Jethro 3: No Place Like Home Read Online Free PDF

well,” Valenko rumbled, flicking his ursine ears in humor. He stretched lazily and then shrugged, rolling his massive shoulders. Muscles rippled under his shaggy brown fur. “You heard about the seizures?”
    “Yes, sir,” Jethro replied, nodding. They had cut off all sleep and VR training for the next week. That actually fit well with the ship's schedule, the hyper skip would use up a lot of computing power anyway. Right now the recruits were getting the necessary downtime to recover and decompress.
    “I was thinking,” Valenko said, tapering off to look around and scratch lazily. He licked his chops as long claws got some of the kinks and itching out. With so many bodies on the ship it was hard to get enough time in the gym or in the latrines to get sorted out good and proper. He wanted a long soak in a hot tub.
    “I was thinking,” Valenko said again, as he picked up his harness. “We've got too many people laying about. Won't do. So, I thought maybe you could take a squad of noobs around.”
    “Tag alongs? Babysitting?” Jethro asked, hiding his dismay with difficulty. He hated how the noobs stared at him like he was some alien creature. Some had learned some manners, but most hadn't. One had even stepped on his tail. He flicked it in agitation. He missed being in his suit. He'd run a brief check on it once, but the Captain had locked it down for now. He couldn't blame her, having it go rogue on her ship was bad enough, having it go rogue while in hyper could doom them all. Commander Firefly had convinced her to give him visitation rights to keep the AI that was apparently in the suit content. She'd relented but with ill grace.
    He knew she couldn't wait to get him and the trouble he seemed to bring with him off her ship. He didn't think it was all his fault, but he had to admit he'd caused a few incidents in the past.
    “Sure. I think we, we meaning veterans, should all do that. Take a small group, no more than three or four and show them some practical duties,” Valenko said, using the royal we .
    They had been working hard to get the noobs schooled on basic military etiquette and protocol while on the ship. Perhaps it wouldn't be so bad, Jethro thought, at least they wouldn't muck up a sim or ask too many stupid questions. He frowned, ears flattening over that last thought, realizing the lie in it. “And I'm getting this thought came to you naturally or from up chain sir?” Jethro asked in resignation.
    “Oh, this is my own idea.”
    “From that twisted bog you call a mind?” Jethro asked, ears forward as he twitched his whiskers in humor. “One does have to wonder what you are up to.”
    “Keeping people busy for one.”
    “Right, me, answering stupid questions while trying to keep my tail from getting trod on. Again,” Jethro said shaking his head. “Yes, sir.”
    “Pilot project. I'll send a couple to you.”
    “Great, noobs looking over my shoulder while I do damage control. Lovely.”
    “Oh, that should be interesting,” Valenko murmured, tapping his chin with his index claw. Jethro looked at him, but the bear just smirked slightly. The panther sighed internally and went off to his rack to finish getting ready for what was about to be a very long day.
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    Jethro pulled the panel off and then nodded to his tag alongs. “Okay, what do we do first?” he asked.
    “Um, log where we are, sir?”
    “I'm not a sir, I work for a living,” Jethro growled. “But you are correct,” he said, pointing to the panel's barcode identifier. “Panel number is here. So I look at it, and click with my implants...”
    He traced a box around the code in his vision and then clicked it with his internal mouse icon. The square blinked as his view shifted. The numbers highlighted and then he felt his implants open a channel to the ship's server. “And now the computers confer and log where I am and then upload the schematics to my implants.”
    “Which we can't see since we still