Hellfire (THEIRS NOT TO REASON WHY) Read Online Free PDF Page A

usually it doesn’t break, and usually it can be tossed back up into the air again. I’m juggling countless septillion lives, and sometimes a detail or two can slip past my fingers.
    Unfortunately for me, “dropping the ball” has an entirely different meaning and a very unpleasant outcome if I drop it badly. Every day, I tried my damnedest to get it right. But, to quote Dickens, “I am mortal, and liable to fall.” Or to use another quote, “Damned if you do, and damned if you don’t,” which is one of the reasons why I nicknamed my Company what I did.
    ~Ia
    OCTOBER 24, 2495 T.S.
    TUPSF SECURED SHIPYARDS
TRITON ORBIT, NEPTUNE, SOL SYSTEM
    Ia stopped in front of the door to the briefing boardroom. She paused a moment to draw two deep breaths, then squared her shoulders.
I can do this…I can do it…I
have
done it, and done it well.
    The only problem is, the moment I stride across that stage, I’m spotlight center for
everything
that follows. Everything I say and do will be scrutinized by the Command Staff, the Department of Innovations, and most importantly, by my entire crew.
    It was a disturbingly large responsibility. Up until now, Ia’s task had been to take shelter behind the rules and regulations and break them only when no one was looking. Now everyone would be looking, and she had to start breaking a lot of those rules and regs.
Not to mention, from here on out, I won’t have a true moment of peace. Not if I want to do everything I need to get done.
    Mindful of the weight of the medals pinned to her newly issued set of Dress Blacks, of the impression she would make in wearing all of them, Ia touched the main button on the controls. The panel slid open with a faint hiss of hydraulics. Noise escaped through the opening, the sounds of 160 men and women chatting quietly among themselves as they waited in idle boredom.
    She knew the layout of the briefing room, shaped like a lecture hall with projection screens on all the walls and tiers of padded chairs that could double as acceleration couches. Those chairs faced a curved table reserved for the six officers and four sergeants seated on either side of the empty chair waiting at the center.
    The Captain’s seat.
    Her seat.
    The door Ia used wasn’t one of the double-wide ones at the back of the hall, above the riser seats. Hers opened onto a short corridor leading to the platform holding that table. It gave her a good view of the ten Humans seated behind that table, though not of the rest of the room; she could hear the others occupying the hall, but that was it. The dim lighting of that little entryhall also hid her arrival from all but one of the sentients in the room. Specifically, the petite redhead who sat at the near end of the table, with her back to Ia’s door.
    The other woman’s eyes may have been occupied with the task of using a tiny stiletto to trim her nails, but her other senses were just as sharp and ready to be used. Between one breath and the next, the knife was shoved back into one of the sheaths doubling as hairpins that held her coronet of braids in place. The woman scrambled to her feet, standing on the seat of her chair so that everyone could see as well as hear her. All without even a single glance behind.
    “Officer on deck!”
she snapped, her voice as much a command as a warning. With that said, she dropped to the platform floor and stood At Attention. Other bodies rose around the table at her call, some more quickly than others, and the rustling of dozens more could be heard from around the corner.
    Shoulders squared, chin level, Ia strode onto the platform hosting the table and the men and women now on their feet. As she came into view, first the officers and sergeants at the table lifted their hands to their brows, then the soldiers up into the tiers.
    Clad as she was in both Dress Blacks and her Dress cap, saluting was mandatory. Ia did not return any of them, however. Instead, she moved to the open chair at the center of the