Whistling Past the Graveyard by Kevin J. Anderson

Author:Kevin J. Anderson [Anderson, Kevin J.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Science Fiction, Space Opera, galactic empire, spaceship, robots, aliens
Publisher: WordFire Press
Published: 2016-02-15T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Fifteen

Elisa Enturi

She had decided to name the first sky hotel “Cloud Nine.” Her marketing instincts told her it was a name that would do well.

Elisa had used Iswander’s standard authorization signature to arrange a luxury transport from Earth, and now she arrived at Qhardin with her first group of invited guests. The gas giant looked beautiful and dramatic—perfect for Elisa’s purposes. The clouds were burnt orange and yellow, with darker bands of red that defined the edges of immense storms.

“Will we see hydrogues?” asked the most eager passenger, a man in his mid-twenties named Fourth, short for Charles Quinton Ruiz IV, a spoiled young son of a wealthy family. Fourth was mildly handsome, made more attractive by the size of his trust fund, and he fancied himself a playboy although he wasn’t good at it. Fourth spent his days doing little of note other than amusing himself.

Elisa didn’t like him. In fact, she despised people who had a sense of entitlement yet contributed nothing worthwhile to society. Her own family had been poor and unambitious, and their low economic status was their own fault, but many rich families had similarly worthless children. Nevertheless, she had selected Charles Quentin Ruiz IV as a perfect example of a demographic to which the Iswander sky hotels would cater.

Hearing the young man’s query about hydrogues, the other three passengers crowded close to the viewing window. Elisa said, “I cannot guarantee it, nor can I guarantee that we won’t. Rest assured that we have safety systems in place for Cloud Nine.”

Elisa didn’t elaborate. Her “safety systems” aboard the floating hotel modules amounted to little more than hoping that the deep-core aliens wouldn’t show themselves. The hydrogues had been quiet for nearly a decade, and she knew that a couple of large Roamer skymines had been harvesting ekti from another gas giant without being molested. She assumed that her four drifting modules would easily go unnoticed.

“The drogues are down there,” growled Roland Kipps, a middle-aged man with a waxy scar across his left cheek and a bald patch on the same side of his head, the result of burns he had suffered in an explosion eleven years ago. “We have to watch out for them. Those bastards might be defeated, but who knows how long they’ll remember.”

Kipps had survived a hydrogue attack, when the crystalline alien warglobes had leveled his colony on Ubor Major. He had been rescued from the wreckage two days later when EDF ships finally responded to the distress calls. His entire family had been killed. Kipps was one of sixteen survivors out of a colony of six thousand.

“You know better than anyone else how dangerous the hydrogues are, Mr. Kipps,” said Candeen, one of the remaining two passengers. “Why would you want to come back?”

Juvia, Candeen’s romantic and business partner, added, “If I’d gone through what you survived, I’d check gas giants off my bucket list forever.”

The Iswander luxury ship cruised into the upper atmospheric banks, and the clouds thickened around them.

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