by Chris Bunch
“Which means what for the two of you?”
Garvin was silent for a while.
“I guess … it means what it means. I don’t know.”
He saw dark bulks down by the water, recognized Alikhan, Ben Dill, two other Musth.
“I wonder what will happen to him?”
“Ben said,” Njangu answered, “Alikhan won’t stay with his father’s clan. I guess there might be some ugly whispers about him setting Wlencing up for what happened, and nobody loves a patricide. Ben told me he’ll either become a Reckoner or else join the Force.”
Garvin looked astonished.
“Huh?”
“First, there’ll be some Musth who haven’t gotten tired of war. Second,” Njangu said, “Hedley told me there’s always people who want to join the side that beat ‘em up. Not my style, but what the hell?”
Garvin recovered.
“Sure. Why not? We always need pilots, warriors. Maybe that’s what those other two furries are talking to Ben about.”
“Especially since we are going to be buying modified aksai, probably some velv, and sure as hell, since we’re a little short of navy, some mother ships from the Musth,” Njangu said.
“Well, kiss my moneymaking ass,” Garvin said. “Wheels within wheels.”
“Always.”
Njangu finished his beer, set the glass on the railing.
“PlanGov goes back to the way we had it set up,” he said. “And we start rebuilding, rearming in a big fat blur. You know what comes next.”
“Yeh,” Garvin grunted. “Protector Redruth. It might be nice, if he’s out of the way, to see about fun things like what’s going on with the Confederation, hell, if there even still is a Confederation.”
Two women came through double doors onto the deck, saw the soldiers, started over.
“It will be interesting to see,” Njangu said, “if we can start a war for a change, or if we’ve got to wait until somebody knocks our dickstrings loose.”
Jasith Mellusin wore a froth of green lace, ending at mid-thigh, with a nearly transparent purple torso stocking under it. Jo Poynton wore a more sober pantsuit in black that clung to her body, left her arms bare, was slit on either leg.
The two men made appropriate compliments.
“Come on,” Garvin said, taking Jasith’s arm, “just once, let’s pretend we are civilized humans, instead of underpaid murderers.”
The four went into the Shelburne, out of the night, and the bright lights, music, and laughter swallowed them.
APPENDIX
The Cumbre system has a medium main sequence sun, about 1.5 million kilometers in diameter.
There are thirteen planets in the system, named, rather unimaginatively, after the alphabet. A- and B-Cumbre are too close to the sun to be habitable, with limited atmospheres, and have only solar and astronomical observation stations.
Mineral-rich C-Cumbre is the reason for both Man and Musth colonizing the system. Its riches include manganese, tungsten, vanadium, niobium, titanium, godarium, natural gamma iron, and some precious metals.
Mines, worked by both races, stud the arid landscape. It’s uncomfortable for both races, more for the Musth than Man. It has a single moon, Balar.
E-Cumbre is chill, just habitable for Man, comfortable for Musth, who know it as Silitric, and consider it the center of the system.
F-, H-and I-Cumbre are ice giants.
G-Cumbre a half-destroyed world from an out-of-system asteroid, and moonlets litter its orbit.
J- and K-Cumbre are small planetoids, and have small observation stations.
L- and M-Cumbre are little larger than J- and K-, and are almost certainly trapped asteroids, with extremely irregular orbits.
D-Cumbre is — mostly — Man’s world. It has three small moons: Fowey, Bodwin, and Kailas. Only the largest and nearest, Fowey, affects D-Cumbre’s tides.
D-Cumbre is about thirteen thousand kilometers in diameter at the equator, and its axial tilt is fourteen degrees, producing a more even climate than Earth’s. Unlike on Earth, there are no continental masses, but many, many islands, mostly in the temperate and tropical belt, although two significant landmasses are at the poles. Some of the islands are large and of volcanic origin. Their peaks have been worn into plateaus with an entirely different climate than the lowlands — still wet, but chill and mist-hung, with the vegetation fernlike, from tiny to enormous. The Musth make their headquarters on the largest of these, the Highlands on Dharma Island.
Man settled at sea level, mostly in the tropics, with his capital, Leggett on the northwestern portion of Dharma and three smaller islets. There are two dozen smaller cities, some not more than villages, on other islands in the temperate or tropical zones.
The climate is balmy, and there are few weather hazards, although open seas away from the island masses produce enormous globe-circling waves, and the stormy season can be uncomfortable.
The environment must be considered benign, although there are still-unclassified predators in the jungles and several species of fish, from large sea serpents to marine carnivores to coelenterates, that must be considered hazardous to life.
Serving as inspiration for contemporary literature, Prologue Books, a division of F+W Media, offers readers a vibrant, living record of crime, science fiction, fantasy, and western genres. Discover more today:
www.prologuebooks.com
This edition published by
Prologue Books
a division of F+W Media, Inc.
10151 Carver Road, Suite 200
Blue Ash, Ohio 45242
www.prologuebooks.com
Text Copyright © 2000 by Chris Bunch
All rights reserved.
Published in association with Athans & Associates Creative Consulting
Cover image(s) © 123rf.com
Names, characters, corporations, institutions, organizations, events, or locales in this novel are either the product of the author's imagination or, if real, used fictitiously. The resemblance of any character to actual persons (living or dead) is entirely coincidental.
eISBN 10: 1-4405-5365-3
eISBN 13: 978-1-4405-5365-3