Read Online Judge by Karen Traviss - Free Book Online

depths of absolute cold and airlessness, and he’d seen her breathe again. He hadn’t imagined that. He knew exactly what c’naatat could do.
    I bet Shan would be amazed at Umeh now. Another dead thing come back to life, at a price.
    At sixty-eight, Eddie had a lifetime of headline memories to catalogue. The last years had been tame by comparison. But they had been spent living among aliens, and once again he was in a blasé period about that. Wonder waxed and waned.
    What’s it going to be like talking to you again, you old tart? You saw me a few months ago. I’ve missed you for a generation. The reunion’s going to be very one-sided, doll.
    How long had she been thawed out from cryo now? Maybe she’d call him soon, keen to share the experience with him. He envied her being in the thick of things, and if only he’d gone too, if only he’d been there right now—
    â€œWe’re going to have to leave that report now and bring you breaking news—reports are coming in of an incident involving the Eqbas flagship and FEU fighters over European Antarctica,” said the anchorwoman. She seemed to have no footage to run, and it was frustrating her visibly. Her fancy hairstyle quivered as she fidgeted. They were all used to simply jumping from feed to feed now, rarely interpreting, offering nothing to guide the viewer. No wonder news ratings had fallen off in the last few years. “We don’t have pictures yet…I’m being told that the alien fleet is simply too fast for our unmanned newscraft to follow. We’ll bring you mapsat or cockpit images as soon as we can.”
    â€œWhat incident, you silly cow?” said Eddie. “World war? Argument over a parking bay? Jesus H. Christ, this is the worst time to go with half a story…”
    But his stomach was churning, and he knew how this would end, because he’d seen it all before. The last thing running through his mind right then were his fears for his buddies. He had complete faith—blind, even—in Eqbas might, but part of him, the largest part, felt a gut-churning dread for his world even if he’d never see it again. It was his son’s future—and most of his own memories, which was all anyone was left with in the final days of life.
    I’m only sixty-eight. This is insane. Stop the mawkishness.
    Eddie grabbed a cup of tea, made from the bushes that Aras had planted for Shan, and settled in to be a very reluctant spectator for the rest of the day.
    I should have been there, though. What a fucking story.
    He thought of calling Shan on the ITX, but that was probably the last thing she needed right then. Boy, I’ve got slack in my old age. There was a time when he’d have called her on her deathbed and not felt a scrap of guilt, because the story came first, cold and pure. He waited a full hour before the first images began to show up, and as a blurred oval streak shot through a sky-colored frame—totally meaningless, minus scale, but the best they could do thus far—the ITX link chimed.
    Eddie half stood, hand braced on the arm of the sofa, looking over his shoulder at the console to check the source. He didn’t want a conversation right now, but it might have been Nevyan or Giyadas, and they didn’t call for idle gossip. But the light showed the link was coming in from Earth. From home.
    At last, BBChan News Desk had remembered they actually had someone out here, someone who’d been under fire in an Eqbas ship, someone who’d had a front-row seat for the destruction of Umeh, their man in the Cavanagh system.
    He’d try to be gracious. But they’d taken their fucking time. He got up and squeezed the virin in his palm, opening the link at his end.
    â€œMichallat,” he said, trying to sound busy yet distracted. There was nothing worse than making ’Desk feel that you waited on their calls like some love-struck teenage girl. He patched