Pirate Sun by Karl Schroeder Read Free Book Online Page A

sharpened to a point. These weren’t shoes. They were weapons, and well-used ones.
    Antaea was nearly six feet tall but had the slenderness of someone raised under lower than standard gravity—or of someone who had spent a considerable part of her youth in freefall. Those long limbs were strongly muscled. Her breasts were not so large that her loose jacket had to visibly accommodate them.
    She glanced at him and he found himself looking away quickly before he could help himself. Damn.
    “Tell me about this home guard,” he said as what remained of the bread finally made its way to him. “I was told you were defenders of Virga—of the whole world. Defenders against what?”
    She grinned. It made the sides of her oval eyes rise, creating for an almost demonic expression. “You know, I couldn’t even convince most people that we exist. Your average farmer or city boy believes that Virga is infinite. They think this,” she waved around at the skies, “is all there is. It’s so nice to meet people who know differently.”
    “Any civilized man could tell you that the world of Virga is an artificial construct,” sniffed Richard. “It is a vast balloon, adrift in empty space.”
    She eyed him. “That just tells us all that I spend very little time around civilized people.”
    “That’s not what I—”
    “No matter.” She shrugged. “The thing is, our world is very small. It’s—what, five or six thousand miles in diameter? Would it surprise you to learn that our ancestors built far larger structures elsewhere in the universe? Or to learn that most of those structures are still inhabited?”
    “You defend us against people from other worlds?” Darius’s voice fairly dripped skepticism.
    “You describe my job most precisely, sir.”
    Darius stared at her in disbelief, but Chaison frowned for a different reason. “Have you traveled outside our world, Antaea?”
    She hesitated, then shook her head. “Those who have, do not recommend it.”
    She didn’t elaborate on that. Chaison wondered which of several lines of questioning he could pursue with this strange representative of an unknown power. He decided to venture one that had been eating at him ever since he’d heard of the guard. “Just how can the guard defend us against powers capable of building whole worlds? Surely not with guns and swords.”
    “Ah, Admiral! Such professional curiosity.” She waggled a finger at him. “My masters have decreed that such knowledge is not fit for the ears of Virga’s citizenry.”
    “Really? Why not?”
    She hesitated again. He watched her carefully, trying to read her subtle expressions. Was she doubtful of what she was saying now? “Because of the potential for harm such knowledge brings,” she said at last. Then she smiled, in a rather cunning way. “I could give you an example.”
    “Please do,” said Richard before he saw Chaison’s warning glance. The admiral already knew where this was going.
    “Something happened some months ago,” said Antaea. She pretended to examine a distant flock of fish that was nosing around the outskirts of the cloud. “We call it the outage . The outage hit the guard like a lightning bolt—shocked us out of our complacency. We’d come to rely on Virga’s built-in defenses rather too much, and then one day, those defenses simply stopped working . The outage lasted less than twelve hours, but it threw my masters into a panic that has yet to subside.”
    Now Darius was trying to catch Chaison’s eye. The admiral kept his face as neutral as he could, merely nodding politely for Antaea to continue.
    “I had been enjoying a much-needed vacation in the skin of the world,” said the Pacquaean. “I was flying with dolphins when the base sirens went off. When I got back to the installation the whole place was in an uproar. The protective field produced by the sun of suns had failed . And in the frozen vacuum outside the world, some things were uncoiling from a very long