Read Under the Eye of God for Free Online

arguments alone convinced them. Shortly, the Burihatin offices of the Interstellar Registry informed the master of The Lady MacBeth that she would immediately put aside her own concerns and accept the Lady’s charter—or risk the suspension of her certification.
    Captain Campbell chafed in annoyance, but she couldn’t operate without a Registry license. She invented several colorful new curses and accepted the contract with about as much enthusiasm as a Dragon confronting a salad.
    For her part, the Lady Zillabar had not forced the issue simply as a casual exercise of power. She would have much preferred to make the long nasty journey on one of her own vessels; but certain matters of state on Thoska-Roole demanded her immediate presence—and political expediency required that her arrival remain undetected. As unpleasant as the journey aboard this vessel might prove, The Lady MacBeth served her desire for secrecy exquisitely. No ship would seem less likely to carry a Regency noble than this decrepit old tub. Her arrival should pass unnoticed. The Lady cared little that its officers and crew shared neither her passion nor her purpose, as long as they obeyed their orders.
    As expected, the passage across the northernmost reaches of the Palethetic Cluster did prove noxious, noisome, and thoroughly offensive. The tired old vessel rattled and stank and vibrated; she produced disturbing smells and inescapable noises. The crew acted surly and the officers seemed disrespectful, even when they bowed. When the vessel finally arrived at Thoska-Roole, bumping rudely into a very un standard elliptical docking orbit, the Lady Zillabar allowed herself the experience of a profound relief. “The things I do for my species. . . .” she grumbled.
    Out here, as seen from space, Thoska-Roole displayed a savage beauty; scarred and broken, ravaged by the vicissitudes of time and greed. All ochre and black and orange, she glowered like a dying jack-o-lantern, a rotting pumpkin left too long in the field. Her scars would leave a sense of awe and dread in even the most jaded of observers.
    Brightside, the world had a reddish cast, like the dust of ancient tombs. As the ship came around the terminator line, the planet disappeared against the sprawling wonder of the terrifying Eye of God , leaving only an eerie crescent, outlining an ominous dark hole in the spangled realm of space. A few lonely settlements on the dark side of the disk appeared as faint as fireflies. From this angle, the luminous glow of the primary illuminated the planet’s thin atmosphere like a veil, as well as revealing a dark cone of shadow stretching outward behind it through the pale dust of space.
    As The Lady MacBeth closed with the orbiting StarPort, EDNA, the starship’s synthesized personality, reached across the distance and opened a wide-band, multi-channel interface with the Registry Control personality. She identified herself by sending three different messages encrypted with her private security codes. By the simple act of decoding the messages with the public half of the encryption key, the StarPort persona could verify The Lady MacBeth’s identity immediately. The process usually took only a few seconds. This time, however, the StarPort persona balked and requested an additional set of Regency clearance codes.
    EDNA considered the request with something approaching puzzlement. Speaking in the clear, she replied, “We have no instructions regarding additional codes. (Please advise on docking procedures.)”
    StarPort responded curtly, “The Regency Administrators have activated new regulations. A fleet of Marauder-Class Fighters stands ready to vigorously enforce these rules. Even as we speak, the interception occurs. You have six minutes to re-identify yourself using the new Regency codes. If you choose not to, you may break orbit immediately. (Please watch out for the debris of the last vessel to ignore these rules.