The Vastalimi Gambit Read Free Page A

without expert balancing of her physiology, that would kill her, and sooner rather than later. “Well, I wouldn’t put it quite that way.”
    Gramps said, “What, are these vans pulled by teams of animals? Horses and stagecoaches?”
    “You remember those from personal experience?” Gunny said, her voice faux-sweet.
    He played the game: “Sure, my cousin invented them,” Gramps said.
    Jo said, “Far Bundaloh is at the end of the road, but it’s not quite that distant in time. House-sized hovervans, maglev rail, and multiplex-sized wheeled bugcrushers move the crops around. It is true that some of these vans have been hijacked, and we need to stop that, but our basic role is to find the ops responsible and shut them down. That will entail convoy duty until we figure it out.”
    “I’ll get a sleetgun,” Gunny said. Her voice was as sere as a desert.
    “Shotgun,” Gramps corrected. He caught her smile and realized she had suckered him.
    “Of course you would know that. Your cousin invent those, too?”
    “Naw, Chocolatte, my brother did—right after he and I invented trees.”
    Gramps had only fifty-nine standard years, but he was older than anybody else here, beating Cutter by a few months, and the rest of them by at least a decade or two. Gunny never let him forget it.
    Of course, Gunny and Gramps were in love with each other; everybody but the two of them knew that. Either of them saying so aloud would break their faces, and as far as Jo knew, they had not acted on it save to hassle each other; they seldom spoke without personal insults or a double entendre involved.
    That made for some interesting interplay.
    Hassles and insults and leers O my. But: When Gunny had been shot on Ramal during the extraction of the Rajah’s daughter, Gramps had slept on a chair in her recovery room until she came out of the healing coma. Just so, he said, he could rag her about getting hit.
    Right . . .
    Jo looked at Cutter.
    He said, “That’s pretty much it. Wink and Kay won’t be here, we’ll get a new medic.”
    “Gonna get a new Vastalimi, too?” Formentara asked.
    “I wish. We’ll just have to muddle through.”
    Vastalimi were worth their weight in platinum to any kind of military, especially small units like Cutter Force Initiative. The colonel made it clear he would hire as many of them as wanted the job, but that pool was fairly shallow. Vastalimi tended to stay home, and those who traveled and wanted jobs as soldiers of fortune didn’t have any trouble getting work. They were faster, stronger, meaner, and deadlier than any human, and nobody with half a brain wanted to find themselves facing a Vastalimi with mayhem in mind. He was happy to have one and missing her already.
    Cutter said, “So there it is, people. Pack, say good-bye to any new friends you’ve made, and let’s get this mission in the vac . . .”

TWO
    There had been, of course, more than a few Vastalimi on the dropship; however, it was the arrival on the planet and the debarkation into the terminal that really brought it home to Wink: Vastalimi in numbers far more than he had ever seen together before. Scores, hundreds, maybe a thousand of them, all about their business, and looking focused. Vastalimi didn’t seem to loll about, they strode, marched, moved from one place to another in a determined fashion, all looking ready to pounce as necessary.
    It was, quite literally, awesome.
    They were shorter than human average, and while their aspects were hardly uniform—there were dozens of different shades and patterns to their short fur, their heights varied, and the males tended to be larger and heavier than the females—they all looked a lot like Kay. They had those preying-mantis-shaped heads, the apelike limb set, the feline grace to their movements, the tigerlike, short fur.
    Put Kay in a clump of them and even as well as he knew her, it might take a while to figure out which one she was. Different, but still they looked so much