Outer Darkness (The Lost Earth) - Outlanders #10 (Outlanders) by James Axler

Author:James Axler
Format: mobi
Tags: Science Fiction - Adventure, Fiction - Science Fiction, Science Fiction & Fantasy, Science Fiction - Military, General, Science Fiction, Modern fiction, Adventure, Fiction - Men's Adventure, Men's Adventure, Fiction, thriller
ISBN: 9780373638239
Publisher: Gold Eagle
Published: 1999-09-01T07:00:00+00:00

Chapter 14

Two women walked across the situation room, but for the moment Kane had eyes only for one. He stood up quickly, assuming a formal posture. After a second, Salvo and the ambassadors followed suit as a show of courtesy and respect to a member of the Priory of Awen. Fand was tall and sleek and beautiful, with a proud, almost defiant look about her. Her narrow face was finely chiseled, emphasizing high, regal cheekbones. Her full lips held a secret, faintly amused smile.

She wore a clinging dress that left her long legs bare to midthigh. The dress seemed to shift with a smoky pastel swirl of colors with every movement, revealing brief, tantalizing gleams of bare flesh. Though he knew next to nothing about current fashion, Kane guessed the garment was essentially holographic, confined by the cohesion of a miniature binding field.

Her skin had the blue-white hue of skim milk, and her waist-length golden hair had been plaited into four strands, and at the end of each hung a little golden ball. Her eyes never left his, and they were not completely human. They were huge, tip tilted, golden with vertical slit pupils.

Fand held a long staff in her right hand, the symbol of her office in the Priory of Awen. It was wrapped

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with vines and many turnings of silver wire. An ivory knob, like an oversize egg, topped it.

Her full lips parted and in a liquid voice touched with an Irish brogue, she said, "You have not changed overmuch, my darling Ka'in. Carriage as erect as always, I see."

His posture was not the only thing erect. Her use of the endearment, the meaning of which Fand had never explained, tugged at his heart and elsewhere. He was glad he stood behind his chair as he shifted his gaze to Fand's companion. She gazed at him with a slightly challenging gleam in the emerald eyes behind the lenses of wire-framed spectacles. Kane felt the rise of the short hairs at the nape of his neck, and a name came to him. He almost uttered "Baptiste," but he said nothing.

She wore a smartly tailored green-black business suit that did nothing to conceal her tall, willowy and well-formed figure. Her long tawny hair, the color of deep sunset, was swept up on top of her head and fastened there in a sort of braided bun. It framed a well-molded face with a light rosy complexion and a scattering of freckles across her cheeks and the bridge of her nose. A large metal-sheathed carrying case dangled at the end of her right arm.

Kane pegged her immediately as part of Commonwealth officialdom, but he could not guess her function or department. At first glance, she looked like a typical credit-counter, but he somehow sensed the woman was far more than that.

Fand made an abrupt, intricate gesture with her left hand near her heart. "I bid thee felicitations and grant thee respect, Otherbrothers. I am Sister Fand."

The men hi the room responded to the formal

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JAMES AXLER

greeting of the Priory clergy with nods and murmurs.

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