The Temporal Void Read Online Free Page A

management monitors being aware of anything untoward. Even before they reached land she’d assumed complete command of a giant cargo warehouse belonging to the Bootel & Leicester import agency. As they passed above an empty barge repair bay just outside she opened one of the plyplastic doors, and the starship slipped into the dark enclosed space beyond, dripping cold rain onto the enzyme-bonded concrete floor. The door shut silently behind them, and five rounded pedestal legs swelled out from the base of the hull. Oscar landed them next to a tall stack of yellow and green cargo crates containing civil engineering excavators manufactured offworld.
    ‘Down and safe,’ Oscar said, letting out a long breath of relief.
    ‘We’re safe,’ Tomansio said cheerfully. ‘I don’t fancy anyone else’s chances.’
    *
     
    When Mellanie’s Redemption dropped out of hyperspace four thousand kilometres above Sholapur, Troblum looked down on a continent rolling slowly into the dawn. The bright new light illuminated a wide monsoon building just off the subtropical coast where the city state of Ikeo squatted amid spectacularly craggy landscape. He studied the weather with interest. There weren’t many monsoons on Sholapur, but those that did materialize tended towards the fierce. It would reach the land in less than two hours.
    On the chair opposite him in the starship’s cabin, the solido of Catriona Saleeb lounged back, smiling contentedly. She pushed a hand through her curly black hair, a languid movement he always found sensual. ‘That storm could help us,’ she said in her husky voice.
    Trisha Marina Halgarth’s solido walked across the small floor space to Catriona. She wore a pair of tight black leather jeans, and a small pure-white T-shirt to show off a nicely athletic body. Green butterfly-wing OCtattoos quivered slowly across her cheeks as she wriggled herself on to the cushioning beside Catriona. The two girls put their arms comfortably round each other; Trisha flexed her bare toes. ‘Do you think so?’ she asked Catriona.
    ‘It’s going to take hours to pass across Ikeo. That’ll mess up sensors, no matter how sophisticated they are. There will be force fields on over most estates, which will block a lot of low-angle scanning. That’s to our advantage, isn’t it Troblum, darling?’
    ‘Could be,’ he admitted. What he would have liked was Isabella Halgarth’s opinion on the situation, but he’d lost her I-sentient personality program when he’d left the Accelerator Faction station, using it in a projector to convince the sensors his starship was still sitting passively in the docking bay. Isabella had an altogether more devious outlook than the other girls, which would have made her ideal to analyse forthcoming events.
    ‘Not if you try and arrive during the storm,’ Tricia said. ‘Even with this ship’s ingrav you’ll be struggling to hold level in the winds. Best you leave it to provide cover if you have to leave in a hurry.’
    Troblum accessed the external sensor imagery again. It was a large storm. Even from this height he could see flashes of sheet lightning ripping through the dark clouds. At his request the smartcore overlaid the sensor patterns guarding Ikeo from uninvited intruders. The Mellanie’s Redemption could sneak through unnoticed. Probably. But it would be a close fought electronic battle. And Tricia was right, the storm would produce a particularly difficult environment to fly through. He ran a passive scan for orbiting ships, but there was no inbound or outbound traffic that he could detect, just Sholapur’s small band of geosynchronous satellites. ‘Activate our full stealth suite and take us down,’ he told the smartcore; then pulled up a map of the city, and designated a small valley five miles from Stubsy Florac’s home, just outside the estate’s official boundary.
    *
     
    Troblum was sweating with worry as they descended through the last levels of cloud. Then they were