Traitor's Sun Read Online Free

some planet to rebel, and use that as an excuse to declare a state of emergency. This was the logical course.
    Had troops already been deployed to those planets regarded as either dangerous or potentially disloyal? Herm did not know, and there was no way he could gain access to the files where such information might exist without arousing immediate suspicion. He had better assume that portions of the Fleet were in place or on their way, just to be safe. Hadn’t there been something about some war games in the Castor sector? He scratched his head and flogged his weary brain to remember. Yes, it was Castor. There were two worlds there which he would focus on, if he were some Expansionist strategist looking for trouble.
    Satisfied for the instant that he had theorized as well as he could without any real information, Herm tried to analyze his own situation. Where did he stand? He was the unaligned Senator of a Protected Planet, and not an overt threat to anyone. He had been careful to cultivate an unthreatening personality, and this had served him well enough during his years. But Herm knew the tenor of the Expansionist mind well enough to realize that if you were not their ally, you were regarded as an enemy. He had seen some of his friends in the Senate destroyed by scandals that he knew were trumped up, and he did not want to wait around to find out if he would become the latest victim. That was unlikely, because Darkover was not an important world. But he had Kate and the children to consider, not just his own Aldaran hide. And once the Senate was disbanded, he would no longer have the immunity of his office to protect him and his family. He could be arrested then, or worse. If only he were not so weary and was able to think with a clear head. Instead, he was just plain scared, and was attempting to resist the impulse to flee.
    Herm decided that he had to try to discover when Sandra Nagy was actually going to drop her political bomb, before he did anything more. He rose from the stool and padded across to the household terminal, knowing that at least this action would not arouse much attention from the spy eyes in the walls. He was in the habit of accessing the newsfeeds several times a day, and even at night if he couldn’t sleep, as he was now. Indeed, it was such a typical thing that it might allay suspicion rather than otherwise.
    He pressed his hand against the glassy surface of the comlink and waited. For several seconds nothing happened and his heart began to beat a bit faster, fearing that he was too late, and that events had rushed beyond his control, that he would be denied access and a goon squad of Expansionist bully boys would come knocking at the door. Then he scolded himself silently. The system had been sluggish for weeks now, due to power blackouts that occasionally blinded half a continent for hours at a time.
    Everything on the planet—from voting to food ordering—was dependent on these electronic links. But the shortsightedness of the Expansionists had blocked the funds for improvements, and now the system was beginning to fall apart. It was, Herm knew, symptomatic of all that was wrong in the Federation. Infrastructures were decaying, and no one was able to get a bill through the legislature to do anything about it. The population kept increasing, but the services that supported the people were deteriorating, because the funds needed were being spent on armaments, on the construction of military ships and the training of troops. It was folly, and he knew that he was not the only one who was aware of it. Unfortunately, no one wanted to hear his voice, or those of others who suggested that spending on defense over basic needs was unsupportable.
    He thought about his studies of history. However reluctantly they had begun, they were now almost an obsession. His love of history was one of the few pleasures outside his family that he had, an escape from the dreadful present he was living through. For some