Independence: Book 4 of The Legacy Fleet Series by Nick Webb

Author:Nick Webb [Webb, Nick]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Galactic Empire, Space Opera, military sci-fi, space fleet, space marine, technothriller
Published: 2016-10-04T21:00:00+00:00

Chapter Thirty

Irigoyen Sector, San Martin System, San Martin

Shuttle Fenway, High orbit

Zivic could hardly believe how fast she managed to get the mask adhered to his face and blended into his natural skin tone with a little—

“Wait, is that make-up?” He pulled away from the applicator in her hands.

“Oh don’t be a big baby. Come’ere.”

He grudgingly submitted, letting her apply the disguise pigment—he refused to even think of it as make-up in his head. “My dad would disown me, again, if he knew I was putting on makeup.”

“Seriously? Stop being such as dick.” She wrenched his head to the left and continued her work. “So … he actually disowned you? Like, literal disowning, with paperwork and all that?”

He started to shake his head no when she grabbed him again to keep him still. “Naw. I … I’m just a huge disappointment to him. When I was grounded—my fighter credentials revoked—that was like the final straw for him. We’d butted heads for years. And after mom and my stepdad died, well, he got kinda weird after that, and his disappointing son just pushed him over the edge, I guess.”

“Oh. Sorry,” she said. “About your mom. I lost my uncles and grandparents during the Swarm War. I wasn’t born yet, of course. But one of my aunts was pretty maimed in a factory explosion—she was working on President Avery’s secret anti-matter project. Basically melted her skin off. Should’ve died.”

“Oh god…” he said, trying to keep still for her to finish her work. “She ok now? I mean, it is thirty years on….”

“Yeah, she’s fine. Face looks like shit after five operations to make her look normal, though I suppose she looks better than if they’d left it all melty. There!”

“Done?” He reached up to touch his cheek, which now lacked all feeling as it was covered in cellulose and adhesive.

She slapped his hand away. “Don’t touch it! Still has to dry and set.”

“Uh, we’re kind of on a time crunch here. We can’t just hang out in orbit while my … makeup dries.”

She rolled her eyes at him. “Of course not. You’re going to pilot us down to the commercial spaceport in Ciudad Libertador while I get my own mask on. And then find us a good place to stay while we switch masks and fiddle with our hair and plan the next step.”

He swiveled back to the flight controls and plotted in a course to the spaceport down in the capital city. “We’ve got an IDF transponder. They’ll probably want us to divert to IDF CENTCOM’s port, but I’m going to claim salvage, which, uh, isn’t that far from the truth. That should at least get us on the landing platform and into customs. From there, we’ve got to find a way to give the authorities the slip while we can duck into a hotel and … uh, reapply our makeup.”

The shuttle bumped a little bit as it descended through the atmosphere. He noticed Batak tense up, and reminded himself that not everyone found atmospheric flight as thrilling as he did.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.