Judge by Karen Traviss Read Free Book Online

reluctance to rejoin the Corps after you made such a song and dance about reinstatement.”
    â€œYou won’t have to.” Barencoin was too hard on the heels of his thoughts sometimes. “That’s my job. You keep your trap shut and pick up where you left off, okay?”
    â€œBut if we go back to FEU jurisdiction, they debrief us. They’ll want to know every cough, shit, and fart we’ve taken for the last few years. That’s a bloody big story to keep straight between five of us. ‘Oh yeah, don’t worry, sir, Sergeant Bennett is the creature from the Black Lagoon on his day off. Now let’s talk about this fascinating water reclamation scheme on Wess’ej.’ They’ll be happy with that, will they?”
    â€œWell, maybe you should have started rehearsing it earlier.” So what? Ade knew the FEU couldn’t lay a finger on him whether it knew he had c’naatat or not. “It doesn’t matter what you tell them. There’s sod all they can do about it now.”
    Between them, Qureshi and Barencoin voiced all the fears and anxieties he still harbored, and asked all the troubling questions. It was a hard homecoming for too many reasons. His last conversation with the top brass on Earth had promised the detachment would be reinstated, more or less, especially if they could tell the FEU what had happened to Rayat. But that had been years ago, and anyone whose career depended on that promise being honored was long retired—or dead—now, and Rayat was thirty light-years away on Eqbas Vorhi. It was all academic.
    Fuck ’em.
    Barencoin shrugged. For once, he looked clean-shaven, which was no small feat. The cryo seemed to have slowed his beard growth.
    â€œYeah, the FEU’s going to make a big thing about missing civvies. Just for something to do, if nothing else. How many payload came back out of seven? Hugel and Mesevy. Two. Out of seven .”
    â€œNot counting Rayat and Lindsay,” Ade said. “Champciaux wanted to stay.”
    â€œWe only lost two, really, and one of those was a blue-on-blue.”
    â€œAnd Eddie,” said Qureshi.
    Barencoin shrugged. “Yeah, that gutted me. I never thought he’d stay behind.”
    â€œWhy shouldn’t he?” said Ade. Shit, Eddie’s my mate. I’m the one who’s entitled to feel abandoned, not you. It was still a massive shock, more like Eddie was dead than just separated from them by a generation. “He hasn’t got any ties here either.”
    â€œI really thought he’d come. We need him to do the smarmy talk with the puny Earthlings, don’t we? Shan can’t do smarmy. Esganikan the Hun definitely can’t. That leaves Deborah Garrod. She knows less about Earth than the aliens do.”
    There was also the small matter of her being the leader of a devout Christian colony; Australia’s population was 45 percent Muslim. Last time Ade had checked, twenty-five years ago, the Christians were getting uppity again thanks to the apparently miraculous return of the lost colony complete with its precious gene bank. He marveled at the ability of people to grasp such flimsy things and build their lives and actions around them. But maybe that was what he’d done all his adult life, by hanging on to an affiliation that was another set of ideas held together by a little metal symbol: a globe and laurel instead of a cross.
    The Corps was real, though, solid and visible in his comrades. Maybe Deborah Garrod saw what she trusted and believed reflected in her friends and family, too. He decided not to judge.
    Becken sucked his teeth noisily. “What do you suppose Rayat’s doing now?”
    â€œI don’t care,” said Barencoin, “as long as the Eqbas are still shoving a fucking probe up his spook arse on an hourly basis.”
    He didn’t mention Lindsay Neville. But she’d been a squid-woman for twenty-five years now, so maybe it