Read Online Ruthless by Robert J. Crane - Free Book Online

area at the back of the plane that almost always smelled like it had been used exclusively by men with poor aim, but the pilots also didn’t truck with any of that sissy crap that the airlines insisted on for the comfort of their passengers, like gentle turns. Military pilots were authorized to go from point A to point B in a hurry, and they did that. Worries about airsickness were secondary.
    On the whole, I’d rather have flown myself, but unfortunately I had to stay on the plane with Simmons to make sure he didn’t get up to any trouble. Unlikely, I know, but better safe than allowing a quake-causing dipshit to go free-range again.
    Reed looked over at me as we went into a steep turn to the left. “Almost home.”
    “Yeah,” I said, probably a little sourly on account of the not-so-smooth ride. “Maybe you can have a little Italian for dinner tonight,” I sniped.
    He narrowed his eyes at me. “Gah, you’re banging on that drum again.” I caught the flinch as he realized what he said a moment too late. “Go on,” he said resignedly, “hit me.”
    “I’d have to bang on it a lot more to catch up with how many times you’ve …” I gave it up halfway through, catching the pitying look from him, and changed tacks, “… gone on about surveillance states and indefinite detention.” Then I flinched, because I’d set myself up much worse than he’d just done, and just as unintentionally.
    He leaned over to me and lowered his voice to a whisper so low that only a metahuman sitting a foot away could have heard it over the engine noise. “Does it not bother you at least a little that we’ve basically become the judge, jury and executioner for metas?”
    We should execute more of them , Bjorn said.
    I ignored the voice in my head, pondered a smug and snarky answer, which he would promptly batter aside, and tried for something a little more truthful. “I think it would bother me more,” I said, “if we didn’t presently have in our prison some of the foulest a-holes known to man. I mean, seriously,” I said, throwing in a little of the snark that I’d previously withheld, “our little prison is well-named if we call it a penal system, because they are all of them dicks.”
    He gave me a slightly pained look, and I recognized it as disappointment in my pat answer. “They get no trials to speak of. They have zero recourse. We put them in the ground and don’t allow them to see the light of day. What if we have an innocent person in there?”
    “We don’t,” I said, dead certain. “And you know we don’t. You’re speaking in hypotheticals of what might happen in the future.” This much was true; we’d caught every one of our current prisoners in some sort of act of criminality, greater or lesser. There was no doubt in my mind as to any of their guilt, not with as low a population as we were dealing with.
    “What about your buddy?” he asked, and he withheld the judgmental satisfaction that I knew was coming. “What about Logan?”
    I felt a pained expression work its way onto my face. Timothy Logan was a bit of sore point for me, because he’d been involved in some low-ranging crimes in a rural jurisdiction. He was guilty, no doubt, but he hadn’t been violent and he’d expressed a lot of remorse. He was, bar none, our easiest prisoner, and I was of a mind to parole him soon-ish. “I don’t have absolute power over these people, okay?” I said. “You know that the DoJ and Homeland Security are just as much in charge of this as I am.”
    “And that doesn’t worry you?” His penetrating gaze was annoying. Really annoying. His accurate points in regards to Timothy Logan were even more so. “They haven’t ever interfered with your judgment.”
    “That’s because so far,” I said as we started to descend, a lot sharper than a commercial airliner would, “I haven’t let anyone go.” Passengers? Nah. We were cargo to our pilots. I glanced back at Simmons, up to his neck in gel, and