Strong Arm Tactics by Jody Lynn Nye Page B

salute. If not for the silhouettes of the fighter craft behind her, she might have been in a luxury resort, up to and including holoposters adhered to the side of the storage shed.
    Daivid didn’t really need to use the finder to locate Jones. He found the Cymraeg standing knee deep in waders, fishing in the rocky brook that flowed parallel to the landing pad about a kilometer out and singing light opera in his big voice. Ewanowski and Aaooorru sat slung in a pair of insulation rings sipping out of cocktail glasses festooned with paper umbrellas which they lifted in toast to Daivid as he frowned at them. Funny, corlists and semicats were not species that usually got along well. But he still hadn’t found the right person. He strode on, stalking his prey with all the intense concentration of his namesake animal.
    Meyers looked up with concern and gathered up the arrangement of Tarot cards she had spread out on a cloth across the bottom of an unused shipping container and snuffed out the candles burning at the corners.
    “Sorry, sorry,” Daivid kept saying, getting more and more angry in his embarrassment.
    Finally, he located one of his two quarries, at the bottom of a gully bounded on three sides by an ox-bow of the ancient river that bounded the spaceport.
    “There you are!”
    A naked Chief Boland scrambled up and out of the double-recliner chair at the sound of Daivid’s furious voice. The big man reached for his discarded breeches and started to tug them on. Lin, similarly unclad, merely shrugged and shifted her eyeshades up onto the top of her head. Her slight but taut body was a criss-crossed network of healing scars and decorated here and there with tattoos. On her knee was a raised area resembling Ambering’s do-it-yourself Cockroach.
    “So, you went to Supply,” she said, her eyes crinkling up at Daivid with amusement. “How far’d you get?”
    “What unauthorized modifications?” Daivid exploded. “You set me up.”
    “Nah,” Lin waved a protest. She found a bottle of sunprotectant on the ground and handed it to Boland. Obediently, he opened it and began to rub it on her back and shoulders. “It was worth a try. I thought your background might get the request past him. You’re going to have to go through Mason to get replacements after all. Sorry. I was hoping you wouldn’t have to.”
    “You knew he was going to refuse?” Daivid asked, feeling his blood pressure rising.
    “Well … maybe 80%.” She took the bottle and began to anoint her small breasts with the white lotion.
    Daivid lost his patience. He threw his hands in the air. “What unauthorized modifications? What did you do to the CBS,Ps that I am going to have to take the request to the commander instead of just requisitioning them like any other unit?”
    “Everybody does it,” Boland interjected. Daivid just glared at him. The big chief looked momentarily sheepish. Daivid transferred the glare to Lin.
    She looked a little embarrassed, too. “All right, maybe they don’t. But they could.”
    “Do what?” Daivid pressed.
    “Well, you know what the CBS,P does,” Lin began. “It monitors circulation, and responds to drops or increases in ambient pressure. It keeps up a wave of compression going all over the body.”
    “Yes, so where does.…?”
    “Let me explain,” Lin pleaded. “So … you know, sometimes transport to the arenas takes so long, and people were getting bored … we adapted it so that maybe it compresses a little harder in some places.…”
    “… And a little faster,” Boland added. “Okay, a lot faster. Not all the time, just after a while. Then it stops.”
    Daivid eyed them. “And where does it start this faster, har—oh, tell me you’re kidding!”
    The two chiefs had the grace to look ashamed of themselves. “Uh, no.”
    “So you’ve turned the space service’s main survival garment into an all-over masturbation machine? No wonder Supply is furious with you!”
    “He’s quick on the