Coming Home (Free Fleet Book 2) Read Online Free Page B

Rick out of the bridge and to the nearest mess. Rick made me sit as he got the food. I was already dozy when he came back with the trays.
    “Sir, you need to get some sleep.”
    “Not damned well lucky right now.”
    “I have to insist. The doctor said that your body can’t take anymore Wake Up, it could kill you.”
    “Everything’s trying to kill me.”
    “Oh shut up and eat.”
    “I don’t want to break the cutlery.”
    “Don’t be stupid. You’re the best handler of a Mecha, you could pick up a fly without crushing it.” With a half grin, I slurped down some of the greenish soup we’d been having since we began training and some chewy meal supplement we’d added to the bland meal. I’d gotten used to it, having eaten it for so long, my last solid meal being made from a food compiler on Parnmal. After a few minutes of silence Rick began talking again.
    “James, you need to get some sleep and have a talk with Yasu.” If there was something I didn’t want to do it was have a talk with Yasu.
    “Hear me out.” He said. forestalling my complaints.
    “You’re going to have the Wake Up drained from you and a solid eight hours then have a talk with her when your head’s clearer. Non-optional, I’ll have your security detail hold you down if I have to.” The intensity of his eyes showed me he wasn’t lying. Thinking about being dragged to my room, kicking and screaming, did not paint a pretty picture.
    “Fine, I’ll have some sleep as long as I can sleep in my Mecha.”
    “I don’t know how you can sleep in that thing, but fine.” We finished off our food quickly. The sooner I finished the sooner I could sleep and wake up I thought as we went to my room, a doctor waiting outside of it with a detox injection to clear my system.
    I really need to just get them added to my auto injector, I thought.
    They put it into the injector port in my Mecha, the auto injector system putting it everywhere in my body. I started to not feel so good on my feet as I stumbled into my room and lay on the floor, not even able to make it to the bed.
    “Help me roll him over.” Rick said as two Mechas turned my body so I was lying on my back on the floor.
    With that, I let sleep take me and the ghosts of the brothers and sisters I’d lost visited me.
    ***
    Yasu had been thinking again when another meal was passed under the hatch she’d broken. The hatch was lifted up and then the tray was tossed in. She ate it slowly. Without any exercise, she’d put on weight, though it didn’t matter. None of it really mattered after she’d seen the look of hatred and sadness in James’ eyes. How she’d felt his trust leave her. She felt like such an idiot for listening to Takahashi and the ‘old ways’. She’d messed up anything she’d had with James and he’d never trust her again. Takahashi had been wrong about James. All he saw was the gamer. He didn’t see commander Salchar. He hadn’t seen what James could do up close. He had no respect for a man that deserved it.
    After the talks she and James had had about his inability to trust anyone, her understanding of how paranoid he was, she’d stabbed him in the back and, in his eyes, tried to kill him. She felt miserable. The food was bland and tasteless as she stared at a bulkhead she’d sliced through with her plasmid sword. She thought of the looks from Janice and Dave that they’d given James, of sorrow and pity and then the rock hard emotionless masks they’d worn as Janice and Calerd pulled her from her Mecha and placed her in James’ closet. The hatch moved to the side, Rick standing in the doorway, and the hatch closed behind him.
    “Why did you do it, and no bullshit.” His tone brooked no argument, she could see how Rick and James had grown, Rick becoming a confident, reliable and joking commander, while James had sully embodied Salchar, being a calming force when needed, but ever the leader who charged with his people instead of staying back.
    Rick clearly