Mech 3: The Empress by B. V. Larson

Author:B. V. Larson
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Published: 2012-02-29T16:00:00+00:00

#

Aldo Moreno had quickly arranged the situation aboard Aareschlucht to his liking. He and Joelle slept in the forward cabin—a chamber once occupied by the Captain. The bizarre skald was left in the lower decks in the aft region of the ship, with orders to keep an eye on the engines, which he professed to have knowledge of.

While Aldo was content with the outcome, Joelle worried continually. He reflected that the slaughter she’d witnessed aboard the ship had injured the bubble of invulnerability so many people’s minds seemed to live within. Aldo had no such illusions to be shattered. He knew he was going to die someday—probably soon, and in a bloody, painful heap. He’d long ago come to accept this eventual fate, and although he was determined to stave it off for as long as possible, he did not waste time dwelling on it. Joelle’s attitude did not match his own.

“How can you be so coldblooded about this?” she demanded.

Aldo shrugged and oiled his blade. One had to be very careful while doing so, as the edge was so fantastically sharp it may well take off the hand that cared for it due to a single thoughtless motion. Its sheath was specially constructed to avoid this fate by gripping the sides of the blade. The long rib of the scabbard that covered the blade itself never actually touched the edge when it was being drawn. If it had, the sheath would have been slashed apart as easily as any other substance that brushed the perfectly aligned molecular-chain.

“I can’t get the image out of my mind, Aldo—I just can’t. I see the scene over and over again. We dragged them out, each crewman’s body, and put it into the low hold. They are still down there, flash-frozen by vacuum by now I would expect. Those are all people we used to know—people you played cards with and in some cases made love to. Now, they are a pile of frozen, mangled corpses in a dark hold. Doesn’t that bother you? How can you think of anything else?”

Joelle continued in this vein while Aldo worked on his blade. She paced their shared cabin as she did so. Her hands rested on her shapely hips as she walked back and forth. When she walked away, Aldo often glanced up to admire the view. When she approached, however, his eyes went back to his blade. The power buttons on the hilt were less than firm, so he disassembled it to tighten the screws inside.

Finally, he became aware that she was standing over him, staring down with a stern expression. He glanced up, eyebrows upraised. Had she posed a question for which she expected an answer? If so, he’d missed it.

“Good point,” he said, hoping this would pass muster. It did not.

“You’re not even listening, are you?”

“I’ve heard enough.”

She made a small growling sound in the back of her throat. “We’ve got less than two weeks before we land and all you do is scratch at that sword of yours.

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.