The Killing of Worlds (43 page)

“Where?”

“Not a chance.”

“Won’t be here for hours!”

Bassiritz pointed. “There on that balcony. With that woman in white.”

The others followed his gaze, cupping their hands against the glare of the sun now spilling into the square.

“That’s the Secularist senatorial block. You wouldn’t catch the Old Man in those abodes.” Master Private Saman had served with Laurent Zai before.

“Zai’s Vadan, Bass! Not some pink.”

“But it’s him. I can see him clearly.”

“It’s at least a klick away, young man. You’re hallucinating.”

The two figures on the balcony grew closer, first hands touching, then bodies drawing near against the cold. Then white and black intertwined.

“He’s kissing a woman up there,” Bassiritz announced.

“Hah-hah!” Saman yowled, almost doubling over against the gantry’s handrail. “The captain kissing a pink senator!”

“Kissing anyone at all!” Astra added in amazement.

The squad laughed at Bassiritz’s fine joke on them, slapping his back again, full of good humor and intoxicated by their imperious position above the crowd, above the naked and gyrating dancers, above the grasping wealthy. Above everything but the huge false ship behind them, and its real and lethal double in high orbit above, where they would soon be lofting to join it, to journey toward the rumored troubles of the Rix frontier.

They laughed that the possibility of death awaited them.

But Bassiritz frowned. He alone could see that it was, in fact, the captain. He could see that it was a long and vigorous embrace. And in his small village the elders had taught Bassiritz one certain rule: Never laugh at a kiss. A kiss was mysterious and powerful, fragile and invincible. Like any spark, a kiss might fizzle into nothing, or consume an entire forest. A kiss was no laughing matter. Not for the wary.

A kiss could change the world.

V1.0 Notes

There
ARE
only 3 chapters in the book. All the remaining sections are split up with the various titles of the characters in the novel (e.g. Captain, Executive Officer, Senator, Pilot, compound mine, etc.)

The “Commando’s” name really is h_rd (“h” underscore “rd”)

No spellcheck was performed (the scans were pretty clean and I hate spellchecking sci-fi)

Hope you enjoy

v1.1

Corrected some typos.
(yadichan)