Drop Zone (Drop Trooper Book 10) by Rick Partlow

Author:Rick Partlow [Partlow, Rick]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Aethon Books
Published: 2022-07-18T16:00:00+00:00

15

“How long is this going to take?” Vicky asked, exhaustion and annoyance weighing down her words and features as she leaned against the galley table. I understood completely because I shared both the feelings.

“We boosted at one gravity for thirty-six hours,” I told her, slugging my brain into motion, “and we’ve been braking for another twenty, so if I had to guess, sixteen more hours.” I yawned and took a sip of coffee,

Theoretically, we could have been sleeping right now, and God knows we’d tried. But every time we closed our eyes, we’d get called to put out another fire. Most of them involving Lan-Min-Gen and his crew. As I’d thought, he hadn’t taken too kindly to the loss of the better part of the Tahni corvette force, and I’d been chosen to run interference between him and Hachette.

“You sacrificed our people!” the Tahni commander had raged, slamming his fist into the bulkhead, the yielding plastic echoing like a Lambeg drum. “You threw us into the fire so you could escape the enemy!”

This time I’d kept my hand on the butt of my sidearm, eyes flickering back to Vicky, who had her back against mine, watching the other Tahni.

“You know we have a recording of exactly what happened, right?” I’d responded, not letting anger leech into my voice mostly because I hadn’t the energy for it. “You can listen if you like. Colonel Hachette ordered your squadron commander to withdraw, told him we were outnumbered and that we had to pull out. He was your typical, bullheaded Tahni though, and he told us he wouldn’t be ordered around by a bunch of humans.”

“And why should he be?” Lan-Min-Gen had spread his hands wide as if he was about to give me a big hug, though I was sure it had some other meaning to one of his kind. “We were here to be your allies, not your underlings!”

He wasn’t making any sense, but I’d known better than to try to reason with him. Lan-Min-Gen hadn’t brought me here to have me use logic on him. I’d been brought here to listen to him vent. Behind him the other Shock Troopers in his company were beating at their chests and warbling some sort of high-pitched wail that I thought had to be their version of grieving.

“And we’re not yours, either,” I’d snapped back. “If you want us to back your play, you don’t just assume we’re going to do it, you ask us… or don’t expect our support. This is a military expedition, and in the human military, one person gives the orders and the others carry them out. Anything else gets people killed. Just like it got your pilots killed.”

“Not all of our pilots are dead.” He’d pointed right into my face, which had to be just as rude in his culture as it was in mine. “You received the signal from Pilot Kan-Mak-So. They made it to the ground and were captured. Do you plan to leave them there? To abandon them as you did the others, to die?”

Okay, I had to admit, that was a good question.

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