The Kassa Gambit by M. C. Planck Read Free Book Online Page A

really need her.
    She decided not to point that out.
    “If you get off this ship without me,” she promised, “you won’t get back on it. I’ll leave you out there. Take us all, or stay here. Your choice.”
    He surprised her. Even though she could feel the heat of his anger, he surrendered.
    “Fine. Have it your way.”
    Kyle fit into Garcia’s suit, albeit badly. Both men were thick, but in entirely different ways.
    Melvin was complaining bitterly, but Prudence ignored him. She wanted as many eyes and guns as she could get around Kyle. She even gave a rifle to Jorgun, although she made sure it was unloaded. He would be useless if Kyle turned on them; but Kyle might not have figured that out yet.
    Kyle had brought over two mag rifles from the Launceston, military-issue assault weapons. They were vastly more intimidating than her civilian equipment. With the imitation of perfect innocence, he even offered her one.
    She accepted, gracefully. When his back was turned, she swapped them, taking the one he had set out for himself.
    Her last precaution was to remove the medallion she wore around her neck. It was small, three centimeters across and a millimeter thick, but it was the most valuable thing she owned. Worth more than even the Ulysses.
    It was the only link she had with her mother. A trinket, passed from mother to daughter, but the one tangible thing that had come from her hand to Prudence’s, from her exotic world to the cramped apartment Prudence grew up in.
    Reflexively, she squeezed the medallion. It had taken her years to learn the trick, just the right pressures in just the right places. As a child she had struggled for hours a day to master this skill, to be worthy of her mother’s gift. Her father could only manage it one try out of ten.
    The medallion unfolded in her hand, stretching out into a handle, and the blade sprung free. Ten centimeters long and as light as a feather, it was the sharpest edge Prudence had ever seen, heard of, or read about. Her father had claimed it was a single molecule thick. It would cut through hardened steel as easily as through water.
    A ridiculously dangerous object to give to a child. But her father had trusted her, had known she would treat it with the respect it deserved.
    Letting it collapse into a disk again, she dropped it into a pocket of the suit, where she could reach it in a hurry.
    “Are we ready?” Kyle was eager, despite his exhaustion.
    She responded by punching the air lock release.

FOUR
    Discoveries
    Standing in the air lock, he checked the magazine on his rifle. Visibly, so she would see him doing it. Letting her know he had a functional weapon might prevent her from trying anything stupid. Her switch-up had been smoothly done, but he’d memorized the serial numbers of both weapons. An old cop habit, born out of the fact that professional-grade weapons imprinted their serial number on every round they fired. Knowing who had shot who was the sort of thing cops liked to know.
    Call it lessons from cop school. Making sure everyone knew the consequences of starting a fight was the best way to stop one. Making sure everyone understood they would be held accountable for every shot they fired was the best way to make them shoot carefully.
    Of course, that was on Altair, where squads of SWAT goons were a panic button away and forensics teams would pore over every square inch of the crime scene. Out here, on a primitive planet in the middle of an arctic blizzard, the rules might be different.
    The lock cycled, exposing them to the outside. The big one, Jorgun, reached up to toggle his helmet mike.
    Kyle put out a hand and stopped him. “Radio silence. Don’t let them know we’re coming.” He had to shout over the howling wind. Jorgun nodded, accepting the rebuke without reacting to it.
    They trudged outside, sinking up to their knees. Jorgun stared up at the sky, entranced by the swirling patterns of snowflakes. Melvin was hardly more effective, wading