The Musashi Flex Read Online Free PDF

as Mourn walked down the street. Now and then, he’d slow or stop to look into a shop window. She was certain he hadn’t spotted her.
    He went into a flickstik and smoke shop a few blocks up the street, a small storefront place. She parked herself at a cafe across the road so she could look out the window, ordered a drink, paid in advance, in case she had to leave in a hurry. The smell of the city was a mix of dust and exhaust and dried herbs from the shop.
    She saw Mourn in the doorway a few minutes later, and she stood to exit. Just as she did, an electric bus pulled to the curb across from her, blocking him from view.
    When the vehicle left, there was no sign of her quarry.
     
Shit! He got on the bus!
    She hurried down the street. There were enough traffic signals so the bus wouldn’t be able to get too far ahead too fast.
    She looked around for a hack, but of course, there weren’t any empties in sight. Always worked that way.
    At a speed somewhere between a fast walk and a slow jog, Sola managed to keep pace with the bus for two blocks. It stopped twice, people got on or off, and she didn’t mark Mourn among those leaving. As it pulled over to pick up and disgorge passengers the third time, she crossed the street and watched. She couldn’t spot Mourn through the windows on her side, nor did he appear to have alighted with the half dozen or so others who just got off.
    Damn!
    She ran to the bus, got on, waved her credit cube over the reader, and started down the aisle. He hadn’t seen her, and she hated to give him a chance to mark her so quick, but there was no help for it. Traffic signals or not, she couldn’t keep up with a bus on foot for much longer.
    She walked all the way to the back and no two ways about it, Lazlo Mourn wasn’t here.
    Well . . . fuck!
     
Luna Azul—a name she had invented—stood in the shadows of a warehouse in Chambee Town, on Wu, in Haradali, and watched the Confed’s Assault Team storm the building across the street. It was cold, and there had been a dusting of powdery snow earlier in the day, just enough to make everything look clean and fresh.
    Beauty, before the beast arrived . . .
    The CAT unit steamed in, no finesse, just raw power: Fifty troopers in full body armor, using .177 Parkers, pop-grenades, puke gas, and polarized smoke. A four-person CI team ran the op—they were not in front, but they weren’t at the back, either.
    The spookeyed troops could work in near darkness, and with her own spookeyes up and running, she had no trouble seeing them hit the place.
    Doors blew in, walls crumbled, and the would-be terrorists inside would be going down like weeds in front of a power mower, cut to bloody shards before they had a chance to mount any kind of defense.
    Score another one for UO—undercover operative—what was that name? ah, yes, Luna Azul, of Confederation Intelligence. The cell was wiped out, and the lesson plain—conspire against the Confed and get caught, the price was exceedingly expensive—it would cost you your ass.
    Why did people risk it? The Confed wasn’t the most benevolent organization, to be sure, but overall, it kept the galaxy stable, and it probably did almost as much good as harm, give or take. It damn sure was a giant, and no handful of malcons meeting in a run-down goods storehouse on some back-rocket world was going to knock the Confed down. How could they think otherwise? It’s one thing to sling a rock at a giant and catch him by surprise. It’s another thing to try throwing stones at an M-Class tank tracking you on Doppler with smart guns locked, moving in at speed. Best say a final prayer quickly, because you were about to leave this life for whatever was waiting in the next . . .
    That there were fourteen people dead or dying in the wreck of a building and that she had sent the ones who’d done it? Not her problem. Once upon a time, she worried about it: The dead people had children, spouses, maybe parents who loved them, and all of