The Terran Privateer Read Online Free PDF

Anderson had pissed her off.
    The entire crew quarters had been built into one module, inside a second layer of armor and buried at the core of the ship, which led to some oddities in the layout. One of them was that Annette Bond’s executive officer’s quarters were directly opposite hers.
    Since Anderson had managed to come through only twenty-two minutes after her deadline, she’d been able to inform Admiral Villeneuve that Tornado would commission on schedule, which meant that she and her XO were due on the main deck in full dress whites in just under an hour.
    Annette took a moment to be sure her own long tunic, with its high collar and stiff shoulder boards, was straight and properly buttoned, then rapped sharply on Kurzman’s door.
    “Commander? Is there a problem?” she asked through the hatch.
    “Give me a moment,” the newly commissioned officer replied. A few seconds later, he opened the door and looked up at his taller captain helplessly. Kurzman was a short man, stocky and well-muscled but without the height needed to carry off the tunic.
    Worse, he clearly had no idea how to wear the tunic, the shoulder boards, or the associated cobalt-blue tie. He’d misbuttoned the tunic, only one of the two shoulder boards was properly fastened, and he’d used a type of tie knot that just did not work with the cut of the Space Force tie.
    “ How ?” he demanded as he saw her perfectly turned-out uniform.
    “Maxwell Base OTS,” Annette told him crisply. “Plus two years of Space Force Academy.”
    “They covered the tie?”
    “They covered the uniform,” she replied crossly. “Now hold still.”
    Obedient to a fault sometimes, Kurzman complied.
    It had been years since she’d helped fellow cadets put the uniform on at the Academy, but she wasn’t surprised to find she still remembered it. In under a minute, she’d rebuttoned and straightened her executive officer’s tunic, reattached his shoulder boards, and tied his tie.
    “There,” she concluded. “You’ll embarrass me less now.”
    Kurzman relaxed slightly and nodded his thanks. She’d half-expected the problem—Kurzman was a merchant spacer who had spent his career as an officer aboard the big transfer ships running between Earth and Mars. Merchant spacer uniforms were much less demanding than the Space Force’s.
    “I checked in with everybody before I started dressing,” he told her after a moment. “We are fully stocked on munitions, fuel, food, and all other consumables. Core Seven is online and has been tested up to one hundred and ten percent capacity.”
    “I assume we’re not running at that now?” she asked.
    “No,” he confirmed. “We’re running all seven cores at less than fifty percent capacity. All systems are showing green, Tornado is ready in all aspects to be commissioned, ma’am.”
    “Thank you, Pat,” she told him quietly. “It’s been one hell of a month. Glad to have you with me.”
    Kurzman appeared unsure how to respond to that—and settled for a safe silence as Annette led the way toward Tornado ’s outer hull.
     
    #
     
    To a fanfare of trumpets, Morgan Casimir—a golden-haired cherub of three years old held in her father’s arms—pushed the button that fired a bottle of champagne into Tornado ’s prow. Cameras zoomed in on it, showing it as it shattered and sprayed broken glass and golden bubbles across the armored prow of Earth’s newest warship.
    Everyone applauded the little girl, who turned a beaming bright smile on the crowd, and the commissioning ceremony itself was over. Annette remained standing next to the platform, allowing herself a rare full smile at Morgan—the little girl, for whatever reason, seemed to adore her. She heard her XO sigh in relief and saw him visibly sag from the unfamiliar parade rest.
    “We still have to circulate,” she murmured to him. “Separately, at that.”
    “I can glad-hand, boss,” Kurzman whispered back. “I just can’t do this god-awful