The Jack's Story (BRIGAND Book 2) Read Free Page A

into my assigned role – the destroyer, the bringer of chaos, a Rip Jack. Most of the other guys in my specialty were smaller – made it easier to fit into shipboard passageways. I didn’t much like tight spaces – so I tore them open. Worked just fine. I was big and mean and crazy enough to hack my way through a ship’s hull with nothing but a power axe and my trusty puncher. I loved how scary that made me.
    But then the claustrophobia started getting to me something fierce. I never talked to the doc about it – no sense talking about something you can’t change. The sleep tubes they stuck us in for long orbit travel were just too damn small and when you’re out in the black for as long as I was... well you get shoved up in those tubes one too many times and sometimes you go a little apeshit.
    That’s how I found myself in front of Ripla again – in the infirmary of the Dawson's brig. The docs had been in and out, asking me questions about where I grew up, about how I felt about my mother, not knowing my father, about my military 'career'. Of course I didn’t give a rat’s ass about those things. I just didn’t want to be shoved into a plastic sphincter and drugged into a coma anymore.
    Then Ripla showed up. At first I thought he was there to help the docs – to open me up – get someone in here that I respected. But I should have known better. Ripla was a master at one thing – recruiting. He used to tell me, "Anyone’s son will do but only I can spot the special ones." I knew he meant the best or the worst, all depends upon what the Corps needs.
    I sat across from him in a cold metal chair at a white table. He tossed down a folio that lit up with text and images, of me. My file.
    "I hear you busted up a transport pod."
    I shrugged. "Got tired of being a suppository."
    He raised that damned eyebrow again, except now I noticed there was gray hair popping out in spots. "I hear you busted up three marines too."
    I scowled. I did feel bad about that, but I wasn’t about to admit that I didn’t remember doing it. I broke a couple noses, Crawleys’ jaw, and maybe rearranged Ricker’s shoulder. They’d only been trying to help me. I didn’t want to admit I’d lost it.
    He swiped through some pages on the folio. It was all a show and he knew I knew that. Hell, he didn’t even need the folio. He was a Jack like me. He had access to all of my information through his cuts. Could even call up caps of the incident directly to his occulars. The folio was old-school. Tactile. A prop.
    "You here to decommission me, Gunny?" I didn’t want this drag out any longer than necessary.
    He leaned back a bit in his chair and steepled his fingers together under his chin, the most thoughtful gesture I’d ever seen from him. "No. I’m collecting people for a special assignment."
    I didn’t move.
    "You interested?" he asked.
    I almost smiled at the memory of when he first recruited me. But I wasn’t a beat up Depot grit anymore. I had skills. We both knew I what I was.
    "Does this special job involve long rides in small places?"
    Ripla smiled. "No. Mostly inner system stuff. No tube hops."
    I nodded. "And I suppose it would be off the record then?" He knew I had received intelligence training. Inner system meant inter-faction shit. Which meant politics. Off grid, with high probability of getting dead.
    Ripla nodded. "Deep. And pretty lethal."
    I smiled. "Just the way I like it."
    "I have some questions for you first."
    I leaned back in my chair slightly and let my arms drop to my sides. "I got nothin’ to hide, Sir."
    The smallest smile pulled at the corners of his narrow lips. "Alright then. Let’s get started."
    Then he did go to his cut. He shared a connection to a doc in white medical utilities. I recognized him. The Dawson's head-cracker. Staff-level brass. Probably went straight from school to a desk. Guess he was too scared to see me in the skin.
    The pink-skulled doc cleared his throat and asked, "Do you think