Come and Take Them-eARC Read Online Free PDF

strictly limited by a system even the high admiral would have found a chore to override. And none of their authors had really cared all that much about the new world. On Terra Nova, on the other hand, where many people were deeply concerned with the planet of their birth, there was, in fact, a cogent theory as to why their world physically matched Old Earth so closely. It had to do with weather or, more properly, with weather and the animals the Noahs had brought, from sabertooth to megalodon to phorohacos.
    Plainly, the Noahs had wanted those animals to live. That required a proper climate, proper seasons, proper winds and rain. And, since weather was largely a function of the layout of a planet’s surface, that had necessitated raising up continents and islands here, moving others there, and perhaps sinking others, still.
    At least, that was the prevailing theory among those who cared.

    Gaul Field, Balboa Transitway Zone, Balboa, Terra Nova

    Both the admiral and the cabin girl had changed out of UEPF blacks into mufti during the second leg of their flight. That way they raised no comment as they made their way from one airport portal to the next in Valdivia, or in Taurus, or here.
    It smells exactly like home, Esmeralda thought, as she and the high admiral walked the short distance from the Tauran dirigible’s hatchway to a waiting helicopter a quarter of a mile away. Well, underneath that funny oily stink it does. Sea salt. Flowers. The jungle.
    The TU’s political and diplomatic crew lagged respectfully behind Wallenstein, who outranked them any way they cared to look at it. Her cabin girl, conversely, stayed by her side. About two hundred meters from the waiting TH-527 helicopter the wind shifted. Esmeralda sniffed again. Even the food…it’s all the same.
    Suddenly the girl was overwhelmed by a sense of homesickness and loss. It was all she could do not to break down in tears at the thought, I’ll never see home again.
    Wallenstein hadn’t gotten to be as old as she had without learning to read people. That she and the cabin girl had spent about the last two years in close company helped, too. Gently, she patted Esmeralda. “Yes, child, you will someday go home. Moreover, you’ll go home free and rich and famous all over. With a nice jump in caste to see you through a long and happy life.”
    And when I hang the last of the Castro-Nyeres—foul brood—you’ll be there to set the ropes. I promise.
    Esmeralda wasn’t as good at reading her admiral as her admiral was at reading her.

    Headquarters, Tauran Union Security Force-Balboa, Building 59, Fort Muddville, Balboa, Terra Nova

    Marguerite had it on very good authority that the TU’s headquarters was an intelligence sieve, that the domestic staff and some of the secretarial staff spied for the other side, that the phones were tapped, and even that some areas were subject to sound amplification via parabolic mirror. She thought that last was paranoia but… Never hurts to be a little bit paranoid.
    Indeed, she’d been paranoid enough to force a third of the more senior TU personnel to precede her out of the helicopter, having ordered the Gaul, Janier, to greet them. While all of that folderol was going on, she and Esmeralda escaped into the building via a less obvious door, held open by a short, well-stacked, very damned pretty blonde with very large blue eyes.
    Who, unfortunately, Wallenstein realized in an instant, isn’t remotely interested in girls. Oh, well.
    The blonde’s nametag read “Campbell,” while the rank on her epaulets indicated captain of ground forces.
    “This way, ma’am,” Campbell said, leading Marguerite and Esmeralda down a narrow, brown-painted corridor, up an even narrower flight of steps, then around two corners and into a thick-walled conference room of perhaps four by six meters. The door to the conference room was doubled, with a small chamber between doors, very much like the air lock of a star ship.
    Almost,