The Fleet Book 2: Counter Attack Read Online Free Page A

duplicate.
    “And watch out for booby traps!” Lutane snapped. She lowered her arm and turned about slowly, surveying the big, open room. There—the lift. It was over against the side wall, doors open—and filled with dead, bloody bodies. Lutane nodded with grim satisfaction—she’d been right. The last Khalian alive downstairs had pushed the up button, and died as the lift rose.
    She turned back to Nol’s squad. “Anybody with a strong stomach, help me throw this mess into a tarp and find the mops and buckets. Everybody else, get busy repairing equipment.”
    She shouldn’t have left it open like that. It came down to Nol and herself on the cleanup crew.

    * * *

    The floor was so clean that it glared. The equipment had stopped smoking, and the soldiers had started to repair it.
    “All set?” Lutane asked.
    Porthal nodded. “It works, Lieutenant. Long-wave and medium-wave audio. Video, too, but there’s nothing to feed into it yet.”
    “We’ll find the pick-ups soon enough,” Lutane assured him. “Okay, power up.” She raised her voice. “Who speaks Weasel?”
    “Here.”
    “I do, Lieutenant.”
    “Me, too.”
    “Okay. You three, over to the pick-ups.”
    The three’ troopers came over and sat down next to the signal operators.
    “Send this out broadcast,” Lutane said. “This city has been conquered by the Terran Fleet . . .”
    “Uh, Lieutenant?”
    “I know, I know, we don’t know for sure that we’ve conquered anything more than this center! But we’re after propaganda, not news. Just broadcast it, Private.”
    “Yes, sir . . .”
    “All civilians are to remain indoors until further notice. Do not obey orders from any Khalian. Instead, report their locations to the nearest Terran soldier.” Lutane frowned in thought for a moment. She had to make it sound like a good deal for the slaves. “Citizens, rejoice! The conqueror is vanquished; your freedom is won!”
    “Yes, sir.” The translators turned back to their pick-ups and eyed the operators, who scowled at their panels for a moment, then nodded. The translators began to talk in falsetto, trilling syllables. Lutane watched them for a few minutes with grim satisfaction, then lifted her big commset and keyed in Captain Rakoan’s code. She waited impatiently until the little plate lit up with his face, frowning.
    “Lieutenant Morna?”
    “Yes, sir. Objective accomplished—we’ve taken the com center.”
    “Yes, I heard your broadcast. You might want to add to it that the other platoons have taken their objectives, too.”
    “Yes, sir.” Lutane felt her belly weaken with relief and realized that, at the back of her mind, she’d been haunted by the possibility of being a Terran island in the middle of a Khalian sea.
    “How many enemy have you taken?”
    “None, sir. They all died fighting.”
    Rakoan nodded as though he had expected it. “That seems to be the rule. Your fellow officers only took two alive, and they’re so badly mangled that we may not get anything out of them. Any noncombatants?”
    “No, sir.” Lutane frowned, realizing for the first time that there hadn’t been any slaves in the building.
    Rakoan nodded again. “That’s the pattern. Featherheads in the houses, slaves of all species in the streets—but none in the objective buildings.”
    “Slaves wouldn’t have anything to do with running the place, anyway,” Lutane said cautiously.
    “No, but I would have expected a few of them to be in the government buildings, just as servants.” Rakoan frowned, brooding on the question for a moment. Then he shrugged it away. “Well. There’ll be time enough to find out why when we’ve mopped up. Well done, Lieutenant. Listen in on the com and pick out the details to broadcast.”
    “Yes, sir. Out.”
    Rakoan’s picture vanished. Lutane racked her commset on her belt, and turned to frown out over her new domain. Something niggling at the back of her mind had become clear—the fact that the com equipment