Orphan's Alliance by Robert Buettner

Author:Robert Buettner [Buettner, Robert]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi, pdf
Tags: Fiction, General, Science Fiction, Fiction - Science Fiction, Science Fiction And Fantasy, Space Warfare, Adventure, Space Opera, Science Fiction - Adventure, Wander; Jason (Fictitious character)
ISBN: 9780316001748
Publisher: Orbit
Published: 2008-10-31T19:30:00+00:00

FORTY

THAT NIGHT, Bassin hosted a dinner party in the Summer Palace Courtyard to bid farewell to the Task Force, who the next morning would reboard the Emerald River for the voyage back to Earth. There they would write a report to Congress, and, in a year or two, Congress would reauthorize Howard to do most of what he had been up to. They thought.

If they, and the thousand other guests, had realized that a hundred feet below the woven carpets where they stood was a panzer division parking garage, the evening’s ambiance might have differed. Most people’s idea of a dinner party on Bren is a duckbill haunch as big as a crocodile spitted above a bonfire, surrounded by drunken ogres, or by indigo-faced nomads smoking janga in water pipes. National Geographic viewership increases for Plains Clan holos. The Marini are too, well, normal. To dine with the Marini monarch was more like an outdoor reception in the south of France. The chamber music instruments sounded woodier, the canapés were reptilian, the torches that flickered on the granite battlements were fueled by sauropod tallow, and two crescent moons sailed above them, but the panelists seemed so at home that most of them wore black tie or evening gown. Governor Warden, all tux and teeth, stood near a carved gold fountain as I approached. He raised his silver wine flute, toasted us, and grinned like a rube.

On his home turf, with staff, Warden, or any of the other panelists, would have tumbled to our amateur coup in hours. But three hundred light years from home, disoriented by surroundings so alien that even the moons in the night sky added up wrong, Howard, the Duck, and I were poised to get away with it. Warden spread his arms. “Hah? Did I keep my promise to be out of your hair in three months?”

“So can’t we just go back to wor®€…k, Tom?”

“Jason, that’s not my decision. And I can’t say there were no problems. But I promise you this.” He pointed with one finger that he unwrapped from the stem of his glass. “I’ll get Colonel Hibble’s projects back to active status by the end of next year. If I have to beat down doors all over Washington.”

By which time, if we waited on my new best friend, Tom, and Congress, the Slugs might be the ones beating down doors in Washington.

A late-arriving guest caught my eye as she whispered to the footman at the courtyard gate. He rapped his halberd on the pavement, then announced, “Rear Admiral Ozawa.”

With Ike already on guard above Bren, Emerald River had been too valuable a chess piece to leave idling in orbit. As soon as Emerald River had dropped off Warden’s panel, she had departed Bren, laden with Cavorite, Casuni mead, and a National Geographic holo crew just back from the boonies, for Earth.

Emerald River’s absence had been critical to our little plot, because her crew couldn’t have missed the excess traffic to and from Ike .

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.