Strong Arm Tactics by Jody Lynn Nye

Author:Jody Lynn Nye [Nye, Jody Lynn]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: WordFire Press
Published: 2014-12-05T05:00:00+00:00

Chapter 12

“Three days,” Commander Iry had said as the shuttle eased out of the Eastwood’s landing bay and fell in a gentle arc toward Dudley. Iry’s voice was still ringing in Daivid’s ears as sharp as the taste of Cockroach liquor on his tongue. Borden had explained the unit tradition of drinking half a glass of rotgut and leaving the glasses waiting on the table until they returned.

“That’s the first part of the tradition,” she had said. “It is superstition, I know, but it helps us come back.”

“Is there a second part to this tradition?” he had asked.

“We don’t do that until we get back on board,” Borden said shortly, and he knew he wasn’t going to get any more information out of her.

Like Treadmill, Dudley looked pretty from space, but more like a watercolor painting than a mosaic. True, the wide brush-strokes of green were various kinds of marshlands, and the purple-blues decorated liberally with the whipped-cream white of cumulonimbus clouds betokened high mountain escarpments that slashed the continental masses into individual ecospheres surmountable only by VTOLs or hardy all-terrain ground vehicles, but it was much more interesting to look at. Daivid strained his eyes to see if he could pick out the province that contained Wingle World. The last time he had been fending off a water-gun attack by his younger sister at the time the family ship made orbit, and missed seeing what he saw now. Presumably nothing had changed, though that wasn’t a sure thing any longer, not with current terraforming techniques and the amount of money that poured into Dudley’s economy during the vacation season.

Lt. Borden piloted the shuttle. That was to say, she sat at the controls ready to take over manually if the autopilot happened to fail. Like everything else aboard the Eastwood this craft, the Carferry, a smaller version of the one that had picked them up on Treadmill, was new and in perfect condition. Borden literally sat on her hands because there was nothing else she had to do with them. Beside her, Adri’Leta acted as navigator. Both of them were clad in full armor. Daivid sat behind them in the jump seat, normally occupied by weapons control. The shuttle was fully loaded with a plasma cannon, lasers and a couple of missiles that could achieve string-drive speeds, though none of these were likely to be needed on this mission. The laser emplacements, to either side of the passenger compartment, were unmanned.

The rest of the Cockroaches had taken their places in the cushy crash seats behind the bulkhead that separated the bridge from the passenger compartment. In their armor they blended in perfectly with the beige high-test upholstery, as the chameleon camouflage pixels on the surface identified the objects behind each trooper and changed to match. It was like being the only person alive on a ghost ship. Act inconspicuous, the commander had told them. Daivid’s combat armor was in the cargo hold, but he wore a uniform made of microinfinitesimal

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