Bayley, Barrington J - Novel 10 by The Zen Gun (v1.1) Read Free Book Online Page A

sudden change in the quality of the light
falling from the apparent sky. He glanced up. Beside the pink sun hovering over
the horizon a red light was winking, like a pulsating companion. It was a signal
to tell him duty called.
                 He
bent down and patted the girl's damp hair. "I must be going. I'm
wanted."
                 Pushing
through a hanging screen of weeping willow, he was suddenly in a
crescent-shaped room whose concave wall was a continuous curve with the ceiling,
decorated with a floral pattern among which were interspersed oval vision
plates. It was his office, containing desks, a mental refresher set alongside
the dispenser of flavoured cold drinks, and various apparatuses relating to his
position as fleet commander.
                 The
only other person in the room was Arctus, his elephant adjutant. He stood with
trunk extended to a touch control beneath one of the vision plates, which
showed an off-focus, off-colour view of the space torsion room.
                 "The
inship network is outphasing again," he said in his trumpety voice.
"It's time the maintenancers got off their rusty backsides and did some
work."
                 "It's
rather difficult getting them to do anything," Archier said. "They
still claim to be on strike, even on fleet duty. But I'll speak to them. Anyway, what's happening,
Arctus?"
                 The
miniature elephant turned to face him, curling his trunk dismissingly in the
air. "Nothing that can't wait, Admiral. The
enabling data from High Command has arrived, that's all."
                 "Oh."
Archier glanced behind him to the area of wall, colour-coded tangerine,
that was the entrance to the dell and the girl. "Well, I might as
well have a look at it. Page it through to me."
                 He
seated himself at his main desk while Arctus got through and spoke to the boy
at the other end. A few seconds later his desk top steamed, then extruded
parchment-like sheets bearing the helical crest of Diadem.
                 For
several minutes Archier studied the sheets, his expression growing serious.
Finally he raised his face and stared with glazed eyes into nothing.
                 "Arctus,"
he said at last, "see if you can find Menshek for me, will you? Ask him to
come here."
                "Yes,
Admiral." Arctus busied himself at his own desk, a low toylike
affair at which he kneeled, expertly touching communicator pads with the soft
tip of his trunk. While Archier waited the cat girl came in, still damp, her
naked body extruding its pungent smell.
                 She
drew herself a thick, creamy confection from the dispenser and lay curled on a
tabletop, smiling archly at Archier and licking the stuff up with a pink
tongue.
                 He
ignored her, and when Menshek arrived, handed him the parchments silently.
                 Menshek
was pure human and the oldest person aboard Archier's flagship 1CS Standard Bearer. At sixty years of age
he was very likely the oldest person in Ten-Fleet, though the artificial
face-aging fashionable among the young women made his white hair and wrinkled
skin less noticeable than they might otherwise have been. Most people of his
age who were in official service held posts in Diadem.
                 Archier
tended to look up to him as a man of larger experience. The news he had now
made him feel he needed to consult such a man.
                 Menshek
sighed as he laid aside the sheets. "Well, there it is. The thing we
feared, that the Star Force fleets are largely in existence to prevent. A rebel
force with a fleet of its own."
                 "Yes,
it does seem we haven't been quite alert enough."
                 "No,
no, alertness isn't it." Menshek sounded weary. "The fleets just
aren't sufficient any more. Once there were thirty-six, now there are only
five, and they are