Passage at Arms Read Online Free PDF Page B

was the witty ethnic insult. He didn’t argue that one. It’d been a tight squeeze.
    “They’ll be along any minute. Said they were sending somebody.”
    “Why out here? Why not straight into Turbeyville?” He hadn’t revealed his landing plan beforehand.
    “We’d have got smoked. Planetary Defense doesn’t waste time shitting around with Fleet couriers. They’re busy covering the lifter pipe from the Pits. They don’t want to hear from home anyhow.” He patted the case chained to his wrist. Odd, I thought, that it should be so huge. Suitcase size. Big suitcase. “They’ll cuss me for two weeks.”
    I studied the chain. “Damn. I’ll have to cut your hand off now.”
    “That isn’t funny.” The poor bastards. They get so paranoid they won’t turn their backs on their own mothers.
    The chain was long. He put the case down and sat on it. He said, “Just open them baby blues and turn yourself a slow circle, Lieutenant.”
    I did. The plains. The grass. The cowboys, who showed no interest in the boat.
    “What do you see?”
    “Not a whole lot.”
    “You’ve seen it all. Change your plans. Come on home with me.”
    “There’s more to it than this.”
    “Well, sure. Trees, mountains, some busted-up cities. Big deal. Look, at those bastards. Hunking around on horses. And they’re the lucky ones. They don’t live in caves. No boomer drops on cows.”
    “I fought too hard to get here. I’ll see it through.”
    “Fool.” He grinned. “Climbers, yet. Here it comes.” He pointed. A skimmer wove a sinuous path across the green, a small, dark boat chopping through a breezy sea.
    It rumbled up to us, down wash whipping torn grass against our legs. “Still not too late, Lieutenant. Go hide in the boat.”
    I smiled my holo-hero smile. “Let’s go.”
    It’s easy to grin when the fiercest monster in sight is a cow. I’d ridden the killer bulls of Tregorgarth. I was ready for anything.
    The skimmer driver waved impatiently. “Not the wide-open-spaces type,” the courier guessed.
    We boarded. Our steed surged forward, arcing past the herd, leaving a long, dull snail track of smashed grass. Cows and cowboys watched with equally indifferent eyes. Our driver had little to say. She was the surly type. You know, “My feelings are hurt just by being here with you.”
    The sub-Lieutenant stage-whispered, “You’re an offworlder, they figure you’re a High Command spy. They hate High Command.”
    “Can’t blame them.” Canaan had been under soft blockade for years. It made life difficult.
    Back when, the other side hadn’t thought Canaan worth occupation. Big mistake. It was a tough nut now. The senior officer in the region, Admiral Tannian, had assembled scattered, defeated, ragtag units for a dramatic last stand. The Ulantonids disappointed him. So he dug in and began gnawing on their supply lines. Now they are too heavily committed elsewhere to give him the squashing he wanted.
    Great stuff, Fortress Canaan, High Command decided. They sent Tannian the first Climber squadron into service. He saw their potential instantly. He created his own industrial base.
    You couldn’t question the Admiral’s energy, dedication, or tenacity. Canaan, an agricultural world sparsely settled, overnight became a feisty fortress and shipbuilding center. A loose frontier society became a tight warfare state with a solitary purpose: the construction and manning of Climbers. All Tannian demanded of the Inner Worlds was a trickle of trained personnel to cadre his locally raised legions. A bargain. High Command gladly obliged. To the sorrow of many ranking officers with ambitions or personal axes to grind.
    Admiral Frederick Minh-Tannian became proconsul of Canaan’s system and absolute master of humanity’s last bastion in this end of space. Down the line, on the Inner Worlds, he was considered one of the great heroes of the war.
    It was an hour’s run to the nearest Guards’ outpost. The place fit the Wild West