The Engineer Reconditioned Read Online Free PDF Page A

the spear at the drone. It would only bounce off. She surfaced and the drone surfaced with her.
    "This is a priority call. You are to come at once," said the drone. Diana pulled her hemolung breather.
    "Another fucking drill?" she spat.
    "The crew are gating aboard at the moment. We leave the system in one hour." The voice was different all of a sudden. Diana realised the Hogue AI had just spoken to her and that it sounded excited. Usually it was locked into the net and too busy in other pursuits to even talk. Diana dropped her spear gun and opened up with her fastest crawl for the shore. She kicked off her flippers in the surf then ran down the grey strand to her beach house. She delighted in the strength of her body. To be this fit compensated for the times she had spent in hospitals being cell welded back together, just as the captaincy of the Hogue compensated for the years she had spent taking orders. She grinned to one side at the drone as it overtook her, carrying her flippers and spear gun. Her beach house was made of pine shipped around from the other side of the planet and was a replica of the chalets they built in Siberia in the twenty-second century shortly after the permafrost melted. At least, that's what the catalogue said. Diana did not care so long as she had room for her weapon collection and gym — not for her the augmentations that were so popular in Security, as she considered it better to know her own strength.
    Inside the chalet she stripped off her swimsuit and stepped under the shower. As she did this she heard the thump of her spear gun and flippers hitting the floor. Out of the shower she dried, pulled on her jump suit, looked around for anything she might need. There was just one thing. She took a large ceramal commando knife down from its wall display and slid it into her boot. It was unlikely that she would use it; she just took it because she felt uncomfortable without it.
    In the back of the chalet stairs led down into an underground chamber that had been carved out of yellow rock of Callanasta. It always gave Diana a thrill to come down here. She rated this, her own runcible. The floor of the chamber was dark glass underneath which could be seen the shapes of machines and ducts. At the centre of the floor was a circular dais of black glass three metres in diameter. At the centre of this stood two nacreous bull's horns three metres high between which shimmered the cusp of this Skaidon gate. No living human understood the science. Iversus Skaidon had, for the brief time he survived directly interfacing with an AI. The whole science was created in a matter of minutes. Diana watched the drone shoot into the cusp and disappear. There were people who used it just as casually, but Diana could not. Always there was a moment of reflection before she stepped through. She stepped through.
    No time. No space, nor pain. Just a feeling of strangeness that came not from the transference itself but from the dislocation. The air was different, as was the gravity, sounds, smells, tastes. All in an instant.
    "Captain, it isn't a drill."
    Weapons comp: Eric Jabro.
    "I figured that," said Diana, striding away from the gate to the screens that showed Callanasta below. She needed that momentary reassurance. "Is everyone aboard?"
    "I'll check."
    They would be. Whatever this was, they had trained for it for the last eight years. She stared down at the planet. For eight years the planet had had tides, now it would have to do without for a while. The suit blew cold air up under her hood. Every so often a feather of the air in the room got through. It felt as if someone had passed a red hot iron near her face.
    "If the air temperature is taken lower, vision will be restricted." Chapra stood with her back against the lock door. Judd stood a pace or two ahead of her. Was this such a good idea? She looked down at the case of hexagonal containers she held. It weighed heavy on her arm. Would the creature understand the