Star Carrier 6: Deep Time Read Online Free Page A

neural net wipe? Ha! That’s worse than a clean death in battle! No! Here is how we play this, American. Ilse here, lovely lady that she is, will come with me, as a guarantee of your good behavior. You and your men will back off. You will clear these corridors! You will permit us to leave. No interference! You will arrange to have a flyer meet us at the surface, with an AI pilot slaved to my direct neural control, and with a range of at least ten thousand kilometers. The flyer will take me to a destination of my choosing . . . and I may release Roettgen there, if I am satisfied that you have not followed us. Now, put your weapons down and move back !”
    A red targeting reticule was centered on Korosi’s faceplate, and Koenig wondered if the Marine was going to try for a head shot, firing from his hip. Had Korosi not been wearing combat armor, Koenig knew, Swayze might have tried it . . . but splash off the armor’s surface could burn the unarmored Roettgen quite badly.
    Of course, Swayze might choose to accept the collateral damage, injuring the hostage in order to kill the hostage taker. He might even accept the hostage’s death. According to Fallen Star’s operational orders, finding and rescuing Ilse Roettgen was secondary to taking down Janos Korosi.
    So the easy solution would be to burn Korosi down now, even if it meant the former Confederation president’s death. It would not have been Koenig’s personal choice, but then Koenig was not the one linked to Swayze’s laser rifle.
    “Okay, okay,” Swayze said after a long and agonizing moment. “You win.” The targeting reticule winked off, and slowly the Marine lowered his rifle, placing it on the floor at his feet. “Don’t hurt her!”
    “The rest of you! Put down your weapons!”
    “Do as he says, Marines,” Swayze told the others. He shifted to the general tactical frequency. “Listen up, Marines! Clear the passageways. Korosi is coming up . . . with a hostage.”
    “Transport, Staff Sergeant,” Korosi said. “Arrange for us a flight out of here.”
    “Okay, okay,” Swayze said. “Meteor! This is Marine One-Five! I want a Chipper on the ground on top of this fort ASAP!”
    Meteor was the code name for the battalion HQ running this op, while Chipper was military slang for a C-28 Chippewa robot transport. Definitely long-range enough for the ten-thousand-kilometer range Korosi specified. Koenig contemplated that requirement. Ten thousand klicks was enough to reach any of the three space elevators—in Ecuador, Kenya, or Singapore. But what then? Korosi had to know that he would be tracked. No doubt he had confederates waiting for him someplace.
    Koenig turned the problem over in his mind. They wouldn’t be waiting for him off-world; the space elevators were too easily blocked, too easily powered down, isolating him. The likeliest scenario would be to touch down very briefly someplace on Earth along a direct line of flight to one of the elevators . . . and effectively disappear as the robotic transport continued its flight.
    Damn it, it was imperative that Korosi not be allowed to escape. If he did, the war might grind on for years more, a guerilla action fought in jungles and villages and mountains from South America to Africa to Southeast Asia.
    Koenig wasn’t linked in directly to Swayze’s thoughts, his internal monologue. That degree of electronic telepathy required more sophisticated equipment than was available here . . . and wasn’t desirable in any case. But he couldn’t help but wonder what the Marine had in mind. Clearly, the man was working toward an idea. . . .
    Swayze, unarmed now, raised both gauntleted hands. “Look, General . . . take me instead, okay? She’ll be nothing but trouble. I’ll promise to behave. . . .”
    Korosi laughed. “What . . . you ? You’re an NCO, a foot soldier! What makes something like you as valuable as the former president of the Earth Confederation?”
    Swayze took a couple of