Read Online Lyon's Pride by Anne McCaffrey - Free Book Online Page B

additional T-1 to assist in the seizure of the refugee ship. Even the Rowan had to admit that the sphere ship had too much mass for her to move, even with the assistance of more gestalt power than Callisto Station ordinarily provided.
    If it makes you feel any better, my dear
, her husband informed her,
the T-2s replacing your good self at Callisto are working their balls off and desperately awaiting your return
.
    Do ’em good
, the Rowan replied smugly.
    Does you good, too, m’darling, to find that you cannot, after all, move mountains all by yourself
, Jeff teased her.
    Ha! Who are you sending?
    Let that be a surprise. It’ll cheer you up, I know
.
    He gave her a phantom hug and an enthusiastic kiss and a figurative pat on the head for the work she had cut out for herself but he didn’t budge on the identity of the third T-1.
    I suppose it’s as well that Thian wasn’t here when Prtglm had its brainstorm
, she said, knowing she couldn’t tease the information out of him.
    Prtglm would have gotten no more help from Thian than he did from Rojer. Less. Thian would have seen the missiles and immediately ’ported out of danger. Possibly even despatched Prtglm back to Clarf with a blistering note about exceeding orders
.
    He’d’ve been exceeding
his
if he did
, the Rowan replied tartly.
    Honey love, you can’t have it both ways
.
    I can
try!
    *   *   *
    Until Thian on Squadron A’s ’Dini
KLTS
had reached a point where he could be ’ported to the
Genesee
, the Rowan busied herself reviewing the fascinating tapes Rojer had gathered by probe. Before, the Hivers had beenfeatureless creatures in a death-dealing sphere; now they were still featureless—as humans reckoned such matters—but the work ethos, the discipline, the minutiae of daily life in some of the orders of Hiver creatures, were depicted, and at least one of the worlds the Hivers had chosen to populate. The Rowan spent more time than she intended on such records. Then, resolutely, she planned how to destroy the planet’s space-faring capability. The two half-finished ships would be easy to demolish, but the third ship was tightly sealed. Commander Yngocelen pointed out that the weapon ports would do nicely: there were sufficient of them to allow the Talents to penetrate into the ship and then a simple matter to ’port in sufficient explosives to disintegrate it.
    Several conferences on the disposition of the refugee sphere decided that dispersing the lethal gas was not an urgent matter. Rojer had suffered no harm in his escape pod and another would handily accommodate the Rowan, Thian and the third T-1 while they surreptitiously eased the refugee ship out of its holding orbit and beyond the range of the ground batteries.
    Permission was also given to destroy any pursuit vessels that the Hiver world might launch. The biggest they would have, according to all information the ’Dinis had amassed, would be surface-to-orbit shuttles. The scout vessels might be stored on the closed sphere and blown up along with the ship, but if they were available as deep space pursuit, the Squadron received permission to destroy them, too.
    Assuming that there was, indeed, no intercolony communication, this Hiver world could not call for reinforcements which might follow the Squadron’s ion trail. By the time a suitable deep-space vessel could be constructed on this world, any traces would have dissipated.
    With plans and material in place, Thian’s arrival waskeenly awaited. His grandmother thought he looked a trifle gaunt but she caught a remarkable energy exuding from him, once he recovered from a stunned surprise at finding her on board the
Genesee
.
    â€œWhere’s Rojer then?” he asked, glancing about him, having looked forward to a reunion with his brother. His ’Dinis, Mur and Dip, were also looking about for they had been eager to see Gil and Kat. He was perplexed by