From Furies Forged (Free Fleet Book 5) Read Online Free Page A

command. They were going to have their hands full.
                 
     
     
     
    Chapter Safe
                  “Vort, tell Commander Zrit to cut her engines and drift. I don't like the reports coming from her, contact the tugs to bring her to the dock and shuttles to transfer her crew,” I said.
                  “Commander,” Vort said, getting to work.
                  I looked over the main screen, looking at the thousands of lights which came from Parnmal, the massive freighter traffic that plied the trade routes along the corridor to Worshun, stopping at the Kuruvian Empire.
                  We had entered the system a day ago, our ships showed the signs of heavy fighting. Armor was blackened and scarred where Kalu lasers had carved into them. Missiles had ripped sections of ships apart. Ejected power plants showed in our engine signatures as we were traveling as fast as the freighters in the system.
                  I shifted in my armor, the odd nothingness still pervading my lower body. I had been hit while leaving Heija, instead of staying in my bed and waiting for my turn in a medical chair I had donned my powered armor and gone back to work.
                  I wasn't the only one. None of the Commandos that had gone down to Heija hadn't been injured in some way. There were a number of people moving around with phantom limbs inside their powered armor. The neural ports in our central nervous system, or whatever passed for one, meant that while we didn't have limbs, or nerve connections to certain areas. Our powered armor still read our nerves impulses and moved our limbs accordingly.
                  I had been a gamer before all of this, I had plotted out games, gone through hours of video to work out the weaknesses of my opponents and capitalize on them. The games had turned real a long time ago. I made a choice to do my damndest to get out from under the clutches of the Syndicate. We had fought them for years, rushing from one monumental battle to another.
                  I had been betrayed, nearly killed, well multiple times and somehow remained in command of the Free Fleet. At first I had been hesitant to take command, scared that I would get more people killed than someone else in my position.
                  The pain of those losses kept me in the seat that I found my ass firmly planted in. I couldn't leave the fleet to someone else that might not care as much as me, or someone that thought in terms of planetary militaries.
                  Memories tugged at the corners of my brain. I gently pushed them down.
                  Soon, soon. I thought, as if bartering with those that had gone into the light.
                  I needed time to decompress, time to think and let the weight of control peel from my shoulders if just for a week.
                  My world had changed, and it hadn't. Yasu was pregnant, making me an expectant father, as well as the commander of the Free Fleet. I didn't know which was scarier at this point.
                  Having Yasu in a damned Combat Ready Commando unit probably. I thought, biting back my anger. I knew that Yasu would carry out her job as commander of her ship Floater. Ship Commander Frex was supposed to replace her, returning her to her position as commander of Floater's commando detail.
                  While it always scared me when she went into combat, it scared me when any of my people went into combat. I knew that they were doing what they had to do, just as I was bartering their possible lives against the lives of those we protected.
                  Now my illogical human brain was making me an idiot, I understood her position and her responsibilities, but another part of me wanted to push her as far from the front lines as possible.
                  A fond