Endgame Read Online Free PDF Page B

“They’re coming in over the bay!”
    Conversation ceased. Everyone turned toward the water just as a black dot broke through the clouds. It grew rapidly, wings becoming visible, sunlight flashing off the metalloceramic skin.
    Jani raised her head and squinted at the approaching shuttle. The underside looked dark, as though the craft had made a bad landing and scraped the hell out of the thermal coating. Then the mess of lines and shading resolved into an all too familiar pattern, two snakes twining around a winged staff. Her stomach tightened. “John? Is that what I think it is?”
    â€œIt’s a caduceus.” John’s voice emerged a puzzled rumble. “What the…?”
    â€œIt’s a Neoclona shuttle, Doctor.” Niall shouldered through the crowd to join them. “Expecting any visitors?”
    â€œNo.” John released Jani and moved closer to the runway’s edge as the shuttle passed overhead, then banked for the last time and settled into its final approach, wings flexing and reshaping to compensate for the crosswinds. Then it touched down, dust billowing behind it like a windblown veil, its engines cut back to near silence.
    Jani moved in beside John. Took his hand in hers, and felt the barest hint of sweat on his palm.
    The shuttle slowed until it drew even with them. As soon as it stopped, the door to the passenger cabin swept upward while the exit stairway emerged and unfolded to the ground.
    Valentin Parini stepped up to the threshold before the stairway extended completely. He wore a daysuit in somber greyed green, the severe lines disturbed by the briefbag that hung from one shoulder.
    John shook loose Jani’s hand, then straightened the already flawless lines of his medcoat.
    â€œI thought he was never supposed to embark on a long haul unless he told you?” Jani watched Val as he let his foot dangle over the first step, waiting for the stairway to stabilize.
    â€œHe’s not.” John’s voice sounded like the rumble from the depths of a cave. “It was an agreement he, Eamon, and I made at the beginning, that we would each know where the others were at all times.”
    â€œEamon broke that rule.” Jani waited for an answer, and looked over at John to find him watching Val with narrowed eyes.
    â€œVal and I never did.” He fell silent, his face a professional mask.
    Val collected himself as he started down the stair, disdaining the handholds that ran along both sides. As soon as he hit the ground, he hit his stride, a saunter that had over the years made fists itch and teeth grind from one end of the Commonwealth to the other.
    John waited until Val had crossed the invisible halfway point before walking out to meet him. His step was weightier, but just as fluid, with the deceptive quickness of molten metal flow.
    Then came the hitch in Val’s step, the slowdown as he drew nearer to John. When no more than a couple of meters separated them, he stopped, the shock that filled his eyes at war with the unperturbed attitude he struggled to convey. He shifted his weight from one foot to the other, glancing at Jani without seeing her before returning to John.
    It’s the first time he’s seen John in person since he hybridized. Jani looked at her lover and tried to see him as his best friend did, comparing the albino presence that Val had known so well with the pale blond, gold-skinned figure that stood before him now. And let’s not forget the eyes. The same silvered blue as John’s daysuit, as glittery as jewels when he smiled.
    Val fought to appear detached, but his face kept betraying him, dismay and shock and affection jockeying for the lead, with professional curiosity bringing up the rear. His jaw slackened as his eyes widened, the only sound emerging from his mouth a strangled, “I—”
    John smiled, stopping just short of a full-blown idomeni teeth-baring. “It really is me,