The Fleet 01 Read Online Free PDF Page B

could kill. And because she had no blanket, no comfort, no medicine or anything but her voice, since her hands were tied, she tried to use that to bring Alton back to reality.
    “Alton,” she said in her most demanding voice, “I want you to talk to me. I need to know everything you know about the Khalia, and quickly. I need to know what we can expect. I need to know if we can find a way to mitigate our plight. Find a raider who might be amenable to trying to ransom us.”
    That brought a rise from her brother, who said, “I told you, they don’t do deals. There’s no contact points, no bureaucratic infrastructure with them—nothing.”
    “Why not?” she demanded.
    “There just ... isn’t,” Alton said dully, shaking his head.
    “After a hundred years of this?” she said disbelievingly. It hadn’t mattered when the Khalia were a vague threat, when the raids were always on somebody else’s planet. Now it mattered, if only to keep Alton talking. “Alton, how can that be? What’s the Alliance good for? What do we pay them for?”
    “To fight ... when they can. For us. I don’t—” His face was tortured now, but that was better than a vacant face.
    This was going to be a very long ride, Mary knew. She didn’t want to spend it next to a vegetable. Or next to a corpse. “Then let’s figure it out,” she pressed. “How did all this start? Why aren’t there representatives trying to negotiate a settlement? What are we paying for, gunboat diplomacy? And if so, why isn’t every human settlement protected?”
    Mary didn’t really care. She knew it wouldn’t do her any good to know the answers. But she had to make herself care about something. She couldn’t just sit there, not when her fate was so horrid and unknowable. And, as Alton tried to straighten up and animation came fully into his face, she knew she did care.
    Not about how the war had gotten started. But about her brother, and about making sure that both of them survived. She’d seen what happened to crazy English, shot down like a dog on the common. It wasn’t going to happen to her, or to Alton, if she could help it. That was what being human was all about.
    You didn’t give up. You asked questions. You made the best of what you had and tried for better. You bided your time. And you fought back. Somewhere out there, among the slavemasters, would come a time and a place where Mary Dinneen could make her life count for something. Until then, there were the questions. And the answers.

“Pocked hulls!” swore the perfectly groomed, clinically handsome and impeccably dressed Fleet Support Officer. He switched off the Omni, still clutching the offending memo.
    “Pocked hulls and overheated drives!” He had always been proud of using the same obscenities as battle-hardened Fleet personnel.
    On the far side of an office specifically designed to instill a feeling of confidence and professionalism in any visitor, the three-dimensional image of Crag Courage, Fleet Captain, and his radiantly beautiful Executive Officer, Lieutenant Amethyst, obediently disappeared. They had just finished thwarting the extravagantly evil (and after three seasons in the top of the ratings), infamous pirate Mac Niphe. In doing so, they just happened to recover the entire Alliance treasury, so saving all from ultimate destruction for the one hundred and seventeenth time.
    Lieutenant Commander Guilliame Kanard was proud of Crag Courage. The show had been one of his first successes as public relations coordinator for the Fleet. The animated robot of Courage on his desk had been presented to him by the grateful network in a ceremony attended by no less than four admirals.
    Gill was also quite familiar with unreasonable demands. If the situation didn’t call for a miracle, the brass rarely resorted to the Sentient Relations and Communications Division.
    The rambling memo could be summarized in two sentences, though no Fleet clerk would stoop to such directness:
    1) The