"Kerrion Empire - 03 - Earth Dreams" - читать интересную книгу автора (Morris Janet E)

EARTH DREAMS


Prologue

This is a tale of the pivotal days of the Kerrion-
led Consortium, of the changing of the guard outside the
citadel of power.

When Chaeron Ptolemy Kerrion, second surviving son
of the house of Kerrion and the cartel Kerrion, came
home to ancestral Earth, disgracedЧa lowly proconsul
charged with the impossible task of bringing the deter-
minedly rebellious primitives of Earth into his society as
civilized citizensЧhe forbade his wife, Shebat, the heir ap-
parent, to accompany him.

But she came upon her own initiative, piloting her own
spongespace cruiser, Kerrion Experimental Vehicle 134
Marada, forsaking the administrative sphere Draconis,
where she was consul, for the rocky hills where she was
raised. For Shebat was born into Earthly destitution and
Earthly superstition, and imagined herself an enchantress
until Chaeron s half brother MaradaЧnow consul general
of Kerrion spaceЧhad chanced upon her and spirited her
away into a universe which Kerrions ruled from great plat-
forms skewed among the stars. Adopted into the Kerrion
family for political reasons by its patriarch, she had be-
come a spongespace pilot, a dream dancer, a fugitive, a
revolutionary, and at last heir apparent and Draconis
consul.

When she put her cruiser into orbit and without so much

VI JANET MORRIS

as a greeting descended into the wilderness that was Earth,
Chaeron could do little but go planetside personally to
seek her out: she commanded her own cruiser, and all its
prodigious intelligence; she was afflicted with the madness
all pilots contract; though they were man and wife, it was
a marriage he had forced on her through blackmail and
guile while still he strove to become heir apparent, himself.

When he found her, he strove to watch his tongue: she
outranked him.

And he was not unaware that she might easily bear him
a grudge. . . .