War of Alien Aggression 4 Taipan Read Online Free PDF

the simple mention of Ram's secrets to make him twinge with the kind of perceptible alarm Matilda Witt was obviously trying to elicit. He said, "Mickey Wells arrived on Hardway with Cozen just before the first encounter with the Squidies on Moriah."
    "That's true," Witt admitted, "but you met her long before the day she died on Moriah. Someone went to a good deal of trouble and expense to hide it, but I found out that Mickey Wells was the one who brought you to Staas Aerospace Academy when you were eight years old and paid sixteen years of tuition, room, and board in advance. After that, she disappeared. She left you, Ram. She left you to go and work for Harry Cozen."
    Ram said, "The War of the Americas..."
    "...killed millions of North Americans including your parents. The narrative I reconstructed is that Mickey Wells came home from that war and somehow met you . She raised you as her own until she handed you off to prestigious Staas Aerospace Academy at the age of eight. You've been ours ever since."
    Ram thought nobody but he and Cozen knew about that. "What does Mickey Wells have to do with anything?"
    "She died in the very first action of the entire war. She was killed by a Squidy during the boarding of the alien scout ship." Ram didn't like remembering that moment and he hoped she couldn't see that on his face. From the grin on her thin lips, Ram decided she could. She said, "I need to know not only what role Mickey Wells and Harry Cozen played in the events of the war's first day, but also the events leading up to that point."
    "I don't understand." He did, of course.
    "There were events leading up to the first day of this war – events involving Harry Cozen and Mickey and the Squidies. There are many who say Harry Cozen isn't telling the truth about how this war began... There's even been speculation about his involvement in the death of the ten miners aboard the junk Mohegan – the first official casualties of our 'War of Alien Aggression'."
    "The Squidies killed the crew of Mohegan, " Ram lied. That's not what he believed. What he believed could never be proven or revealed.
    "Mr. Devlin," she said, "I have more than a few reasons to question the official accepted narrative of how this war began."
    "There's always been rumors around anything involving Harry Cozen." Witt raised her eyebrows, inviting him to tell her more. "Read my report," Ram said.
    "I've read your report."
    "Then you know what happened."
    Matilda Witt's nostrils flared. "I can't prove it and I don't know how or why, but I know in my bones that this whole war was Harry Cozen's making. He and the woman to whom your gun belonged made sure it happened."
    Mickey didn't kill any innocents. She'd said so. And whatever it was that Cozen had actually done, she only kept him alive to do it because it was important to the future of Humanity – more important even than how she felt about doing it. She'd said it was the most important thing she'd ever done in her life. And Ram had believed her.
    Witt was right, of course. And Ram couldn't prove it any more than she could, but he was sure Harry Cozen had been the one responsible for the first casualties of the war – the killing of Mohegan 's crew – the unprovoked outrage that was attributed to the Squidies and helped mankind dive head-first and without reticence into a good and righteous war against alien aggression.
    "Mr. Devlin," she said, "it's a lie. A war cannot be... Excuse me... History , Mr. Devlin. History cannot be based on a lie." Ram remembered saying the same thing to Harry Cozen.
    "My report is the truth." She'd have sensors pointed at him right now, he realized. She'd be recording thermals of his blood flow and his heart rate and measuring the low frequency tremors in his vocal muscles. All it would tell her was that this conversation made him anxious. And it should.
    Matilda Witt stood up and the way she looked down at him told Ram it was time to go. This round of negotiation was almost