Trading in Danger Read Online Free PDF

in their drinks. She’d eaten that scrap of lunch in the Commandant’s library as a disgraced ex-cadet, and tonight she would eat supper in the family dining room, the family disgrace come home to roost.
    “You want to talk about it?” Gaspard asked. He was only ten years or so older than she was, she thought. Younger than the Commandant or her father, older than all but one of her brothers.
    “You know.” Her hands moved as if of themselves. “I tried to help, and it blew up in my face.”
    “You know this kid well?”
    “Mandy? He’s—he was—in my diviso. Last year the cad intake officer asked me to take him under my wing. Third-years get handed a cad to baby-sit. Mandy was mine. He had a rough time, being Miznarii, but he did fairly well.” The Miznarii considered even implants immoral modifications of the basic human, so those of their children seeking higher education were always at a disadvantage. They attended only those institutions where students had to study without implant assistance, but, as with the Academy, the other students had used them before.
    “As well as you did?”
    “No, but—” Her voice trailed away. Who would expect a Miznarii from Cobalt Hole to do as well as she had? “Better than expected,” she finished.
    “So… you give the kid a model he can’t reach, and he asks you to do him a favor, and then he backstabs you. Think he did this just to cross you?”
    She hadn’t considered one way or the other. What did Mandy’s intention matter? It was betrayal even if not intended.
    “I think… I think he meant to get the Academy in trouble.”
    “More than you?”
    “Yes.” As she thought about it, more than that, even. “I think he wanted to get the whole system in trouble. The War Department, the Academy, the military, maybe even Slotter Key.”
    “Yeah. And you were collateral damage, maybe.”
    “Probably.” It hurt, even so. She had thought Mandy appreciated what she’d done for him, all the hours spent tutoring and rehearsing.
    “He want to sleep with you?”
    Ky felt the wave of heat up her neck. “If he did, it would have been unpro—wrong of me—to have noticed.”
    “If? You honestly don’t know?”
    She knew, all right. She knew perfectly well why Cad Mandy Rocher had pulled off his overrobe slowly, stretching, before the underclass wrestling matches. She knew he’d wanted her. No word had been spoken. No word need be.
    Gaspard nodded as if she’d answered aloud. “So he lusted after you and you repulsed him.”
    “I didn’t repulse him!” Ky said. “I just didn’t encourage him.” He could stretch all he wanted and it did nothing for her; she had Hal in her mind’s eye and there was no comparison.
    “Dirty little scum,” Gaspard said. Ky glanced at his face; he looked like someone about to be very angry.
    “I’m sorry,” Ky said.
    “Not your fault,” Gaspard said. “You’re a good girl, Ky; you always have been. Taken advantage of, and thank all the gods you don’t believe in it went no farther. You’re well out of that.”
    “I thought you thought I would be a good officer…”
    “I did. You would have been. But a waste, in a way.” He grinned at her. “Never mind. Just think of them all, in their stiff scratchy uniforms, while we’re flying down to the sunny isles of delight. Out of that nasty cold—”
    “I like the cold,” Ky said. She did not want to think of Hal, who might be storming up the stairs to the Commandant’s office to find out where she was at this very moment…
    “That’s not what you’ve said other leaves.”
    “No, but—all right. Yo ho for the tropics.” Her laugh sounded hollow, and he shook his head at her.
    “I know it seems like the end of the world to you—that’s because you are a good’un and you care. But life goes on, Ky, and you’ll get over this. You don’t want to hear it but it’s true, just like you didn’t want to hear that there were things you couldn’t do with an