The Musashi Flex Read Online Free PDF Page B

that . . . went away, because of her. But those worries had eventually faded to twinges, and the twinges were few and far between. If you want to play, you have to be willing to pay. If you had small children at home, what the fuck were you doing plotting against the Confed? It wasn’t as if there was anybody with a working brain who didn’t know that treason was a mind-wipe-punishable crime. Dead or brainless in a medical kiosk, what was the difference? Probably not a lot of spouses wanted to bring the kiddies by to visit Daddy in stasis, where he was waiting to be cut up for spare parts. The dead and dying here weren’t spitting on the sidewalk or shoplifting, they were planning revolution. They knew the risks. They might not think anybody would catch them, but that was a big mistake, wasn’t it?
    She pushed the spookeyes up onto her forehead and turned away, suddenly a little tired. It always had a sameness to it. People could be so fucking stupid. They deserved to be removed from the gene pool.
    A few minutes later, Marky, the Lead Operative, came over. “It’s a done deal,” he said. “Twelve klags DOA, one more on the way there, one alive enough to maybe harvest a bit more intel from before he goes in the box. Good job, op.”
    She shrugged. “What they pay me for.”
    “We’ll have it clean in a few minutes. Where you off to, next?”
    “Classified, LO,” she said. She gave him her professional smile.
    “Of course. Sorry.”
    She wanted to shake her head. These Assault Team Ops were always so stick-up-the-ass deadly serious. No jokes, all business.
    And where was she going next? Vacation. She’d earned it. She’d done twenty-five ops in the last eighteen months, one for every year she’d been alive, lacking one. She had a thick bank account, and she needed a break. Maybe she’d try one of the pleasure casinos. Or do some sight-seeing on one of the scenic planets. Get herself a boytoy and hole up in some hotel with silk sheets and room service, not get out of bed for week.
    Or maybe it was time try to find her brother. She had been thinking about tracing him for a long time, just never had gotten around to it. Her parents were dead, and her brother was her only blood kin in the universe—assuming he hadn’t died—and she was curious. She had been a late baby, an accident, and her brother was twenty years older than she was, two years gone from their rabbit hole of a home by the time she’d been conceived—they’d never actually seen each other. He hadn’t looked back, and she couldn’t blame him for that. Far as she knew, he didn’t know she’d ever been born.
    Of course, he could be long dead like their parents, too. Did she really want to know one way or the other? If she didn’t look, she could keep thinking he was still alive out there. Mated, maybe, a couple of kids, a good job, a happy life. Wouldn’t that be something?
    Or he could have been cooked robbing a casino. Or maybe in one of these revolutionary cells—maybe she had sicced the CATs on him herself?
    She shook her head. Not likely, given the breadth of the galaxy, but possible. Did she want to know that if it was true?
    Well. She didn’t have to decide today. First thing, she was going to go sit in a hot soak tub, have a stein of good beer, then go sleep for about thirty hours. Undercover work was stressful. Yeah, she was good at it, as good as anybody, but you never could truly relax when you were down in the trench—an offhand and thoughtless remark could get you chilled. That was part of the game, too. A caught spy didn’t fare well.
    Rest, first. After that, she’d see.
    She caught a hack, gave it directions, and leaned back in the seat. But before she was halfway to her kiosk, her com vibrated against her hip. Nobody had the code but her bosses, and there was no way not to answer the call—they’d have her on sat-track, would know where she was and that her com was on. She lit her confounder to scramble any