The Battlemaster by Christopher Rowley

Author:Christopher Rowley [Rowley, Christopher]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Published: 2012-08-28T07:09:29+00:00

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

THEY FINALLY TRACKED HER DOWN TO A SMALL TOWN IN North Trios, in the Banbury Valley.

It was a plain little house, a white rancher on a two-acre plot. When she came to the door she seemed surprised by all the attention.

An ominous Shark gunship hovered overhead on thudding rotors. Police vehicles were stretched along the street.

She was wearing a simple blue dress and no shoes. There was an open bottle of wine on the table. She'd been writing something; a screen glittered with amber text.

Then, as Chang's men charged in, she looked Luisa in the eye and said, "I suppose it was inevitable that you'd find me."

"We've had a planetwide search for the past forty-eight hours, sister."

The silver star on Luisa Chang's lapel seemed to fascinate her. Luisa waited on the doorstep while the security team ran through the place.

"You'd better come in, I suppose," Caroline Reese said after a moment.

Chang followed her in. A minicam team was taping everything for Scopus Central; everything had to be by the book.

"I tried to tell someone, you must know that."

"Why did you run?" Chang said.

Caroline Reese shrugged. She was floating; it was almost as if what they were talking about involved someone else, faraway, like a distant relative.

Chang felt her irritation rising fast.

"Does it matter?" Reese said.

Chang slammed a fist on the table; the bottle jumped and fell over and rolled off but did not break.

"Yes, damn you!" she roared. "It matters a great deal. Millions of lives are at stake, maybe billions."

Stupid, sullen resentment flared in Caroline's eyes.

"Nothing at stake in my life, is there? I'm fucked any way you look at it, right?"

Chang compressed her lips to keep the anger bottled up. "Damn right. Your consideration for the rest of the human race will be taken into account at your trial." Her voice was cold.

Reese flushed, heaved her shoulders awkwardly.

"I tried, I really did. I'm not very brave, I'm just an ordinary person. I mean I just couldn't handle it. Anyway I warned you, I went there, but they didn't believe me. They thought I was crazy."

"And you ran away."

"I couldn't go back, I couldn't go back there and I knew you would want me to and I couldn't face it."

"You ran. . ."

"You knew enough, you knew. . ."

Chang stood up. The security team was expressionless, hands on weapons.

"We still haven't found the damn thing. It could be anywhere."

Caroline looked up with hope in her eyes.

"Then it wasn't so dangerous after all."

"It's dangerous all right, it's just biding. We don't know why and we don't know where."

"You can't be very good at searching for it, then, can you?"

Chang's temper was close to breaking. They'd lost days searching for this damn woman.

"Arrest her," Chang snapped.

"To the base, Colonel?"

"No, to CKC, the consulate roofport. She'll be going to Cluster Command after we get a mindprobe completed."

From Banbury Valley they flew north and east aboard the Shark, a thundering colossus of black armor-plated weaponry. Chang had given up the old Skua for the moment because of the need for speed and possible offensive capability.

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