Finity's End - a Union-Alliance Novel Read Online Free PDF

accounted for certain carriers. But the Fleet captains were canny and hard to nail. One Mazianni carrier with its rider ships was more than a lightspeed firing platform: it was also a traveling, self-contained world, deadly in its power and long-term in its staying power. A carrier, badly damaged, could repair itself, given time. Even if Pell declared a victory, surviving ships of the Fleet might pull off to the long-alleged secret base for a generation or so and then return, making the rebel captain Mazian again a major player in the affairs of the human species.
    Elene inclined to a mix of those beliefs, convinced, first, that Mazian was a threat diminishing rather than rising; second, that the end of the pirate wars would be a wind-down and never a provable victory; and third, that the critical danger to the human species was
not
in a Fleet mostly driven in retreat, secret base or no secret base. The Fleet had been the demon in the dark for so long that it had taken on a quality of myth, so potent a myth that Alliance and Union administrators alike need only say the dire word
Mazian
, and a funding bill passed
    But the downside of that preoccupation with the Mazianni was an Alliance Council refusing to take their eyes off the Fleet and look instead to their primary competition: Union , the enemy the Fleet had fought before it turned to piracy.
    Her own councillors said she was out of date, obsessed with history, unable to forgive the
Estelle
disaster. She should become more progressive in her thinking and give up the bitterness of a War grown inconvenient in modern politics.
    Like hell.
    "Seven years," Elene said, stalking her topic as the waiters carried off the empty salad plates. She knew who was at surrounding tables, two of her loyal aides and the policy chairman. She knew this area of the restaurant, she knew the noise levels, precisely how far voices carried, which was not far at all. She'd have skinned the maitre d' if he'd settled anyone in her vicinity who didn't have a top clearance—since anyone who'd worked at all on the docks could lip-read, a skill which defeated the device she had also seen with the lights on, the one that also guaranteed the privacy of this table. "Seven years is too long to wait for a good supper,
Finity
. What are our chances we'll see you more often in the future?"
    James Robert's expression was a parchment mask. The eyes, darting to hers, were immediately lively and calculating.
    "Fairly good," James Robert said, an answer the commodities dealers would be very interested to hear. "Granted Union behaves itself." The inevitable stinger. Yea and nay in two breaths. James Robert to the core.
    "We're turning full-time to honest trade," Francie said. "At least that's our ambition."
    "Peaceful trade," Madison added, lifting his glass. "Confusion to Cyteen
and
to Mother Earth."
    "To peace," Damon said, more politic, and Francie and Alan emptied glasses to the bottom.
    Then the main course arrived, a flurry of carts and waiters, during which
Finity
passed around the bottle and did their own wine-pouring, to the consternation of the wait- staff—they were spacers to the bone, and if the waiters couldn't handle empty glasses fast enough, then they did for themselves, ignoring station protocols and etiquette as blithely as they'd done for decades. They were nothing if not self-sufficient and reckless of external protocols.
    As the Quens had once been, on their own deck, Elene could not but reflect. And now the almost-last of the Quens finagled and hoped and connived for that right again, cursing the waiters dithering in and out at the wrong moment.
    She could sway the internal government of Pell. That was half the Alliance . The approval of the Alliance Council of Captains—that was the sticking point in her plans. And that meant, significantly, the leadership of James Robert Neihart.
    "A brave new world of peace," she reprised, as the waiters and the cart went away, and before the conversation