Hour of Judgement Read Online Free Page B

the heat in his throat pull his energies into one solid and protective core within him. “You have come to me, and told me. I am not to be permitted to go home to my child.”
    Why had he ever imagined anything different? He could not go home. How could a man so much as look on his child, with such a stain on him? “Very well, I have of this understanding, and you have delivered your message.”
    Rising to his feet, Andrej reached out his hand to help Ivers up, politely. There was a peculiar ring of chafed skin around her wrist beneath her sleeve, showing for a brief moment as she moved. Chafed from cold? Or had she recently been in manacles?
    “Now it remains only for you to explain how it is that I am to get around it. I do not believe that I can go to Chilleau Judiciary and live, Specialist Ivers. I have only this long survived because the longer it was, the nearer to the end it became.”
    Was that grammatical? Did it make any sense? Did it matter?
    Andrej hardly knew what he was saying. It surprised him to realize that he was trembling; but whether it was fury or horror or a combination of the two Andrej could not begin to guess. “Tell me the way out of this, Specialist Ivers, or I am lost.”
    “I’m sorry, sir,” Ivers repeated. She sounded as though she was surprised at the evident sincerity in her own voice. “In my professional opinion the First Secretary has covered all vectors of approach. I have no advice for you except to enjoy the perks, because as far as I can see you’re to be genuinely stuck with the duty whether you enjoy the perks or not.”
    Polite of her, to gloss over that issue of enjoyment so delicately. She was a Bench intelligence specialist. She probably knew as much as his own gentlemen about what Andrej enjoyed, and how, and when. Or where. And yet her reference was utterly innocent: oh, yes, very delicately done indeed.
    “Good-greeting, then, Specialist Ivers. You will excuse me. I must to someone go speak, to understand the meaning of what you have just told me.”
    Nodding gravely in acceptance of her dismissal, Ivers gave him the bow without another word. Just as well. Too much had been said already. Andrej accepted Ivers’s salute in turn with a nod of his head, and she left the room with swift silent dispatch.
    He was alone, and the enormity of the disaster that had just overtaken him weighted him down until he could hardly so much as breathe. A sleep-shirt made of lead. An atmosphere of viscous fluid of some sort, that sat in a man’s lungs and gave no air, but could not be coughed loose.
    He could not stand here in his office. He would choke.
    Possessed with dread and driven by horror Andrej fled the room for the one place on board of all Ragnarok where hope could be found — if there was any hope, any hope for him at all.

    ###

    It was a quiet morning, all in all, now that Lowden’s staff meeting was out of the way. Convoy duty was not very challenging; things were quiet in Section. Ralph Mendez was treating himself to a little inconsequential talk with Ship’s Intelligence when Koscuisko — as blue in the face as a man near-dead of cold — staggered through the open door into Two’s office, palming the secure on his way past with so much force that Mendez half-expected he’d put a dent in it.
    “I cannot endure it,” Koscuisko said. “I will not be asked to tolerate. Your pardon, First Officer, Two, you will tell me, if there is to be no way out of this?”
    Straightening in his seat, Mendez waved Koscuisko’s apology off, interested. He didn’t usually see Koscuisko so exercised in spirit. Angry, yes, and from time to time in an ugly sort of state of savage amusement — when Lowden was working him particularly hard.
    This didn’t look like angry, or frustrated, or hostile, or otherwise distracted. This looked like somebody’s mother was due to be sold to the tinkers for a drab, and no seven-hundred-thousand tinkers Mendez could imagine could possibly begin