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Chelsea Handler Chelsea Chelsea Bang Bang (epub
Brit Brinson [Dia of the Dead Dia of the Dead (epub)
Cody Goodfellow [Radiant Dawn Radiant Dawn (epub)
Cate Tiernan [Immortal Belove Immortal Beloved (epub)
C J Busby [Deep Amber 01] Deep Amber (retail) (epub)
Carl Ashmore [Time Hunters 01 The Time Hunters (epub)
Drew Hayes [Super Powereds 02 Super Powereds Year 2 (epub) i
Beth Harbison [Shoe Addict 02 Secrets of a Shoe Addict (epub)
Cara Lynn Shultz [Dark World The Dark World (retail) (epub)
Antwan Floyd Sr Piece Keeper (epub)

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.The regul who did move about afoot were younglings, sexless and still mobile, not yet having acquired their adult bulk.The elders, the muscles of their legs atrophied, hardly stirred at all, save in the prosthetic comfort of their sleds.And, alien in the corridors of the Nom, humans moved, tall, stalking shapes strangely rapid among the squat, slow forms of regul.Duncan's own quarters were on the second level, a private room.It was luxury in one sense: solitude was a comfort he had not had in a very long time, for he had come to Kesrith as attendant to the governor; but he was keenly aware what the small, single room represented, a fall from intimacy with the important powers of Kesrith, specifically with Stavros, the Honorable George Stavros, governor of the new territories of human conquest.Duncan had found himself quietly preempted from his post by a military medical aide, one Evans, E.; he had come back from Kesrith's backlands and from sickbay to find that state of affairs, and although he had hoped, he had received no invitation to move back into his old quarters in the anteroom of Stavros' apartments that post of regul protocol which, among their conquered hosts, humans yet observed meticulously in public.An elder of Stavros' high rank must have at least one youngling to attend his needs and fend off unwelcome visitors; and that duty now belonged to Evans.Duncan was kept at a distance; his contact with Stavros, once close, was suddenly formal: an occasional greeting as they passed in the hall, that was the limit of it.Even the debriefing after his mission had been handled by others and passed second-hand to Stavros, through the scientists, the medics and the military.Duncan understood his disfavor now as permanent.It was Stavros' concession to the regul, who hated him and feared his influence.And what his position on Kesrith would be hereafter, he did not know.It was, for his personal hopes, the end.He might have promoted himself to a colonial staff position by cultivating Stavros' favor.He was still due considerable pay for his five year enlistment in the hazardous stage of the Kesrithi mission pay and transport to the world of his choice, or settlement on Kesrith itself, subject to the approval of the governor.He had been lured by such hopes once and briefly, half-believing them.He had taken the post because it was an offer, in an area and at a time when offers were scarce; and because he was nearing his statistical limit of survival on missions of greater hazard.It had seemed then a way to survive, marginally at least, as he had always survived.He had survived again, had come back from Stavros' service scarred and sunburned and mentally shaken after a trek through the Kesrithi backlands which the lately arrived regulars would never have survived.He had learned Kesrith as no human would after him; and he had been among mri, and had come back alive, which no human had done before him.And in his distress he had told Stavros the truth of what he had learned, directly and trustingly.That had been his great mistake.He passed the door that belonged to Stavros and Evans, and opened his own apartment, Spartan in its appointments and lacking the small anteroom that was essential to status in the Nom, among regul.He touched the switch to close the door, and at the same panel opened the storm shields.The windows afforded a view of the way that he had come, of Flower on her knoll, a squat half-ovoid on stilts; of a sky that, at least today, was cloudless, a rusty pink.There had not been a storm in days.Nature, like the various inhabitants of Kesrith, seemed to have spent its violence: there was an exhausted hush over the world.Duncan stripped and sponged off with chemical conditioner, a practice that the caustic dust of Kesrith made advisable, that his physician still insisted upon, and changed into his lighter uniform.He was bound for the library, that building across the square from the Nom, accessible by a basement hallway: it was part of the regul university complex, which humans now held.He spent his afternoons and evenings there; and anyone who had known Sten Duncan back in humanity's home territory would have found that incredible.He was not a scholar.He had been well-trained in his profession: he knew the mechanics of ships and of weapons, knew a bit of geology and ecology, and the working of computers all in areas necessary for efficiency in combat, in which he had been trained from a war-time youth, parentless, single-minded in the direction of his life.All his knowledge was practical, gathered at need, rammed into his head by instructors solely interested in his survival to kill the enemy [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]