Read Firemask: Book Two of the Last Legion Series for Free Online

worry.”
    “Not quite,” Hedley said. “Considering it’s a half hour back to Camp Mahan, and it’s pretty near opening time, we’d better hurry.”
    “I see you caught that about open vessels, didn’t you,” Angara said.
    “I always listen to my flipping superiors,” Hedley said piously.
    • • •
    “A word?” Njangu asked, sounding a bit formal.
    Garvin put down his paperwork.
    “Go ahead.”
    “Has anybody suggested you’re behaving a bit like an asshole lately?”
    Garvin colored, got up from his desk in the I&R Company Headquarters.
    “You know, I didn’t need this shit from you, of all people.”
    “Who else is gonna give it to you?” Yoshitaro pointed out. “We happen to be friends, remember?”
    “Just leave it alone,” Jaansma said. “I’ll be all right.”
    “Sure you will. You’ll get over being dumped on, sooner or later. Nobody I ever knew died of a busted heart. But you’re sure playing hell with the company while you’re getting better, growling at everybody so nobody knows whether to shit or go blind, ignoring people half the time, giving them a ration of crap the other half.”
    Garvin stared out at the company street, at a team going through gun drill on a rocket launcher borrowed from an Artillery section — I&R trained on every weapon, every vehicle in RaoForce as a matter of routine.
    “Whoever dumped that invite on you wasn’t your friend,” Njangu pressed. “And they sure succeeded in getting to you.”
    “You know about that?”
    “I know about it,” Njangu said. “And probably half the frigging regiment’s figured it out by now.”
    “I thought I had all that business tucked away, forgotten,” Garvin said. “And then whambo, it came bouncing right on back.”
    “Yeah,” Njangu. “Ngai surprises us like that, making us think we’re human and all every now and again.”
    “And where the hell did you get all this sudden wisdom?”
    “Easy,” Njangu said. “It ain’t my problem.”
    Garvin smiled wryly.
    “So what do I do about it, o combat advisor and valued friend … for a dickhead.”
    “Go bleed somewhere else.”
    “What? Take leave? And what happens if something happens while I’m gone? No way,” Garvin said. “I’ve got too much to do.”
    “Wasn’t suggesting you go piddle off,” Njangu said. “The new fools we’ve got training are coming up for their graduation exercise.
    “We’re fat city, no more’n two percent understrength, and the way it looks we’re gonna graduate about eleven of them, with only two, maybe three washouts. Things like that are liable to make Hedley think we’re getting soft since he gave us the company.
    “So take these clowns up in the hills, bust their nuts, see if you can’t get five or six of ‘em to go crying home to momma.”
    “Like where?”
    Njangu considered the wall map.
    “Here’s something that’d be a real killer. Take the virgins across to Dharma Island, maybe on the far side of Mount Najim, hike on up into the Highlands. It’ll be nice and frozen, make ‘em homesick for the tropics down here.
    “Go completely tactical, no air unless it’s an emergency …” Njangu looked at the map again, checked the legend. “Yeh. Here we go. Insert here, where it’s still fairly livable, then shamble on up into the Highlands to … here. That’s the Musth base they abandoned.
    “See if there’s any interesting sou-ven-waars. Tell the little bastards that we’ll come in with hot rats and cold beer, give them a nice ride back here for graduation, then put on your best sorrow-face and say, ‘The airlift didn’t show, and we’ll have to hike back.’
    “That ought to get some people busting into tears and quitting.”
    Garvin looked at the map, at Yoshitaro.
    “That’s an evil thought. How long ago was it you went through this shit?”
    “Year or so. Which reminds me. You never did qualify, not formally. So this’ll be your own final grad. How’s that hang, my friend? Be a real