Shadow Force 1: the Garden Planet Read Online Free PDF Page B

more than friendly, but for the moment I ignored it as we had more important things to deal with, such as where did we go from here, the subject I immediately brought up after Izzy left.
    “How do we make contact with the underground people we are looking for?” I asked Max.
    “We already have. I gave Izzy our cover story and you can be sure she will relay that to Rashid promptly. I imagine they will offer us some low level, low risk job just to check us out.’’
    “What kind of job?” Sara asked.
    “I don’t know. Perhaps a highjacking, or something along those lines.”
    “What do we know about highjacking?”
    “The question should be what don’t we know about it, here’s one of the other tidbits about Shadow you don’t know. The memory banks have recorded all the aggressive criminal acts both Jon and I have ever encountered. So pretty much we let Shadow handle the show.”
    “You mean our little baby Shadow is a bird of prey?”
    “Exactly, and she can outmaneuver anything else we know about in space. All items I installed before she was delivered to SFI and there are many more, as she was originally designed to be my war ship, I excluded nothing.”
    “Max, I caught you kissing Izzy. What was that all about?” I asked to Sara’s surprised expression.  
    “You caught that, did you?” Max asked dismayed.
    ‘Yes, I did and it confused me unless she is privy to our plans.”
    “She is, and for now will it be good enough for me to tell you that I trust her with my life?”
    “If you trust her, then so will I.” Sara said, “How about you Jon?”
    “For now.” I said, still being the super sleuth that I fancied myself as, I knew I would have to get the real story sooner or later, or it would drive me crazy.
    There was a knock on the door. It was Izzy, inviting us for dinner with Rashid and some friends. This was hopefully the opportunity that we had been waiting for.
    Sara asked Izzy to come to her room supposedly to pick out an outfit but I knew she would try to get an answer to the question at hand. Max didn’t look the slightest bit troubled.
    “Why the mystery?” I asked.
    “It’s for her safety, so that if we were to be questioned you would not know the answer.”
    “Yes, but you would.”
    “Yes, but that section of my brain is not excisable by normal means of interrogation, a gift from my days as a spy.”
    “Ok. I’ll leave it at that for now.” I then had Shadow print copies of the known felons that he had recorded from my eyes as we walked through the casino. To say the number was high would be an understatement. There were hundreds of wanted men, yet no known pirates.
    The girls came back out and Sara was dressed in the same gown I had seen her in on board Shadow and she looked just as beautiful. I even saw the approval from Max yet his eyes were all for Izzy just as hers were focused on him. Oh yeah, there was a mystery here and I would solve it soon, of that I was sure.
    We were escorted to a private dining room where Rashid and a small group of gentlemen were already seated. There were four others whom Rashid introduced as his associates, no names. They were serious looking individuals with jet black eyes and hair to match. The first to speak was also the biggest of the four and we were informed we could call him Jamal, when he spoke he did so with a heavy accent.
    “We hear you would like some action, maybe more than you get at the tables here.”
    “We’ve tried all the tables yet they’re no different than the hundreds we’ve tried before. We are looking for some real action, yet we can’t seem to find any.” Max said.
    “Well, what we have in mind is a little different than playing the tables. You have a ship that is unknown in our sphere of influence. Now that is the first plus in our plan. The second is that you are unrecognizable; the mission we propose is the highjacking of two canisters of Carliteume from Barlow’s world. We have already paid an enormous