Merkiaari Wars: 01 - Hard Duty Read Online Free PDF Page A

grimaced, his thoughts heading toward a place he knew well; one he didn’t want to revisit. “Going through the motions. All of us... all is programming,” he murmured.
    “Sir?”
    Eric cursed himself. Dammit he was slipping. He hadn’t noticed the steward arrive. And he had said that last aloud! Dammit, he was acting like... he shuddered. He was acting like a classic whigout wannabe—a malfunctioning unit fit only for termination. No! He was fine. He was rock solid stable, he was!
    “I’m fine,” Eric said, making a guess the steward was offering refreshment. The steward nodded and made to move on. Eric stayed him a moment with a raised hand. “How long to undock?”
    “As the pilot said, sir, a few minutes more for traffic to clear our space.”
    Shit, he had missed the announcement too. “Thanks.”
    “You’re welcome, sir.”
    Eric let the steward go and turned his attention inward again. He pulled up his diagnostics and ran a full scan. While that was running, he opened the download and forced himself to wait calmly for the scan to complete. He wasn’t a damn burnout, he was just distracted. It happened. Being enhanced didn’t make him less Human in that aspect at least.
    The mission was a snoop and scoot. The data provided plenty of background information for him. Interesting. The current president of Thurston was the son of the old one, who had been an unapologetic bastard of mega proportions, but strangely not in the people of Thurston’s eyes. He had limited his particular brand of vicious single-mindedness to political and business enemies, and allowed the citizens of Thurston quite a bit of freedom. Very clever of him really. They loved him for it, and never realised he was only letting them have what they were entitled to anyway. Of course, he was one of the founders of the company that owned most of the planet, and employed most of them in his mining operations. The planet was named for him!
    The current President, Martin James Thurston, was cut from different cloth. Educated on Earth he had brought true democracy to his home planet when his father died and he took over. Raised to the presidency by acclamation, he immediately set about undermining his own power by legislating a five year term for the presidency, and throwing away his own lifetime position. At the same time, he instituted wide spread reforms that made the existing parliament more than just a tourist attraction and into what it was meant to be.
    His father must be spinning in his grave, Eric mused. Of course introducing a proper parliament with real powers and political parties meant Thurston was on course to join the Alliance—a stated goal of the current government. Such things as real democracy and political safeguards were required for membership, and it was that proposed membership that had sparked the need for Eric’s mission.
    As always, democracy had enemies. In Thurston’s case it had the so-called Freedom Movement to deal with.
    In his father’s time, such a terrorist group would never have flowered into a real problem. Dictatorships did have uses, and one of those was making troublemakers disappear. Eric had a lot of sympathy with that sort of thing. He preferred making such people vanish as well, but dictators never knew when to stop. Too many innocents tended to die needlessly, and that was something Eric did not approve of. According to Ken’s data, Thurston had requested aid from the Alliance to deal with the terrorists and it was granted. An Alliance Marine battalion commanded by a Major Stein had been landed to take care of business. They were not yet in position to take out the Freedom Movement in its entirety, but they had been in action a few times on a smaller scale.
    His mission then was to infiltrate the Freedom Movement and report to Major Stein with everything needed for the Marines to clean house. Thurston would then complete his intention of dragging his planet into the big leagues—full membership