Torch of Freedom

Watanapongse grinned at one another; Luiz Rozsak had never been interested in betting mere money '—I'd be willing to put a few credits on the probability that any instructions Manpower might give where Torch is concerned wouldn't contain the words 'Remember the Eridani Edict' anywhere.'

'I'm pretty damn sure they wouldn't.' Watanapongse's short-lived grin disappeared. 'And with Manticore and Haven shooting at each other again, Erewhon's going to want to keep its own military assets closer to home, just in case.'

'All right.' Rozsak nodded to himself. 'I think you're right about Erewhon, and even if you aren't, they're not the ones who have a treaty with Torch. We are. I want you and Edie to do a full staff appreciation on all of the intelligence information we've got about Manpower, outlaw StateSec ships, and anything else we can scrape up about the Manties' new targeting systems and known redeployment plans. I want to be able to brief Oravil on the entire situation, hopefully within the week.'

* * *

'Are you all right, Jack?' Steven Lathorous asked, and Jack McBryde looked up quickly from the memo he'd been studying.

The two of them sat in McBryde's Gamma Center office, going over routine paperwork as part of the current installment of their regularly scheduled three-times-a-week meetings. Lathorous was the Center's assistant security director, McBryde's senior subordinate, and they'd known one another literally since they joined Alignment Security as cadets. They worked well together, and, what was more, they were personal friends. Which gave the look in Lathorous' eyes—a sort of fusion of mingled perplexity and concern—additional weight in several ways.

'Am I 'all right' about what?' McBryde asked after a moment.

'If I knew what might be bothering you, I'd probably know whether or not it really was bothering you. As it happens, I don't 'know' anything of the sort, but, if I had to hazard a guess, I'd say it probably has something to do with our problem child hyper-physicist.'

'Simões?'

'Unless you happen to know about another 'problem child hyper-physicist' you may have simply failed to call to my attention,' Lathorous said dryly, and almost despite himself, McBryde chuckled.

'No, thank God.' He shook his head. 'But you're probably right. If I seem a little . . . distracted, it's probably because I am worrying about him.'

'We're getting close to the end of his project, Jack,' Lathorous pointed out in a considerably more serious tone.

'I know.' McBryde made a waving-away motion with his right hand. 'But even when we do, the man's still a valuable research asset.'

'Yes, he is.' Lathorous' dark eyes met McBryde's blue eyes very levelly. 'That's not the main reason you're worrying about him, though.'

McBryde gazed at him for a moment, thinking about how long they'd known one another. Their careers had brought them together and separated them again often enough over the years, and Lathorous had spent considerably longer in the field as a 'shooter' than McBryde had. Unlike the McBryde genome, the Lathorous genome was a beta-line, but even without the sort of nonbiological implants some of the military and/or security- oriented beta and gamma lines often received, Lathorous was a decidedly lethal presence. McBryde was reasonably certain his old friend had been assigned to the Gamma Center specifically to provide the additional, relatively recent field experience he himself lacked.

And, despite their friendship, Lathorous was undoubtedly the most dangerous person in the entire Gamma Center where McBryde's own increasingly ambivalent feelings towards the Alignment in general—and the rapid approach of Prometheus, in particular—were concerned.

'No,' McBryde sighed finally. 'No, Steve, it's not just about his value. The man's already been hammered hard enough. I don't want to see him get hammered any more.'

'Not a good attitude, Jack,' Lathorous said quietly. 'I'm not saying I do want to see him get beaten up on any more than has to, but we're supposed to maintain our professionalism where the people we're responsible for keeping an eye on are concerned. And we're especially not supposed to get too close to someone who's so likely to self-destruct.'

'Wasn't my idea in the first place, Steve!' McBryde pointed out. 'Bardasano personally stuck me with this one.'

'A point of which I'm painfully well aware.' Lathorous nodded, yet concern still hovered in his eyes. 'But whoever's idea it was, it's been six months—almost seven—since the girl was terminated, and better than four months since Bardasano assigned him to you, and he's not getting better. In fact, we both know he's getting worse. He's going to crash, Jack. We can't—you can't—prevent that, however hard we try. All we can do is minimize collateral damage when it happens . . . and I don't want the effect it has on you to be part of the fallout.'

'I appreciate that,' McBryde said softly. 'And I'm pretty sure I'm going to be okay,' he added, lying as carefully as he ever had in his life. 'I'm working on it, anyway.'

Lathorous nodded again. He was obviously still less than happy about the situation, though. As much as McBryde appreciated his friend's concern, letting Lathorous pick up even a hint of what was really going on inside him was definitely contraindicated, so he twitched his hand at the memo he'd been looking at without really seeing.

'What do you make of this?' he asked.

'I think it's about damned time . . . and pretty damned silly,' Lathorous replied with a sour chuckle. 'Mind you, I'm sure I don't know everything about the full damage Zilwicki and Cachat have managed to do to Manpower—and us—over the years, but I know enough to think eliminating them would be a very good idea. That much I'm entirely in favor of. My only real problem with it, from an operational perspective, is that I'm pretty sure what really happened was that they finally did something that pissed Albrecht off. I mean, really pissed him off.' He shook his head. 'Putting out what amounts to a 'shoot-on-sight' order to everyone isn't exactly a calm, reasoned response. I mean, how likely is it that anybody here at the Center is going to stumble across them in our daily routine?'

His chuckle was the least bit sour, which, McBryde suspected, had something to do with the fact that Lathorous really missed fieldwork. He probably would have enjoyed pitting himself against the redoubtable Anton Zilwicki or Victor Cachat. Unfortunately (from his perspective), his assessment of how likely anyone in the Gamma Center was to encounter those particular targets was undoubtedly dead on the money. On the other hand . . .

'I think the theory is that finding them is going to be the next best thing to impossible,' he pointed out. 'Until we can pin down their physical location with some degree of confidence again, all we can really do is hope that they wander into our sights somewhere along the line.'

'Oh, I understand the theory just fine,' Lathorous agreed. 'And you're right—given the fact that we don't have a clue in hell where they are, this is probably the most effective way to go about it. Even if it doesn't have a snowflake's chance in hell of succeeding!'

'You just want to take them down yourself,' McBryde teased.

'Well, it wouldn't look too bad in my résumé,' Lathorous conceded with a chuckle. Then he sobered. 'On the other hand, I've got to admit that their reputations would make me a little nervous unless I was in a position to completely control of the situation.'

'They are a capable pair of bastards,' McBryde acknowledged.

He considered the memo again, then paged ahead to the next screen. He scanned the header on the new memo quickly, then grimaced.

'I see Lajos is bitching again,' he said.

'Hard to blame him, really.'

Lathorous words were reasonable enough, even sympathetic, but his tone was anything else. He and Lajos Irvine had never gotten along particularly well, and McBryde suspected that at least part of it was Lathorous' yearning to be back in the field. He knew he wasn't going to get there anytime soon, and the fact that Irvine seemed to be agitating for the type of assignment Lathorous wasn't going to get only increased the irritation quotient.

'Actually, I agree with you,' McBryde said out loud. 'I'm probably as tired of his whining as anyone, but, let's face it, spending your time pretending to be—no, scratch that, actually being—a slave has