The Lost Stars: Shattered Spear Read Free Page A

cluttered alley despite the gloom of the night. The suit he wore, similar to that of an average low-level executive, appeared innocent but actually contained a wide variety of weapons and defenses. He thought of it as a hunting outfit, because it had been designed to stalk and eliminate prey.
    Human prey, because Malin was determined that anyone who might threaten either Drakon or Iceni would be taken out before they could harm either leader. It sometimes bothered him that he felt no qualms about killing anyone he suspected of being a threat. Perhaps that was because of how important his goals were. Or perhaps he had inherited that lack of conscience from his mother. That thought bothered him as well.
    Malin froze in position as one of the screens on his palm pad revealed another flicker of motion as someone slipped from one crack on the surveillance system to another. He had been following that someone for over an hour, a slow-motion game of cat and mouse. This was no ordinary criminal but a highly skilled operative, using the sortof techniques that only someone trained by the Syndicate snakes would know to employ. Malin, who had acquired that same training by means that would have meant his death if the snakes had ever discovered it, had been sorely pressed to maintain contact with his prey.
    Was this a surviving snake, operating under deep cover? Or someone like Malin, who was serving other masters?
    And where was he or she going? His quarry had at first seemed focused on places and things related to General Drakon and Colonel Morgan, leading Malin to initially believe that this chase might be related to the hiding place of General Drakon’s infant daughter. Drakon wanted to find that girl, to rescue her from whatever planned upbringing Morgan had arranged. Malin always thought of the baby girl as Drakon’s, and not as Malin’s own half sister. Contemplating the girl’s relationship to him too easily brought up emotions that could distract and anger him when focus and cold calm were necessary.
    But something about that other’s long, careful path across the city had led Malin to think there might be another reason behind his or her skulking journey.
    Malin, having waited to ensure the other would have minimum chance of spotting him if his prey was also tapping into the city surveillance network, moved in a sudden, smooth rush from the end of the alley into an adjoining street. Clinging to the side of the building, he slid along until he could twist around the corner where another alley met the street.
    Pausing, he studied his palm display again. An itching sensation began between Malin’s shoulders, the uncomfortable sixth-sense feeling that someone was aiming a weapon at his back. He leapt across a gap and down a short distance before coming to a halt in a shadowed doorway, a small but extremely lethal weapon in one hand.
    He had very little information from the surveillance net to go on, but Malin’s instincts warned him that the prey had become tired of the chase and was trying to become the hunter. Malin had spent the lasttwenty minutes growing increasingly certain that his quarry knew of the pursuit and was not simply trying to remain hidden from chance watchers but was actually hiding from Malin.
    A pair of police officers walked by on a nearby street, their casual conversation and the sound of their feet echoing like gunshots to Malin’s senses, which were tuned to bare whispers of noise. The police had palm readouts as well, and were doubtless watching them, but would have seen nothing of Malin and his target, and would have seen no alarms or alerts on their pads. The Syndicate had devoted generations to trying to perfect artificial intelligence routines for the surveillance systems, but every AI operated using rules. Once someone knew the rules, it was just a matter of breaking whatever pattern the AI was looking for.
    Human minds weren’t locked into rules, though. Their ability to think outside of rules