Overkill Read Online Free Page B

“I thought civilians couldn’t own hovertanks.”
    “They can’t. But they can own historical vehicles.” I rapped my knuckles on a rubber block of the left track. “Before hovertanks, there were crawlers. General Dynamics M1A2 Abrams main battle tank, manufactured Lima, Ohio, United States, Earth, 1998. Frame-off restored by Gustus & Son Forge, Marinus, Bren, 2081. Fully operational.”
    She walked around the prow, then stood on tiptoe to touch the main gun tube. “Operational?”
    I knelt and peered underneath at the suspension. No visible damage after a nine-jump trip. “My boss the fool had 120 mm ammunition recreated. Should be very annoying to your grezzen.”
    I clambered across the sponson, peered into the commander’s hatch on the turret, then looked down at her, alongside.
    She squinted up at me, a hand visored above her eyes. “Why?”
    I shrugged. “Because some of the rounds are depleted uranium penetrators. They used to cut through crawler tank armor like blowtorches through ice cream. Trueborns believe in overkill.”
    “I mean why does your boss want to hunt grezzen?”
    “He’s Trueborn.” I shrugged again. “You can always tell an Earthman, but you can’t tell him much. I’m no mind reader.”
    Kit levered herself up alongside me, and clutched my elbow. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
    I pushed her hand away. “Look, his people hired me sight unseen a couple months ago. I know Cutler’s rich. And used to doing what he pleases, like every other Trueborn.”
    She narrowed her eyes. “Then he’s the Cutler? As in Cutler Communications?”
    Why did people get excited because somebody had money?
    It took me an hour to pry open the plasteels piggybacked above the engine, check the tank’s auxiliary machine guns packed inside, and the mechanicals. The three crates of main gun ammunition —practice, canister, armor piercing discarding sabot, and Cutler’s mysterious custom jobs—were also intact.
    Kit Born disappeared back into the building, then came back and supervised while the stevedores loaded her cargo onto a trailer. Then she wandered back over to me. My work had earned a cosmoline goop streak on my forearm for my trouble.
    I pointed alongside the left track. “Could you hand me that rag?”
    She passed the rag over, and her fingers touched mine. “You told me about your boss. But why are you here, Parker?”
    The Tassini say that all a man has is his story, but an Illegal keeps his to himself. “I joined the Legion to see the worlds. Mostly I saw the inside of transports. Now I’m out. I get to look around.”
    “For your future?”
    While I scrubbed cosmoline off the tattoo on my forearm, I straightened up and stared at the tree line. “For my past.”
    Which was what Orion had told the Legion recruiting sergeant the day she took me to enlist, at sixteen.

    The gray-eyed sergeant had locked his office door behind us, then shook his head. “I don’t like this, Orion.” He pressed my forearm against the laser’s platen, with a hand that was regrown clear back past the wrist.
    Orion snorted. “Your site says a legionnaire can forget his past and discover his future, Frank. And that the Legion pays bonus to Yavis for armored because we fit in small spaces.”
    “We do. But this kid’s as tall as a Trueborn.”
    Orion frowned. “That’s why I need to get him off Yavet! It’s been tough enough raising an Illegal. Now he stands out.”
    The sergeant sighed, then stared at me. “You sure about this, son? The tatt burns clear down into the bone, because sometimes that’s all that’s left. It’s indelible. Once it’s on, so’s your obligation. The Legion can get you off Yavet, but you’ll still be an Illegal under Yavet law. If you choose out after your hitch, you’ll earn a year without a bounty, as long as you’re off Yavet. After that any bounty hunter who finds you, anywhere in the Union, can deliver you to any Yavet Consulate, dead or alive, which means