by David Drake
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 eyesocket 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.
Johann 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 Peres’ 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 Barbour’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 competi
tors. 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.