Marauder by Gary Gibson Read Free Book Online Page A

sufficient leverage to rapidly dominate the whole of Redstone. And since it would take a little over two decades for a
clone’s implants to reach maturity, that set a definite limit on the frequency with which the ship could be interrogated.
    And what about the clone? Gabrielle had asked, as she lay curled up on top of the bedsheets, her hands clasped around her knees and shivering. Put to death, Karl had informed her, once a clone
had outlived her usefulness. The physical remains were disposed of in secret, even as the next Speaker-Elect was being born to a secret birth-mother.
    This process had been finessed over the intervening centuries, and embellished with ceremonies as a public demonstration of the Demarchy’s growing power. The city of Dios – meaning
literally, the city of God – had grown up around that grounded starship, becoming a place of devout pilgrimage for the Demarchy’s citizens. Few outside a secretive inner circle,
however, knew the underlying truth.
    In this way, Karl explained in a voice full of regret and anger, he had learned the true reason he had been hired to protect her: for the sake of the riches she would unlock once she was of
age.
    He had cupped her face in his hands then, assuring her he could never allow her to suffer the awful fate that had befallen her predecessors. She would not, as she had been taught to believe,
ascend bodily to Heaven after entering the Ship of the Covenant. Instead, she would become someone else entirely, and then die a miserable, painful death.
    She had clung to him, hot tears burning a path down her cheeks, as he promised to take them both somewhere far away from Redstone, where no one could ever find them.
    But to do so, he had warned, might require drastic measures – possibly very drastic indeed.
    Karl gave out a sigh of relief as Gabrielle reconfirmed her willingness to aid him in his plan. She would help him murder the whole of the Demarchy’s inner circle, rather
than allow them to take her life, and then the two of them would finally make their escape.
    ‘I’m glad to hear you say that,’ he said, with a strange half-smile that left her feeling unsettled, without really knowing why.
    ‘But what happens afterwards?’ Gabrielle demanded. ‘You haven’t told me how we’re even going to get ourselves off-world. What if Thijs sends your own soldiers out
looking for us . . . ?’
    He pressed a finger to her lips. ‘I’ve made arrangements, Gabrielle. Believe me, there’s no possible way anyone’s going to stop us.’ He grinned, and she again felt
that same curious unease as she returned his gaze, as if someone else were hiding behind his eyes. ‘I promise you this, though,’ he added, ‘they’ll never know what hit them.
Literally.’
    Karl slipped out of her bedchamber not long after. She let herself fall back against the pillows and closed her eyes, thinking of Karl’s seed now deep within her
body.
    She wondered why she had yet again failed to tell him about the new life growing inside her.
It’s one less thing for him to worry about, before we escape
, she assured herself. But
another part of her knew that she was just afraid to tell him she was pregnant – strangely fearful of how he might react.
    Mater Cassanas stepped back into the room, her mouth pinched tight and her eyes refusing to meet her mistress’s. She moved around the bedchamber, picking things up and then putting them
down again, making a show of tidying up but without really achieving anything.
    ‘I don’t know what you’re planning,’ Cassanas said finally, her voice tight with emotion, ‘but I’ll tell you this: you’re making a mistake in trusting
Petrova. He’s an evil man, with evil intentions . . . you have
no idea
—’
    ‘Then you could have at least tried to protect me,’ replied Gabrielle, unable to keep the venom out of her voice. ‘But instead you left me alone with him.’
    ‘With Petrova?’ Cassanas stared at her. ‘But