Forsaken Skies by D. Nolan Clark Read Free Book Online

corporations were the only powers capable of bringing peace to human space.
    At least, that had been the company line. Not everybody accepted it, even when the polys were victorious, even when they set up the institutions and infrastructure that made human space a possibility, made the galaxy safe for commerce again. There had been those who didn’t want to live under the thumb of the big companies. People who wanted to live free, to set up their own planetary colonies without being forever beholden to the polys.
    Unfortunately their best idea of how to get that desire across was to blow up poly facilities and murder the plutocrats in their beds. The Establishment, as they called themselves, had been branded as terrorists. The Navy, including Aleister Lanoe, had been sent to root them out and destroy them. They’d been successful at capturing or killing the freedom fighters—Lanoe had won that war, too—but their victory was short-lived. A new, more organized Establishment had risen from the ashes. Instead of relying on sneak attacks and assassinations, the new Establishmentarians had mustered fleets of warships and divisions of marines. They’d seized the planet Sheol and raised their blue flag there, swearing to defend it and their right to live free.
    That had been where Valk came in—he’d flown under the blue banner, on the side of self-determination. He’d been an Establishmentarian, himself.
    He should have known better. It wasn’t long before Aleister Lanoe and the Navy rolled in, guns blazing, to take Sheol back. The Establishment had fought like wild dogs, pushed back into a corner and with nowhere to go. They’d sacrificed thousands of lives to keep the dream going. Valk had risen to minor celebrity himself, one of the Establishment’s top aces, and he’d been willing to fight to the death. But Lanoe and the polys had seemingly infinite resources behind them. Always they had more ships, more people, more money than the Establishment. It had really only been a matter of time—the grand cause had been so thoroughly doomed that the history texts didn’t even call the fighting a full-fledged war. They just called it a crisis, the Establishment Crisis, as if it were destined to be no more than a footnote in the record books.
    That been the last of Lanoe’s wars. Humans still fought each other, of course. The polys, having achieved dominance over every human planet except Earth, had turned on each other, battling one another for supremacy. Even now Centrocor was fighting against DaoLink, and ThiessGruppe had attacked Tuonela, a planet run by Wilscon. There would always be more wars. Lanoe had resigned his commission at the end of the Crisis, though. Maybe he figured it was time to let somebody else have the glory. In the seventeen years since then, he’d lost some of his fame. His name was no longer a household word. Yet no one could take away what he’d achieved.
    Lanoe’s career had spanned centuries. He’d fought in hundreds of battles and won almost all of them. The man was a legend, a hero out of myth, and he hadn’t got that way by being stupid.
    And now Valk had to try to outsmart him.
    There was no gravity in the docking facility. Lanoe kicked out of his seat and grabbed the edge of the raised canopy so he could face Valk directly. “I was told to set down here by the order of orbital traffic control. I assume that was you? The same man I spoke to when I arrived in this system?”
    â€œYeah,” Valk said. He pushed himself over to the fighter, grabbed one of its airfoils to steady himself. “That’s right. I wanted to see you for myself.” He looked over the FA.2, the cigar-shaped body with its segmented canopy, the double row of airfoils, the bulky weapon pods. It had been a while, but he felt the old stirring, the
need
to fly. “I’d ask where the yacht got to, but I’ve had way too many people