Big Pete (Privateer Tales Book 4) Read Online Free PDF Page A

guard take a thin black combat boot straight to the solar plexus. He stumbled and waved a blaster pistol back toward his attacker. Shock barely described my emotions when the transport pilot, Lieutenant Irawan, stepped into view and fired two blaster rounds into the man’s chest. She turned, looked straight at me and took aim.
    “No…”
    She fired and the shot whizzed over my head. I swiveled around to see the big guard, who I’d dropped first, fall back.
    “Shit…”
    It’s impossible to look cool when you’re lying on top of another person, with your wrists bound and wrapped around their head. Moreover, removing yourself from that position makes you look quite a bit more ridiculous. I wasn’t sure why, all of a sudden, I cared about that …
    Check that. Of course I did.

ESCAPE
     
    “How’d you get here?” I asked, crawling over the bodies in the doorway. Again, there’s just no graceful way to do this with your hands bound.
    “A simple thank you would suffice,” she replied and crouched down next to me. She was holding a pistol in one hand and flicked open a nano-blade with the other. I pushed my wrists towards her and she cut the simple but effective band-style restraints.
    “Right, thanks. Did you come alone?” I picked up weapons and discarded them for the junk they were. The Skampers were fighting a war and they were radically underfunded.
    “Yes. We need to get out of here,” she said peeking nervously around corners.
    “Give me a second.” I found a decent, medium-sized hand blaster with a quarter charge. It would be a bitch to aim without an AI interface but it’d have to do. “Where’d you get the flash-bangs and breaching charges?”
    “They were in my go-kit. We need to move, Sergeant.” Her voice took on an air of command.
    I smiled grimly to myself. That didn’t take long , I thought. “Yes, Ma’am. Right behind you.”
    “Don’t get pissy. You know as well as I do we can’t hang out here.”
    “Agreed, but if I don’t get something on my feet, it’ll slow us down. What floor are we on?”
    “Second,” she answered, “and I’ve only got one breaching charge left and no flash-bangs.”
    “Perfect.” I looked over the four fallen Skampers in the room and chose the big guy I’d originally dropped. I was pulling his boots off when we heard the sounds of people running. “Is that door unlocked?” I indicated the one in the opposite direction of the noises. While she was checking, I dragged a Skamper soldier forward, setting him up so that he looked like he was peeking around the wall with a rifle, guarding the hallway.
    Irawan ran to the door and was unable to open it. “Want me to blow it?” she asked.
    “Nope. Help me with this guy,” I said. We pulled the big guard over to the door. Since this guy had been first in the room, I was hoping his palm print would open all the doors on this level.
    Semi-automatic blaster fire lanced the room, just over the head of our dummy guard. Fortunately, we weren't directly in line with the hallway anymore, but it wouldn’t be long before we had company.
    I heard the lock click and Irawan slipped through the opening. I quickly followed, pulling the guard through behind us, shutting the door and using the guard’s hand to lock it.
    “One sec,” I said. She was already half-way down the hallway. The guard had been through a lot. He was still breathing, but not too lively after taking blaster rounds to the chest. Hopefully, he wouldn’t come around and let anyone through the door for a while. So far, we’d escaped cleanly. I caught up with Irawan and we ran to a corner and peered around. My ruse wouldn’t last long. They’d figure out the guy in the doorway wasn’t returning fire and that we’d found another way out. A few minutes could be a lifetime for us, though.
    “Here,” I whispered harshly and jumped into an abandoned office. I closed the door behind us and looked out the window. It was raining which wasn’t