships could easily withstand. Perhaps it had been different for navigators of the civilization

before the Collapse.

"Oh, the Breach," Hawtry said dismissively. "Say, that's a matter for sailors. Our Venus lads can do

things that cowards from Earth never dreamed of. If they were real men, they wouldn't kiss the feet of a

tyrant like Pleyal!"

"I see," I said in a neutral voice.

I supposed there was truth in what Hawtry said. The ships of today were more rugged than Landolph's,

and if half of Captain Ricimer's reputation was founded on fact, he was a sailor like no one born to

woman before him. But the notion that a snap of the fingers would send a squadron through the Breach

was—

Well, Hawtry's reality testing had always been notable for its absence. His notion of using the Lady

Melinda as a shortcut to power, for example . . .

ThePorcelain 's crew was shifting the first of the plasma cannon from the lowboy. A crane lifted the gun

tube onto a trolley in the hold, but from there on the weapon would be manhandled into position.

ThePorcelain 's ceramic hull was pierced with more than a score of shuttered gunports, but like most

vessels she carried only one gun for every four or more ports. The crew would shift the weapons

according to need.

"They'll get their use soon!" Hawtry said, eyeing the guns with smirking enthusiasm. "And when I come

back, well—it'll be Councilor Hawtry, see if it isn't, Moore. Say, there'll be nothing too good for the

leader of the Breach Expedition!"

I felt the way I had the night I let the spacers inveigle me into the crooked card game, where there was a

great deal to gain and my life to lose. I said, "I can see that you and Captain Ricimer—"

"Ricimer!" Hawtry snorted. "That man, that artisan's son? Surely you don't think that a project of this

magnitude wouldn't have a gentleman as its real head!"

"There's Mister Stephen Gregg, of course," I said judiciously.

"The younger son of a smallholder in the Atalanta Plains!" Hawtry said. "Good God, man! As well have

you commander of the expedition as that yokel!"

"I take your point," I said. "Well, I have to get back now, Thom. Need to dress for dinner, you see."

"Yes, say, look me up when I return, Moore," Hawtry said. "I'll be expanding my household, and I

shouldn't wonder that I'd have a place for a clever bugger like you."

Hawtry turned and stared at the ships which he claimed to command. He stood arms akimbo and with

his feet spread wide, a bold and possessive posture.

I walked on quickly, more to escape Hawtry than for any need of haste. Dinner was part of Eloise's

Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html

David Drake - [Reaches 02] - Through The Breach

相关推荐

开通VIP享超值会员特权

作者详情

相关内容

热门标签

举报选择: