Gabriel's Ghost Read Online Free PDF Page A

order. A dereliction that resulted in the deaths of fourteen officers and crew in the Imperial Sixth Fleet.
    An order the court said I’d acknowledged, then ignored.
    An order I swore on all I held holy I’d never received. My ship’s logs showed otherwise. Forgery, the court said, was impossible.
    As impossible as jukors, alive, prowling the forests of Moabar.
    I saw one. Sully had killed one.
    I sipped my tea, listened to my brain argue with itself and engage in a familiar litany.
    This was Moabar. Why should I give a damn what happened here? Jukors or Takans. Illegal or legal. If the Empire needed more devils for its Hell, this was the place to grow them.
    It wasn’t my concern. I was neither scientist nor theologian. I was alive—praise the stars— and an hour from freedom.
    “Tea’s fine,” I told Drogue. I meant it. Time to focus on what’s now, not what should be. What could have been.
    At a soft sound in the archway, I turned, expecting Sully.
    For two seconds I froze in my seat. It was as if one of the old training sims had come, horribly, to life. The dagger snapped flat into my hand. My chair fell backwards, crashed to the floor. I was almost to the door when Drogue’s voice stopped me.
    “Leave now, captain, and you will surely die.”

Chapter Three
    “Chaz! He won’t hurt you.”
    This time I did see Sully, freshly scrubbed, his hair still damp and glistening. And in a monk’s uniform, its pale sand-like colors contrasting sharply with his dark hair and eyes.
    His humanness contrasted sharply with the Stolorth filling the archway. Sully squeezed by the tall, humanoid form and strode toward me, hand outstretched.
    I backed up a step. If he thought I’d give him my dagger he was wrong. Dead wrong. But I did take my hand off the door leading outside. I did lower the dagger. “Explain.”
    He stopped, two dagger lengths away, and glanced over his shoulder. The Stolorth hadn’t moved, save to lean a little to its left on a cane it held in its six-fingered left hand.
    His hand. The Stolorth was definitely male. Like Sully, he wore the pale sand-gray pants and tunic of a monk. But his biceps and thighs strained the fabric. He topped Sully’s height by four, five inches.
    He could almost pass, if you didn’t see the gill slits on his neck, for human. Could almost pass, if you didn’t notice the thick silvery-blue hair plaited in a braid not unlike my own, for human. Could almost pass, if you didn’t see the webbing between the fingers, for human.
    Now I understood the role of the bathtub.
    “I’m sorry.” The Stolorth spoke. His voice was deep, surprisingly soft. In it, I heard waves echoing on a shore I’d never visited. “I thought she knew.”
    Sully had the good grace to look sheepish. “I was going to tell her. I fell asleep in the tub.”
    The Stolorth angled his face toward me. “Captain Bergren, it wasn’t my intention to startle you.”
    Startle me? No, when a Stolorth Ragkiril was finished with a human mind, there was nothing left to startle. Nothing left at all.
    Sully took a half step closer. I could smell the soap on his skin. A small drop of water lost its grasp on his tousled hair, made a rivulet around the edge of a thick eyebrow, trickled down the right side of his face. “It’s okay, Chaz. Trust me.”
    I could think of a dozen reasons not to. They didn’t matter as reality dictated I had no choice, and nothing to go back to. If I died on Moabar, death would be slow, painful. At least with a Stolorth, he could plant pleasant memories as he ripped my mind to shreds.
    “He’s blind, Chaz. He can’t hurt you.”
    Blind? “That’s impossible. They kill their—” But even from across the kitchen I could see the film over his silver eyes, dulling them.
    By all I held holy. A blind Stolorth in an Englarian monastery. And a full-grown male at that. We were told Stolorths killed defective young, and weak elders for that matter. Blindness was especially heinous to them.