Charles Ingrid - The Sand Wars 06 - Challenge Met

VIP免费
2024-12-24 0 0 528.88KB 206 页 5.9玖币
侵权投诉
Scanned by Highroller.
Cleaned, re-formatted & proofread by nukie.
Color: -1- -2- -3- -4- -5- -6- -7- -8- -9-
Text Size: 10- 11- 12- 13- 14- 15- 16- 17- 18- 19- 20- 21- 22- 23- 24
Challenge Met
The Sand Wars 6
Charles Ingrid
To Vincent DiFate
This one's for you, Vinnie, intrepid interpreter of word to vision.
Thanks.
Table of Contents
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Prologue
^ »
The vehicle was little more than a coracle, thrown to the mercy of solar
winds and planetary gravities. A man stood at the heavily shielded port
watching the heavens pass. Intently, he viewed the planet the vehicle
orbited. It was aswirl with clouds, but he could see the burned off continents
through rifts in the cover. The blue of water and white-blue of cloud
obscured most of the damage, yet he could see streaks of green and brown
coming through. Initial reports from his far-flung organization told him that
there were possibilities here once more. Clean water, grass, seedlings, along
with the ores. The norcite would bring them back, if nothing else.
Resurrection, he thought, and the thought tipped the corners of a weary
smile. The expression smudged out the worry lines.
He was older, his shoulders bowed with fatigue. He wore the plain
jumpsuit of the working class, a miner's suit, the trouser section lined with
pockets both full and empty. Over its drab colors, he wore the deep blue,
long vested overrobe of his office. A rough-hewn cross rested upon his
chest, rising and falling with each breath. His hair, thinning brown strands
across his broad skull, had been thick once and more tinted with auburn
than it was now. Only his eyes remained the same: vigorous, alive, the
deepest of browns, windows to a soul still fiery with conviction.
"Jack would be proud," he voiced aloud. "He's brought a planet back to
life." He'd had to bring an emperor to his knees to do it, but the resurrection
had begun. Colin watched the planet avidly, drinking in its phoenix rebirth
out of ashes.
He was dwarfed by the massive battle armor behind him, its opalescent
Flexalinks catching the light as it shifted nearer. "Should have brought Jack,"
said the armor, its voice sounding forth in magnificent basso profundo
tones.
The man did not take his gaze from the portal. The armor was not
empty, though it should have been, and the voice did not come from a
human throat nor a computer sentience. There was alien flesh inside the
armor, regenerating like a chick within its shell. That it missed the soldier
who wore the armor, its symbiotic link, gave it more credence than Colin
had at one time supposed.
The Walker saint replied, "Jack's busy. He'll come after us." The man did
not elaborate. The machinations of humankind might stall any kind of
rescue, but Colin had been prepared for that.
It appeared the armor was not. "You should have brought Jack," it
repeated with the petulance of a small child. It shifted and brought up a
gauntlet. The massive fist could easily crush Colin, but he did not flinch as it
came to rest upon his shoulder. The petulant tone faded. "There," Bogie
said. "Company."
The armor's sensors were far better than human eyes and so it was a
while before Colin could see what the other registered. Then, when he
recognized it, it was with a sucked in breath. His right hand went
involuntarily to his cross and gripped it.
"By God," Colin whispered. "I was right."
The cross within his fist cut into his weathered palm. God was his
business, not diplomacy. But it had seemed to him that mankind had no
right to war with a creature they had not even met face-to-face, as terrible as
that enemy had proven in the past. He was old enough to know destiny
when it crossed his path.
The heavens seemed to tremble as the alien fleet moved into sight,
warships thrumming with massive power. The tiny rescue coracle would be
dwarfed by any vessel they sent out. Colin looked out over the fleet even as
a lethal, viperous looking vehicle peeled away and headed in their direction.
To have been spotted so quickly!
Colin dropped the cross and laid his hand over the gauntlet on his
shoulder. "I can't take you with me," he said.
Armor couldn't flinch… could it?
"Alone again?" said the being.
"Till Jack finds you. He should. But I can't take you with me." To meet
with them, to have at last the evidence his Protestant ministry had long
searched for, to prove to the worlds and mankind that Christ had indeed
gone on to walk on other shores. There wasn't an archaeological site the
Walkers delved where they hadn't also found signs of these others. They
had become, enemy or not, someone he had to treaty with. Yet, as the
fighter winged toward him, his dreams failed and his heart skipped a beat.
What if he was wrong?
As if echoing his thoughts, Bogie growled. "The enemy."
"No," Colin murmured. "The unknown." He took a steadying breath.
"You're my signpost, Bogie. You have to tell what I've told you, and point
the way after. If I'm very, very fortunate, I'll be there to meet you at road's end."
The coracle rocked as a tractor beam locked about it.
Chapter 1
« ^ »
The sound of being locked into a berth rang throughout the ship. Its clamor
vibrated through the ship's skeleton as though it were a bell tolling the end
of a journey, the attainment of a destination. After weeks shipbound, in
vacuum and in FTL warp, the noise echoing through normal atmospheric
pressure was deafening—and welcome.
The recycler began to shut down as the locks were opened to pump in
fresh air. Jack's ears popped as the pressure changed and he swung about in
the passenger lounge chair. He looked at his fellow traveler though her
amber hair waving down across one shoulder hid the expression on her
fine-boned profile.
"Now," he said. "The emperor shows his true colors."
The young woman could not hide her shudder from him. She looked
about the cabin as she turned to him, her gaze surveying the lounge as if
worried they might be spied upon, and she answered quietly, "I think you
already have him scoped. We're still his prisoners."
"Maybe." He could not contain his growing excitement. "I beat him to a
standstill as half a man. Think what I could do completed."
She turned back to the viewing screen, even though it had been shut
down and the lounge portal was still locked for deep space. Jack felt her
closeness as though she actually leaned against him with her head upon his
shoulder, for she had not withdrawn her intimacy, and he felt himself smile.
The door to the lounge room opened with a faint hissing noise, and the
emperor stepped through. The man was slight and wiry, fair-skinned and
heavily freckled, his frizzled red hair alive with an electrical aura of its own,
and the sharp gaze of his cat-green eyes rested upon Jack.
"Commander Storm," Emperor Pepys said, in a deep tone that belied his
slight body. "Until you have been decommissioned, I suggest you rise and
salute your emperor."
Jack Storm paused, and then, slowly and deliberately, he rose and
saluted. He stood head and shoulders and then some over the older man,
and if he'd been encased in his battle armor, he would have towered over
Pepys, filling the entire room with his presence. The two men locked gazes,
and Pepys turned away first, unable to stay with the clear as rainwater faded
blue eyes of the other. The corner of Jack's mouth twitched. He remained
standing.
"I've sent for an escort," Pepys said. He plucked an imaginary thread
from the seams of his red and gold jumpsuit which was not his customary
elegant wear but far more suitable for the journey they'd just made.
"Escort?" Amber echoed. "Or guard?"
Pepys' face twisted in ill-concealed anger. He shoved a fist into his right
leg pocket. "Does it matter? You agreed to return with me, and this is my
world."
Amber's lips curved shut and she said nothing although she might well
have reminded him Malthen was her world, too. But it wasn't in the sense
that she came from the underground, from the unprivileged society, and
Malthen had never held anything for her, until it had brought her Jack.
"No Thraks," Jack said, and he moved to the back of her chair, his
protection of her obvious for all that it was unspoken.
The emperor's anger became wry amusement. "Ah, yes," he said. "Let us
not forget the phobia which drove you away from my Knights. Whatever
else we may do here, I won't have you upsetting the alliance which I have
taken such pains to reweave."
"Alliance. You've been infiltrated and conquered, but you're too blind to
see it." Jack's hands, resting on the back of Amber's chair, touching but not
hidden by the cascade of her hair, tightened. "They've sucked you in."
"There are considerations you know nothing of."
"If you'd care to elaborate, I'd like to know just what you've been
planning."
Pepys made an exasperated sound, his lips pursed. He took his hand out
of his pocket and slapped it on the bulkhead, then keyed open the com lines
to the bridge. "Raise the shields."
"But, sire—"
"Riot watch notwithstanding—do as I say!"
The portal shield before Amber began to rise, and Malthen's white-gold
sunlight flooded in, made bearable by the window filter. Pepys pointed
outside, beyond the berth cradle, across the spaceport. Jack turned his head,
and his eyes narrowed.
"It's the Walkers. They've heard my private ship was berthing
today—they've come to see if I've brought back their saint." Pepys' voice
was faint and bitter. "He brought me to this."
Jack straightened. A riot guard, faintly seen, but still visible at the
perimeters of the landing field jostled against a wall of flesh. He could not
hear the voices at this range, but the sight of Thraks in riot gear and battle
armor controlling ordinary people made his flesh prickle. "They know St.
Colin's missing?"
"Yes, damn it all. Word broke out while we were en route. I could not
have kept it quiet much longer anyway, but I had hoped for better." Pepys
stepped up, joining them at the window. "Old friend," he said quietly. "Is
this the legacy you wanted to leave?"
Jack had often seen fiery indignation in Colin's mild brown eyes, but he
knew the Walker leader would never want a religious war in his name. The
Walker religion had been embraced for its benevolent tenets as well as its
search for new worlds that Christ might have visited. It was as tolerant as
any religion he knew, though he did not espouse it. The fervor he saw now,
the wave of humanity dashing itself against the riot shields and inflexible,
beetlelike carapaces of the Thraks, bore no resemblance to anything he'd
ever heard Colin preach.
He started to say something as he turned to Pepys, but the emperor was
still fixed on the sight before them, and interrupted Jack, saying, "So you
may call my honorable Knights an escort or a guard or whatever you
wish—but we're not leaving here without them. We'll never get through
otherwise." Pepys backed away from the window. With a snap, he added,
"You've agreed to find Colin for me. Cross me now, and you'll not only be
court-martialed for the treasonous acts you've committed and been taken
prisoner for—you'll be the one responsible for the slaughter that follows."
The emperor left abruptly. Amber tilted her head, waiting until the fall of
his steps could no longer be heard. Then she said, "Nice man."
Jack made a noncommittal sound. He unclenched his hands from the
back of her chair and moved them to the back of her neck, where he stroked
soft and fragrant skin. "A fine pair we are," he told her. "A treasonous
Knight and a thief."
She laughed and raised her arms so that she might grasp his hands. "A
thief and an assassin," she corrected. "But you've never betrayed your
Knighthood." Her voice sharpened. "Pepys corrupted it—corrupted them
all." Her words were spat out, venomous and bitter.
He leaned over her. "Witch."
She tilted her head back, throat arching gracefully. "Hero."
Jack shook his head, laughing so softly that when she met his mouth with
a kiss, she was surprised to feel the laughter vibrating pleasantly in his lips.
Springtime had come to Malthen and its under-belly, the slums known
simply as under-Malthen. Green shoots ignored the still gray skies and
slanting drizzle as the freezing rains of winter warmed. They pushed their
insistent growth upward, fracturing concrete and perma-plast. Only the
rose-pink obsidite walls of the emperor's residence, the palace of the Triad
Throne, could deny them life. Here the grass retreated and settled to a life of
surrender in the lawns and grounds, which was a far better fate than that
which it faced on the Training grounds. No matter how brave the grass or
weed, it was destroyed when hard-heeled boots of Flexalink ground it to
dust. It grew relentlessly, only to be trampled by battle armor.
This day it had a respite, and pushed through the first wet splatters of
rain, ignorant of its fate.
Lassaday, first sergeant of the Dominion Knights, first D.I. of the
Malthen training station, his chunky body as hard as the Flexalinks worn by
a Knight, his bald head darkened and weathered by the usual Malthen
sunshine, hung his elbows over the observation railing and spat in disgust.
The grounds were empty, on a day when the veterans and recruits should
have been drilling, ill-weather or not. The Walker riots confined them all to
base and he had little choice about his assignments. He could only thank his
lucky stars that it had brought out the Thraks first, Minister Vandover
taking advantage of the human fearfulness of the aliens to keep the
dissenters at bay.
The sergeant looked over the pitted and battle-scarred retaining walls.
His cheek bulged with the wad of stim he chewed and he spat another
mud-like droplet over the railing when the alert came in over the com line.
He answered it, taking his orders gruffly, and keyed off. He pulled back
from the railing after a last look at the acreage before him and went
downstairs.
The shop was as empty as the grounds, racks of battle armor in repair
hanging silent. The locker rooms, permeated by an odor of fear as palpable
as the odor of sweat, were vacant except for the robosweep, squeaking as it
toured the aisles in its janitorial mode. Lassaday strode through, aware of
the cameras following him as he made his own sentry rounds. He heaved a
sigh as he broke into the fresh air once again.
The barracks, however, teemed with activity as Lassaday approached
them. Recruits and veterans sat in knots, polishing their minor
equipment—bracers, gauntlets, small arms—or they stood around idly
gossiping.
"Th' emperor's ship is ported. I want an honor guard of twelve
volunteers, and I'm only takin' th' best of you." It was an assignment he had
feared, but he would take it, and he wanted only the top Knights beside him
when he did.
The knots broke up, mumbling, arguing, and he could hear the drift of
their voices, the same words, the same arguments that had driven him to
the solitude of the Training grounds in the first place.
摘要：

ScannedbyHighroller.Cleaned,re-formatted&proofreadbynukie.Color:-1--2--3--4--5--6--7--8--9-TextSize:10-11-12-13-14-15-16-17-18-19-20-21-22-23-24ChallengeMetTheSandWars6CharlesIngrid ToVincentDiFateThisone'sforyou,Vinnie,intrepidinterpreterofwordtovision.Thanks. TableofContentsPrologueChapter1Chapter...

展开>> 收起<<
Charles Ingrid - The Sand Wars 06 - Challenge Met.pdf

共206页,预览42页

还剩页未读， 继续阅读

声明：本站为文档C2C交易模式，即用户上传的文档直接被用户下载，本站只是中间服务平台，本站所有文档下载所得的收益归上传人(含作者)所有。玖贝云文库仅提供信息存储空间，仅对用户上传内容的表现方式做保护处理，对上载内容本身不做任何修改或编辑。若文档所含内容侵犯了您的版权或隐私，请立即通知玖贝云文库，我们立即给予删除！

相关推荐

更多
立即下载
分类：外语学习 价格：5.9玖币 属性：206 页 大小：528.88KB 格式：PDF 时间：2024-12-24

开通VIP享超值会员特权

  • 多端同步记录
  • 高速下载文档
  • 免费文档工具
  • 分享文档赚钱
  • 每日登录抽奖
  • 优质衍生服务

作者详情

相关内容

更多

热门标签

人际关系 动力学连接体 力的合成 配电装置 高考理综 全宋诗作者索引 公务员考试
/ 206
评分 收藏
分享
立即下载 VIP免费下载
客服
关注