Shadow Heart Read Online Free PDF Page B

drug-induced stupor.
    As the blurs sharpened into human-shaped silhouettes, she watched one sit across from her—that meant she had to have been in the cabin, rather than in the cockpit as she last remembered.
    “Welcome back to the world, Aurora,” the man said, his voice returning to normalcy as her senses adjusted. “How do you feel?”
    She registered with alarm that the man did not apply her title—something none of the men who left with her on that Halo from Rome would have neglected to do. Liz trained her eyes on him, willing them to focus and tell her what she desperately needed to know. They obeyed, and she found herself staring into the face of one of her greatest rivals: General Bryan Gavin.
    She tried to rise—to attack him, anything—but that was when she felt the restraints. They pinned her to the bulkhead and kept her from moving even an inch forward in her seat. Regardless, she continued to strain against them, all the while wondering what could possibly have happened to land her here with this man, of all people. How long had she been out?
    Gavin anticipated her question, “It’s been three days since your little stunt before the Citadel. Quite a mess. Your flight has our precious legislature wondering if there are traitors around every corner, now.”
    “I’m no traitor,” Liz snapped. “I just want what’s mine.”
    “An opportunist, then,” Gavin smiled. “Something I’m glad to hear. I know you and I have never quite seen eye-to-eye, my dear—”
    “Because you wanted my job.”
    Gavin’s boyish grin soured, but only long enough to let her know she had struck a nerve, “I did wonder at the emperor’s decision to place a little girl at the reins of what would become the greatest war ever fought on this planet, but even I have to admit: you held your own, for a time. Still, in the end you confirmed my fears about your selection. Now that the price of victory has risen beyond the reaches of your conscience, you no longer have the fortitude to do what is necessary.”
    “Fortitude is not the word I would use to describe the willingness to murder a hundred thousand people…not even to see Napoleon Alexander fall.”
    “And while you wallow in sanctimonious pride, the Imperial cities will starve and the Great Army will finally stir from behind their walls. What do you imagine will happen then? Will Blaine and Alexander show the same kind of mercy to our people?”
    “Derek Blaine is your creation, General. You tell me.”
    “It will be worse than Grand Admiral Donalson’s purge of Rome,” Gavin said. “Much worse. If they leave even a quarter of the population alive, we should consider ourselves lucky. But…it is not your sensibilities on this matter that make you a traitor, my dear.”
    In that moment the realization dawned on her: if she was here on a Halo with Gavin, that meant her men had been either killed or captured.
    “Yes,” Gavin said calmly. “We know all about the Golden Queen. Did you really think the emperor would allow you to not only leave the Imperial Guard, but to take a detachment of men, a destroyer, and her crew along with you? In attempting to do so you committed a supreme act of sedition against the Imperial Conglomerate, a crime whose retribution can only be paid with death.”
    “Then why haven’t you finished the job? You’ve had ample time, it seems.”
    “As far as the Citadel and the High Council are concerned, you are dead, killed when your Halo crashed into the Mediterranean Sea. Those of your men who survived the crash were executed before the very eyes of the Citadel, and they all watched via satellite as a detachment from the fleet at Perth closed in on the Golden Queen and made certain she met a swift and violent end.”
    Liz closed her eyes briefly, the weight of every death falling upon her shoulders. Those men had risked everything in loyalty to her. Now they were dead, while she still lived.
    What a difference three days made.
    “And