by David Weber
“If you’re sure . . .”
“Roger, Your Highness, my Prince, my darling?”
“Yes?”
“Shut up.”
“Old Earth,” Roger breathed.
The ship was currently looking at the dark side of the planet. Relatively dark, that was. All of the continents were lit, almost from end to end, and a sparkling necklace of lights even covered the center of the oceans, where the Oceania ship-cities floated.
“Have you been here before, Mr. Chung?” the communications tech asked.
“Once or twice,” Roger replied dryly. “Actually, I lived here for a number of years. I started off in intra-system brokerage right here in the Sol System. I was born on Mars, but Old Earth still feels more like home. How long to insertion?”
“Coming up on parking orbit . . . now,” Beach said.
“Time to get to work, then,” Roger replied.
“You look like you didn’t get much sleep last night, Shara,” Dobrescu observed brightly.
“Oh, shut up!”
“What’s the status on the buildings?” Roger asked. Dobrescu had come up in a rented shuttle for a personal report and a quiet chat.
“The warehouse is fine; needs some cleanup, but I figured we had enough hands for that,” Dobrescu said in a more serious tone. “The restaurant is going to need a few more days for renovations and inspections. I found out who to slide the baksheesh to on the latter, and they’ll get done as soon as we’re ready. There’s a bit of another problem I couldn’t handle on the restaurant, though.”
“Oh?” Roger arched an eyebrow.
“The area’s a real pit. Getting better, but still quite a bit of crime, and one of the local gangs has been trying to shake down the renovation teams. I had a talk with them, but they’re not inclined to be reasonable. Lots of comments about what a fire-trap the building is.”
“So do we pay them off or ‘reason’ with them?” Despreaux asked.
“I’m not sure they could guarantee our security even if we paid,” Dobrescu admitted. “They don’t control their turf that way. But I’m afraid if we got busy with them, it would be a corpse matter, and that could be a problem. The cops will look the other way on a little tussling, but they get sticky if bodies start turning up.”
“The genius is in the details,” Roger observed. “We’ll try the famed MacClintock diplomacy gene and see if they’re amenable to reason.”
“It’s going to be a really nice restaurant,” Roger said as Erkum picked up one of the three-meter-long oak rafters in one false-hand and tossed it to a pair of Diasprans on the roof.
The building’s front yard was being cleared by more of the Diaspran infantrymen. The local gang, whose leader was talking with Roger, eyed them warily from the street corner. There were about twice as many Mardukans in sight as gang members. The gang leader himself was as blond as Roger had been born, of medium height, with lanky hair that fell to his shoulders and holographic tattoos on arms and face.
“Well, in that case, I don’t see why you can’t afford a very reasonable—” he started to say.
“Because we don’t know you can deliver,” Roger snapped. “You can make all the comments you like about how inflammable this place is. I don’t really give a good goddamn. If there’s a suspicious fire, then my boys—many of whom are going to be living here—are going to be out of work. And they’re not going to be really happy about that. I’d appreciate an ‘insurance plan,’ but the plan would have to cover security for my guests. I don’t want one damned addict, one damned hooker, or one damned dealer in sight of the restaurant. No muggings. Better than having a platoon of cops. Guarantee me that, and we have a deal. Keep muttering about how this place would go up in an instant, and we’ll just have to . . . What is that street term? Oh, yes. We’ll just have to ‘get busy.’ You really don’t want to get busy with me. You really, really don’t.”
“I don’t like getting it stuck in any more than the next guy,” the gang leader said, his eyes belying the statement. “But I’ve got my rep to consider.”
“Fine, you’ll be paid. But understand this. I’m paying you for protection, and I’d better receive it.”
“That’s my point,” the leader said. “I’m not a welcome wagon. My boys ain’t your rent-a-cops.”
“Cord,” Roger said. “Sword.”
The Mardukan, who had, as always, been following Roger, took the case off his back and opened it.
Roger pulled out the long, curved blade, its metal worked into the wavery marks of watered steel.
“Pedi,” he said. “Demonstration.”
Cord’s wife—who, as always, was following him about—picked up one of the metal rods being used for reinforcement of the new foundation work. She held it out, and Roger took the sword in his left hand and, without looking at the bar, cut off a meter-long section with a single metallic “twang.”
“The local cops are right down on guns,” Roger said, handing the sword back to Cord. “Sensors everywhere to detect them. You use guns much, Mr. Tenku?”
“It’s just Tenku,” the gang leader said, his face hard. He didn’t answer the question, but he didn’t have to. What his answer would have been was plain on his face, and in the glance he cast at the environment-suited Cord, who’d closed the case once more and gone back to leaning on the long pole that might, in certain circles, have been called a three-meter quarterstaff.
“You see them?” Roger pointed at the Diasprans who were picking up the yard. “Those guys are Diaspran infantry. They’re born with a pike in their hands. For your information, that’s a long spear. The Vasin cavalry who will be joining us shortly are born with swords in their hands. All four hands. Swords and spears aren’t well-liked by the cops, but we’re going to have them as ‘cultural artifacts’ to go with the theme of the restaurant. Mr. Tenku, if we ‘get it stuck in’ as you put it, then you are—literally—going to be chopped to pieces. I wouldn’t even need the Mardukans. I could go through your entire gang like croton oil; I’ve done it before. Or, alternatively, you and your fellows could do a small community service and get paid for it. Handsomely, I might add.”
“I thought this was a restaurant?” the gang leader said suspiciously.
“And I thought you were the welcome wagon.” Roger snorted in exasperation. “Open your eyes, Tenku. I’m not muscling your turf. So don’t try to muscle mine. Among other things, I’ve got more muscle.” And more brains, Roger didn’t add.
“How handsomely?” Tenku asked, still suspicious.
“Five hundred credits a week.”
“No way!” Tenku retorted. “Five thousand, maybe.”
“Impossible,” Roger snapped. “I have to make a profit out of this place. Seven hundred, max.”
“Why don’t I believe that? Forty-five hundred.”
They settled on eighteen hundred a week.
“If one of my guests gets so much as panhandled . . .”
“It’ll be taken care of,” Tenku replied. “And if you’re late . . .”
“Then come on by for a meal,” Roger said, “and we’ll square up. And wear a tie.”
Thomas Catrone, Sergeant Major, IMC, retired, president and chief bottle washer of Firecat, LLC, was clearing off his mail—deleting all the junk, in other words—when his communicator chimed.
Catrone was a tall man, with gray hair in a conservative cut and blue eyes, who weighed just a few kilos over what he’d weighed when he joined the Imperial Marines lo these many eons ago. He was well over a hundred and twenty, and not nearly the hulking brute he’d once been. But he was still in pretty decent shape. Pretty decent.
He flicked on the com hologram and nodded at the talking head that popped out. Nice blonde. Good face. Just enough showing to see she was pretty well stacked. Probably an avatar.
“Mr. Thomas Catrone?”
“Speaking.”
“Mr. Catrone, have you been checking your mail?”
“Yes.”
“Then are you aware that y
ou and your wife have won an all-expenses-paid trip to Imperial City?”
“I don’t like the Capital,” Catrone said, reaching for the disconnect button.
“Mr. Catrone,” the blonde said, half-desperately. “You’re scheduled to stay at the Lloyd-Pope Hotel. It’s the best hotel in the City. There are three plays scheduled, and an opera at the Imperial Civic Center, plus dinner every night at the Marduk House! You’re just going to turn that down?”
“Yes.”
“Have you asked your wife if you should turn it down?” the blonde asked acerbically.
Tomcat’s hand hovered over the button, index finger waving in the air. Then it clenched into a fist and withdrew. He rattled his fingers on the desktop and frowned at the hologram.
“Why me?” he asked suspiciously.
“You were entered in a drawing at the last Imperial Special Operations Association meeting. Don’t you remember?”
“No. They’ve generally got all sorts of drawings . . . but this one is pretty odd for them.”
“The Association uses the Ching-Wrongly Travel Agency for all its bookings,” the blonde said. “Part of that was the lottery for this trip.”
“And I won it?” He raised one eyebrow and peered at her suspiciously again.
“Yes.”
“This isn’t a scam?”
“No, sir,” she said earnestly. “We’re not selling anything.”
“Well . . .” Catrone scratched his chin. “I guess I’d better schedule—”
“There is one small . . . issue,” the blonde said uncomfortably. “It’s . . . prescheduled. For next week.”
“Next week?” Catrone stared at her incredulously. “Who’s going to take care of the horses?”
“Sorry?” The blonde wrinkled her brow prettily. “You’ve sort of lost me, there.”
“Horses,” Catrone repeated, speaking slowly and distinctly. “Four-legged mammals. Manes? Hooves? You ride them. Or, in my case raise them.”
“Oh.”
“So you just want me to drop everything and go to the Capital?”
“Unless you want to miss out on this one-of-a-kind personalized adventure,” the woman said brightly.
“And if I do, Ching-Wrongly doesn’t have to pay out?”
“Errrr . . .” The woman hesitated.
“Hah! Now I know what the scam is!” Tomcat pointed one finger at the screen and shook it. “You’re not getting me that easily! What about travel arrangements? I can’t make it in my aircar in less than a couple of days.”
“Suborbital flight from Ulan Bator Spaceport is part of the package,” the blonde said.
“Okay, let’s work out the details,” Catrone said, tilting back in his desk chair. “My wife loves the opera; I hate it. But you can gargle peanut butter for three hours if you have to, so what the hell . . .”
“What a horribly suspicious man,” Despreaux said, closing the connection.
“He has reason to be,” Roger pointed out. “He’s got to be under some sort of surveillance. Contacting him directly at all was a bit of a risk, but no more than anything else we considered.”
The bunker behind the warehouse had the capability to artfully spoof the planetary communications network. Anyone backtracking the call would find it coming from the Ching-Wrongly offices, where a highly paid source was more than willing to back up the story.
“You think this is really going to work?” Despreaux asked.
“O ye of little faith,” Roger replied with a grin. “I just wonder what our opposition is up to.”
“And how is the Empress?” Adoula asked.
“Docile,” New Madrid said, sitting down and crossing his long legs at the ankle. “As she should be.”
Lazar Fillipo, Earl of New Madrid, was the source of most of Roger’s good looks. Just short of two meters tall, long, lean, and athletically trim, he had a classically cut face and shoulder length blond hair he’d recently had modded to prevent graying. He also had a thin mustache that Adoula privately thought looked like a yellow caterpillar devouring his upper lip.
“I could wish we’d been able to find out what got dumped in her toot,” Adoula said.
“And in John’s,” New Madrid replied with a nod. “But it was flushed, whatever it was, before we could stop it. Pity. I’d expected the drugs to hold back the dead man’s switch longer than they did. Long enough for our . . . physical persuasion to properly motivate him to tell us what we wanted to know, at least.”
“Always assuming it was the ‘dead man’s switch,’” Adoula pointed out a bit acidly. “The suicide protocols can also be deliberately activated, you know.” And, he thought, given what you were doing to him—in front of his mother—that’s a hell of a lot more likely than any “Dead Man’s Switch,” isn’t it, Lazar? I wonder what you’d have done to Alexandra herself by now . . . if you didn’t need her alive even more than I do?
“Always possible, I suppose.” New Madrid pursed his lips poutingly for several seconds, then shrugged. “Well, I imagine it was inevitable, actually. And he had to go in the end, anyway, didn’t he? It was worth a try, and Alexandra might always have volunteered the information herself, given that he was all she had left by that point. On the other hand, I’ve sometimes wondered if she could have told us even if she’d wanted to. The security protocols on their toots were quite extraordinary, after all.”
“True. True.” New Madrid pursed his lips poutingly for several seconds, then shrugged. “I suppose it was inevitable, actually. The security protocols on their toots were quite extraordinary, after all.”
The Earl, Adoula reflected, had an absolutely astonishing talent for stating—and restating—the obvious.
“You wanted to see me?” the prince asked.
“Thomas Catrone is taking a trip to the capital.”
“Oh?” Adoula leaned back in his float chair.
“Oh,” New Madrid said. “He’s supposedly won some sort of all-expenses-paid trip. I checked, and there was such a lottery from the Special Operations Association. Admittedly, anyone who won it would be worth being suspicious of. But I’m particularly worried about Catrone. You should have let me take him out.”
“First of all,” Adoula said, “taking Catrone out would not have been child’s play. He hardly ever leaves that bunker of his. Second, if the Empress’ Own start dying off—and there are others, just as dangerous in their own ways as Catrone—then the survivors are going to start getting suspicious. More suspicious than they already are. And we don’t want those overpaid retired bodyguards getting out of hand.”
“Be that as it may, I’m putting one of my people on him,” New Madrid said. “And if he becomes a problem . . .”
“Then I’ll deal with it,” Adoula said. “You concentrate on keeping the Empress in line.”
“With pleasure,” the Earl said, and smirked.
“Indian country,” Catrone said as he looked the neighborhood over.
“Not a very nice area for an upscale restaurant,” Sheila replied nervously.
“It’s not so bad,” the airtaxi-driver, an otterlike Seglur, said. “I’ve dropped other fares here. Those Mardukans that work in the place? Nobody wants to mess with them. You’ll be fine. Beam down my card and call me when you want to be picked up.”
“Thanks,” Catrone said, getting the driver’s information and paying the fare—and a small tip—as they landed.
Two of the big Mardukans stood by the entrance, bearing pikes—fully functional ones, Catrone noticed—and wearing some sort of blue harness over what were obviously environment suits. A young human woman, blonde and stocky, with something of a wrestler’s build, opened the door.
“Welcome to Marduk House,” the blonde said. “Do you have reservations?”
“Catrone, Thomas,” Tomcat said.
“Ah, Mr. and Mrs. Catrone,” she replied. “Your table is waiting. Right this way.”
She led them through the entrance, into the entry room, and on to the dining room.
Catrone noticed that there were several people, much better dressed than Sheila and he but having the look of local Imperial staff-pukes, apparently waiting for tables.
A skinny, red-headed woman held down the reception desk, but most of the staff seemed to be Mardukans. The restaurant area had a long bar at one side, on which slabs of some sort of meat were laid out. As they walked through the area, one of the Mardukans took a pair of cleavers—they would have been swords for a human—and began chopping a long section of meat, his hands moving in a blur. The sounds of the blades thunking into flesh and wood brought back unpleasant memories for Catrone, but there was a small ripple of applause as the Mardukan bowed and started throwing the chunks of meat, in another blur, onto a big iron dome. They hit in a star pattern and started sizzling, filling the room with the cooking noise and an odd smell. Not like pork or beef or chicken, or even human. Catrone had smelled them all in his time. Cooking human smelled pretty much like pork, anyway.
The table they were led to was already partially occupied. A big, vaguely Eurasian guy, and the blonde from the call. When he saw her, Tomcat almost stopped, but recovered with only the briefest of pauses.
“There seems to be someone at our table,” he said instead to the hostess.
“That’s Mr. Chung,” she replied quietly. “The owner. He wanted to welcome you as a special guest.”
Riiiight, Tomcat thought, then nodded at the two of them as if he’d never seen the blonde in his life.
“Mr. and Mrs. Catrone,” the big guy said. “I’m Augustus Chung, the proprietor of these premises, and this is my friend, Ms. Shara Stewart. Welcome to Marduk House.”
“It’s lovely,” Sheila said as he pulled out her chair.
“It was . . . somewhat less lovely when we acquired it,” Chung replied. “Like this fine neighborhood, it had fallen into disrepair. We were able to snap it up quite cheaply. I was glad we could; this is a house with a lot of history.”
“Washington,” Catrone said with a nod. “This is the old Kenmore House, right?”
