Read Children of Steel for Free Online Page B

looked
around at their faces.
    "Yeah," this was from Katrine who was
grinning, "be careful, I'd really miss you if you got your
'you-know-what' cut off!"
    "Me too!" piped up Mist laughing.
    "Gee thanks a lot." I mumbled, "Well I guess
I might as well go see what kind of trouble I'm in." I got up and
started for the door.
    "You can wait till tomorrow Raj," said
Sharazad, "a few more hours won't make much of a difference."
    I stopped and thought about it a second, but
I couldn't see myself being able to relax now.
    "No, if I sit around and think about this
you'll have two whacked out leopards. I'll let you all know what
happens."
    I walked out the door to a chorus of 'Good
Lucks' and her room number from Kate. The walk down gave me time to
think about what I was doing. The other drawback to being the
junior member of a clan is getting all the dirty jobs of course. So
how do you just barge in on someone who's decided to be a recluse?
Granted it was unhealthy, they used to tell us horror stories about
animen who went off the deep end, especially Leopards. Of all the
animen only Weasels have a worse reputation than us, but then
they're proud of it, we're not. The only thing that kept racing
through my mind was that at least if she went off the deep end now,
I'd be her first target.
    I wondered then if she had any combat
training?
    On that thought I came to her cabin door, and
knocked.
    "Who is it?" came quietly from inside.
    "Warrant Raj Rakir, May I come in?"
    "What for?" Was it my imagination, or did she
sound nervous?
    "Personal," I responded.
    "No, go away I'm busy." Yes, she did sound
nervous.
    "Thank you, but no," I opened the door and
walked in to her quarters.
    The first think to hit me was the smell. It
was a clinging unhealthy rot, faint but nauseous. The second thing
to hit me was the book she was reading, right in the face. I looked
at it as it hit the floor, some kind of engineering text, must have
weighed about twenty pounds. The smell was worse.
    "Who the hell do you think you are!" She
yelled. "Get out of my cabin."
    I looked her over, she was about 5' 8",
average height for a Leopard, but she looked way too thin, kind of
drawn too. She still had her uniform overalls on and they were
clean. But her fur didn't look good, kind of patchy.
    "Didn't you hear me?" she yelled again.
    "Yes, actually I did and there's no need to
scream."
    "Well then," she continued in a more normal
voice, "get out."
    By this time she was standing right in front
of me. I looked down and smiled what I hoped was a good impression
of a nasty smile and grabbed her wrist.
    "With pleasure," and I dragged her out into
the hall.
    "WHY YOU LOUSY ..." She jumped me as I pulled
her down the hall, "I'm gonna ..."
    I wouldn't have even called it a scuffle; I
just scooped her up into a fireman's carry over my shoulder and
kept going down the hall. Damn, was she light, skin and bones
mostly by my guess.
    "Temper, temper now," I chided. "Screaming
and kicking aren't going to get you anywhere."
    "What do you expect? Barging into my room and
dragging me out like that?" she growled.
    "Well I'm sorry about that, but your room
stinks and that book had definite dislike for my face."
    "Okay, I'm sorry about the book, now put me
down."
    I decided that the mess was a good place to
start and turned down the hall in that direction.
    "I'll think about it, now when was the last
time you had a decent meal?"
    "I had some food just a little while ago,
why?"
    "I'm not talking about that packaged crap I
noticed sitting on your desk, I'm talking real food."
    "Damn it, put we down."
    I stopped and set her down; we were at the
mess entrance anyway. I glanced inside, it was fairly empty but
they were still serving, good.
    I felt something hit me in the back; I turned
around and looked at her. She was holding her foot and scowling, I
sighed.
    "Come on, let's eat."
    I pulled her inside and we walked over to the
serving line. I ordered for the both of us, got the food and found
a