The Tejano Conflict Read Free Page A

Sunday if I let you go play in this situation, Doctor Death-wish.”
    â€œI only want to dance, not die.”
    â€œYou are an adrenaline junkie.”
    â€œ
You
have no room to talk.”
    â€œBut
I
am not the medic who needs to be in one piece to help keep the rest of us in good health. You stay in camp unless the colonel okays it.”
    â€œI’ll have a word with him.”
    â€œYou probably already have—you know how Gramps likes to spy on everything. If I had to guess, I’d bet that your answer will be a fat ‘No.’ And Rags won’t be going out to play, either.”
    â€œYou are a harsh mistress, Josephine Sims.”
    â€œI try.”
    After she was gone, he smiled. They had a history, albeit brief; a short, athletic sexual liaison after their adventures on Ramal, and he much enjoyed the memory of it. They were all friends here, sometimes with benefits, but probably there was no future in that direction for the two of them. They both loved putting themselves at risk too much, testing to see how close to the edge they could come and survive. It wouldn’t do to make any deep connections with anybody while they did such things; it wouldn’t be fair to a partner, even one who knew of it and why.
    Jo knew. And there was Kay, who also knew. The Vastalimi had an offhand disregard for dying that came pretty close to a shrug. And Kay was . . . one of the most interesting sexual partners he’d ever had, too.
    The idea of a three-way polyamory sometimes arose in his thoughts . . .
    Too early in the day to be going down those lanes, Dr. Horny . . .
    He voxaxed his com: “Singh?”
    After a beat, the response. “Sah?”
    â€œYou need to drop round the office and let me check your hearing again.”
    â€œSah.”
    He thought about telling the kid why but decided to let Jo do it. She’d enjoy the smile on his face when she told him . . .
    â€“ – – – – –
    For the first run, it was just Jo and Kay. They were the most experienced, the quickest, save for Em, and the best two-person team in CFI. They knew each other’s moves, they knew their own, and it was unlikely that the opposition would have anybody to match them.
    They met with Wink, Gunny, Gramps, and Formentara for the final rundown.
    Gramps led off: “Here, take this.”
    â€œWhat is this?” Gunny said.
    â€œWhy, it’s a
map
, child,” Gramps said. “A two-dimensional representation of the forest wherein we are about to commence our recon op.”
    Gunny gave him a fuck-you look. “Ah know it’s a
map
, you doddering fossil! And Ah also know this is
Earth
, and they have so many geosats circling you can footprint any spot on the planet from twenty thousand kilometers up sharp enough to read a flatscreen Bible over somebody’s shoulder! So why are we looking at this . . .
parchment
sheet instead of a holoproj real-time goog? Future shock too much for you?”
    â€œNo, because your ordinary visible-spectrum satcam stops at the tree crowns, and what we want to see won’t show up on IR or pradar. Part of what we need to do is update this map—remind me to teach you the difference between ‘paper’ and ‘parchment,’ by the way.”
    â€œWhat do you mean, it won’t show up on IR or pradar? Both of those should paint the ground like those tree crowns are made of air.”
    â€œAh, but there’s the rub.” He grinned.
    Jo, standing next to Kay, added her smile to the mix. Always entertaining, the Gunny and Gramps show.
    Gunny turned to look at Jo. “What is this . . . unwrapped
mummy
blathering on about?”
    Jo started to speak, but Gramps picked it back up. “It’s the
trees
, Chocolatte. Which, if you had read your background packet, you would know are native to the area but genetically modified
Cupressus