Read The Vastalimi Gambit for Free Online

the gat.
    The hopper slowed, gravity eased up, and the vessel veered a hair to port as the gat-port snapped open. The electric gun opened up, six barrels atwirl, eight thousand rounds a minute of 10mm EU caseless, laser-locked onto the incoming rocket. A two-second burst was more than enough. Way more.
    Rags would probably give her shit about how the computer could have done it in one second, thus saving 133 rounds, but fuck it, better safe than sorry. If they got spiked? The computer wouldn’t care.
    The heavy metal sleet tore the rocket to pieces five hundred meters out, shredding it into metal-and-plastic confetti. No boom, as the bits fluttered and fell in the warm afternoon.
    “Smart rockets don’t come cheap,” Jo said. “Looks like the opposition is ramping things up.”
    “We need to go find it and have a look?” Gramps asked.
    “No point. We’d find out it was a rocket and maybe backwalk where it came from, but the shooter will be long gone, if he was even there when it lit. Could have been a din running it.”
    “Well, at least we won’t be bored on this op,” Gunny said.
    “How could anybody be bored when you are around, Chocolatte?”
    Jo shook her head. Sooner or later, somebody would tell them to get a fucking room and get to fucking. Be interesting to see what their reactions would be when it finally happened.
    She waved at the com.
    “Cutter here.”
    “You check the feed from the hopper’s squirt?”
    “Why would I do that? Don’t
you
know? Aren’t you there?”
    “So far. But somebody doesn’t want us to be.”
    There was a pause. He’d be calling up the telemetrics on the hopper. Before he could speak, she said, “And don’t even go there about overfiring the fucking Gatling gun, Rags.”
    “I was only going to say, ‘Nice shooting.’”
    “Bullshit you were.”
    He laughed. “Come home. We need to sit down and think out loud about this.”
    _ _ _ _ _ _
    Kay didn’t expect her visit quite so soon, though it wasn’t a complete surprise. Wink was at the lab, talking to Luque, and it wasn’t as if Kay had all that much to do. She walked through the decontamination field, waved her hands back and forth to make sure they were completely bathed, and through the two positive-pressure chambers. Into the waiting area. Other than her own fur, she had nothing on that could carry germs. Not that they had found any such.
    Leeth stood there, as if she were a statue, staring into infinity. It was well-known that the
Sena
could stand in a meditative trance for hours without moving, their minds hard at work on whatever they wanted to consider in detail. They seemed unaware of their surroundings at first look, but it would be a mistake to assume that.
Sena
slept aware.
    Two seconds through the door, Leeth spoke to her: “Kluth.”
    “Leeth.”
    Her sister appeared much the same as Kay remembered. Trim, taut, with the bril-
hide
weapon belt of her trade slung low on her hips, pistol on one side, swand on the other, the com, recorder, and PPS snugged midway between. The official stain on her shoulders was an electric purple, freshly applied.
    She was every centimeter the walking Rule of Law, and a subvocalized word into her com would bring a dozen more like her running if she needed them. Unlikely that she would
need
such help. To assault a Shadow was to die; if not in the moment, then soon afterward. Everybody knew that. It happened rarely. As far as she knew, there were no unsolved attacks on Shadows unless some had happened since she’d left.
    Shadows were immune to Challenge while on duty. Any Challenge from anybody. Offer one, they could shoot you down without a second thought if they felt like it.
    Even the military stepped wide of the
Sena
.
    “I grieve for our parents and siblings,” Kay said.
    “As do I. We have never been a particularly fortunate family.”
    That was the extent of their expressed grief. People died. Some sooner, some later, that was the way of it. The dead moved