David Weber - Torch of Freedom

To hell with it. Let them burn.

They'd already decided Anton would spend this last night in Victor and Yana's safe house. That posed a slight risk, but less than adding an additional complication to their actions on the morrow by requiring yet another rendezvous.

His two companions were there when he arrived, sitting at the same kitchen table where they'd spent so many hours already.

"You're looking pensive," said Victor. "Is something troubling you, Anton?"

He draped the jacket he'd been wearing to fend off the chill over one of the seats. "No," he said.

Late that night, Lajos came to his decision. Much as he hated to take the risk, he didn't see where he had any choice. He'd have to tell Bardasano.

Tomorrow, early in the morning. It'd take a fair amount of persuasion before he could get past Bardasano's aides, since he was not one of the people she had any regular contact with. Trying to do it at night was probably impossible.

Tomorrow would be soon enough, anyway. It wasn't as if Jack was going anywhere.

Jack McBryde felt a curious brittle, singing hollowness swirling around inside him as he offered his retinal pattern to the scanner and slid his hand through the biometric security sensors as he'd done so many times before. Even now, it was almost impossible for him to believe—really believe—that this was the last time he would ever do it.

"Good morning, Chief McBryde," the uniformed sergeant behind the sensors said with a smile. "Didn't expect to see you here today. Sure as hell, not this early."

" I didn't expect to see me here today, either," McBryde replied with carefully metered wry humor. "That was before I realized how far behind I am, though." He rolled his eyes. "Turns out there are a few little details that need to be tied up for my quarterly reports."

"Ouch." The sergeant chuckled sympathetically. Unlike some of his peers, Jack McBryde was popular with his subordinates, and part of that was because he didn't go around ripping people's heads off because he thought he was some sort of tin god.

"Well, I'd better get to it," McBryde sighed, then shook his head. "Oh, by the way, I'm expecting Dr. Simões. Send him straight along to my office when he gets here, okay?"

"Yes, Sir."

The sergeant's sympathetic humor vanished. By now, everyone in the Center knew about Simões. They knew how long and hard McBryde had fought to keep him functional . . . and they also knew the security chief had finally lost the battle. The sergeant very much doubted that McBryde was looking forward to what would almost certainly be his final interview with the embittered scientist.

"Thanks."

McBryde nodded, then headed for his office.

Lajos Irvine showed up at Steph Turner's diner at eight in the morning, as Bardasano had instructed him to do, feeling distinctly unhappy with this assignment. His unhappiness stemmed from two factors.

First, he disliked—intensely—getting orders that were vague to the point of being oatmeal.

Check out the diner and see if you can spot anything suspicious. Let me know right away on my private com if anything turns up. While you're doing that, I'll be putting McBryde through the wringer to find out what the hell he thinks he's doing.

Wonderful. And Bardasano was supposed to be some sort of star-line genius! She might as well have told him to hang out at the playground and tell her if he spotted any of the kids acting in an unruly manner. What— specifically —did she want him to look for? Who knew?

Something about McBryde's activities must have rattled her more than he'd thought they would. Oh, having it come at her cold probably accounted for some of that, and Irvine supposed having a peon of his own lowly rank crash her security just as she was sitting down to breakfast probably hadn't helped. Maybe she just wasn't a morning person?

His lips quirked slightly at the thought, even now, but the temptation to smile faded quickly. At least some confusion had to be inevitable when a junior agent jumped the queue the way he had, but this struck him as more than just the inevitable bureaucratic confusion of something the size and complexity of Alighnment Security. By all accounts he'd ever heard, Bardasano was normally as sharp as a razor, yet no impartial observer would have reached that conclusion based on the instructions she'd given him .

The second source of his unhappiness, and an even greater one, was shuffling along the street about a hundred meters behind him. In addition to giving him vague instructions, Bardasano had also insisted on saddling Lajos with what she called "backup." Three people from one of her "special units"—whatever the hell that meant—who'd be there to provide him with whatever force he might need.

Wonderful. Irvine was a spy, not some sort of stupid HD "action hero." He collected information, was what he did. If Bardasano wanted him to do his job, he'd be able to do it a lot better working on his own with no backup at all—much less "backup" whose fieldcraft was so rusty that probably the mutts in the street knew the three clowns following him were official muscle. And if, on the contrary, she wanted to crack down on whoever was at the diner this morning, then why the hell did she insist on dragging Lajos into the business at all?

He wasn't even carrying a weapon. If for no other reason, because he was legally as well as genetically a seccy, and seccies were forbidden to possess firearms of any kind. Even having a knife whose blade was longer than six centimeters would get you arrested, if you were found with it.

Lajos made a silent vow that in the unlikely event violence did break out in Turner's place, his contribution to the cause of righteousness was going to be to duck under a table. Let Bardasano's "specialists" deal with it. They were the kind of people who swaggered to the bathroom.

Herlander Simões eyed the young man in front of him uncertainly. He'd probably never been this close to a seccy in his entire life, he realized. Even by the standards of star-lines raised in privilege, he'd led a cloistered life.

And now he was putting that life in the hands of one.

No, two. A big, tough-looking blonde woman emerged from the back of the van. She didn't look much like a seccy, though.

"Get in," she said. "I'll help you get tucked away in your crate."

The woman climbed into the crate with him. The crate itself hadn't been sealed yet.

"Now we wait," she said. "I'm Yana."

Jack would really have preferred to take care of all of this yesterday, yet he hadn't quite dared. In some ways, it might not be necessary at all, but he wasn't prepared to settle for "might not" at this point. There was too much data in his computer files, too much information about Simões, too much that might point an alert investigator in the right direction before Zilwicki and Cachat could get them off-planet and out of the system.

Even more important than wiping away any fingerprints he might inadvertently have left, though, was the need to create a diversion. He and Simões were both going to be missed, probably before they could get off-planet, and certainly before they could get out-system. McBryde was pretty sure he'd figured out which of the non-Mesan ships currently in the star system was Zilwicki and Cachat's chariot, and if he could figure it out, so could someone else. So, since they were going to be missed anyway, setting up a suitable school or two of red herrings seemed in order. And the best place to do that was from right here, in his office.