Freehold Read Online Free PDF Page B

major part, with only small portions of meat. Due to its climate, most of Freehold's food was grown in large hydroponics centers. Stell learned that eventually the settlers hoped to irrigate their deserts using water from the huge underground rivers that crisscrossed the planet. Then they would be able to grow a wider variety of crops, and import herd animals. Until then, however, lesser fare would have to do. Stell found the dinner quite satisfying and, when it was over, he settled back, cigar in hand, to enjoy some excellent Terran coffee.
    Dinner conversation had centered around the merits of big game hunting on various planets, something Roop was an expert on; 18th-century literature, a passion of Kasten's second only to politics; and an extremely funny commentary by Olivia on the internal politics of the Emperor's court, which she had observed firsthand while visiting there with her father. Stell and Como had taken their turns as well. Stell told short, humorous anecdotes suggested by the conversation, and Como shared a long, absolutely hilarious tale about a leave fraught with misadventure, all culminating in an intoxicated performance as first zirth player in the Alberian World Symphony, and the difficulty he'd faced when called upon for a solo—and how one coaxes music from a ten-foot-long reptile that closely resembles a boa constrictor.
    Since no one could top Como's story, they agreed to retire to the sitting room and discuss business. Once everyone was seated, with drinks in hand, Kasten pressed a button on a remote control unit and a section of faded red wall slid aside to reveal an old but serviceable holo tank. Turning to Stell, Kasten said, “Colonel, in order to understand why we're interested in your services, a little history might come in handy. With your permission I'd like to narrate a holo prepared by my staff. I think it'll make our situation clear.”
    Stell nodded his assent as the room darkened and the holo tank swirled into life. The first thing he saw was the blackness of space. Then a pinprick of light appeared at the center of the blackness, gradually growing larger and larger as the camera approached it, until finally a large, moonless planet hung before him.
    “That's home,” Kasten said simply. “Freehold. It was discovered and claimed about forty years ago by Intersystems Incorporated.”
    Kasten didn't need to tell Stell about Intersystems Inc. Everyone was familiar with one of the biggest companies in the human empire. Intersystems, and two other equally large companies, were known as the Three Sisters. The name stemmed from the fact that they often seemed to function as a family, usually to their mutual benefit and someone else's loss. While Intersystems was huge, and involved all sorts of manufacturing and banking enterprises, it was well known that a large part of their income came from the incredibly expensive and risky business of finding, claiming, and selling planets.
    “Here's some info on climate and so forth that you'll find interesting,” Kasten remarked as words and numbers appeared to overlay the planet. He laughed, and then added, “Believe me, Colonel, it's even worse than it looks!”
    Stell scanned the data and found that Kasten wasn't kidding. It probably was worse than it looked ... and that was bad enough. Seventy percent of Freehold's surface was classified as “arid,” or “semi-arid,” which always sounds better than “desert.” Ten percent was devoted to polar ice caps. That left two narrow temperate zones to divide the polar regions from the broad section of arid land banding the middle of the planet. As if that weren't bad enough, the hot air rising from the huge deserts inevitably came into contact with the cold air generated at the poles, producing incredible winds. Propelled by the wind, the desert's almost limitless supply of sand quickly became billions of tiny projectiles, making travel on much of the planet's surface extremely difficult, and