Off Armageddon Reef

OFF ARMAGEDDON REEF By David Weber Context: The Terran Federation Navy fought desperately for over forty years, but the ruthless species known as the Gbaba slaughtered the human race's extra-Solar colonies one by one. Now the end had finally come; Earth herself lay under siege by an enemy humankind could not defeat. And so mankind undertook one last throw of the dice: Operation Ark. Earth's final colonizing expedition was meant to build a new civilization, on a planet so distant even the Gbaba might never find it, and without the high-tech infrastructure whose emissions might betray its location. To protect and conceal that expedition, the Navy's final fleet was prepared to die to the last ship. Lieutenant Commander Nimue Alban volunteered to serve on the flagship of that fleet, knowing that she and everyone else aboard it would die...which was exactly what happened. So she was a little surprised to wake up in a cave on a planet called Safehold. She was even more surprised to discover that she'd been dead for eight centuries...and that the fanatic administrators of Operation Ark had used mind control techniques to create a false, brutally suppressive religion in which every single Safeholdian believed. One whose entire purpose was to forbid invention and innovation forever. Everyone on Safehold knows the Church is the consecrated custodian of God's will. Everyone knows forbidden technology is the work of the Devil. And everyone knows that anyone who dabbles in the forbidden must be destroyed, lest everyone's soul be lost forever to damnation. But a tiny fraction within Operation Ark's leadership remembered the truth and believed in human dignity and freedom. They've left Nimue Alban to oppose that monstrous creation, and they've given her a carefully hidden cache of technology and the capabilities of the android body in which her memories, loves, hopes, and dreams live on. It's her job to somehow provoke the that human progress which the Church of God Awaiting has worked centuries to crush. Now, in a new guisethat of the apparently male "Merlin"--Nimue comes to Charis, a mid-sized kingdom with a talent for naval warfare, to make the acquaintance of King Haarahld and Crown Prince Cayleb, and maybe, just maybe, kick off a new era of invention. In this excerpt, Merlin, having managed to save Cayleb from an attempted assassination, speaks with King Haarahld for the first time... .VI. RoyalPalace, Telesberg, KingdomofCharis "SeijinMerlin, Your Majesty," the chamberlain said quietly as he stepped through the open doorway and bowed. Merlin followed him into the small presence chamber -- more of a working office, really, it seemed -- and bowed a bit more profoundly than the chamberlain. King Haarahld's court was looked down upon by the courtiers of such sophisticated lands as Harchong because of its casual informality and ability to get along without a veritable horde of servitors. Still, Haarahld was a king, and one of the more powerful ones on the face of Safehold, whatever others might think. "Seijin," Haarahld said, and Merlin looked up. He saw a man of middle years, stocky, for a Charisian, and taller than most, although shorter than his son and considerably shorter than Merlin. HWeber, David is the author of 'Off Armageddon Reef', published 2008 under ISBN 9780765353979 and ISBN 0765353970.