Titan (Old Ironsides Book 2) Read Online Free PDF Page B

this shouldn’t be out there,’ Vasquez said. ‘Military weapons are destroyed when they’re retired from service, period, unless they’re held in the armory reserve.’
    Nathan was about to answer when another voice did so.
    ‘They’re melted down and recycled to prevent criminals getting their hands on them.’
    Nathan turned as Lieutenant Kaylin Foxx strode toward them. She was slim but moved somewhat like a cat, always alert, as though she walked on her toes. Her elfin features were topped with a tight bob of silvery hair that shimmered in the office lights, and she was dressed in a smart suit that folded over her chest from hip to opposite shoulder, tight pants and boots, her pistol swinging on her hip as she moved up to Nathan.
    ‘What’s up?’ she asked. ‘Got scared witless by old Buzz already?’
    ‘We got a perp’ in holding, opened fire on a cop with this,’ Nathan said as he gestured to the pistol Vasqeuz was holding.
    ‘How old is it?’ she asked the former Marine.
    ‘My service time,’ Vasquez replied, ‘no more than ten years. It was being superseded by the MM–17 when I left the corps. There shouldn’t be any left in existence except in museums planet–side, and there definitely shouldn’t be any on the streets.’
    ‘What do you think?’ Nathan asked Foxx. ‘Some kind of ring running inside the military, selling off high–grade weapons to criminals?’
    ‘I don’t know,’ Foxx replied. ‘Let’s go talk to your perp’ and see what he has to say. You got him in processing?’
    ‘Betty’s taking him to holding right now. You wanna do the interview?’
    Foxx looked Nathan up and down for a moment. ‘It’s your snatch, so you’ve got the interview. I’ll sit in.’
    ‘Seriously?’ Nathan asked, suddenly excited.
    ‘Sure, but get the hell out of that traffic uniform first or nobody’s gonna take you seriously.’
    ***

The interview room was a drab box of four walls, the paintwork scratched and the air stained with the scent of stale coffee and the unwashed masses routinely manacled to the steel chair bolted to the floor opposite where Nathan sat.
    Opposite him sat the youth he had arrested, still with his hood concealing his features and the glow of a prosthetic eye visible in the shadows within as though he were some kind of demon. Not much shocked Nathan these days, especially after everything he had seen since he had been awakened from his four hundred year slumber just a few months before, but the part–human presence before him still felt unreal somehow.
    ‘So, you want to tell me what happened?’ he asked, keen to establish a dialogue with the kid and get him to speak like a human being.
    The hooded figure did not move, but the glowing red eye swivelled up to look at Nathan, the iris shimmering with laser light that made him briefly wonder whether such a device could become a weapon or not.
    ‘I want a lawyer.’
    ‘I want answers,’ Nathan replied, trying to ignore the strange digital timbre of the kid’s voice. ‘You opened fire on a cop, kid. You’re facing prison time for it, you understand that?’
    ‘I didn’t shoot nobody.’
    ‘That’s not what forty or so witnesses have said,’ Nathan shot back, ‘and that’s not what happened to me, or did you already forget the four or five shots you took at me?’
    The hooded face vanished again as the kid looked down at his boots. ‘I was scared.’
    ‘Yeah, that’s what they always say: wasn’t me, I was just scared , that’s why I tried to kill a cop.’
    ‘I din’ try to kill nobody!’
    The kid’s fist slammed down on the metal surface of the table, anger flaring in his bionic eye like a distant star.
    ‘Lose the hood,’ Nathan ordered him.
    ‘Like hell.’
    Nathan leaned closer. ‘You don’t talk to me like a human being, I’ll stop treating you like one. Lose the hood or I’ll rip the damned thing clean off.’
    The youth looked at him for a moment longer and then he reluctantly