Free War Games by Karl Hansen Page B

garrison. Those claws could make them interesting. She smiled, showing her teeth. They shone like cut sapphires. Then she laughed. Viper heat organs glowed from ridges above her eyebrows.
    “Where are you from?” I asked, hoping idle conversation would distract my thoughts. From dark forest. And her hands.
    She smiled. “A place called Telluride. Have you been there?”
    “Once,” I answered. “A long time ago.” Eight months seemed a long time if you were a combrid on Titan. And I’d been most everywhere on Earth once. Especially places the beautiful and rich considered chic. How well I remembered Telluride. Telluride was very chic. I wondered what a resident of there was doing here. But you didn’t ask that kind of question in the Corps. Because you wouldn’t want to answer it. Everyone had his reasons. Some were more solid than others, but all were valid. “An interesting place, Telluride,” I said.
    “Do you think so? I suppose. I was a Lady there. Married to a Lord.” She stopped speaking briefly. “Do you know what that means?”
    I did, but I didn’t have a chance to answer.
    Ahead, shadows moved. I stomped on the accelerator and banked into a hard right turn. Ten G’s pushed against me, pinning my flesh against wombskin cushions. I heard Peppardine gasp in surprise, as her breath was squeezed from her lungs.
    “Toad!” I said with my own exhalation.
    A pulse of red light flashed through a momentary gap in the road’s force-field, Pavement bubbled into vapor where the skimmer would have been if I hadn’t goosed it.
    I thumbed the firing stud of the quad-50 mounted on the roof of the skimmer. A computer sight was already aiming it. Before the breach in the field closed again, four 50mm pulsar beams of a nanosec duration fanned through it. Spent photonuclear cases streamed into the air behind the skimmer. In the forest, crystal trees exploded into millions of sharp fragments. I knew the unseen elves were dead, impaled by tiny slivers of glass. They didn’t wear combat armor. They couldn’t fly with the extra weight. Their mistake.
    I eased off the accelerator and let the skimmer coast to a more maneuverable speed. The lights of the garrison glowed on the horizon. We were almost home.
    I looked at the chimera. Ten claws gripped the arms of her seat. But she was smiling.
    “You saw?” I asked.
    “Of course. More than you imagine.” She licked her lips with blue saliva. “Did you have to kill them that way?”
    “No. We could have eluded them, anyway.”
    Her eyebrows arched. “Then why?”
    “Because I wanted to. I like killing elves. There’s no way they can claim to be civilians if they’re dead.”
    “I see.” She touched my leg. Her fingers puckered my skin. Her cape had opened along its slits. I glimpsed smooth pectus muscles, adolescent breasts, pubic hair fine as spun carbon.
    Excitement swirled inside. It had been days since we’d had a new player in the outfit. That was a long time in the bush. Everyone had bedded everyone else. And there’d never been anyone like this chimera. I thought of the blue fire carried in her claws. Peptide could warm up the night. I knew peptide was dangerous. My own parents bad been addicted to it. But I would be more careful than they. Scenarios flashed in my mind. I smiled to myself.
    I put my hand on her leg. Her skin was soft to the touch, but with a firmness underneath due to intradermal polymer mesh reinforcement. She moved my hand along her thigh. Sharp claws scratched the back of it. I saw promise hidden in her eyes.
    Then we were gliding into base. I was being tossed about by a testosterone storm—you know, hot to trot. I stopped the skimmer and dilated its doors. I carried Peppardine’s duffel this time, leading the way to her hut. But at the door, she turned. Nictitating membranes had closed. She was different; something had changed.
    “Let me show you to your quarters,” I said, my voice intimate.
    “That won’t be necessary.” Her