Read Online The Rifter's Covenant by Sherwood Smith, Dave Trowbridge - Free Book Online Page A

you’re
here,” she said softly. “We have to move again. I’ve got to go supervise.”
    “Move?” Fierin
repeated, chill spreading through her as she jolted back into her own problem.
Where could she herself move to be safe from Srivashti?
    “. . . and
those two cruisers came in with even more civs,” Chlarmon was saying. “We’ve
been reassigned to the new domiciles over by the citrus groves.” She sighed,
hands on her hips. “We adopted two children out yesterday—but took in
twenty-four more. All orphans for all practical purposes, until we’re fully
linked back into the DataNet again.”
    She chattered on
while Fierin murmured appropriate words. These poor children would wait a long
time for that. The effort of gathering intelligence from the DataNet, and communicating
with the burgeoning resistance movements throughout the Thousand Suns, would
hold top priority until the war was over. Reuniting families was going to have
to wait.
    Fierin said all the
right things, and then volunteered to check and catalog a stack of new
educational and entertainment chips brought in on one of the cruisers.
    Chlarmon gave her a
tired smile. “Thank you! I expect the school chips will probably sit there, but
they’ll be wanting the entertainment vids.” She rolled her shoulders as she
glanced at the children. “Until we can establish who is responsible for whom,
most of them use their lack of ties to avoid schooling as much as possible.”
    Chlarmon left.
Fierin made herself do a slow circuit of the consoles, in case anyone needed
her help. Not once did she look beyond the confines of her area; it was enough
to envision Felton out there, watching. Then she sat down at the control
console and reached for the stack of chips. Her heart hammered, and her palms dampened.
How close could Felton get? Nausea crawled inside her: she would never know
until it was too late.
    She had planned
this so carefully that she found her hands moving almost automatically, selecting
a handreader, pushing and popping one simpleminded educhip after another, and forcing
herself to watch lengthy segments. She did not know how long Ranor’s chip was.
After a time the familiar images and slow voices held no meaning for her.
    Several times she
stretched and ran her fingers through her hair before she slid the chip between
two fingers, and palmed it in one hand as the other picked up several more ed
chips.
    She rose to make
another circuit of the children, still carrying the handset carelessly in one
hand, and the chips in the other. She sat down again at a station that put her back
squarely to a thick climbing wall full of rowdy five to eight year olds.
    She yawned as she
pretended to take her chip off the pile she’d set next to the console, and
inserted her chip, at last to view what no one now alive had seen—not even the
Aerenarch.
    The impact of the
Ivory Hall in the Mandala hit hard, an invisible blow to the chest. Pausing the
vid, she forced her breathing to slow, and her face to assume a calm, slightly
bored expression as she turned around to watch a little boy pick at a scab on
his arm, and a little girl kick repeatedly at the wall before launching herself
up the handholds again.
    Then she turned
back to her task.
    Very soon she
recognized that this was raw data. The unknown artist with the ajna had not had
time to edit it, for the views of famous and powerful people circulating about
the great Hall were interspersed with private talk between Ranor and the woman,
both unseen—Ranor because he watched from another vantage, and the woman
because the ajna was in her forehead.
    Fierin paid scant
attention to the political converse. Surely Ranor would not be killed for the
same sort of chatter the novosti had broadcast through the Thousand Suns? At one
point the woman was approached by a Kelly trinity—the Archon of that race,
whose genome was now embedded in the arm of the Rifter boy Ivard. Threy
congratulated Leseuer on her own