Severance Read Online Free PDF Page B

nothing bad. Not too bad at least. Not
yet. I just thought I might have stumbled upon one.”
    “I guess we all need our hobbies.” Stein hadn’t told him
everything about her nocturnal activities, but he was smart enough to guess, if
Bruce hadn’t drunkenly told him everything. Griese waved his arm at the room. “For
me, it’s low–gravity prose. More classy.”
    “Oh, highly classy. I like the way Kate’s skirt keeps
billowing up. You know, I think they did have undergarments back in Shakespeare’s
time.”
    “We can’t completely defy the audience’s expectations, Laura.
This is still the Argos.”
    Stein smiled. “All right.” She looked at the door, then the
time on her terminal. “I think Ellen and I are meeting at the Prairie tonight.
You coming?”
    “To chaperone you two? Sounds dangerous. I’ll see.”
    “It won’t be any fun without you.”
    “I’ve been told by several reliable sources that Ellen is
much more fun without me around,” Griese said, smiling. “But your kind words
are appreciated.”
    §
    Sergeant Sinclair Hogg walked down the street at a measured
pace, scanning back and forth. Tall, wide, and solid, Hogg looked like a cop; even
in plain clothes, his size and bearing marked his profession as clearly as if
he had a little rotating blue light on his head. He had exited the trolley a
block earlier than necessary so he could arrive on foot. Good for seeing what
he was walking into, but more importantly, it allowed people to see him coming.
He could tell a lot about someone by how they reacted to a security officer
approaching. That was something his partner, Steve Ganty, had told him on his
first rotation. That Ganty had been stabbed in the stomach by someone who saw
him coming, did temper the value of the advice a bit, but in situations where
stomach stabbings were unlikely, Hogg still regularly followed it.
    Hogg was currently on his fifth rotation in the corps, not an
uncommonly high figure. Unofficially, the rotation policy had been intended to
reduce the risk of corruption and complacency amongst the security corps by
repeatedly introducing new blood into their mix. Whether this was effective or
not was open to debate; it took a certain type of person to want to be a cop in
the first place, and given the variety of perverts and recreational substance
abusers on board the ship there was a limited pool of suitable volunteers. Consequently,
security officer jobs tended to rotate amongst a fairly small group of
regulars, and in practice, the only difference between a security officer and
an off–rotation officer was that one got to wear kind of a neat hat.
    Hogg rounded the corner and set off down the side street,
moving away from the main shopping traffic along Asia. Ahead he could see the
rest of his team along with Sergeant Koller, clustered outside the door of a
modest apartment. Standing in front of the door was a balding middle–aged man,
wearing stained, fraying clothes. He was yelling obscenities at the gathered
security men. Not very original ones, Hogg was disappointed to hear.
    As he approached, the distressed man noticed Hogg and
immediately shifted the focus of his anger, having correctly pegged Hogg as
someone in charge. “You can’t do this! You bastards can’t do this!”
    Hogg waited until he was close enough to the man to not have
to shout. “Sir, you were informed months ago that you’d have to relocate. You
have no one to blame for this but yourself.”
    “You don’t have the right to make me move, you fascist
fucker!”
    Hogg arched an eyebrow. “Sir, the ship’s government has the
right to reallocate space and personnel as it sees fit, if it’s in the interest
of ship–wide operations. I’d suggest you look it up; it might make you feel
better.”
    “You can’t just take away our home! My family has lived here
for a hundred and fifty years!”
    Hogg inhaled deeply. “And you were given multiple
opportunities to sell it at a fair price. Now