Mammoth Books presents Merlin's Gun Read Online Free PDF Page A

planetary and asteroidal orbits.
    â€œIt’s a Nexus,” Merlin said. “A primary Waynet interchange. You find systems like this every thousand or so light-years through the plane of the Galaxy, and a good way out of it as well. Back when everyone used the Waynet, this system would have been a meeting point, a place where traders swapped goods and tales from half-way to the Core.”
    â€œBit of a dump
now,
though, isn’t it.”
    â€œPerfect for hiding something very big and very nasty, provided you remember where it was you hid it.”
    â€œYou mentioned something about a storm . . .”
    â€œYou’ll see.”
    The Way had dropped them in the inner part of the system, but Merlin said that what he wanted was further out, beyond the system’s major asteroid belt. It would take a few days to reach.
    â€œAnd what are we going to do when we get there?” Sora asked. “Just pick this thing up and take it with us?”
    â€œNot exactly,” Merlin said. “I suspect it will be harder than that. Not so hard that we haven’t got a chance, but hard enough . . .” He seemed to falter, perhaps for the first time since she had known him; that aura of supreme confidence cracking minutely.
    â€œWhat part do you want me to play?”
    â€œYou’re a soldier,” he said. “Figure that out for yourself.”
    â€œI don’t know quite what it is I’ve found,” the familiar said, when she was again alone. “I’ve been waiting to show you, but he’s had you in those war simulations for hours. Either that or you two have been occupying yourselves in other ways. Any idea what he’s planning?”
    Merlin had a simulator, a smaller version of the combat-training modules Sora knew from warcreche.
    â€œA lot of the simulations had a common theme: an attack against a white pyramid.”
    â€œImplying some foreknowledge, wouldn’t you say? As if Merlin knows something of what he will find?”
    â€œI’ve had that feeling ever since we met him.” She was thinking of the smell of him, the shockingly natural way their bodies meshed, despite their being displaced by thousands of years. She tried to flush those thoughts from her mind. What they were now discussing was a kind of betrayal, on a more profound level than anything committed so far, because it lacked any innocence. “What is it, then?”
    â€œI’ve been scanning the later log files, and I’ve found something that seems significant, something that seemed to mark a turning point in his hunt for the weapon. I have no idea what it was. But it took me until now to realize just how strange it was.”
    â€œAnother system?”
    â€œA very large structure, nowhere near any star, but nonetheless accessible by Waynet.”
    â€œA Waymaker artifact, then.”
    â€œAlmost certainly.”
    The structure was visible on the screen. It looked like a child’s toy star, or a metallic starfish, textured in something that resembled beaten gold or the luster of insect wings, filigreed in a lacework of exotic-matter scaffolds. It filled most of the view, shimmering with its own soft illumination.
    â€œThis is what Merlin would have seen with his naked eyes, just after his ship left the Way.”
    â€œVery pretty.” She had meant the remark to sound glib, but it came out as a statement of fact.
    â€œAnd large. The object’s more than ten light-minutes away, which makes it more than four light-minutes in cross-section. Comfortably larger than any star on the main sequence. And yet somehow it holds itself in shape – in quite preposterous shape – against what must be unimaginable self-gravity. Merlin, incidentally, gave it the name Brittlestar, which seems as good as any.”
    â€œPoetic bastard.”
Poetic sexy bastard,
she thought.
    â€œThere’s more, if you’re interested. I have access to the sensor records