She raised the binoculars again, listening to the earbug tied into the StateSec net and feeling Alistair McKeon’s taut readiness beside her. Nimitz stood upright in the carrier, now slung across her back, pressing his triangular jaw into the top of her shoulder as he stared down at the shuttle pad with her, and the bright flame of his predator anticipation burned at the heart of her own like a fire.

The shuttle settled with neat precision in the center of the pad, and Jardine allowed himself a small smile of self-congratulation. A trash hauler was hardly a sexy mount, but it was nice to demonstrate that he still had the precision of control which had gotten him promoted to Camp Charon.

Yeah, and if I’d known how exciting it was going to be, you can bet I’d have blown off the chance to get my ass sent here, too, prestige posting or not! he thought with a silent chuckle, and keyed his com.

“Base, this is Jardine,” he reported. “On the ground at Inferno.”

“Check, Jardine,” Base Ops replied in a voice tinged with ineffable boredom. The woman on the other end of the com didn’t quite invite the citizen lieutenant to go away and quit bothering her in so many words, but her tone got the message across quite handily.

And that’s exactly why I enjoy reporting in so much, Jardine thought with a nasty smile. Citizen Major Steiner wasn’t as bad as a lot of the other base personnel, and she was actually fairly competent. But she was just as set in her ways as anyone else, and she’d leaned harder on Jardine than most about easing up on The Book. She hadn’t been confrontational about it, but she’d made her point with a fair degree of emphasis, and she was too senior for him to fire back at her the way he’d wanted to.

But, of course, she can’t officially complain if all I do is follow Regs, now can she? And if that just happens to rub it in with a little salt…

He chuckled and looked over his shoulder at his crew.

“He’s transmitted,” Honor said quietly, good eye aching as she stared through her binoculars.

Come on, Jardine, she thought silently, almost prayerfully, at the pilot. Be sloppy just this once. Break SOP just a little bit, please. I don’t want to kill you if I don’t have to.

“All right, Rodgers. Over to you and Fierenzi.”

“Gee, thanks a whole hell of a lot,” Citizen Sergeant Rodgers muttered just loud enough for Jardine to hear but not quite loud enough he couldn’t pretend he’d thought he was talking only to himself if the citizen lieutenant jerked him up short over it. Not that Rodgers really cared a whole hell of a lot. He was an old Hades hand, and he’d seen a handful of other hotshots like Jardine come and go. The citizen lieutenant’s by-the-book, pain-in-the-ass mania for details had lasted longer than most, but sooner or later Hades took the starch out of even the most regulation personality. Still, it would be nice if Jardine would go ahead and get it the hell out of his system and be done with it.