Storm Force: Book Three of the Last Legion Series by Chris Bunch Read Free Book Online

your commander said, I
am
a professional. I’m more than content to be tucked in whatever comfortable prison you have on some distant island, and give as much help as I can while you pursue your venture against Redruth. That should ensure my continued survival, in a measure of comfort.”
    His voice suddenly sounded a bit unsure. “Do you think such an arrangement might be possible?”
    Njangu, carefully blank-faced, stood.
    “I’ll discuss this with my superiors. I’m afraid we can’t leave you in this room, by the way. It’s not as secure as others. Someone will escort you back to your previous compartment in a few minutes. Tomorrow we’ll continue our discussion, and perhaps in the meantime you’ll think if you don’t remember a bit more than you said about Larix and Kura.”
    Yohns was on his feet, holding out a hand.
    “I’m sure we’ll work well together.”
    Yoshitaro didn’t want to take his hand, but did.
    He went out to where the guards waited. “Take him back to the clank. Oh yeah. Put him on a suicide watch, round the clock.”
    “Yes, sir,
Cent
.”
    • • •
    Njangu rolled to his feet, the pistol always under his pillow in hand as a fist thundered at the thin door.
    “Yeh?”
    “
Cent
Yoshitaro!” It was the Bachelor Officer Quarters’ Charge of Quarters. “It’s an emergency!”
    Njangu had the door unlocked and open in a second.
    “Sir,” the CQ said, “II Section says you’re to go to what they said was the prisoner’s quarters at once.”
    • • •
    “That’s a hard way to go,”
Mil
Hedley said, looking down at the bloody corpse. “Damned if I think I’d have the flipping guts to chew through my own tongue and then just quietly bleed to death.”
    “I don’t understand why he killed himself,” Njangu said.
    “Who knows?” Hedley said. “Spies aren’t the most stable people. Maybe he didn’t believe us when we said we weren’t gonna toss him in an iron maiden just for laughs.
    “More likely, he started thinking about how an oh-so-clever agent got his flipping ass trapped by a bunch of infantrymen with dirt under their fingernails, and his ego told him it couldn’t handle things.”
    “I had a suicide watch mounted,” Njangu said, holding back his anger. “He asks for some fresh water, and both guards go out of the cell. I know two troopies who’re going to be mounting suicide watch on each other on the smallest frigging reef on this frigging planet.” Promise made, he forgot about the two for the moment, looked back down at Yohns.
    “All this goddamned work,” he hissed. “To end up with — ”
    “With nothing,” Hedley said. “Except he won’t be hanging over our shoulder, watching, anymore. But he could’ve been so much, much flipping more,” he said.
    Yoshitaro remembered the extent of Yohns’s claimed knowledge.
    “Maybe. Or maybe not.” An idea came. “Or maybe we can still get some miles out of his sorry ass.”
    “Like how?”
    Njangu turned a profile to Hedley. “Don’t I make an utterly lovely Ab Yohns?”

CHAPTER
5

Asteroid Glyph-Hander
    The yacht belonging to the late Ab Yohns matched orbits with the dumbbell-shaped asteroid, then landed. A
velv
held position about three kilometers away from the asteroid.
    “Finished with engines and all that nautical rot,” Ben Dill said.
    Njangu Yoshitaro got up from the copilot’s chair. “Damn. I was sure you were gonna stack it up on that rock on final.”
    “You see your problem?” Ben asked. “You’re in the hands of the finest pilot humanity has produced since, oh, mebbe Orville and Wilbur Lilienthal, and do you show proper respect? Hah! I say again, hah!
    “Your biggest problem, Yoshitaro, is that you’ve never learned to fly, so you have no method of judging a natural birdman like myself.” Dill caught himself. “Yoish, but I’m a dolt.”
    “No kid.”
    “No, I mean I went and volunteered to fly you out here for your rendezvous with destiny, and it never occurred: