Vicky Peterwald: Target Read Online Free

at a table, while the lieutenant and Kat went to fetch plates for them. They had learned their choices among the limited meals served on the
Wasp
. Today was better. Fresh meat, fruit, and vegetables had arrived, and the cook was doing himself proud.
    Vicky found herself served with a steak, baked potato, mixed fresh vegetables, and a salad. It tasted like ambrosia to her after the last couple of weeks of dry rations . . . and short rations at that.
    She was half-done when a man joined her table.
    That was unusual.
    Normally, she and her team dined alone. Even more unusual, the man was not in uniform. Kit stiffened; hands went for whatever weapons she had secreted on her body. Vicky glanced at the chief. He had a black box beside his dinner plate. He eyed it and shook his head.
    Most likely, the stranger was unarmed and not carrying a bomb.
    Most likely. One never knew for sure, what with the race between offense and defense going at a maddening rate. Her best resources said he was unarmed.
    Had her best been outbested?
    “Hello,” Vicky said, breaking the silence. “And who might you be?”
    “I’m your new best friend,” the guy said with a knowing grin.

CHAPTER 3
    V ICKY studied her new, putative, best friend.
    He looked old enough to know better but young enough to still be doing foolish things. If his legs were as muscled as the bare arms his shirt showed her, he likely was in good enough shape to get out of the messes he got into.
    The eyes that watched her would have done good service to a hawk. The face they rested in was intelligent and alert.
    “Words are easy,” Vicky said. “Do you have any deeds to back them up?”
    “You may remember that bomb that messed up the Forward Lounge just a few minutes after you left.”
    “I do recall such an event.”
    “I’m the reason it blew five minutes after it was supposed to.”
    “Why five minutes? Why not never?” Vicky asked.
    His narrow lips formed a tight grin. “But if it hadn’t, you wouldn’t know that you needed a new best friend to be grateful to. Or that you needed to have your eyes and ears open for the next assassin who will, inevitably, come along. Now you do, don’t you?”
    “You have a point. It was kind of hard on the help. They did lose a waiter to space.”
    He shrugged. “What was he to you? It sent a message that needed sending. Messengers have been dying for a long time.”
    “I could get to like you,” Vicky said. “You want to draw a plate and eat with us?”
    “Don’t mind if I do.” He stepped away to take a run down the steam table.
    While she’d been talking to her new best friend, her team had returned with loaded plates. “What do we know about that man?” Vicky whispered to them.
    The chief and the lieutenant were madly running their black boxes through their paces. “He looks as unarmed as a newborn babe,” the lieutenant finally said.
    Kit spoke for the two. “We’ve seen him in the ship’s gym. He’s good. We could probably take him if we got the jump on him.”
    “Let’s let him run with his own thing for a while,” Vicky said, as the stranger turned back to their table. Around her, her minions settled into watchful alert.
    He was dressed in an unmarked blue shipsuit, which told Vicky only that he was of the
Wasp
, but nothing about rank, rate, or status. Most likely he was carried as a contractor, but he could be assigned to anything from weapons to short-order cook flipping burgers in one of the restaurants.
    Good camouflage.
    “So, do you have a name?” Vicky asked as he settled in.
    “You can call me Smith. Mr. Smith. It works as well as any.”
    “And where do you draw your paycheck?”
    “That might take a while to explain since I draw several for all the different things I do for all the different folks I work for. If you catch my meaning.”
    “So who paid you to delay that bomb? A friend of Kris Longknife, or a friend of mine?”
    “Honey, I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but you