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CHAPTER SIX

Jack’s Steakhouse

City of Olympia

Old Terra

Sol System

Terran Federation

October 15, 2552


“You’re late,” Leopold Osiecki observed as the real live human waiter seated the attractive Asiatic woman across the table from him.

“So sue me,” Kawaguchi Kurumi said sweetly, and Osiecki chuckled. Very few of his employees would have taken that tone with him, but then very few of them had been with him as long as she had or were as good at their jobs as she was at hers.

Of course, there were some additional factors in play in her case.

“Would you care to view the menu, Sir?” the waiter asked, half-extending the slate tucked under his arm.

“Please, Gordon.” Osiecki rolled his blue eyes. “How long have we been coming in here?”

“Eight years, I believe, Sir,” Gordon replied with a small smile.

“I’m pretty sure we have the menu down by now, then. I’ll have my usual. Kurumi?”

“I think I’ll have the Lomo Saltado today,” she said. “And some of those delicious yeast rolls of yours, Gordon.”

“Excellent choice,” Gordon said with a broader smile. “Salad?”

“Yes, I think. With peppercorn dressing. And sweetened iced tea, please.”

“Of course. And just to be sure, Mr. Osiecki, for you braised tenderloin, blue rare, with baked potato—butter, no sour cream—steamed broccoli, a side salad with balsamic vinaigrette, and a stein of Kielce lager.”

“Exactly.” Osiecki nodded, and the waiter filled their ice water glasses and disappeared, leaving them in the quiet alcove that was permanently reserved at Jack’s Steakhouse for Osiecki Enterprises’s senior executives.

There were several interesting features built into that alcove, the most important of which were the most sophisticated anti-snooping systems Federation technology could build. Not that anyone would have been surprised to discover that. After all, Osiecki Enterprises was widely—and with reason—regarded as the Sol System’s most efficient and effective industrial security firm. Most people knew that. What a much smaller and highly select clientele knew was that in addition to its sterling credentials in industrial security, Osiecki Enterprises was also the most accomplished industrial espionage firm in the system.

Leopold Osiecki had spent thirty years of his life building that firm, and those who employed him as their industrial spy automatically received the services of his security arm, as well, plus a guarantee that he wouldn’t be spying on them. Mostly. There had been occasions upon which one or more members of the Five Hundred had taken umbrage over his…acquisition of proprietary information and processes for one or more of their competitors, but he was far too valuable for them to squash. And he was an honest broker, whose services were available to all.

What not even that smaller and select clientele knew, of course, was that Leopold Osiecki—who hadn’t thought of himself as Huang Jiang in almost forty years—wasn’t what he seemed. For that matter, despite the splendidly official birth certificate on file for her in the ancient city of Tokyo, neither was Kawaguchi Kurumi, who’d actually been born Ryom Jung-Soo in the Uromachi System.

They were, in fact, the Tè Lā Lián Méng’s two most highly placed spies in the Federation.

They made small talk until Gordon returned with their drink orders and their salads. Then Osiecki tapped the smart panel in the tabletop to bring up the privacy systems. All sound from the rest of the restaurant disappeared instantly, and he leaned back slightly in his chair.

“And what brings us here today?”

His tone was pleasant, but his eyes—those blue eyes, which had earned him so much boyhood grief and bullying as a “gwáijái” on the planet Tu Di Ye—were focused and intent. One of his ironclad rules was that he never discussed League business in any of Osiecki Enterprises’s offices. One of the quid pro quos of his “industrial espionage” activities was that Federation intelligence got to keep an eye on those activities, and he was perfectly happy to provide the Central Intelligence Directorate and the Federal Bureau of Investigation—even the Hand—with complete access. In fact, he’d helped them out on several occasions, including pointing them at more than one anti-war group’s efforts to sabotage critical war industries.

All of which, in combination, meant that both CID and the FBI knew exactly who Leopold Osiecki was and what he did for a living. And that Osiecki Enterprises passed its semiannual security background checks with ludicrous ease.

It also meant that anything related to what he really did for a living was passed on primarily by word of mouth in public settings no serious spy would ever even consider. There were, of course, conduits for passing electronic messages and even dead drops for old-fashioned physical letters, but those operated through a dizzying level of cutouts with which he never had any personal contact.

“I talked to O’Casey,” “Kawaguchi” said now. “He says the leak about Murphy’s been confirmed and the Five Hundred’s panicking.”

“Confirmed?” Osiecki frowned. “Confirmed how?”

Benjamin O’Casey was one of Kawaguchi’s crown jewels, although he was also a bit of a two-edged sword. He’d begun working for Osiecki Enterprises as a junior engineer in the powerful Dawson family’s Astro Engineering transstellar almost twenty years ago, and he was smart, capable, and supremely unencumbered by anything remotely resembling a principle. He’d also figured out about ten years ago that there was rather more to Osiecki Enterprises than the Federation at large suspected. By then, though, he’d been in too deep—delivered too much proprietary military R&D data that had made its way to the League—to turn state’s evidence. Oh, he might have been able to avoid the death sentence by testifying for the prosecution, but that was far from a given, whereas the probability that Osiecki would have him killed if he even looked like talking to the FBI approached one hundred percent. On the other hand, Osiecki was prepared to pay him even more handsomely than before and promised him relocation to a life of luxury on one of the more affluent feral worlds out beyond the Blue Line within the next twenty-five years or so.

Under the circumstances, he’d opted for continued employment, and he was worth every penny Osiecki had ever paid him. Not only was he smart and unscrupulous, he’d also risen to the assistant directorship of Astro Engineering’s Energy Weapons Division. The information he’d provided over the years hadn’t been spectacular; it had only been priceless to its recipients.

That was what worried Osiecki now. O’Casey was far too valuable—and knew far too much—to be compromised pushing for more data on something as speculative as the rumors about Terrence Murphy.

“We’re talking about O’Casey, Leopold,” Kawaguchi said dryly. “The next time he sticks his neck out for us will also be the first time he sticks his neck out for us.”

Osiecki snorted, because she had a point. In truth, O’Casey had put his neck on the line at least half a dozen times over the years, but only after careful thought and very, very cautiously. And for extremely high bonuses.

“All right, that’s a given,” he acknowledged. “But the question stands: What kind of confirmation are we talking about?”

“It’s—”

A buzzer sounded quietly, and Kawaguchi broke off, glancing over her shoulder as the alcove’s privacy curtain opened and Gordon walked in with their salads, her tea, and Osiecki’s beer. After so many years, Jack’s staff knew the drill as well as Osiecki and his senior employees did. They wouldn’t have dreamed of interrupting such old, valued, and high-tipping customers without first warning them.

Food and drink transferred smoothly from Gordon’s tray to the tabletop. He glanced around, double-checking everything, then withdrew, and Kawaguchi picked up her fork.

“He and Kleinmueller were called in to brief Dawson personally on the grav-lens focusing project,” she said then, and Osiecki nodded.

Judson Kleinmueller was O’Casey’s boss over at Energy Weapons, and if they ever got the bugs out of the gravitically focused lasers they’d been working on for the last six years or so, it would increase energy engagement ranges dramatically.

“Anyway, they were briefing Dawson when she got a call. It was from one of her contacts in the Oval. Somebody in Fokaides’s staff, if I had to guess. And she didn’t bother to shoo them out of the room when she took it.”

Kawaguchi scooped up a forkful of salad, chewed, and swallowed. Osiecki was fully aware that the delay was deliberate. The twinkle in her eye would have told him that, even if he hadn’t already known her so well. And, since he was aware, he simply waited as if he’d never noticed a thing.

“Anyway,” she said with a smile that acknowledged he’d won the round, “apparently Murphy’s official report’s come in. O’Casey didn’t get a look at it, of course, but Dawson was excited enough—and kept interrupting whoever had called often enough—that he thinks he got most of the high points.”

“Which are?”

“Which are,” Kawaguchi’s smile disappeared, “that, according to Murphy, he defeated an attack in strength on New Dublin. If Dawson’s informant’s to be believed, Murphy claims to have defeated a twelve-carrier task force…and destroyed at least eight of them.”

“What?!”

Even Leopold Osiecki’s formidable self-control could waver on occasion, and Kawaguchi nodded grimly as he stared at her in shock.

“Dawson thinks—or claimed she did while she was shouting at whoever was on the other end of her comm—that Murphy’s lying about the numbers. He was already in deep trouble—you know how sensitive they all are to the possibility of Fringe systems going ‘out of compliance’!—so Dawson’s theory is that he’s inventing the entire thing, or at least exaggerating it hugely, to cover his ass.”

“That doesn’t sound like everything we’ve heard about Murphy going into this,” Osiecki said slowly.

“No, but aside from his family name, he wasn’t exactly front and center on our radar before he got handed New Dublin, either, now was he?” Kawaguchi shrugged. “He’s married into the Thakore family, so he’s got pretty good connections in the Five Hundred, but he’s still an outsider in a lot of ways. And it looks like he’s been systematically pissing them off ever since that business at Inverness.”

Osiecki grimaced. Inverness left a bad taste in his mouth every time he thought about it.

Like his cover name, the blue eyes and fair coloration that had caused him so much grief as a child—and which served him so well as a spy—were the legacy of his mother’s family. And the only reason Faustyna Osiecka had ended up in the Terran League and married to Huang ShenKang instead of living in the Terran Federation was that the League had rescued her parents’ family from the Godlewski System in 2350, long before the war against the Federation had begun. Janosik, Godlewski’s sole habitable planet, had always been tectonically active, but no one had been prepared for the yearslong cycle of earthquakes, tsunamis, and volcanic outgassing that had destroyed that habitability. The casualty totals had been horrific, and Godlewski had lain on the very fringe of the Federation, far closer to Anyang, the League’s capital system, than to Sol. And so a huge infusion of baakgwai genetic material had been abruptly injected into the nearby Wutai System.

Including the Osiecki family, which had embraced its new home with the patriotic fervor of refugees who knew exactly who’d saved them all from death.

That was the legacy of the League Leopold Osiecki liked to recall, the difference between the League and the Five Hundred, who would cheerfully have written off any of the Federation’s Fringe Worlds the same way they’d ignored Janosik all those years ago. What that butcher Xing had done to Inverness…that was what the Federation did, not his star nation!

“Of course he’s pissing them off,” he said now. “The last thing the Five Hundred can afford is for someone to demonstrate the legitimacy of the Fringe’s resentment. And I wonder how many of them are thinking about his family name while they’re being so pissed? I tend to doubt old Henrik would have had much patience with their policies in the Fringe.”

“Doesn’t look like his grandson does, either.” Kawaguchi’s voice was a little indistinct as she chewed salad, and she swallowed, then sipped tea. “From the looks of things, he actually thinks a system governor is supposed to defend the system he’s governing.”

“You think there’s anything to the Five Hundred’s warlord suspicions?”

“Our other sources on that are probably as good as anything O’Casey’s turning up, but, on balance, I genuinely don’t think so.” Kawaguchi shook her head. “I think he really is Don Quixote, to be honest.”

Osiecki snorted.

“If he is, the Five Hundred’s a hell of a lot more likely to kill him than we are,” he said. “Especially if he really did just defeat that many of our carriers!”

“I’m inclined to doubt he did,” Kawaguchi replied. “Oh, I think he probably did win an engagement, and if Dawson’s end of the conversation O’Casey overheard is accurate, I’m pretty sure Second Admiral Xing was in command when he did it. Frankly, just between you and me, that wouldn’t exactly break my heart. What she did at Inverness is only going to justify the next Federation K-strike. And then we’ll retaliate for that. And they’ll retaliate for the retaliation. And before you know it, we’ll be killing the odd million civilians at the drop of a hat all over again.”

She would not, Osiecki reflected, have said anything remotely like that to one of their joint superiors. On the other hand, their nearest joint superior was in the Cairo System, almost 360 light-years from Sol, and it was a sign of how much she trusted him—and how well she understood the way his own mind worked—that she was willing to say it to him.

“So why do you think he exaggerated the numbers?”

“Do you mean why do I think the numbers had to be exaggerated, or why do I think he chose to exaggerate them?”

“Both.”

“Leopold, we both know how tight things are along the Beta Cygni Line. Do you really think the Rénzú Liánméng Hǎijūn’s in a position to cut a dozen FTLCs loose to hit a secondary—at best—system like New Dublin?” Kawaguchi shook her head again. “I just don’t see any way that many of our carriers could’ve been swanning around out in Concordia. We know Xing had at least a couple of them when she hit Inverness, and she could have picked up two or three more, but there’s no way Navy Command would’ve committed more than four or five to a target like New Dublin.”

She paused, head cocked, and he nodded slowly.

“Well,” she continued, “even four or five of them would have been a nasty handful for a typical Fed system picket, so Murphy has plenty of justification for patting himself on the back if he held his ground in the face of an attack like that. But unless I miss my guess, he’s probably pretty well aware of what the Five Hundred’s been cooking up for him ever since he started looking like a ‘noncompliance’ poster boy. So, since he controls all the sensor records and tac data from the battle, why not pump the numbers up a little bit to try and get some of the heat turned down a notch or two?”

“Makes sense,” Osiecki conceded. “I wish we had some way to confirm that, though.”

“I’m checking all of my other sources—discreetly, of course,” she said. “But the best we’re likely to manage is to confirm what he reported, not whether or not what he reported is accurate.”

“I know.”

Osiecki looked down into his beer stein, turning it on the table, then looked back up at her.

“See what you can turn up in the next couple of days,” he said. “Don’t push too hard! I know you, and you can get carried away by your own enthusiasm. Like you say, the best we can do is to confirm what he’s reported, and it’s not worth risking losing you—or even just one of your sources—for something that…indeterminate. But I’ve got a courier headed out for Uromachi day after tomorrow. I’d like to send along anything we’ve been able to confirm—or not—when he goes.”

“Understood.”

Kawaguchi nodded and addressed herself to her salad once more.

The most frustrating thing about her otherwise satisfactory assignment was how long it took for anything they reported to reach home. Any spy—for that matter, anyone involved in interstellar commerce of any sort—had to factor voyage time into every equation and decision, but that didn’t mean she had to like it. Especially when it came to something like this.

She didn’t know what Murphy was up to any more than the Five Hundred did, but unlike the Five Hundred, she expected whatever it was to hurt the Terran League more than it would the Federation. God only knew what a truly competent Fed task force commander might do if he was prepared to ignore the Fokaides Directive and actually do his damned job. But while God might be the only one who knew, Kawaguchi Kurumi—and Ryom Jung-Soo—strongly suspected she wouldn’t like it. In fact, she didn’t much like even contemplating the possibilities.

And it was almost eight months from Sol to Uromachi by way of the Cairo System. One hell of a lot of those unpalatable possibilities could happen while their message was in transit.



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