Marque and Reprisal

Zusatztext “An utterly satisfying adventure . . . In Kylara Vatta! Moon has created another tough and complex heroine.” —Scifi “The intrigue-filled plot lends a marque of distinction.” — Entertainment Weekly “Excellent plotting and characters support the utterly realistic action sequences: swift! jolting! [and] merciless.” — Kirkus Reviews  (starred review)  “A gripping! action-packed book.” — Omaha World-Herald Informationen zum Autor Elizabeth Moon Klappentext "An utterly satisfying adventure . . . In Kylara Vatta, Moon has created another tough and complex heroine."-Scifi Though the exciting military career she hoped for never materialized, Ky Vatta still sees plenty of combat. An unknown adversary has launched a full-throttle offensive against Vatta Transport Ltd., Ky's father's interstellar shipping empire-killing most of Ky's family. Fighting for her very survival, Ky is determined to avenge her family's deaths. Teaming up with a band of stranded mercenaries, her black-sheep cousin Stella, and Stella's roguish ex-lover, Ky struggles to penetrate the tangled web of political intrigue that surrounds the attacks. Amid suspicion and deception, she is prepared to take whatever measures are necessary to ensure that Vatta stays in business. What she's not prepared for is the shocking truth behind the terror- and a confrontation with murderous treachery. . . . Praise for Marque and Reprisal "The intrigue-filled plot lends a marque of distinction."-Entertainment Weekly "Excellent plotting and characters support the utterly realistic action sequences: swift, jolting, [and] merciless."-Kirkus Reviews (starred review) "A gripping, action-packed book."-Omaha World-Herald Leseprobe CHAPTER ONE Kylara Vatta looked at the mass of paperwork from Belinta's Economic Development Bureau and sighed. The real life of a tradeship captain: paperwork and more paperwork, negotiation with shippers, customers, Customs officials. The life she hadn't wanted, when she chose to enter the Slotter Key Spaceforce Academy, and the life she had fallen back into when she was expelled. Boring. Mundane. Not that her recent experiences in Sabine had been boring or mundane--terrifying was more like it--and no one would want another trip like that. Except that she did. She remembered very clearly the rush of excitement, the soaring glee of the fight itself, the guilty delight when she'd killed Paison and Kristoffson. So either she wasn't sane or...or nothing. She thought of the diamonds tucked into her underwear drawer. Not enough to restore her old tub of a ship completely, but enough to take her to somewhere else, somewhere she could make the kind of life she really wanted. Perhaps the mercenaries would accept her violent tendencies; they'd offered a chance. Perhaps someone else. It would annoy her family, but not as much as the truth would hurt them. No. She had to finish one job at least. Crew depended on her. The ship belonged to her family, as well, and she could not possibly earn enough to buy it away by the next stop or the next. She sighed again, signed another sheet, and stared at the next. All right, then. Take this old tub to Leonora, deliver that cargo, then to Lastway. If she couldn't finance a refit by then, return to the original plan and go home by commercial passenger ship. If she made enough profit, enough to do the refit, she could get that done and bring the ship back to Slotter Key, and then resign. Or--she stared into a distance far beyond her cabin bulkhead. She could send the ship back with someone else. Quincy, for instance, knew enough to run the ship herself. In the long run, her family would be better off without her. If her father knew how she'd felt when she killed...no. She had had those nightmares, trying to explain to that g...

Product details

• Authors: Elizabeth Moon
• Publisher: Del Rey
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Released: 30.08.2005
• EAN: 9780345447593
• ISBN: 978-0-345-44759-3
• No. of pages: 400
• Dimensions: 108 mm x 175 mm x 28 mm
• Series: Vatta's War; Vatta's War; Random House Worlds
• Subject: Fiction > Science fiction, fantasy