David Weber - Torch of Freedom

What finally decided Dusek was the need to cross-check McRae yet again. If DuChamps' assessment was accurate—and Jurgen had little doubt that it was—then Daniel McRae had indeed been a legitimate (using the word loosely) member of Saint-Just's inner circle. But that didn't necessarily mean that he was up to snuff, personally. Every inner circle had its flakes. So far as Dusek knew, Saint-Just's sexual preferences had been a complete unknown. Maybe this guy McRae had just been his catamite.

"What's he want?"

"A Kettridge Model A-3."

That was an awfully small gun. Easy to hide and deadly enough, if you were a good shot. But most people wanted something quite a bit more powerful, especially mercs.

So, again, there was a possible problem. Maybe the guy was a real gunman. On the other hand, McRae could just be putting up a show and didn't want a man-sized gun that might tire him out, having to lug it around all the time.

"Okay, let him have it. But I want this guy tested, Chuanli. Tested hard. If I broker him to Luff as a top Saint-Just inner circle field op—what lowly crooks like you and me would call an enforcer—then I have to be sure I'm not passing on a creampuff. I don't want to lose Luff as a customer."

Triêu took a little time to ponder the problem. "He's got some rooms not far from the Rhodesian. I'll tell him some people who might want to hire him frequent the place, and he'd be smart to hang out there in the evening. Then I'll tell Jozef to have those three new guys of his show up and hit on the blonde. We'll see what happens."

"What if he doesn't bring her?"

Chuanli shrugged. "Figure out something else. But don't forget she's a Scrag, boss. How likely is it she'd let a man—any man—tell her she has to stay home knitting socks while he parties?"

Dusek chuckled. "True enough. You wouldn't catch me picking a Scrag for a girlfriend."

"Me neither. No, she'll be there. I figure the bigger problem is that she might decide to handle the matter herself."

"You have any problem with the idea?" asked the owner of the restaurant.

Anton Zilwicki smiled. "You mean the degrading status of being a waiter in a greasy spoon joint?"

Steph Turner gave him a thin smile. "You hand a customer a greasy spoon and you're out the door. I don't care how many hosannas Saburo and his people pile on you. The last thing I need is to give the local authorities a reason to inspect the place. The one thing they do take half-seriously are health and sanitation regulations."

"Sorry, I was just trying to make a joke. No, I don't have any problems with the idea."

Turner nodded. "You ever worked as a waiter?"

"Not since I was a teenager. And then, not for long. I can't say I liked it much, and the pay was lousy."

"The pay's always bad in the restaurant business. Low profit margin. Been that way for at least five thousand years, near as I can determine. The only reason anybody's dumb enough to open up a restaurant—"

She shrugged. "First, a lot of people can do it. And, secondly, at least you're your own boss."

"I wasn't complaining," Anton said mildly. "When do I start?"

"Tomorrow morning. We open early, since half of our business is the breakfast trade, and we're mostly servicing people in manufacturing. They'll be starting early themselves, much earlier than office workers. So be here by four o'clock."

She watched him closely for a couple of seconds. The smile that followed actually had some warmth in it. "Nary a wince. Good for you. Of course, you won't really have to worry that much about getting up on time, since you're sleeping in one of the back rooms. I'll make sure you're up. Trust me on that."

"I wouldn't doubt you for a second," Anton said.

Turner shook her head. "I've gotta be crazy to do this. But . . . I owe Saburo. My life, not money, so it's not a debt I can shuffle off. But that's where my involvement ends, you understand? I'm not part of his . . . business."

Zilwicki nodded. "I understand."

Later, in the tiny room in the back of the building that Turner had provided him for sleeping quarters, Anton felt guiltier than he had in many years. He'd do his best to protect the woman, but the odds were that Steph Turner was going to pay a steep price for the help she was giving him. It might well wind up being a price as steep as her debt to Saburo. Her life itself.

Hopefully, it wouldn't come to that. Or, if it did, maybe he could smuggle her off the planet with them.

But that was all in the future. Right now, Anton was just wondering how Victor was managing things. He'd have arrived on Mesa a couple of days sooner than Anton. Maybe as much as three or four days. Either way, though, Cachat would still be getting himself situated. Anton figured he had a few days to get into the rhythm of being a waiter again, before Victor tracked him down.

He smiled, as he started to unpack. "Hell, who knows? Maybe he hasn't even killed anybody yet."

August, 1921

"So you're ready to call it 'official,' then?" Oravil Barregos asked.

"I'm not going to call anything we can't get better confirmation on than this 'official,' " Luiz Rozsak began in a significantly more sour tone of voice, only to pause as his voice was buried in a sudden roar of applause from the audience.

Neither of them had been speaking very loudly to begin with, since they were seated in the governor's box in Corterrael Coliseum on Vorva, the single moon of the planet Smoking Frog. The coliseum's enormous expanse opened before and below them, packed to old-fashioned standing room only as the annual System Festival got underway, and the clowns, acrobats, and jugglers of the Lebowski Circus were taking full advantage of Vorva's low natural gravity. It was one of the "Fabulous Lebowskis' " boasts that they used neither counter-grav nor even safety nets, and the spectacular quadruple somersault Aletha Lebowski had just executed between trapezes had the entire cast crowd on its feet.

"I'm not prepared to call anything 'official' at this point," Rozsak repeated, once the uproar had eased enough for Barregos to hear him. "Not when the best we've been able to come up with is corroborating rumors. With that proviso, though, I'd say it's 'official' enough for us to proceed on the assumption that it's reliable information. It's close enough for me to think we'd damned well better not act as if it isn't reliable intel, at any rate!"

As always, Vegar Spangen had the governor's portable anti-snooping system in operation. It was quite a good system, but nothing was infallible, and given the public venue, neither Rozsak nor Barregos was being very specific, despite all the background noise. Now the governor frowned for a moment, then shrugged.

"Well, if that's your judgment, I'm not going to argue with it. Go ahead."

"Yes, Sir," Rozsak acknowledged with a bit more formality than usual, and the two men turned their own attention back to the Fabulous Lebowskis.

"Impressive," Rozsak observed two of Smoking Frog's planetary days later as he stood on the flag bridge of SLNS Marksman contemplating the icons on her master plot.

The Marksman class was unique among Solarian Navy light cruisers in that it had a flag bridge. Of course, the fact that Marksman and her sisters belonged to the Solarian League Navy was something of a technicality, Rozsak supposed. As was the fact that, at 286,750 tons, she was bigger than the majority of the League's heavy cruisers.

She was, in fact, the first of the Maya Sector's "emergency program" to emerge from the newly expanded Carlucci Industrial Group yards in Erewhon, and she and the seven sisters currently in formation about her represented the largest warships in the Maya Sector Frontier Fleet Detachment the SLN had seen fit to place under Rear Admiral Rozsak's command.