Read Online StarCraft II: Devils' Due by Christie Golden - Free Book Online Page A

my office,” he told Rett. “Hopeful y there’s a
    woman stil there.”
    Rett raised an eyebrow, and Butler scowled at him.
    “Come on, Rett, she’s one of Findlay’s and Raynor’s
    girls. Find out what she knows. We can hold her on
    associating with known criminals if we have to.”
    “Yes, sir.”
    “Sir!” It was the security chief of the depot, and his
    face looked considerably brighter than it had a few
    minutes ago. “The transponders affixed to every
    government vehicle are stil working. Looks like they
    couldn’t disable them.”
    Hope flickered in Butler’s heart. “Wel , cough it up,
    son. Where are they?”
    “They’re about forty kilometers due west of here.
    They’re not moving.”
    Butler frowned beneath his mustache. Why steal
    planet-hoppers if you were just going to stay
    stationary planetside? The hope died back down but
    did not vanish altogether.
    “They could be loading cargo,” he said. “Al units,
    let’s go.”
    Marshal Wilkes Butler and his entire staff, save for
    a skeleton crew left behind, arrived a few moments
    later at the location the transponders indicated. He
    sat on his bike for a ful minute, digesting what he
    saw.
    Of course, there were no planet-hoppers, with Jim
    and Tychus busily loading cargo.
    There were two vultures. And that was it. No one
    said anything. There was only the tick-tick of engines
    cooling and the sound of a wind kicking up. One of the
    bikes fel over.
    “They switched the transponders,” said Butler, with
    unnatural calm. “They broke into a marshal’s depot.
    Stole two space-worthy vehicles. Switched the
    transponders and had time to hire a girl to come
    make sure our faces were rubbed in it.”
    His men glanced at one another uneasily but wisely
    stayed silent.
    Butler dismounted and walked to the remaining
    standing vulture and glared at it, his hands on his hips.
    His eyes narrowed, and he reached down and
    plucked out a tiny microphone.
    “Findlay? Raynor? Listen and listen wel . You think
    you’re so clever. I make you a promise, boys. You
    come on my world again, and I wil have your asses
    thrown in jail so fast, it’l take an hour for your heads to
    catch up with them. You got that?”
    And he threw the tiny mic down on the rocky soil,
    crushing it beneath his boot heel with more savage
    energy than any of his men had seen in him before.
    Safely out of reach, Tychus Findlay and James
    Raynor were laughing so hard, they couldn’t talk.
    “Oh, man,” breathed Jim, “that was too much. I
    couldn’t fly straight there for a moment.”
    “Hel , Jimmy, you couldn’t fly straight if you were
    sober as a preacher and had nothing else on your
    mind.”
    “I ain’t been drinking!” Jim retorted.
    “Maybe you should be,” Tychus replied. “Might help
    you straighten out.”
    Tychus
    was
    right.
    Their
    current
    careers
    necessitated that they become jacks-of-al -trades.
    They’d flown a lot of vehicles in their day, and so could
    manage an attempt at almost anything. Just not very
    wel . It would probably have made their departure from
    New Sydney quite comical to watch, if anyone had
    been watching. They’d opted to take two, just in case
    the law got onto them and they had to split up. Such a
    tactic had often worked wel for them. Now, though,
    Jim wondered if maybe they should have just picked
    one: perhaps both of them in a single vessel might
    have made for one good pilot.
    Jim glanced at the viewscreen to see the other
    smal vessel ahead and slightly to the right. He
    snorted; Tychus was stil weaving.
    “You’re one to talk. I’ve seen four-year-old girls who
    were better pilots than you.”
    “Maybe we should enlist them into our gang, then.
    We could use a decent pilot.”
    Jim laughed. “Speaking of girls,” he said, “although
    a bit older—how the hel did you talk Daisy into going
    in to see ol’ Butler?”
    “Girl’s sweet on me. She’l do anything I ask.”
    “And anything for money,” Jim added.