Fortune's Star (The Sandbox Galaxy Book 2) by Michael Lasco

Author:Michael Lasco [Lasco, Michael]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2023-06-04T22:00:00+00:00

14

The Marine called Coffey (Skip didn’t know his rank, and didn’t care) brought her to the captain’s cabin, then waited outside the door as she entered.

Aziz was dressed very differently to any other time Skip had seen her. Tactical pants and boots. A wide belt with a sidearm holster. A thick, blocky vest over her gray shirt. The captain snapped her fingers at the door until Coffey stuck his head around it.

“Go get a vest for Skip,” she ordered him. He nodded and hurried off. “Can’t have you going in unprotected.”

“Thank you, Captain. Um, will I get one of those?” She nodded at Aziz’s pistol.

Aziz’s wry smile was her only reply.

The captain went to the small table in one corner of the neat cabin, then pressed a button on the display there. “This is the captain to all Marines and crew. As you know, we’re in orbit around Chiru Ké. Our away mission departs in twenty minutes. I’ll need forty of you. We’ve shut down their planetary defenses—”

When did that happen? Skip wondered.

“—and we need to storm this facility asap. I’ve already sent one team to lock it down so they don’t get vehicles out. Time is of the essence, people. We have two fugitives to apprehend, data to retrieve—and information on how much of it they analyzed and passed on. As you know, storming a defensible position isn’t usually pretty and it could well cost us casualties. I don’t want anyone there who doesn’t want to be there. But remember this: until the theft is both remedied and avenged, we can’t return to Cross Us If You Dare territory, and if we can’t return there, we’re separated from our families. Volunteers, make your availability known to your line leaders immediately. Captain out.” She regarded Skip candidly from across the room. “You know what my parents used to say about moments like this?”

“What?”

“Shit’s about to get real.”

Skip shook her head. “You know what’s unreal? Your crew left Consensus Space to join a faction that’ll kill your families for something you didn’t even do wrong. It’s insane that you’d put your families at risk like that.”

“That’s not true, Skip. Cross Us If You Dare aren’t barbarians. Our families are citizens there, and protected as such. The situation is simply that we can’t return with this failure unaddressed.”

“Right. So, they are barbarians.”

Aziz tugged at the bottom of her shirt, straightening it behind the vest. “Puh-lease, Skip. You’re a kid. An uneducated kid from a dirtworld who got lucky stealing a ship—and luckier she was caught by us and not those dirtworld police.”

Heat spread up Skip’s neck, cheeks, brow. “I’m not a kid.”

“What would you know about politics, about leadership, about culture?”

“I’m not uneducated.”

“You want to see barbaric?” Aziz said, leaning one hip against her table. “How about we surrender you to your hometown cops and see how they treat you.”

There was a cup on her desk. Skip could smell the coffee. Aziz sipped it while Skip fumed. Aziz’s desk display burped. She put down the cup and answered it.

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