Nova War by Gary Gibson Read Free Book Online Page A

skull, pressed up against the thin, semi-translucent material . . .
    Remembrance froze, and the shadow moved quietly away, as if its owner realized he’d been spotted. However, the outline he’d glimpsed triggered memories of a fleeting encounter light-years away, and months in the past.
    But that same person had been reported dead in a fire-fight aboard a coreship, not long after the destruction of Bourdain’s orbital pleasure palace.
    Supposedly.
    Charette’s breath had become coarse and ragged, and Remembrance wondered if he’d applied too much pressure, for judging the right amount was never easy. Yet after a few moments, the restaurant manager struggled upright, walking carefully back towards the kitchens without sparing either Remembrance or Honeydew a second glance, thereby retaining at least part of his dignity.
    Some of the Bandati clientele had finally realized something was wrong. One or two had dropped down from their perches, and stood on spindly, furred legs, chittering nervously and staring over towards the two Hive agents now standing between them and freedom.
    Remembrance ignored them for the moment and hugged his shotgun close to his chest, slipping the wire loop attached to its stock over his arm. Honeydew appeared uncertain for a moment, then did the same.
    ‘When was the last time a maul-worm actually killed anyone?’ he asked Honeydew, after they had started to make their way towards the cordoned-off area where he had glimpsed a face.
    ‘Two years ago,’ Honeydew replied, ‘halfway around the world from here. Thirteen died in all, not including any kitchen staff. Apparently they’d been tipped off beforehand.’
    ‘So it wasn’t just an accident?’
    ‘Officially, it’s because of a lack of appropriate security in an unsanctioned restaurant. Unofficially, someone fired a smart missile from right across the continent. It missed by half a kilometre, but it still triggered an avalanche bad enough to scare the maul-worm into contracting. This sort of business is a risky one to get into.’
    They stepped around a sequence of screens and found Alexander Bourdain himself sitting with two human companions at one of several tables that were each large enough to accommodate a dozen seats. Only this one table was occupied, however. Bourdain’s companions – a man and woman – were seated directly across the table from him. Remembrance had encountered them before, but even if he hadn’t had that pleasure he would still have recognized immediately that they had the careful, watchful look of hired guns.
    The woman had deep ebony skin, her face surgically altered to look deliberately artificial and cartoon-like, in a style Remembrance recalled had been in vogue for a while within the Consortium. She was dressed in artificial skin, a thin, permeable body-suit more akin to a symbiote than any article of clothing. Her name, he recalled, was Rachel Kapur.
    The other bodyguard, Tobias Mazower, was pale-skinned and much more conservative in appearance.
    Something in the posture of all three caused Remembrance to suspect that his presence was not unanticipated. They appeared relaxed, and Bourdain even wore a small smile.
    Remembrance glanced sideways at Honeydew and found himself staring down the barrel of the Immortal Light agent’s shotgun. In that moment, he realized his initial suspicions concerning the source of the security leak had been correct.
    How long, Remembrance wondered, had Bourdain known he was the subject of a deep-cover investigation stretching over years and several star systems? I’ve spent too long around these creatures, he thought, with a tinge of self-loathing that disturbed him, for sometimes it felt as if he could read humans better than they could read each other. His time amongst them had at least granted him an appreciation of certain of the species’ arts, if not of anything else related to them.
    Honeydew gestured towards the table with his shotgun. ‘Drop your weapon where