The Sword of Sophia (The Fighter Queen saga Book 5) by John Bowers

Author:John Bowers [Bowers, John]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: AKW Books
Published: 2014-12-29T05:00:00+00:00

Chapter 18

Thursday, 27 February, 0200 (PCC) – Soderstad, Vega 3

Hans Norgaard strolled casually down a broken street in Soderstad, the southernmost city on Vega 3. The sun had just set and the air was cool after the heat of the day. Soderstad sat on a peninsula surrounded on three sides by water, so it never truly got hot, but the downtown area could get stuffy where the tall buildings blocked the breeze. Hans was still wearing civilian garb, his VE uniform too inflammatory for his present assignment. Norma Teasdale hung on his arm like a middle-aged lover. As long as one didn’t look too closely, she could pass for a Vegan, especially after dark.

The smells of cooking fires drifted over him on the breeze; Soderstad was still a ruined city—the war had been over for three years, but the Sirians were taking their time at reconstruction. Nearly a million people still lived in the dark, or in shelters, or in crude shacks hammered together from bits of rubble. The city had been the scene of terrible fighting, the first to be invaded by the Confederate army. Fighting had been street to street, house to house, and the Vegan Guard had been virtually wiped out, but at a terrible cost. The Confederacy’s experience in Soderstad had changed their approach to the invasion, causing them to avoid major cities and fight the Guard in the mountains.

That had also been costly, but no other cities had been destroyed.

“Is this the right street?” Norma asked as they turned down a littered avenue where most of the houses were missing windows, roofs, or both.

“Yeah, I think so. My GPS says it is.”

“Place looks like a fuckin’ jungle.”

“It is. I wouldn’t want to walk around here unarmed.”

“Or in uniform.”

“Especially that.”

Halfway down the block they spotted a house with a number hanging drunkenly by a screw. 4127. Hans stopped, his nerves beginning to hum.

“This is it.”

The house was quiet, the windows dark, but this was the address they’d been given. Hans glanced up and down the street—he saw the glow of a campfire a block away, and shadows everywhere, but no people. Norma gripped his arm.

“Watcherass,” she suggested.

Hans proceeded up the walk to the door, Norma hanging ten feet behind. She held a laser pistol at her side, invisible in the gloom. Hans tried the door plate, but it was dead. He knocked instead, five hard raps. He took a step back and waited. Through the window by the door, obliquely, he saw candlelight reflected in a mirror. Someone was home.

He knocked a second time, and called out. This time he heard a crunching sound from inside, as if someone were stepping on broken glass.

“Who is it?” The voice behind the door sounded young, cautious.

“Hans Norgaard.”

“Who?”

“Hans Norgaard. Mr. Watanabe?”

“I don’t know anyone by that name. What do you want here?”

“I need to talk to you. Please open the door, it’s important.”

He waited ten seconds, and finally heard a lock snap. The door creaked open a few inches and a face peered out, a young Asian man not more than twenty years old.

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.