War of Alien Aggression 4 Taipan Read Online Free PDF Page B

over. Now, he knew what she wanted: Harry Cozen's head on a pike. But she still hadn't shown Ram what she offered in return. For a moment, he considered the idea that maybe she thought the truth alone meant enough to Ram to make him give her Cozen.
    It did. Ram Devlin was just the sort of man who valued truth, but after Harry Cozen had used that aspect of his personality to manipulate him, Ram had learned to hide that facet of his nature. The truth was important to him and he did want to see Cozen pay for what he'd done, but from Ram's actions so far, Witt had no way of knowing that. She'd expect Ram to want something in return.
    At the hatch, before she opened it, she finally made her offer: "I want Hardway as part of my personal battlegroup. Harry Cozen won't be around forever. I'm already looking for his replacement. Hardway could very easily be yours to command, Mr. Devlin. Sooner than you think." She spun the wheel and opened the hatch before she glanced at his sidearm again. She said, "Think about my offer. I'd very much like to add that gun of yours to my collection."
    *****
    Hardway hadn't been built with a proper brig, but a month after having the Lancers on board, the redsuits made one just for the fighter pilots. The maintenance crews welded bars in place and turned half a munitions hold into a brig so the pilots could be jailed close to their fighters. The other half of the compartment was full of warspite torpedoes just waiting for a chance to detonate.
    The Lancers reclined on welded slabs that served as bunks. Jordo's pilots looked comfortable because they were. After serving years in Bailey Prison, a little time in the Staas Guards' brig didn't bother them much.
    The Hellcats looked less bothered by confinement than Jordo had expected. He wondered if they were emulating the Lancers, but he only had to think about it for a few seconds before he realized the Hellcats were probably used to being confined as well. They had to be suffering the same side-effects the Lancers were suffering from using the new pulse-pinches in their fighters. They were showing the same symptoms of tidal-flux induced brain damage...all the same hyper-aggression.
    The new inertial negation systems in the fighters let them fly as hard as the Squidies, but they were messing up the new pilots' brains just like they'd messed up the Lancers' brains. The Lancers had been a little scrappy before, but they hadn't been the Donnybrook brawlers they were now until their brains had gotten shaken with pulses of artificial gees every .02 milliseconds for a few hundred combat hours. You can't do that to a brain without side-effects. Cozen said it would take 36 months to mess them up so bad they couldn't fly. He never said anything about shite impulse control and hyper-aggression. 
    If the 1200 pilots of the Taipan Air Group were suffering the same side-effects like the Hellcats, it would be a disciplinary nightmare. Witt's unarmored box carriers had probably been built with proper brigs and lots of them. They'd need them.
    In Hardway's brig, the nine Hellcats that tangled with the Lancers had been stuffed in a separate cage. There were too many of them to fit on the slab bunks. Half of them sat on the deck, up against the bulkhead. Pooch tried to burn holes in Jordo's head with her stare. She had a hardon for him and Jordo still had no idea why. It was more than just the expected alpha-pilot bullshit.
    "Bitch broke my rib," Dirty said when she saw Jordo staring back at Pooch.
    The Staas Guard who'd been assigned to stand outside the bars and insult the pilots every time they looked too comfy didn't slack off on the job. "So amazingly stupid," he said. "I thought it was just the dumbass Lancers here and it was mostly 'cause they were convicts and all, but you F-151 pilots are all alike . Freakin' nut-job psychos."
    That goon only had it half-right, but Jordo didn't correct him. Who wants to say they've got brain damage? "He's partly right about us,"