Strength and Honor by R.M. Meluch Read Free Book Online

his head on the belly of Cain Salvador’s crate.
    Cole Darby was an overeducated white suburban boy, who enlisted in the Fleet Marine looking for purpose in his life.
    The Darb wanted a purpose? Colonel Steele would give him a foxtrotting purpose. He jammed the instructions for the Divorce Protocol into Cole Darby’s hands. “Make this happen.” Find your meaning in that.
    “Aye, sir,” said Cole Darby.
    Steele had expected Darb to bail a long time ago. But the Darb had hung in, fit in. Not that the Darb wasn’t still an odd duck in this company. Steele didn’t know if Cole Darby had found whatever he was looking for, but he was still here and he was useful most of the time.
    Steele watched Cole Darby read the Protocol. Darb’s eyes did not glass over. You could see the cylinders turning and the tumblers falling into position.
    Steele returned to Ranza, gestured back with a jerk of his thick thumb. “There.”
    “Oh,” said Ranza on an arcing note, everything becoming clear. “That brain.”
    “Allocate your resources, Flight Leader,” Steele tapped her shoulder with the bottom of his fist. Ranza smiled a gap-toothed smile. “Got it, sir. Thank you, sir.”
    Steele surveyed the hangar. His gaze fell on a pair of booted feet, sticking out from under the Swift next to Kerry Blue’s.
    Steele advanced. Let his shadow fall across the boots. “You got a girlfriend under there, Salvador?” Clunk. Head on the belly. Cain Salvador scrabbled to vertical. “No, sir.”
    Flight Sergeant Cain Salvador looked like a Marine. Cain was sleek and powerful as a seal. Could have been a real afthole but he respected authority and stood before Steele at stiff attention.
    “As you were.” Cain Salvador rubbed his head and crawled back under his Swift, Alpha Three.
    Tromping across the deck grates and making a lot of noise operating a maintenance bot to suck the debris and soot from Kerry Blue’s exploding crate was Dak Shepard, Alpha Two. Hard not to like Dak Shepard. All heart, guts, brawn, and dick. No brain. Dak was solid.
    Flight Sergeant Twitch Fuentes was changing out the canopy of his Swift, Alpha Five. Steele did not ask Twitch Fuentes anything. Steele really didn’t want to know how much English Twitch didn’t know. Twitch was a good fighter, always ready.
    Carly Delgado regularly flew Alpha Four. She had pried up a deck grate and was summoning Dak over to help her with the soggy mess underneath it with a wave of her stick-thin arm. All bone and whip muscle. Carly was a hard soldier. Her small pyramidal breasts looked hard too. Mean. Too lean. She was looking particularly skinny right now. Steele ordered her, “Bulk up, Delgado.”
    “I feel better when I’m hungry,” Carly answered back. Steele told her, “I don’t care if you eat or not, I want to see more Delgado.” Dak whispered, “Carly! Take your shirt off!”
    “Shut up, Dak.” This mess was all Augustus’ fault as far as Steele could see. The Roman man-machine was just plain easy to hate.
    The war had gone hot and Merrimack was stuck in the Deep, snarled up in the Divorce Protocol, tripping over minutia and that was Augustus’ fault too. The boffins were afraid Augustus had left rogue nanites.
    Merrimack segregated all her systems. Took them down one by one, searched for signs of tampering and scoured for nanites. The crew ran test scenarios designed by the cryptotech and validated by the systems’ normal users and their maintenance personnel.
    All programs were reencrypted and reseeded.
    Chief Engineer Kit Kittering took down each of the fornicating ship’s six fornicating engines one at a time, exiling the fornicating antimatter into space, while she purged the fornicating system, rehoused the fornicating components, recoded the fornicating containment field, recaptured the antimatter (really fornicating on the way back in) and restarted the damned engine.
    Codes needed changing on all spacecraft Merrimack carried, starting with the Swifts,