Torch of Freedom

by David Weber

  Damn risky, though. Not because he was dealing with ex-StateSec toughs and thugs—Jurgen had been handling people like that since he was fourteen—but because of the people on the other end. Those still-very-murky individuals or organizations whose exact identity Dusek didn't know and didn't want to know. "Still-very-murky" suited him just fine. If everything worked out well, they'd stay nice and murky.

  But that was the problem. There was always the danger, dealing with "murky people" on Mesa, that you'd eventually discover you'd climbed into bed with Manpower. Or, even worse, the really murky people whom Dusek sensed were lurking somewhere within Manpower, or behind it.

  It wasn't that he had any moral objection to the idea of being tied to Manpower. Either today or at some point in his life, Jurgen Dusek had been a knee-breaker, a contract killer, a pimp, a drug dealer, a counterfeiter (of welfare chits, not money; nobody in their right mind tried to pass fake money on Mesa), a brothel-keeper—several brothels, in fact—a gambling overlord, a smuggler—the list went on and on. His capacity for accepting and taking advantage of immoral business opportunities was well-nigh infinite.

  No, it was the damn risk. Getting involved too closely with Manpower had a history of turning into a nightmare for the person foolish enough to do it. At the very least, you wound up losing your independence and becoming just another one of their flunkies.

  Risk or no risk, though, the mercenary business really was profitable. And if this new guy . . .

  "She's sure he was part of Saint-Just's inner circle?"

  "Absolutely and positively certain. She says McRae knows far too many things—details, specifics, not generalities—than anybody possibly could without having been right in the middle of things. In fact, she figures he probably knows more than she ever did, when it comes to field work. Cybille stresses that McRae would have been a very junior member of that inner circle. He wasn't any sort of high level StateSec official, or even mid-level like she was. But she says she recognizes the type. Saint-Just had the habit of cultivating young protégés for field work. People whose dedication and ruthlessness were . . . well, 'extreme' is the word she used. Coming from Cybille . . ."

  Dusek grinned humorlessly. Cybille DuChamps had her own reputation for, ah, extreme behavior. For her to call anyone else a "psychopath" was pretty rich. It was literally worth your life to become her lover—and you didn't even get to enjoy the status for more than three or four months.

  "All right, then. He's a lot more than just common muscle, in other words. We might be able to get quite a bit in the way of a commission from Luff, if he decides to take him on."

  Triêu looked a bit skeptical. "I get the impression Luff's not all that keen on the really hardcore StateSec types."

  "He's not. But that's just a matter of personal preference. Adrian Luff also has a very large military force he needs to keep in line. Somebody like Daniel McRae could prove very handy for him."

  "Ah . . . you do know Luff's gone, boss?"

  "Don't teach your grandmother how to suck eggs. Of course I know he's gone. And I don't know where he is, either, and while I could probably guess I'm nowhere near crazy enough to do so. But he left me with a contact person who stayed behind. Inez Cloutier. I'll get in touch with her and see if she's interested in pursuing the matter."

  "Okay. I'll tell McRae to stick around for a while."

  "Is he asking for anything right now? Money? Women? A place to stay?"

  "He seems well enough set up." Chuanli smiled. "The only thing he says he wants—he's willing to pay for it, too—is a gun. And unless he's got the sex drive of a rabbit, I doubt he needs a woman. He's got a big blonde with him who's better looking than most of the girls we could provide him with."

  "What's her story?"

  "Scrag, believe it or not."

  Jurgen's eyes widened. For a StateSec man to be coupled with a Scrag girlfriend was highly unusual. Offhand, in fact, Dusek couldn't think of a single case he knew of.

  "How'd he manage that?"

  "They were both on Terra during the Manpower Incident. Among the few who got out alive and intact. I guess they got hooked up there and they've stayed together ever since."

  Not a casual girlfriend, if they'd been together that long. The Manpower Incident had happened years ago.

  Dusek was silent for a minute or so, as he weighed the risks and benefits of providing the McRae fellow with a gun. On the pro side, the risk was minimal and selling McRae a gun would serve for a while to keep him on an informal payroll without actually having to pay him anything. On the con side, there was a risk, however small—and there was always the chance that McRae was just a nut case.

  But, even if that were true, it just meant there'd be another killing in a district which already had the worst murder rate in the city. (The worst official murder rate. The actual murder rate was a lot worse.) Easy enough to handle.

  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, second, at least you're your own boss."

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

  "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 and her teenage daughter, 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 Turner and her daughter 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."

  Chapter Forty-One

  August, 1921 PD

  "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 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.

  Which didn't make them the largest ships under his command, of course. And didn't mean the SLN knew they were actually "his," either. In point of fact, his nominal superiors back on Old Earth were under the odd impression that they were Erewhonese units the SLN was merely helping to man because the Republic of Erewhon found itself "temporarily" short of trained manpower. That sort of assistance was part of the Office of Frontier Security's standard operating procedure for gaining influence with independent star nations, so no one back on Old Earth had turned a hair when Rozsak reported that he was applying the tactic in Erewhon's case. It helped that Erewhon had applied the Royal Manticoran Navy's new standards of automation to its own new construction without bothering to mention that fact to the galaxy at large. The fact that an entire ship's company for one of the Marksmans was actually considerably smaller than the complement of one of the SLN's far smaller Morrigan-class light cruisers made it far easier to convince The Powers That Were back on Old Earth that all Rozsak's people were doing was to "help fill in the holes" in otherwise Erewhonese crews.

  For a few more seconds he gazed at the icons which had just completed their scheduled exercise, then turned to face Captain Dirk-Steven Kamstra, Marksman's commander. Kamstra was of only moderate height, with brown hair, brown eyes, and a rather chunky physique. No one would have called him massively muscular, although he was considerably broader (and, undeniably, thicker) than Rozsak himself, and the uncharitable might have been inclined to describe his habitual expression as somewhat bovine. "Phlegmatic" might have been a better term, although it was sadly true that there was no glow of genius or superior intellect in those brown eyes.

  Which was fortunate, in Luiz Rozsak's considered opinion, since it had caused so many people to completely overlook the incisive, sharply honed intelligence lurking behind that stolid, unimaginative-looking exterior. In point of fact, he knew the exterior in question had been developed specifically to hide what was going on behind it . . . including its owner's simmering hatred for what Frontier Security had done to Geronimo, his parents' homeworld. The fact that Kamstra had managed to attain officer's rank in the SLN despite having been born on what had become a Frontier Security protectorate planet six T-years before his own birth made him almost unique. The fact that he'd made it as high as captain (which was a recent promotion) had been made possible only by certain strategically placed patrons, prominent among whom were one Oravil Barregos and one Luiz Rozsak, and they would never have managed to pull it off if anyone in the Solarian League Navy's flag ranks had suspected for one moment how Dirk-Steven Kamstra had come to regard OFS and all its works.

  The fact that no one ever had—or would, before it was too late, at least—was one huge reason why Dirk-Steven Kamstra was both the commanding officer of Light Cruiser Squadron 7036, SLN, and, after Edie Habib and Jiri Watanapongse, Rozsak's most trusted subordinate. He was also one of the very few people who knew exactly what Oravil Barregos and Luiz Rozsak had in mind for the Maya Sector's future. All of which, of course, explained why he held the command he currently held.

  "Very impressive, Dirk-Steven," Rozsak said now.

  "I'm pleased with them myself, Sir," Kamstra replied. "We've still got a few rough spots—couldn't be any other way, I suppose, given how much doctrine we're inventing as we go along—but, overall, I think they've done well." He glanced at the icons himself, then looked back at R
ozsak. "It'd help if we could go ahead and exercise the entire force together instead of more or less hiding the new units off in a corner, as it were, of course."

  "It looks like you might just get that opportunity," Rozsak said a bit less cheerfully. Kamstra's left eyebrow arched slightly, and Rozsak snorted in harsh amusement. "Let's go ahead and take this to your briefing room," he suggested.

  "Of course, Sir." Kamstra inclined his head respectfully in the direction of the door which connected the bridge directly to the flag briefing room.

  "Attention on deck!" the newly promoted Captain Edie Habib said crisply as Rozsak stepped through the door with Kamstra at his heels.

  The people seated around the briefing room table rose quickly, standing as Rozsak made his way to the chair awaiting him at the table's head. Kamstra, as his senior officer in space, took the chair at the table's far end, waiting with the others until Rozsak had seated himself.

  "Sit, sit," the rear admiral said, just a bit impatiently, and his subordinates did. It was all a bit more formal than usual, he reflected, but, then, circumstances weren't exactly usual, either.

  He let his eyes circle the table. The officers present represented only a small percentage of the Maya Sector Frontier Fleet Detachment's ship commanders, but they were the most important ones. All of them understood what Barregos and Rozsak had been working towards for so long, and all of them would be critical to its accomplishment. And then, of course, there were Habib and Watanapongse.

  Kamstra, as Marksman's CO and the senior officer of Light Cruiser Squadron 7036, wore two official "hats." Three, really, since he normally acted as Rozsak's space-going deputy. In effect, he was the in-space commander of the Maya Sector Detachment, given Rozsak's heavy planet-side administrative duties. Tactically, he would function as Rozsak's flag captain if—as had become increasingly likely—the Detachment found itself committed to action. As such, he'd carried a huge share of the burden when it came to training and integrating the new-build units coming out of Erewhon over the past several months.