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.Taking a last look around with half-shut eyes, I noticed Sakura had left.She’d never said a word.Mentally, I shrugged.She wasn’t the most expressive person.I decided to take her gratitude as a given.* * *The Raptors left us alone after our refusal to share technology.They didn’t even bother to make contact.I think they were embarrassed and ashamed, although whether by their champion’s defeat or his behavior, I wasn’t sure.I was far from an expert on the nuances of Raptor honor, but by skill, luck or divine providence I seemed to have used it against them.I’d pushed all in with my paltry pile of chips and won the pot.Deciding not to press our luck, I let the Raptors be.That day we held funerals for our dead.Three marines and one crewman had died in the battle.I felt every damned one of their deaths.They were my responsibility.If I’d thought to challenge Kleed earlier, maybe there wouldn’t have been a boarding action.Then again, it was probably only his supreme overconfidence and his trapping himself aboard Valiant that had forced him to accept the duel.The next day I declared a holiday for everyone, letting Valiant run everything.As we were in deep space with nothing nearby, I felt like the risk was negligible.Getting up early, I packed all of Sir William’s things up and put them into the cargo hold.I finally moved into the captain’s quarters.For the first time since joining Valiant, I felt like I’d earned the position.From their responses, I knew the crew was ready to accept the change.I’d spent the night after the battle with Adrienne, but I’d been too banged up for sex.She’d pouted a bit until I reminded her of what she’d said about making the first time special.Due to the miracle of nanites and Microbes—plus a little help from the autodoc—I invited her to breakfast in the morning.The food was nothing special, but the company was excellent.Suffice it to say that we spent our holiday athletically making love.For once there was no looming crisis and no emotional baggage to push us apart.For the first time, I let go of my regrets that Olivia and I had never slept together.It was better we hadn’t for now I would never compare the two.Despite my itching, healing body, it was a day and a night I would always remember—and the next couple were pretty damn good, too.* * *We found Greyhound on Orn Six, at the location we’d suspected was a square-shaped Raptor installation.In fact, it wasn’t of Raptor origin at all.When we cruised into orbit, four Raptor monitors pinged us.They were missile-heavy mini-fortresses held aloft by repellers above the ring.They painted us with their radar, but held their fire.Valiant edged closer.My gunners were locked on with our heaviest weapons—but nothing happened.Apparently Star Force and the Raptors were now at peace, or at least in a state of truce.I felt better when we’d half-orbited the planet and landed next to Greyhound near the Square.That’s what we ended up calling it: the Square.Resembling a city nearly half a mile across, it was composed of an infinite variety of dark gold-colored cubic shapes each placed upon or even within one another.Perfectly square openings dotted the cubes in seemingly random places—not only on the sides, but often on top of, or beneath overhangs.The doorways varied in size from too small to accept a fingertip to ten yards across or more.While always lined up with the associated cube’s edges, the portals might be placed anywhere on any surface.Our sensors had spotted Marvin’s ship resting nearby.We’d been attempting to contact him intermittently, but he hadn’t answered.Greyhound seemed to be undamaged, and I suspected he was still inside the hull.I also suspected he was just too busy to bother answering us.Whatever this Square was, I was certain it fascinated him and probably for the same reasons it fascinated me.That didn’t mean I hadn’t learned a few things since falling through the first ring back on Yale.This time I disembarked Valiant in a battlesuit with Kwon and a squad of marines at my back.Hoon joined us as well, representing our science team.I had more faith in his ability to survive a crisis than three clumsy civilians, nanotized or not.Adrienne wanted to come along, but she hadn’t been trained to use a battlesuit, and I wasn’t going to let her out in a thin crew suit this time.There probably weren’t any Lithos here as Greyhound hadn’t been molested, but other dangers might lurk.I decided not to fly close to the Square on suit repellers.I had no idea what we were dealing with here.It seemed a lot safer to walk, and only fly if we needed to jump out of there fast.The Square itself showed unusual, hard-to-pinpoint power emanations.It made me jumpy.As we moved warily among the cubes, the doorways beckoned to us.Black as a void, they seemed to be made of liquid darkness with no depth.I’d seen something like it, but I wasn’t certain where.Choosing a large opening near ground level I walked up to it and stared at it for a time.I couldn’t see inside the perfect, obsidian darkness.Picking up a stone from the rocky surface—the ground was not paved or altered in any way—I was just about to cast it at the portal when I heard Marvin’s voice over the close-range com-link.“That may be inadvisable, Captain Riggs.”Marvin slunk out from behind a large cube.The core of his body was a lumpy cylinder ten yards long.His many tentacles and camera stalks sprouted from his central mass in a random profusion.He looked like a fifty-armed octopus sliding toward me.“My, how you’ve grown,” I laughed.“I determined that an increased body mass could more efficiently explore this facility.”“And what is this facility?”Marvin’s appendages moved slightly faster in agitation.“I’m not certain [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]