Deucalion by Brian Caswell Read Free Book Online

that if you’re always stopping to consider the effect of this or that decision on your future in the Corps. Most career-Security types play it safe and do everything by the book. Unfortunately, ‘the book’ was written by people who never put their lives on the line in the field. So it only works in cases where commonsense would tell you what to do anyway.
    The end result? Security became just another big bureaucracy. It’s just lucky that there was so little to secure, or people like the J-man might have had a pretty short life-expectancy. Of course, it only takes one looney-tune – or one accident – to test just how good you really are.
    Edison was maybe a thousand clicks south of the capital. After New G and the northern cities of Roma and Elton, it was the largest settlement on Deucalion. And it was the one place that wasn’t controlled by the Corporation. The main reason for its independence was the reason for its existence in the first place. Edison had been set up as a centre for Funded Research.
    Rumour had it that the 1,000-kilometre buffer-zone between it and New Geneva was to protect the top-secret nature of a lot of the research going on there. Though with a population pushing half a million, from a Security point of view that argument didn’t hold too much water. My personal belief was that it was to protect the rest of us – in case one or more of those ‘top-secret’ experiments went horribly wrong.
    Whatever the reason, we were headed there. Researchers or Rockbiters, there were almost half a million potential voters in Edison, and the J-man was going to shake as many of their hands as he physically could. While I tried to stop people from killing him.
    Of course, all that assumed that we made it safely across the Roosevelt Ranges. Which proved to be a hugely optimistic assumption . . .
    SAEBI
    Standing at the entrance to the cave, Saebi heard the noise of the flyer before she caught sight of it. That fact alone made her move into the open to see what was wrong.
    Flyers were almost silent. More than once, as she had watched the offworlders from her favourite position on the cliff above Neuenstadt, she had been surprised by one flashing past, almost close enough to touch. Surprised, because she had not heard it approaching until it was right on top of her.
    But this one she could hear. It was labouring as it struggled to make enough altitude to clear the sharp peaks that surrounded the small valley in which she was standing. She tried to call to Cael, but he was painting inside the cave, and his mind was closed to her. She was caught between moving inside to get him, and the awful fascination of watching the fate of the flyer.
    Then it was too late.
    The flyer came in from the west, barely clearing the wall of rock and losing altitude, as if the pilot were desperately searching for a place to land. But the floor of the narrow valley was littered with boulders. Huge cracks in the barren soil were all that remained of the ancient river that had once carved it from the flesh of the land.
    It passed not far from her, travelling at great speed, and as it passed, she caught the taste of fear from a number of minds. Offworlders. Thoughts too alien to understand, yet the alarm she tasted was terrifyingly real.
    The flyer banked slightly, following the path of the ancient river, until the valley curved sharply around the base of a rocky outcrop, about a kilometre from where she stood. She watched the machine struggle to find height, climbing metre by metre as it approached the outcrop, but too slowly, so that it seemed that it must crash.
    But somehow, suddenly, it was high enough, and it disappeared from view behind the rocky crest. The alien minds were too far away now for her to taste them, but she imagined the relief that they must be feeling . . .
    The force of the explosion shook the ground beneath her feet. Within moments, a huge plume of black smoke began to rise