Pledge Allegiance Read Online Free PDF Page B

Her lines were certainly more retro than modern but she had a certain quirky charm about her. Her body was long with wings set far back, behind a top-mounted gun. The running lights lit on her nose and wingtips were illuminated orange and red and seemed to be winking at me as we got closer.
    She wasn’t much compared to an Imperium naval ship but she seemed to have character. She and I would get along just fine.
    I turned to Vess and asked, “What’s her name?”
    He grinned. “Captain Shaun Blake, I’d like to introduce you to the Finch .”

Chapter 4
    W e flew beneath the Finch ’s hull and ascended into her docking bay. I heard the whirr of machinery as an outer door closed and an inner door opened. Morrow flew us expertly through the airlock and into the shuttle bay.
    The shuttle door opened and a set of steps extended down to the hangar’s steel floor. Through the window, I could see a second shuttle sitting a few feet away and other vehicles covered by tarps. One of them was a tank, the camo-painted barrel of its main gun protruding from the tarp. I wondered what kind of trouble Vess was expecting. He seemed to be putting together a small private army.
    “Come on,” Vess said. “Let’s go and meet the rest of the crew.” He jumped up out of his seat and descended the steps.
    Baltimore and Morrow climbed out of their seats silently, their expressionless faces a stark contract to Solomon Vess’s wide-eyed wonder. Okay, so maybe the old guy was overenthusiastic but it would nice if at least some of his enthusiasm rubbed off on these two.
    I followed them, realizing that proper protocol would have been for them to wait until I had disembarked. I was the captain, after all.
    We walked through an open door and along a small, dimly lit corridor to a second door where two soldiers stood at attention with blaster rifles. They didn’t have the Imperium insignias on their dark blue combat jackets but everything about their attitude and manner told me these men had once worked in the regular army, even if they were now part of Vess’s private security force.
    They waited until we were through the door and then fell in behind us.
    Vess tapped the steel wall gently. “What do you think of her, Captain?”
    “She’ll do just fine,” I assured him.
    “As I said, we’ve upgraded the engines and weapons a little. She should fly like a dream. If you’re interested in all the technical aspects, Tegan can fill you in on that later.”
    “Tegan?” I asked.
    Vess nodded. “Tegan Prime, your engineer. She and her crew will make sure the Finch ’s engines are ship shape. I asked her to meet us in one of the conference rooms, along with Shibari and Hart.”
    “Shibari and Hart?” I asked. I hoped I was going to be able to keep all these names straight in my head. Until today, the only things I’d had to remember were WarZone strategies. I didn’t have many acquaintances on Iton-3 so interacting with people on a daily basis was going to be a new experience. I’d done it before, of course, but I had the feeling I was going to have to relearn my social skills. Especially where Morrow and Baltimore were concerned.
    “Don’t worry,” Vess said as if reading my mind, “you’ll soon get to know everyone. All you need to remember for now is that I have assembled the finest crew for this mission.”
    He led us to a transporter. Vess, Baltimore, Morrow, and I squeezed inside but there was no room for the soldiers. They remained in the corridor as the doors slid closed.
    Vess pressed a button and the transporter began to move. “There are a dozen soldiers on board,” he told me. “Sergeant Ian Hart is in charge of them.”
    “Sergeant?” I said. “I thought the Imperium wasn’t involved in this mission.”
    “It isn’t,” Vess said. “I’ve hired Hart and his squad from the Imperium but his superiors know nothing about his duties on board this ship. I paid a lot of money to keep it that way.”
    I nodded with