The messenger at the door of Hathaway House flashed his gray cloak open toward the view-slit, displaying a blue uniform jacket with chromed buttons and frogs. By trying to look simultaneously self-important and inconspicuous, the man gave the impression of a rat tricked out in pheasant plumage.
"A lady wants to see Major Coke!" he hissed meaningfully, casting a wary glance over his shoulder toward L'Escorial headquarters.
Coke nodded toward Mistress Hathaway at the door. He was shrugging into his body armor. The location of Hathaway House wasn't ideally neutral, but the team hadn't been sent to Cantilucca to be fair. Just to strike a deal, and that seemed to be a practical proposition.
"A bit earlier than I'd figured," Coke said to his three fellows. "Niko, you're ready on your end?"
The sensor tech grinned brightly. He patted a magazine pouch on the right side of his waist belt, opposite the holster clipped for cross-draw.
"The bugs're here," he said, "not in my case." He waggled the attaché case in his left hand.
"Sten, you're comfortable with the hardware?" Coke went on, shifting his attention to the man who would remain behind in the hotel lobby.
"Quite comfortable," the logistics officer said. His arm swept across the terminal, changing the display from streetscape to a close-up of the Astra messenger's face, then back. "This isn't my specialty, but I've probably spent as much time at consoles as you or Bob have."
"Come on," the messenger whined. "Do you think I like standing out here?"
"Do you think we care?" Niko Daun snapped. The suddenness with which the young technician's smile broke and reformed indicated that he was jumpy, reasonably enough.
Johann Vierziger grinned at Coke. Neither man bothered to speak the obvious truths.
Coke settled a gray cape over his armor, his attaché case, and a slung sub-machine gun. "All right," he said. "Then let's do it."
The messenger scampered ahead. He was probably afraid to be seen with the trio of Frisians. It was late morning and the sun was hot. L'Escorials had removed the wrack of bodies from against their wall, but the stench of rotting blood was fierce even against the reek of garbage and human excrement.
The gates to the L'Escorial courtyard, vertical steel bars in a wall-height framework, were closed. Half a dozen gunmen sat beneath an awning inside, playing cards. The concrete around the titular guards was littered with gage injectors and empty bottles. None of the men paid any attention to traffic from Hathaway House.
The messenger was ten strides ahead of the Frisians. He turned around and waggled his hands toward them in a pulling motion. "Come on, come along," he urged.
"We'll get there, little man," Johann Vierziger said calmly. "And the more surely if we watch what we're about, not so?"
Though the messenger wasn't a prepossessing physical specimen, he was bigger than Vierziger. Nobody hearing the comment smiled at it, however.
A combat vehicle converted from a bulldozer was now parked in the entrance to the courtyard in front of Astra headquarters. Metal plates were welded to a framework around the bulldozer's sides.
The add-on armor didn't look to Coke as if it'd stop much. The earthmoving blade which protected the front would originally have been tempered soft so that it wouldn't shatter if it hit a rock. The alloy steel could have been surface hardened during the conversion process, but he doubted that it had been.
The vehicle mounted a twelve-tube launcher for hypervelocity rockets. These could be extremely effective weapons, capable of penetrating more than a meter of ferroconcrete; but the mounting was fixed in azimuth, so that aiming a salvo required the vehicle itself be turned toward the target.
The messenger led the Frisians past the 'dozers worn tracks. Astras on the vehicle and around it had their guns out. None of them spoke to the Frisians, but Coke heard several deliberately loud sneers about the pansies come to call. At least the blue-clad guards seemed to be more alert than their rivals down the street.
"The Widow's waiting for you, gentlemen," the messenger called, several strides ahead again. "Do come along."
Niko Daun stumbled twice while easing past the converted bulldozer. The first time he slapped his hand against the armor covering the commander's station on the right side of the vehicle; the next time he caught himself on the gatepost. He'd touched his belt pouch before either slip, but there was nothing noteworthy in that.
The sensor tech patted the jamb of the doorway into the headquarters building as well. Each time his hand touched, he left behind an irregular disk of self-adhering material, as unremarkable as a splash of clear lacquer. Each palm-sized swatch contained an audio pick-up and transmitter, powered by micro-flexions in the crystalline structure of its matrix material.
Though not precisely invisible, the bugs appeared to be merely areas of random gloss to anyone but an expert looking for them. Cantilucca wasn't a place where the survey team expected to find expert sensor technicians.
The front half of the ground floor was a single room, thronged now by fifty or sixty blue-clad gunmen. Men in full uniform formed a corridor, not quite a gauntlet, between the outer door and the inner one in the partition wall at the back. Astras in less formal attire were relegated to stand behind the elite.
Vierziger led. Daun, with another bug palmed and waiting, walked behind him, and Coke brought up the rear. The air stank of nervous sweat.
"These are the tough guys?" sneered a man as big as Sten Moden. A scar twisted up his cheek and forehead, filling one eye-socket with a mass of pink tissue. "Don't look much to me!"
"Now, boys, the Widow wants to see them," the messenger pleaded.
"This one looks like a fairy!" cried a man carrying a sub-machine gun and a slung grenade launcher. He reached out to pinch Vierziger's cheek.
Coke lifted his hand into the air, visible to everyone in the big room. Simultaneously, Vierziger's light cape ballooned as his arm moved.
The muzzle of Vierziger's chased and carven pistol bloodied the Astra's lips. The fellow yelped in surprise and would have lurched backward. The men behind hemmed him in too straitly to move.
"Does he indeed, my friend?" Vierziger said in a lilting whisper. "That's not surprising, is it? Since he is a fairy. Do you have a problem with that?"
The little killer punctuated each sentence by tapping his pistol forward, hard enough to chip the Astra's teeth. Blood smeared the iridium barrel.
Coke said nothing. His hand held the fat tube of a bunker buster. The grenade's red safety tab was lifted, and only the Frisian's index finger held down the arming spoon.
"Do you?" Vierziger's pistol lifted so that the muzzle centered on the Astra's right eye.
"No sir. No sir!"
"Just as well, isn't it?" Vierziger said conversationally. He tugged out the Astra's shirt with his left hand and wiped the pistol clean with it. The weapon vanished as suddenly as it had been drawn.
Coke put the live grenade back under his cape. Vierziger walked to the inner door. The corridor between the Astra lines was half again as wide as it had been before.
Nobody spoke for a moment, but pandemonium broke out in the anteroom when Coke closed the door behind him. Most of the noise seemed to be laughter, directed at Vierziger's battered victim.
Dark wood paneled and furnished the inner room. There were no windows, and the several lights were point sources which accentuated the darkness beyond the surfaces from which they glared.
An old man, a lushly attractive young man, and a woman in late middle age sat on the other side of a heavy table. The woman rose to meet the Frisian delegation. She had strong, handsome features, but she was trussed into clothing a size or more too tight for her soft weight.
"I am Stella Guzman," she said, extending her hand to Coke's touch. "The Widow, you may call me. I've been president of Astra since my husband passed on three years ago."
The woman's male companions stood up as she identified herself. The younger one put his hand on Widow Guzman's shoulder in a gesture of ownership. He smiled: appraisingly at Coke, disdainfully at Daun, and at Johann Vierziger with a spark of different interest.
Coke found the young man's warm glance at Vierziger to be utterly disorienting. Presumably wolverines can be considered sex objects also . . . but this Cantiluccan gigolo wasn't by any stretch of the imagination of the same species as Johann Vierziger.
"This is my friend and advisor Adolpho Peres," the Widow said, covering with her own hand that of the man's on her shoulder. She patted it affectionately. Either she didn't see the look Peres gave Vierziger, or she was very complaisant.
"And on this side," she went on, extending a hand toward the other man, "is Simon Roberson, who has been of great help in Astra's business transactions. Master Roberson is a goods supplier with outlets all over Cantilucca."
Roberson wasn't, in fact, nearly as old as Coke had initially judged. Rather, he was sick with worry. The cause of the merchant's stress could have been any number of things; but given that Roberson was the man Evie Hathaway said bankrolled the Astra syndicate, Coke would have been interested in hearing the fellow's assessment of the relative strength of the sides.
The weaker party was usually willing to pay more for support . . . .
"Mistress, gentlemen," Coke said, bowing over the hand. "These are my associates Master Daun"—he nodded—"and Master Vierziger. As I'm sure you're aware, we're part of a survey team for the Frisian Defense Forces."
"This is a lovely table," said Niko Daun, stroking first the underside, then the top, of the piece. In fact, the wood was dented and ringed from long use. He beamed a smile toward the Cantiluccans.
Peres sneered at the sensor tech. "Sit down, gentlemen," he said to Coke. "I doubt we'll need help from mercenaries, but we're willing to listen to your offer. Will you try some of my private-stock gage? Or perhaps liquor?"
Roberson glared at the gigolo with impotent hatred. Widow Guzman winced, patted Peres' hand again, and reseated herself.
"Water for us, I think," Coke said. He unfastened his cape and hung it over the back of the heavy, leather-upholstered chair. The fuel-air grenade was clipped to his belt again, with the safety tab latched down.
"I wouldn't mind trying your gage, Master Peres," Vierziger said in his usual soft, cultured voice. Coke wondered where the little man came from originally. "A demi for a start, if you please."
"We don't have an offer for you, mistress," Coke said. "We're a survey team, as I said. We're here to observe conditions on Cantilucca and report on them. I'll be sending message capsules to Nieuw Friesland on a regular basis, probably daily, while we're here."
Vierziger took a pale green stim cone from the tray Peres offered him. "If you have proposals, we would of course forward them to Camp Able," Vierziger said as he set the injector against the inside of his left wrist and triggered it. "If not, well. We'd have to look for other interested parties."
It was useful to have two FDF negotiators present, though the team hadn't been deliberately structured that way Vierziger was along simply as muscle, as a bodyguard.
Whatever the little man had been in the past, it wasn't merely a sergeant in the field police.
"Stop this nonsense!" the Widow Guzman snapped. "At any moment, it all could—burn, explode. What is it you're offering, Major Coke, and what price do you put on your . . . merchandise?"
"That depends somewhat on the circumstances," Coke said, nodding at the woman's candor. Peres hadn't brought the water Coke requested. He'd have liked something to do with his hands besides spreading them on the tabletop. "How many troops of your own are there?"
Peres frowned, then shrugged. "Eight hundred," he said. "Nine hundred, perhaps. And we have six tanks."
"And L'Escorial?" Coke said.
Peres and Roberson exchanged glances behind the Widow's head. If it wasn't an ulcer that grayed and twisted the merchant's features, he was sure on the way to giving himself one.
The Widow Guzman stared toward the far wall. Her eyes were empty and her plump fingers tented before her. Coke thought of Pilar Ortega touching her crucifix as she contemplated bleak horror.
"The same," Peres said at last. "About the same."
"Neither of your syndicates have tanks," Vierziger said with a lazy smile. "For the sake of discussion, let's assume L'Escorial employs, say, two hundred men more than Astra."
His smile broadened, sharpened. "Of course, that's twelve fewer than they employed at this time yesterday."
The merchant giggled nervously, then choked.
"Details like that make a difference, you see," Coke said mildly. "Not an insuperable difficulty, but a difference."
He paused. When he continued, his mind broke the stream of words into thought segments, each as precise as if Coke were taking aim instead of speaking.
"Based on my provisional assessment," he said. "I doubt my superiors at Camp Able would be willing to hire out any force smaller than a company of infantry and a company of combat cars. Fighting vehicles. To either of the parties on Cantilucca. And that will be expensive."
Roberson leaned across the table. "How expensive?" he rasped.
Joharin Vierziger was examining his manicure. "As a matter of comparison . . ." he commented toward his almond-shaped fingernails, " . . . less expensive than being burned alive in your house, let us say."
"Approximately three thousand Frisian thalers per day," Coke said crisply. This was money, not lives. He was out of the mood of stark calculation which had gripped him moments before. "With add-ons, perhaps ten percent over. I estimate that the operation will take forty days, and as much longer as you dally about on your own end getting started."
"That's ridiculous!" Roberson blurted. The quoted figure had shaken him from his shell of despair. "That would make the cost of hiring your soldiers equal to the value of the gage the syndicate ships in a half year! Not the profit, the value!"
"In other words, a quarter's value of the gage shipped from Cantilucca as a whole," Vierziger said with a gentle smile. "Since control of the total would be in the victor's hands. Perhaps your hands."
"And you could reduce your in-house security force," Coke noted. His tone was flat, factual; not in the least cajoling. This is the deal, people. If you aren't smart enough to take it, be assured somebody else will be. "I know, man for man the cost is much lower; but what the FDF offers is victory, and what you're buying from those buffoons outside—"
His thumb hooked dismissively toward the door behind him.
"—is a stalemate that's about to collapse on you."
"It won't work anyway," said the Widow Guzman. She groped blindly to the side to grip Feres' wrist. Hell of a thing to have to depend on that one for human warmth. "You can't bring your armored cars to Cantilucca without the Confederacy learning, and for that they would react."
Peres bobbed his head at the beauty of the thought emerging from it. "How much for just the infantry, Master Coke?" he asked. "That shouldn't be very much, should it? We can slip men into the port in twos and threes, that won't be a problem. Marvela doesn't watch very closely."
"The cost of three companies of infantry," Coke said, "which would be the minimum I'd recommend—to my superiors—without armored support, is approximately the same. A Frisian infantry company isn't simply a hundred troopers, Master Peres; but I take your point about the need to infiltrate the units rather than bringing them in formed, on a single hull."
"That's too much money," Roberson moaned. He sat bent over, clutching his lower rib cage with both hands. "I can't possibly manage that. We're running at a loss as it is, with the force doubled and gage production down because we've squeezed the farmers so hard already."
The Widow looked at the merchant with a face as blank as ice ready to shiver off a warming window.
"Now I'm not sure the difficulty's as great as you suggest, Simon," the gigolo put in unctuously. "Perhaps if the three of us go over the books . . ."
He pressed the Widow's hand, then returned it firmly to her lap. This was Peres the Businessman, Peres the Wheeler-Dealer, not to be distracted by a woman's needs.
"I've gone over the books," Roberson retorted. "I've been going over the books. That's why I'm concerned, Master Peres."
Coke stood up, flanked by his companions in a motion so coordinated that it must have appeared pre-arranged. "We'll leave you to your considerations, mistress, gentlemen," he said. "Perhaps you'll have occasion to see us again before we leave Cantilucca."
Vierziger opened the door and stepped through it in the lead, as before. The anteroom had emptied except for ten or a dozen Astra gunmen. One of them threw the Frisians a mocking salute. The tension of the party's entrance was gone.
The door to the private office was thick. It thumped shut behind Coke, amputating all but the first syllables of the voices raised within.
Coke smiled. Lieutenant Harbour's software would polish and enhance the conversation into a form more clearly audible than it was for the three principals inside the office.
The jitney driver, looking both puzzled and pleased at having reached Silva Blanca safely, went off in search of a bar. The two Frisians were paying him as much for a day trip as he'd normally have earned in a week.
Of course, they hadn't gotten back to Potosi yet; and it had taken the cold stare of Johann Vierziger (who'd wandered over "aimlessly" during the negotiations) to put the driver into a mood to deal. Margulies figured she owed her sergeant one for the help, not that he'd exactly done anything.
The Lord knew, though, she understood how the jitney driver felt. She didn't suppose she could have a better man to back her in a firefight . . . but she wasn't quite convinced Vierziger was human.
The village consisted of twenty-five or thirty buildings, constructed for the most part of local timber with shake roofs. Each house had its own chest-high fence of palings. A few chickens ran in the courtyards, though there weren't as many as there should have been. Most households had small kitchen gardens as well.
The driver had stopped his three-wheeled vehicle as directed, in front of a largish red-painted house. It was the only structure in town that wasn't naturally weathered wood, so Barbour had suggested the village headman likely lived there.
The intelligence officer was probably right. They couldn't be sure until somebody acknowledged the Frisians' presence.
"Hello?" Margulies shouted again. Nobody responded. Again.
She shifted the strap of her sub-machine gun. Probably not the best way to reassure the locals who were keeping indoors, but the gun was heavy, the sun was hot, and it had been a kidney-pounding ride in the curst jitney.
"The next time," she muttered to Barbour, "I check to see if a planet's got aircars before I agree to take a mission on it."
"There's aircars in Potosi," Barbour said. "One at least, from the signature. It probably belongs to one of the syndicates, though. Like everything else bigger than these cyclos."
Barbour viewed the village with interest and less apparent irritation than Margulies felt. From what Barbour said during the ride to Silva Blanca, he'd been purely a staff officer before transferring to the survey service. Probably hadn't seen as many mud/stick/straw hovels as she had in the field police.
At least the intelligence officer was loosening up a little. Margulies had been a bit worried about him during training. Couldn't complain about his competence, but a six-man team was too small for somebody whose eyes always seemed focused on his memories inside.
Margulies pulled out a handkerchief and lifted her helmet to wipe her brow. She wasn't going to turn straight around and return to Potosi. She was too stubborn for that, and anyway she didn't relish an immediate fifteen klicks in the jitney.
But she was getting ready to kick a gate open, and kick down the door of the house beyond if it came to that.
An argument erupted from the house in the next courtyard over. At least three people shouted simultaneously. Each voice seesawed higher, building on the volume of its competitors. It was obvious that none of the speakers was listening to the other two.
The door opened fiercely enough to slam against the front wall of the house. A young man surged out, twisting his arm free of the older woman and man who had tried to hold him back.
"Sure, I'll stay here!" the young man shouted. "Stay here and starve, that's a fine idea! Why should I go to Potosi and live like a human being, hey?"
"Live like a filthy killer!" the woman shrieked. "My son, a killer like the killers who take everything we grow! Will you come back and rob us yourself, Emilio?"
She tore the front of her dress open. Her breasts sagged like banana skins. "Why don't you just shoot me now? Wouldn't that be easier than breaking my heart?"
Margulies motioned Barbour with her toward the gate into the adjacent courtyard. The low fence permitted them a full view of the events.
"Look, I'll be able to send money back to you, mother," the boy said. He glanced at the woman, then jerked his eyes away in horror at her histrionic self-degradation. "Look, we're all starving here!"
"Blood money!" the woman shrieked. "Blood money! I'd rather die!"
She flung herself on the ground. It wasn't an effective ploy, because it freed the boy's arm from her gripping hands. He half-ran, half-skipped toward the gate. His father followed, bawling, "Emilio!"
The door of the headman's house opened a crack. When those within realized the strangers were going next door, a little man scurried out. He wore red pantaloons, a loose shirt of unbleached cotton, and a red headband.
"You there!" the headman shrilled. "Strangers! You don't belong here! I've called for help, you know. You can't just come in here with your guns and order us around!"
The only thing Margulies had said since arrival was, "Hello?" Barbour hadn't said that much. The whole business was informative about the social structure of Cantilucca, all right.
As Emilio reached for the gate-latch, he noticed the Frisians for the first time. He recoiled abruptly. The boy's father grabbed his arm from reflex, but both of them stared over the fence at the strangers instead of carrying on their quarrel.
"You there!" the headman called. "Strangers! Come away from there at once!"
Margulies made a quick decision and turned toward the headman's compound. "We're here to see a friend of mine," she said. "Angel Tijuca. Can you tell me where he lives?"
Emilio snatched the gate convulsively open and darted into the street. His father gestured toward him, but the near presence of the Frisians kept him from following the boy Emilio carried a short staff and slung his possessions from it. The bindle was so slight that its presence was better proof of poverty than nothing at all would have been.
"Blood money!" his mother cried. The boy bent forward, as though he were hiking toward Potosi against a sleet storm.
"We don't have any Tijucas here," the headman said. "You should go away now, before the guards arrive."
The fellow was short to begin with. He splayed his legs deliberately so that his eyes barely glinted over the fence. Margulies had the impression of a turtle peeping from a shell of palings.
"There's a vehicle with four driven wheels on the way, Mary," Barbour said. He looked doubtfully at the sub-machine gun she'd insisted he carry. His expression wasn't so much frightened as confused, that of a bachelor confronted with a squalling baby.
Margulies wasn't sure how Barbour had gathered the data—so far as she knew, the intelligence officer wore a commo helmet just like hers, with only the standard sensors. She'd have been willing to take Barbour's word for the situation, even without the headman's confirmation.
"That's no problem," she said, her voice reassuring. Though the implication was that there wouldn't be any trouble—and probably there wouldn't—Margulies' mind was considering the quantity of troops and weaponry carried by a patrol vehicle, and the degree to which she could count on Barbour for back-up in a firefight.
Not far, she was afraid. Of course, he might draw attention away from her by shooting himself in the foot.
"Angel was from Silva Blanca before he joined the Slammers," Margulies continued calmly to the headman. The local shifted his weight from one leg to the other, at a rate which increased with the intensity of Margulies' gaze. "And I got the impression he intended to return here after he retired. I just—"
An open car roared up from the other end of the town's only street. It had four oversized tires mounted on outriggers to keep the vehicle from tipping during off-road travel; a 2-cm tribarrel was mounted on a central pintle. There were four men aboard, one of them at the grips of the big gun. The muzzles swung as the vehicle swayed on its long-travel suspension.
The patrolmen wore red; red gloves, in the case of the driver.
Emilio's parents disappeared within their house. The boy was out of sight also, though Margulies thought he might have ducked behind a hedge. She didn't think there'd been enough time for him to have walked around the sweeping curve of the road to Potosi.
The vehicle shimmied to a halt. "Drop those guns!" shouted the man at the tribarrel. "Drop them right now or s'help me, I'll kill you!"
The driver was extending the collapsed shoulder stock of his sub-machine gun. The other two L'Escorials pointed weapons as well. The fat bore of the grenade launcher wavered between Margulies and Barbour without ever quite aiming at either one of them.
Margulies set her fists deliberately on her hips and faced the car, arms akimbo. "I'm Lieutenant Mary Margulies of the Frisian Defense Forces," she said in a harsh, hectoring voice. "An ally of L'Escorial if your Masters Luria can come to terms with President Hammer. Who in the hell told you to point a gun at me, boy?"
The driver's foot slipped off the brake. The car had a hub-center electric motor in each wheel. Their torque jerked the vehicle forward. The gunner fell back, lifting the tribarrel's muzzles. It was pure luck that he didn't manage to trigger a burst while he was at it.
The back of the vehicle was full of food and personal gear in wicker baskets. The tribarrel's gunner untangled himself from the clutter, awkwardly helped by one of his fellows. "Shut it off, Platt!" he shouted. "Shut it off, you dickhead! D'ye want to kill us all?"
The driver, a rabbity-looking fellow, cut the power. The motors' singing wound down against friction, leaving the village quieter than it would have been without that contrast.
The gunner slapped the grenadier on the shoulder to point him out of the crowded car, necessary so that the gunner too could step down behind him. The driver and the remaining gunman got out also. They stood on the other side of the vehicle; perhaps for the sake of cover.
The headman scurried out his courtyard gate to join the group in the street. "I told them they had no business here," he said. "And I called you right away, just like I was supposed to, sir."
"We do indeed have business here," Margulies said, frowning at the gunner, the apparent team leader. "I came to visit an old friend of mine from the FDF—Angel Tijuca. He was my driver for a year and a half."
The grenadier stared at the gunner. The gunner frowned in turn. "You know Angel, then?" he said.
"Yes, he was my driver," Margulies repeated. The L'Escorial didn't sound hostile for a change, so she didn't add a gibe to the statement. "He got me out of a tight spot, a really tight spot."
"Why's she here, then?" the driver asked plaintively. "Why this dung-heap?"
Jalousies covered the windows of the houses. Corners of the slats tilted up as eyes peered from within. The Lord knew what the tableau would seem to people who couldn't hear the discussion.
A naked child opened the door of a house halfway down the street. An adult arm shot from the shadows and dragged him back inside.
"Look, if you're friends of Angel, then there's no problem you being here," the L'Escorial gunner said. He scratched his beard stubble in puzzlement. "But he's not here, lady, he's in Potosi."
"Where in Potosi is he?" Margulies demanded. She massaged the palm of her left hand with her right thumb.
"Well, he's in headquarters, I suppose, lady," the gunner said. He was unsure of himself and nervous of giving offense—under circumstances where, moments ago, he'd thought he and his tribarrel were the Lord God Almighty.
"He's our training officer, lady," the driver blurted. "He's training officer of the L'Escorial syndicate."
"Well, you missed the live show," Sten Moden said as Coke opened the door of Hathaway House, "but you're in time for the first rerun."
The logistics officer had been sitting at the console the whole time Coke's party was gone. He stretched, reaching up to the lobby's high ceiling. His lopsided figure looked like an archaeological treasure, an oversized monument dragged from the midst of ruins.
Evie Hathaway stuck her head out from the kitchen. She ducked back, though she could still overhear the Frisians' conversation.
The team had effectively commandeered the lobby, the only volume in Hathaway House big enough to serve them as an operations room. They had to treat the Hathaways as allies. Georg might be ambivalent, but Evie's support was willing. Coke and his team had proved they were willing to stand up to the syndicates—if only to get a better price for the FDF's services.
"Getting good signals?" Niko Daun asked as he stripped off his cloak.
"Clear as a bell," Moden agreed. "The guards on the tin can at the gate think Dobrynyev, who quit the poker game a winner, was cheating. Though they're not sure how."
"Dang!" Niko Daun joked. He was brilliantly cheerful from success, from the end of immediate danger, and from having been part of a dangerous and successful team operation. "Now I gotta go back and stick a personal shadow on Dobrynyev so we can be sure. Knew I should've done that!"
"Let's see how the leaders' conference went after we were gone," Coke said. His tone was a little sharper than he'd intended. The men had a right to be pleased; it was just that the job wasn't finished yet.
"Ready to roll," Moden said mildly. He touched a control.
"We can't pay that!" Roberson's recorded voice said in impotent fury.
"I'd pay anything if I thought it would work," the Widow said. Despair made her empty, while it drove the merchant to frustrated anger. "But if we hire them, then the Lurias will simply bring in more foreigners of their own. Thanks to Suterbilt, they have first look at possibles coming through the port."
"You don't understand, Little Star," Peres interjected. His tone was disdainful, only lightly screened by a pretense of affection. "In a fingersnap, these mercenaries will go through anything L'Escorial can put up. Spaceport toughs and petty criminals, that's all their best is."
"Good assessment," Coke murmured.
Vierziger gave the other men a lazy smile, like that of a cat awakening. "I don't like them with brains," he said. "But I'm not convinced that Master Peres has disqualified himself as yet."
"A gun is a gun," Roberson muttered. "And just how did you expect to fund these wonderful troops, Peres? Out of your purse?"
"I didn't expect to fund them at all, old man," the gigolo sneered. "After all, the transaction can't go through the Bonding Authority ."
"Will they agree to that?" the Widow asked.
"Smart lady," Niko said to show that he'd picked up something from the discussion among the officers earlier.
"Not smart enough just to hire us and be done," Johann Vierziger said. "Wait and see."
"They'll have to agree to it," Peres insisted. "They know as well as we do that the Marvelans would have to take action if they heard we were bringing in a mercenary regiment. If the Bonding Authority's informed, the Marvelans will hear about it. The Frisians are here to deal, so that means they're willing to go outside the normal channels!"
"Maybe," Coke said. "Maybe we're willing."
"I don't see how that follows," Roberson said, but his voice had lost its vehemence.
"So our Frisian visitors arrive," Peres caroled, "they clean up our problem. They board the ship we provide, though they don't know the ship's ours. And the ship never gets home. The credit chips are aboard the same vessel, so they're never presented for payment. End of story, yes?"
"You see?" Vierziger said. "My type after all."
"But can we be certain they'll agree to act outside the Bonding Authority?" the Widow said. "Surely they'll recognize the danger!"
"It's not our doing, you see," Peres insisted. "The Marvelans really would quash the operation if they heard about it. We'll offer Master Coke a lagniappe of his own, five percent say. Enough to retire on happily, if he sees matters the right way and explains them to his superiors."
"I wonder," Sten Moden observed, "how carefully Mistress Guzman has gone over the contracts her friend lets on her behalf?"
Vierziger tittered. "Definitely my type," he said as he stretched his delicate, deadly fingers before him. "Dumber than dog squat."
Daun glanced at the gunman uneasily.
"I'm not sure . . ." muttered Roberson, but he wasn't sure enough even of his objections to proceed. Generalized fear hung over the merchant, darkening his vision and blurring details into a miasma of formless danger.
"We don't have any choice," the Widow said abruptly. "Every day our situation gets worse. I should have sold my interests to the Lurias when Pahlo died, but it's too late for that now. I'll call Major Coke."
"Not yet, Little Star," Peres said. "We don't want to look too eager and make them suspicious. Wait for this evening and we'll say we've been able to raise the money after all."
"In a way," Sten Moden said, "it would be surprising if clients understood just what they're buying from soldiers, and how much it's really worth to them."
As he spoke, he unconsciously kneaded his left shoulder with his remaining hand.
"All right," the Widow said. "If you say so, Little Heart. That's what I'll do."
Moden switched off the recording. Mistress Hathaway looked out of the kitchen again.
"And our move, Matthew?" Vierziger asked. He had his pistol out. He was rubbing the metalwork with a synthetic chamois which he carried folded in a pocket.
"L'Escorial doesn't seem to think they need us," Coke said, pursing his lips as he considered. "We should do something about that."
"Pepe Luria is off Cantilucca," Evie Hathaway volunteered from the doorway. "He's the active one, though he's the grandson. Raul and Ramon are probably waiting for him to get back before they start the killing. In earnest."
Coke nodded. "Do we know where the syndicates' installations are?" he asked Moden.
The logistics officer grimaced. "I can make some guesses," he said. "For fine tuning, we're going to need Barbour. Though if"—he turned toward the kitchen doorway—"Mistress Hathaway is willing to provide some local knowledge, I think we can do a pretty good job right now."
"What are you planning to do?" Evie said crisply.
"Something very costly to the syndicates," Coke said. "Are you in?"
"Yes," the woman replied. Her voice was just as flat as Coke's had been.
"Get on with it, Sten," Coke said. He looked at Johann Vierziger. "Come along, Johann," he said. "You and I are going back to Astra headquarters to give helpful advice."
"Yes, I thought that might be the case," Vierziger said, rising easily from his chair.
His fingers twitched the pistol in and out of his holster twice, to be sure that it didn't bind. He was smiling.
"Patrol One to Base," announced the console. The voice was recognizably that of Margulies, despite the stitching and compression of spread-band radio. "We're coming in. So don't get nervous when the door opens, Johann."
Coke paused with his hand halfway to the latch of the front door. It swung in, pushed by Barbour while the security lieutenant watched the street in a would-be negligent fashion.
"When did you become Patrol One?" Moden asked.
"Well, it didn't seem right to identify ourselves in clear," Margulies said in mild embarrassment. "If you like, sir, I can be Three from here on out. We don't know who's listening in."
"On this benighted planet, nobody is," Barbour said as he seated himself at his console.
He obviously didn't want to look like a mother desperate to check her child after the first day of school. Equally obviously, that was how he felt about having handed his equipment over to somebody else, however apparently trustworthy.
"Johann and I are going out," Coke said. "I'd like to hear about your trip when we get back, though."
He reached for the door again.
"Just a moment, sir," Barbour said. "Let me find Peres for you. He's left Astra headquarters."
Coke blinked at the intelligence officer. "You were listening in on all this while you were gone?" he asked.
"Yes sir," Barbour said. "Through the console. Ah—perhaps I should have asked your permission?"
He looked up in sudden concern. Barbour's sandy hair and unlined face gave him the appearance of being a boy at least a decade younger than he really was.
"I won't tell you how to do your job," Coke said. "I just—well, I didn't know you could do that from a remote location. Without special equipment."
"Yes sir," Barbour said. He grinned suddenly, unexpectedly. "Commo helmets are more special than most people realize. If you know how to program them, which isn't any great trick."
Right, thought Coke. He'd heard exceptional cooks talk the same way, in absolute honesty. Oh, there was nothing to it. Nor was there, for them. As opposed to 99.7 percent of the people who might have attempted the same dish, with results ranging from mediocre to disastrous.
The console display shifted fluidly as Barbour spoke. It locked into a section of streetscape five hundred meters west of Astra HQ. "Here's where he's gone, sir," Barbour explained. "I think he's on the third floor."
Coke hooked a finger to Evie Hathaway to join the group about the display. "How in blazes did you determine that?" he asked. "How did you even know Peres had left the building?"
"Voice print," Niko Daun said guessed.
"Right in one," Barbour agreed. "I told the software to analyze audio inputs and track Peres through it. He'd gone out past the bug at the courtyard gate a few minutes after you'd left, telling the guards he was going to the Bucket."
"The Bucket of Blood," Mistress Hathaway said. "Yes, it's in that building all right. It's an Astra bar. No worse than most places, not really."
"I tracked him through the external sensors here on Hathaway House," Barbour said in obvious—and justifiable—pride. "He was traveling with three companions, talking frequently enough that I could follow the audio after I lost video . . . though even with enhancement, I'll admit that there was a lot of guesswork at the end, sir."
"Your guesswork is what laymen call genius," Coke said. "You don't need to be modest with me, Bob. And Via! Call me Matthew, all right?"
"We need to place more sensors up and down the road," Daun said. "Visual, too. I'll get on that right now."
"Would you prefer to find Roberson, ah, Matthew?" Barbour asked. "Mistress Guzman hasn't left the building."
"No, no," Coke said. "Master Peres is the choice for this approach." He smiled tightly. "He's a gambler. That's what we need."
Niko Daun opened his case. He sorted through it with practiced fingers, pulling out items from several different pockets.
"Let me get something to drink," Margulies said, "and I'll give you some back-up, kid. No rest for the wicked, hey?"
She walked toward the saloon, rubbing the shoulder where the strap of her sub-machine gun had hung during the jitney ride. At the archway she turned and said, "When we all get back, Matthew, I'd like to talk to you about L'Escorial. I don't know how important it is."
Coke nodded. "Sure," he said.
"Shall we visit the Bucket of Blood, Matthew?" Vierziger said. "I wonder if the ambiance is as high-toned as the name."
He giggled as he opened the door.
The shill for the Bucket of Blood was a woman in pirate costume on whose shoulder perched either an aviform or a bird-featured robot (the thing/creature certainly wasn't a Terran parrot). She was bare-breasted, overweight, and seemed desperately tired.
From the way she kept trying to wipe invisible cobwebs from her face, Coke suspected that the woman had already overloaded on gage. Additional cones could no longer stave off the crash into near-coma that was due in an hour at the latest; they could only prolong its duration.
The outside stairs serving the third-floor tavern were wide enough for two to pass if they were careful. The burly Astra who came out while the pair of Frisians were midway above the second landing was deliberately clumsy. He lurched toward Vierziger, in the lead, in an obvious attempt to crush the smaller man against the railing for a joke.
Vierziger shifted stance and dodged past the Astra, right shoulder to right. Vierziger's hand moved too, probably with something in it, though even Coke couldn't be sure. Hand or object made the Astra's head tunk like a hammered melon. The man slid bonelessly down the stairs to the landing, where he sprawled.
The woman who'd accompanied the Astra out of the bar stared at the Frisians without speaking. Coke politely lifted his commo helmet as he passed her on the stairs.
The Bucket's waiters were husky, and the man in a protective cage by the door carried a beanbag gun. The big-bore weapon fired bagged shot at low velocity, giving the projectile an impact like the fist of the most powerful boxer who ever lived.
The beanbag gun could break bones, but it wasn't generally fatal. Coke presumed the intention was to avoid dangerous penetrations rather than to spare troublemakers' lives, however.
All the bar's staff and most of the clientele wore blue, though some of the patrons were obvious sailors who'd simply tied on a neckerchief of the correct color as a temporary measure. The music was loud and there was a life-sized holographic sex show going on in one corner, but the place wasn't exceptionally bad for its type.
Exceptionally tough was another matter. Most of the people, staff and patrons alike, carried guns. One wrong word and the bar would sound like Settlers' Day celebrations on a frontier planet.
Peres wore black, not blue. He and the three men with whom he'd left Astra HQ were in a corner booth with three women and a boy. Stim cones stood to attention on the table, with empties littering the stained floor beneath. Peres groped the crotch of one of the women beneath her dress, but his heart didn't seem to be in the activity.
Coke approached, Vierziger a pace behind to his leader's off side. An Astra with Peres looked up and grabbed for the machine pistol he carried in a shoulder holster.
There wasn't enough elbow room on the banquette seats for the fellow to draw. Peres saw the attempt, glanced blank-faced toward the oncoming Frisians, and broke into an oily smile.
"My friend Master Coke!" Peres called over the glass-edged music. The gigolo reached across the girl he'd been fondling to lay a finger of restraint on the wrist of the henchman with the machine pistol. "And Master Vierziger as well! Can I hope that you're here for pleasure?"
"Business first, Master Peres," Coke said. "But if it goes well, then in a couple months we'll all have both time and a reason to celebrate. Is there a place you and we could . . . ?"
"Here," Peres said without hesitation. He chucked the girl under the chin. "You lot, get out of here. We need the space."
"Hey!" said the girl. "You told us that—"
Peres' three henchmen stood up. The boy and the other two women were leaving the booth without objection. Peres hit the protesting woman with the same hand that had been between her legs a moment before. Her head snapped back and she sprawled across the banquette.
The guard with the beanbag gun turned at the commotion. When he saw Peres was involved—and that Peres didn't need further help—he looked away.
One of the Astras with Peres carried gloves thrust through the epaulette loops of his sleeveless blue shirt. He took the pair out and pulled one of them on. It had fishhooks sewn into the back, points forward.
The other two women shrieked and grabbed their fellow. They dragged her out of the booth before the Astra was ready to punch her. He aimed a kick, but she was too groggy to react.
No bones broken, just a bruise or two.
Coke smiled at Peres. The escorts sat down again.
Coke thought of the ruck of blood and offal the mines had left of the L'Escorial cordon. This time he fantasized that the uniforms were blue, and that some of the pellet-torn faces were those of the men before him.
He sat on one end of the semicircular banquette; Vierziger took the other end, across from his leader, so that they both had a way out of the booth. In a room full of guns and blue garb, that wasn't a free ticket home, but it was better than having to ask permission of Peres and his thugs before getting to your feet.
"What I was thinking, Master Peres . . ." Coke said.
"Adolpho, please," the gigolo said. "And Matthew and—"
He cocked an eyebrow toward Vierziger and smirked.
Vierziger smirked back, for the Lord's sake! "Johann, and of course you may," the little killer said.
"We realize that you're doubtful about committing so much money without certainty of the result, Adolpho," Coke resumed. "I'd like to show you that quite apart from armed force, we can help you through planning and—data collection."
He'd almost said "intelligence," meaning it in the military sense. Peres might have misunderstood by taking the word at its general meaning. That would have been correct also; but the wrong thing for Coke to have said aloud.
"What do you have in mind, then?" the gigolo said. Peres wasn't as stupid as Vierziger claimed while listening to the bugged conversation. Rather, he had no experience of the world outside Cantilucca, and he was too young to realize that Cantilucca was a very small pond.
"Your competitors warehouse their gage," Coke said. "With the information my colleagues and I provide, you can snatch the whole amount without any alarm being given. That's pure profit, a good quarter of the cost of the FDF's services."
"We could never do that!" said the Astra holding the hooked gloves. He looked as though Coke had told him to walk on water.
"Besides which," Vierziger said with a smile, "that will leave your L'Escorial friends with severe liquidity problems. They won't be able to bid for comparable services for several months."
Peres looked from one Frisian to the other. His right index finger sorted out one of the unused stim cones in the pile before him. He flicked it across the table to Vierziger. "Try this," he directed.
Vierziger rotated the thumbnail-sized gray cone. The casing didn't have the usual markings, lines, or spots to indicate the contents. "Gage?" he asked.
"Gage and," the gigolo said. "Go on, try it."
Vierziger shrugged and set the injector to his left wrist.
Peres wheeled and looked at Coke again. "Why are you offering me suggestions that'll handicap you in getting the Lurias to jack up your price?" he demanded harshly.
Coke smiled. "I'm not on Cantilucca to raise the price," he said. "I'm here to deal on the terms my superiors set me."
The smile broadened and grew as terrible as the one that played over Vierziger's lips in the aftermath of the mine blasts. "It may be that your L'Escorial friends think the way they greeted me cost them only a dozen dead. They would be wrong. It's cost them everything they have—so long as the Widow is willing to meet our minimum demands."
"The Widow is willing to do whatever I tell her," Peres sneered. "But how can I be sure you're not playing a double game? Let's you and him fight, hey? Astra and L'Escorial . . . and your troops land to loot the ruins."
A shudder rolled through Vierziger's frame. Coke looked at his companion with unexpressed concern. The little gunman waved a negligent hand when the spasm passed.
"What is it?" he asked Peres.
"Gage," the gigolo said. He smiled. "But cut with first-distillation tailings. Are you afraid now?"
Vierziger laughed. "Afraid of what? Dying? No, Master Peres, not me."
Vierziger flexed his hands above the table, showing that the nerves and muscles all responded normally. He laughed again. His voice sounded like snake scales scraping on rock. The nearest gunman groped toward his hip holster, then caught himself.
"There won't be a fight," Coke said to Peres. The pulse of the music overrode the discussion anywhere beyond the booth itself. The gigolo's decision to negotiate here had been a reasonable one. "There's only a few watchmen in the warehouse. I can show you how to get through the walls, and how to disconnect all the alarms before you start the operation."
"Are you afraid of a fight, Master Peres?" Vierziger asked in a voice too soft to be a gibe . . . and with a grin that could have sharpened knives.
"No," the Astra leader snapped. He looked at Coke. "Money in my purse so that there can be money in yours, hey? Very reasonable. So we'll do it—but you'll come along, Matthew, so that we can be sure the deal is that reasonable."
"All right," Coke agreed. "We'll go to your headquarters now and I'll brief you. I'll need a hologram projector—or I can get one from the hotel."
Peres' lips tightened. "We have projectors. We're civilized here, not some backwater, you know!"
Coke didn't laugh in the gigolo's face. Again, it wouldn't have been politic.
"Then let's go," he said, rising. "After I brief you, I'll send a message capsule to my superiors to update them. The operation itself will take place tonight, if you can get your end together that quickly."
"Yes, of course we can!" Peres snapped. He looked at Vierziger, rising also. "Are you going?"
"I wouldn't miss this for the world," said Johann Vierziger, stroking the inside of his left wrist with his right index finger, his trigger finger.
Coke viewed his surroundings from a cool vantage point above his flesh and prickling nerves. He would see Pilar when he routed the message capsule toward Nieuw Friesland. There would be time for dinner afterwards, and other things.
And it might be the last time Matthew Coke had.
Sten Moden emerged from the alley between a pair of six-story structures. Washed clothes hung by an arm or leg from poles thrust out of windows on the upper floors. The washing was the first sign of domesticity the Frisian had seen on Cantilucca.
The area behind the buildings along Potosi's single street was given over to garbage, storage, and living quarters. In a few places the forest had been cleared.
Generally the trees had died when human activities stripped their bark or poisoned their roots. Derelicts used dead limbs for firewood and sheltered beneath the fallen boles.
This ten-by-twenty-meter space equidistant from the two syndicate headquarters was one of the formal exceptions. Four large trees had been left at the corners to support a roof of structural plastic. A metal post peaked the center of one end; the sheeting was rectangular, while the area it covered was a rough trapezoid. One of the corner trees was dead, but for the moment it seemed steady enough.
The fenced area under the rigid marquee garaged vehicles ranging from jitneys to the elaborate air-car beneath which projected the legs of a man in multi-pocket overalls. The four lift fans whined in different keys. They were spinning out of synchrony, obvious even to ears less trained than Moden's.
A boy of twelve or so was in the driver's seat, adjusting controls in obedience to orders which the man under the chassis shouted. The boy saw Moden and chopped the car's throttles. "Father!" he called. "A man is here. A big man!"
Moden waved to show that he was friendly. The fence around the garage was a combination of woven wire, barbed wire, and the body panels of wrecked vehicles welded to metal posts.
The chained and locked gate was metal plating on a tubular frame. Judging from the power cables, it could be electrified. Moden didn't feel a prickle when he passed the back of his hand close, but he didn't actually touch the panel to be sure that the power was off either.
The man who pushed himself into sight from beneath the aircar was dark-skinned and solid-looking; in his late thirties or maybe forty standard years, though Moden didn't consider himself any judge of age.
"Yes sir?" the mechanic called.
"I want to rent a vehicle," Moden replied. "Maybe several, there's six of us. We landed from Nieuw Friesland yesterday on business."
The man relaxed slightly. He wiped his hands carefully on a rag, giving himself time to consider both the request and the stranger making it.
"My name's Moden," the logistics officer went on, adding reassurance. "Besides, I've worked maintenance myself and I wanted to see what your operation was like. Who decided to bring a Stellarflow to Cantilucca?"
He gestured toward the aircar, its fans now at idle.
The mechanic's face changed again, this time to an expression of interest and even hope. "I am Esteban Rojo," he said. "I am the owner here, though not of the aircar."
He glanced over his shoulder and called to the boy, "Pito? Go on back to the house now. It's time for your lessons."
He unlocked the chain. Moden stepped aside so that Esteban could swing the gate outward. The boy darted through, following the one-armed stranger with his eyes until disappearing into the alley.
Esteban gestured Moden into the enclosure before chaining and relocking the gate. "You're familiar with the Stellarflow, then?" he asked.
"There's people who swear by them," Moden said, looking critically at the ornate air-car. "Not the people responsible for maintenance, though. And I wouldn't have thought you could get parts for one closer than Earth. Are there many aircars on Cantilucca?"
"This one," the mechanic said glumly. "Adolpho Peres, a friend of the Widow Guzman, bought it on Delos and shipped it here. He's given me a tennight to get it running properly."
"No spares, I gather?" Moden said. He didn't ask when the tennight was up, nor whether the Widow's gigolo had bothered to state the obvious "or else" at the conclusion of his orders to Esteban.
"Stellarflows are of the finest Terran engineering," the mechanic quoted in flat irony. "They never break down. This one must have been damaged in shipping. But it's up to me to fix it!"
He shook his head. "I can't get the fans to synchronize," he said. "Peres says the car was fine on Delos, but I don't believe him. I think the problem's electronic, not mechanical, but I couldn't have gotten control boards from Earth in time even if I'd ordered them five days ago."
Moden walked around the air-car, lifting and closing access plates. "You couldn't get parts on Earth either," he said. "From the serial number, this unit's older than either of us are."
"Stellarflows are of the finest Terran engineering," Esteban chirped. "They never wear out."
"Right," said Moden. He opened the side door and lay down on his back in the driver's compartment so that he could look under the dashboard. "Their engineers' stools don't stink, either. Just ask them."
The logistics officer carried a multitool. He used it now to loosen fittings behind the wood-veneer interior panels. His size and single hand made it difficult to work in the strait confines, but he proceeded without asking for help.
"I thought it might be the fans themselves," Esteban said, peering through the opposite window in an attempt to follow what was going on. "They'd been replaced in the past with standard units, Gurneys, instead of Stellarflow parts. I thought that might be the problem, but the fans synch fine when I jury-rigged a chassis from a ground car."
"You do a lot of work for the Astras, then?" Moden asked. His face was hidden, but his casual tone fooled no one.
"I work for whoever pays me!" the mechanic snapped. "Or doesn't pay, half the time. The cyclo drivers, it's their livelihood. They haven't got any money when they break down, and sometimes they forget to pay when I get them running again. Do you have a problem with that?"
"Quite the contrary," Sten Moden said. He folded the powered multitool into its belt pouch, then straightened with a flat plug-in module in his hand.
"This car has an autopilot," Moden said.
"Yes, of course," the mechanic agreed. "But we don't have guidance beacons on Cantilucca. You can't engage it."
"Right," said Moden. "And the board driving it is identical to the board driving the manual duct controls. Except with luck this one isn't shot."
He handed the module to Esteban, who took it with dawning comprehension.
"May the Lord bless you and keep you, Master Moden," the mechanic whispered. Relief flooded through the dikes of insouciant carelessness with which the man had tried to armor himself against the coming deadline.
"Well, we're not out of the woods yet," Moden said. "If this board's packed it in too, then we cobble together something from scratch. Refrigerator controls from big trucks—four of them in parallel, that might work. Do you have reefer trucks here?"
"I could never manage that in five days!" Esteban said.
Moden got out of the car. "We can do it in twelve hours," he said flatly. "I'm not looking forward to dialing in four separate units though, I'll tell you that. But chances are this one's going to work."
Esteban, holding the module as if it were his first grandchild, started to crawl under the air-car again. He stopped. "You want to rent vehicles, Master Moden? What sort of vehicles? Anything you please."
"We'll talk about that later," Moden said. "Right now, I want to get my hands dirty."
His face set, then smiled again. He took out his multitool. "I've been in admin too long."
The big Frisian sat down, lay back, and slid himself under the blocked air-car with the certitude of the tide coming in.
The man guarding the garage beneath the building holding the Ortegas' apartment wore brown trousers, a green shirt, and a carbine which fired flechettes. He slid the gate closed as Pilar squeezed the port van into a space that was only wide enough by the thickness of the paint. Ten other vehicles, one of them a scarlet armored truck, had virtually filled the parking area.
"We'll have to get out through the back of the van," Pilar apologized to Matthew Coke.
Coke slipped between the seats ahead of the woman. "I've made low-level drops under worse conditions," he said, forcing a chuckle. He was keyed up and working very hard to conceal the fact.
You couldn't let your men know that you were as nervous as they were. Besides, the process of acting calm brought a degree of real relaxation.
"I appreciate you escorting me back, Matthew," Pilar said. "It's been . . . Until last night I could pretend it wasn't as bad as it seemed, but now I'm frightened to be out alone after dark."
"My pleasure." Coke said. "Besides, I could use the drink you offered."
The interior of the garage was painted half red, half blue. Both sides had staircases. Pilar walked toward the red one.
"Only a drink, you understand," she said. She didn't look at her companion as she spoke, and her left hand clutched her crucifix.
"I understand," Coke said in a neutral voice.
The guard smirked at the couple. He turned away when Coke gave him a flat glance from the base of the stairs.
"L'Escorial?" Coke said mildly. There was room to walk beside Pilar. He followed two steps back in order to keep his right hand clear of her if he had to draw.
"Not exactly," Pilar said. She paused just below the ground-floor landing to let a party of sailors exit noisily onto the street. They sounded happy, even the man who was reciting the Lord's Prayer in a singsong.
Pilar started up again when the way was clear. "The top floors, the fifth and sixth, are a, a brothel," she said. "They have the same—staff, I understand. But the entrances to the two floors are off different stairs so that there won't be fights. Our suite is on this side of the building, that's all."
The cape she wore for concealment draped her full hips and swayed as she moved. Coke smiled at the thought of Salome and the seven veils. Far more effective than just flaunting your bare tits over a railing . . . though that worked too; anything at all worked when a man was going into the red zone and needed to reassure himself.
Pilar had kept her explanation flat, purely informative. She cleared her throat and added with a touch of embarrassment, "It's actually a good location in Potosi, you realize. The security is so much better than at other buildings."
The door at the second landing had three separate lock plates, though they seemed to work from a single electronic key. As Pilar began to open them, a L'Escorial gunman turned at the floor above and continued down the stairs.
The man was drooling and wild-eyed from gage tailings. He held a 2-cm powergun. The loading gate was open, indicating that there wasn't a magazine in place, but Coke couldn't be sure whether or not there was a round in the chamber.
Coke walked up two steps and stood so that he blocked the stairwell. His hands were under his cape, the left one holding a needle stunner. Unlike powergun bolts, the little charged projectiles would penetrate the light film of the gray cape. "Good evening, sir!" he called. "L'Escorial forever!"
"Fuck you," the gunman mumbled. He braced himself against the wall and pointed his weapon at the Frisian's face.
"Inside quickly!" Pilar screamed as she flung the door inward.
Coke shot the L'Escorial in both knees. The gunman's legs splayed outward like those of a dancing marionette. His tailbone slammed violently down on the step behind him.
The powergun was pointing at the ceiling when it went off. Cyan light and the wham! of enclosed air superheated filled the stairwell.
The 2-cm bolt shattered the lower half of the cast-in-place concrete. It left a cloud of powder and the rusty squares of reinforcing wire across a meter-wide crater.
Coke lunged into Pilar's suite and slammed the metal door behind him. He held the panel shut while the woman reset the triple locks.
"Well!" Coke said, expelling a deep breath. He stripped off his cape and threw it down. He felt hot and trembly.
The floor was carpeted. Coke put the needle stunner on safe and dropped it onto the cape. His grip had been so fierce that his hand hurt. He'd trained himself to shoot ambidextrously, but using his left added a level of stress—
Necessary here so that he could have drawn the powergun with his master hand.
Pilar removed her own cape. Her face was calm until the composure crumbled like ice in a spring freshet. She threw herself sobbing into Coke's arms.
"I hate this place!" she cried. "This house and this town and this planet! Oh Lord, I wish I were dead!"
Coke stroked the back of her neck with his left hand. With his right he tilted her face and kissed her. Her lips were wet with tears.
"Don't wish that," he whispered. "It's not as bad as that."
"This place is Hell and I'm in Hell," Pilar moaned. "Oh, if only we had never left Marvela . . . ."
Coke kissed her again. He lifted her breast against his broad chest with his left hand.
"Please," she said. She put her hand to his and twisted her torso away. "Please."
The room was lighted by three globes, weaving a simple pattern as they hung unsupported in the air. The furnishings were of handmade wood rather than the plastic extrusions that Coke had seen everywhere else in Potosi. The syndicates preferred to import goods and even food rather than to turn the labor force into production of anything except gage.
Coke held Pilar by waist and shoulder. He kissed her again. "Your husband isn't here," he said. "You know he isn't going to be back tonight."
He thought of adding that Terence Ortega had gone to an apartment at the other end of town at midday. Barbour would warn them if Ortega left.
Coke decided not to explain that. Telling Pilar there was an electronic tag on her husband would have indicated the degree of preparation that Coke had made for this moment.
Coke was romantic—you didn't stay a soldier because of the pay and benefits. But you didn't survive as a soldier if you didn't plan each possible step, and that carried over to the rest of Coke's life as well. Women tended not to see things the same way.
Pilar snatched herself out of his grip again. "Terry's behavior doesn't affect my vows!" she said angrily to the far wall.
"Pilar," Coke said softly "I'm—not real settled just now. Forgive me if I misspoke."
He put his hands on her shoulders and guided her around to kiss him again.
"Oh, Matthew," she said, "you could have been killed, I know. Because of me. But . . ."
Her fingers brushed his cheek, dusted by tiny fragments of the concrete ceiling. He kissed her, pulling her toward him without resistance.
"Matthew," she said desperately. She caught his hands as they rose again toward her breasts. "Matthew, I'm so sorry, please."
She stepped away, still holding his hands. "Let me get you that drink, but then I'm afraid you'd better go."
He lifted his chin and dipped it again. His face was as placid as that of a saint's statue. He lowered his hands to his sides. "That's all right," he said. "But I don't think I'll have the drink."
Pilar began crying again. She swallowed the sobs, but the tears pulsed down her glistening cheeks. She held her crucifix with both hands. "I'm sorry, I just can't," she whispered. "I want to, but I can't."
An internally lighted button controlled each lock-plate from the inner face of the door. Coke thumbed the buttons in turn, switching them from green to red.
"No problem," he said without emphasis. He donned the cape again. His hands and the needle stunner vanished beneath the gray shimmer.
"Matthew?" Pilar said. "Please? Call me when you've gotten back to Hathaway House safely."
Coke looked over his shoulder at her. "I've got various business tonight," he said. "If it goes well, I'll probably see you tomorrow when I send another message capsule off from the port."
Pilar caught the door behind him and kept it from swinging to. She watched through the crack.
Instead of going down to the street, Coke started up the stairs toward the brothel.
Moden and Esteban Rojo could have finished the job in an hour and a half, if they'd had good luck and the right tools. They had neither.
Removing the Stellarflow's lower electronics module required either special equipment or great care. Moden was careful, but years of vibration had crystallized a plastic bearing. The joint snapped, and then they had to cut the other three straps as well because the clamps had frozen.
Four hours after they'd started—straps replaced with pieces cut from sheet stock, bearing freed in a sonic bath from the multitool, and journals cannibalized from one of the pair of redundant trunk-lid cantilevers—Esteban ran the fans up and down in perfect unison before shutting off the power.
"As good as new!" he announced.
Moden stretched mightily. "Which means," he said, "it's almost as good as a Frisian air-car that would have cost half as much free-on-board . . . but Via, some people have to have their Terran technology."
He'd acted in place of a hydraulic jack when the bow of the car had to come up 20 centimeters. Judging from the weight, Stellarflow had used iridium for the frame. Moden ached, but it felt good to have been doing physical labor again.
"Will you eat with us, Sten?" Esteban asked. He tossed a rag to Moden so that the big man could wipe his—hand. Esteban's mouth opened in embarrassment.
Moden pinned the rag between his knees and dragged his hand through it determinedly. "Got the big chunks off," he said.
He looked at the mechanic. "At your apartment, you mean, Esteban? I don't want to be in the way."
"We have a cafe," Esteban said with dignity. The Frisian had skirted as delicately as possible the question of whether Esteban could afford to feed guests, but the well-meant concern still rankled. "My wife and children run it, Pito and our daughter Annunciata; and I help when there's time. But I ask you there as a guest, not a customer, please?"
"Then I'd be honored," Moden said. He flicked the rag through the air, caught it in a fold; and folded it a second time, into a square, against his thigh.
Rojo's cafe was on the building's second floor, with the entrance and sign—The Sacred Heart—near the mouth of the alley down which Moden had walked to reach the garage behind. A dozen locals were present in the single small room, two families with children as well as individual adults. The food odors were piquant and wonderful.
The girl who shuttled plates from the serving window was in her early teens and strikingly beautiful. "My daughter, Annunciata," Esteban said proudly. "Nunci, I want you to meet Master Sten Moden!"
The girl dropped into a curtsy, though she carried a serving plate in either hand and there wasn't, Moden would have thought, space enough for her knees to dip as they did.
The patrons of The Sacred Heart sat at a single table supported on six pillar-like legs. The table was of native wood with a subtle grain, polished by use into an attractive brazen patina. Seating was on the pair of full-length benches. There was barely enough room between the cafe's walls and the ends of the table for patrons to edge by to the side away from the door—the side from which Nunci served.
"Rosaria!" Esteban called. A woman, older and much fatter than Annunciata, stuck her head out of the serving window.
The mechanic gestured to the cafe's patrons, all of whom were staring at him and his huge companion already. "Everyone! This is our great good friend, who repaired the aircar which had me tearing out my few remaining hairs. Rosa, your special chicken and rice for our guest—and plenty, he has the strength of ten men and no doubt he eats like ten!"
"Well, I'll be able to do justice to the meal," Moden said. The undoubted virtues of Hathaway House didn't include the cooking of Master Hathaway, who attempted that task.
Esteban led the Frisian to the open seat in the center of the table, facing the door. Moden's knees straddled the table's central leg. There was a general shifting and good-humored discussion to create a second place into which Esteban squeezed himself.
Pito popped out of the door to the kitchen and presumed living quarters, carrying a basket into which he dropped dirty dishes. They were plastic and crude, locally pressed from exterior sheeting.
Esteban whispered in his daughter's ear. She passed the message to her mother at the window and received two small glasses with a bottle of ruby liqueur, three-quarters full.
"From my father-in-law's farm," Esteban said as he poured. "That's where we get the food as well."
Annunciata reached past to put a serving platter, not a normal dish, of chicken with rice and a variety of heavily processed vegetables on the table before Moden. "Grandpa Mordechai won't grow gage," she said. "He says people must eat, mustn't they?"
"To your health!" Esteban said, raising his glass.
"And yours," the Frisian responded. He jostled the neighbor on his right in grabbing his glass. The liqueur was thick, almost a syrup, with a fruity flavor. Not unpleasant, and there was enough alcohol to bite the back of Moden's tongue.
"Both syndicates have been after Mordechai," Esteban said with a frown. "L'Escorial pushed him off his old farm, so he terraced a hillside that nobody claimed. I helped, the whole family helped, and his neighbors too. He's stubborn. I agree with him, but I worry."
The food was delicious. "Have things gotten worse recently with the sides arming?" Moden asked through a bite.
"No, no," Esteban said. "Since so many of the gunmen came here to Potosi, there's fewer left to bother the farmers. Most of the farms grow food for themselves, but they grow gage too for one syndicate or the other. So that they'll be protected."
A family got up to leave. The wife paid Rosaria with three separate credit chips. From the prices chalked beside the serving window, the five dinners totaled less than ten pesos—one and a half Frisian thalers. The citizens of Potosi didn't have easy access to credit terminals which could have combined the small amounts into a single chip for convenience.
The outer door opened. The chatter stilled. Three men wearing blue shouldered in. All carried powerguns: a pair of sub-machine guns and the third man festooned with four separate holstered pistols as well as a selection of knives.
Esteban stood up, awkwardly since he had to step over the bench to do so. Citizens—his neighbors—slid to either side, half-crouching toward the ends of the room.
"Gentlemen," Esteban said, "this is not a bar. I'm sure you'll find better entertainment elsewhere."
The leader of the Astra gunmen appeared to be the man with the pistols. "You got a red sign downstairs,"he said. "We thought we'd check the place out."
"The sign is the sacred heart of our lord Jesus Christ!" Rosaria blurted from the serving window. "We have nothing to do with L'Escorial here!"
"Nunci," Esteban said in a low voice. "Go help your mother in the kitchen."
"She stays," ordered an Astra. He wagged the muzzle of his sub-machine gun to emphasize the point.
"They used to have a red sign," the gunman to the leader's other side tittered. "It had a little accident when we come by it."
The trio moved further into the cafe. The local patrons flowed behind them on both sides and out the door, like damping fluid when a shock absorber compresses.
Moden wore a pistol in a belt holster. He wasn't a particularly good shot. He certainly wasn't good enough to drop three men in the fraction of a second he'd have before the sub-machine gun aimed at him blew his head off.
"Please," Esteban said. "This is just a cafe. We have no sides, we are poor people."
The leader took the bottle of liqueur and drank directly from it, eying Moden past the plane of sluggish red fluid. He handed the bottle to the man aiming at Moden. "Who's the crip?" he asked.
"My name's Sten Moden," the Frisian answered calmly. His hand lay on his lap. The closed flap of his holster was in sight of the gunmen. "I'm from Nieuw Friesland, a businessman."
"He's a leftie!" said the Astra who'd warned Nunci not to leave. "Get it? A leftie!"
Without warning he triggered a single shot. The cyan bolt struck near the top of the kitchen door. Wood blew outward in blazing splinters, leaving a hole the size of a soup plate in the thin panel.
Rosaria screamed. Nunci stood transfixed, and Esteban's fists balled.
Sten Moden gripped the table's central leg. He lifted and hurled forward the massive piece of furniture with all his strength. Both sub-machine guns fired, into the tabletop and ceiling as the huge club pistoned toward the three Astras. Moden felt the shock of the bolts through his hand, but the table was too solid for the light charges of a pistol or sub-machine gun to tear it apart.
The tabletop hit the far wall, or almost, with a soggy thump. Moden pulled back, then slammed his weapon toward the wall again with his shoulder behind it.
There was a gurgling cry. When Moden withdrew the table the second time, sub-machine guns and other accoutrements clattered to the floor behind it.
Annunciata screamed. She threw herself into her father's arms.
Moden gave a convulsive gesture that slammed the table back down on its six legs. He was trembling all over. He had to brace his hand on the scarred top in order to continue standing. Powergun bolts had blown smoldering craters in the wood.
Moden didn't try to look over the table to see what had become of his victims, though he knew he ought to. One of the Astras might still have enough strength to pull a trigger . . . .
But probably not.
The Rojo family spoke or cried in four vocal ranges, all of them incoherently. The Frisian closed his eyes and opened them, drawing deep breaths.
The cafe's outer door flew open.
Mary Margulies lunged in behind a sub-machine gun. Niko Daun followed her with a set expression and another sub-machine gun.
The would-be rescuers looked at Moden, then looked at their feet. "Blood and martyrs," Niko said.
Margulies straightened from her crouch. She put her weapon on safe and cleared her throat. "Ah," she said. "Barbour, you know he monitors the audio from the helmets. He thought you might need a hand."
Sten Moden looked at his palm. His adrenaline-charged grip had left white valleys where it held the corners of the table leg.
"No," Moden said. "One was enough."