Chapter 1

“You did not just dothat to me! I’ll launch you out the nearest airlock if I have to get a Plas torch and cut a new one myself.”

Colonel Deeton just shrugged. He knew her threats were empty, damn him, but she was seriously tempted this time.

“You saddled me with a rook?”

“He’s not a rookie.”

She glanced through the window at the dweeb seated front and center outside Deeton’s cube. Then she rolled her eyes back to her commander. “He’s got first-stage rook written all over him.”

“No, he doesn’t, Syra” Deeton scrubbed at his graying beard as he always did when she was irritating him. “He’s got final-stage engineer written all over him.”

“Oh, like that’s any kind of an improvement.”

“Full payload.” Meaning he was the real deal no matter how he looked.

At least it explained a few things, though not enough of them. He was an engineer who looked like a rook, yet shaped like a soldier not a dweeb engineer. Workout shoulders. She’d always been partial to shoulders on her soldiers. “Oh, like a rook-dweeb engineer is so much better than a rook-dweeb soldier.”

“Got all the soldier we need right here if she weren’t running off at the mouth so hard.” Deeton tossed a chip at her. “Won’t unlock until you’re clear of the station.”

She let it ping off the window behind her before she caught it on the rebound. No hurry in low-g. It was eye-dent sealed and station locked. Her kind of mission.

“Whose eye?”

This time it was Deeton’s turn to roll his remaining eye at her—the other had gone the way of half his face sometime during the Drone Downfall. He didn’t talk about it much.

The eye-dent required her retinal scan, of course.

“It was a gimme, Deet,” she explained when he didn’t rise to the bait. “Just feeling sorry for you playing two legs short of a full deck.” The Drone Downfall had been ugly.

The Drone Downfall still ranked as the most lethal undeclared war in history (which was saying something serious).

You broke my heart,and then an untraceable Class II drone slams through the windshield of your skidder at Mach 2.

I deserved a raise,revenged by calling in sick and delivering five kilos of Hydrox rocket fuel and a sparker to the office by remotely controlled drone. Politicos who hadn’t bunkered, and bunkered deep, didn’t last long back then.

The I-Loc, International Law of Control, had required trackable human control via DNA scan of every drone flying. The same had been required on every computer with an intelligence above Level Four—it was the last thing the countries of Earth and Near Space had been able to agree on. The remaining government of Canmerica West had taken it upon themselves to take out all non-complying drones—Canmerica East had long since stopped being a factor. And it was fliers like Deeton who’d taken the abuse.

Letting the chip ricochet off the window had also given her an excuse to eye the RDE again. A severe regressive: blond hair and blue eyes—neither looked fake. Nor did the smile as his gaze met hers through the window.

“What’s the lowdown on it, Colonel?”

“The lowdown, Syra? I don’t have a scope on it. They didn’t tell me anything but to get our very best on it.”

“Aw, shucks.”

“Since Daggert isn’t available, I’m stuck with you.”

“Daggert can barely find his own back end to wipe it.”

“Whereas you’re all brown from sticking your nose in it. Get out of my space, Syra. Try not to embarrass the fleet while you’re at it.”

“Shit,” she kicked open the door and walked out past the RDE. “Come on, Rood, you’re with me.” Rood—Rook Dweeb. She liked it. Maybe she could make it stick on the guy.

“Shouldn’t that be Roodee—Rook Dweeb Engineer. Like a roadie. Or maybe you’re right and the final ‘e’ sound is silent,” he rose to his feet a little fast and floated up off the floor in the light grav. For crap’s sake!

“What’s a roadie?” He wasn’t supposed to have heard what she was saying in Deet’s office. Could she help it if her voice carried when Deet was making her nutsoid?

“Old days. Guy who traveled with bands to set up their gear for a show.”

“Not just a regressive,” she kept moving but noticed that he didn’t react. “Regressive” was not a kind label.

She’d have beat the O2 out of someone who called her that.

“A retro one,” which compensated a bit as there was a coolness to it that she’d never achieved.

Though what a band of soldiers needed with a roadie was beyond her. She’d humped her own gear for her entire service. For her entire life. Mom had been hunting this deck long before she had. Keeping the Royal Delta Marines at the top of the military heap was a hereditary job as well as a chosen one.

Grandmom had fought for Canmerica all the way back before it divided into East and West—that’s how long the Clairborne women had been fighting the good fight.

Syra dropped downshaft to null-g then had to wait while Rood hung onto a slider. Below two-gees, slider handles were strictly for civilians. No self-respecting human used one for the transition from one-quarter at command levels down to zero at the docks.

Rood did. And was sweating by the time she grabbed him. If she hadn’t, he might have hung onto the slider right back up the opposite axis—which could cause real problems if you entered the shaft feet first through the gravity flip. Good way to break something permanent, like your neck.

“Where did you come from, Rood? Earth?”

He looked a little green as he nodded. She hadn’t met one of those in a long while. Earthers were as rare as blonds with blue eyes. Maybe that’s all that was left down there.

“You spew on me, Rood, and we’re gonna have issues. Clear?”

He nodded again and clamped his jaw harder.

She dug into her med kit, found a patch in a little used corner, and slapped it on his neck. “Close your eyes and count to ten.”

She inspected him while she waited. He was tall for a full-grav grounder—almost her height. Spacer-borns added ten or twenty centimeters just for not living in brutal Earth grav every damn minute of the day. And he had a layer of muscle that even the toughest Marine couldn’t lay on because it simply wasn’t natural in space. Spacers were long and lean unless they were some civvie who lived their whole life in the outermost level of a rotating habitat can—and what kind of life was that?

His suit was a standard c-fiber rig, so knock off a few centimeters breadth on those nice shoulders, but still majorly brawny. Not bad looking once she got used to the blond hair, which was gonna take a while.

Surreal though, when he opened those weirdly blue eyes—who knew what he could see with those. Almost made her check that she wore a full suit and wasn’t standing there in just her skin. Like he could see right inside her.

He looked more stable now though. She didn’t tell him about the lockjaw that wouldn’t wear off for a couple of minutes.