Against All Enemies Read Online Free PDF Page B

and gave him a surprised look. "What're you doing up, Paul?"
    Good question. Randy had just come off watch, but what explanation could Paul give? "The XO wanted to see me," Paul explained, reasoning that it was a truthful statement as far as it went.
    "Oh. Paperwork?"
    "Yeah." Paul seized on the explanation. "Legal officer stuff. There's some reports the XO wants to see."
    Randy winced. "That ship's legal officer job really sucks, doesn't it? Uh, have they told you who's going to get it when you leave the ship?"
    "Not yet." Every officer had collateral duties, extra jobs they got to be responsible for in addition to their primary jobs. Paul had been given the legal officer job, responsible for advising the captain on legal issues, by virtue of a three-week-long course he'd taken before reporting to the ship. With Paul's own transfer off the ship coming up, he'd heard that the other junior officers were in mortal terror of being assigned the legal officer job. "Are you volunteering?" he couldn't help adding.
    "No!" Randy suddenly seemed to realize he needed to be somewhere else and started down the passageway away from Paul. "I'm too busy all the time now! Check you later!"
    "Sure." Paul watched him go, then headed for the wardroom first. He'd need coffee.
    The only person in the wardroom when Paul entered was the new supply officer. Paul blinked in surprise as he realized Commander Smithe was watching a video on the big display screen. Smithe gave a non-verbal and non-committal greeting to Paul and then paid full attention to the screen while Paul got his coffee.
    Paul checked the title of the video as he got his dose of caffeine. Slaughterhouse Five ? Oh, it's a twentieth century video. Old junk . With time to kill, he pulled out his data pad and called up a description of the movie. It sounded mostly incomprehensible, but Paul locked on one section of the description. "The aftermath of Dresden." Dresden? Air raid. Good God. Now I remember . He looked at the screen, where two men were climbing up some huge pile of rubble. Dresden. They still don't know how many people were killed there. For no reason. No military reason, anyway .
    The comparison bothered him. We're here watching these civilians. They're not harmless, though. Well, some of them aren't. But some of them are likely to die tonight. And we're helping that effort even if we're not directly involved in what's going to happen on the surface of that asteroid. What if the civilians fire at us? What if we have to kill kids to stop them? What a lousy choice.
    We're supposed to use these weapons of ours against other military forces. That's the way it's supposed to work. Honorable combat against people who follow the same rules we do. That sounds stupid and archaic but it's true. But how many times do we end up pointing them at civilians, instead?
    And we don't have a choice. What the hell else are we supposed to do ?
    He didn't know. So Paul headed for combat, nursing his coffee and hoping his fears would prove meaningless.
    He tried to move without any sign of unusual haste or tension, though Paul realized that if he did move with speed and apprehension then everyone seeing him would assume Commander Garcia or the XO had just called him in for another chewing out. The darkened nighttime passageways of the Michaelson were once again almost deserted except for a few personnel conducting physical inspections as a backstop for the automated sensors which had too great a tendency to fail just when they were most needed. The quiet and sparsely populated passageways made a strange contrast to the turmoil inside of Paul as he thought of the upcoming operation and everything that might go wrong.
    He arrived in Combat a good half hour before the operation was scheduled to begin, nodding casually to the watchstanders who looked up at his entrance. He talked to them for a few minutes, the sort of quiet interaction that just reassured Paul that they knew what was going on and