'Will you lie to me, like you just lied to Shavash? Do I look like his executioners?'
The Assalah company vice president squeezed himself further into the wall.
'Ashinik, I know that there are people you must obey unquestionably. They could have given you orders. If this is the case, I wouldn't tell Shavash anything. I will help you to go to Earth, to any place where nobody can give you orders. Did you have anything to do with this explosion?'
'They told me that you had sold me to Shavash. That you exchanged me for a controlling stock block of the aluminum plant!'
'Oh-ho,' Bemish muttered, 'and you tried to kill Shavash. Did you try to kill me, too?'
Ashinik hid his face in his knees and burst in tears.
'Master! Why are you torturing me? It was Shavash first, now it's you! Not again!'
Bemish was silent. In six months he grew attached to this twenty-year-old youth as if the latter were his son. The lad was almost the right age. Bemish had gotten used to feeling like Ashinik's patron. He picked up a dirty guy with lice in his hair and crazy visions and he transformed him into a manager with a tie around his neck and a cell phone in his pocket. And now this manager seduced his concubine. He also tried to send to the other world a man who in a strange way had become one of Terence Bemish's closest friends. And, possibly…
Bemish paused.
'Our score is even, Ashinik,' the Earthman said. 'You saved my company. I saved your life. It's one to one. I don't owe you anything.'
Bemish threw the white plastic folder at his deputy.
'You will find here your last check from Assalah Company, two tickets to Earth, and an application form to Havishem; it's one of the best business schools. I talked to Trevis — they will accept you to Havishem. Trevis will pay your tuition fees.'
Ashinik pulled the papers out of the folder. His bandaged right hand shook slightly.
'There are two tickets,' Ashinik said suddenly.
'Don't worry,' Bemish snickered, 'I'll buy myself a new concubine.'
While all these unpleasant adventures related to the White Elder's assassination were taking place on the planet of Weia, Kissur napped in a wide first class seat of a passenger spaceship flying to the planet of Lakhan.
The flight took almost eighteen hours.
Kissur left the spaceport for a cheap hotel, took a shower, changed into old grey pants and a worn out shirt with a popular band's logo pictured on it, made a couple of phone calls and took off. He went to the western part of the city, to Danachin University; the famous Lakhan student uprising had taken place there ten years ago.
Kissur took the main street across the block, turned left and left again and, bending slightly, dived into the roar and light of a bar's entrance. He chose a table next a window, leaned to a wall and started waiting.
In half an hour, Kissur finally saw a tall and skinny guy with olive skin and a ponytail who was finding his way to the bar's stand.
'Hey, Lore,' Kissur said.
Lore turned around and shuddered but he recovered and, having picked up a beer can, he joined Kissur.
'How is it going, dude?' Lore asked. 'You haven't gone back to your Weia, have you?'
Kissur just waived his hand.
'I have a question to you,' he said, 'You've told me once that you knew a man who was ready to trade a tiny gadget.'
'What gadget?'
Kissur picked up a napkin and drew something on it.
Lore's eyes widened a bit.
'There is such a man,' he said, 'but capitalist rot has eaten all the way through him. He will not do anything for his brothers, he only works for money.'
'Tell him that there is a man who will pay money for his goods.'
'How many pieces do you want to buy?'
'I want everything.'
Lore's eyes grew suspicious.
'Kissur, where have you gotten the dough?'
Kissur silently presented a three-day-old newspaper to him. It was a Weian paper published in Interenglish and an article about a daring robbery of Weian Industrial Bank, the second largest bank in the Empire, covered its front page.
'We will teach these capitalists a good lesson,' Kissur spoke, 'we will show them that we can fight for peace not only with our mouths.'
Denny Hill worked on a stationary base Nordwest located on a tiny natural moon of Danae planet. Nordwest was the only base constructed on a planet that didn't have either atmosphere or population. It was only fitting that it had assumed an unpleasant role of a nuclear waste garbage pit for all the outdated and not particularly outdated armament of the whole Galaxy. Nordwest storage areas bored through the planet like huge honeycombs. Weaponry was sent there if it became obsolete or banned due to political reasons or due to the activities of peace mongers.
The rumors traveled around the base that the oldest units in storage were shells from the First Moon War. What Denny Hill, a technician at Nordwest, knew for sure however, was that retired Cassiopeia missiles were stored at Nordwest.
These missiles had caused a major military scandal at some point. The missiles were equipped with S-field generators capable of twisting space around them. It meant that, once launched, they could not be intercepted. Any wall, defense screen or field can, in principle, be destroyed. To destroy something, however, you have to interact with it. Interaction means passing through space but it's impossible to pass through twisted space.
Ten years ago, Gera had raised a great hassle demanding the ban of all types of offensive armament equipped with S-field. It had been calculated that the construction of one S-field missile cost as much as the construction of twenty five subsidized houses for the underprivileged.
The world shed tears. Instead of building missiles and employing the same underprivileged as a workforce — that would enable them to buy their houses with their earned income — the Federation signed a treaty offered by Gera and started constructing houses for the poor.
Now Gera now didn't have to build expensive missiles and it put everything into an effort to develop alternative types of S-field that would not be covered by the treaty and would be cheaper.
Some missiles had been destroyed outright and some had been partially disassembled and brought to a 'relatively disabled' stage. The missiles from three bases — Arcon, Mino and Delos — had been transported to Nordwest.
The accompanying documentation pointed out that there were one hundred forty six 'relatively disabled' missiles. The whole Galaxy thought that there were one hundred forty six of them. Only Denny Hill, a civilian technician at the base, was energetic enough to take a count of the newest (though disassembled) missiles and he found out that there were one hundred fifty eight of them. The missiles were stored in a huge depositary area where the alarm system had been disabled by a local anaerobic life form and Denny Hill was supposed to take a census of the storage once a month. Formally speaking, it should have been a committee made out of three local employees and federal inspectors but the army didn't have any money for all these stupid committees and the base didn't have enough employees. That was why Denny Hill conducted the census on his own.
In two weeks on a planet with the beautiful name of Grace, two people approached Denny Hill who was spending his vacation there. Denny would have ever taken them for students — both guys were well-built and lean like pedigreed greyhounds and the senior guy had an old horrible scar above his neckline. They were Kissur and Khanadar.
'Lore sends you his greetings,' Kissur said.
'Hello,' Denny Hill said guardedly. 'Why are there two of you?'
