The Heretic (Beyond the Wall Book 1) Read Online Free

systems.
    And then, as suddenly as it had begun, it was finished. Tantrum over; equilibrium. She evened out, fell into a gentle arc around the anonymous gas giant, and powered towards Herse on the other side. Shepherd sighed slowly, closed his eyes for a moment and leaned back in his chair. This time, he promised her, he’d get it fixed. No matter what the cost.
    When he opened his eyes again, Herse had begun to float into view from its hiding place behind the leviathan sphere of crimson flame. He never tired of gazing at a planet that could sustain life. He’d always felt that the atmosphere of a planet—when infused with oxygen and nitrogen and whatever else the terraformers did to make places habitable—appeared intensely wild and beautiful from above. Framed by the stars and the deep blue and black of space, the maelstrom of vivid colour left him breathless.
    But beauty too, he had found, was so often wed to violence. As he broke left and poured on thrust, readying to punch through the upper atmosphere, Soteria again began to roil, the turbulence slinging her from side to side. At least this time she behaved and responded to his commands. But even so, Shepherd was relieved when at last they dropped through the final layers of the atmosphere and Soteria slowly began to level out and relax. He brought her down low and easy and just above the sea to cool her down, carving a wake of white froth behind him.
    Herse was a coastal township that stretched back towards dense forest. This time of year, it would be knee-deep in winter. Beyond the leagues of grey-green woodland lay an immense massif of obsidian and slate-grey rock, shrouded in glacial silver and blue névé. Turbid, charcoal cloud seemed to permanently veil the summits. Panis lay well away from even the thinning outskirts of Herse. It was a small community—perhaps a hundred people. The prospects of picking up a mechanic, or at least someone handy with a wrench, would be reasonable only in Herse proper.
    The port itself was some way out of town, on a natural shelf that jutted out from the mountainside and then broke off sharply down into the sea. A single track led from the Port into the main township, and the Praetor had licensed a shuttle service that, Shepherd knew, was operated by an old terraformer with a gammy leg. He had never known the man’s name, but the shuttle had always looked in need of a mechanic’s love. Maybe you could do wonders with spit and tape.
    Shepherd manoeuvred Soteria upwards and into an arc, easing the stern into a gentle quarter turn, then leaned forward towards the radio.
    ‘Herse Port, this is freighter Soteria, requesting a landing platform.’
    The static on the radio hissed for a few seconds, then crackled to life. ‘Freighter Soteria, this is Herse Port. Landing Platform Seven, then proceed directly to Customs to file your licence and nav data.’
    ‘Received, Herse Port. Soteria out.’
    In the end, he thought, sometimes you had no option but to take what was on offer.

C HAPTER T HREE

Herse

    SHEPHERD STEPPED off the ramp leading down from Soteria’s hold, the thick fur collar of his longcoat hitched up and the buckles tightly fastened. From the warmth of Soteria’s embrace he emerged into a hostile, frigid wind that stripped the skin from his face. His pistol was strapped to his thigh, a necessary burden. Most communities bordering the Wall tolerated the overt carrying of weaponry, and in those that did not, concealment was usually enough. But strangers to Herse would be foolish to walk through the township without protection.
    Despite the glacial cold, the Port still functioned. Shepherd could only just pick out the feeble glow of the main hangar’s interior lights seeping through the mist of tumbling snow. Beyond the hangar, at the perimeter of the Port, was a border of flashing orange strobes that marked where the cliff’s edge fell away into the raging sea below. Each of the landing platforms was outlined with