Duty Bound by Steve Miller, Sharon Lee and Steve Miller Read Free Book Online Page A

not--but
who can predict a Scout Commander? Short form is that he's gone
missing, and there's been the very hell of a hue and cry--and
another problem.
    "Shadia Ne'Zame may have discovered his
location--but the Department's on the usual bands--monitoring us.
Listen to Scout Net, but for the gods' sweet love don't attempt to
use it!
    "Shadia's due in any time and I'll send a
follow-up when she gets here. You'd scarcely know the place, with
all the changes since your training.
    "If you've got ears for any of us, Captain,
now is when we need you to hear." There was a pause, as if Clonak
was for once at a loss for words, then:
    "Be well, old friend. If you've heard me at
all..."
    It ended.
    Daav stared for a moment, then punched the
button for the next message.
    There was no next message. Days had gone by
and Clonak had not followed up.
    Daav shifted in his seat, thinking.
    Desperate and under the shadow of a pursuing
enemy, Clonak had found him. And Clonak had not followed up.
Suddenly, it was imperative that Daav be somewhere else.
    He flicked forward to the microphone.
    "This is L'il Orbit, ground. I think I've
got the problem fixed now. I'm going to be checking out the whole
system in a few minutes. If I get a go, I'll need you to move me to
a hot pad."
    "Hot damn, L'il Orbit, way to go!" The
counterman sounded startled, but genuinely pleased. "I'll get Bugle
over there with the tractor in just a couple!"
    "Thank you, ground," Daav said gravely,
already reaching for the keyboard.
    "Hello," he typed.
    "Go," said maincomp.
    "Complete run: Flight readiness."
    "Working."
    So many years. His brother and sister dead.
His son in trouble. The son he wasn't going to be concerned with
after all. And somehow the Juntavas was mixed around it.
    Scout Commander. Daav sighed. Scouts were
legendary for the trouble they found. The trouble that might attend
a Scout Commander did not bear thinking upon.
    The ship beeped; lights long dark came
green. He touched button after button, longingly. Lovingly.
    He could do it. He could.
    He had left all those battles behind.
    "Ground," he said into the mike, the Terran
words feeling absurdly wide in his throat, "this bird's in a hurry
to try her wings. Everything's green!"
    "Gotcha. We'll get you over to the hotpad in
a few minutes. Bugle's just got the tractor out of the shed."
    Daav laughed then, and laughed again.
    It felt good, just the idea of being in
space. Maybe he could talk to some of the pilots he'd been
listening to for so long--He grimaced; his back had grabbed.
    Right. Easy does it.
    And then, recalling the circumstances, he
reached to the keyboard once more.
    "Hello," he typed. "Weapons check."
    * * *
    "I'M NOT A COMBAT pilot, either, Shadia. I
think we did as well as might expected!"
    The gesture in emphasis was all but lost in
the dimness of the emergency lighting.
    "I swear to you, Clonak--they've murdered my
ship and if they haven't killed me I'm going to take them apart
piece by piece, and if they have killed me I'll haunt every last
one of them to..."
    The muffled voice went suddenly away and the
mustached man raised his hand to signal the separation. The woman
shrugged and braced her legs harder against the ship's interior,
bringing her Momson Cloak back in contact with his as they sat side
by side on the decking behind the control seats, using the leverage
of their legs to hold them in place in the zero-g.
    "We bested them," the man insisted. "We did,
Shadia--since the fact that we're somewhere argues that their ship
isn't anywhere."
    There was a snort of sorts from within the
transparent cloak. "I'm familiar with that equation--my instructor
learned it from the Caylon herself! But what could they have been
thinking to bring a destroyer against a ship likely to Jump? You
don't have to be a Caylon to know that's..."
    Her gesture broke the contact again and the
near vacuum of the ship's interior refused to carry her words.
    Shadia leaned back more firmly against
Clonak's shoulder,