Read Online For King & Country by Robert Asprin, Linda Evans, James Baen - Free Book Online Page A
Tags: Fiction, General, Science-Fiction, adventure, Fantasy fiction, SF, Space Opera, Time travel, High Tech, Great Britain, Attempted assassination, Kings and rulers, Adaptations, Arthurian romances
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vowed to unleash genocide, not only against the Irish Catholics, but the British, as well, for betrayal. The Orangemen are frightened, love, and they can't find him."
"But you did?" Her voice came out whispery, little-girl frightened.
"We did. And, child, if there's truth in the rumors about the laboratory he's joined, he can destroy all of us, and I mean everybody on this bloody planet, billions of innocent lives."
She'd sat in her grandmother's arms for a long time, shaking, listening as her grandmother explained everything they'd learned, why they couldn't just hit the bastard with a standard IRA hit team. No publicity, not even the breath of publicity, nothing that would look even remotely like anything but pure accident—and before they could do even that much, they had to know. Was the threat real? Was the research viable? And if so, how far away was the team from success? And literally the only person in all of Ireland who could infiltrate that team as the Orangeman had done was Brenna McEgan.
"They'll pull strings, child, our own people and the Orangemen, both. They're afraid of him, Brenna, terrified of the man they've created and now must stop. They can't do it on their own. They've no one with the credentials to get close to him. And even if they did, he'd recognize them in a flash, drop them off a cliff somewhere. Together we'll get you inside that lab, Brenna. From there, it's you and no one else must discover the truth and stop him."
It was, ironically, the first time in the Catholic-Protestant history of the island that the Orangemen had voluntarily worked
with
the IRA Provisionals. All it had taken was the realization that they'd unleashed a creature so deadly, he would risk destroying the entire world—including the Orangemen who'd turned him into a weapon—to take his vengeance against Catholics and the British who'd "betrayed" him.
Cedric Banning—not his real name, but the name of his carefully constructed cover persona—was ruthless, brilliant, and utterly mad. To refuse the mission was unthinkable. He
had
to be stopped. So she'd come to Scotland, with no idea how many strings had been plucked to get her there, and she'd identified Banning, and she'd assessed the threat level—utterly deadly—and now she had an
SAS captain
on the job, who knew none of this, whose every glance tonight had shouted plain as daylight that she topped his suspect list.
How could she not? She was Irish, wasn't she? Reason enough for any self-respecting Brit to hate and distrust her, given the circumstances. By the end of Mylonas' hideous little lecture, every colleague at the table had been shooting her furtive, unhappy little glances.
The IRA,
those looks said,
the IRA's threatening us and ours, and you're by-God Irish.
It would have done no good to stand up and say, "You're absolutely right, mates, I'm IRA to my bones, and I'm the only thing standing between you and a disaster so enormous, you can't even comprehend it."
Admission would only earn her a one-way ticket to prison—and leave the man she'd come here to stop with a free and easy road to success. A very powerful intuition was screaming at Brenna that her enemy—all humanity's enemy—would waste no time, now that the SAS was on the job. It wasn't logical, not even remotely. Logic said he'd simply sit back on his own forged and impeccable credentials and smile while the SAS locked her up. But intuition said otherwise. Intuition whispered,
He'll move now and throw blame on you, Brenna, so what are you going to do to stop it, eh?
She turned the key in the ignition and put the car into a smooth reverse in the crowded carpark, then set out for the lab. Whatever he planned, he would do it tonight. Sitting at the pub all evening with a crowd of eyewitnesses would get her an alibi, but what good was that if he blew the entire future to hell while she earned it? She thought of Terrance Beckett, alone in a silent lab office, working like a fiend to prepare them
"But you did?" Her voice came out whispery, little-girl frightened.
"We did. And, child, if there's truth in the rumors about the laboratory he's joined, he can destroy all of us, and I mean everybody on this bloody planet, billions of innocent lives."
She'd sat in her grandmother's arms for a long time, shaking, listening as her grandmother explained everything they'd learned, why they couldn't just hit the bastard with a standard IRA hit team. No publicity, not even the breath of publicity, nothing that would look even remotely like anything but pure accident—and before they could do even that much, they had to know. Was the threat real? Was the research viable? And if so, how far away was the team from success? And literally the only person in all of Ireland who could infiltrate that team as the Orangeman had done was Brenna McEgan.
"They'll pull strings, child, our own people and the Orangemen, both. They're afraid of him, Brenna, terrified of the man they've created and now must stop. They can't do it on their own. They've no one with the credentials to get close to him. And even if they did, he'd recognize them in a flash, drop them off a cliff somewhere. Together we'll get you inside that lab, Brenna. From there, it's you and no one else must discover the truth and stop him."
It was, ironically, the first time in the Catholic-Protestant history of the island that the Orangemen had voluntarily worked
with
the IRA Provisionals. All it had taken was the realization that they'd unleashed a creature so deadly, he would risk destroying the entire world—including the Orangemen who'd turned him into a weapon—to take his vengeance against Catholics and the British who'd "betrayed" him.
Cedric Banning—not his real name, but the name of his carefully constructed cover persona—was ruthless, brilliant, and utterly mad. To refuse the mission was unthinkable. He
had
to be stopped. So she'd come to Scotland, with no idea how many strings had been plucked to get her there, and she'd identified Banning, and she'd assessed the threat level—utterly deadly—and now she had an
SAS captain
on the job, who knew none of this, whose every glance tonight had shouted plain as daylight that she topped his suspect list.
How could she not? She was Irish, wasn't she? Reason enough for any self-respecting Brit to hate and distrust her, given the circumstances. By the end of Mylonas' hideous little lecture, every colleague at the table had been shooting her furtive, unhappy little glances.
The IRA,
those looks said,
the IRA's threatening us and ours, and you're by-God Irish.
It would have done no good to stand up and say, "You're absolutely right, mates, I'm IRA to my bones, and I'm the only thing standing between you and a disaster so enormous, you can't even comprehend it."
Admission would only earn her a one-way ticket to prison—and leave the man she'd come here to stop with a free and easy road to success. A very powerful intuition was screaming at Brenna that her enemy—all humanity's enemy—would waste no time, now that the SAS was on the job. It wasn't logical, not even remotely. Logic said he'd simply sit back on his own forged and impeccable credentials and smile while the SAS locked her up. But intuition said otherwise. Intuition whispered,
He'll move now and throw blame on you, Brenna, so what are you going to do to stop it, eh?
She turned the key in the ignition and put the car into a smooth reverse in the crowded carpark, then set out for the lab. Whatever he planned, he would do it tonight. Sitting at the pub all evening with a crowd of eyewitnesses would get her an alibi, but what good was that if he blew the entire future to hell while she earned it? She thought of Terrance Beckett, alone in a silent lab office, working like a fiend to prepare them
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