“I’ve been in more than one atmosphere landing, and I would rate that in the top twenty percent. Considering I’ve flown with some damn fine pilots with a lot of experience, I’d call that more than good,” Ben said.
“Yeah, well on a farm there’s not much to do in winter when school isn’t in session, so I logged way more hours on the amusement simulator than I should have.”
“Which is exactly why the SC underwrote the technology,” Ben said.
For a second, that slipped right by Allie. Her brain couldn’t quite make the nouns and the verbs fit together right. “They what?” she finally demanded.
Ben looked around, startled when he found her and Shank staring at him. “Oh. I guess that was one of those things I shouldn’t have said. In my defense, when those of us who worked with SC ‘service out’ at the end of our last tour, it takes a couple of months of debriefing and transitioning to make sure we know what we can say. I sort of skipped that part.”
“Go back to the underwriting part,” Allie said. Shank unlocked his harness and stood. He looked equally interested.
Ben shrugged. “Command had a new advance in flight simulation training. It interacted with the pilot, monitoring brain function to focus on the specific skills the pilot needed.”
“Like the games?” Shank asked.
“Yeah. The game is Command’s program. They wanted to keep it top secret. The SC just might have authorized stealing the tech, and then they underwrote a gaming company in order to get the technology into the hands of people young enough to really benefit from the specialized training.”
Shank gave a low whistle. “The government stole from itself?”
Ben leaned back against one of the consoles. “People think of Command and SC as the right and left hand of Earth’s government. They’re actually more like—” He frowned, and it took several seconds for him to start again. “They’re more like human cells and cancer cells sharing one body.”
“Which one is the cancer?” Allie asked. The marines were Command; however, Nicve marines were almost always attached to SC units.
“Who knows?” Ben gave an exaggerated shrug. “SC tends to call Command shortsighted Neanderthals without the common sense to duck when people start shooting. Command calls SC manipulative, deceitful bastards who have no morals.”
“And where do Nicve marines fall?” Shank asked. Clearly he’d had the same thought Allie had.
Ben grinned. “We’re manipulative, deceitful, shortsighted bastards who don’t have the sense to duck when people are trying to kill us. We prefer to hold our ground and shoot back.” The grin slowly faded. “At least that’s who I was. I think most of the adjectives still apply.”
“I’m really tired of my head getting rewired today,” Allie muttered. Ben gave her a very odd look, but she ignored him. “So, I’ll gear up, and we can check out the singleton you found. I assume he is still isolated from the others. I was a little busy not crashing to watch the scanners.”
Ben’s eyebrows went up, and Shank looked incredulous.
“What?”
“You are not going with us,” Shank said firmly.
“What are you talking about? There are only three of us, and I’m not going to sit on my hands and let the men take care of the hard work for me.” Allie crossed her arms.
“If you get hurt, who is supposed to fly us out of here?” Shank demanded.
“Becca’s been working as copilot. She wouldn’t be doing low-atmosphere maneuvers, and a ship this automated only needs a pilot for the truly crazy stunts.”
Shank just stared.
“Becca’s pretty good, and you need me.”
He kept staring.
“I am going with you no matter what argument you make. Period. Full stop.” Allie pressed her lips together and tried to ignore the crawling feeling of discomfort as Shank slowly reddened.
“I’m going to check our weapons and generally stay out of your way,” Ben said, and then he fled. The bastard didn’t even have the manners to pretend it was something else.
“I’m going,” Allie said firmly.
“You don’t give me orders outside of bed,” Shank said, his voice low and dangerous.
The answer startled Allie so much that she took a step backward, all her angry retorts and logical rebuttals forgotten. “What?”
