The Man Who Never Missed Read Online Free PDF

weren’t many. But there was this… girl.” He paused and took another swallow of his drink, closing his eyes as he did. “This girl was maybe thirteen and she was lying there with her legs shot off from from the middle of the thighs down. And she looked up at me while the medics were clamping vessels and pumping dorph into her to kill the pain and I swear I never saw such clear green eyes before or since. And she smiled and said, ‘It’s all right. My father is a soldier.’ And then she died. Massive hemo-shock, the medics said.”
    The Sub-Lojt finished his splash and set the mug down gently. “That was the bad part. As if it was okay for me to shoot her, because I was a soldier like her father.” He shook his head. “A system that makes people kill children, it’s just not right. If something like that ever comes up again, I don’t know if I could shoot. I haven’t seen any of the Shamba Scum, but if I saw a bunch of kids coming at me waving sticks, I just don’t know what I’d do this time. Can you understand how I might feel like that?”
    Khadaji nodded, and stared unseeing at the far wall of the octagon. “Yes,” he said, finally. “I can understand.”

Chapter Four
    AT ONE-THIRTY, Khadaji went to his rooms. The Reflex was mostly gone, but there was enough of the drug in his system to keep him awake for a couple of hours, if he’d let it. Instead, he took three hundred milligrams of paramethaqualone—Paco, it was called in the pub—and stretched out on the bed. There were more potent sleeping medications, but a Paco would sometimes stop the nightmares that usually went with Reflex. Sometimes.
    —twenty-five years old and Sub-Lojt, with a good shot at promotion to full Lojtnant, if he would sign for another tour this far in advance. A man could do worse than the military, and six years in the Jumptroops with two Distinguished Service lines on Nazo and a third for the Kontrau’lega Break would set him up for a fast track to his own centplex. That’s what they told him and he had no reason to believe any different. As soon as the little scrap on Maro was done, he could come and see the Old Man’s sub and talk fine points and was he interested?
    Emile Khadaji nodded and grinned. He was young and understood life in the ranks. It wasn’t dull, there were plenty of people who shared the places with him, he had good times with women and even a few men, he had stads to buy what he wanted. Was he interested? Yeah, he was interested—
    “—see the way the fish swim through that funnel, Emile? It’s plenty big enough to pass through, but once they’re on the other side, they never can seem to find the narrow exit to get back out.”
    The boy nodded at his father and watched the fifty kilo grouper swim around inside the trap. There were five or six of the big blue-gray fish flippering back and forth. “They’re stupid,” he said. “The hole in the middle is the same size on both sides.”
    Hamay Khadaji looked down at his ten-year-old son, then back through the glass walls of the observation tank. “No, son, they aren’t stupid, no more than any other fish. It’s the way they look at things. It has to do with the space around them, with the way their eyes and minds work. Just because somebody or something doesn’t look at the world the way you do doesn’t mean it’s stupid. It’s just different—”
    “—oh, yes, Emile, put it in, I’m ready!”
    He looked down the length of Jeda’s naked body, slick with sweat, at her widespread legs and damp pubic hair. He was ready too, but he wasn’t sure of just what to do. Should he just plunge in all at once? Or should he move slowly? She said she liked it all at once, but the instruction tapes said it was better to be easy, gentle and—she decided for him, as he poised himself over her, by grabbing his ass with both hands and pulling him into her, hard. Oh, yes! This was wonderful, he couldn’t believe how good it felt, only it wasn’t