Angry Ghosts Read Online Free Page B

Won’t take long to get very cold in there.”
    “Good. We have two days until we meet up with the freighter. Go see Brick Argo and have your wounds tended, then police up the bodi es and store them. Do it quick, 'cause after that, we’ll inventory the ship. I want a full list of everything she’s carrying and everything she’s capable of. I don’t want any surprises brought home to Cadre One. Acknowledge.”
    “Understood, sir,” answers Drusus.
    “Acknowledged, sir,” answers Setee.
    Thompson switches off his radio and looks down at Maiella. Through all of their rotations together, the young woman never gets flustered. It amazes him how she can be so relaxed, as if the thought of failure never touches her.
    The Geek’s goggles pulse rapidly with code, augmenting the data flowing directly into her brain through the oversized headgear she wears.
    “Excellent work, getting control so quickly,” Thompson says. “It saved us.”
    Her goggles halt their flashing again so she can look at him. “How many blueskins were aboard do you think?”
    Thompson thinks for a moment. “Standing crew of twenty plus fifty troopers. If you count the troops from the other ship, it would have been fifty more.”
    “A hundred and twenty versus nine of us...pretty tall odds.”
    “You evened them nicely.”
    Maiella blushes proudly. She breathes deeply and gets back to work, her goggles resuming their flashing pulses of code. Thompson looks for the nearest body to haul away, and grabs a violently torn corpse wearing the tatters of a black uniform.
     
    * * * * *
     
    “Approaching captured freighter,” announces Maiella.
    Thompson looks up from the console he is studying. “Can you give me a visual?”
    Maiella hesitates. “I could have,” she says, pointing to the blackened scorch marks at the front of the bridge, “but it, uh, was disabled.”
    “Is there a backup?”
    “Possibly... hang on....” Her goggles strobe with data and instruction. “There!”
    A small holo-window opens in front of her and displays the bridge of the freighter. Another slim human in armor and goggles, covered in a reddish brown dust, almost leaps out of his seat in surprise. Once he realizes who is hailing him, he calms down, telling someone off screen to reset the auto-destruct safeties.
    “Geek Maiella! It’s good to see you alive! We didn’t know if the plan would work….”
    Maiella smiles demurely. “Lukas, good to see you too. Thompson's plan was perfect. No problem at all.”
    “A ny casualties?” the freighter pilot asks.
    “No,” she answers, “we’re all okay.”
    The freighter pilot exhales his held breath in a rush.
    “How about your team?” Maiella queries. “Anyone hurt?”
    “No, we’re in good shape. Resistance was meager. Small crew. Easy.”
    Thompson slides over beside Maiella to look through the Holowindow. “What’s that on you? You’ve been doing some digging?”
    The freighter pilot stiffens noticeably and salutes.
    “Yes, sir, Gun Thompson! We’ve inventoried the ship cargoes; and she’s carrying raw ores of Tungsten, Vanadium, Iron, Germanium, and Silicon, plus two very high-quality ore excavators. The diamonds on the augers are bigger than Argo’s fist!”
    “Is that why you’re covered in ore dust, Sergeant?”
    The pilot looks down sheepishly. “We were waiting a long time for you, and, uh… and....”
    “You tried them out.”
    The slim pilot looks up, jutting his lip, contemplating whether he should try to explain, but decides against it. “Yup,” he replies, “we did.”
    Maiella brings a hand up to her face to hide her chuckling. Thompson buries his amusement. “Get yourselves ready to return.”
    “But, sir, it’ll take us eight more months to pilot this freighter to the planned position.”
    “You and your team will be returning with us. We can get home sooner, which means we can all be on another rotation sooner. Program the freighter for a circuitous route—full