On the flight back to Kamberra that evening—how extraordinary, he thought, to now find alien spaceships so routine—he gazed down through a transparent deck at the erased land on which European and Sinostates conurbations had once stood. If the ship diverted, he could look at the same reminder of the cost of restoration in parts of Africa and the South Americas. What looked like fresh new growth was built on death and destruction.
I helped that happen. I couldn’t have stopped it happening anyway, but I made my choice, and I can live with it. I helped buy the world some time.
“Do you remember Esganikan Gai?” Jenesian asked.
“Yeah,” said Bari. “Shame, really. I never got to know her as well as I would have liked.” He wondered if he’d ever get around to those memoirs, and knew that if he did that he’d omit quite a lot of detail and crazy stories about immortals. “You’d have thought I’d have made better notes at the time. Politicians do that, you know. We always have an eye to our memoirs, right from day one.”
He could always ask Shukry. He had a better memory, even now, and he kept notes. But there was plenty of time for that. Bari found himself thinking back to the first meetings he’d had with the Eqbas commander and her entourage, those disorienting first days, and tried to recall all the names around that meeting table when the FEU tried to get heavy with Esganikan.
There’d been a human copper, a woman the FEU wanted badly. What was her name? Francis? Frankel? He’d have to look it up. She only stayed a couple of weeks, and then she was gone. There had been a lot of water under the bridge since then, oceans of it.
“What’s troubling you?” Jenesian asked. “You’re frowning.”
“Bad memory,” he said. “Trying to recall a name from way back. But it doesn’t matter. Nobody important.”
Franks?
Bari kept tossing the name around in his head, then gave up and started compiling a list on his handheld of the key people—human and alien—who had been pivotal in the restoration of Earth. He really should have started outlining these damn memoirs a long time ago. He’d need the material for a lecture tour, too.
Franklin?
He got on with his list. No, the name really didn’t matter at all.
Acknowledgments
My grateful thanks go to Bryan Boult and Jim Gilmer for critical reading: to Suzanne Byrne, for saving me from being an ignorant Whingeing Pom; and to my editor, Diana Gill, and my agent, Russ Galen, for keeping me in line.
About the Author
New York Times bestselling author KAREN TRAVISS is a former defense correspondent and TV and newspaper journalist. She’s worked in public relations for the police and local government and served in the Royal Naval Auxiliary Service and the Territorial Army. Her bestselling novels include City of Pearl, Crossing the Line, The World Before, Matriarch, Ally, Star Wars—Republic Commando: Hard Contact, Triple Zero, Star Wars—Legacy of the Force: Bloodlines, and Star Wars—Legacy of the Force: Sacrifice. She lives in Wilshire, England.
Visit www.AuthorTracker.com for exclusive information on your favorite HarperCollins author.
Resounding praise for
KAREN TRAVISS’
“Traviss is a valuable addition to the world
of science fiction.”
James Alan Gardner, author of Expendable
“Satisfyingly complex…. [Traviss], at times, evokes the earlier moral fables of Le Guin…at other times the revisionist critique of expanding human empires…and at times the union of romance with SF that we see in the work of Catherine Asaro or Lois McMaster Bujold…. The fact that Traviss manages to keep these sometimes conflicting modes in balance, mostly through her strong sense of character, suggests that she’s a writer worth watching.”
Locus
“Stellar.”
Jack McDevitt, author of Deepsix
“Science fiction with teeth…. In Shan Frankland, Karen Traviss has created a tough, interesting, believable character.”
Gregory Frost, author of Fitcher’s Brides
“Traviss takes what could have been a rote collection of characters (marines, cops, religious extremists) and slowly adds depth, complexity, and color.”
BookPage
Books of The Wess’har Wars by
Karen Traviss
CITY OF PEARL
CROSSING THE LINE
THE WORLD BEFORE
MATRIARCH
ALLY
Credits
Cover art by Chris McGrath
Copyright
This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
JUDGE. Copyright © 2008 by Karen Traviss. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
ePub edition February 2008 ISBN 9780061737329
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
About the Publisher
Australia
HarperCollins Publishers (Australia) Pty. Ltd.
25 Ryde Road (PO Box 321)
Pymble, NSW 2073, Australia
http://www.harpercollinsebooks.com.au
Canada
HarperCollins Publishers Ltd.
55 Avenue Road, Suite 2900
Toronto, ON, M5R, 3L2, Canada
http://www.harpercollinsebooks.ca
HarperCollinsPublishers (New Zealand) Limited
P.O. Box 1
Auckland, New Zealand
http://www.harpercollinsebooks.co.nz
United Kingdom
HarperCollins Publishers Ltd.
77-85 Fulham Palace Road
London, W6 8JB, UK
http://www.harpercollinsebooks.co.uk
United States
HarperCollins Publishers Inc.
10 East 53rd Street
New York, NY 10022
http://www.harpercollinsebooks.com