Hostiles (The Galactic Mage series) Read Online Free PDF

descend, he added, “Commander, do not be late for the court martial, and when you arrive, remember that while that foul mouth of yours is arguably acceptable on a ship, it has no place down here. Nor do we have time for any ill-conceived debauchery that might land you in court as well. Until this war is over, you are still a member of my crew, do you understand?”
    “Yes, sir,” Roberto said.
    When the ramp was down, a pair of Marines saluted the captain, who directed them inside to the gurney upon which Orli lay. “You are to stay with her every second until she is in a cell. I don’t care if there are six hundred Minot doctors, nurses and interrogators with her, do you understand? You walk her into that cell, check the lock and make damn sure the cameras are on. That cell security needs to be armed and ready to go off at all times. Make it certain. And if they decide to move her, keep her drugged. If they need her awake, put a gag on her.”
    “Yes, sir,” the two men replied.
    “And listen close. If Meade or any other Prosperion shows up, you shoot them on the spot. To kill, do you understand that? No questions. No ‘hold it, mister,’ no, ‘freeze,’ just right through the heart, and a second through the head just in case. You have not seen what these people can do, or how fast they can do it. Especially Meade. Do not hesitate. Do you have that?”
    “Yes, sir.”
    Captain Asad turned to look over his shoulder, toward the front of the shuttle where Roberto was finishing up the shutdown of the ship. “Commander, let’s go.”
    Roberto set the ship into sleep mode and joined the captain at the hatch. At another time, he might have felt insulted by the captain’s comments regarding his behavior, like a chastened child, but not this time. Not while standing there looking down at his friend like she was, still and seemingly lifeless, strapped there helpless and likely to be set upon the whims of the great military bureaucracy. A sinking feeling came upon him as he looked into her face. It was eerily empty, vacant, like somehow they’d killed her already, and now she was just waiting to die. The captain had been cryptic in his answers about why they’d brought her down here from the start. They obviously thought she was a threat. They’d drugged her nearly to coma for fear that she might try something, might make an attempt to escape or use some secret magic whatnot that Altin had made for her and that she’d hidden on her person somewhere. Roberto shook his head ruefully. It had been a rough twelve years for her, most of it not her fault. She made some dumb choices there at the end, but he couldn’t really blame her, all things considered. And he’d liked Altin too.
    He caught himself looking around the hangar then, thoughts of Altin sending his gaze darting into the shadowy corners, searching for movement behind the stacked crates and parked gravity-lifts. A flutter near a pile of boxes caught his eye, looked like the billow of gray robes, but he saw that it was only a tarp thrown over the boxes, one corner of it blown about by air coming from massive ventilation ducts high above. He shook his head and followed the captain out.
    Altin wouldn’t come down here anyway. He couldn’t. He didn’t even know where “here” was. Roberto knew how that magic worked, at least a little bit. He was pretty sure that was the main reason they’d been ordered to bring Orli down off the ship: to get her away from Altin’s all-seeing magic eyes. Roberto felt a little better about that. His experience with Prosperion spell casting told him that was a real risk, Altin finding her. He knew the Prosperion would try. So it made sense to get her away from the ship, which was a thing, a place, Altin was familiar with. Teleporters couldn’t go somewhere they’d never been before, or at least that they hadn’t seen with their magic sight. Roberto had worked with enough teleporters to understand that fact very well. But