The Albino Knife Read Online Free PDF

composure. Albinos had to learn early how to deal with a galaxy that wanted them, wanted to own them, wanted something from them even if it had to take it by force. Exotics had to develop walls to protect themselves, hard shells to absorb the blows, and he could not imagine Juete failing to teach her child—their child—what she must know to survive. But for an instant, the walls cleared and her fear and vulnerability were there for him to see.
    "Someone has kidnapped my mother," she said. "Will you help me find her?"
    He had left it all behind when he'd come to retire on Muto Kato. The killing he had done while a soldier, the manipulations after that, the war against the Confed. Oh, he would sometimes take the spetsdods out on a free day to plink at old drink containers, trying to keep skills that had once been razor-edged from rusting completely. He had put it all behind him, the danger and intrigue, and he had never regretted it.
    He'd done a lifetime's work in a decade and a half, and walked away without a backward look. He had done what he had been driven to do by a mystical battlefield revelation that he could not ignore, but he was long past that. It seemed sometimes when he thought about it as if it had all happened to another man, in another life, one he knew only slightly, if at all.
    All these thoughts ran through his head in a jumble, and it was only a few seconds before they were done. This was a test; the gods were not done with him yet.Comfortable in your little pub, Khadaji?
    Really? Here. Chew on this.
    "Yes, of course," he said. "I'll do whatever I can."
    Veate smiled at him, the relief bright behind her expression, and he mirrored her smile with one of his own.
    "Thank you," she said.
    He stared, entranced by her. He had a daughter.
    But the joy was mitigated by what she had said. The woman he had loved above all others, the mother of his child, had been kidnapped. He hoped he wasn't too late to do something about it.
    Veate slept in the spare room of his cube. Khadaji sat at the keyboard of his computer and called up his communications program.
    "Online," it said.
    He gave the computer the com number of the Siblings of the Shroud's main compound on Earth. It was billions of klicks from here but White Radio had a hundred-LY armspan, if you could afford it. And at this distance, the time lag would be almostnil . Odd, that, since the farther away one got using White Radio, the less lag there was.
    "Linked," the computer said.
    The face that peered from the holoproj over Khadaji's computer was completely covered save for the eyes. The hood was part of the shroud all members of the order wore. Khadaji kept his own visual transmission blank.
    "Yes?"A woman's voice.
    "I would like to speak to Pen."
    "He is unavailable at the moment."
    "It's important."
    "This makes him no more available." There was an edge to the woman's voice, something Khadaji could not quite identify.Anger? Worry?
    "I see. I would like to leave a message, then. Tell him to call Emile when he can—"
    "Emile? Will you give me visual?"
    Khadaji hesitated. The Siblings were as trustworthy as they came, but the habits of the last few years were hard to break. What the hell, he thought. I'm leaving here anyway. Maybe I won't ever come back.
    He said, "Transmit visual."
    The computer obeyed.
    "It is you," the woman said. "This is Moon."
    Moon.Pen's mate.Khadaji had met her before he'd left for his new life. He should have recognized her voice.
    "Ah, Moon."
    "Pen is having a cut on his shoulder bonded," she said. "I'll put you through."
    "Nothing serious, I hope?"
    "We had an explosion. He was hit by a shard of denscris."
    "An explosion?"
    "An attack, of sorts."
    Something torpid stirred in Khadaji's mind. Juete kidnapped and Pen injured? It was possible that it was coincidence, of course, but his reptile brain knew otherwise. It sent a cold tendril to chill his scrotum, another to tighten his belly.
    The reptile knew that something was very wrong