Loralynn Kennakris 3: Asylum Read Online Free PDF

a moment. “There. Look at that.”
    The spoon stopped halfway to her lips—hung there faintly trembling. “Air?”
    “Yep. That’s an air-trail he’s leaving. Has some node damage too and I wouldn’t give a lot for that section of fuselage ahead of his canopy.”
    “You think he made it back?”
    Glances crossed all around the table. Huron refilled his cup. “Can’t say. You did.”
    “Yeah. I did.” She put the spoon carefully back in the bowl. “So, who’s gonna tell me what this was all about? Or is it still a big secret?”
    Two weeks ago, without any explanation, they’d suddenly been ordered to Karelia—a high-speed transit under maximum security. Arriving at Kalervo Station, orbiting the frigid paradise of Pohjola, they’d exchanged their full complement of fighters for the strangest warbirds any of them had ever seen. There were eighteen of these great ungainly beasts, and along with them came two hundred seventy nameless strangers, who promptly vanished into locked quarters, emerging only to see to the care of their charges, whom the deck crews were not allowed to approach, and whose requirements in the way of fuel, stores and handling (to the extent they were communicated) were wholly outside the crew’s experience.
    It was disruptive, and at times more than a little provoking. Kris and Tole, along with Ensign Charles Dance, who was the other occupant of their berth (there should have been four of them, but Lieutenant-JG Molly Szentpetery had been killed two months ago, and they hadn’t been assigned a replacement yet), found themselves hot-bunking it in a warrant officer’s berth, while the junior officer’s wardroom was summarily taken over without so much as a by-your-leave. The deck crews were forbidden their own holy deck, and left to grumble in the mess and stalk sullenly about the passageways.
    Trafalgar then proceeded, again at top speed and under complete blackout conditions, to Tuonela, the true back of beyond, where ninety men and women boarded the strange craft and launched into the unknown. The crew of Trafalgar watched them go, most shaking their heads in bafflement, but a few beginning to suspect something momentous has just happened. Kris was one of those few.
    “Which part?” asked N’Komo, with a cat-that-ate-the-canary smile.
    “Those birds. What were they?”—wondering if she’d guessed right.
    “Starclippers,” Tole answered. He’d had a day to catch up on the scuttlebutt that was just now beginning to spread. “Racing yachts,” he added, being helpful.
    “Yeah, I know what a starclipper is.”
    Starclippers were the fastest hypercapable craft ever built. She had heard of them but never seen a real one, as indeed few people ever had, there being fewer than a thousand in existence. These had not looked quite like the published images, due to their modifications, but they weren’t heavily disguised. Kris hadn’t needed the benefit of the scuttlebutt to draw the right conclusions.
    Looking around, she stirred her glop. “So what did we do? Take a poke at Halith with those things?”
    Kris knew that Tuonela, at the very edge of Karelian space, was connected to Syrdar, the outermost of the Halith core systems, by a thin transit route that was uncommonly dangerous. Having a lot of experience running dangerous transits when she’d been held as a slave on Harlot’s Ruse , she had a much greater appreciation of what that meant than most. If that was really what they’d attempted—and why else would you launch armed starclippers from such a gawd-forsaken bit of ether?—those ninety men and women must have been exceptional: exceptionally brave, exceptionally crazy, exceptionally bored with life—any or all three. She figured less than half would make it.
    “You gonna tell her?” N’Komo looked to Huron.
    He leaned forward with his elbows on the table. “Yep. We took a poke at Halith.”
    “Okay.” Kris dutifully ate another spoonful. “Are you gonna give me