Read Online The Timeweb Chronicles: Timeweb Trilogy Omnibus by Brian Herbert - Free Book Online

effort … but kept breathing.
    She studied the heaving of his chest, and thought, Die, damn you!
    They ascended a corrugated alloy ramp to a platform and ran across to the opposite side, where they boarded a small maglev rail car. Francella took a seat at the rear of the vehicle, while the others placed the bier on the floor in the center of the aisle, and then took seats themselves. Armored doors closed and the car accelerated quickly, throwing Francella against her seat back.
    Only half an hour earlier, fifty-eight heavily armed conducci had attacked the CorpOne complex. She had hired them through a series of middlemen in such a circuitous chain that no one knew who had originally paid for their services. As the Security Chief for the company, Francella Watanabe had ways of getting things done discreetly. She had, however, put out the word that any mistakes would be handled brutally … and the killers had not done their job cleanly, as she had demanded.
    The CorpOne policemen in the rail car with her had known nothing of the plot and had interfered, going to the aid of the Prince and whisking him off to safety, with Francella in tow … trying to figure out what to do.
    Her thoughts racing, she touched an electronic transmitter at her waist, setting off explosives in the tunnel behind them. The company security men chattered excitedly and stared out the rear window of the railway car at the flaming tunnel.
    But Francella had other matters on her mind. Privately, she was considering how best to finish the job on her father, but she needed to do it carefully, so that no one suspected a thing. For years she had been monitoring the old man’s declining health, and had hastened it along by seeing to it that the “cellteck” life extension drugs and other medicines he took were of less effect than they should have been. With those products at full strength—many manufactured in CorpOne laboratories—he might have lived to a hundred and ten, another twenty-seven years.
    Too long for her to wait. She wanted control of all family corporate operations as soon as possible, before anything could erode her position.
    The alterations in her father’s pharmacopoeia had been slight but cumulative, so that over a period of years they undoubtedly subtracted time from his life. An actuary secretly in her employ (his services obtained through another circuitous series of middlemen) had prepared projections showing how much she had probably shortened the unnamed subject’s life. Based upon raw medical data that she had provided for the actuary, he had originally estimated a reduced life span of seventeen months, twenty-four days, and a few hours.
    Unfortunately that had been modified by the interference of the Prince himself, who had unwittingly compensated for her tricks by improving his diet and instituting a moderate exercise program. In the process, the big man, unaware of her actions, had been bragging that he’d lost two kilos over the past few weeks. Undoubtedly the net effect on his health had been minimal, since he had always been sedentary and had such an enormous girth. She had been waiting for him to slip back into his old ways, but the crisis had interfered … the meeting between Noah and her father that she could not allow.
    At Francella’s instigation another explosion sounded behind the maglev car in which she rode. The vehicle shuddered, but kept going. It entered a brightly-illuminated tunnel, and moments later a heavy alloy door slammed shut behind them, keeping them safe from pursuers or the fire and detonations that she had set off.
    A rapprochement between Francella’s brother and father would have unraveled much of her carefully-crafted efforts over the past decade, allowing her hated brother to gain a toe-hold on CorpOne operations.
    She and Noah, her fraternal twin, had never gotten along very well, and the problems started early. After the babies were born, they thrashed around on a table and gave each