Judgment Day by Joseph Nassise

Author:Joseph Nassise [Nassise, Joseph]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Urban Fantasy, Fiction
Publisher: Harbinger Books
Published: 2014-09-02T07:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

What had been a rather heated conversation just moments before as Riley came down the hallway dropped to a dull whisper and then died entirely as he stepped inside the locker room.

Normally he would have ignored it; the men had a tendency to be closed-mouthed whenever an officer was present, even if, like himself, the officer had come up through the ranks. It was to be expected to some degree. But something about the way several of the men kept stealing glances in his direction as he passed through the room finally brought him to a halt.

He looked around; of the two dozen or so men that stood around the room in various shades of undress following an exercise drill, the majority of them would not meet his eyes. Those that did seemed to do so defiantly, as if daring Riley to say something.

To their surprise, and perhaps even his own, he did.

“What’s going on?” he asked.

No one said anything. “Grover? Chambers? What’s the problem here?”

The former didn’t say anything, but the later, Chambers, looked away as he said, “No problem, sir.”

Riley was about to press the issue – there obviously was a problem of some kind or another – when someone in the back of the room said, “I think they should hang him.”

The Echo Team commander couldn’t tell who had spoken, so he asked the room in general. “Hang who? And for what?”

No one said anything.

A feeling of dread began to drift its way up his spine. Suddenly he knew that something had gone terribly wrong. Now he just needed to find out what.

“When I ask a question, I expect an answer. One last time, hang who and for what?”

This time one of the men from the back of the room stepped forward. Riley recognized him as one of the new replacements that had been brought into the strike team ranks in recent months by Preceptor Johannson. Pasquale, Riley thought his name was.

“The Heretic. Williams. You ask me it should have been done a long time ago,” the man said with a sneer, looking around at the other men to see who was with him.

Hang Cade? Riley couldn’t believe what he was hearing.

Nor seeing, for that matter. A number of the men were nodding in agreement with Pasquale. Most were rookies, but there were a handful of veterans doing the same. It was as if the Preceptor’s whisper campaign against Cade had wiped away the years of sacrifice he had made on the Order’s behalf.

The rest of the men were muttering darkly as well, but their ire was directed at their comrades rather than at Cade. A tension sprang into the air, one that hadn’t been there moments before. It was as if voicing their opinions to a superior officer had suddenly made their differences all the more real. If left unchecked, Riley had no doubt that fists would be flying before long.

Dissension like this was a cancer festering in the ranks, and he needed to cut it out before it grew too big to be contained.

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.