A Rising Thunder-ARC Read Free Page B

Kingdom?” He shook his head. “I don’t know whose brainstorm this was, but it’s going to play merry hell, and that’s the truth!”
    “Lev, I’ve got one-point-six million tons of cargo that’ve been sitting in orbital warehouses for over two T-months waiting for your arrival. One-point-six million tons—you understand that number? That’s the next best thing to a billion and a half credits of inventory, and it’s supposed to be in Josephine in less than four weeks. If you leave it sitting here, there’s no way I can possibly get it there.”
    “I understand .” Wallenstein shook his head helplessly. “And if I had any choice at all, I’d be loading your cargo right now. But I don’t . These orders are nondiscretionary, and they don’t come from the front office, either. They come direct from the Admiralty , Sharon.”
    “But why?” Selkirk stared at him. “Why just…yank the carpet out from under me like this? Damn it, Lev, you’ve been on this run for over twelve T-years! There’s never been a problem, not from either side!”
    “Sharon, it doesn’t have anything to do with you. Or with me.” Wallenstein sat back in his chair aboard the Yellow Rose , gazing at the image of a woman who’d become a friend, not just another business contact. “You’re right, there’s never been a problem…not here in Mendelschon.”
    Selkirk had opened her mouth again, but she closed it once more and her eyes narrowed at his last four words. Or at the tone in which he’d spoken, to be more accurate.
    “You mean this has to do with that business in, where was it, New Tuscany? And Spindle? That’s what this is about?”
    “No one’s specifically said so,” Wallenstein replied, “but if I had to guess, yeah, that’s what it’s about.”
    “But that’s stupid!” She sat back in her own chair, throwing both hands up in frustration. “That’s seven hundred light-years from Mendelschon! What possible bearing could it have on us? ”
    Despite his very real affection for her, Wallenstein found it difficult not to roll his eyes. Unlike the majority of people who found their way to her seniority in a Solarian multi-stellar, Sharon Selkirk had always been friendly and courteous in her dealings with the merchant service officers who transported the Shadwell Corporation’s goods between the stars. She’d never held the fact that Wallenstein wasn’t a Solarian against him, either. In fact, that was the one thing about her which had always irritated him. She didn’t even realize she was being condescending by not holding the fact that he wasn’t a Solarian against him. Why, she was treating him just like a real person!
    He was confident she’d never actually analyzed her own attitude, never realized how it could grate on anyone’s nerves, because she was, frankly, too nice a person to treat someone that way if she’d ever realized she was doing it. But that was part of the problem. Solarian arrogance, that bone-deep assumption of superiority, was so deeply engraved into the Solarian League’s DNA that Sollies never even thought about it.
    “Look, Sharon,” he said after a moment, “I agree that what happened in New Tuscany and what happened in Spindle don’t have anything to do with you, or me, or Mendelschon. But they had one hell of a lot to do with the people who got killed in both those places, and you may not realize just how completely relations between the League and the Star Empire are going into the crapper. But they are, believe me. And looking at these orders, I think it’s going to get a hell of a lot worse before it gets any better.”
    “But that’s crazy.” Selkirk shook her head. “I mean, I agree it’s horrible all those people got killed. And I don’t know what happened any more than you do. But surely nobody wants to get more people killed! They’ve got to settle this thing before that happens!”
    “I agree with you, and I wish they would. But the truth is, it doesn’t