Dyson's Drop Read Online Free Page B

should know the lay of the land. I might not be around much longer. Can’t say I’d hate it. RIM is changing too rapidly. It’s not the place I dedicated myself to twelve decades ago.’
    Anneke remembered something her uncle had once told her. ‘You are responsible to the principle of RIM even if not to RIM itself.’
    Jake laughed uneasily. ‘They’re not Viktus’s words. Not originally. Our commander during probation used to say that. And he got it from his commander who got it from hers. It’s as old as RIM itself. And that’s old!’
    ‘Do you have arry good news?’ Anneke asked suddenly.
    Jake fixed her with a look. ‘How well are you?’
    ‘Well.’
    After a moment he said, ‘There’s a rumour. Something’s been found off Orion’s Belt.’ He told her what it was. Her eyes went wide. ‘Could be nothing. Could be everything.’
    ‘Somebody should go investigate,’ said Anneke.
    ‘Somebody should.’

BLACK worked feverishly. The possibility in the rumour of a derelict dreadnought, an M-Class Destroyer adrift off Orion’s Belt, was so startling, so electrifying, that he felt a fuzzy thrill at the thought that the ship might be there.
    There were dummy corporations to set up. He manipulated the local Net directly through his neural neck jack and visual overlays were generated through his optic nerves. Three-dimensional representations floated before him, data made into dancing light. Holding companies, umbrella bodies cavorted before him. Then voting shares, directorships, proxies, and other false trails with razor-thin but real links. It was a sleepless forty-eight hours for Black, fuelled by noradrenalin. Now Maximus Black claimed - through a maze-like series of corporate ownerships and shell companies - salvage rights in a ‘putative’ F-Class Battleship that might be located within a cuboid of otherwise empty space.
    Certain that his claim was thoroughly disguised, and untraceable, he met again with the Envoy. This time they were atop the tallest rain-swept tower of Spaceport Lykis, their heads bowed against the elements. It was near midnight and they had the platform to themselves, the tourists having gone for the day. Hundreds of metres below lay the lights of the port buildings and the vast luminescent field on which hundreds of ships, scramjets, skimmers and shuttles sat, hooked to their array of umbilicals, docking tubes, clamps and elevators. Tiny ant-like droids and engineers swarmed about the ships, servicing them as drones to their queens. In the distance a kilometre-long and kilometre-high nanodiamond launch ramp twinkled reflections from the spaceport while it shot supplies into orbit using the ramp’s magnetic linear accelerator.
    Black pointed. ‘I want that ship,’ he said, his eyes, even in the rainy dark, fever bright. The Envoy nodded, his hood thrown back. Rain spattered his carapace and ran in rivulets between his insect-like features and the deep-set yellow eyes that rarely blinked. He seemed to enjoy the weather.
    ‘It is your Kadros,’ he said, as if this explained everything.
    ‘My destiny?’ This time, Black did not sneer. The universe had handed him a prize. With it, much that remained hazy, plans waiting to be birthed, had found their midwife. Black too, perhaps. The metaphor made him lick his lips. Perhaps he too was being reborn. Certainly there was something elemental, something pagan, about standing on this great finger of metal, amid a storm that raged not only outside but inside as well. The Galactic Gods must be with him.
    Black steadied his racing pulse, took a deep breath, and said, ‘You know what you have to do.’
    ‘I will find it,’ said the Envoy and with that he turned on his heel and vanished into the drizzling dark.
    Black turned back to the edge of the tower platform. There was no parapet, only an invisible deflector field. He stared down at the distant spaceport. All the tiny ants that serviced humanity would soon service him. A heady