BAEN BOOKS BY DAVID WEBER
HONORVERSE NOVELS:
HONORVERSE YOUNG ADULT NOVELS:
HONORVERSE ANTHOLOGIES:
EMPIRE FROM THE ASHES:
WAR GOD:
WITH JOHN RINGO:
WITH STEVE WHITE:
WITH ERIC FLINT:
WITH LINDA EVANS:
For a complete listing of Baen titles by David Weber, please go to www.baen.com.
Shadow of Freedom
This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.
Copyright © 2013 by Words of Weber, Inc.
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form.
A Baen Books Original
Baen Publishing Enterprises
P.O. Box 1403
Riverdale, NY 10471
www.baen.com
ISBN 13: 978-1-4516-3869-1
Cover art by David Mattingly
First printing, March 2013
Distributed by Simon & Schuster
1230 Avenue of the Americas
New York, NY 10020
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
t/k
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Printed in the United States of America
February 1922 Post Diaspora
“It’ll be easier the next time…and there
—Frinkelo Osborne,
Office of Frontier Security,
Loomis System.
The wingless, saucer-like drone drifted through the wet, misty night on silent counter gravity. The fine droplets of rain sifted down in filmy curtains that reeked of burned wood and hydrocarbons and left a greasy sensation on the skin. Despite the rainfall, fires crackled noisily here and there, consuming heaps of wreckage which had once been homes, adding their own smoke and soot to the atmosphere. A faint, distant mutter of thunder rolled through the overcast night, though whether it was natural or man-made was difficult to say.
The drone paused, motionless, blacker than the night about it, its rain-slick, light-absorbent coat sucking in the photons from the smudgy fires which might otherwise have reflected from it. The turret mounted on its bottom rotated smoothly, turning sensors and lenses towards whatever had attracted its attention. Wind sighed wearily in the branches of sugar pine, crab poplar, and imported Terran white pine and hickory, something shifted in one of the piles of rubble, throwing up sparks and cinders. A burning rafter burned through and collapsed and water dripped from rain-heavy limbs with the patient, uncaring persistence of nature, but otherwise all was still, silent.
The drone considered the sensor data coming to it, decided it was worth consideration by higher authority, and uploaded it to the communications satellite and its operator in far distant Elgin City. Then it waited.
The silence, the rain, and the wind continued. The fires hissed as heavier drops fell into their white and red hearts. And then—
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