Torch of Freedom wos-2

by David Weber

  "Why do I think they should be broken up? Or why do I want them eliminated?" Irvine asked in response to his own question.

  "Both."

  "Well, I guess it's really the same reason for both. I'm starting to think they're better organized than I originally thought they were, and, like I say, they're obviously in at least loose contact with the Ballroom." He shrugged. "The fact that they're better organized makes me wonder what else I might have missed about them, who else might be in contact with them. And the fact that they've established at least some contact with the Ballroom suggests they might actually manage to pull off some kind of sabotage operation. Maybe even an assassination or two."

  "Directed here? At the Center?" McBryde asked more sharply, and Irvine shook his head.

  "Except for the fact that you're under a tower that might have one or two offices they'd consider targets, I don't think the Center's in any kind of danger. There's absolutely no indication anyone in the slave community even suspects the Center exists, much less that anyone might be planning an attack on it. Believe me, if I saw any sign of that, I'd be in here in a heartbeat! No, I'm thinking more about managing to pick off a Manpower executive, or maybe blow up a Manpower or Jessyk office . . . along with its staff."

  McBryde relaxed a bit, but he also nodded in understanding. The Ballroom's successes against Manpower throughout the explored galaxy could scarcely be kept a secret from the slave population of Mesa. The number of those successes in the Mesa System itself was minuscule, however, and the authorities had managed to suppress knowledge even of some of the Ballroom's successful efforts. Alignment Security found itself in general agreement with the normal planetary security forces in that regard, too. Enheartening the spirit of rebellion among the planetary slave population by allowing successful attacks here in the home system wouldn't be in any one's interests.

  "What makes you so positive they are in active contact with the Ballroom?" he asked after a moment. "It's not that I doubt your judgment," he added hastily, as Irvine's eyebrows lowered. "I just want a breakdown on the evidence so I'll have a better appreciation of the situation."

  "Well," Irvine's expression eased, "there've been quite a few little things over the last few months. But the kicker, as far as I'm concerned, is that two new people have turned up. And neither of them is a sutler. In fact, neither of them is a seccy."

  "Ringers from outside, you mean?" McBryde asked with a frown.

  "I mean two people I've never seen before at all, hanging around with Carl Hansen and his group. One of them is working as a waiter in Steph Turner's restaurant."

  "Who's she?"

  Lajos waved his hand dismissively. "Just a woman who owns a small restaurant that caters to the seccy trade. Divorced, one kid, a teenage daughter. I've never mentioned her before, as I recall, since I don't think she's more than vaguely connected to the underground, if she's even connected at all."

  McBryde nodded. Given the fact that slaves made up sixty percent of Mesa's population and seccies made up another ten percent, the anti-slavery underground was vast and extensive. For the most part, the underground concentrated on activities that were not directly threatening to the Mesan order: smuggling slaves out and contraband in; maintaining a network of social services that made up to a degree for the lack of such services provided by the government; and so forth. Only a small percentage of the underground's members had direct and close ties to the Ballroom or engaged in violent activities. If Lajos had been in the habit of reporting every seccy who had any connection at all to the underground or even the Ballroom, neither he nor Jack would ever be able to get any sleep. You had to be practical about these things.

  "But it's the other one that mostly makes me twitchy. He's a Havenite. Claims to be a former StateSec agent, and seems to have the credentials for it."

  McBryde frowned thoughtfully. "What would an ex-StateSec be doing hanging around with that group you're watching?"

  "Good question. The waiter might just be another malcontent, although I'm almost sure he's not a seccy—or an ex-slave of any kind, for that matter. I haven't been able to get that close to him, so I haven't seen his tongue or gotten any DNA samples. But he's got a very pronounced and unusual phenotype, and it's nothing like any line we've ever developed. Not that I'm familiar with, anyway. But the StateSec guy . . ."

  Lajos took a sip of his coffee. "For starters, there doesn't seem to be any question that he's legitimate. Meaning, his background is in fact what he claims it to be. I know for a fact that Cloutier is eager to pick him up—eager enough that she's been willing to dicker terms with the guy for some time now."

  McBryde's eyebrows went up. Luff's top recruiting agent didn't handle run-of-the-mill hiring. Still, he couldn't recall any instance where Inez Cloutier had allowed a prospective contractor to dicker for more than a couple of days. Admittedly, Jack hadn't tried to keep entirely on top of that situation.

  "In short," Lajos concluded, "one of them is definitely from outside the system and the other—the waiter, that is—could very well be. And regardless of their origins, I can't think of any legitimate reason either one of them would have any contact with Hansen's group. I'm thinking one or both is likely to be a Ballroom agent. Pulling them in and breaking them could give us an additional peek inside the Ballroom's plans where Mesa is concerned."

  "Not all that likely, though," McBryde observed, and Irvine grunted in sour agreement.

  They might have kept Ballroom agents from establishing any significant presence here on the planet, but Ballroom operatives seldom provided anything useful in the way of information, either. Partly because the Ballroom understood operational security at least as well as anyone else in the galaxy. It compartmentalized information tightly, and it applied the "need-to-know" rule ruthlessly. More than that, any of its operatives who possessed truly sensitive knowledge were also provided with the means for reliable self-termination. More than one of them had chosen surgically implanted explosive devices, which had taken their share of security personnel with them over the years.

  "I didn't say it was likely," Irvine said. "I only said it could give us some extra information."

  "Have you managed to pick up anything else about them? Anything more than just the fact that we don't know who they are, I mean?"

  "Not a damned thing," Irvine admitted frankly. "I did get a few images of them, though. These are from the one and only time I ever spotted the two of them together in the same place. The StateSec guy seems to be having breakfast in the same restaurant the waiter works. Here."

  He reached into the neck of his smock and flipped across a chip folio. McBryde caught it, extracted the single chip inside it, and inserted it into his desk computer. It took a moment for the computer's internal security systems to decide the data on the chip was acceptable, and then a holo image of two men appeared above his desk.

  He gazed at them curiously. Whatever the StateSec man's purpose might be, if Irvine's suspicion that the other one also came from outside the Mesa System had any validity, then the waiter wasn't a seccy at all, even though he was working for one. McBryde had always wondered what went on inside the heads of escaped genetic slaves who voluntarily walked straight back into the lion's den. Unlike some of his fellows, he'd always respected their courage, and of late he'd begun to understand the kind of personal outrage which motivated many of them far better than he'd ever understood it before. Still—

  His thoughts slithered to a halt. Somehow—he never knew how—he managed to keep his eyes from widening or his jaw dropping, but it was hard.

  It can't be, his brain insisted quietly. Not here. Not even those two would be ballsy enough!

  Yet even as his brain insisted, he knew better. The one sitting at a table was a thoroughly unremarkable-looking, almost slightly built young fellow. If Jack hadn't been told he was a Havenite, he would have assumed that the man was descended from any of several general laborer lines. But the other . . . At a glance, you might assume the other was obvio
usly descended from a heavy labor line. But Jack knew Irvine was right. This was no line ever developed by Manpower. The guy was simply much too short for that incredible physique. When Manpower developed a line specifically for muscular power, they made them big all around. It would have been foolish not to do so, as a practical matter, and probably even genetically difficult.

  McBryde studied the images, concentrating on the waiter. The facial features were different, but that could be done any number of ways. The things that were much harder to disguise . . . The coloring, that massive neck, that tilt of the head, those incredibly broad shoulders, like some dwarven mountain king—or troll . . . those McBryde recognized. Recognized because he'd seen them so recently, in a broad-distribution, priority memo, and he wondered how Irvine could possibly not have recognized them.

  Because he never got the memo, he realized almost instantly. He's at too low a level, and it never would have occurred to anyone to look right here, on Mesa itself. The only reason Steve and I ever saw the memo was that it was distributed to everyone above Level Twelve, and Lajos isn't routinely cleared for anything above Level Three unless it's specifically related to his current assignment.

  "Well," he said out loud, "I don't recognize them." He chuckled. "On the other hand, I don't suppose they'd send anyone they expect us to be able to pick out of a lineup, now would they?"

  McBryde killed the images. "I'll pass it around, Lajos, but don't get your hopes up." It was his turn to shrug. "I don't imagine we're going to get a direct hit on the imagery, even assuming these two were stupid enough to come in without at least trying to disguise themselves. And, frankly, I'm inclined to doubt that anyone higher up the chain is going to authorize taking out the entire group, either. In fact, if they are in contact with the Ballroom, the decision's probably going to be that that very fact makes keeping an eye on them and seeing what they do even more important."

  "I know." Irvine sighed. "I can hope, though."

  "Oh, we can always hope," McBryde agreed. "We can always hope."

  Chapter Forty-Seven

  It's been too damned long since you were operational, Jack McBryde told himself nervously. And you were never as good at this sort of thing as Steve is, anyway.

  The thought was unfortunately accurate, but there wasn't a lot he could do about it. Except, of course, to forget the entire insane idea and hand his suspicions over to Isabel Bardasano the way he was damned well supposed to.

  But that wasn't going to happen. If it had been, he wouldn't be sitting here in a back corner of a so-called eatery of the sort which was still known as "a greasy spoon," nursing a spectacularly bad cup of coffee and watching flies buzz through the overhead clouds of sleep-weed smoke. That smoke was so thick he was frankly amazed the flies didn't simply nose dive out of it and smack into the tabletop in a drugged stupor.

  He grimaced at the thought, but there was some truth to it. Enough, in fact, that he'd been careful to inhale the nanotech busy scavenging the stuff out of his own bloodstream as quickly as it got there. Sleep weed, also known as "old sleepy" and just plain "weed," was one of the Mesan slave labor force's intoxicants of choice. It was more addictive than alcohol (for most people, at least), yet it was also less expensive, and it didn't produce a hangover. With persistent use (and most of its users smoked it very heavily), it did produce some nasty respiratory problems, but that usually took several decades. Given the fact that very few genetic slaves lived much more than five or six decades, total, it was scarcely a pressing concern for the slaves who smoked it.

  McBryde took another sip of tepid coffee, then followed that with another bite from the sugarcoated doughnut he'd ordered to go with it. About the only thing he could say for the doughnut was that it was better than the coffee and probably not actively poisonous. Or not, at least, sufficiently poisonous to pose a threat to an alpha's enhanced physiology.

  He hoped. At least the silverware was clean.

  "Need a refill?" an extraordinarily deep voice rumbled, and McBryde forced himself not to twitch.

  He glanced up with exactly (or, at least, what he hoped like hell was exactly) the right degree of disinterest at the massively built "waiter." He'd been hoping that if he only drank enough of the diner's truly atrocious coffee, this particular waiter would eventually come close enough. Now that the moment had come, however, he felt his pulse speeding up. At the same time, a little to his surprise, he felt his professionalism kicking in, as well, including his trained ear. He'd heard recordings of this man's natural accent, and he was privately amazed by how well the other had managed to turn his normal buzz saw burr into the guttural yet still far softer accent of the Mesan slave underclass.

  "Sure," he said casually, hoping that his own accent was equally convincing. He held out his cup, watching the waiter top it off, then raised his other hand, index finger extended in a "wait a minute" gesture.

  "Something else?" The waiter arched one eyebrow, his expression calm, and McBryde nodded. "What can I get you?" the other man asked, setting down the coffee pot to pull his battered order pad out of his pocket and key the screen.

  "Something from off-world," McBryde said softly.

  The waiter didn't even twitch. His shoulders didn't tense; his eyes didn't narrow; his expression didn't even flicker. He was good, McBryde thought, but, then, he'd already known that. Just as he knew that at this particular instant his own life hung by the proverbial thread.

  "I think you're in the wrong place for that," the waiter replied in obvious amusement. "In this joint, we're lucky to get our hands on local produce that doesn't poison the customers!"

  "Oh, I don't doubt that," McBryde snorted with an edge of what he was astonished to discover was genuine amusement. "On the other hand, I wasn't thinking about the menu . . . Captain Zilwicki."

  "Then you're really in the wrong place," the waiter said calmly. It wasn't a calm McBryde found particularly reassuring, but he made himself smile and twitch the extended index finger in a cautionary sort of way.

  "Actually, I'm not," keeping his own voice low enough to avoid being overheard yet loud enough—and steady enough—to project a confidence he was actually quite some way from feeling. "I came here to speak to you . . . or to Agent Cachat, if you'd prefer."

  Anton Zilwicki's eyes narrowed—minutely—at last, and his right hand shifted ever so slightly on his order pad.

  "Before you attempt to twist my head off like a bottle cap—probably with a degree of success I'd regret—" McBryde continued, "consider your situation. I'm sure you and Agent Cachat have several alternative escape strategies, and it's entirely possible that several of my fellow 'customers' would be delighted to help you slit my throat before taking your leisurely and well-planned leave. On the other hand, I wouldn't be sitting here running the risk of your doing exactly that if I hadn't taken a few precautions of my own, now would I? And if it should happen that I'm wired, then whoever's at the other end of the link already knows what's going on here, doesn't he? Which, presumably, means my backup—assuming, of course, that I was clever enough to arrange one—would undoubtedly arrive before my lifeless body hit the floor. So before either of us does anything the other one would regret, why don't you and I talk for a moment."

  "While we waste enough time for your goons to close in, you mean?" Zilwicki inquired calmly.

  "If my 'goons' were planning on closing in on you, Captain, I'd for damn sure have had them do it before I sat here in arm's length of you and blew the whistle on myself, now wouldn't I?"

  "The thought had crossed my mind. So since we're being so civilized and all, just what is it you do want?"

  "I want to talk," McBryde replied, expression and tone both suddenly dead serious. "I'd prefer to talk to both you and Agent Cachat simultaneously, but I'd be very surprised if the two of you were willing to run that sort of risk. I'd also like to talk to you now, if possible, but no matter how good your security is—and, by the way, it's actually pretty damned good—I don't think we need to be seen ha
ving a tête-à-tête right here in front of everybody."

  Zilwicki considered him thoughtfully for a moment or two, then slid the order pad back into his pocket. To McBryde's considerable relief, when his hand came back out of the pocket it didn't bring a lethal weapon with it. On the other hand, Anton Zilwicki didn't exactly need artificial lethal instruments to deal with most problems likely to come his way.

  "Two minutes," he said. "Drink some more coffee, then amble down the hallway. Outside the men's room, turn left. Take the 'Employees Only' door."

  He nodded, turned, and walked calmly away.

  * * *

  McBryde pushed open the old-fashioned, unpowered swinging door and stepped through it. He'd fully expected to be looking down the muzzle of a pulser when he did, but instead he found himself in what clearly passed for a staff break room. At the moment, it was empty, aside from the single massively built man seated at its single battered table with a cup of coffee.

  "Sit," Anton Zilwicki invited, pointing at the chair opposite him across the table. McBryde obeyed the one-word command, and Zilwicki slid a second cup of coffee across to him.

  "This is better than the crap we have to serve out there," he said, this time making no effort to hide his Gryphon accent. "Of course, it could be laced with all sorts of deadly poisons. Would you like me to take a sip first?"

  "Why?" McBryde smiled crookedly. "If I were going to poison me, I'd've taken the antidote first myself, then put the poison in both cups."

  He accepted the coffee and—not without an internal qualm or two, despite his own words—sipped. It really was much better than the brew served to the diner's patrons.