Scarcity (Special Forces: FJ One Book 1) Read Online Free PDF

who are the reason we have to leave. Greedy and impatient and cruel and selfish. Who ruthlessly turned every neighbor and potential ally into an enemy. Who destroyed the environment, and the health of every living thing in it, to get another nickel you didn’t need.”
    He leaned in closer, his steady, steely blue eyes dominating the Doctor’s, forcing him to blink. “And if you think for one moment that we are going to let you repeat those mistakes on a fresh new world, and ruin our chance at doing it right this time, you are out of your fucking mind.”
    The Captain strode out without looking back. “And now, I have go to see the Hierarch and explain to him why he and all his people were nearly killed today by one of ‘my kind.’”
     

CHAPTER FIVE – THE BEST SEED PREVAILS
     
    The Captain took a fifteen minute nap, which was just enough sleep to keep going. When he woke up, he was out of “combat” mindset, ready to take off his battle cap and put on his diplomatic one.
    He changed into his full dress uniform, replete with sharp creases, shining buttons and glittering medals. The High Tiamatans were obsessed with signs of status. The one thing that was the same on his field and dress uniforms was the holographic badge on his shoulder, with the Fallschirmjäger emblem: two shimmering light sabers, one red and one green, crossed in combat.
    He took a slider to the Great Gate, and walked into the city of Rumbra from there. Foreign ambassadors arriving to take their place at court would be expected to put on a lavish procession as they entered through this gate, displaying their nation’s wealth and power. Regardless of their splendor, those processions would be critically observed from the city walls by the High Ones, who used them as an occasion for a war of wits over who could best mock their new guests.
    The Captain and his team had made a sufficiently magnificent entrance into Rumbra on Day One, the day of first formal contact, three years ago. They’d studied the planet from the orbiting station (and undercover on the ground) for two years before that. That was the usual timeframe for finding a good place to found a colony, identify key members of the local community whom they’d need to win over, and of course how best to make a good first impression. Scarcity had nothing to do with the gilded chariots they’d rode in on, or the mechanical horses that pulled them, built from dug-up plans for rich men’s toys of a century earlier.
    It was the common practice to name potential colony worlds after planets from old science fiction novels. It was one of the few “imperialist” tactics of Department 6C. It helped humans think of new worlds as part of their own heritage, instead of as “foreign” lands. This in turn helped 6C to persuade them to take stewardship, rather than control, of a new planet. The locals often didn’t have a name for their whole world, other than the native translation of “the land.” The goal was, over time, to rename the planet once humanity was comfortable enough and integrated enough with the natives to think of the world’s population as “us” rather than “us and them.”
    Today, the city streets were quiet. People had taken shelter in their patrons’ walled compounds, as if that could save them from the death-dealing machines that had, just barely, stopped short of the walls.
    There was only one man on the street, sitting just inside the gate on a camp chair, reading a book. He jumped up with both a salute and a smile when he saw the Captain.
    “Captain Chen, sir. Is everyone okay?”
    The Captain returned his salute, then shook his hand. “Lieutenant Orlov. We’re all fine. A little dinged up, is all.” His wounds from the cyberaptor attack were legion, but they’d been sealed with nuskin, and toxin tests had been negative. He was running on pain blockers and a small kick of adrenalert that Sergeant Hewitt had grudgingly allowed him after his nap.
    But he was