A Dark and Hungry God Arises by Stephen R. Donaldson Read Free Book Online Page A

her life must have gone on from that point. She could remember what happened next. Angus Thermopyle knew. Nick knew some of it. But for Davies Hyland the path was closed; blocked by a neural gap he couldn't cross.
    For him, it was easier to figure out who was being betrayed.
    Not the Amnion.

    And not himself. Or his mother. Not this time.
    Nick Succorso.
    Davies had seen the loathing on Nick's face and trusted it: he was utterly sure that Nick would never risk cheating the Amnion to save Morn's son. And Morn had already worked miracles on Davies' behalf.
    If he survived the next few hours, that knowledge might prove useful.
    He had no particular reason to think he would—except that if Morn could work the miracle of diverting him from Tranquil Hegemony, she might also have conceived a way to keep him alive. The more he thought about her, the more powerful she appeared: a source of miracles as well as understanding. Maybe that was why the stresses of the past days hadn't destroyed him. Maybe buried away inside him somewhere was a visceral awareness of what she could accomplish, how much he could rely on her.
    And maybe the son of a woman like Morn Hyland could work miracles of his own.
    Eventually the pod's screens told him that he was going to be rescued.
    A ship came toward him. Not a pursuit craft from Tranquil Hegemony: a vessel from Thanatos Minor. And she didn't fire. According to the screens, he was still an hour off the rock when she intersected his trajectory.
    Her blip absorbed his on the screens.
    Because of his training in the Academy — no, Morn's, dammit, Morn's - he knew what was happening as the pod began to decelerate. A monitor reported decreasing velocity; he felt g shove him against the pads and restraints. But the pod slowed without braking thrust.
    The other ship must have matched speeds with him, accepted the pod into one of her holds, then clamped it down so that she could control it.
    With difficulty, he wormed his hands up to wipe the sweat off his face. He had no guarantee that this other ship wasn't Amnion. Nevertheless he believed she was human. If the shipyard on Thanatos Minor hadn't been controlled by human beings, Succorso wouldn't have tried to escape here from Enablement Station.
    So the ship was human. And illegal. He couldn't stop thinking like a cop, the cop Morn Hyland had been.
    Whoever rescued him was his enemy, one way or another. The shipyard on Thanatos Minor served forbidden space as surely as if it were Amnion. The illegals who proxied for them here were the most malign men and women in the galaxy; as bad as Angus Thermopyle; worse than Succorso in some ways.
    And he had no way of knowing what they wanted from him; what his value to them was; what use they meant to make of him.
    Though the prospect twisted his soul, he had to brace himself for more helplessness, brutality, deprivation.
    As soon as its sensors detected a breathable atmosphere, the ejection pod automatically popped the locks and unsealed its hatch.

    At once a hand gripped the hatch and swung it wide.
    Davies found himself staring down the muzzle of an impact gun.
    'Out, ' demanded an oddly lifeless voice.
    With his mind full of Morn, Davies feared that he would start to wail. For some reason he didn't. Instead he snarled a curse, pushed the muzzle out of his face, and sat up.
    Right the first time: he was in a hold. A cargo hold, not a medical rescue bay designed to receive ejection pods, judging by the look of it; by the fact that the pod was anchored with the kind of flexsteel straps freighters used to secure crates and equipment; and by the lack of heat.
    The man with the gun sure as hell didn't look like a medtech. His slack features and dead eyes gave him the appearance of a nerve juice junkie who was about to follow his addiction to its logical conclusion. His shipsuit was too nondescript to mean anything. But he must have been a guard. His impact gun wasn't a weapon he carried: it was a part of him, a