Hostiles (The Galactic Mage series) Read Online Free PDF Page A

major cities around the globe were under Hostile attack, and that the Hostile disease had been detected in all of them. One anchorman proclaimed, “It seems they’re like insects, attracted to the lights.”
    Roberto didn’t know if Hostiles could see light, but the map graphics being shown by the various stations all confirmed general bad news for the largest population centers everywhere. He stared at the most recent graphic and shook his head. “The Hostiles sure did all that fast,” he said. “And the disease thing, how did that happen? It didn’t set in that fast on the ship. It took several days before anyone showed symptoms before. How can it be manifesting so quickly now? It hasn’t even been a day.”
    “They’ve been studying us all along, Commander, of course they have improved it. And the Hostiles arrived fifteen hours before we did. This is why I have been summoned to speak to Director Nakamura in person. And why we were ordered to bring your pal Pewter along.”
    Roberto couldn’t ignore the real sense of fear that settled in his gut as he flipped off the television feed. It was hard to believe how wrong everyone had been about the Prosperions. Especially him. He’d been sucked in almost as bad as Orli had. It made him feel gullible, and stupid, and worse, it made him feel responsible for what was happening now, almost as responsible as everyone thought Orli was.
    The shuttle came up on Fort Minot then. He stared out over the massive hundred-foot walls as they approached, marveling at how so much concrete could be stacked so high. The walls, as thick as they were tall, marked off a massive space covering seventy square miles, and passing over the wall seemed to bring them into another universe, a universe of severity, a place where strict dedication to function was not only the rule, but the absolute totality of all things. Other population centers they’d been flying over as they came in, or looking at on television during the flight, were largely vertical settings, vast land-locked islands of mirrored monoliths, majestic feats of engineering where buildings thrust skyward like great fingers of delicate-seeming glass, bejeweled by lights and shimmering architectural artistry reaching proudly toward the stars. But not Fort Minot. By comparison, Fort Minot seemed squat and surly, a seventy-mile expanse of low buildings, few more than ten stories high, and almost entirely covered in the same black solar paneling. While these too gave a glassy effect, the uniformity of it all seemed to smother any chance the place had at beauty. Not even the play of sunlight upon the surfaces could change the numbing devotion to function there. It was as if the panels themselves knew they weren’t pretty, weren’t even all that important in the scheme of things, given that these surface structures, the buildings, the massive hangars, all of them were built over a bunker so enormous, dug so deep into the Earth, that the solar panels were counted as merely an ancillary power source. Even still, there was a brute magnificence to it that Roberto couldn’t help admire, if for no other reason than for its role in history. Had it not been for Fort Minot, the lion’s share of Earth’s technology would have been lost in the three centuries of chaos that followed the third world war.
    Only a few minutes passed before an octagonal section in what seemed a veritable plain of solar paneling opened like the iris of some great fortified eye, and the shuttle was drawn inside. The small ship settled to the ground, and shortly after, the sound of the roof panels locking back into place vibrated through its frame. They were officially back on Earth.
    “I wish I could say I’m glad to be home,” said Roberto, “but I think we got here in time for it all to go to shit.”
    “We’ll see about that, Commander.” He got up and went to the shuttle hatch, throwing a scowling glance Orli’s way. As he waited for the hatch to open and