Read The Mind Field for Free Online Page B

he said. “What would we do if you retired?”
    “You’d do something stupid and get yourself dead inside a week,” she added a layer of sugar on top.
    “Children,” Captain Sokolov said. Quiet. Firm. Commanding.
    Javier refused to listen to that part of his lizard–brain that had been trained to salute even when he was dead asleep or falling down drunk. Bad precedent. The man might come to expect it. Then where would they be?
    They were, right the moment, back down in the loading bay, waiting for the engineering crew to finish extending the boarding tunnel, mate it, and override the airlock on the other side so they could board. It felt like they were getting ready for a picnic. Kind of looked like it, too.
    Captain Sokolov was there to see them off. Sykora and a smaller than normal group of her killers, armed for invading small planets. Javier’s occasional assistant and sometimes minder from engineering, Machinist’s Mate Ilan Yu.
    Sykora’s two pathfinders for planetary work were also there, Sasha: the short brunette with the nice hips, and Hajna: the skinny blond with the long legs. Nice girls. Cut–throat card sharps.
    Javier took inventory. Since they were expecting power, heat, and hopefully air over there, at least after some repairs, everyone was only wearing skinsuits today instead of the big armoured suits like Sykora had used to kill the mine.
    To various loops and belts Javier had attached bits and pieces he had rifled from his planet–side gear. The little bag with low tech stuff like a magnetic compass (currently useless), matches (no scrub to burn), paper and pencil (good for mapping), a small metal knife (it didn’t vibrate, or have a laser edge, or collapsed monomolecular edge, or anything cool), and his handy little hiking trinket that combined a very cheap magnetic compass, a thermometer, and the symbols you should make in the dirt in an emergency.
    The only thing high–tech he was taking was Suvi.
    Externally, she looked like a small gray grapefruit, covered with knobs and things. Externally, she was just his short–range autonomous sensor remote, with an extra surprise. When the pirates had taken his ship, Mielikki , he had managed to smuggle out the AI who ran it, and pour her into the remote. And kept her his little secret ever since.
    Since then, he had upgraded her electronics about as far as he could without people asking suspicious questions. She didn’t have her original memory core, but all of her personality could fit now and she had pretty much all of her log files and enough books to keep her busy for a few years at least.
    He looked around to make sure he had space and then tossed her into the air as he pulled out the matching portable computer. It would take her about thirty seconds to re–baseline the bay in visual, ultrasound, radar, and infrared, with a stack of dials and gauges giving him various readings on people and equipment.
    There had been enough time to upload what he knew about the ship over there, plus some of the mission parameters, so she was at least as prepared as the rest of them. And probably smarter.
    The engineering crew coming out of the boarding tube brought him out of his fugue with a jolt.
    “We have a seal over there, sir,” the woman said, addressing herself to him instead of the Captain standing next to him or the Dragoon beyond that. When had he gotten put in charge?
    Still, this was a technical task, and they were nerdy people. He at least spoke in a language they could follow, some of the time. Unlike little miss amazon killer here.
    “That’s good,” he replied, absolutely at a loss for her name. “Status over there?”
    “Didn’t get too deep into their diagnostic system, but we’re pretty close to level,” she said. “Gravplates are dialed down to about one quarter, so be careful or you’ll bonk your head. Air reports breathable and acceptable pressure, but stay prepared anyway. Temperature is only a few degrees above freezing