Ballistic (The Palladium Wars), стр. 85
“That’s yours,” Idina said. “I can’t take that with me.” The jacket in her hands probably weighed two kilos or more, and if that was indeed real leather from live Gretian steers instead of vat-grown leather or synthetic replicate, it was worth thousands of ags in material alone.
“I still have my own,” Dahl said. “I found a colleague who is close to your build, and whose midsection has expanded considerably in the last ten years. So I talked him out of it. Do not worry. I would not give up my own even under threat of death. But I figured that you should have one of your own. If you care to keep it, that is. You, too, have paid for the privilege.”
Idina folded the jacket again and held it to her chest with one arm.
“Thank you,” she said. Then she held out her hand, and when Dahl moved to take it, she seized the other woman’s forearm in a firm one-handed grip, the Pallas Brigade greeting and farewell.
“When we aren’t in uniform anymore, we’ll meet up,” Idina said. “Here or on Pallas, or anywhere in between. And we’ll wear our steerhide jackets and have drinks and bore the shit out of the other patrons with our stories.”
“If the gods have any goodwill left for us at all,” Dahl said. “And if they do not, we will tell them to stuff themselves. And then go do it anyway.”
The orbital shuttle in front of the transit lounge was a Gretian design, part of the military inventory the Alliance had taken over with the rest of the base. It was shaped like a slender arrowhead and painted in what Idina guessed had been a brilliant titanium white with orange accents once upon a time. Now it was flecked in various shades of gray and brown and black, and the paint had scrapes and scuffs everywhere. The Alliance had elected to keep utilizing the Gretian equipment because it was there and because it interfaced with the spin station overhead without a fuss. From what she heard, they had expected the Gretian shuttle fleet to last maybe two more years after the occupation had started, but now they had been here for half a decade, and the birds were still lifting off and landing reliably every day despite their obvious surface wear.
If they engineer their duty clothing as well as they do their spaceships, this thing will outlast me without popping a thread even if I decide to go to sleep in it for the next fifty years, Idina thought as she tucked the leather jacket Dahl had given her into her gear bag before putting it into the cargo conveyor’s loading chute. Then she walked through the boarding door and plodded across the metal gangway that connected the transit lounge with the main airlock of the shuttle. Now that she had said her goodbyes, she wasn’t much for lingering and taking in some final impressions. She had all the memories she’d ever need of the place, and if it wasn’t for the kinship she felt with Dahl, she would have been skipping merrily all the way to the shuttle airlock while humming a happy tune.
Her fellow passengers were mostly Rhodians and Palladians, with a few Acheroni and Oceanian marines sprinkled here and there. The Pallas Brigade troops she passed on the way to her assigned gravity couch nodded at her respectfully. A lot of those faces seemed impossibly young to her. Most of the troops who had received their kukris with her were now either dead or retired, and the former group was considerably larger than the latter. Maybe it was the knowledge that she was being sent home early like a worn-out piece of machinery, but as she strapped into her couch, she felt a deep and profound fatigue that seemed to go all the way to her bones.
Maybe a year or two as the brigade museum curator is all I have left in me, she thought.
She went through the launch prep and listened to the automated briefings with her brain on autopilot, knowing full well that none of the safety features would change the fact that her fate would be out of her hands for the ninety minutes it took to get to the orbital spin station. Then the hull of the shuttle vibrated as the service lines and gangway retracted for takeoff and the engines came alive.
“We are cleared for departure. Launch sequence initiated. Prepare for main engine ignition in thirty seconds,” the flight deck announced to the passengers. Idina closed her eyes and leaned back in her gravity couch in anticipation of the g forces she’d feel momentarily. The Gretian shuttles didn’t have gravmag units fitted, so the couches would do all the work to compensate for the thrust from the engines. This was the part of the trip she usually disliked the most.
The thrumming from below died down gradually. A few moments later, the hull was silent again. They spent the next minute in silence. In the cabin around her, some troopers started chuckling and talking in low voices.
Great, Idina thought. I got the defective shuttle. But I guess it’s better for the stupid thing to break now than halfway up to the station.
“All passengers, our launch clearance has been canceled. Please maintain position and remain in your harnesses until the flight deck signals the all clear.”
It took a few more minutes for the all clear to come from the flight deck. Idina unbuckled her harness and raised her couch into the egress position to climb out of it. Outside, there was clattering and clanging as the gangway