The cards were dealt. Erik glanced at his; jack-ten of diamonds. He checked, and Elsa opened with a fifty-C bet.
The dealer turned over the flop: a five, a six, and a three. No diamonds. The businesswoman and the reporter folded. Erik saw Elsa’s fifty, as did the businessman. Elsa raised another fifty.
The next card over was a jack of clubs, giving Erik a pair—not bad, but very beatable. He looked at Elsa. Did she have a straight? A pocket pair that could beat his jacks? Two pairs? Three of a kind?
The businessman was out.
Next card was a ten of spades.
What did she have? Well, one way to find out. “All in,” Erik said. He’d just bet his entire pile on this hand.
Elsa stared at him.
He stared back.
She grimaced. “Fold.”
“So,” he said, “what did you have?”
She tossed her cards back to the dealer, facedown. “You’ll never know,” she said.
Erik took his pot, and pushed it to the dealer. “Cash me out. I think I’ll call it an evening.”
He signed off as the winnings were credited to his account, then headed away from the table without looking back. He was almost out of the casino when Elsa, still struggling to stuff chips into her purse, caught up with him. “Quitting just when things were getting interesting?”
“No action at that table,” he said without slowing down.
“Looking for some action, are you?”
He stopped, turned, and glared at her. “I don’t have time for games, Elsa. That was an INN reporter at the table.”
“Did I say anything? Do anything? I knew who he was before you did, Erik. While you’ve been hiding in your cabin, I’ve been circulating around the ship.”
“Looking for me?”
“As a matter of a fact, yes. You’ll notice I was discreet enough not to come to your cabin.”
“How good of you,” he said sarcastically. He looked around nervously. “We can’t talk out in the open.”
She moved to a nearby door marked Sauna 2. A movable sign indicated that it was unoccupied—hardly surprising considering how empty the ship was. She poked her head inside. “It’s not even on,” she said.
He followed her inside and locked the door. The room was lined with cedar planks, and benches lined the lower and rear walls.
“So,” he said, “you are a spy.”
She laughed. “I told you what I am. My friends knew that the Duke’s forces were massing on St. Andre, and I’d hoped you’d be heading there. I used some of my connections to put myself along one possible path and waited at the jump point. I was on the lookout, and checked the passenger manifest of every other ship through.”
“And if that hadn’t worked?”
She shrugged. “I’d have gone to St. Andre and tried to contact you there, but that would have made it much more difficult to be discreet. I wanted a chance to talk to you alone, before you got stuck neck-deep in command responsibilities.”
“So you can pump me for information on our defenses?”
“Erik, I could give a dead moon about your defenses. I want you.”
“You want me, or Liao does?”
“Both, Erik.” She licked her lips. “I helped you before, and I’m going to help you again. Erik, I’m betraying my friends by telling you this, but St. Andre is going to fall.”
“You know this for a fact? If you like playing spy so much, tell me their plans. We can pay you as much as they do—maybe more.”
She laughed. “You don’t think they trust me with their battle plans, do you? They just told me that St. Andre was going to be theirs, and I believe them. They told me I could make you an offer.”
Klaxons sounded, warning that the ship would shortly be making the hyperspace jump to St. Andre. Never having been troubled by jump-sickness, he paid only passing attention. He looked at Elsa. “An offer?”
“Switch sides, Erik. Convince St. Andre to surrender. We don’t know how many of your forces are committed there, but it must be significant. At the very least, it would wound the Duke’s reputation, and demoralize the SwordSworn.
“You could do well with House Liao. Certainly, it would be no worse than being the Duke’s errand boy, and probably better. You could be an important person in your own right.”
It was actually tempting in a way. To be free of Aaron once and for all, to answer the Duke’s betrayal with one of his own. To abandon everything and seek his own destiny.
“How important? Important enough to be given my own army?”
She laughed. “Erik, you just don’t understand, do you? To be blunt, other than your name, you just aren’t considered that important. Until a few months ago, even your uncle was beneath their notice, though he’s managed to change that somewhat.
“Don’t you see, Erik? People like us, we don’t really matter much. We don’t have many choices. We have to know our place in the world, know our limitations, and make the best of it.”
Erik wiped his face with his hands. Know your place. Know your limitations. He’d heard it all before. Yet this time, he had one last chip to bargain with, and the only way to use it was to play all-in. House Liao didn’t seem to have figured out the Duke’s deception at Shensi yet, and that had value.
If Liao could make the SwordSworn coalition fall apart without landing a single ’Mech or firing a single shot, what would that be worth? If that happened, perhaps they could be persuaded to bypass St. Andre for now, saving SwordSworn lives.
Yet, when it all was said and done, once the deal was made, he would be no more important than he’d ever been. It was the information that was valuable, not Erik Sandoval-Groell. Here or with Liao, he wasn’t much—a little fish in a very big sea. But as long as he was with Aaron, he was at least swimming with a shark, and there was something to be said for that.
“I’m sorry, Elsa. I can’t do that.” He considered. “I’ll make you the same offer. Come over to our side.”
She smiled sadly. “And I can’t do that, Erik, for a lot of reasons. But most of all, what have I really got to offer? My services as your concubine? I care for you Erik, but I can’t be beholden to you that way. It would poison everything, and I’d end up hating you.” She shook her head. “No, I’ve set my course, and I’m staying with it.”
“Well then,” he said.
“Well,” she said.
He unlocked the door. “When we get to St. Andre, just stay on the ship. If you go down to the planet, I can’t be responsible for what happens.”
He considered returning to his quarters, but instead went back to the casino to ride out the jump.
He was still there, sitting at an empty poker table, half an hour later when Clayhatchee appeared. “Commander! I’ve been looking for you everywhere!
“The ship was contacted by St. Andre as soon as we jumped into the system. There isn’t going to be any defensive action, Commander. Liao forces started landing three days ago, and they’ve dug themselves in good.”
16
Xu district, New Madrid, Poznan
Prefecture V, The Republic
17 December 3134
Aaron managed not to flinch as a bottle smashed against the limousine’s ferro-glass window, a few inches from his face. He glanced at Joan Cisco, who sat on the other side of the car taking notes on a computer pad. “Well, it’s at least good to know that the cost of armor-plating this car was money well spent.”
Outside, blue-uniformed police tried to shove throngs of protesters back onto the sidewalk, and out of the motorcade’s path, with limited success. Aaron looked out dispassionately at the screaming, contorted faces—the waved signs and banners reading things like DEATH TOSANDOVAL, and LIBERATE US, LIAO!There were people spitting on his car.
He shook his head sadly. “Don’t they understand that I’m here to liberate them? Give me six months and I’d have this place cleaned up—end all this unrest.”
Cisco looked at him sideways and lifted an eyebrow. “By
crushing it under your iron heel, Lord Governor?”
Aaron grinned. He had given the woman license to be frank. “If necessary. Order has its price. But my heel would fall equally on the oppressed ethnic groups and the people who oppress them. To do otherwise is to simply allow the groups to switch places, or to drag on the conflict for generations.” He saw his own reflection in the window glass. “I could restore order and purpose to the crumbling remains of The Republic,” he said in a low voice. Two hundred fifty worlds for House Davion, delivered by my hand.
“Excuse me, Lord Governor? I didn’t hear.”
“Nothing. Nothing.”
A small man dressed all in black jumped down from a traffic signal he had climbed and landed sprawled on the roof. He pounded on the skylight with his fist, yelling something that Aaron couldn’t hear through the soundproofing. Aaron’s hand strayed down to the armrest. He flipped it open, revealing a hidden control panel. His finger hovered over the controls. He turned to Cisco. “Can I push the button?”
The button was connected to one of the car’s defensive options. If pressed, fifty thousand volts of electricity, at very low amperage, would be transmitted through the car’s exterior rails and trim, guaranteed to turn anyone touching them into a twitching heap on the ground.
She sighed. “No, Lord Governor. You must demonstrate tolerance.”
“I don’t feel tolerance. I feel an intense desire to push the button.”
“I wouldn’t advise it. We must keep up appearances.”
“I suppose so.” He reluctantly snapped the armrest back down over the panel.
There was a pause. Cisco studied him. “You were just joking, Lord Governor?”
He grinned slightly. “About the button? I suppose. About the urge? Not at all.” He looked out the window at the angry crowds. “All people have urges, impulses, and it’s no less true of the very powerful. But when most people slip and let one of those impulses loose, perhaps a window gets broken, or a car fender gets bent, or at worst a nose gets broken. At the very, very worst, the body counts can be tallied on the fingers of your hands.
“But when people like me slip, wars start, planets fall in ruin, thousands or millions die. I have to be very careful about those urges, and so when one comes along like that, where death is unlikely, where the victim is certainly deserving, it is very, very tempting.”
Cisco nodded. “But you still resist.”
“Mostly. But just in case, I depend on my people to remind me of my station. Consider that a test. You passed.” He looked around. The crowds had thinned, and they could at least drive freely, without concern about running someone over. “Where are we going, anyway?”
“Nowhere, Lord Governor. We’re simply out so you can be seen.”
He watched a group of children raiding a trash can, and throwing garbage at them. “And this is helping me how, exactly?”
She raised an eyebrow. “I sent you an executive summary. I’d assumed you’d read it.”
“A month ago, I’d have known everything there is to know about this planet; I hired you so I didn’t have to think about such details. I have a war to win. I need to be able to trust you to take care of everything under your purview, and I don’t want to have to oversee everything you do. So tell me what we’re doing here.”
“Poznan is a former member of the Duchy of Liao. Under the Duchy’s control, immigrants of Chinese descent turned the ruling descendants of the original Spanish colonists into an oppressed minority—a fine tradition of hatred that continued for centuries under the rule of the Capellan Confederation. Though this oppression was moderated when The Republic assumed control, it lingers.” She gestured at the windows. “These are members of the Spanish minority, by the way, who are throwing rotten fruit at us.”
“Good to know. And I suppose the people with the ‘LIBERATE US, LIAO!’ signs were Chinese?”
“Exactly, but that was a block ago; the Chinese never cross Xu Avenue west of 110th Street.”
Aaron shook his head. “This is barbaric.”
“I won’t even discuss the other original colonists, who were of Polish descent. They lost a civil war with the Spanish, and still hate them with a seething passion. I’m sure if we drove across town to their neighborhood, they would throw fruit at us, as well.”
“Delightful. I can hardly wait. Let’s go.” He rubbed his chin. “You still haven’t explained how this helps me.”
“The people throwing fruit at you are secretly glad that you’re here listening to them without fighting back, without”—she pointed at the armrest where the button was hidden—“and the people who oppress them are pleased that you’ve seen, up close and personal, what their ‘problem’ is, and aren’t afraid of it. Or at least, they all will be, after you give some speeches I write, and sign off on some statements I’ll fabricate. If we play this right, we can make them all hate each other even more, and love you at least a little bit.” She went back to her writing.
She looked back up at him. “You’ve read the executive summary, haven’t you?”
“I skimmed it. Frankly, there wasn’t much I didn’t already know from my own research, but I found it to be concise and well written.”
“That was another test, wasn’t it?”
“It was.”
“I don’t like secret tests, Lord Governor. If you want to test my competency, you have only to ask.”
Aaron studied her for a minute. “You don’t like me very much, do you, Cisco?”
She glanced up at him. “Is that a job requirement?”
“No. I insist on competence and loyalty. ‘Like’ I can live without.”
“Good, because you’re not liable to get ‘like.’ But I’m not going to pass judgment either.
“I’m a professional liar. I sold my soul to the farm-machinery devil a long time ago. I’ve spent half my life convincing people to mortgage farms that have been in their family for a hundred years, to buy AgroMechs that will only drag them into bankruptcy.
“I make truth seem like lies, and lies look like truth. I run black and white through a blender every day, and make it come out gray.”
“You don’t paint a very flattering portrait of yourself.”
She shrugged. “People pay me to manipulate the truth for them. I’ve got nothing like that left for myself.”
“So what is bothering you, then? Are we going to win this planet to our cause or not? Because”—he gestured at the screaming mob outside—“it doesn’t look good to me.”
She half-smiled. “When you started this, did you think they’d all be easy? Like I said, you were lucky, and you hired me just in time. It’s just”—she paused in her writing—“that if they sign on to your coalition, my polls and surveys show it’s going to aggravate an already bad situation. If Liao doesn’t take this world, they’ll have a civil revolt within a year, and it will likely spiral into a full-blown war.”
“I don’t need them for longer than a year. If we haven’t stemmed the tide of Liao in six months, it won’t matter.”
“I know, which is why I’m just here doing my job. It’s just—” She put down the pad and stared out the window. “What then?”
“Then, when this is done, I will return, and I will give them order. I promise this.”
The crowd ahead of them suddenly surged to the left side of the street, people trampling each other in panic. From behind a building to the right, a Riot-Mech appeared, the little black-and-white machine wading through the crowd, red and blue lights flashing from the bar above its cockpit. Tiny for a ’Mech, it was still a terrifying presence among the mostly unarmed mob, which scattered from it like a school of fish facing a shark. A rotary launcher on the Riot-Mech’s right arm swiveled down and began to pelt the crowd with rubber bullets. Even in the car he could hear the screaming.
“It’s about time,” he said.
Ulysses Paxton kept his cool reserve as he drove the limousine past the two SwordSworn ’Mechs standing guard, and up the ramp
into the Tyrannos Rex. s abbreviated vehicle bay. He watched in the rearview cameras as four members of his recently hired security force opened the door, and ushered the Duke into the relative safety of the ship’s living quarters.
His eyes missed nothing, not where it concerned the Lord Governor’s safety, or the performance of his new team. To his satisfaction, as he watched them disappear, he detected not a single flaw in their procedures. Maybe, in six months or so, they’d be as good as the people he’d lost on New Canton.
He watched the inner hatch seal shut. Only then did he let his body go a little slack, leaning forward to place his forehead on the steering wheel. They’d spent four hours driving around the city. It seemed like a lifetime, without a single moment where threats, or potential threats, to the Duke’s safety weren’t all around.
Even now, his job wasn’t done. He still had to make sure the car was screened for bombs or other booby traps that might have been planted during their close contact with the protestors. It also needed to be scanned for bugs.
He climbed out of the car, put his fists on his hips, and stared at it. He felt he should personally supervise the security sweep on the car, but he had to start trusting the new people at some point. Maybe today was the day. He touched the plug in his ear. “Timms. I need a full security sweep on limo two.”
“I’m on it, Mr. Paxton,” said the voice in his ear. “Long-sword”—that was their radio code for the Duke—“is in a planning session with Ms. Cisco, and says to tell you he won’t be needing you for the rest of the day. He seems to think you could use a break.”
Ulysses grinned. “The Duke is a perceptive man. Call me if anything comes up. Otherwise I’ll see you at eight.”
“Sure thing, sir.”
He tapped the earpiece, breaking the connection. He reached up and took it from his ear, then held the device in his open palm, looking at it for a while. Then he slipped it back in. “No rest for the watchers,” he said.
“Hard day at the office, Paxton?”
Ulysses turned to see Captain Clancy leaning just inside the airlock door. He frowned, wondering what the captain wanted with him.
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