Read Star Road for Free Online Page B

communities of your people waiting for—for what? Enlightenment?” His thin smile faded. “Get ready to be disappointed. Now, if you’ll excuse me.”
     
    Jordan kept moving, slipping past the other passengers who were standing in the narrow aisle.
     
    His words didn’t bother Ruth.
     
    There would always be doubters.
     
    She repeated one of her favorite Seeker mantras: Doubt feeds on fear, and fear feeds on ignorance.
     
    Ruth closed her eyes ... and waited for the trip to begin.
     
    ~ * ~
     
    The lowest screen at the base of the SRV’s control panel switched from the Mobius Station logo to Humphries’s smiling face.
     
    “SRV-66—ready to begin pre-Road checkout.”
     
    She smiled. “All set here.”
     
    Humphries looked to the side of his screen as if trying to see if someone was sitting to Annie’s right.
     
    “Where’s your gunner?”
     
    “Checking the main and the freight area. We had an issue with loading.”
     
    “We know. McGowan already filed a liability-for-damages report. Sorry about that... and the little incident before boarding.”
     
    “Little incident?”
     
    The words echoed ironically for Annie.
     
    “A lot of people could have been hurt... if it hadn’t been for Jordan.”
     
    “Yeah. But all’s well, right? We’re showing green lights across the board for your portal exit.”
     
    He’s avoiding the situation.
     
    “You know as well as I do that things can change quickly. No Runner activity reported thus far, and no areas showing any anomalies.”
     
    Another euphemism. “Anomalies.”
     
    Anything that happened on the Road that they couldn’t explain was an “anomaly.”
     
    Anomalies could kill you out here.
     
    “Good,” Annie said, focusing on her job.
     
    “Let’s run through your board check.”
     
    “Let’s.”
     
    And Mobius Control Center began checking every switch, button, screen, readout, and HUD remotely while Humphries confirmed that each responded properly.
     
    A tedious process.
     
    But, Annie thought, keeping your ass safe is worth a tedious process.
     
    ~ * ~
     
    Jordan pulled at the metal clamps and tension bars holding the pallets of freight to be dropped along the way to Omega Nine.
     
    Near the back, large metal bands wrapped tightly around the large metal sarcophagus that held McGowan’s mining suit.
     
    Everything as locked down as it could be.
     
    He turned and bent down to enter the low passageway that led to the main gun turret.
     
    The turret itself was small. Not unlike the old gun turrets mounted on B17s two centuries earlier.
     
    The addition of a gunner’s chair here, though, seemed almost like an afterthought.
     
    If the gun could be operated remotely, with the 360-degree space easily seen from the cockpit, why the chair?
     
    Somebody had the imagination to realize there would be gunners... like me, Jordan thought.
     
    Where no screen—no matter how damned crystal clear the 3-D was— could replace sitting back here, swiveling, turning, circling, as a human, hands on the controls, aimed and fired the gun.
     
    And though this SRV was perhaps the smallest vehicle that worked the Road, her main gun was ... something else.
     
    Lots of power, fast response, and with amazing accuracy.
     
    Capable of pin-point blasts as well as wide-angle scattershots that could take out a half-dozen attackers at once.
     
    He had to admit...
     
    I hope something happens this trip.
     
    Be a shame to let all that firepower go to waste.
     
    He sat down on the seat, and for a few minutes practiced targeting as the seat pivoted and swerved. He smiled, knowing Mobius Control Center was wondering what the hell he was doing.
     
    ~ * ~
     
    “All right, SRV-66, all systems check out. Got you synced to the Mobius Cloud ... Oh. Thought you’d want to know. Your gunner is still in the back. Practicing, it looks like.”
     
    Annie was about to tell them Jordan didn’t need any “practicing.”
     
    But they probably knew