A Princess of the Aerie Read Online Free PDF Page A

you’re here you can do a few things for me, and I know that you might be a lot
     more interested if I mention this, so let me add that some of those things are, um, kind of wild and edgy and a little crazy
     and dangerous.
    “Also, here’s something else I’d like: bring along Dujy, and while you’re at it bring along Myx. Neither of them is essential
     but it would be so fun just to have the four of us together again. And of course in the event of trouble, Dujuv is so good
     … you know, a panth, and a loyal friend, and all of that … not that I expect that you’ll be in a fight or anything, but then,
     I can’t say that I wouldn’t expect there to
not
be fighting, either, masen? Weehu, that was another one of
those
sentences. Well, anyway, I hope I’m making some kind of sense all the same.
    “I expect that sending this by back channel with so little real information will probably at least pique your curiosity. So
     here’s what you do. The Hive Spatial has CUPV slots open for you, Myxenna, and Dujuv, for the next cruise of RHBS
Up Yours,
and its very first port of call happens to be the Aerie.”
    Jak smiled; she knew how he liked to travel. He’d been a CUPV before, three times, all on merchant sunclippers. A CUPV was
     “Crew, Unpaid, Passenger Volunteer,” a fancy way of saying a paying passenger working on the ship to have something to do;
     it counted for union points, and it was more interesting than the viv, the gym, and reading, which were most of the amusements
     for passengers on sun-clippers, and tended to become boring in a few days—a major problem since getting between the worlds
     on solar sails and gravity assists took many weeks even in the lower solar system.
    During peacetime, the Spatial took passengers. Warships, with their quarkjet engines, traveled on direct trajectories much
     faster than the solar orbits in which the sunclippers moved, and charged less than the super-fast private quarkjet liners.
     At half the cost of a quarkjet liner, it was often worth it to administrators to be able to move bureaucrats and corporados
     around in a quarter or less of the time a regular sunclipper would take, and transporting needed, high-ranking workers on
     Spatial ships would not threaten the social order, for no one was going to acquire a taste for luxury while traveling on a
     warship.
    Furthermore, the Spatial’s passengers, like any other passengers on a union ship, were eligible for CUPV status. Jak had never
     been on a Spatial ship—and
Up Yours
was a battlesphere, the biggest and second-fastest class of deep space warship. So whatever it was that Sesh wanted him to
     do at Greenworld, just getting there was going to be a wonderful opportunity.
    “
Up Yours
will be leaving just after your final exams. It took me a few good tricks to get access to those CUPV slots, let me tell
     you, but I did, and the three of you need only claim them—just call on Lieutenant Creyamanen on
Up Yours,
anytime down to a week before it boosts. As a CUPV you can even pick up some union points, just in case you’re still interested
     in that funny-looking short-haired girl.”
    “Phrysaba,” Jak said. “Phrysaba Fears-the-Stars.” Besides Sesh, Phrysaba was the other person whose letters Jak’s purse was
     supposed to announce immediately.
    “I’m not
toktru
insecure on that point, I mean, look at her, who could be? But anyway, give it some thought.
    “Now, the important last detail:
don’t reply.
I worked up a few things all on my own to get one good back-channel message out. There’s just the slightest chance that nobody
     on Greenworld has detected this message, so let’s not risk their detecting your reply. Just show up. You at least, with Dujuv
     and Myxenna ideally.” She gave him the big warm happy smile that had always melted him, and said, “I still miss you a lot.”
    He played her message twice more as he finished his bath.

C HAPTER 3
I Have a Feeling That Your Troubles Are