The Kassa Gambit Read Online Free PDF Page B

apparatchik. Even now.
    The taint of self-pity disgusted him. He took his hand away from the console, and leaned back into the chair.
    To wait.

THREE
    Bonds
    Prudence watched the patrol boat touch down without envy. Sleek and lean, its lines appealed to the uninitiated eye. It looked fast, and the array of weapons and sensors it sported made it appear as prickly dangerous as it really was. Its skin was finely painted, smooth, and angular. As a craft of war, she could appreciate it for what it was.
    But what it could never be was a home. It could never offer refuge from a hard day’s work, never be a place where friends gathered for a meal. It could never earn its keep, make people happy with its promise of new goods, bringing presents from faraway places. It would never attract a curious and happy crowd with its mere landing.
    Even now, under these terrible circumstances, its presence only garnered relief. And anger, for its lateness. The refugees waited sullenly for the ship. The weapons it brought were too little, too late.
    She watched as the officers of the Launceston were deluged by the bitter demands of Kassa’s survivors. She had struggled with the angry crowd past the point of pity. They had been in shock, still grateful for any help, any friendly face from the skies. Now that they were beginning to grasp the full extent of the disaster, their personal dismay would be translated into global outrage.
    Prudence would share their outrage, when she was not tired beyond feeling. Nothing electrical was left functioning on the planet. Hardly any buildings were still standing. The extent of the dead was unknown. It would be months before everyone was accounted for. The only good news was that Kassa had prided itself on its outdoorsmanship, almost as if they were primitives. The bulk of the population would still be out there, hiding in the forests. Of all the worlds she had visited, Kassa was perhaps the best capable of surviving a hit-and-run raid. Any dome colonies would have suffered total casualties. Even Altair would have lost vastly more, their densely packed cities sitting ducks for orbital bombing runs.
    Of course, Altair had a fleet of warships that stood between its vulnerable cities and the threat of attack. Not that there ever had been any credible threat of attack before. The nearest planet with enough population to think of itself as competition was too many hops away, too embroiled in its own internal politics to project its power across the tiny stepping-stones between there and here.
    Kassa was one of those tiny stones, too small and poor to be worth stepping on. Kassa had defended its freedom with a volunteer police force and a single fusion-powered rescue boat, and that had been enough, because there was nothing here worth a conqueror’s time.
    But this enemy had come to kill, not to conquer; to destroy, not to possess. The survivors, terrified by this irrationality, shouted at the officers of the Launceston, whose uniforms were the only visible sign of authority and reason left on Kassa.
    “Tell them to pay us.” Garcia was quick to accept the authority of the uniforms, as well. “For our fuel, at least.”
    “Why would they, Garcia? This isn’t Altair soil. They don’t owe Kassa the time of day.”
    Garcia looked over the angry crowd with a new appreciation. “It looks like he’s telling them the same thing. And they don’t like it any more than I do.”
    “He” would be the man in the police uniform. The captain of the Launceston stood behind him, deferring to him. Prudence felt an immediate pang of sympathy for the captain. His government might have the right to seize his ship and hand it over to a political hack—after all, they paid the bills—but it was still painful to watch.
    She couldn’t work up anything but contempt for the cop, though. True, his job right now was as hard as the captain’s—he had to stand there and explain to the Kassans exactly what the price of their