Coyote Horizon Read Online Free PDF

seldom was there a time when the skies above New Brighton didn’t thunder with a sonic boom, announcing the arrival of another vessel from Earth.
    Most were passenger shuttles, ferrying people down from starships in low orbit above Coyote. The spaceport was also frequently visited by freighters, big cone-shaped craft that would land at the side of the spaceport where the warehouses were located. On rare occasion, the starships themselves would come down, usually when they needed to be dry-docked for major repair; when that happened, the ground itself seemed to shake, the windows of the terminal rattling gently within their frames, as the giant vessel slowly descended upon vertical thrusters to the steel-reinforced concrete of the field.
    No matter their size, purpose, or registry, though, the ships all came from the same place. Their point of origin was Highgate, the international space colony in lunar orbit above the Moon. Upon departure, they’d make the short journey to Starbridge Earth, positioned at a Lagrange point nearly a quarter of a million miles away. Once traffic controllers aboard the starbridge gatehouse cleared the vessels for hyperspace transit, AIs would assume control of the craft from their pilots, and the ships would enter the artificial wormhole created within the center of the enormous silver ring. Five seconds later, in a burst of defocused light, they’d emerge from Starbridge Coyote, in trojan orbit around 47 Ursae Majoris-B, forty-six light-years from Earth.
    A miracle of physics and engineering; Hawk was familiar with the details, but he hadn’t experienced it for himself, nor was he likely ever to do so. Born and raised on Coyote, he’d never left the world his parents had come to call home. His mother, along with his uncle, had been among the 104 colonists who’d made the long voyage to 47 Uma aboard the URSS Alabama , while his father had been one of those who’d been aboard the first starship built by the Western Hemisphere Union, Seeking Glorious Destiny Among the Stars for Greater Good of Social Collectivism. His parents had been very young when they’d left Earth; the stories they’d told him about their early lives were based upon recollections that had faded with the years, until Earth had become little more than a vague childhood memory. To be sure, Uncle Carlos and Aunt Wendy had been back there, shortly after the starbridge was established, and they had served as Coyote’s first emissaries to the United Nations. As far as Hawk was concerned, though, the place to which they’d gone was as mythical as Heaven, Asgard, or Nirvana.
    So the ships from Earth would come, their arrival heralded by thunder and flame, and once the dust settled around the landing gear, their passengers would march down lowered gangway ramps and make their way to the terminal. The very first person they’d meet on Coyote would be the customs inspector who’d process them through passport control. And if they happened to pick the middle of three kiosks, that inspector would be Hawk himself.
    Hawk would sit at his desk while the passengers, obeying multilingual holos floating above the floor, entered roped-off queues to take their turn at his kiosk. He kept his expression carefully neutral, showing neither pleasure nor disapproval, and once they approached his window, he’d ask the same set of questions.
    Name, please?
    Passport and visa?
    Citizen of the Coyote Federation or nonresident?
    And if it was the latter . . .
    Reason for visiting?
    Expected length of stay?
    Are you bringing in any items valued above one hundred colonials?
    And in the meantime, while he checked their papers and listened to their answers, the biometric scanner would examine their faces, matching their profiles against a database of known criminals. On the rare occasion that the database tagged someone as persona non grata, his comp would alert him and he’d surreptitiously press the small button beneath his desktop that would