STAR HOUNDS -- OMNIBUS Read Online Free Page B

frakking bureaucrats for four years now, doing your dirty-laundry Intelligence work and testing your new equipment on the side. You bastards owe me, and I intend to collect.”
    “I take it that what you mean to collect is one blip-ship, to hop in and streak off into an area of trillions of square kilometers of unknown space in search of one lowly individual. You lend the phrase ‘needle in a haystack’ new meaning, Agent Shemzak.”
    “Get your head out of the clouds, lady,” Laura said, stalking around the side of the desk and pushing a code into the keyboard of the holocomp. “You think I’m stupid? I work for IntelNet, remember. I’ve got access to just as much of the inside scoop as you do.”
    Colors danced. Figures swirled in the air like a bunch of silent but angry insects, eventually collecting into an uneasy hover. Laura stabbed her fingers through the holograph. “Can you read this, Lasster?”
    Friend Lasster could not hide her annoyance. “With my Interpret Compiler, yes.”
    “Well, I can read the raw stuff, Lasster. There was just enough machinery operating in the wreckage of Mulliphen’s defense systems to put a tracer on those Jaxdron whip-ships. They’re headed in a direction that could only take them one place … Baleful. Coridian system, Marchgild sector. The first territory the bastards grabbed when they made their move five years ago. You remember Baleful, don’t you? Right by those binaries: the Witch’s Tits. Smack dab in the center of the Underspace Fault, too, which is probably why the kidnapped Cal. Baleful used to be ours, remember? We’ve got memory bytes up the wazoo on Baleful, to say nothing of projections and simulations. Hell, the only problem with you Friends is that you ain’t got the frakking
cojones
to even ponder some kind of rescue mission. You ought to thank me for taking it upon my able shoulders to deal with this crisis situation.”
    She grinned, showing teeth faintly stained by
rictori
smoke.
    “And you volunteer for this—ah—duty purely out of the kindness of your heart, to say nothing of the vast respect you have for the Friends and our government.” Lasster’s voice was sharp with sarcasm.
    Laura folded her arms against her chest and kept her grin. “Yeah.”
    Friend Chivon Lasster swiveled and went to her bar for a drink. “Only very special Friends are permitted alcoholic beverages in their offices.” She plopped ice into a glass, added a spill of sparkle whiskey. “My weakness, Laura. Would you care for some?”
    “Uh uh. Slaughters my serotonin.”
    Lasster drank. “Now, your motivation for this gallant gallivanting is not precisely as clear as you declare, is it? You see, I, too, have access to certain memory areas that even you cannot delve into.”
    “Maybe I don’t want to. Maybe I’m too much a lady to muck about in that junk,” said Laura, unable to control her defensiveness.
    “I took the time this morning, Laura Shemzak, to avail myself of my unladylike abilities.” Lasster sipped at the cool, effervescent drink and stared into a shifting mood sculpture. The lights, previously playful, darkened into shadowplay. “An interesting little story, Laura, one which, as a Friend responsible for the stability of the state’s homeostasis, I can hardly condone.”
    “No one asked you, you frakking bitch,” Laura Shemzak shot back.
    “Sticks and stones, blippie.”
    Laura cringed at the word. She turned away to hide any vulnerability that might wash over her face.
    “It makes for an interesting aberration, Shemzak. A tale of … what is the archaic term? … ah yes, sentimentality worthy of some squalid colony. A male and female from the same brood vats accidentally placed in the same growschool, developing an attachment, and then, coincidence piled upon accident, discovering their fleshly relationship.”
    “Brother … ” said Laura. “And sister. Can’t you say it, Friend Lasster? Just pairings of syllables like any other