Cryoburn-ARC Read Online Free PDF

patrons."
    Of all the brain-bending twists of democracy Roic had encountered, even worse than the secondary market in Komarran planetary voting shares, it was Kibou-daini's custom of votes by the dead that most made his head hurt. Proxies, naturally—left in the hands of the cryocorps that shepherded their frozen charges into an unknown and curiously receding future. Because if you were going to trust a company with your death and next life, your vote was a small thing in comparison.
    "It had doubtless," m'lord had remarked crisply, upon first learning this fact, "seemed a good idea at the time." Two, three hundred years ago, when New Hope's strange burial customs, as Roic could not help thinking of them, were just beginning to gain popularity.
    "Heh," muttered m'lord, and sent his message on its coded and circuitous way.
    Roic knew that Heh . It gave him cold chills.
    And so to bed, to rise and face the last day of the conference, which had gone, as near as Roic could tell, as no one had expected, not even m'twisty lord.
    And now, oh God, he'd gone and lost the little maniac . . .
    Or had he? Belatedly, he wondered if m'lord had been captured in the melee in the lobby as well.
    He could be here . Roic abandoned the bolt and shuffled over to rap three times three on his room's side wall. Again. Nothing . He tried the other side of the room, though he had to stretch to reach. Silence. The adjoining rooms could be empty, or his fellow captives still too drugged to hear, or answer. Or maybe it was his captors over there, and he'd just alerted them of his return to consciousness. Damn . Try again later?
    He went back to working on his bolt, which was producing blisters on his fingers but no discernable loosening, and brooded. He'd only taken his eyes off m'lord for a moment, and then his old street guard reflexes had cut in, as he'd hustled at least half-a-dozen potential kidnap victims into a lift tube and escape, because they were unarmed civilians but that wasn't his job even though no one else was doing it. He'd sure won a whole lot of angry attention from their attackers by that, at least till the stunner beam had caught him. Maybe m'lord escaped, and will rescue me . An embarrassment, Roic decided, that he could happily live with.
    At the sudden clack of the door being unbolted, he started and dropped his hands hastily to his lap. The door opened, and a skinny young man with lank dark hair, and a slitted eye set in a swollen magenta-and-purple contusion, eased through and stared for a suspicious moment at Roic, seated on his mattress. He limped forward to just beyond the arc of Roic's chain, set some sort of commercial Reddi-Meal tray on the floor, and pushed it toward Roic with what appeared to be a broom handle. The tray was still sealed. So, Roic was not to be starved—or poisoned? Don't make premature assumptions, he could almost hear m'lord's voice intone. Roic realized he was terrifically hungry, but he made no move toward the tray.
    "I've seen you before," Roic said suddenly. "In the hotel lobby." Up close. Things had been happening too fast at the time for Roic to tell if the snatch had been an amateur or a pro job, but thinking back, he guessed a mix. The marksman who'd clocked him with the stunner had been cool enough, yet the mob of men assigned to control and cart away captives, well, they sure hadn't been up to Roic's idea of a standard—military, paramilitary, or youth scout troop. It had been a mass snatch, however, therefore not targeted especially upon Barrayarans—m'lord's ego would be wounded at that—but Roic wasn't sure if it made things more or less of a puzzle.
    The skinny man touched his swollen eye and stepped back a pace, scowling. It seemed he remembered Roic, too.
    "Who are you people, anyway?" asked Roic. "Why t'devil did you kidnap me—us?"
    Skinny's head jerked up; his good eye lit. "We're the New Hope Legacy Liberators. Because this generation"—he thumped his fist on his chest—"is