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CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Denver Summervale raised his head from the data terminal with a cold frown as his office door opened, and the woman whod opened it swallowed unobtrusively. Summervale was a hard, dangerous man, with a record of dead bodies to prove it, and he disliked interruptions, but she stood her ground. It wasnt as if she had a choice. Besides, hed been working on the books, and most of that scowl probably stemmed more from his hatred for paperwork than her sudden appearance.
"What?" he demanded in an arctic, aristocratic accent.
"Theres a call for you," she said. His scowl deepened, and she hastened to add, "Its from the boss."
Summervales face smoothed quickly into a masklike calm, and he rose with a curt nod. The woman stepped back out of the doorway, and he brushed past her with an oddly courteous apology.
She watched him vanish down the hall, moving toward the com room with his customary cat-footed grace, and felt the familiar shiver he left in his wake. There was something coldly reptilian about him, part and parcel of his upper-class accent and the sort of instinctive courtesy he showed to all about him. He was like an heirloom sword, graceful and poised, but honed and lethal as chilled steel. Shed known more than her share of dangerous, lawless men, but none quite like him, and he frightened her. She hated to admit that, even to herself, yet it was true.
The com room door closed behind him, and she turned away with another shiver, adjusting her dust mask as she opened the door to the lab and returned to her own responsibilities.
* * *
Summervale took one look at the face on his com screen, then nodded curtly to the duty operator. The man departed without a word, and Summervale seated himself in the chair hed abandoned. Long habit drew his eyes to the panel, double-checking the scrambler circuits, before he looked up at the man on the screen.
"What?" he asked without preamble.
"We may have a problem," his caller said carefully. The mans Sphinxian accent was pronouncedpossibly too pronounced, Summervale thought yet again. It had an almost theatrical quality, as if it were a mask for something else, but that was fine with Summervale. Its owner paid well for his services; if he wanted to maintain an extra level of security, that was his business.
"What problem?"
"The NPAs spotted the new mekoha," his caller replied, and Summervales mouth tightened.
"How?"
"Were not certainour informant couldnt tell usbut Id guess its a side effect of Harringtons operations. Shes freed up a lot of NPA manpower, and theyre extending their patrols."
Summervales eyes flashed at the name "Harrington," and his tight mouth twisted. Hed never met the commander, but he didnt have to meet her to hate her. She represented too many things out of his own past, and he felt the familiar heat tingle in his nerves. Yet he was a professional. He recognized the danger of visceral reactions, however pleasant they might be.
"How much do they know?" he asked.
"Again, were not certain, but theyve been running analyses of the stuff theyve brought in. The odds are pretty good theyll figure out its not Stilty-produced. In fact, they may have already. One of my other sources tells me Harringtons pulled one of her pinnaces off the customs assignment."
"To run orbital sweeps," Summervale said flatly.
"Probably," his caller agreed.
"Not probablycertainly. I told you it was risky to make the stuff so pure."
"The Stilties prefer it that way."
"Damn the Stilties." Summervale spoke almost mildly, but his eyes were hard. "Youre paying the freight, so the decisions yours, but when one of these bucks gets hopped on a pipeful of our stuff, he turns into a nuke about to go critical."
"No skin off our nose," his employer said cynically.
"Maybe. But Ill lay odds thats what attracted the NPAs attention. And the same elements that give it the kick will prove it wasnt made by any Stilty alchemist. Which means it was either shipped in or made somewhere on-planet. Like here." The man on the screen began to say something else, but Summervale raised a hand. Again, it was an oddly courteous gesture. "Never mind. Done is done, and its your operation. What do you want me to do at this end?"
"Watch your security, especially the air traffic. If theyre making overflights, we cant afford to attract their attention."
"I can hold down the cargo flights. I can even reduce foot traffic around the complex," Summervale pointed out. "What I cant do is hide from Fleet sensors. Our power relay will stick out like a sore thumb, and once it draws their attention, well leak enough background energy for them to zero us despite the wall shields. You know that."
He chose not to add that hed argued against a beamed power relay from the beginning. The extra cost in time and labor to run a buried feeder cable would have been negligible beside the investment his employers had already made, and it would have made the entire operation vastly more secure. But hed been overruled at the outset. And while he had no intention of allowing his caller to saddle him with full responsibility for concealment at this point, there was no point rubbing the mans nose in it.
"We know that," the man on the screen said. "We never expected to have to face Fleet sensors"Summervale knew that was as close to an apology as he was likely to get"but now that we do, we dont expect you to work miracles. On the other hand, I doubt youll have to. Remember, we have people on the inside. Maybe not high enough to tap into Matsukos office or communications, but high enough to let us know if the NPA starts assembling anything big enough to come after you. Well try to get inside Harringtons information channels and keep an eye on her recon reports, but even if we cant, we should be able to give you a minimum of six or seven hours warning before anything local heads your way."
Summervale nodded slowly, mind racing as he considered alternatives. Six hours would be more than enough to get his people away, but anything less than a full day would be too little to get even a tithe of the equipment out. And that didnt even consider the meticulous records his employer had insisted he keep. He couldnt fault the man for wanting to track every gram of mekoha the lab producednothing could be better calculated to arouse Estelle Matsukos fury than finding off-worlders peddling dream smoke to the Stilties, and if one of his people had set up as a dealer on his own time the odds of detection would have gone up astronomicallybut maintaining complete hardcopy backups was stupid. The increase in vulnerability far outweighed the advantages, but there, again, he had been overruled.
He shrugged internally. That was his employers lookout, and hed made damned sure his own name never appeared anywhere in them.
"How do I handle the hardware?" he asked after a moment.
"If theres time, take it with you. If theres not" His caller shrugged. "Its only hardware. We can replace it."
"Understood." Summervale drummed on the edge of the console for a moment, then shrugged, physically this time. "Anything else?"
"Not right now. Ill get back to you if something else breaks."
"Understood," Summervale repeated, and killed the circuit.
He sat before the silent screen for several minutes, thinking, then rose to pace the small com room. There were things about this entire operation that never had added up to his satisfaction, and his employers apparent lack of concern over the loss of his entire lab complex was one more puzzle. Oh, the facilities werent that expensivemekoha production wasnt particularly difficult or complicatedbut putting them in without detection had been a major operation. If they lost them, they also lost their production base, at least until a new one could be assembled, and installing a new lab would expose them to detection all over again.
Or would it?
He paused in his pacing, and an eyebrow curved in speculation. Suppose they already had a backup facility in place? That was certainly possible, particularly in light of some of his other unanswered questions. Like why the Organization had gone to such lengths to sell drugs, especially something like mekoha, to a bunch of primitive abos in the first place. He couldnt quite convince himself that Medusa hid some unknown, priceless treasure the Stilties were trading for the stuff, and any Medusan commodity he could think of could have been purchased for far less investment (and risk) with legitimate trade goods. Of course, he wasnt privy to the distribution end of the pipeline. He and his people distributed some of their production to the local chieftains and shamans in return for a network of Stilty scouts and sentinels, but the vast bulk of it was shipped out for disposal elsewhere.
And if they were going to sell drugs, why choose mekoha? There were half a dozen other Stilty drugs and intoxicants the Organization might have chosen. Not ones that would produce the same price, perhaps, but ones that could have been manufactured even more cheaply. And ones which were far less likely to bring the NPA down on their heads, as well. Mekohas violent side effects were certain to infuriate Matsuko, and not just because she felt a genuine mission to protect the Stilties from off-world exploitation. Only a lunatic would be unconcerned over the massive distribution of something that could turn the most peaceful native into a raging maniac.
But, as hed told the man on the screen, that was the Organizations concern, not his. Besides, his lip curled unpleasantly, anything that upset the Resident Commissioner, the NPA, and the Royal Manticoran Navy was eminently worthwhile in its own right.
He resumed his pacing, and his eyes were dark and ugly with memories. There had been a time when Captain the Honorable Denver Summervale, Royal Manticoran Marine Corps, would have been on the other side of this problem. But today he was in his element, on the side he should have been on from the beginning, for the Marines had decided theyd made a mistake the day they accepted his oath of allegiance. One they had corrected in the formal drama of a full-dress court martial.
A dangerous snarl bared his teeth, and his pace quickened as he recalled the moment. The spectators humming silence, with the point of his dress sword turned towards him on the table before the glittering senior officers while the president of the court read the formal verdict. The roll of drums as he was marched out in mess dress uniform to face his regiment, an officer of the Queen in gorgeous black and green, standing with emotionless face while the most junior enlisted man in his own battalion ripped the buttons and decorations from his tunic to the slow, bitter tapping of the drum. The expression on his colonels face as his epaulets and insignia were taken from him to be ground under a booted heel. The flat, metallic crack as the blade of his archaic dress sword snapped in the colonels gloved hands.
Oh, yes, he remembered. And, despite his hatred, he knew theyd been right. They were the sheep, but Denver Summervale was a wolf, and hed made his way even then in the way a wolf knew bestwith his teeth.
He dropped back into the chair before the com terminal, grinning dangerously at the blank screen. His father had been there, too, he recalled. His pious, noble father, clinging to the fringes of the Summervale glory despite his poverty. What had the high and mighty family ever given them, that they should ape its manners and honor its name? Their branch had none of the wealth, none of the power, that clung to the direct line of the Dukes of Cromarty!
Summervales hands clenched in his lap, and he closed his eyes. His own flesh and blood sat in the prime ministers chair. Even then, the precious Duke of Cromarty had been Lord of the Exchequer, second in seniority in Her Majestys Government, and had he raised a hand to help his distant cousin? Not he! Not that noble, proper, sanctimonious bastard.
But that, too, was all right. He made his hands relax, savoring the thought of the gossip and sidelong glances his disgrace must have brought upon the noble Duke and treasuring the look on his fathers face as his sword snapped. All his life, his father had preached to him of duty and responsibility, of the glorious role his family had played in the history of the Kingdom. But duty and responsibility hadnt paid his debts. Family history hadnt won him the respect and fear it won the "true" line.
No, those things he had earned himself, earned on the "field of honor" while he laughed at their pretensions.
He opened his eyes once more, staring at his reflection in the com screen, remembering the dawn quiet and the weight of a pistol. Remembering the seconds and the master of the lists stern expression as he stared across thirty meters of smooth grass at a pale-faced opponent. It had been . . . Bullard? No. That first time had been Scott, and he shivered as his palm felt again the shock of recoil and Scotts white shirt blossomed crimson and he fell.
He shook himself. It had been a business transaction, nothing more, he told himself, and knew he lied. Oh, it had been business, and the money his secret sponsor had slipped him had cleared his debts . . . for a time. Until the next time. But the sensual thrill of knowing, even as Scott crumpled, that his bullet had blown his targets aristocratic heart apartthat had been his true reward. And the reason it had been so easy to accept the next assignment, and the next.
Yet in the end, the very people he hated with all his soul had won. "Professional duelist," theyd called him, when all the time theyd meant "paid killer." And theyd been right. He admitted that here in the quiet, empty room. But hed killed too many of them, even when his sponsors would have been willing to settle for a wound. The blood taste had been too sweet, the aura of fear too heady, and finally the Corps had had enough.
Hed killed a "brother officer"as if the uniform a dead man wore should matter! He wasnt the first serving officer to do so, but there were too many bodies in his past, too many families that owed too many debts. They couldnt try him for murder, for duels were legal. Hed faced his opponents fire, and they couldnt prove hed accepted money for it. But theyd all known the truth, and they could bring up his entire record: his gambling, his women, the adulterous affairs hed used to lure targets onto the field, the arrogance hed let color his relations with senior officers as the terror of his reputation grew. And that had been enough to find him "unfit to wear the Queens uniform" and led to that bright, hot morning and the slow, degrading tap of the drums.
And it had led here, as well. Here where the money was good, but even here the money was only part of it. Only the means to an end that let him sneer at their self-proclaimed nobility of purpose and avenge himself upon them again and again, even if they never knew it.
His nostrils flared, and he pushed himself up out of the chair.
All right. Hed been warned that the operation was in jeopardy, and its security was his responsibility. So be it. There were too many records, too much evidence, in this facility, and as his employer had said, the lab was only hardware.
There were ways to evacuate, and there were ways to evacuate, he thought with a slow, hungry smile. If he had to leave the equipment behind, then he could at least abandon it in a way that would give him personal satisfaction.
He opened the com room door and walked briskly down the hall. He had arrangements to make.
Chapter | P | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 |
17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 | 32 | A |