“Yes, Captain Anderson.” Trouble answered quickly.
And Ruth did a quick reassessment. The old guy was retired Navy. That raised his stature in the strange game these folks played. If this was the Captain Andy, skipper of the 97th Defense Brigade in the recent war, he was darn near a god to Izzy and Trouble.
“And this must be your bride,” the old fellow beamed.
Ruth beamed back, unsure if she should nod her head, offer her hand, try to curtsy where she was seated, or salute. Flustered, she just sat there and blushed.
“I read the report on what you and your husband did on Riddle.” Captain Anderson continued. “A fine bit of action. Well done. Very well done.”
Ruth might be new to the Navy, but she knew that to be the highest praise available to these tight-lipped, unexpressive people. Now she was blushing red-hot, but, for a civilian, in the presence of a god of war, it seemed like the best response.
“What are we headed for this time out?” Izzy asked.
“I have no idea. The spy has been keeping busy and offering no tidbits for the rest of us to gnaw on. I, myself, have been fully occupied trying to restore one lost bridegroom to the side of his lady-in-waiting. Shall we just go along, my feline friend, and enjoy the ride?”
“This tiger says why bloody not,” Izzy said.
The rest of the drive was quiet enough to give Ruth plenty of time to wonder what a farm girl was doing among the likes of these hardheaded fighters. When she’d signed herself up to be Izzy’s part-time ADEE Agent, she’d figured it for a minor thing.
Apparently, there was a lot more to saying “Yes” to the likes of Trouble and Izzy than she’d ever dreamed of.
Their destination was an imposing building of gray stone pierced by row upon row of windows. The limo drove into a basement garage and dropped them off next to an elevator, which disgorged them onto a thickly carpeted, high-ceilinged hallway, lined at long intervals by dark, wooden doors.
This is definitely not the poor side of town.
The empty conference room that Captain Anderson led them to smelled of wax and wood. A thick slab off a huge tree dominated the center of the room. Trouble took Ruth’s elbow and edged her toward one of the high-backed wooden chairs lining the wall. Izzy and Andy seated themselves at the table. Ruth tried not to look like she was gawking as she surveyed the room.
Two chandeliers provided a gentle light. The walls were a rouge-and-cream paper, marred by empty hangers. Ruth would have bet paintings once hung there. Why keep the empty hangers?
She doubted it was an accident.
Nothing in the room spoke of carelessness to detail. Except the hangers . . . and the two large screens at the front and back of the room. They must be recent additions; their cables were neat but showed in stark, modern contrast to the carefully contrived ancient elegance of the rest of the room.
Interesting, very interesting. Turning to Trouble, she opened her mouth . . . and was immediately shushed by a curt shake of his head.
She followed his gaze to an opening door. Quickly, the room filled with purposeful people, talking quietly among themselves, juggling armfuls of readers, looking for seats. Several seemed to know her husband.
One gorgeous blonde flashed him a brilliant smile. “How’s it going?” she gushed.
“Great,” Ruth answered Trudy Seyd.
They’d met on Riddle. Tru had not only been Ruth’s bridesmaid, but had gotten the planet’s records center back up so that it could issue Trouble and Ruth a marriage license.
“What are we up to?” she shot back.
Tru’s grin got even bigger. “Can’t spoil the boss’s announcement, but I think Trouble here is gonna love it.”
The Marine beside Ruth groaned. “They don’t pay me enough for what you get me into.”
“Hey, you never would have met Ruth except for the last mess I got you into.” Tru protested, which wasn’t exactly correct, but was close enough not to argue over.
“Oops, here comes the boss.” Tru turned to take a place near the head of the table.
The announcement was ambiguous since three entered the room.
A rotund man in a rumpled white suit easily could have deserved the title; clearly he was used to dominating any room he entered.
Then Ruth caught a hint of the steel in the other man’s eyes. Back ramrod straight, the taller man took the room in with a commanding glance, nodded at whatever the other was saying, then turned a loving smile to the woman that seemed surgically joined to him at the elbow.
The woman was clearly pregnant. The smile she shared with the man was warm enough to make comfortable any long winter night.
Ruth remembered such glances between Ma and Pa, and sighed in hope that she and Trouble might one day share the same.
Then the woman spared a quick, appraising glance for the room, and Ruth ditched her first impression. The steely eyes and the assessing look were a startling contrast to the loving wife.
“Everyone is here,” the woman announced, taking the chair at the head of the table. The men moved smoothly to fill the empty seats at either side of her.
“Hopefully, this is the last ministerial meeting I’ll be chairing, now that my long, lost husband has wandered back from whereever it was he strayed off to.”
That drew a chuckle from the room.
“Captain Umboto, I’m glad you could make it. I see you’ve brought your key staff.” Which came as another shock to Ruth, piled so quickly upon the last one.
Since when was I promoted to key staff?
Then the woman turned to the big man. “Well, Mr. Spy, what have you and yours been up to?”
THREE
Captain Izzy Umboto leaned forward in her seat, hungry for action, for anything to sink her teeth into. As far as she was concerned, most meetings were a waste of time. Not with this bunch.
While the minions around the walls would have readers overstuffed with the raw feed, the discussion at the head of the table would be lean, mean, and with a bit of luck, something worth fighting for.
Andy patted her hand gently. “Down, tiger. Overeager people in our trade get the wrong people killed.” Under the Buddha-like gaze of her old master, the captain of the cruiser Patton leaned back in her chair, took a deep breath, and waited.
Fortunately, the spy did not make her wait long. “My technicians have been sifting through the scraps you enthusiastic field folks left us on Riddle. Fortunately, it was enough. Although I suspect it does not take a genius for intelligence analysis to glean the essentials from the debris.” The spy fixed Izzy with wide, inviting eyes, tempting her into his realm.
“The station above Riddle was too small and its capacity too limited to maintain a fleet of pirate cruisers,” Izzy said quickly. “It lacked the yards to refurbish the pirated ships or to file the serial numbers off them so that they could appear again on regular shipping lanes.” Izzy continued with growing confidence and a touch of disappointment.
It had felt good to grab a space station, capture three pirate raiders and bring down a planetary government of drug lords and slavers. Still, in the back of her mind, even then she’d known the fish was too small for the damage it did.
She needed to look further for the bastards that gave her niece Franny the drugs that killed her.
Okay, spy, point me at something I can blow up.
“A very accurate assessment,” the spy said, rewarding her with a smile, a most strange rearrangement of his face. “We winged the buggers, but we missed the heart.”
“So where is the bankroll for those bastards?” said the other man. Izzy liked the sound of the question. She studied the man for a moment, then blinked in surprise.
This was Colonel Ray Longknife, the man who killed Unity’s President Urm and ended the war. But in all the videos he hobbled around with a cane or two, the results of a chunk of iron her brigade had put up his backside.
Izzy frowned her own question at Andy.
“A long story,” he whispe
red back. “Later.”
“A good question,” the spy answered. “And one that gets straight to the heart of matters like these. In military operations, you follow the flow of energy and munitions. In matters like these, you follow the money and it leads you to the source.”
“And?” the woman cut in.
“We lost the trail,” the spy said bluntly. “Which says something in and of itself. Only old money can hide that well. Old money from Earth. Fortunately, while money can hide, what it does often leaves telltales behind. For example, Colonel Longknife, we have taken apart the little present left behind in the Second Chance’s main network. A delightful bit of code, created by a sterling programming boutique back on Old Earth.”
The colonel looked very interested in the spy’s work.
“They serve a very select clientele, very discreet. Only recently has their conscience been pricked about the use certain of their customers have put their code to in the recent war. But they have come forward and made a clean confession of it.”
Why did Izzy doubt that guilt and absolution had anything to do with this sudden turn of affairs? She grinned, for once enjoying the chase.
“There is also the recent bit of luck that Mrs. Tordon gave us, putting the fear of God in her Commander Uxbridge and allowing him to take flight.”
Izzy swiveled in her chair to observe the spy’s high praise turn Ruth beet red. Still, she did a decent imitation of the Marine seated next to her, saying not a word to deflect the kudos or correct the spy’s misconception . . . if indeed he did not already know she had meant to bag the commander that day.
“Uxbridge’s sudden withdrawal of all funds in certain numbered Swiss bank accounts allowed us to trace not only where he went, but also where the funds came from.”
“Where does the trail lead?” The woman leading the meeting rushed the spy; a glance her husband’s way made it clear she had better uses for her time.
“Forward, to a certain planet misnamed Savannah. While we on Wardhaven were successful sending our Unity thugs and politicos packing, their President Milassi managed to hang on, pointing to an election he won before Unity took over five years back. He has to face elections in a few months. Interest in the outcome of those elections goes far beyond Savannah.”
“Savannah was settled before Wardhaven,” Colonel Ray Longknife mused. “Industrialized from the get-go. I never had to fight them. Glad of that. Anything else we need to know about Savannah?”
“The Humanity ambassador to Savannah has requested additional Marines to bolster his small guard. Milassi seems to be having trouble maintaining order. The Senate also has a fact-finding committee due there in ten days. They want a cruiser in orbit for their stay.”
The spy turned to Izzy. “You will shortly receive orders to the Savannah system.”
“Nice of you to tell me about them. Did that trail your sniffing after lead anywhere else?”
“Yes. Forward the trail led to Savannah. Backward, and not as a total surprise, it lead to this gentleman.”
The screen behind the spy came alive as Tru Seyd tapped her reader right on cue. A face smiled out at them blandly, the kind of pictures that the business section of papers featured under the headers of “promoted” or “heading the megamergered stellar corporation.”
Izzy found such pictures lacking in conviction.
This one was no exception. If the years had lined that face, given it any wisdom or character, computer processing of the negative or surgery on the original had removed any evidence.
The face was bland, blank, uninformative.
Still, Izzy memorized it, as she might the electromagnetic fingerprint of a new enemy’s flagship. This was the target. This empty face had retailed the drugs that killed Franny and too many others.
Deep within Izzy a question formed. Why would anyone as outwardly clean and straight as this man mess with poison?
Izzy waved off the question; the odds of her getting an answer were not worth betting on. Then again, the odds of her getting such a man in her gun sights were pretty slim, too.
If it came, Izzy didn’t want to miss.
“Mr. Henry Smythe-Peterwald’s money was mature when old money was just being minted. His family has been buying and selling politicians since before graft had a bad name.” The spy examined his notes. “I believe one or two popes are in his direct lineage, though that was before the pope gave up his army.
“The family’s money went from obscene to merely plentiful until a few generations back. Henry’s grandfather got in on the ground floor of the interstellar net. He got a lock on the hardware and managed to buy up all the software. He also invested quite heavily in several planets just opening up.”
“Was Savannah one of them?” Izzy asked.
“Yes.”
Izzy made a gun with her finger. “Bang,” she said to the picture.
“Were it only that easy,” the spy fairly moaned. “Money and power build walls that keep investigators out more thoroughly than prisons keep ordinary people in. The trap that captures Mr. Peterwald must be carefully baited and cautiously sprung.”
“He wouldn’t be going to Savannah any time soon?” Izzy asked.
“He has never set foot off Earth in his life. No one in his family has.”
Izzy had never even seen Old Earth.
She sighed. Sailors didn’t get to pick their battles. They fought where and when they were told. She did have orders to take the Patton to Savannah and offer all assistance. She might just have a chance to bring some well-deserved pain and discomfort into Mr. Peterwald’s life.
Others, way above her pay grade, would be the ones to bring down such a gold-encrusted scumbag as little Henry there.
FOUR
Henry Smythe-Peterwald XI paced his father’s room. Twenty paces took him to the windows that looked out over a thousand pristine acres of woodlands.
The old man had nurtured the waste just to impress lesser beings. Henry never knew his father to actually walk among those trees. In his youth, Henry had tried to hide there, to find some special place that was his alone.
Father’s guards always found him.
Today, Henry ignored the view and whirled to cover the twenty paces back to the white wall, bare except for the myriad of medical gear that kept the old man alive.
His father had bragged, “I will live forever. I’m buying the rejuvenation treatments other people are dying for.”
The old man would laugh at his joke, enjoying it immensely.
“You stupid, old bastard,” Henry snarled. “You warned me never to trust a beta version. ‘Wait until the second or third upgrade to risk your own system to the new damn code.’ But you had to have the first rejuv the labs came up with. Now your brain has turned to snot?”
Remembering what his father could not, Henry laughed. He laughed in the old man’s face.
It was safe to laugh now.
The old man couldn’t call his guards.
The eyes that had made Henry cringe now stared blankly at the ceiling, blinking rarely. Breath flowed in and out as the ventilator pushed and pulled. The body could easily pass for a healthy thirty-year-old’s, a good twenty years younger than Henry.
“Now live with what it’s got you, old fool,” the son snarled at the blank face.
The beeps and weaving patterns on the monitors quickened. Henry stepped away from the bed, put several paces between him and his father before the nurse passed through the self-opening door.
“Mr. Peterwald, your father seems to be having a distress episode,” the woman said as she hurried to the bed.
“I’ll leave him to you,” Henry said, avoiding even a glance at the nurse. Ms. Upton was probably the ugliest woman to pass the Nursing Boards in the last fifty years. Several others on his father’s support team rivaled her for that accolade, but Upton brought a second factor to her credit.
Her voice made stripping gears sound melodic.
His father had always kept the beautiful a
nd graceful at his beck and call. Now, if the old man actually could hear, could understand what was going on around him, he’d be hating every moment of his immortality.
Served the bastard right.
Henry smiled as he left the room.
An elevator took him down to his office area. The wide space it disgorged him into presented a view of plants, trees, and a waterfall.
Hidden behind the facade, dozens of people in this room labored to fulfill his slightest whim.
More waited patiently, hopefully, for him to permit them a moment of his time.
He was distracted by none of them as he walked to his office. A word from him and the waterfall would have disappeared, giving him a view to his primary secretary.
Henry walked, breathing the aroma of the woods, listening to the chirp of birds. Almost, he was in his hiding place, his special place.
Only now, no guards would dare disturb him. Today, no father could yank him in to put on a senseless display for lesser petitioners.
Someday, he might go back to the woods, the real woods, to see what his secret place had become. Not today.
Not now. There were things to do. Grandfather had remade the family fortune. Father had added to it, reaching new heights until presidents and prime ministers sweated as waiting petitioners in this very room.
Now that Henry had finished paying off the courts and been formally appointed the old man’s guardian and master of the family fortune, Henry would show the old man who was the better.
But he’d have to do it quickly, before the old man’s brain was totally mush.
The drug money had offered him a quick way to the heart of Unity. Grandma Smythe may have razored out the bootleggers from the family tree but that didn’t mean Henry was ignorant of the many ways the family made its fortune.
The Unity propagandists were right. Henry and other powerful men were jacking up the price for finished goods, and offering cutthroat prices for the raw materials the outer rim could offer for payment.
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