The Kassa Gambit Read Online Free PDF Page A

officer and temporary commander of the Launceston. ”
    The voice hardened. Some part of Kyle, deep in the back of his mind, regretted that. “Acknowledged, Commander. This is Prudence Falling, captain and owner of the Ulysses. We’re glad you’ve finally shown up.”
    His knowledge of Fleet jargon deserted him. “What do you mean?”
    Apparently his ability to speak like an intelligent adult had gone with it.
    “We’ve got a disaster on our hands, Commander. Perhaps you noticed? I’ve spent the last sixteen hours ferrying refugees, but there’s more broken here than I can fix. We need a hospital ship.”
    “What happened down there, Captain? Give me as many details as you can.”
    The voice paused. “Why don’t you come down and see for yourself?”
    She was a suspicious one, all right. From one clue she had deduced that there was something important he wasn’t telling her. She was wasted as a freight-hauler; she should have been a detective.
    “We are currently under attack ourselves, Captain. You wouldn’t know anything about that, would you?”
    The voice turned curt and direct, ignoring his implication. No more gamesmanship. “A mine?”
    “Seven of them, actually.”
    “I’m sorry to hear that.” A hint of real pity. “We were only tracked by one.”
    How could a freighter escape a military-grade mine? Even to Kyle that seemed unlikely. “Then why are you still alive?”
    “It malfunctioned. Gave us a miss.” Just the lightest hint of amusement. Not a chuckle. That voice would never chuckle. But she appreciated the irony of his question.
    Every bone in Kyle’s cop body twinged. This was the point in an ordinary interrogation where he would sit down next to the subject, shake his head sadly, put his hand gently on their shoulder, and quietly explain that lies would only make it worse. Much, much worse.
    But this interviewee could not be intimidated. Kyle wasn’t looming over her, with the power of the State and a few burly beat cops behind him. Whatever truth she was hiding, he would have to lure it out of her.
    “Your luck seems providential. Remarkably so, wouldn’t you agree, Captain?”
    She surprised him, giving up without a fight. “I would agree. My engineer fired on the mine, with a mining laser defocused to a meter spread. But that seems far less likely a source of miracles than a malfunction. I should also note it evaded several decoys, which I was assured were fully effective against all known targeting systems.”
    For a tramp freighter, the Ulysses sounded remarkably well armed. It was like stumbling onto a murder scene and finding a hot-dog seller loitering in the area with a grenade launcher hidden in his cart. It tended to make one suspicious.
    But the comm officer had been listening in with one ear, and had found something interesting enough to intrude on their conversation. “ Launceston comm here, Captain. What model were those decoys?”
    She answered him immediately, the bond between spacers obvious now that she was talking to a real one. “Nonstandard. Not from Altair, but Fleet grade. Supposed to work on gravitics, thermal, radio, and cosmic ray detection. I don’t have any better specs for you.”
    “What evasive action did you take, Captain?”
    “Random vector generation. But it didn’t help. Running silent didn’t either. We never figured out how it was tracking us. And then it just stopped trying.”
    “After the laser? But you can’t crack the hull on a lifeboat with that kind of spread, let alone a mine.” The comm officer hounded down the stray fact, cutting past all the boring, unhelpful, well-behaved ones. Kyle watched the officer worrying it like a bulldog, trying to squeeze out the answer by brute force.
    “What’s missing?” Kyle asked, trying to help. “How can a laser stop a mine without breaking through its armor?” He had no idea what the answer was. He just knew it was the right question.
    The comm officer silently counted on his fingers,