Blood and Fire Read Online Free PDF

have these same kinds of overwhelming physical urges. So Morthans didn’t have to control them, didn’t have to know how to behave appropriately toward others. Morthans were trained early how to behave—distrust everyone and everything. Learn that and you know how to survive and succeed for the rest of your life.
    But humans—ordinary humans had all these other operating modes . They made jokes. They flirted. They told the truth . All of these modes
were alien experiences to Brik—so alien, in fact, that he was beginning to suspect that ancestral-form humans were far more unfathomable to Morthans than Morthans ever would be to them. And for that reason, he began to suspect that the Morthan Solidarity might actually lose the war.
    It was a curious thought. Morthans lose?
    Militarily, Morthans were clearly superior—but interstellar space was a great equalizer. A torpedo could be launched from a small ship as well as a big one—it could destroy a big ship as well as a small one. So the advantage lay not in strength, but in speed and tactics.
    Humans had speed, but Morthans had tactics.
    Given that equation, the smart money would bet on the Morthans—but more and more Brik was beginning to realize that the essential irrationality of human beings made them tactically impossible to predict, and possibly impossible to defeat. And if that were so, then the unthinkable might actually be true—human beings might be superior to Morthans.
    All those different operating modes. Humans had more different ways to be, more different ways to think , than Morthans did.
    Very troubling.
    Because if this were true, Brik could not afford to dismiss affection or sexual relationships. If this particularly uncomfortable thesis had any validity to it at all, Brik had to continue his investigations. No matter what the personal cost.
    Indeed, his personal commitment to expanding his knowledge of dangerous things demanded that he return his attention to these investigations. The thought bothered him immensely and he inflicted severe damage on both of his workout robots while he dealt with the discomfort.
    His exercises gave him a way to maintain—and beyond that, he could safely postpone any further inquiries into the matter of emotional attachments because Korie had effectively ordered him to. “Do your job” took precedence.
    At least for now.

Preparation

    For a long while, the crew of the Star Wolf had been resentful of Korie’s treatment. They had complained—with considerable justification—that the executive officer drove them too hard. But later, after several missions and several close encounters with the enemy, after several opportunities to see how well the ship functioned in a crisis, the crew’s attitude had changed dramatically. They still complained about how hard Korie worked them—but now they did so with a considerable degree of pride. Their unofficial motto was, “Yes, but he’s our son of a bitch.”
    Captain Parsons had come aboard the Star Wolf well aware of Korie’s reputation. She knew his record, she knew what fires fueled his engines. She had expected a humorless man, a grim one, a martinet—someone like his mentor, Captain Richard Hardesty, only younger and without the augments. What she found was someone much more complex.
    At first, Korie seemed to her much less than she had expected. But then, perhaps she wasn’t certain at all what she expected. What she found was a young man who was deceptively soft-spoken and respectful of her authority. Possibly he had grown more relaxed with his situation over the past year. And possibly the tales of Korie were somewhat exaggerated. In either case, she found him intriguing—particularly the depth of his knowledge about his starship. She suspected that he could take it apart and rebuild it single-handedly, if given enough time. And add a few improvements in the process. So far, she hadn’t