Read Skylock for Free Online Page B

separating them. "I so wanted this to go easy and well between us, Royce. Hoped you'd embrace my concept outright and pave the way for converting other department heads. But I also understand what impact such a strategy must have when dumped unannounced on the table."
    Warrington reconsidered his glass. He didn't drink, but slowly spun its condensation into wet circles on the polished surface beneath.
    "Do me one great personal favor," he asked Corealis. "Don't make any decision on the matter until you've at least had time to sleep on it. Take more time if need be. I do need your help on this."
    Warrington dropped his gaze and turned away, ending the talk. But recalling an earlier item, he swung back with renewed vigor.
    "Royce, a moment ago you mentioned the possibility of alternatives. Do you have any such in mind?"
    Corealis looked up, then away. "No," he said quietly and left the room.
     

CHAPTER 4
    Fifteen hundred miles to the west Doctor Martin Keener sat alone at his lab desk. Struggling with both his composure and handwriting, the bioengineer swiped again at bunched tears of frustration. He braced himself with yet another deep breath and refocused on setting his coded script to the coarse yellow pages before him.
    The frivolous adolescent behavior of keeping a secret diary was decidedly out of place for a man of Keener's educational stature, position, and clinical logic, not to mention just plain risky. Yet the nightly ritual he'd taken up in these last months offered the single vent to all his years of scientific captivity; the old-fashioned method of putting pencil to brittle pages became the sole confessor he dared share a desperate prisoner's deepest secrets with.
    Even so, limiting himself to just this secondary exercise was no longer possible. A bizarre fury had grown within the soft-spoken man, one gone beyond the simple restraints of such a passive avenue. The stark truth of his labors had swelled to a boiling rage, which now demanded a much more radical and total closure.
    Like so many researchers kept in governmental harness, Martin had for years turned a blind eye to the reality of his work. Leading a handful of learned disciples who had unquestioningly accepted him as their shepherd, Keener had slogged the way through scores of military-interest projects.
    In the name of so-called national security, the doctor and his loyal troop had developed plant forms ranging from the very strain of antipersonnel thorn barriers encircling this camp, to crop poisoning viruses capable of starving whole nations into submission.
    For three decades the plant geneticist had labored solely on dark government projects, hoping someday for a truly noble cause to materialize and be his ransom. The horror of global starvation arrived to grant just that wish.
    But even mankind's threat of total annihilation couldn't disrupt military scrutiny of Keener's work. And eventually an object of covert value was detected in his reports—something powerful enough to forever divert and sequester his team from a key Manna Project conference trip those many months ago.
    Given the simple explanation of having been reassigned to new and alternate duties, Keener's squad was severed from all further contact with the Manna Project and plunked down here, wherever this place was. And again, his obedient, if typically naïve team, followed Martin in complying.
    But the doctor could stand no more. In his diary, he'd detailed the truth of his work. Subtly coded in the dog-eared commonplace notebook, he hoped, like a message in a random bottle, it would somehow be discovered by an honorable person, who would carry the truth forward. Yet, even if that never happened, Martin felt somehow cleansed by the exercise, purified for his next and final step.
    Martin closed the book and spared a moment to reflect on the quiet night about him. He'd given his life to his work, forsaking even marriage in its name. Never sparing the time for anything remotely like