Lost Stars 04 - Shattered Spear by Campbell Jack

Author:Campbell, Jack [Campbell, Jack]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
Tags: Speculative Fiction, Fiction, Science Fiction, Military, War & Military, Action & Adventure
ISBN: 9780425272275
Google: j2JYCgAAQBAJ
Publisher: Penguin
Published: 2017-05-01T04:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER TEN

COLONEL Bran Malin stood silently in a slice of shadow just large enough to cover him, trying not to move and breathing as shallowly as possible to avoid giving off any signs that someone could spot. The city was unusually active this late at night, but there were still many areas where silence and stillness reigned.

President Iceni had told him to take the night off without explaining why, but it had not been difficult to find out that General Drakon was to be her guest this evening. Malin had long wanted to encourage such a relationship, but had been at a loss for how to do so. He knew that physical intimacy by itself was unlikely to produce any good results, and that in theory a strong relationship between Drakon and Iceni would involve emotional ties and intimacy.

In theory. Malin gazed into the darkness, remembering the woman who had raised him as her own. She had loved him, and he had thought he loved her in return. But then he had learned of his real mother and sought her out. Roh Morgan. A woman who knew a great deal about anger and pain, but seemingly nothing about any softer emotions except as tools to wield against the targets of her plans. And Malin had found he had a natural skill at the same sort of machinations. Inherited, apparently, along with who knew what else.

He had walled off his feelings as much as possible, trying to bend his work toward some greater goal that might prove he had overcome his mother’s legacy. There was an irony in the fact that both he and Morgan had fixed on Drakon as the means to achieve their ends, though those ends differed hugely.

Was she dead? Malin stayed motionless, gazing into the night, wondering why he felt a conviction that Morgan had somehow survived the destruction of the snake alternate headquarters on Ulindi.

Neither Drakon nor Iceni trusted him as much as they once had, but that was fine. It wasn’t about him. What mattered was that the two former CEOs seemed to have finally reached out to each other in a way that should help preserve this experiment at Midway, this attempt to build a government and a society that were both strong and free.

Malin inhaled slowly and deeply, repeating in his mind a mantra he had recited countless times. I have been a slave to my past, but I will free myself by freeing others from their pasts.

His instruments registered a flicker of motion in an area half a block down and to the left, an area that should be empty at this time of night. Malin moved like a wraith through the darkness, determined that this time he would run his quarry to earth.

Move. Hide. Pause. Move. His prey was moving with great care as well. Did the prey know of the hunt this time? Probably not. There had been no moves so easy to spot that they were obviously intended to draw Malin on.

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