Willful Child Read Online Free PDF

out, you have no authority to operate.”
    “It’s a smallish bridge, sir. Where was I supposed to stand? No, you’ll not be linking that scan to me at science station—not a chance!”
    “Keep your voice down, Adjutant, the janitors out in the corridor might hear you. Now, as for where you should stand, let me think. Ideally, I’d suggest the bar, Deck Eleven. Barely held upright by the rail and with a tall glass in one wobbly hand. But since you’re on duty, let’s add a bowl of peanuts. That way, I’ll always know where to find you.”
    “That, sir, is deeply offensive.”
    “Well, that’s the problem with you diplomat types, isn’t it? This is primarily a military vessel, Tighe. Best acquire a thick skin and fast. Now, please, do leave the bridge—as we’re in T space, after all, thus negating any chance whatsoever of unexpected contact or whatever. Who knows, if I get bored staring at this black screen, I might well join you. Deck Eleven I said, didn’t I?”
    He watched her march from the bridge, and then frowned at the screen. “Well, that’s a not very interesting view, is it? Helm Sticks—dare I call you Joss? Anyway, fleet regs being what they are, we’re stuck with static wallpapers, rather than some enticing sex drama or the like. So, run us through a slide show, will you. No, belay that! I’ve loaded a very old program, called a screen saver. It shows stars speeding past. Let’s go with that one. Ah, excellent, now it looks like we’re getting somewhere!”

THREE
    Three point two-one hours later, the Willful Child dropped out of T space in the Blarad system.
    “On screen,” Hadrian commanded. He was grainy-eyed from staring at the screen saver program. His lower back ached. The ridiculous high-topped black plastic boots pinched his toes. “Now, let’s take us a look around, shall we? Science station! Sin-Dour, tell me what we’re looking at. That blue bulb there, is that Blarad’s sun?”
    “It is indeed, sir. Of course, we’re at the system’s very edge, as it were. The nearest outermost planetoid is a black carboniferous rock, pretty much nonreflective. We’re in its orbital plane.”
    “Carboniferous? As in … coal?”
    “Yes, Captain. It is posited that it is a fragment from a very old planet that—”
    “Can we light it up? Get some warmth in this damned system? I mean, there’s what, one and a half barely habitable planets here?”
    “And two gas giants, yes, sir.”
    “So?” He swung in his command chair to face her. She was leaning over, studying the station screens, presenting him with a nice, round backside only slightly undermined by the loose-fitting, black fleet-issue trousers.
    She twisted round to meet his eyes. “Sir?”
    “Can we light it up? Rig some kind of incandescent laser beam? Why, I bet it’d burn for years, don’t you think?”
    “Sir, I don’t—”
    “Look, can we reconfigure one of our sensor banks to produce something lethal? That’s what I want to know. I don’t mean torching a few gasbags on Neptune. I mean blazing, infernal heat, a welder’s torch, a damned arc gun of spark-spitting annihilation. Railguns are all very well, but honestly, we could really do with some kind of deadly coherent-energy weapons. Anyway, never mind that lump of coal, but flag the idea for some research.”
    “Sir, beam weapons were researched early on in the Affiliation. Not even the Benefactors left us with anything like what you’re describing. We do employ lasers in our countermeasures system, primarily to burn out photon-sensitive tracking and the like.”
    “Yes yes. We all know that nothing beats the old flashlight in the eye.”
    She was frowning. “The problem is that space is not as empty as it needs to be. Countermeasures against beam weapons are a rather simple affair.”
    “And that was the flaw in the scientists’ thinking right at the start, 2IC. Sufficient energy will burn right through all that crap.”
    “And the source of that