Looking Glass 4 - Claws That Catch Read Online Free

didn't want to get anything wrong in front of your bosses.”
    “Those people are my bosses the way that Bill Gates is the boss of a lowly Micro-Vac programmer,” Eric said. “I'm not even going to try to figure out why they asked to attend. All we have to do is survive the reception and we're out of here.”
    “You just want to do more than what my mother refers to as 'spooning,' ” Brooke said, grinning.
    “I just want to get out from under the gaze of the commandant,” Eric said, smiling back. “Not to say that I'm not looking forward to tonight.”
    “And no alcohol for you at the reception,” Brooke said, crawling onto his lap. “At least that's what Mom suggested.”
    “ 'Wine giveth the desire but taketh the ability,' ” Eric quoted.
    “Is that from the Bible?” Brooke asked.
    “Close,” Eric replied with a grin. “Shakespeare.”
     
    “Captain,” Admiral Townsend said, nodding at Weaver.
    “Admiral,” Weaver replied.
    The reception had turned into an odd affair. Held at the Quantico Officers' Club, it was buffet style with tables and chairs but no defined places. It had started off rather aggressively split between the civilian attendees and the military. That slowly changed as it became evident that many of the civilians, the male ones at least, were former military. The town Eric and Brooke derived from had more than its share of veterans and while they tended to avoid the “brass,” they had been more than willing to seek out the more junior officers, and the few enlisted permitted for this occasion on hallowed ground, for conversation.
    The ladies, on the other hand, had completely ignored the civilian/military divide. Which had Brooke's grandmother, who, with only few exceptions had never left the confines of a small West Virginia town, in deep conversation with Mrs. Admiral Townsend, both of whose children had been born outside the contiguous United States, one in Hawaii and one in Japan.
    “I'm waiting for someone to ask why we're all here,” the CAO said.
    “You're looking at the wrong captain, sir,” Weaver replied. “I've spent more than half my total career in black operations. I don't ask questions unless they're germane.”
    “Touché,” Townsend said, chuckling. “I'd forgotten you were in the black community before you got shanghaied.”
    “I wouldn't call it shanghaied, sir,” Weaver replied, shrugging. “I volunteered.”
    “I talked to Jim Bennett, who in case you didn't know it was the guy who greased your skids,” the admiral said, referring to a former Chief of Naval Operations. “He said he knew from the beginning that there wasn't a Naval officer who was going to be right for the Blade, one who really understood space. One choice was pulling back one of the Navy officers with NASA. But most of them were more expert at near-space, which wasn't going to get us anywhere. Then there were some officers associated with the Observatory, but they were a bit . . .”
    “Geekish?” Weaver asked.
    “Probably the best way to put it,” Townsend admitted. “But the SEAL after-action reports from the Dreen War indicated that you were anything but geekish. Bennett quietly arranged, without either you or Columbia realizing it, to pull you off the project over and over again, figuring you'd get fed up and try another tack. When you volunteered, it fit his plans exactly.”
    “So I was manipulated into becoming an officer?” Weaver asked, aghast. “He could have just asked.”
    “Probably what I would have done,” Townsend admitted. “But Jim was a bit more Machiavellian than I. Anyway, just thought you should know.”
    “Shiny,” Bill said. “Somehow that gives me the courage to ask. Are you all here because Berg is a really nice kid or for some other reason?”
    “Oh, Berg is a nice kid,” Townsend admitted. “But the President wanted to come and couldn't. So he ordered me and the commandant to attend. Spectre was coming, anyway. Everybody else? I think