Throne of Stars Read Online Free PDF

rifle breech with a leather-wrapped swagger stick.
    “Keep that barrel down. You’re missing high.”
    “Sorry, Sir,” the recruit said. “I think the roll of the ship is throwing me off.” He clutched the breech-loading rifle in his lower set of hands as the more dexterous upper hands opened the mechanism and thumbed in another greased paper cartridge. It was an action he could perform with blinding speed, given the fact that he had four hands, which was why his bright blue leather harness was literally covered in cartridges.
    “Better to miss low,” the officer said through the sulfurous tang of powder smoke. “Even if you miss the first target, it gives you an aiming point to reference to. And it might hit his buddy.”
    The shooting was going well, he thought. The rifles were at least hitting near the floating barrel. But it needed to be better, because the Carnan Rifles had a tendency to be in the thick of it. Which was a bit of a change from when they had been the Carnan Canal Labor Battalion.
    The captain looked out at the seawater stretching beyond sight in every direction and snorted. His native Diaspra had existed under the mostly benevolent rule of a water-worshiping theocracy from time out of mind, but the few priests who’d accompanied the Diaspran infantry to K’Vaern’s Cove had first goggled at so much water, then balked at crossing it when the time came. So much of The God had turned out to be a bad thing for worship.
    He stepped along to the next firer to watch over the private’s shoulder. The captain was tall, even for a Mardukan. Not as tall or as massive as his shadow Erkum Pol, perhaps, but still tall enough to see over the shoulder of the private as the wind swept the huge powder bloom aside.
    “Low and to the left, Sardon. I think you’ve got the aim right; it’s the motion of the ship that’s throwing you off. More practice.”
    “Yes, Sir,” the private said, and grunted a chuckle. “We’re going to kill that barrel sooner or later,” he promised, then spat out a bit of bisti root and started reloading.
    Fain glanced towards the back of the ship—the “stern” as the sailors insisted it be called. Major Bes, the infantry commander of the Carnan Battalion—“The Basik ’s Own,” as it was sometimes called, although any resemblance between the human prince it served and the harmless, cowardly herbivorous basik was purely superficial—was talking with one of the human privates assigned to the ship. The three humans were “liaisons” and maintained communications via their Terran systems. But unlike most of the few remaining humans, these were still uncomfortable around Mardukans, and the team leader seemed particularly upset about the quality of the food. Which just went to show that humans must be utterly spoiled. The food which had been available since joining the army was one of the high points for most of the Mardukans.
    “I like the food,” Erkum rumbled discontentedly behind him. “The human should keep his opinions to himself.”
    “Perhaps.” Fain shrugged. “But the humans are our employers and leaders. We’ve learned from them, and they were the saviors of our home. I’ll put up with one of them being less than perfect.”
    There was more to it than that, of course. Fain wasn’t terribly introspective, but he’d had to think long and hard before embarking on this journey. The human prince had called for volunteers from among the Diaspran infantry after the Battle of Sindi. He’d warned them that he could promise little—that they would be paid a stipend and see new lands, but that that was, for all practical purposes, it.
    The choice had seemed clear cut to most of the Diasprans. They liked the humans, and their prince perhaps most of all, but things were happening at home. The almost simultaneous arrival of the Boman hordes and the humans had broken the city out of its millennia-old stasis. New industries were being built every day, and there were