TW10 The Hellfire Rebellion NEW Read Online Free PDF Page B

performance measured up in the field. When he had organized the unit, he had hand-picked all the personnel, many of whom had less than favorable military records and were deemed misfits in their former units.
    Finn Delaney was an excellent example. Large-framed, red haired and barrel-chested. with the appearance of an amiable bear, he had come within a hairbreadth of dishonorable discharge more times than he could count. His record was chock-full of infractions of just about every military regulation there was, from disobedience of orders to striking superior officers. He had spent his entire adult life in the service and his rank had fluctuated like the fashion industry.
    No sooner would he be promoted as a result of outstanding performance in the field than he would be busted for breaking some military regulation. He was on a first name basis with practically every officer who ever sat on a court martial. Indeed, he would have long since been discharged if it were not for the fact that he was an absolutely first-rate soldier, with a record of performance that was absolutely unsurpassed.
    Clearly. Delaney was a problem, but unlike many other senior officers, Forrester had known that a man's worth as a soldier could not be measured by how snappy his salute was. Some of history's greatest fighting men, such as George Patton. Benedict Arnold, and Julius Caesar. had personalities that were ill-suited to military discipline. Patton had been egotistical and insubordinate: Arnold's unchecked ambition had led him to turn traitor: Caesar had been overly familiar with his troops and had seized power by turning his legions against Rome, but each man had been an unquestionably brilliant soldier on the field of battle. Delaney had a mercurial Irish temper and a contempt for what he called "military assholes," but with a commander such as Forrester, who knew the proper way to handle such a man, he had steadily risen to the rank of captain and his disciplinary problems had fallen off dramatically.
    Creed Steiger, on the other hand, was the son of soldier whose appearance would find favor with the most nit-picking commander. He was blond and gray-eyed, hook-nosed, slightly cruel-looking, and solidly built. Like Lucas Priest, he looked like a model officer, but there the similarity ended. While Priest's record was absolutely spotless. Steiger was a maverick. As the former senior field agent of the T.I.A.. he had often bent the rules, only unlike Delaney. he was adept at covering himself. His mentor in the agency had been none other than the late Col.
    Jack Carnehan, a legendary temporal agent codenamed Mongoose, who had instructed him in the complexities of being a professional chameleon. Carnehan had been virtually uncontrollable, with an unshakable belief in the correctness of his actions, regardless of what his orders were. But Steiger had learned the hard way that in an organization as complex and devious as the T.I.A., with agents that were so deeply buried under cover that there was often no record of their existence, orders from the top were frequently not to be trusted.
    The corruption in the T.I.A. ran deep. Steiger had never wanted any part of it, but when even the former director of the agency had been a secret member of the Network, there was no way of knowing if an order had been given legally or not. Yet now that Forrester was in charge, determined to root out the corruption and break up the Network, Steiger was finally able to do his job as he saw fit.
    Forrester had appointed him to organize and lead a special unit, the Internal Security Division. whose sole function was to police the agency and ferret out corrupt agents of the Network. It was a formidable task. Over the years, the Network had spread through the agency like a cancer, with its members both concealed within the agency bureaucracy in the 27th century and scattered throughout time. as well. Dealing with the threat posed by the parallel universe was difficult