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  I could see this conversation going off in a number of different directions. The fact that Letitia and others were nodding as he spoke told me they were sold. I almost started a counterargument, just to mess with minds, but since she was willing to scrag me and my hands were still in cuffs, I put that plan on hold.

  “Okay, I see where you’re going with that, which is great, but I’m paycheck-ocentric and I was getting a feeling that my commitment to piling up stones in my account was something you were willing to trust.”

  “Were it not combined with your pathological hatred for Reis, I would not. The simple fact of the matter, however, is that your loathing of that toad and your unique skills make you an asset worth recruiting. If we can come to a suitable agreement on pay…”

  “Save it, ’cause I’m not that stupid. I don’t agree to work with you, I’ll be planted where I’ll fertilize a new crop of trees. My skills, that you know of, are driving a ’Mech, and that comes with a price. I’ll let you buy me on a per job basis, assuming you have a ’Mech for me to drive. A ’Mech that will do the job.”

  “We are making arrangements for getting a ’Mech that will be up to this operation. I will pay you five thousand stones, as ComStar bills, Republic scrip, your choice. I will deposit it with ComStar for you. It will be quite clean.”

  I nodded and gave him my universal linknumber. He’d send it into my account and once the job was complete he’d give me a password that would allow me to unlock the funds. He could cheat me out of the money by refusing to give me the password, but ComStar wouldn’t give it back to him without an arbitration hearing, and I was pretty sure he’d want to avoid something like that.

  “That ought to work. I do need to know one more thing, though, before I can begin to feel comfortable.”

  “And that is?”

  “Who was your spotter?”

  The hands were back fingertip to fingertip. “Someone outside this cell, therefore you may not know their identity.”

  I shook my head. “You tell me, or she can just kill me. I didn’t spot him, and if I didn’t spot him, I need to figure out why. I’ve not made that big a mistake in a long time, and I don’t plan on making it again. I need to know what I missed.”

  The leader remained silent and his hands motionless for a minute, then he rubbed his hands together. “Very well. It was your boon companion.”

  “Andy?”

  “The very same.”

  I shook my head again. “That’s the last time you’re going to lie to me. If Andy was your man, you’d not be needing me. He has my skills, my hatred of Reis, and has already been on the dark side of the law. Last chance.”

  “Forgive me, it was a test.”

  “Did I pass?”

  “You did. The bartender, the short one, at the Scrapyard, has been keeping an eye open for someone with certain skills. Andy had been considered but old Laments do not revolutionaries make.”

  “They’ve already done it once.”

  “Quite true, Mr. Donelly. Letitia will be your contact and will see to your needs.” One hand pointed to the office where the leader had been waiting. “We have a billet for you here. Then, tomorrow, you will be briefed on preliminary activities leading up to our operation. Is that satisfactory?”

  I doubted that having a woman whose jaw and nose I’d broken taking care of me would be anything but hellish, but I nodded. “Long live the Mottled Lemur.”

  “Indeed, Mr. Donelly. Chances are very good they will outlive all of us.”

  6

  The cat and dog may kiss, but are none the better friends.

  —Federated Suns saying

  Overton

  Joppa, Helen

  Prefecture III, Republic of the Sphere

  21 November 3132

  The office to which Letitia led me might have been described as cozy. A desk had been shoved against the wall and stocked with a variety of drinks—meaning fruit juices, sparkling waters and natural spring water—and snacks, all of which had no taint of meat, no salt, no fat and, save for the dried fruit, no real flavor. The fact that it was all the sort of stuff that would grant one a much longer life struck me as a bit ironic, but also hopeful.

  A rusty iron cot had been set up in the far corner and had a ratty old mattress unrolled on it. Sheets, blanket and pillows were piled on the lumpy, gray-striped surface. I took a look at it, then turned my back and waggled my fingers at my captor. “Undo these and I can make my bed.”

  She snorted and I figured she’d be grinding her teeth, but that would have hurt a lot. Letitia unlocked the cuffs and had them tucked away by the time I turned around, rubbing my wrists. I gave her a quick nod as she backed away and perched herself on the corner of the desk. It seemed pretty plain to me that she wanted nothing better than an excuse to kick my butt, so I said nothing to her and instead turned to making the bed.

  The sheets were clean and had even been ironed. I somehow imagined Blondie having done that job, and had that impression before I found a long, blond hair on the pillowcase. She’d struck me as the sort who would do anything for a friend, be it human or a tree-dwelling varmint. I smoothed out the sheets, then lifted the folded blanket and turned to face Letitia.

  “Assuming you’re going to keep an eye on me, and assuming you’re going to use that chair over there, do you want this to keep you warm?”

  She gave me a hard stare which, had it been composed of microwaves, would have roasted my heart in a beat or two.

  I shrugged and tossed the blanket on the seat of the leather office chair. “It’s there if you need it.” I shucked my jeans—I’d worn them to bed at the mission because they’d have been stolen if I hadn’t—and slipped into the bed. Stretching out I could feel my spine cracking all the way up, so I started breathing deliberately to relax myself and quickly slipped off to sleep.

  While a case could be made for the stupidity of falling asleep in an enemy’s lair while being watched by someone holding a grudge, the simple fact was that I fell asleep easily. There had been ample opportunities to kill me earlier, and lulling me into a false sense of security before acing me made no sense at all. Whatever the Gaia-guy wanted with me was anyone’s guess, and I was pretty sure there were wheels within wheels. As long as I didn’t get pinched between them, I was happy.

  I woke up fairly early and made enough groaning and stretching sounds for Letitia to come alert before I did. She crawled out from beneath the blanket very slowly and washed a pill down with water sucked through a straw. I figured the pill for a painkiller and also assumed she was using a fraction of the prescribed dosage so she’d not drift into some narcotic nirvana. While I admired her guts at doing that, I was pretty sure that the drugs would dull her edge enough that I could take her if I needed to.

  I decided to wake up slowly. When I finally reached for my jeans, I found they were gone. On a nearby chair I found a new set of clothes, including a nice pair of khaki work pants, a button-down shirt and fresh underclothes. I could have concluded that to have things in my size there they had been watching me for a while, but I’m pretty much a pure medium, so outfitting me from some all-night department store wouldn’t be that much trouble.

  That, and the shoes they got me were a half size too big.

  With my eyes barely open, I shuffled to the desk and appropriated a carton of fruit juice. I fumbled with it, growled, then opened it and drained it. Setting it down, I let one eye open fully. “Coffee?”

  Her glare suggested I might as well have asked for lemur blood.

  I came round and stepped up to her fast, far faster than she expected me to, and yet again faster than she could react to. “Okay, Letitia, you and I need to come to an understanding. You don’t like me, and I get that loud and clear. You don’t like me because I busted your jaw and your nose, but that’s personal, you and me. You’d have that under control, too, I know, except for the other thing.”

  She took a half step back and I didn’t pursue. “The other thing is this, sister: y
ou’re angry with yourself for the people who died on that mountain. Because I busted you up, you weren’t there. You weren’t in command, so people got stupid and got dead. I was the one who killed them, sure, so you hate me for that, and that’s fine. You can’t be putting on me your anger at yourself, though. You know it isn’t right and it’s the sort of thing a sniveler like Reis would do.”

  Letitia planted a hand on my chest and shoved me back. She mumbled something at me that I didn’t quite catch, which is fine, since it was hardly ladylike language. If I related it verbatim this chronicle would plunge from the exalted realm of literature and I would be accused of pandering to the prurient interests of the lowbrow masses.

  I could have done a variety of things, from grab that hand, twist it around and drive her to the floor, to use it to drag her forward and plant a kiss on her. The latter would certainly have been pandering, and would have even been an assault, given the state of her jaw. As it was I opted for the easiest of choices and let her turn away to sulk in silence.

  That suited me fine because I wanted some time to think, too. My interview with Reis had revealed the presence of a Constabulary agent within the GGF. This was something that Letitia would know all or nothing about. She would know all about it if she were the mole, and nothing if she wasn’t. The case for her being the mole was good, since a quick report to Reis about the altercation at the Eyrie would get things going to leave me hanging out there as bait. My assaulting one of his officers would make me a perfect target, though, as much as I wanted to hate him for hating me, I’d made myself the perfect target anyway. Reis would have found me convenient no matter what.

  If Letitia was the mole, her anger at me could be born out of the deaths of the CDRF folks. Had she not been sidelined by the broken jaw, she could have been at the ambush and prevented anyone getting killed. While she probably was happy at the death of the GGFers who got smooshed, the loss of comrades would have hurt. Even so, she’d have to see pretty quickly that there had been nothing I did, save decking her, that contributed to their deaths in any way.

  There was a further problem, however, with the way the ambush had gone down. Reis sets me up to be bait after he learns of the fight. GGF learns I’ll be out there and decides to move against me, which is also communicated to Reis. Reis plans his ambush and brings in a handful of people and one small hovercar. The GGF, on the other hand, was packing explosives, had two hovertrucks and some heavy weaponry. The GGF, it could easily be concluded, had known he was going to be there and had gone gunning for him.

  The only conclusion to be drawn from those facts was that the GGF had someone inside the CDRF. The easiest link to make, and again Letitia could fill the bill, was that Reis’ agent was really a double agent. Presumably that double agent would only report to Gaia-guy. No one inside the cell would know who she was. Letitia, if she was Reis’ agent, wouldn’t have been told of the counteroperation prep since she wouldn’t be involved and everything could have devolved into a complete massacre of the CDRF troops had I not intervened.

  There was a slender possibility that Reis’ agent had been killed when I dropped a tree on the hovercar. This would, in some ways, explain his anger with me. Despite my dislike for Reis, I didn’t dislike his people, and the idea that I might have killed one of them made me uneasy. Still, the way the hovercars opened up on the CDRF troopers suggested Reis’ agent was either a double agent and did nothing to stop the attack, or wasn’t present at all. I was okay with either of those cases.

  So, what it all boiled down to were these things. First, cop or crook, Letitia had ample reason to hate me. I had to assume that if she had a chance, she would hurt me. Second, anything we planned would be leaked to Reis. Third, anything leaked to Reis would be leaked back to Gaia-guy.

  I tried to look at things from Gaia-guy’s point of view. He knew this cell was contaminated with a Constabulary agent, so it was expendable, unless the agent was a double, in which case it could be trusted. Because he knew this cell was compromised, any plans he made would require two phases. The first was the overt operation, against which Reis would be expected to move. The second would be a reaction operation designed to punish Reis for going after the first op. Properly set up, the secondary operation would seem to have been bad luck on the CDRF’s part, and would allow Reis to point out how diabolical his enemy was.

  I had to assume that whatever we were going to be doing, then, would be the primary op. If that was it, we were being used as bait. Gaia-guy’s CDRF source wouldn’t be one of us, so we could be wiped out and it would be cool: more martyrs for the cause.

  If, on the other hand, we were part of the secondary op, we could only be employed that way if Gaia-guy thought we were completely secure. This idea pleased me because it meant we’d be getting the resources needed to do our job, and that would greatly shrink the chances of my ending up as the autopsy du jour at the coroner’s office.

  This led to a further thought that bothered me a bit. Gaia-guy had offered me five K stones for an op. That’s not the kind of money you make strumming a bazuki on a street corner for tips. I’d only been on Helen four months and never during that time had I seen PADSU hold a bake sale, much less some thousand-stone-a-plate dinner with the glamorati all sparkling on in for the cause. My fee and Gaia-guy’s promise to make arrangements for getting me a ride suggested someone had deep pockets. I was fairly certain that it wasn’t Gaia-guy himself. I was also pretty sure his talk of doing it for the lemurs was nonsense, too. While I didn’t know much about him, his fingernails had been freshly manicured and the chronometer lurking up his left sleeve would have paid my fee several times over.

  So, it was pretty much at that point that I realized I’d landed on both feet deep in a minefield I’d not known existed. Getting out with all my ancillary bits intact was not going to be easy. I shrugged. If this whole thing was going to kill me, at least I’d be wearing clean underwear.

  I asked Letitia about a shower. She pointed me out the door and to a corner with drains set in the floor. A hose had been rigged, but no shower curtain or anything, so I just stripped down and washed myself. I used my old shirt to dry myself off, then pulled on fresh underdrawers and returned to my prison.

  The tags had been cut from the underwear and all the other clothes. That surprised me a bit because it was more professional than I’d have expected GGF to be. The lack of tags would make more work for local law enforcement in tracing GGF’s steps. I could have read a lot into that, but decided Gaia-guy just wanted to impress his people with his experience. It was a good way to build their confidence in him, which meant he was not a long-term acquaintance.

  I smiled and thought back to the bar before the fight. Perhaps GGF had only arrived after the net collapsed. Gaia-guy had been brought in to organize it, but by whom? The why—power—was obvious, though from whom it would be taken and to whom it would be given were less so. As things geared up, we’d see how it would go and I was itching to figure out who signed Gaia-guy’s pay vouchers.

  One of the kidnappers from the night before appeared in the office doorway. He tossed me a coat that I caught easily. “Oh, leather. Are we allowed to wear it?”

  He hesitated for a moment. “Well, yeah, it’s a disguise, isn’t it?”

  I nodded. “Good point.” I shrugged the jacket on, then slipped a bottle of water into one pocket. I followed the man to a door in the side of the building and out into an alley. It had a corrugated tin fence on the street end, so we headed back to a connecting alley, then slipped through a gate into a playground attached to a block of low-rent housing. Over in the parking lot he indicated a late-model Gaijin hovercar and pointed me to the driver’s side.

  “You want me to drive?”

  “Just do what I tell you and we’re going to be fine.”

  I slid in behind the wheel and punched in the ignition code he gave me. The engine purred to life on the first go. I keyed in the sequence requesting performance statistics and they popped up onto the auxil
iary monitor, showing that while the outside of the car wasn’t much, the propulsion system had been tweaked to perfection and beyond. “This monster will move.”

  “Yeah, well, with any luck we won’t need any of it. Nice and calm, drive.”

  I brought the hovercar up on a cushion of air and we were off. He had me do some lazy circuits while he watched the rearview to pick up anyone tailing us. He didn’t see anything, and started giving me directions that headed us back into the heart of Overton. I began to get a little antsy as we drew closer to the Constabulary headquarters. That seemed to amuse my compatriot.

  “Relax,” he said. “We’re just going to pick up where the other team left off.”

  “And what will we be doing?” As I asked that, the Castel Del Reis came into view.

  He smiled. “Waiting and watching. Park anywhere along here and look sharp. We’re at the enemy’s gate and we’re going to bring it crashing down.”

  7

  The fish sees the bait, not the hook.

  —Capellan Confederation saying

  Overton

  Joppa, Helen

  Prefecture III, Republic of the Sphere

  21 November 3132

  My tall, rangy companion said his name was Ray, and whether that was a nom de guerre or not I didn’t know and didn’t care. His brown eyes appeared real, his blond hair colored. He moved pretty easily and looked about warily. I couldn’t tell if he was carrying a weapon, but if he was it was small, like a hold-out laser.

  I parked on the street, which was a lucky break, and we sauntered on down to a small bistro with a sidewalk annex from which we could watch the Constabulary building easily enough. He sat facing it while I was positioned at an angle where the building was to my left and I could see our hovercar off to the right. He had a little noteputer on which he appeared to be reading the news, but his thumb kept flicking every time someone walked in or out of the building.