Vigilante by Laura E. Reeve Read Free Book Online Page B

been
    approved by the CAW Space Exploration, Exploitation, and Economics Control Board.” She couldn’t
    avoid using a defensive tone, still feeling guilty for all the work that Matt had to do for the
    SEEECB flunkies.
    “Don’t worry. Although he’ll never admit it to Mr. Journey, the colonel
    thinks he did the right thing. The colonel even admires the Byzantine snarl that’s resulted.”
    Joyce grinned.
    As if I care about what Owen Edones thinks .
    She wondered why Owen had sent Joyce here and immediately squelched her curiosity. She didn’t
    have a need to know, but she’d bet a hundred HKD that this had something to do with the
    Terrans. They were still the enemy, or at the least, they were the other side , no matter what lip service AFCAW intelligence gave
    to Pax Minoica.
    “There’s more to interest the Terrans than just the artifact.” She
    changed the display to zoom in on the third planet from the sun, labeled Sophia II. “They think
    the Builders—that’s what they’re calling this alien civilization—were terraforming this planet.
    They found what they think are inactive sensors on the surface.”
    “I thought they found nothing artificial on any of the inner planets
    during the second-wave prospecting.” Joyce picked up his slate and began making notes. “Sophia
    Two was staked by Taethis Exploration; why didn’t they catch this earlier?”
    “There’s a limit to what second-wave prospectors can find using
    telebots. The lessee now has contractors capable of surface exploration.”
    “Are the contractors Terran?” Joyce asked.
    “I don’t think that matters as much in new space as you think it
    does.”
    “The Terrans will be all over this, given their problems with Mars and
    Earth.”
    “Not Earth—Terra. Once you leave this ship, you should avoid offensive
    words.” She clipped her words, irritated. He apparently thought his mission, whatever it was,
    would be business as usual. It wouldn’t, not in new space. “You’re going to have to get used to
    new space, Joyce. There’s a mishmash of backgrounds and loyalties here; our governing bodies
    are far away and we’re isolated. You practically breathe ComNet on any Autonomist world, but it
    won’t even exist here. That means no timely news or feeds, no safety monitoring, no automatic
    nine-one-one access, and you have to get into the queue to make calls home. There’s no such
    thing as free bandwidth out of this system. Not while that generational ship has to get more
    than twenty-five years of data downloaded and processed.”
    She ran out of breath and stopped her minidiatribe. Tapping a command,
    she showed the view of the Pilgrimage III looming imminent and by
    now, filling the entire screen.
    “And don’t make trouble for Matt,” she added. “He’s had enough problems
    lately.”
    “I won’t make any trouble.” Joyce’s voice was grave, but the corners of
    his eyes wrinkled with humor. “As long as I don’t have to eat generational ship food.”
    Ariane laughed. “If I have to eat dinner aboard the Pilgrimage , then so do you. Worse, you have to pay for your food.”
    “That’ll be the day.”
    “Of course, you get credit if you donate genetic material,” she
    said.
    He snorted. “I’ll never sink to jacking off for money. You haven’t sold
    them anything, have you? What about Mr. Journey?”
    “We haven’t had time.” At his expression, she said, “Seriously, Joyce,
    there’s nothing obscene about it, once you can get over the privacy issues. They’ve got to
    contend with real-space, which prevents women from carrying babies to term. Besides, they never
    know when they’ll be stranded light-years from civilization, and they can’t even trust that the
    civilization they left still exists. They need a viable gene pool for healthy children and,
    possibly, for rebuilding our species.”
    “I don’t care; they’re not getting any of my little guys. Only my wife
    gets those.”
    She rolled her