Hellburner Read Online Free PDF

trouble. I really don’t want to. I just don’t want any shot right now.”
    “Sorry, too, sir. Doctor left orders. You don’t want to be any trouble. Right?”
    “No,” he said. He shook his head. He made up his mind he had better change tactics. Agreeing with them got him out of this place. It would. It had. He couldn’t remember. It was only the drugs he had to worry about.
    “Just hold still, sir. All right?”
    “Yeah,” he said, and the hypo kicked against his arm. Stung like hell. His eyes watered.
    He said, “You fuckin’ get off me. I can’t breathe. Let me up, dammit.”
    “Soon’s you shut your eyes, sir. Just be quiet. You loosened a couple of John’s teeth yesterday. You remember?”
    He didn’t remember. But he said, out of breath, “I’m sorry. Sorry about that. I’m better. A lot better.”
    “That’s good, sir.”
    “Friend of mine was here,” he said. But the drug was gathering thick about his brain. He said it again, afraid he might not remember when he waked. Or that it hadn’t happened at all.
    He went to sleep when they drugged him and he waked up and he never knew where or when. He was going out now. He felt it happening. And he was scared as hell where he would wake up or what would be true or where the lines would lead him.
    “Ben,” he cried, “Bird. Ben, come back— Ben, don’t go— they killed my partners, Ben, they fuckin’ killed us—“
    “This isn’t validated,” the check-in clerk said, and slid the travel voucher across the desk in the .6 g of 8-deck. “You need an exit stamp.”
    Ben took the voucher with a sinking heart. “What exit stamp? Nobody said anything about an exit stamp. There’s no exit stamp in the customs information.”
    “It’s administrative, sir. Regulation. I have to have a stamp/’
    “God. Look, call Sol One.”
    “You do that from BaseCom,” the clerk said. And added without expression: “But you need an authorization from your CO to do that, sir.”
    “And where do I get that?” You didn’t yell at clerks. It didn’t get you anything to yell at clerks. Ben said quietly, restrainedly: “My CO’s on Sol One—I need the UDC officer in charge.”
    “This is a Fleet transport voucher.”
    “I know it is,” Ben said. “But this uniform is UDC. Is it at all familiar to you? Where’s the UDC officer in charge?”
    The clerk got a confused look, and focused behind him, where someone had come into the office, to stand in line was Ben’s initial reckoning; but whoever it was said, then, “Lt. Pollard?”
    Voice he’d heard before. A long time ago. He turned around, a little careful in the .6g, saw a blue uniform and a black pullover, a thin, angular face and nondescript pale hair. Brass on the collar.
    The trip out from the Belt. The Hamilton. And Jupiter’s well.
    Graff. Fleet Lt. Jurgen Graff. Carrier pilot, junior grade.
    “There’s an office free,” Graff said, meaning very evidently they should go there. Now. Urgently. A Fleet lieutenant wanted to talk to him, and he was stuck on Fleet orders in something that increasingly felt like a deliberate black hole?
    “I’ve got a flight out of here at 1800. They’re talking about an exit stamp. I need some kind of clearance.”
    “You don’t have a flight out of here. Not this one.”
    He slowed down, so that Graff had to pull a stop and look at him. “Sir. I need this straightened out, with apologies, sir, but I’ve got a transfer order waiting for me back on Sol One, I was told not to communicate with my CO, I’m not Fleet personnel. I understand the interservice agreements, but—“
    “Five minutes.”
    “I’m UDC personnel. I want to see a UDC ranking officer. Sir. Now.”
    “Five minutes,” Graff repeated. “You don’t want your friend screwed. Do you?”
    “My friend— Sir, I don’t care what happens to my friend. I’ve got an appointment waiting for me back on Sol One, and if I lose it, I’m screwed. I’m just a little uneasy about this whole