The Blockade: First Salik War - Softcover

Buch 3 von 3: First Salik War

Johnson, Jean

 
9780425276945: The Blockade: First Salik War
Softcover
ISBN 10: 0425276945 ISBN 13: 9780425276945
Verlag: Ace, 2016

Inhaltsangabe

The national bestselling author of The V’Dan returns to her gripping military sci-fi series set in the same world as Theirs Not to Reason Why.
 
The First Salik War is underway, and the Alliance is losing—their newest allies must find a way to win, or everyone will be slaughtered.
 
Though committed to helping their V’Dan cousins, the Terrans resent how their allies treat them. The V’Dan in turn feel the Terrans are too unseasoned to act independently. And the other nations fear that ending the Salik War means starting a Human Civil War.
 
Even as Imperial Prince Li’eth and Ambassador Jackie MacKenzie struggle to get their peoples to cooperate, they still face an ethical dilemma: How do you stop a ruthless, advanced nation from attacking again and again without slaughtering them in turn?

Die Inhaltsangabe kann sich auf eine andere Ausgabe dieses Titels beziehen.

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Jean Johnson is the national bestselling author of the First Salik War novels (The V’Dan, The Terrans), the Theirs Not to Reason Why series (Damnation, Hardship, Hellfire), and the Guardians of Destiny novels (The Guild, The Grove, The Tower). She believes the best part about being a writer is the joy of entertaining others. The second best part is inspiring them to do greater things than they would normally imagine, and to honor those who have tried. This is one of those stories, and she hopes you both enjoy it and are inspired by it.

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

Chapter 1

August 10, 2287 c.e. (Common Era, Terran Standard)

Avra 3, 9508 v.d.s. (V'Dan Standard)

Winter Palace, Winter City

V'Dan homeworld, V'Dan System

"The Terran embassy to V'Dan is now officially closed!"

Ambassador MacKenzie's final words echoed down the shallow-stepped terraces of the Inner Court. Carved from golden granite and lined with benches and chairs designed to accommodate a range of alien and native body types, dotted with security and broadcast equipment, the mix of hard and soft surfaces did not diminish her hard-voiced claim. Silence stifled the ancient hall.

Seated on the top step of the highest dais of his mother's court, just a few mitas from the empty, pearlescent pink curve of the Eternal Throne, Li'eth felt that silence pressing down on him, squeezing his skin like some sort of congealing plastic film. The officers' uniforms of the Imperial Armed Forces, made from special ballistics cloth, were designed to look formal enough to appear in his mother's court while still being both comfortable and durable enough that he could fight off an enemy attack. Yet all he felt was trapped in its confines.

The uniform no longer fit him. It was still tailored perfectly to his figure, every crimson seam straight, every golden line neat . . . but the loyalty and pride with which Imperial Prince Kah'raman had originally worn it no longer fit the man whom Li'eth had become.

Li'eth still loved his home nation. He loved his people. He loved his family! Mostly . . . Most of the time.

Right now . . . he wanted to smack his eldest sister repeatedly about the head and shoulders with the hardest, heaviest cushion he could find. Or something that would solidly bruise some sense back into her without actually killing or crippling her. Except the absurd idea of smacking his sister-the Imperial Regent Princess Vi'alla V'Daania-about the head and shoulders with a pillow like some common Fifth Tier sibling did not cheer him out of his . . . grief? Regret? Ire? Despair? Desolation.

He had thought he knew Jacaranda MacKenzie, Grand High Ambassador of the Terran United Planets . . . No, he did know her. He had known that Jackie would choose to serve the needs and protect the rights of her people despite any personal inconvenience, pain, or peril. And she had chosen to do so just now. They were bound in a Gestalt, a holy pairing, his and her psychically gifted minds entangled on a quantum level-the will of the Saints, pure random chance, or fate, he did not know. They were bound, and he could feel her subthoughts of pain and determination and anger just beyond his innermost walls.

She lived within his outermost mental shields, the very same shields she had taught him how to construct, support, and stabilize in ways strong enough to keep her out of his head even though he didn't want to do that. He did it right now, though. Jackie was strong enough to do what was right for others even if not best for herself. Li'eth-Imperial Prince Kah'raman, who had been raised from birth to heed his duty to the Eternal Throne-respected and honored that level of dedication.

Ambassador MacKenzie had chosen to refuse to allow his people to continue to insult hers over and over and over again, all because of a simple yet pervasive cultural difference that was literally just skin-deep. Because of those differences, their embassy had been closed. His people had just lost their access to the only form of breathtakingly swift interstellar communication the entire Alliance knew, and he was going to lose personally one way or another because the embassy was closed, his Gestalt partner was headed home . . . and either he would have to stay here and suffer without her or abandon his people and go with her into virtual exile.

He didn't know what to do. Which path to choose. And on top of it all, Li'eth didn't know how badly his mother had been injured. He did not know if his mother would live or die.

"An Imperial Prince does not sit on the steps of the Inner Court like a common Fifth Tier in a marketplace."

He twisted, looking up at his sister. Vi'alla clenched her jaw as she stared down at him, her body tight with returning anger. The same anger that had caused her to refuse to even consider the Terrans' demands that they either be treated with respect or that those who disrespected them be punished so that they could no longer see the cause of that disrespect, via something called a mind-block. Her aura had broken into confusion when their Ambassador had closed the embassy, and panic when she discovered that Jackie had ordered the nearest Terran hyperrelay unit destroyed. But now, that look on her face was the look of someone furious, hurt, and looking for a target.

She wanted one? He would give her one. Herself. Li'eth pinned his sister with a hard look. "An Imperial Regent does not treat her desperately needed allies like u'v'shakk."

Vi'alla stiffened, her gray eyes widening. "You dare talk to me that way?"

"You dared talk to them that way. Imperial Regent," Li'eth stated formally, pushing to his feet to face down his eldest sister. "Our people need what the Terrans can provide."

"Then they need to provide it!" Vi'alla snapped, frowning at him. "Instead of yanking it away like a child!"

"You don't even see it, do you?" Li'eth asked softly, more to himself than to her. She was the one trying to yank it away like a child. A child being deprived of a toy.

"See what?" his sister snapped.

Li'eth wracked his brain for a parable that could get her to understand. ". . . Do you remember the story of Saint Ba'nai?"

"A story?" she scorned.

"For once in your mind, will you clear it?" Li'eth demanded, gesturing at his head. "A good Empress listens to the counsel of her people! The story of Saint Ba'nai is about how she tried to get the people of a village she was visiting to listen to her warnings that they were going to be caught in a great fire because of a terrible drought that had plagued the land that year. They were stubborn and set in their ways, proud of their skill in cutting wood, trimming and shaping it, and sending it downriver. The river kept getting lower and lower until they could no longer pole their barges downstream to the cities that needed it, but the villagers kept cutti-"

"-The villagers kept cutting wood until a stray spark set fire to the forest, and only a third of the people managed to escape by heeding Ba'nai's warnings to go deep into the abandoned mines in the mountain while the firestorm raged through, yes, yes, I know the legend!" Vi'alla overrode him. "I've studied the Book of Saints far more often than you!"

"Did Nanny Ai-sha ever tell you how she got a third of the village to listen to her?" Li'eth asked her. "Because Nanny El'cor told me how she did it when I asked him." He waited to see if she would dismiss him and his story. When his sister gave him an impatient but silent listening look, Li'eth continued. "El'cor taught me that Ba'nai was of the Fifth Tier, the daughter of a herdsman. A pig herder. She had no training in eloquence, no ability to make fancy speeches, and no real grasp of etiquette, but she was smart, and she occasionally had dreams of the future, what the Terrans call precognition. Those dreams led her to that village.

"That village was filled with skilled laborers, lumberjacks and carpenters, Fourth and Third Tier, higher socially than her place in the Fifth. She was so worried about the firestorms in her dreams, she spoke bluntly, told everyone they had to stop working the lumber, stop leaving sawdust everywhere, stop piling up the bark against their wooden houses and the uncut trees. She demanded that they stop their livelihood, demanded that they leave the area to save their lives. She thought she was doing the right thing, trying to save...

„Über diesen Titel“ kann sich auf eine andere Ausgabe dieses Titels beziehen.

Verlag
Ace
Erscheinungsdatum
2016
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
0425276945
ISBN 13 
9780425276945
Einband
Taschenbuch
Anzahl der Seiten
352
Kontakt zum Hersteller
Nicht verfügbar
Verantwortliche Person
Bear Family Records GmbH
49474882160
info@bear-family.de

Grenzweg 1
Holste
27729
Deutschland