Xeelee Novellas by Stephen Baxter

Author:Stephen Baxter
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Published: 2010-09-05T04:00:00+00:00

When they got back to the Rock, an evacuation and hasty re-equipping was underway. Non-combatants were removed from the Rock, equipment, stores and people hurried underground, weapons, sensor and drive emplacements rapidly completed and tested. Meanwhile the troopers were checking their skinsuits and other kit, and injecting themselves with mnemonic fluid, a record which might help the military analysts reconstruct whatever happened to them.

It turned out that orders had been changed. The Rock was to be hurled on its new mission to the Front in just a few more days, weeks ahead of the old schedule. Perhaps, Luca thought with a shiver, the prognosticating librarians on distant Earth had discerned some shifting in their misty maps of the future, and the Rock was to be sent to secure some famous preordained victory - or to avert some predetermined disaster.

But for him the most important consequence of this chain of events was that he was to be taken off the Rock and flown out to another station, while Teel was to ride the Rock once more to the Front itself.

He hurried to her quarters.

Aside from a small bathroom area there were just two pieces of furniture, a simple bed and table. She was sitting on the bed studying a data desk. The top button of her uniform was undone; he found his eyes drawn to the tiny triangle of flesh that showed there.

She put down the desk. ‘I knew you would come.’

‘You did?’

‘You have learned about the new orders. Your emotions are confused.’

Tentatively he sat beside her on the bed. ‘I’m not confused. I don’t want to be parted from you.’

‘Do you think I should defy my duty? Or you yours?’

‘No. I just don’t want to lose you.’

Her blue eyes were wide, deep as oceans. ‘It’s not that. You’ve been to New Earth. Now you know where I come from - what I am. You want to save me, don’t you?’

He was hot, miserable, perplexed. ‘I can’t tell if you are mocking me.’

She took his hand and enclosed it in hers. ‘Go home.’

‘Take me with you,’ he said.

‘What?’

It was as if he was framing the thoughts even as the words emerged from his mouth. ‘To the Front. Give me a posting on the Rock.’

‘That’s absurd. You’re a Commissary - a Novice at that. You don’t have the training.’

He let his voice harden. ‘I could surely be as useful as the twelve-year-old conscripts who will be riding with you.’

‘Do you know what you will face?’

‘I know you will be there.’ He moved his face closer to hers, just a little, until he could feel her breath on his mouth. It was his last voluntary act.

Her passion was primal, like the way she ate, as if after this moment there would be no more to savour. And all through the love-making, and the hours later they spent asleep together, he could sense the strength in her - a strength she held back, as if afraid of damaging him.

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