David Weber - Torch of Freedom

"Well . . ." She heaved a sigh. "Okay, then. I guess."

She took his arm and more or less marched him inside. "But since you insist on getting rid of any other company, Mr. Arai, you'll have to provide me with all the scintillating conversation I need. And I warn you! If I catch your eyes roving about looking for Manpower agents hidden in the pastry bins, there'll be hell to pay."

Berry only had to scold him twice. With the interior of the parlor completely deserted except for the two of them and one employee, and with Lara's Own standing guard at the entrance, Hugh found he could relax a bit.

Of the two times she caught him lapsing, one of them did indeed happen to be an excessive scrutiny of one of the pastry bins.

(You never knew. A small bomb might be buried under those fruit rolls.)

The other, and longer, lapse came when his suspicions fell on the one employee present. There were no good reasons for that suspicion, true. Not only was the employee slaving away at some new concoction Berry had decided to try; not only was she beaming her obvious approval of the queen's new security arrangements; not only was she probably the smallest and least threatening person in the employ of J. Quesenberry's Ice Cream and Pastries— the young woman stood less than one hundred and fifty centimeters and couldn't have weighed more than forty kilos—but she had one of Lara's Own watching her at all times, gun pointed almost right at her.

(You never knew. She might be one of the ninjas of legend and fable, even if she did seem to be basking in the unusual attention.)

Whether his conversation was scintillating or not, he did not know and never would. Mostly, he listened to Berry. He could do that for hours. She was one of those rare people who, in some uncanny way, made the phrase "idle conversation" something that denoted real pleasure rather than tedium. Maybe it was the way she was so obviously paying attention to the person she was talking to, even when she was doing most of the talking.

When they were readying to leave, she said: "This wasn't so bad, to my surprise. But I have to say I liked our first date better."

"This was not a date," Hugh said firmly. Sternly. With granite resolve. "For you, it was an outing. For me, a security assignment."

Berry smiled. There was something about that smile that Hugh decided he didn't dare think about it too much.

"How could I have missed that?" she murmured.

Damn the girl. Better still, damn Jeremy.

Before they made their exit, Hugh gave the detachment from Lara's Own a five minute warning to get the street cleared. Then he had to extend it to ten minutes, and then to fifteen. The crowd that filled every seat at every table out there—just as Quesenberry's owners had figured they would—was friendly and co-operative. But they saw no good reason not to finish their dishes in a leisurely manner, and even in the best of circumstances it takes time to get that many people to move. What could he do? Order Lara's Own to open fire? Berry damn well would have him skinned alive.

When they were finally able to leave, he extended his arm once again.

"If I may, Your Majesty."

Berry nodded, placed her hand in the crook of his elbow, and they went out onto the street beyond.

On the way back to the palace, a few minutes later, Berry got that peculiar little smile back on her face. "Did I mention that I have the ability—not always, sure, but more often than sheer chance can allow—to foretell the future?"

"Ah . . . no, Your Majesty. You didn't."

"It's quite true. And I'm getting another of those premonitions."

"Which is what, Your Majesty?"

"The day will come, Hugh Arai, when you will pay dearly and bitterly for each and every one of these blasted 'Your Majesties.' Mark my words."

Hugh mused on the matter all the way back to the palace. By the time they arrived, he'd reached the tentative conclusion that as dire predictions went, that one had the potential of being quite delightful.

The conclusion, of course, triggered off Hugh's overly-developed sense of duty again. And, again, he heaped silent curses on Jeremy X.

July, 1921

"Yes, Jiri?"

Luiz Rozsak went right on methodically crushing gingersnaps for the eventual gravy as Commander Watanapongse appeared on his personal com. The rich, comforting smell of home-baked rye bread with caraway seeds was a subtle background incense for the stronger, more immediate scent of simmering sauerbraten, and, as usual, when he was occupied in the kitchen, Rozsak had set the com for holographic mode, which meant Watanapongse's head and shoulders seemed to sprout out of the counter before him while he worked.

"Sorry to disturb you, Luiz, but I thought you'd want to hear about this ASAP." The commander grimaced. "I think we've just managed to confirm what Laukkonen was talking about back in March."

"Laukkonen?"

Rozsak's fingers paused in their work, and he frowned slightly. There were enough things breaking loose in the Maya Sector and its immediate environs for even Luiz Rozsak to need a handful of seconds to sort through his orderly mental files. Then he nodded.

"Ajax," he said.

"Exactly." Watanapongse nodded as the single word told him Rozsak had found the required memory and called it up. "This isn't from him, and it isn't as clear cut and . . . concise, let's say, as what he had for us, either. But it's from two separate low-level sources in two different star systems. Neither of them happened to have any senior StateSec officers who owed them money, but between the two of them, they've reported the departure of three rogue ex-Peep warships from their areas. There's a lot of little stuff—minor crap, the kind of bar room and restaurant chatter where people let things slip—to suggest all three of them were headed for the same rendezvous somewhere, as well. Obviously, we can't confirm that positively at the moment, but we have been able to confirm that the ships in question all left in a fairly tight time window. One which would match pretty well with what Laukkonen gave us from Bottereau, the StateSec guy who owes him all that money."

"I'm not hearing anything about positively confirming their target," Rozsak observed, and Watanapongse twitched a slight smile at him.

"No, you're not," he agreed. "But as we agreed when we talked about Laukkonen's original report, it's hard for me to think of another target in our area Manpower would be interested in beating on."

"That assumes operations in our area are what's on their mind, though," Rozsak pointed out. "Given what seems to be going on out Talbott's way, they could be pulling in extra forces for that area."

"They could be." Watanapongse nodded. "On the other hand, given the scale of the operation Terekhov busted at Monica, all the StateSec holdouts combined wouldn't matter a fart in a skinsuit. If we can figure that out, then Manpower probably can, too, so why waste an asset that's only going to disappear like snow on a griddle when it gets run over by the reinforcements the Manties have to be sending that way?"

"Assuming the Manties have very much to send," Rozsak replied.

"You know, Luiz, you really do seem to get more enthusiastic about playing devil's advocate whenever I catch you in the kitchen. I thought cooking was supposed to be a soothing pastime."

"This is me being 'soothing'—or as close to it as I can get these days, anyway."

Rozsak smiled crookedly, finished crushing the gingersnaps, set them aside, and wiped his fingers on the hand towel draped around his neck. He stayed that way for several seconds, his smile gradually fading into a slight frown, then exhaled heavily.