The Gentle Seduction Read Online Free PDF

captive of whom?" Her voice held no mockery, just objective observation. "I will do this job my way." She turned and trotted off.
    "Wait!" I yelled.
    She turned long enough to blow me a kiss.
    "I love you!"
    She continued on, as if she hadn't heard.
    I sat on a fallen tree trunk. I marshalled my arguments for my next meeting with Sharyn; I couldn't go back to Keara until I was sure Sharyn wouldn't get herself killed.
    I sat for a long time. At last a bright yellow blur bounced out of the forest from my right.
    "Hi," said a golden-haired girl of perhaps seventeen years. She held out her hand. "My name is Wendy."
    I stood up, wiping my hand before shaking hers. "And I'm Gibs Stelman."
    "I know. You're the mindshifter."
    I nodded.
    "I'm supposed to take care of you while Sharyn is gone."
    I see.
    Wendy seemed determined to do a good job. She took my hand and dragged me down the trail. "Let me show you where everything is," she said. "At least, everything that isn't classified," she continued with a hushed whisper.
    "Aren't you a bit young to be a rebel recruit?" I asked.
    She frowned, but she never had the chance to answer.
    The sky turned gray, and six cruisers in formation descended from the clouds belching destruction.
    "Come on," Wendy cried. She dodged through the thickets and started pulling back a camouflage net.
    I helped her unveil the vehicle: it was a two-man skycycle.
    Under other circumstances I would have grinned broadly; four lifetimes earlier I had been a skycycle racing champion. I hadn't seen one in a couple of lifetimes, since the invention of the slipjet.
    Unfortunately, with battlecruisers all around an obsolete skycycle was not my first choice vehicle. But when Wendy tilted the clear plastic bubble open, I climbed through the top and into the webbing.
    Frenzied, Wendy pushed the jump throttle, and we smashed into the tree branches above us. She cried out.
    "Let me run this baby," I commanded. "I know a few tricks nobody else on this planet knows when it comes to skycycles."
    A skycycle is a perfectly circular, very tiny machine. The thruster is externally mounted. It is connected, not to the hull of the ship, but rather to the seat assembly inside through a gimballed fuel tank separated from the main hull by magnetic bearings. The ship literally goes the way your chair points; you spin your chair to face your destination, and zoom! you're off.
    The standard commercial skycycles of centuries before were controlled by swinging your chair manually, using handholds around the rim of the hull interior; acrobatic and racing machines used hydraulic controls. This one was hydraulic.
    With supreme confidence I nudged the jump throttle. The ship smashed into the tree branches above us, just as it had for Wendy.
    "Whew! This baby has power, doesn't she?" I asked rhetorically. If the old skycycles had jumped like that, they might never have been replaced.
    A broadsweep beam carved through a swath of trees just meters from our hiding place. With blood pumping in my ears, I pointed the cycle into the clear and let the thruster rip.
    We were up a thousand meters before I could retard the thrust. One of the cruisers turned toward us. "Do we have anything to shoot with?" I asked.
    "A pair of lazeguns, pointing forward from the thruster mount," Wendy's hands were clenched around the arms of her chair. She broke one hand free and flipped several switches. "Push the red button on top of the gimbal control, and they fire."
    I scampered to the side as the cruiser blew apart the piece of sky we had recently occupied. We whipped down toward the beast and fired the lazeguns. "Damn," I muttered. "Why did we bother?" We had scored a direct hit, but we had merely polished the cruiser's armor.
    Again they fired; again I dodged.
    Down below the scene was grim, though I could see very little through the smoke. The smoke seemed to offer a hint of protection, so we plunged back down toward the thickest patch.
    I spotted Sharyn.
    At least I