The Lost Stars: Shattered Spear Read Online Free

image of the specialist who had reported the information. “The jump point from Kane? Twenty-four Dancer ships?”
    “Yes, Kommodor,” the specialist confirmed.
    “Did I miss hearing that twenty-four Dancer ships had arrived in human space? Did this happen while I was at Ulindi?”
    “No, Kommodor. I checked the records. There is no report of any Dancer presence here since the ships of theirs that accompanied Black Jack’s battle cruisers jumped back toward their own territory.”
    Marphissa glowered at the comm screen, but she wasn’t looking at the nervous specialist anymore. She was running his words through her mind. The Dancers were the only alien species humanity had yet contacted that seemed willing to coexist. The Dancers actually seemed friendly toward humans, which wasn’t what people expected of aliens who looked like the result of the mating of wolves with enormousspiders. But the Dancers had saved Midway from a devastating bombardment launched by the enigmas, another alien race, but one that had acted only with hostility toward humans. That alone inclined Marphissa to see the Dancers as allies against a universe her Syndicate upbringing argued was hostile and unrelenting. “How did they get to Kane?”
    “Kommodor, I don’t—”
    The specialist’s image was replaced by that of Kapitan Diaz, commanding officer of
Manticore
. He had clearly been awakened, too, but was already on the bridge of the heavy cruiser. “Kommodor, our sensors show that many of the Dancer ships display battle damage.”
    “Battle damage?” This just got stranger by the moment. “Can we tell what sort of weapons inflicted the damage?”
    “The damage is consistent with a variety of weaponry,” Diaz said, consulting a screen off to his side. “Something that could be hell lances or a similar particle beam weapon, fragmentation damage from explosions that could be from missiles, some spalling that could mark hits from small kinetic weapons like grapeshot. Because we don’t know enough about the precise characteristics of the Dancer hulls, our systems cannot match the damage to exact Alliance or Syndicate weapons. It could even mark damage from enigma weaponry.”
    Diaz glanced aside, listening to another report. “We have just received a text message from the Dancers, Kommodor. All it says is ‘going home.’”
    “Going home?” Marphissa repeated, baffled. “From where? Whom did they fight?”
    “There is more. Another message.” Diaz blinked, looking baffled. “The Dancers say ‘watch different stars.’ Isn’t that what the last group said just before they left?”
    “Yes. Maybe we can get this bunch to explain before they leave!”
    “That is all we have, Kommodor,” Diaz said.
    “I will prepare a report for President Iceni,” Marphissa said, trying to figure out what to say. Iceni would want more information. Anyonewould. But the little available left more questions than answers. Dancer ships arriving from deeper in human space when they had not been seen arriving in human space. Dancer ships that showed many signs of heavy fighting, but whom had they fought? And the repetition of the warning to watch “different” stars, the meaning of which remained obscure.
    Hopefully, the president would know what to do about all of this.

CHAPTER TWO
    GENERAL Artur Drakon, formerly a CEO in the Syndicate Worlds, watched President Gwen Iceni, also formerly a CEO of the Syndicate Worlds, pacing across the width of her office. One wall of the office appeared to be a vast window looking out on a beach, and Iceni would pause each time she reached that view to gaze at the waves for a moment before turning and pacing back in the other direction. In fact, the office was underground, buried behind layers of armor. Syndicate CEOs took for granted that many enemies would be happy to kill them if the opportunity presented itself, and some of those enemies might well be coworkers and co-CEOs.
    “What the hell do I do about