Tech World (Undying Mercenaries Series) by B. V. Larson Read Free Book Online Page A

me. “Dude, you don’t know that. You shouldn’t spread rumors.”
    “It’s already done,” I said. “Are they voting, Natasha?”
    She worked, tapping quietly with a fixed frown on her face. She nodded after a while. “About half of them have logged in to the voting page. I’m going to have to fight to keep this tunnel open until they finish. Don’t bug me.”
    “Excuse me? Is there a stewardess on this flight?” Carlos asked no one loudly. “I need to move to another seat before McGill makes me dead again!”
    I smiled at him. “Too late,” I said. “Stop fooling around and vote to keep Varus independent.”
    “What if I vote for unity, for strength—to join the pride and glory that’s known to us lowly rodents as Hegemony?”
    I gave him an evil look. “If we lose, I’m going to ask that you and I serve together in a new unit under Winslade, damn you.”
    “Okay, okay.”

-5-
     
    When we reached Minotaur and docked, Natasha quickly repeated her hack. For a brief time, everyone aboard was able to navigate on their tappers to Earth and log into Central. I walked the promenades over the exercise deck spreading the word. It was time to vote—now or never.
    I needn’t have bothered because the news spread like wildfire. They didn’t like the implications of the situation, and as far as I could tell there were a lot of angry votes shunting down the line to Earth. No one liked the idea that they’d been railroaded into not voting by being mustered off Earth on the eve of the vote.
    “The loyalists are whipping the quitters five to one, I bet,” Carlos said.
    “I thought you were a quitter,” I answered.
    He looked at me in mock outrage. “That was just my charming sense of humor. I don’t want to be a hog any more than you do.”
    I smiled at him, but inwardly I worried about what Turov had said. She’d indicated that it didn’t really matter how we voted. It was only a method to identify dissenters. I hoped she’d been bluffing about that.
    Outwardly, I clapped people on the shoulders and told them they were doing the right thing. I wondered about myself as I did so. Was I really into winning this vote? How much did it matter to me that we stayed independent? Sure, the dirt-side hogs were losers, but at least they didn’t have to look forward to getting their guts chewed on by aliens once or twice a year.
    “I hope you know what you’re doing, James,” Natasha said later, echoing my sentiments. She’d been eyeing me. I recognized the look. She knew me too well, and she knew when I was in over my head and bullshitting. This was definitely one of those times.
    I took a moment to remind myself that Turov deserved to lose this vote even if it was only an embarrassment for her. She’d overstepped her authority, and right now she was coming off as petty despite her promotion. Defying her just for spite was a worthwhile cause in my mind.
    “I joined this legion to see the stars,” I told Natasha. “And I mean to keep doing just that. I don’t want to be gelded and left in an office someplace.”
    She laughed. “Don’t worry. I have a feeling no one in any office could put up with you for more than an hour.”
    I took her statement as a compliment, thanked her, and moved off to tour the ship. Minotaur really was an improvement over Corvus . Word was it had been shipped out from the Perseus spiral arm systems, from its old base about two hundred lightyears closer to the Core.
    Whether this rumor was true or not, I liked the ship. It wasn’t just a transport, it was a hulking warship. Minotaur had a broadside of guns, sixteen of them, strung down the starboard length of her thick, scarred hull. That meant this ship could fight if she had to. Corvus had been very lightly armed and built only to take a legion of humanoids to battle.
    I managed to get to my bunk just before midnight. Over the last hour, every trooper I’d met had already voted. At the end they were telling me that they