The Only Game in the Galaxy by Paul Collins Read Free Book Online Page B

glass and refilling it with more champagne.
    Jeera dutifully crossed the room and prepped the data for a micro-burst transmission, encrypting it first. She had just finished when the wall in the outer corridor imploded.
    ‘What the hell –?’ said Karl, spinning round awkwardly to see the corridor full of smoke and dust. Mika’s face paled. Neither she nor Karl moved.
    Jeera, on the other hand, knew exactly what was happening. She leant forward, pressed her eye to a retinal up-loader and hit the send button. In a flash the encrypted micro-burst was uploaded onto a data chip lodged in her neo-cortex, a bio-wetware implant nearly every school child possessed.
    As high-energy beams stitched into Karl and Mika, vaporising raw chunks of them, Jeera sprinted for the panic room located in the back. Once inside, nothing could touch her until Black came for her.
    She didn’t make it.

    Maximus sat behind his desk and pondered. Life was full of surprises. Quesada Towers had been invaded this morning, yet here he was, the building refurbished and vacuumed of gas as though this morning’s events had never occurred. He’d thought Anneke dead, yet here she was alive.
    He guessed that she was never going to assassinate his opponents at Myoto – but nonetheless he would play out a plan he had devised for her.
    He wasn’t sentimental enough to think it had to do with her having been on his birth world, Tormat, or because she was hiding something from him. There was no denying her revelation had shocked him deeply. Indeed, he was trying to assess the seismic blow, and what it might mean …
    It was late and Maximus was tired. Not a good time to measure emotional fallout. Suffice to say that what he had thought dead and buried was showing an unhealthy desire to disinter itself.
    In any case, he thought Anneke – and her opportune amnesia – might be put to practical use, repairing some if not all of the damage she herself had caused.
    His mind was ticking over when a part of it, both wetware and hardware, became aware of running feet.
    The door burst open and a Quesadan flunky stumbled in, out of breath.
    Maximus felt instant foreboding. ‘What is it?’
    ‘Sir, we just received a malfunction report – from Spider’s Web!’
    The Envoy strode into the room at that moment. Maximus waved the flunky out. ‘Yes?’ he said to the Envoy.
    ‘Destroyed. All dead –’ the Envoy rasped.
    ‘All?!’ Maximus felt panic. It wasn’t the machinery he was worried about.
    ‘All but Jeera Mosoon.’
    Maximus felt weak and sat down. The Envoy assessed him, or so Maximus imagined. ‘She made it to the panic room?’
    ‘No. She was captured. The logs show that she made a micro-burst retinal upload just before she was apprehended …’
    Maximus stared. ‘They did it. They cracked the code!’
    ‘If so, the enemy has it in their possession. Further, the auto-toxin that should have terminated the girl’s life the moment she left the underground bunker did not succeed.’
    Maximus felt numb. His inexplicable attraction to the girl was becoming an interesting embarrassment. ‘What can I say, Envoy? I didn’t have the heart to infect her. Well … I gave her an antidote.’
    ‘You feel for her.’
    ‘That is no concern of yours. Now tell me the rest.’
    ‘Our spy informs us Jeera will be moved off planet tomorrow. Logically to Se’atma Minor since the IMC controls the Old Fortress and they have scheduled their shareholder’s meeting there next week.’
    ‘Yes. What better place.’
    ‘There is something else.’
    Maximus closed his eyes for a second. He felt something large and nasty rushing towards him.
    ‘Anneke Longshadow is gone. The safe house was attacked an hour ago. Agents are combing through the debris as we speak. First estimations suggest she is dead.’
    Maximus, too weary to be shaken, managed a short barking laugh. ‘Trust me, Envoy, she is harder to kill than you imagine!’
    ‘As you say.’ The Envoy’s tone was