At All Costs

by David Weber

  He grimaced and reached inside his shirt, removing the padding, and tossed it into the back seat of his air car. A quick squirt from a small aerosol can, and the padding dissipated into a wispy fog.

  He adjusted his clothing slightly, then unlocked the grimy vehicle beside the air car in which he had arrived. He settled himself at the controls, brought up the counter-grav, and flew calmly away. He inserted the vehicle into one of the capital city's outbound traffic lanes, switched in the autopilot, and leaned back in his seat, wondering idly whether or not the vehicle he'd abandoned had been picked up and stripped yet.

  If it hadn't, it would be very shortly, of that he was confident.

  * * *

  Sir James Bowie Webster smiled pleasantly, despite the fact that his teeth badly wanted to grit themselves, as he stepped out of his official diplomatic limousine in front of the Greater New Chicago Opera House. He'd never liked opera, even at the best of times, and the fact that the Sollies prided themselves that they did this-like everything else-better than anyone else in the known universe irritated him even more.

  If pressed, Webster was prepared to admit that the citizens of planets like Old Earth and Beowulf at least meant well. The fact that they had little more clue than a medieval peasant about things that went on outside their own pleasant little star systems was unfortunate, but it didn't result from any inherent malevolence. Or even stupidity, really. They were simply too busy with the things that mattered to them to think much about problems outside their own mental event horizon. But the fact that they complacently believed that the Solarian League, with its huge, corrupt bureaucracies and self-serving, manipulative elites, was still God's gift to the galaxy made it difficult, sometimes, to remember that most of their sins were sins of omission, not commission.

  At least he and Carmichael were making some progress dealing with the bloody events in Talbott. Accounts of the Battle of Monica were really only just beginning to trickle in to Old Earth, and from everything he'd seen so far, the revelations were going to get worse, before they got better. The good news, he supposed, was that it was remotely possible even the Solarian public might get exercised over such flagrant-

  Webster never saw the pulser in the hand of the Havenite ambassador's chauffeur.

  * * *

  "What? What did you say?" William Alexander, Baron Grantville, demanded incredulously.

  "I said Jim Webster's been shot," Sir Anthony Langtry said, his face ashen, his voice that of a man who couldn't-or didn't want to-believe what he heard himself saying.

  "He's dead?"

  "Yes. He and his bodyguard were killed almost instantly, right outside the Opera House, of all goddamned places!"

  "Jesus." Grantville closed his eyes on a stab of pain. He'd known James Webster most of his life. They'd been personal friends, but not nearly so close as Webster and Hamish had been. This was going to hit his brother hard, and the entire Star Kingdom was going to be stunned-and enraged-by the highly popular admiral's death.

  "What happened?" he asked after a moment.

  "That's the really bad part," Langtry said grimly. The Foreign Secretary had come to Grantville's office in person with the news, and something about his tone sent a chill down Grantville's spine.

  "Just the fact that he's dead is bad enough for me, Tony," the Prime Minister said a bit more tartly than he'd really intended to, and Langtry raised a hand, acknowledging the point.

  "I know that, Willie. And I'm sorry if it sounded like I didn't. I didn't know him as well as you and Hamish, but what I did know about him, I liked a lot. Unfortunately, in this instance, the way he was killed really is worse."

  The Foreign Secretary drew a deep breath.

  "He and one of his bodyguards were shot and killed by the Peep ambassador's personal driver."

  "What?!"

  Despite all his years of political training and a basic personality which remained calm in the face of disaster, Grantville erupted to his feet behind his desk, leaning forward over it to brace both hands on its top. Eyes of Alexander blue blazed with consternation-and rage-and for just a moment it looked as if he intended to vault physically across the desk.

  Langtry didn't reply. He simply sat, waiting for the Prime Minister to work through his shock the same way he had when the news first hit his office. It took several seconds, and then, slowly, Grantville settled back into his chair, still staring at Langtry.

  "That's what happened," Langtry said finally, after the Prime Minister had seated himself once more. "In fact, it's pretty damned open and shut. The driver's dead, of course-Webster's second security man nailed him, and three Solly cops at the Opera as additional security saw the whole thing. In fact, one of them got his sidearm out in time to put at least one dart of his own into the driver, and one of the others got the entire thing on his shoulder cam. It's all on chip, and they sent the visual record out with the dispatch."

  "My God," Grantville said, almost prayerfully.

  "Wait, it gets better," Langtry said grimly. "The driver wasn't a Havenite national. He was a Solly, provided by the limo service with the transportation contract for the Peeps New Chicago embassy."

  "A Solly," Grantville repeated carefully.

  "A Solly," Langtry confirmed, "who's received the equivalent of just over seventy-five thousand Manticoran dollars in unrecorded, unreported credit transfers from a Havenite diplomatic account."

  Grantville stared at him, far beyond consternation and into the realm of pure shock.

  "What could they have been thinking?" He shook his head. "Surely they didn't think they could get away with this?"

  "I've asked myself both those questions. But, to be frank, there's another one that's far more pressing at the moment."

  Grantville looked at the Foreign Secretary, who shrugged.

  "Why?" he asked simply. "Why should they do this?"

  * * *

  "God damn them!" Elizabeth Winton snarled as she stormed back and forth like a caged tigress, pacing the carpet behind the chair in which she should have been sitting.

  Her fury was a living, breathing thing in the conference room, and Ariel crouched on the back of her chair, ears glued flat to his skull, scimitar claws shredding its upholstery like kneading scalpels. Samantha was in little better condition, her eyes half-closed as she crouched on the back of Hamish Alexander-Harrington's chair and fought to resist the other 'cat's blazing rage.

  "Don't these fuckers ever learn a goddamned thing?" Elizabeth hissed. "What the hell did they-"

  "Just a minute, Elizabeth."

  The Queen whirled back towards the table, her face still suffused with rage, as White Haven spoke.

  "What?" she snapped.

  "Just... calm down for a second," he said, his own expression that of a man who'd taken a physical wound. "Think. Jim Webster was my friend for over seventy T-years. You can't possibly be more furious about his murder than I am. But you just asked a very important question."

  "What question?" she demanded.

  "Don't they ever learn," he said. She glared at him, and he looked back steadily. "Don't misunderstand me. And don't think for an instant, if it turns out the Peeps did this, that I won't want them just as dead as you do. For God's sake, Elizabeth-they already tried to kill my wife!"

  "And your point is?" she asked in a slightly more moderate tone.

  "And my point is that this whole thing is stupid. Assume the Peeps have access to whatever they used to make Timothy Mears try to kill Honor. In that case, why in hell would they choose their own ambassador's driver as their assassin? They could have picked someone with absolutely no connection to them, so they used his driver. Does that make any sense to you at all?"

  "I-" Elizabeth began. Then she paused, obviously beginning to think at last.

  "All right," she said, after a moment. "I'll grant that that's a legitimate question. But what about the credit transfers the Solly police turned up?"

  "Ah, yes," White Haven said. "The credit transfers. Transfe
rs made directly out of Havenite diplomatic funds, and made so clumsily the police turned them up within less than seven hours of beginning their investigation of the killer. And let's not forget, that killer was on what anyone but an idiot must have recognized would be a suicide mission. Like the reports say, there were police eyewitnesses. At the very least, he was looking at certain arrest and conviction for murder. Would you do that for seventy-five thousand dollars? How much good would the money do you lying dead on the sidewalk, or after it was confiscated by the courts when they convicted and sentenced you for murder?"

  "Maybe it's a double-blind," Colonel Ellen Shemais suggested.

  The head of Elizabeth's personal security detachment's job was at least half that of a spook. As a consequence, Elizabeth had made the colonel her liaison to the Special Intelligence Service, as well as her chief bodyguard.

  "What do you mean, Ellen?" the Queen asked now.

  "I mean Earl White Haven's objections are extremely well taken, Your Majesty," Shemais said. "It's got to be the stupidest way to arrange an ostensibly deniable assassination I've ever heard of, and the Queen's Own is something of an authority on the history of assassination. They might as well have had their ambassador pull the trigger himself. So, either they didn't do it, and someone's gone to enormous lengths to convince us they did, or else they deliberately set it up this way so they could scream they were being framed."

  "Why would they do that, Colonel?" Baron Grantville asked.

  "I don't know. The problem is, they could have a reason we simply don't know anything about that makes it seem perfectly logical to them. I can't personally conceive of what it might be, but it's the only explanation I can come up with for them to have set this up."

  "What about the time element?" Langtry asked. "What if this was something they'd decided simply had to be done quickly, and they didn't have time to set it up better?"

  "Won't wash, Mr. Secretary," Shemais said, shaking her head. "The earliest of those credit transfers was over three months old. So either they had a limousine driver-someone who was driving their own limousines, not someone else's-on their payroll for three months and then tapped him for this suicide mission, as the Earl described it, or else we were supposed to find the transfers. And if they recruited him specifically to kill Admiral Webster, then apparently they did it three months ago. Which was plenty of time for them to have set up another assassin, one with absolutely no connection to them, instead."

  "But who else could have wanted Jim dead?" Grantville asked.

  "I can't answer that one, either, Prime Minister," Shemais admitted candidly. "But while you're asking it, you might also want to ask who else could have wanted him dead, and had the resources and technical capability to put this together, if it wasn't the Peeps? If it wasn't them, someone went to an awful lot of trouble to convince us it was."

  "I don't think it was anyone else," Elizabeth growled. She was marginally less furious, and Ariel allowed her to lift him from the sadly shredded topof her chair as she seated herself at last. She settled the 'cat in her lap, and frowned harshly.

  "I'm willing to admit at least the theoretical possibility that it wasn't the Peeps," she said, "but I don't believe it was someone else. I think it was them. I think they did it for some reason we can't know, possibly something Webster had found out on Old Earth that they didn't want us to learn about. Maybe even something he hadn't realized yet that he knew. Like you say, Ellen, we can't know what might have seemed like a logical reason to them. And as for the credit transfers, they could have had him doing something else before they picked him for this one."

  "But-" Hamish began, only to have her cut him off with a quick, sharp shake of her head.

  "No," she said. "I'm not going to play the think and double-think game. For now-for the moment-I'll operate on the assumption that it may not have been the Peeps. You've got that much. We'll go ahead with the summit, and we'll see what they have to say. I'd be lying if I said what's happened wasn't likely to make me a lot less willing to believe anything they say on Torch, but I'll go. But I'm getting incredibly tired of having these bastards murder people I care about, members of my government, and my ambassadors. This is it, as far as I'm willing to go."

  Anthony Langtry looked as if he wanted to argue, but instead, he only closed his mouth and nodded, willing to settle for what he could get.

  Elizabeth glared around the conference room one more time, then climbed back out of her damaged chair, nodded to her three cabinet secretaries, and left, accompanied by Colonel Shemais.

  Chapter Fifty-One

  "Where's Ruth?" Berry Zilwicki, Queen of Torch, asked plaintively.

  "Saburo says she's running late, girl," Lara said, shrugging with the casual informality which was such a quintessential part of her.

  The ex-Scrag was still about as civilized as a wolf, and she had a few problems grasping the finer points of court etiquette. Which, to tell the truth, suited Berry just fine. Usually, at least.

  "If I've got to do this," the Queen said firmly, "Ruth has to do it with me."

  "Berry," Lara said, "Kaja said she'll be here, and Saburo and Ruth are already on their way. We can go ahead and start."

  "No." Berry flounced-that really was the only verb that fit-over to an armchair and plunked down in it. "I'm the Queen," she said snippily, "and I want my intelligence advisor there when I talk to these people."

  "But your father isn't even on Torch," Lara pointed out with a grin. Thandi Palane's "Amazons" had actually developed senses of humor, and all of them were deeply fond of their commander's "little sister." Which was why they took such pleasure in teasing her.

  "You know what I mean!" Berry shot back, rolling her eyes in exasperation. But there was a twinkle in those eyes, and Lara chuckled as she saw it.

  "Yes," she admitted. "But tell me, why do you need Ruth? It's only a gaggle of merchants and businessmen." She wrinkled her nose in the tolerant contempt of a wolf for the sheep a bountiful nature had created solely to feed it. "Nothing to worry about in that bunch, girl!"

  "Except for the fact that I might screw up and sell them Torch for a handful of glass beads!"

  Lara looked at her, obviously puzzled, and Berry sighed. Lara and the other Amazons truly were trying hard, but it was going to take years to even begin closing the myriad gaps in their social skills and general background knowledge.

  "Never mind, Lara," the teenaged Queen said after a moment. "It wasn't really all that funny a joke, anyway. But what I meant is that with Web tied up with Governor Barregos' representative, I need someone a little more devious to help hold my hand when I slip into the shark tank with these people. I need someone to advise me about what they really want, not just what they say they want."

  "Make it plain anyone who cheats you gets a broken neck." Lara shrugged. "You may lose one or two, early, but the rest will know better. Want Saburo and me to handle it for you?"

  She sounded almost eager, and Berry laughed. Saburo X was the ex-Ballroom gunman Lara had picked out for herself. Berry often suspected Saburo still didn't understand exactly how it had happened, but after a brief, wary, half-terrified, extremely... direct "courtship," he wasn't complaining. On the face of it, theirs was one of the most unlikely pairings in history-the ex-genetic-slave terrorist, madly in love with the ex-Scrag who'd worked directly for Manpower before she walked away from her own murderous past-and yet, undeniably, it worked.

  "There is a certain charming simplicity to the idea of broken necks," Berry conceded, after a moment. "Unfortunately, that's not how it's done. I haven't been a queen for long, but I do know that much."

  "Pity," Lara said, and glanced at her chrono. "They've been waiting over half an hour," she remarked.

  "Oh, all right," Berry said. "I'll go-I'll go!" She shook her head and made a face. "You'd think a queen would at least be able to get away with something when her father is half a dozen star systems away!"

  * * *

  Harper S. Ferry stood in the thr
one room, arms crossed, watching the thirty-odd people standing about. He knew he didn't cut a particularly military figure, but that was fine with him. In fact, the ex-slaves of Torch had a certain fetish for not looking spit and polish. They were the galaxy's outcast mongrels, and they wanted no one-including themselves-to forget that.