Palatine First (The Aurelian Archives) Read Online Free PDF

capsule. I know what a meteorite looks like coming through the atmosphere, and this was nothing like it. It was generating some serious heat, but it was stable. It didn’t leave a tail. It just…landed.” As Hayden spoke, he tapped his fingertips together and started pacing. “Some of the others in the crowd might not have recognized the signs, but surely those in the flight tower…but why would they fail you, if they knew?”
    To keep his poor concussioned head from combusting, Reece held up a hand to stop Hayden’s tirade. “Wait, wait, wait. You think they knew it wasn’t my fault, and still failed me?”
    Hayden waved a hand as if that was trivial and kept pacing, clicking his fingers and muttering.
    “Why?” Reece persisted. He could feel his hands forming into fists around handfuls of his sheets. “Why would they do that?”
    “Maybe so they wouldn’t have to provide proof of why it wasn’t your fault. Maybe they don’t want attention drawn to the supposed meteorite.” As if annoyed, though he rarely got annoyed except with Gideon, Hayden threw out his hands and made a growling noise. “This is going to drive me insane. What could it be?”
    “Maybe it is an escape capsule. It’s not the first time aliens have come to Honora. Look at the Pantedans.”
    “But don’t you see the connection? If this isn’t a meteorite, and its readings are identical to the supposed meteorite of eight years ago…then that wasn’t a meteorite either. And it couldn’t have been an escape capsule either time or they would’ve had a broadcast about it. We would have heard about the survivor, I’m sure of it. So it stands to reason that cover stories were fabricated for both events. Maybe—”
    “Here’s a thought,” said Reece, sitting up slowly to keep his headache in check. “Will getting that answer for you get me proof that the crash wasn’t my fault?”
    Thereby getting him his promotion. That was all he wanted, all he had ever wanted; a ship, a crew, and the right to fly them. It was just a pair of wings. What right did a panel of judges who probably hadn’t flown in thirty years have to tell him he couldn’t have that much?
    Looking suddenly uncomfortable, Hayden plunged his hands into his trouser pockets and ducked his head. Reece could tell he likened the mystery to an equation in his mind, something to be solved. Just not at the risk of…risk.
    Before either of them could say more, the doors opened inward, and a stream of visitors trickled into the hospital chamber. Tutor Clauson was at the head of the line, a small man that hunched like a vulture and had the nose to match. He gave Reece a limp handshake, offered his regrets at the outcome of the test, and said in his dry, wheezy voice, “There’s as much important work to be done on the ground as in the air, my boy. You’ll get the sky out of your system in time. I did.”
    A few of Reece’s fellow aspiring pilots came and had the decency to not mention the test. Then there was Scarlet, in her peacock blue dress and silvery hairnet, bending over to whisper that she was seeing if there was anything to be done about rescheduling the test under fairer conditions. Sophie and Hugh were the most welcome of all, dear Sophie with a tin full of his favorite biscuits. Liem, Abigail, and the duke didn’t show. His accident likely would’ve merited a visit from them only if it had been fatal.
    Reece polished off his third biscuit, and as he reached for a fourth under Sophie’s delighted eye, asked carefully, “No Gideon?” The other visitors were all gone, but there was a male nurse standing at the door in a white jumpsuit.
    Leaning back into one of the mechanical spring chairs the nurse had helpfully cranked up out of the floor, Hugh shook his head. “He and Mordecai are back at the shop. They came to see you this morning, but you weren’t awake yet, and Mordecai was…Mordecai.”
    That sentence made perfect sense to anyone who’d ever carried on