Free Osdal (Harmony War Series Book 3) by Michael Chatfield Page A

in the way of flying and having stuff fly around if they were in zero grav was a pain in the ass.
    Moretti greeted everyone and grabbed a place to set up his sleeping gear.
    Everyone was friends, and there wasn’t much special about going on platoon only mission. They’d been there, done that, got the scars.
    “Looking good here,” Bobbie said poking his head into the cockpit.
    “Last scans show we’re operational,” Young replied.
    “Let’s power everything up and prepare for departure, seal hatches last,” Yu said.
    Bobbie’s head disappeared back into the cargo hold as Yu fired up the power plant on the freighter and opened a channel to flight control. “Flight Control this is Bandit two, sealing up and prepared for departure.”
    “All sealed up!” Bobbie reported.
    “Understood Bandit one, depressurizing hangar,” Flight Control said, and Yu saw dust and a wrench being sucked towards the walls; someone had forgotten their tools.
    He sighed to himself.
    “Depressurized and opening hangar doors,” Flight Control said.
    Yu held off putting power to the vertical thrusters.
    The hangar doors opened, showing space beyond. There wasn’t any sign of Osdal System in the inky darkness.
    Young anticipated his request, a checkpoint by checkpoint map showing where they were going.
    “Bandit Two this is Flight Control; you are cleared for launch.”
    “Thank you Flight Control, see you later.” Yu powered the vertical thrusters, and Reclaimer was pointed away from Osdal, its engines firing to slow the carrier down and bring them to stop outside the system’s Oort cloud. As they were losing speed, the shuttle still had inertia, and it wasn’t braking.
    They slid out of the hangar without any thrust.
    Yu looked to his flight plan; he wouldn’t need to fire his engines except for minor corrections for a few weeks.
    “Now all we have to do is get to Osdal Actual,” Young said.
    “Fuck, I hate this part, so goddamn boring,” Yu sighed, getting comfortable in his seat.
    He’d changed the freighter’s seats out, after the flight on the shuttle, he’d learned that good lumbar support and a comfortable chair were key items to staying sane. It was odd the things you changed and appreciated after adversity, or too much exposure to the opposite.
    “That’s why I got Reclaimer’s movie and television database.” Young grinned.
    “Isn’t that illegal?” Yu asked, looking at her with a smile.
    “Well, we are Harmony supporters, I don’t think anyone’s going to give a rat’s ass that we aren’t paying the corporations to watch their movies while fighting their war.”
    Yu let out a snort. “You may have a point there. I’ve never thought of what we do as a war, sure, we were clearing the worlds of rebels, or just scaring the shit out of them by simply showing up. Before Sacremon we didn’t have that many slug-them-out fights, but even those were just battles. It all sucks, don’t get me wrong, but this, this war is not just a group of people that want more money or benefits from their planet’s conglomerate partnership. It’s a hell of a lot uglier.”
    “And it feels like it’s not going to go away any time soon,” Young said, looking out at the stars and darkness that surrounded them.
    “Yeah,” Yu said, shaking his head to try and get off the subject, but it was hard to. Everything they did was done to prepare for fighting Harmony. All they talked about was Harmony.
    “I’ll take first watch, go play some card games or something if you want,” Yu said, checking his navigation controls, though they didn’t need to change their trajectory for another couple of days.
    “Holler if you need anything,” Young said, pulling off her seat straps, and walking through the cockpit and into the cargo hold. Yu heard her talking to someone at the bottom of the short ladder that separated the cargo hold’s floor to the cockpit, then he heard footsteps coming up.
    Yu looked around. “Hey