Freedom's Fury (Freedom's Fire Book 2) by Bobby Adair

Author:Bobby Adair [Adair, Bobby]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Beezle Media, LLC
Published: 2017-05-08T06:00:00+00:00

Chapter 26

We’re waiting again.

There’s a lot of boredom in war.

Blair is sending some of our soldiers from the control center to bring Tarlow to the explosives shed.

Graham is still lying on her back, trying to control her nausea, or napping. She hasn’t said anything in a while. It could be either.

Brice is fumbling through what I guess are blasting caps, a variety of types, in a series of translucent bins. He cocks his head toward Graham. “She gonna be alright?”

“I suppose.” I’m looking at the bin he has a hand in, realizing I have no guesses about the functions of these odd doodads, no idea how they puzzle together to form something lethal. “You know how this stuff works?”

“In theory.”

I laugh. “You mean you’d blow us all up if you tried to rig a bomb?”

“More like I’d build a dud.” Brice is one-hundred-percent serious again. “Wouldn’t matter. Failure is death out here in the ‘stroids. No room to fuck up. If your booby trap doesn’t blow, the Trogs swarm you. Death. See what I mean?”

Booby traps sound appealing, however, I’m cultivating my ideal fantasy outcomes into something that’ll pass for a plan.

Brice seems suddenly bored, impatient, as he empties his hands. “We should wait on Tarlow.”

I agree, look around at the contents of the explosives hut, and start a slow walk along the shelf-covered wall, taking in what I can see, looking for anything I might learn while killing time, and trying not to think about other soldiers out there on the surface, still dying.

“A lot of waiting,” says Brice, coming along beside me.

“What do you do to kill the time?” I ask, not wanting to spend too much time with my thoughts, afraid of what I might find in my heart if I dwell on the echoes of last gasps over the comm and vivid memories of dying faces, watching the vacuum suck blood through gaping tears in suits.

“Tell me about Phil,” says Brice.

That’s a surprising twist.

I hesitate.

I guess at a motive and realize I’ve spent too much time looking for hidden agendas throughout my life. Too many years in a Gray-ruled world. It’s shaped me in a way I didn’t realize had bent towards paranoia until just now. “The Phil thing is complicated.”

“It always is for people who think too much.” Brice smiles after setting the barb. He slaps me on the back to let me know it’s just good fun.

I smile, too. No big deal. He’s right. I don’t want to talk about Phil. “What about you? What’s your story?”

“So that’s how it works?” he asks. “You won’t tell me yours unless I tell you mine?”

“You know a lot more about me than I know about you.”

“There’s nothing to tell,” says Brice. “You already know my dirty laundry. I fragged a captain. You saw me do it.”

“So what else have you got?”

“Two years of watching people die in this war.” He tries to be hard when he says it, attempting to cover his sadness with a cavalier smile.

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