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
When she stepped back through into the main cabin, Karl was still there, with one of the Freeholders. The others had all disappeared from sight, although she could hear their muffled voices echoing along a narrow passageway that appeared to run the full length of the boat.
When Karl glanced towards her, it once again felt uncomfortably like looking into the eyes of a stranger.
ELEVEN
Megan
2751 (twelve years before)
It takes time to move a starship measuring three hundred metres in length, and massing several thousand tonnes, out of orbit. Drive-fields used for manoeuvring and short-distance propulsion need to be activated, and even then it can take hours or even days before such a ship can put sufficient distance between itself and objects possessing large mass such as planets that can prevent a superluminal jump taking place.
Thirteen hours after agreeing to help Tarrant and Sifra hijack the Beauregard, Megan finally climbed down from the astrogation chair, feeling weary and exhausted. Kjregrnnested still loomed large in the command decks monitors, but they were accelerating now, headed for the outer system. The Beauregards drive-spines were scraping raw energy out of the quantum vacuum and storing it in preparation for a jump that would carry them across light years
Bash took over in the chair and Megan made her way to her own quarters. She collapsed, exhausted, in the cubbyhole where she slept. But it was nearly impossible to rest, with so many conflicting thoughts and feelings churning through her mind.
They were committing an act of piracy, after all; the punishment, if they failed, would be severe. She wondered if she had too easily let Bashs enthusiasm push her onto a path of recklessness. For a moment, she wondered if she should tell him to halt the flight, to return to orbit above Kjregrnnested and then suffer the consequences of their foolishness.
And yet she remained where she was, stretched out fully clothed on her bunk, with one booted foot dangling over the edge. Whatever doubts she might retain, the fact remained that Tarrant was offering them both a chance at a real future.
She had no trouble in picturing the chaos that must already be erupting back in Ladested. A squall of increasingly frantic queries was already chasing them, and undoubtedly the engineers, drive-specialists and military advisers who had been waiting to assume effective command of the ship on behalf of the Accord would by now be aware of what was happening.
Finally, sleep stole her away, and she woke some hours later to find that the ships steadily building acceleration had returned gravity to the ship.
She accessed the navigation systems and saw that Kjregrnnested had slipped away into the stellar darkness. The initial squall of transmissions had blown into a storm, and she now accessed some of them, along with some of the major news feeds.