Ashes of Candesce by Karl Schroeder

Author:Karl Schroeder
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Tom Doherty Associates

14

LEAL WAS LOOKING out one of the yacht’s portholes when the ship began braking heavily. She braced her hands on the bulkhead in front of her, as fore suddenly became down.

Her reverie was broken. Leal wasn’t even sure what she’d been daydreaming about, but she knew her shattered ambitions had been in there somewhere. Her dream of being a university professor, of achieving tenure and spending her twilight years surrounded by ancient books … it was all so far from here and now as to constitute a separate life. Once this was all over, could she return to those daydreams? It seemed so unlikely.

The braking eased up, and now she saw the running lights of some sort of way station up ahead. Several ships hulked in the twilight air. Stations and caravansaries weren’t unusual in the zones where the light of different suns overlapped. It was too dim here for agriculture, but destinations were clearly visible. You could hang out a shingle and sell fuel and food, and make out pretty well. This particular station seemed even more prosperous than most.

It would be good to get out and stretch, even if there was no gravity to be had here. She climbed out of her narrow stateroom and nearly collided with Keir Chen, who was sailing down the yacht’s spinal corridor. “Rest stop?” she said to him.

He shook his head. “Two of those ships are Slipstream cruisers, and I’m not the expert here, but they look pretty banged up.”

She went back to her window to look. Sure enough, there were black scars and holes in the hulls of two of the vessels parked by the stop. Returning to the corridor she found Venera already undogging the main hatch. The admiral’s wife wore functional leathers and a bandolier, with pistols at her belt. This must be serious.

“What’s going on?”

Venera spared her a quick glance. “Those are two of the ships we sent to Serenity.”

“Oh!” They all waited impatiently for the dockhands to catch their ropes and haul them in. Before they were even tied down, Venera had hopped off the ship and was pulling herself hand over hand along a rope that led to the station’s main building. Leal and Keir followed as quickly as they could.

The station building was a wooden sphere about a hundred feet across, with various blocky buildings crowding its inside surface. There was an administrative shed, two stores, a hotel, a bar, and something that might actually be a brothel, based on the apparel of the women drifting in front of it. The center of the space held a bank of crude electrical lamps, whose flickering light was competing with a bright glow from the bar. Loud music and raucous voices could be heard coming from there.

Venera, Leal, and Keir looked at one another, then sailed in that direction.

Venera perched on the lip of the door and looked in; Keir did so opposite her. Windup lamps in colored paper balls were bouncing around the bar’s main room, and all the wicker half-spheres where you could nestle with your drinks and friends were full.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.