Ghost Legion by Margaret Weis Read Free Book Online Page A

commandos to transport a fake space-rotation
bomb to a new, supposedly more secure location. As he'd figured, the
information that the bomb had been moved had been leaked. Someone had
known where it was and how to go after it. But his plans for catching
the informant and his or her cohorts had failed.
    Or had it?
    "Ghost Legion," he muttered.
    Bennett had returned and was hovering again. "The meeting with
His Majesty is scheduled for tomorrow, 0800. And now, my lord, about
that jacket—"
    "Screw the damn jacket!" snarled Dixter. He reached for the
printouts, knocked over the coffee cup, spilled coffee on his pants.

Chapter Four
    What beckoning ghost .. . invites my step ...
    Alexander Pope, Elegy to an Unfortunate Lady

    Tusk climbed, hand over hand, up the ladder that led to the
Scimitar's hatch. He stopped once about halfway up to adjust the
child carrier he wore strapped to his back and to admonish the small
child inside.
    "Remember, be quiet and don't touch anything. Grandpa XJ doesn't
like it."
    The child nodded solemnly, wide-eyed at the prospect of treading on
sacred and forbidden ground. It was not often he was allowed inside
the Scimitar. The bright lights and myriad buttons and dials—some
of them actually on his level—were too great a temptation for
two and a half. Then there was the disembodied voice, the awful and
mysterious Grandpa XJ, who was the god of the Scimitar, who had power
over light and air and a certain sealed compartment beneath the
plastileather sofa.
    Tusk reached the hatch located on the top of the spaceplane, and
pounded on it. "Open up, XJ. It's me."
    The hatch whirred open with a suddenness that surprised Tusk, who had
been expecting an argument or at least a barrage of sarcastic remarks
from the computer. Flashing one last warning glance at the toddler,
Tusk crawled through the hatch and descended into the spaceplane.
    Those who had flown in this plane three years earlier—His
Majesty among them, as proclaimed by an engraved plaque bolted to the
bulkheads (Link's idea)—would not have recognized it now. Once
a fighting warbird, the Scimitar had undergone a remarkable and
expensive transformation, was now (as Nola put it) a cockatoo.
    The bubble on top, which had once been the gun turret was the
"observation dome." Only one passenger could sit up there
and "observe" at a time, and that was a rather tight fit
due to the fact that the gun was still in place, though Tusk had
built a cabinet around it and it now masqueraded as a drink holder.
But the observation dome was popular with travelers and was one of
the spaceplane's selling points.
    The sleeping area—once a repository for tools and mags and
vids, coils of wire, empty bottles of jump-juice, and a couple of
hammocks suspended from the overhead—was now "homey and
inviting" as Link termed it, though Tusk thought privately it
looked like the waiting room in a dentist's office.
    The weapons storage compartments were plastileather settees. The deck
had been carpeted (used). A large-screen vid provided entertainment
for the space-weary traveler. Link would have added an artificial
fireplace, for "ambiance," but Tusk had threatened to throw
him out the airlock if he did. The only improvement of which Tusk
thoroughly approved was the new wet bar. He took care to keep it well
stocked, much to XJ's ire. The computer ceased to grumble, however,
after discovering how much profit they made off liquor sales.
    Unfortunately, that was the only area in which they were showing a
profit. Business was good. The swift-flying shuttle was popular with
those who either needed to be somewhere in a hurry or wanted to get
there without customs and immigration taking notice of them on
arrival. Such people were willing to spend extra to obtain one or the
other convenience, or both. With careful money management and sound
investments, "Tusk's Link to the Stars" (as Nola had
cleverly dubbed it) could have made its two