Crown of Slaves

quickly, Madam President. For the moment, I think what's probably needed most is to give Cachat a major and important assignment. An official one. I'll go out there myself, as soon as possible, to spend some time with him. But let's give the young man a chance-for once-to show what he can do when he isn't being forced to circumvent authority at the same time. He'll be the authority.'

Eloise frowned. 'Go out there yourself? What 'there' are you talking-oh.'

Her eyes widened. Then, a cool smile came to her face. 'Hm. Hm. You know, I think I like that idea. Victor Cachat, chief of station on… Erewhon? Or Torch?'

'Both, I think,' replied Wilhelm. He cocked his head at Usher, soliciting his opinion.

Kevin nodded. 'Yes, both. We'd be crazy-I'm just being blunt, Eloise-to yank him out of Erewhon now. From everything I can tell, he's got an inside track with the Erewhonese. If we yanked him, that would certainly send them exactly the wrong message.'

'True,' agreed Eloise. 'But why add Torch to the mix?'

Ginny started to say something, but choked off the words. Pritchart glanced at her. 'Should I take it that he'd be visiting Torch every chance he got anyway?'

Ginny nodded. Pritchart's smile remained cool, but spread a little. 'Not a casual girlfriend then, I gather. Well… who knows? That might help things, too.'

'Besides,' Kevin interjected, 'Victor's got the inside track with the Torches also. If you send anybody else out there, he'll just-ah-'

'Run rings around them?' Eloise jibed. 'Leave them lying flat on their back in a cloud of dust?'

'Something like that.'

The President of the Republic of Haven moved her eyes to a blank spot on the far wall, which she examined for a minute or so. Then, leaning forward, she planted her hands on the desk again and spread her fingers.

'All right, we'll do it. And since we need to send someone official to attend the coronation of the new Queen of Torch in a few weeks-Kevin, you're it. I'll let you break the news to your protege that he's now an Official Maniac. Which means if he pulls a stunt like this again, I'll flay him alive.'

Usher nodded, looking as innocent as a lamb.

'You're not fooling me, Kevin,' growled Pritchart. 'Your lamb imitation wouldn't fool Little Red Riding Hood.'

But she was laughing softly when she said it. And then added: 'I'd love to be there myself, actually. Just to watch you and Ginny having to act like a respectable married couple, for a change.'

It was Ginny's turn to look innocent. She managed it about as well as Kevin. 'You mean I can't wear that sari I bought on The Wages of Sin, the day before I left?'

* * *

As they got up to leave, Pritchart said: 'You stay behind, Kevin.'

Once Ginny and Trajan had left the room, Pritchart gestured at the display screen. 'I didn't see any reason to bring this up in front of Wilhelm, since I'm sure he missed it. There's still a loose end here, Kevin. A big one.'

'Stein's killing?' Usher shrugged. 'Yeah, sure. But I'm also sure it's being taken care of.'

The President of Haven rolled her eyes. 'Oh, wonderful. Cachat's Hairy Ride of Death and Destruction is about to get underway again.'

Usher shook his head. 'It won't be Victor's operation. I'm sure of that.'

'Who's, then?'

'How am I supposed to know?' complained Kevin. 'I'm umpteen light-years away! But it won't be Victor. No reason for it to be, really.'

Eloise stared at the empty screen, bringing up in her mind various tantalizing bits and scraps of the reports. Reports which had been, she was quite certain, carefully edited in some respects.

But there was no great anger in the thought. She was experienced in black ops herself, and knew perfectly well that Victor Cachat had been careful to provide her with 'plausible deniability.' Now that her fury had faded, Eloise was willing to admit-to herself alone-that Trajan had been right. Cachat was brilliant at this kind of work. If he could be brought under some kind of control…

She leaned back in her chair, mollified at the thought-the possibility, at least-that in a few years Haven might have an excellent foreign intelligence service again. One with a different ethos than Saint-Just's, but every bit as capable. Not even in her angriest moments did Eloise think Cachat was cut from the same cloth as Saint-Just. Every bit as ruthless, yes. But she didn't misunderstand the moral code that lay beneath that ruthlessness. That was as different from Saint Just's as a grizzly bear from a cobra.

'I guess I can live with 'furry,' ' she said, half-smiling. 'So what's your guess, Kevin?'

'The girlfriend,' he said promptly.

Eloise had come to the same tentative conclusion herself. Again, she rolled her eyes. 'Too much to ask, I suppose, that Victor Cachat would get the hots for a prim and proper debutante.'

* * *

The impulse came as a surprise, but Rozsak wasn't in the habit of arguing with himself. He too, he realized, had come a bit under the spell of a teenaged queen-about-to-be. So, he turned toward Berry just at the moment when he estimated Thandi would strike.

One of her Amazons, rather. Thandi herself was standing next to Cassetti, as he addressed the crowd gathered in the closest thing Torch's main city had to a central square, with Rozsak and Berry a meter or so away on Cassetti's other side.

There was no one behind Cassetti now, who might get hit by a dart passing through his body. Rozsak had no idea how Thandi had managed that. He suspected Anton Zilwicki's hand was involved, somehow-Berry's father was also standing on the administration center's terrace. Which, if so, underscored Watanapongse's warning that the whole operation was no longer 'covert' to at least some people outside their own ranks.

No one standing behind Cassetti… It would happen now. Rozsak wouldn't have bothered with that curlicue, but he was more ruthless than Palane.

The Solarian captain turned to face Berry, his back toward Cassetti, shielding the girl, as Thandi reached out and touched the lieutenant governor on the upper arm.

'So, Ms. Zilwicki,' Rozsak said, and smiled, even as he felt a shiver of respect for Palane. He knew what she was doing… even though Cassetti himself didn't. 'When should I start calling you… what did you decide upon, anyway, for a suitable cognomen?'

Her smile was almost a grin. 'We're still arguing about it. It doesn't look as if I'll be able to get away with 'Your Modesty,' so now I'm angling for-'

Rozsak heard the pulse rifle dart's impact. From the solid WHAP! of it, a good center impact shot. He had Berry by the shoulders and was pulling her down to the terrace a split-second later. It was not quite a 'tackle,' but… close.

Only then did he turn his head and actually look at the lieutenant governor. Not that he'd really needed the confirmation.

The marksman had hit the sniper's triangle dead center, and the hyper-velocity dart had smashed squarely into the man's spinal column on its way through him. The transfer of kinetic energy had been, quite literally, explosive, blasting a twenty-centimeter chunk of Cassetti's neck and shoulders into a finely divided spray of blood, tissue, and pulverized bone even as it flung the instantly dead body back and out of Palane's iron-fingered grip.

No one, Rozsak knew-not even the newsies, some of them standing less than fifty meters away-would ever realize just what Palane had done. They might remark on the freak coincidence which had led the major to tap the lieutenant governor on the arm, undoubtedly to remind him of something, in the very instant before the shot was fired. But none of them would realize that her touching him had been the signal to the person behind that pulser dart. That she had deliberately stood less than a meter from him, holding him motionless to guarantee her chosen shooter a perfect shot and eliminate the possibility that a moving target might change her carefully planned trajectory and put someone else in the line of fire.