Trust Territory by Janet Morris & Chris Morris

Author:Janet Morris & Chris Morris [Morris, Janet & Morris, Chris]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction, Fantasy, General
ISBN: 9780451451262
Google: N5zqI2WZZR4C
Amazon: 0451452364
Publisher: Roc
Published: 1992-11-15T06:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 17

Guard Duty

The ConSec patrol cruiser Blue Tick orbited the Ball slowly. Behind it, the deployed vessels of the Consolidated Security Force waltzed in perfect formation around Spacedock Seven and the artifact parked there.

Reice's ship was the comet's head and the rest of the force made up its tail.

He felt about as useful as a comet. Pulled and pushed by powers beyond his ability to control, he was on a fixed course that nothing he could do or say would alter. Until it was too late.

The teardrop ships were gone now—on their way to Threshold with Mickey Croft's blessing and full UNE honors.

Out at Spacedock Seven, only the initial threat of the Ball remained to justify the commitment of Threshold's defensive might so far from home.

Inside the Blue Tick, Reice sat moodily in a darkened cockpit dotted with colored running lights and undulating graphic displays.

Blue. Green. Yellow. Orange. Red. Pretty colored lights in the dark. Lights that cascaded down the control suite and danced on the face of Reice's wrist chronometer. Lights with haloes around them because Reice's eyes were so tired. Lights that danced in place and shifted with the orbiting security force as it circled the Ball.

The Ball lit up sometimes. Reice knew it. He'd seen it.

The only people who didn't perceive the Ball as a threat were the Threshold brass. The ones who'd never been close to the Ball. The ones who didn't understand that the appearance of colors on the Ball and weird occurrences were somehow linked.

Reice had chased the Cummings kid and his girlfriend out here and seen them disappear. The cosmos had opened its mouth and swallowed them whole.

Right about here. At the very coordinates through which Blue Tick was now passing. Reice braced himself, in case a spongehole opened up and sucked his ship through into some other space and time—or into no space and time whatever.

He'd cordoned off this area once. He'd known what he was doing.

There was some spacetime anomaly out here. Some gate to another dimension—or worse. That was how the teardrops did their appearing and disappearing act, he had a hunch.

But a hunch didn't play with the powers that ran Threshold. And you couldn't tell your superiors they were acting like fools.

They probably knew that anyhow.

So here he was, promenading over arguably the most dangerous spacetime around, with the rest of Threshold's firepower spread out behind him. If that hole opened up under him, his ship and the rest of them were going to tumble over the brink into the abyss like a bunch of lemmings over a cliff.

And then what was Trust Territory going to do if it needed a little good old-fashioned human destructive power?

Not a damn thing, was what. If Reice and his security force were eradicated, Threshold would be all but unarmed. Incapable of defending itself from the teardrops or from anything else that might threaten it.

But did the brass care about that?

Evidently not.

"Reice, stay out there with the Ball," the ConSec line officer mimicked his orders savagely.

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