Read The Mind Field for Free Online

targeting pulse. Sitting blind in the middle of a minefield had utterly sucked.
    So, theoretically inhabitable planet below. Had been inhabited once, until a bright fall day in August Standard, five hundred and eighty–three years ago. Nobody had visited since. Or, if they had, nobody had escaped.
    Boring looking planet. About half water and half land, randomly arranged by whatever the gods of chance and plate tectonics had found most pleasing recently.
    Javier wondered about tsunami down on the surface, considering the vast amount of extremely large junk in orbit that was likely to fall eventually. Five fleets worth of warships, plus every raider, scavenger, and pirate, save one, that had tried their luck over the centuries. Gravity was an unforgiving mistress and there was a lot of water to hit.
    From here, the wound gouged in the face of the western hemisphere would rise in about thirty minutes. There had been a planetary capital there. Before. Ought to be able to pick up any radiation in a little bit, if there was anything significant. There weren’t even lights down there on the dark side, so either the entire population had died, or just their technology.
    Javier watched his screens as his data banks slowly filled with interesting tidbits.
    He turned to the Captain as he considered taking the time to pee.
    “What are we looking for here, anyway?” he asked, in his ten–year–old backseat–whining voice. He was good at that one.
    Captain Sokolov barely glanced over as he watched the screen. “Money.”
    Okay. Yeah. The obvious answer. Translation: I have no clue what’s here, we’ll steal everything not nailed down, or anything that we can pry up.
    Pirates and Philistines.
    Still, it beat being dead. Or working as an agricultural slave on some forgotten, misbegotten backwater. At least the pirates had a sense of humor.
    Centurion Djamila Sykora, Ship’s Dragoon, walked in.
    Most of them.

Part Two
    Zakhar had learned to watch what was going on in Aritza’s head by the way his hands moved when he typed things on the console. Usually, it was a lazy, one–handed motion, two fingers and a thumb roaming the whole face to find keys and buttons.
    When he got excited, or nervous, he used both hands, striking with precision and all ten fingers. Concord Fleet Academy training. When Sykora was around, back to one hand, slowly banging things out, like he was driving nails with his fingers.
    If they both weren’t so good, and, more importantly, so professional about it, he would have had to physically separate them a while ago. As it was, she was generally on his left and stayed away from the Science Officer on the right, with most of the width of the bridge between them.
    Not that it would do him any good. Zakhar had seen how fast Djamila could move when she wanted to.
    So Zakhar watched the Science Officer’s whole outlook change, just in the set of his hands, when she walked in. He doubted that anybody on this ship, excepting possibly Aritza, would even recognize a reference to Pavlov, but he couldn’t help himself. It was like a bell rang.
    On the big projection, he watched the real time face of the planet slowly turn. They had already done something nobody had ever done. At least, that anybody had ever mentioned. If they could sneak in and out of here, he might have to bring back a bigger ship, maybe one of those monster cargo carriers, all hollow box, and see how much loot they could steal.
    The old ships weren’t going to be worth much as salvage after this long, but there would be logs, and sentimental value in things like personal effects and ship’s crests, vintage fighters left alone on abandoned docks, etc.. That would be worth something to collectors, especially since he had the market cornered.
    Hell, Javier might make enough off his Centurion’s share to buy his freedom, if it went really well. Maybe he could actually hire the man. He certainly wasn't about to just give back the trees, Javier would