“Exactly,” Lafayette said. “In shorthand, it means that not everybody is cut out for top-level management, and it sounds like Adames isn’t. Maybe he’s got all the stripes he needs to wear.”
Maker almost glared at him. “Are you telling me you won’t do it?”
“Not at all,” Lafayette clarified, shaking his head. “All I’m saying is that, based on his history, it may not stick.”
“We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.”
“Okay. Any other promotions we need to push through?”
Maker shook his head. “No. Nobody else has enough time in grade.”
“So is that it then?” the admiral inquired. “We’ve covered the main issues you’re concerned with?”
“Well, there’s some other stuff on the chip dealing with the practicalities of life – things like medical care, family leave, and so on.”
“Okay, none of that should be a problem.”
“And I’m going to want it all in writing,” Maker added. “And signed by someone with appropriate authority.”
“That’s a given,” the admiral stressed. “Now, if you’re all done, we’ve got some conditions of our own.”
“Why am I not surprised?” Maker muttered rhetorically, then looked pointedly at the admiral. “Okay, what?”
“First of all, the mission gets underway within three days,” Lafayette said.
Maker frowned. “I’d argue that’s contingent upon us getting the ship in a timely fashion, as well as everything on the wish lists I gave you.”
“You’ll have it all tomorrow,” the admiral asserted.
“Still, it’s going to be a pretty tight schedule.”
“Make it work,” Lafayette said dismissively. “Next, Browing goes with you.”
Maker’s brow crinkled in thought, but he simply nodded in response. This was what he had suspected the moment Lafayette had mentioned Browing reaching out to people about a new ship: that the man was coming along for the ride.
“Ostensibly, this is a diplomatic mission,” Lafayette continued, “so it’s necessary to have an appropriate government liaison in attendance. Browing has the requisite credentials, and – despite your past issues with him – I thought you’d find him preferable to someone new.”
“I’m fine with Browing,” Maker admitted truthfully. “Any conflict we previously had is water under the bridge.”
“Good to hear. And by the way, you yourself will officially be designated a military attaché.” Noting that Maker frowned upon hearing this, the admiral went on, saying, “It just means that you’re a military member–”
“Who’s attached to a diplomatic mission,” Maker interjected. “Yeah, I know what an attaché is.”
“Sorry,” Lafayette murmured. “You just looked confused for a second.”
“I’m looking confused because you’ve been selling this as simple escort duty. Now I’ve got Browing tagging along as a diplomat and me as a military attaché. What’s with all the skullduggery?”
“Ambassador Vuqja has bought into our approach to diplomacy,” Lafayette explained, “including the application of certain concepts, such as diplomatic immunity.”
“I get it,” Maker said with a nod. “If this thing blows up for some reason, we’re protected. Allegedly.”
“Assuming you mean blowing up figuratively as opposed to literally, that’s the general idea.”
Maker snorted in derision and shook his head, muttering, “Unbelievable.”
Lafayette looked at him with raised eyebrows. “What’s the problem? I thought diplomatic immunity would give you some peace of mind.”
“Even if I thought the Vacra would respect and honor the concept, this just opens a new can of worms.”
The admiral frowned. “In what sense?”
“Diplomatic immunity is generally a two-way street,” Maker explained. “That means Skullcap will be protected while we’re on this little jaunt.”
Lafayette seemed to ponder this for a moment before stating, “I suppose that’s true.”
“So Skullcap gets escorted home by his enemies, and even if he does something untoward along the way, we can’t touch him,” Maker noted, then shook his head in disbelief. “He couldn’t have planned this any better.”
Lafayette gave Maker a somber stare. “Does this mean you’re having second thoughts about the mission?”
Maker seemed to contemplate for a moment, then shook his head. “No. As long as the members of your little Star Chamber agree to everything I’ve asked for, we have a deal.”
“Star Chamber?” Lafayette echoed. “You don’t think much of us, do you?”
“Would you prefer it if I called you a ‘cabal’? Because that was my first inclination.”
The admiral chuckled. “A rose by any other name, Lieutenant.”
Maker acknowledged the comment with a slight nod before asking, “So, are we done?”
“Just one other thing,” Lafayette said. “Dr. Chantrey goes along as well.”
“I assumed as much.”
“Great. Now that we’ve gotten all of that out of the way, I think this is where you get off.”
The admiral must have sent some surreptitious signal to their driver, because as he spoke, the staff car slowed and came to a halt. Glancing out the window, Maker noted that they were in a rustic region. He saw nothing but trees and grass nearby.
“Hmmm,” Maker droned. “I suppose my ride back is that car that’s been pacing us since we left the VOQ.” As he spoke, he hooked a thumb over his shoulder toward the vehicle’s rear window.
The admiral once again gave him a discerning look, clearly updating his assessment of Maker. Then he smiled and said, “I didn’t realize you’d spotted it, but I guess I should have known better. As previously noted, you don’t miss a trick.”
Rather than respond, Maker simply opened the door and stepped out. However, before closing it, he turned back and looked the admiral in the eye.
“Just to be clear,” Maker avowed, “if Skullcap makes the slightest misstep, if he so much as looks at me sideways, I’m going to shoot him in the head – diplomatic immunity be damned.”
He then shut the door.
Chapter 20
The rest of the day essentially flew by. After being driven back to the VOQ, Maker had immediately headed to his unit’s warehouse. Once there, he had apprised his squad of recent developments – namely, that they anticipated departing in three days. He had then dismissed everyone for the day, simply telling them to be ready to get to work bright and early the next morning. (He did, however, pull Wayne aside for a moment to give him some specific instructions before letting the young man leave.) A short time later, only he and Adames were left in the warehouse.
“Once again,” Maker said to his NCO, “my orders also apply to you.”
“I appreciate it,” Adames stated, “but I’ve got too much to do. Still, it was nice of you to give the rest of the team the day off.”
“Well, assuming the admiral comes through, the next three days are going to be extremely hectic. Seemed to make more sense to give them some R-and-R now instead of later. Plus, who knows what we’re walking into with this mission? There’s no guarantee that any of us are coming back.”
“You like this admiral?” Adames asked. “You trust him?”
Maker shrugged. “Seems straightforward. Didn’t appear to be blowing smoke up my nether regions.”
“Well,” Adames uttered, chuckling, “that’s always a good sign.”
Grinning, Maker was on the verge of commenting when his p-comp indicated that he had a message coming in on a secure network.
“Speak of the devil,” Maker said, then went into his office to review the communiqué, which turned out to be the first draft of a document memorializing the agreement to his demands.
***
Maker spent the remainder of the day revising the document and trading drafts with Lafayette until he ended up with an agreement that essentially encap
sulated everything he had asked for, with verbiage that both parties found acceptable. Upon completion, the admiral promised to have it signed and get a copy to him as soon as possible.
Satisfied with the progress he’d made, Maker suddenly realized that it was past quitting time. He honestly didn’t know where the day had gone. Working on the drafts hadn’t been fun, per se, but he had taken a certain amount of joy in knowing that he was getting his people a fair deal for the risks they’d be taking.
Stepping out of his office, he immediately noted that the warehouse bay doors were open. As he watched, Adames closed the rear of a transport vehicle parked there, then slapped the side of the vehicle twice with his palm. The driver, already in position, stuck a hand out of the window in acknowledgment, and a second later the vehicle was in motion. Adames watched him drive off for a moment, then stepped over to a control panel located on a nearby wall. The NCO pushed a button on the panel, and the bay doors began to close.
“Hey,” Maker called out, causing Adames to spin around. “We good?”
“Yep,” Adames replied with a nod. “All the stuff we’re taking with us is on standby, waiting for me to say where it needs to be delivered. Anything that belongs to us but isn’t making the trip is slated to go into storage. Almost everything else is headed back to the depot for redistribution.”
As the NCO spoke, Maker glanced around approvingly, noting that the warehouse was essentially barren. Almost nothing was left aside from furniture and fixtures. (There were a few personables in his office, but he’d pack those and take them with him.)
“You know,” Maker observed, “operational logistics is heavily automated these days. You just enter your request in the computer system and you’re done. In other words, you didn’t have to personally oversee the actual loading of our stuff.”
Adames snorted derisively. “You’d feel differently if you were the person having to sign off on it.”
Maker laughed. “That’s what NCOs are for.”
“Now you tell me,” Adames remarked, shaking his head in mock melancholy. “Anyway, it’s not like I did a lot outside of simply cataloging our accouterment. I mean, the transport guys are the ones who actually bagged and tagged everything and loaded it up. However, that reminds me: we didn’t get anything from your office because you were in there working.”
“Don’t worry about it,” Maker said. “There are only a few items in there that need to go, and I’ll grab them on my way out.”
“Works for me,” Adames assured him, then seemed to grow contemplative. “Hey, do you remember our old unit commander?”
“Captain Boggan?” Maker queried. “Of course. Good guy – and an even better officer.”
“Yeah. I recall that whenever we had a dangerous assignment – with odds of somebody not coming back – he’d bring us together the night before we deployed and break out a rare bottle of wine, an exotic delicacy, or something along those lines.”
Maker nodded, smiling. “I remember – and it was always something wildly expensive. He said he did it so that, in case we died on the mission, the Corps would have at least allowed us to experience something exquisite and bonne bouche.”
“Bonne bouche,” Adames repeated, chuckling. “Yeah, that was the phrase he used. Anyway, it occurred to me that we should continue the tradition he started.”
As he spoke, he reached into a box on a nearby table that Maker hadn’t paid particular attention to before. A moment later, he pulled out what looked like a bottle of wine and two glasses.
“What’s this?” Maker asked as Adames handed him the bottle.
“Just a little bubbly I managed to get my hands on.”
Examining the label, Maker stated, “Wine’s not my forte, but I’m guessing this is a rare vintage. It’s certainly old.” He handed the bottle back to Adames, who had produced a wine cork from somewhere. “Where’d you get it?”
“I pinched it from Browing’s stash,” Adames replied, and they both began laughing. A minute or so later, they were partaking of the bottle’s contents.
“Mmmm,” Maker droned approvingly. “As I said, I don’t have the palate to truly appreciate fine wine, but this seems really good. You’ll have to steal from Browing more often.”
“Actually, he gave it to me,” Adames retorted. “Said he thought I’d enjoy it.”
“Really?” Maker muttered in surprise before taking another sip.
“Yeah. All things considered, he’s really not such a bad guy.”
“Well, I’m sure it’s obvious by now, but he’s grown on me, too,” Maker admitted.
They took a few more sips of wine in silence, simply enjoying a brief respite at the end of a hectic day.
The calm before the storm, Maker thought.
“So, this mission,” Adames uttered, interrupting Maker’s introspection. “You got any particular thoughts on it?”
“Like what?” Maker inquired.
“Well, that first time our unit went up against the Vacra, you secretly reconfigured our entire ship to be a nova bomb.”
“And you’re worried I might do something like that again,” Maker surmised.
“Not exactly. Setting aside the fact that it’s a banned weapon and you should have spent the rest of your life in prison for setting it off” – Maker snickered at this – “it was actually the right call and saved everyone’s life.”
“Stop,” Maker gushed, feigning modesty. “You’re making me blush.”
“My point is this,” Adames said, ignoring his commanding officer’s comment. “You were the only person who really had an inkling of what we were up against with the Vacra. You were the only one who understood how to deal with them.”
“You’re forgetting about Planck,” Maker chimed in. “He was their prisoner for years and knows them better than I know the back of my hand.”
“Sure, he knows them, but he doesn’t understand them. You do. That was the case then, and it’s the case now. So with that in mind, here’s my question: what do you really think we’re up against on this mission, and how do we deal with it?”
Maker looked him in the eye and then, shaking his head, admitted, “I don’t know.”
Chapter 21
“Have you been drinking?” Chantrey asked.
“Yes and no,” Maker replied.
They were currently in his quarters, with Maker having just walked in to find Chantrey sitting on his living room couch, waiting for him. She had greeted him with a kiss, then frowned, obviously noting the alcohol on his breath.
“It’s not really a question with a lot of gray area for a response,” she retorted. “Either you’ve been drinking or you haven’t.”
“I split a bottle of bubbly with Adames,” Maker admitted, setting down a box of personal items he had brought in with him. “But it was wine, so it doesn’t count.”
Chantrey gave him a skeptical look. “Alcohol is alcohol. It doesn’t have to come with a head of foam.”
Ignoring her jibe, Maker bent down to rub Erlen’s back, who had just padded over to him.
“Sorry about leaving you inside all day,” he said as the Niotan made a low rumbling noise. “Couldn’t be helped.”
Erlen made a noise that was something between a growl and a cough, then moved away. He clearly wasn’t bothered to any large extent by having spent the day indoors, and Maker hadn’t been particularly worried about him. Truth be told (and as Maker had noted on more than one occasion), the Niotan was fully capable of taking care of himself, including getting food from the kitchen and pantry when he was hungry, as well as keeping himself entertained.
“So,” Chantrey droned, getting Maker’s attention. “Did you get so tipsy that you forgot I was coming over?”
“Is that a rhetorical question?” Maker asked as he flopped down on the couch, subtly alluding to the fact that Chantrey typically came over every night.
“It shouldn’t be,” Chantrey replied, allowing Maker to pull her down onto his lap, and then placing her ar
ms around his neck.
Maker gave her a befuddled look. “What does that mean?”
“It means that you’ve got the passcode to my place, and I’d argue that it’s usually presentable. Ergo, we could occasionally spend some time there instead of always staring at these four walls, if you weren’t so paranoid about people finding out about us.”
“Well, I’m turning over a new leaf in that regard, remember?”
“Yeah, right,” Chantrey muttered sarcastically.
“You don’t believe me?” Maker asked. “We can go right now if you like.”
Chantrey looked him solemnly in the eye for a moment, then uttered in a surprised voice, “You’re serious, aren’t you?”
He smiled. “Of course.”
“Well, I’m tempted to take you up on the offer,” she said with a smile. “But I’m afraid if I did, you wouldn’t get much sleep.”
Maker raised an eyebrow in a wanton fashion. “Is that a promise?”
“That’s not what I was suggesting,” Chantrey insisted, giggling. “What I meant was that I need to pack, same as you. In case you forgot, I’m going with you tomorrow.”
Suddenly, a serious expression settled on Maker’s face, as if some dark cloud of thought had suddenly entered his brain and altered his temperament.
“Maybe you shouldn’t,” he declared somberly.
Chantrey gave him a perplexed look. “What, I shouldn’t pack?”
“No,” he answered, shaking his head. “Maybe you shouldn’t go.”
Thoroughly confused now, Chantrey slid from Maker’s lap and sat down next to him.
“Gant, do you know something?” she asked.
“No,” he replied. “Just a feeling.”
“About what?”
Maker ruminated for a moment on how to answer, then said, “On the drive back here – after I left Adames – I kept thinking about my conversation with Admiral Lafayette and my list of demands.”
“He didn’t agree to them?”
“That’s just it – he agreed to everything I asked for.”
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