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

hasn’t sat down first. I’m staying on my feet as a reminder to
me
to be as brief as I can, given how much I need to say.”
    Those few older soldiers who were still on their feet, including her fellow officers, settled into their chairs. Ia nodded.
    “Thank you. Most of you received your transfer orders with very little explanation as to why you were being transferred,” she said, acknowledging in her opening words the confusion she could see lurking in the expressions of the men and women studying her. “You may think you have been selected at random. You may be wondering why
you
are here, and not someone supposedly better qualified. I say to you that you
are
the right men and women for the jobs that lie ahead of us. I have painstakingly hand-selected each and every one of you, based upon the foreknowledge that each and every one of you can and will get your tasks done, and get them done right.
    “What those tasks are will have to wait for another day. Our ship is still in dry…” She paused as a rumbling noise transferred through the deckplates for a moment, then finished her sentence. “…in dry dock, undergoing the last of the interior fittings. We ourselves will be splitting our time between this ship, the dock station, and even some land-based maneuvers over the next two months as we give this crew a shakedown to get you used to your upcoming multiple responsibilities. Then we will be taking this ship out for its shakedown run as well.
    “But first, an introduction of your command staff, starting with myself. My name is Ia, pronounced
EE-yah
, not
Eye-yah
, or even
Lah
, and it is my first, last, and only name. You may therefore call me Captain, Captain Ia, or even just Ia in those moments when we are being informal. For those few of youalready familiar with my military nickname, my first name is
not
‘Mary’ and I will not respond to it on its own. You may, however, call me by my full nickname, Bloody Mary,” she allowed, meeting the gaze of a man here, a woman there, “but you
will
say it with respect. I have formed a very bad habit throughout my military career of flooding the deckplates in my enemies’ blood, and I have no intention of breaking that habit in the years to come.”
    A few bodies stirred in the crowd at that; not everyone in the room was comfortable with the thought of such violent combat. The green-and-brown-haired man at her side grinned openly at their discomfort; he had seen it before and wasn’t fazed by the thought. Ia nodded briefly at him and continued.
    “On a more personal note, I come from the heaviest inhabited world. That means I am roughly three times as strong and three times as fast as the majority of the Humans in this room. I am also a very strong psychic, stronger than any other Human you are likely to meet, because my mother is very much a Human…but my father was a Feyori.”
    She waited while that caused another stir. The fact that psychic abilities came from the Meddlers was a somewhat known but rarely discussed topic since it made most people uneasy. Admitting openly to her crew that she was a half-breed would make many of them uncomfortable around her. None would be openly hostile, but some would be wary. Ironically, some of the uncomfortable ones would be fellow psis; even more ironic, most hadn’t realized yet just how many psis had been gathered into her crew.
    “Make no mistake, meioas. I side with my fellow Humans and the other matter-based sentients. Beyond that, the main thing you need to know right now is that I am a massive precog. In fact, I am the Prophet of a Thousand Years, as prophesied by the Sh’nai faith of the V’Dan Empire.” That caused another, much larger stir in the crowd as waves of doubt spread across many of their faces. Only a handful believed in the main V’Dan religion; most were followers of Terran faiths, if they followed anything. Raising her hand briefly, she warded off that doubt. “Don’t worry if you don’t