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~ She must have loved you a lot to follow you into the Army.
~ Actually it was more me following her, sir; enlisting was her idea. Trying to
rescue the souls stored in the Military Institute on Aorme before the rebels
got there was her idea too.
~ She sounds like quite a female.
~ She was, sir.
~ I'm really sorry, Major Quilan. I was never married myself, but I know what
it is to love and to lose. I just want you to know I feel for you, that's all.
~ Thank you. I appreciate that.
~ I think maybe you and I need to study a bit less and talk a bit more. For two
people in such intimate contact we haven't really told each other that much
about ourselves. What do you say, Major?
~ I think that might be a good idea, sir.
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~ Let's start by dropping the 'sir', shall we? Doing my homework, I did notice
the bit of legalese attached to the standard wake-up briefing which basically
says that my admiral-generalship lapsed with my body-death. My status is
Reserve Honorary Officer and you're the ranking grade on this mission. If
anyone's going to get called sir around here it should be you. Anyway, just call
me Huyler, if you're happy with that; that's how people usually knew me.
~ As you say, ah, Huyler, given our intimacy, perhaps rank isn't entirely
relevant. Please call me Quil.
~ Done deal, Quil.
The few days passed without incident; they travelled at absurd speed, leaving
Chelgrian space far, far behind. The ROU Nuisance Value passed them via its
little shuttle craft to a thing called a Superlifter, another big, chunky ship,
though with a less extemporised look to it than the war craft. The vessel,
called the Vulgarian, greeted them by voice only. It had no human crew;
Quilan sat in what looked like a little used open area where pleasantly bland
music played.
~ Never married, Huyler?
~ An accursed weakness for smart, proud and insufficiently patriotic females,
Quil. They could always tell my first love was the Army, not them, and not one
of those heartless bitches was prepared to put her male and her people before
her own selfish interests. If I'd only had the basic common sense to have been
taken with airheads I'd have been happily married with - and probably even
more happily survived by - a doting wife and several grown-up children by
now.
~ Sounds like a narrow escape.
~ I notice you're not specifying who for.
The General Systems Vehicle Sanctioned Parts List appeared on the screen in
the Superlifter's lounge as another point of light in the starfield. It became a
silver dot and grew quickly to fill the screen, though there was no sign of
detail on the shining surface.
~ That'll be it.
~ I suppose so.
~ We've probably passed near several escort craft, though they wouldn't be
making their presence so obvious. What the Navy calls a High Value Unit; you
never send them out alone.
~ I thought it might look a little more grand.
~ They always look pretty unimposing from the outside.
The Superlifter plunged into the centre of the silver surface. Within it was like
looking from an aircraft inside a cloud, then there was the impression of
plunging through another surface, then another, then dozens more in quick
succession, flicking past like thumbed paper pages in an antique book.
They burst from the last membrane into a great hazy space lit by a yellow-
white line burning high above, beyond layers of wispy cloud. They were above
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r r
and aft of the craft's stern. The ship was twenty-five kilometres long and ten
wide. The top surface was parkland; wooded hills and ridges separated by and
studded with rivers and lakes.
Bracketed by colossal ribbed and buttressed outriggers chev-roned in red and
blue, the GSV's sheer sides were a golden, tawny colour, scattered with a
motley confusion of foliage-covered platforms and balconies and punctured
by a bewildering variety of brightly lit openings, like a glowing vertical city set
into sandstone cliffs three kilometres high. The air swarmed with thousands
of craft of every type Quilan had ever seen or heard of, and more besides. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]