3 CHAPTER TWENTY-NINESten shifted the bulky file from one arm to another, and stood patiently in the doorway to the work area. He watched with no little amazement as the Eternal Emperor bent low over the strange boxlike object held gently in his hands. The curled right fingers of his hand plucked...
packed with other golden ones. Between them and the scaffold, more Imperial troops in the mottled-brown combat uniform of the Guards. Their weapons were leveled at the crowd.A furred out-of-focus head blurred across his vision.Movement, and Sten was looking again at the scaffold.Sounds: drumroll....
The final course was set, and in a few hours the ship would settle on the gray-white surface of Fundy—the major planetary body in the Erebus System.Erebus would seem to be the last place that any being would want to go. Its sun was so near extinction that it cast only a feeble pale yellow light t...
They looked at the craters where the assassins had exploded as they died, the two rows where the dead Security beings lay covered, the torn wire, and the shrapnel-ripped buildings. They could not see the hilltop, where smoke trailed up from the N'Ran's launch site, and the warship Alex's blind-la...
A weak sun crept through those clouds, picking out flashes of gold, green, and red from the towering buildings and domes.The square was immense: twenty-five square kilometers solid with gaudy buildings, the official heartbeat of the Altaic Cluster. On the western edge was the lace-pattern fan of ...
Straining under the weight, he lifted it to knee height, then staggered a few paces and dropped the mass onto a pile.Senior Captain (Intelligence) Lo Prek stepped back to review his work. Only a large, twisted steel door remained. The Tahn officer had labored for hours clearing that door. Beyond ...
She hugged him and palmed a button; the wall flickered, became a screen, and cartoon characters scampered in across it. The fourteen-year-old boy giggled in delight. Bet's parents had sold her to the Company a few cycles before. The price: Their contracts were torn up and the Mig couple was free ...