An Ancient Peace Read Online Free PDF

This time, they kept the dance short.
    â€œYes,” she said. “I am still angry that we haven’t been sent out to hunt for the plastic aliens. I am fully aware that no one has any idea of where to start looking. I know while the cellular marker they stuck in our heads means they occasionally respond to my touch or to Craig’s, that means shit in the end given that I carried a plastic bowlfor days without them giving themselves away. But I also know that people died—good people, mediocre people, bad people,
people
—because they were using us, all of us, Confederation and Primacy both, as subjects in a social science experiment. The war was their laboratory, our deaths were data, and they don’t get to do that without consequences.”
    â€œAnd yet, because they’ve disappeared from known space, it appears they have indeed escaped without consequences.”
    Torin pushed both hands back through her hair and sighed. “Why do I think the word displacement is going to show up any minute now . . .”

    On OutSector stations, the lowest two or three levels of the central core were set aside for off-duty and civilian personnel. On a MidSector station the size of Ventris, five broad concourses had been set aside for stores, bars, and cantinas. Although Sutton’s on Concourse Two was a civilian bar, it seldom saw civilians; both officers and enlisted personnel gravitating there for the excellent beer, the first-class kitchen, and the enormous vid screen that showed a steady stream of the Confederation’s more obscure sports. In spite of three solid days of cricket annually, it had been Torin’s favorite bar when she’d served on Ventris and she saw no reason to find another just because she no longer wore a uniform.
    The first time she’d sat down with her team in Sutton’s after a Justice Department debrief—the debrief where Torin had picked up another dozen visits to the Corps psychologist for what the Wardens had called excessive violence while closing an orbital factory turning Katrien into coats—a brand new second lieutenant had made a comment about certain people not knowing where they were unwelcome. The comment had been intended to be overheard. Before Werst could do more than threaten further excessive violence, the lieutenant had been set straight by two captains, three NCOs, and Elliot Westbrook, the grandson of the original owners.
    Staff Sergeant Kerr had fought a thousand Silsviss to a standstill, ripped off their leader’s head, and brought the vicious reptilian race into the Confederation.
    Staff Sergeant Kerr had outwitted a sentient alien ship and, unarmedand with only an HE suit between her and vacuum, stood between her people and enemy fighters.
    Gunnery Sergeant Kerr had brought down Crucible when it turned against the Marines it was supposed to teach and by defeating it—with nothing more than a platoon of trainee Marines—had discovered the hyper-intelligent shape-shifting plastic aliens who’d been collecting data on the Confederation.
    Gunnery Sergeant Kerr had survived the destruction of Sho’quo Company, escaped from an alien prison, and threatened the hyper-intelligent shape-shifting plastic until they admitted they’d nurtured the fight between the Primacy and the Confederation as a sort of social experiment, and then she’d ended the war.
    The poor kid’s hands had still been shaking when she downed the beer Torin had bought her as an apology for the exaggerations.
    Unfortunately, although the war was over, the fighting had become a centuries-long habit and it hadn’t entirely ended. The plastic aliens had been happy to explain; she hadn’t had to threaten them. Much. The Crucible thing was essentially true, but, in all honesty, it had been an accident of placement as much as intent that had put her between her Marines and the enemy after leaving the alien ship in Craig’s