The Saga of Seven Suns: Veiled Alliances by Kevin J. Anderson Read Free Book Online Page B

believed him for a moment. He muttered angry comments that few people could understand, as if cursing at voices inside himself. His captors threw him to the ground in disgust, like garbage.
    The village leader stood above him and pronounced a prompt sentence in a flat, impartial voice, as sad as it was angry. “Sam Roper, never has such a crime been committed on Theroc. When we came to this new world, we believed it was a fresh start. We had every reason to hope. We had everything we could want . . . but apparently we brought our demons as well.”
    The other people muttered, nodding. Thara remained silent.
    Brovnik continued, “We’ve all read the library records. We know that such crimes were common enough on old Earth, and it seems we cannot escape them, even here.” Now the village leader looked smaller, as if he wanted to be anywhere else, making any other kind of decision. Their colony on Theroc had thrived for five years. This was the worst thing that had happened under his leadership.
    “We’ve not yet established a way to punish atrocities such as these. We never needed it before.” His voice became so quiet that even Thara could barely hear him. “I was foolish to hope it would never happen.”
    Thara realized what she had to say, and her own voice was loud. She knew what this man had tried to do to her, what he had done to those other women. Even though fleeing from him had accidentally resulted in her wondrous transformation, she could not forgive him, nor could she allow Roper to harm anyone else.
    “Leader Brovnik, take him to the top of the trees at dawn. The worldforest will know what to do.”

    At sunrise, the humidity in the air acted like a veil of tiny magnifying lenses that caused the air to shimmer. Mist rose from the lush canopy as the dense forest began to awaken.
    Thara Wen climbed to the highest branches along with a contingent of colonists. Some people remained back in the village, not wanting to see, but others felt compelled to watch.
    Sam Roper, stripped naked, was bound wrists and ankles, crouching on an exposed branch under the open sky. He kept muttering a mantra of “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.” It didn’t matter whether or not anyone accepted his apology; the villagers had made up their minds. He struggled against the cords that bound him to the branch, but he could go nowhere. Sweat poured down his face. His brown hair tangled over his eyes. “I’m sorry . . . I’m sorry.”
    Thara, Brovnik, and their companions watched from a high branch, but with little pleasure. The buzz of insects filled the air, drowning out the fainter rustling of worldtree fronds. A flock of languid rose-colored moths flapped by, their wingspans more than two meters across. They circled the bound human figure curiously, then beat their wings, moving slowly away.
    Suddenly, a wide, angular shadow splashed across the treetops. A large creature dove downward. The moths scattered in panic.
    Sam Roper looked up and stared at the creature coming toward him.
    Thara observed through her own eyes and through the senses of the forest. The most fearsome creature on Theroc—an enormous carnivorous insect with two sets of segmented wings, chitin-armored legs and body, glassy faceted eyes like a huge dragonfly that had been twisted through a nightmare machine. The few colonists who had ever seen one called it a wyvern.
    Roper said in a whisper heard only by the forest, and in Thara’s head, ”Sorry,” before the wyvern grasped him with pincered forelegs, tore him free of the bindings and snapped the branch in the process, then pierced him with spearlike mandibles.
    Taking its prey, the wyvern flew off, snaking a long proboscis around the blood oozing from Roper’s torn skin. In distaste, the creature tore him apart and discarded his broken body into the forest below.
    Thara watched as the tiny figure plummeted into the trees. “Apparently, wyverns do not like the flavor of human flesh,” she said