Chapters (50)
- Cover
- MARAUDER
- HISTORICAL ARCHIVES SUBSECTION C/5 category ALPHA
- ONE
- TWO
- THREE
- FOUR
- FIVE
- SIX
- SEVEN
- EIGHT
- NINE
- TEN
- ELEVEN
- TWELVE
- THIRTEEN
- FOURTEEN
- FIFTEEN
- SIXTEEN
- SEVENTEEN
- EIGHTEEN
- NINETEEN
- TWENTY
- TWENTY-ONE
- TWENTY-TWO
- TWENTY-THREE
- TWENTY-FOUR
- TWENTY-FIVE
- TWENTY-SIX
- TWENTY-SEVEN
- TWENTY-EIGHT
- TWENTY-NINE
- THIRTY
- THIRTY-ONE
- THIRTY-TWO
- THIRTY-THREE
- THIRTY-FOUR
- THIRTY-FIVE
- THIRTY-SIX
- THIRTY-SEVEN
- THIRTY-EIGHT
- THIRTY-NINE
- FORTY
- FORTY-ONE
- EPILOGUE
- TIME LINE
- SHOAL TRILOGY
- EVENTS FOLLOWING EMPIRE OF LIGHT AND PRECEDING MARAUDER
- Acknowledgements
- Also by Gary Gibson
His eyes still stared past her, betraying no hint of awareness. Megan smiled to herself, then felt her own eyes grow moist.
You took me under your wing and I hid there for years, she murmured.
And then she had stayed with him, following him all the way back to Kjregrnnested and the Three Star Alliance; and then she had met Gregor Tarrant, and been forced to watch as he sentenced Bash to a fate worse than death before tearing Megans life apart forever.
TWO
Gabrielle
On the first morning of the Grand Pilgrimage, Speaker-Elect Gabrielle woke up with stomach cramps that made her wince. She waited for the worst of the pain to pass, then opened her eyes to see a look of concern on the face of the old woman standing by the foot of her bed.
Madame Gabrielle? enquired Mater Cassanas. Are you all right?
Gabrielle stared across an ocean of linen at Cassanass inquisitive expression, then looked away, bunching her fists tightly beneath the heavy restricting sheets as the pain returned, then faded just as quickly once more. She stared past the gold and silver statuary adorning the bedchamber, past its high ceiling decorated with scenes from the Book of Uchida, and out through the tall windows reaching from floor to ceiling. There, she could see the canals winding through the heart of Port Gabriel, whose pale blue waters were dotted here and there with the white sails of yachts and with automated sea transports.
Most of her attention, however, was taken by the barges crowding the riverside docks. They were huge flat-bodied vessels sprouting innumerable pennants and flags, all decorated with the red and gold seal of the Sacerdotal Demarchy of Uchida.
She had tried, as she had done every morning now for more than two years, to access the public parts of the Tabernacle information service. And, as ever, she failed.
Im quite all right, Mater Cassanas, said Gabrielle finally, before sitting up carefully. Her machine-head implants were feeding her a constant drip of background data about her surroundings: the composition of the sheets between which she lay, or the trace elements in the air she breathed, even the current locations of orbital factories and Accord peacekeeper platforms above the surface of Redstone. She could track them, if and when she chose to, even follow them as they passed from one horizon to the next, and beyond.
But there was so much more information closer to hand to which her access was heavily restricted. It was for her own safety, they claimed, because too many public-data links could be subverted by the Demarchys enemies and used to launch covert viral attacks against her. Even so, it was enormously frustrating to be gifted with so very powerful a tool and yet be prevented from making use of more than a tiny fraction of its capabilities.