passing without your using up some of your leave time, Cliff.'
'I imagine I can live with that order, sir.' Sanders grinned. 'On the other hand, I've got this funny feeling you may change your tune if I ask for some of that leave in, say, the middle of our next cost efficiency survey.'
'You probably would, too,' Wincizki agreed with a chuckle. 'Well, go on. Get out of here! We'll see you back in a couple of months.'
'Yes, sir.' Sanders came to attention, saluted, and walked out of the office. He nodded to the brigadier's uniformed receptionist/secretary in passing, but deep inside, he hardly even noticed the young man's presence, for hidden worry pulsed behind his smile.
Why now, damn it?! Ten years-ten years!-he'd put into preparation for his retirement. Another two years, three at the outside, and everything would have been ready. Now all he'd worked for was in jeopardy, and he had no choice but to run still greater risks.
He fought an urge to wipe his forehead as he rode the exterior elevator down the gleaming flank of the arrogant tower which housed Ursula Sector General Central, but he couldn't stop the churning of his brain.
It had all seemed so simple when he first began. He wasn't the first officer who'd worried about what he'd do when his active duty days were done, nor was he the first to do something about those worries. The big corporations, especially those-like GalCorp-who did big-ticket business with the military, were always on the lookout for retired senior officers to serve as consultants and lobbyists. Ex-Dinochrome Brigade officers were an especially sought-after commodity, given the centrality of the Bolos to the Concordiat's strategic posture, but it was the men and women with field experience whom the corporate recruiters usually considered the true plums. They were the ones with all the glitz and glitter, the sort of people Concordiat senators listened to.
Unfortunately, Clifton Sanders wasn't a field officer. Despite his position as Ursula Sector's senior Maintenance officer, he wasn't even really a technician. He was an administrator, one of those absolutely indispensable people who managed the flow of money, materials, information, and personnel so that everyone else- including those glittering field officers-could do their jobs. Without men and women like Sanders, the entire Dinochrome Brigade would come to a screeching halt, yet they were the nonentities. The invisible people no one noticed... and who seldom drew the attention that won high-level (and high-paying) civilian jobs after retirement.
Sanders had known that. It was the reason he'd been willing to make himself attractive before retirement, and for ten years he'd been one of GalCorp's eyes and ears within the Brigade. It had even helped his military career, for the information he could pass on had grown in value as he rose in seniority, and GalCorp had discreetly shepherded his career behind the scenes, maneuvering him into positions from which both they and he could profit.
Four years ago, they'd helped slip him into his present post as the officer in charge of all of Ursula Sector's maintenance activities. He'd been in two minds about taking the assignment-Ursula wasn't exactly the center of creation-but the data access of a Sector Maintenance Chief was enormous. In many ways, he suspected, he was actually a better choice than someone in a similar position in one of the core sectors. He had the same access, but the less formal pace of a frontier sector gave him more freedom to maneuver-and made it less likely that an unexpected Security sweep might stumble across his... extracurricular activities.
He'd paid his dues, he told himself resentfully as the elevator reached ground level and stopped. He stepped out, hailed an air taxi, punched his trip coordinates into the computer, and sat back with a grimace. The data he'd provided GalCorp had been worth millions, at the very least. No one could reach the level he'd reached in Maintenance, Logistics, and Procurement without being able to put a price tag on the insights he'd helped provide his unknown employers. He'd earned the corporate position they'd promised him, and now they had to spring this crap on him!
He frowned out the window as the taxi rose and swept off towards Hillman Field. He should have refused, he thought anxiously. Indeed, he would have refused-except that he was in too deep for that. He'd already broken enough security regulations to guarantee that retirement would never be a problem for him if the Brigade found out. The Concordiat would provide him with lifetime accommodations-a bit cramped, perhaps, and with a door he couldn't unlock-if it ever discovered how much classified information he'd divulged.
And that was the hook he couldn't wiggle off, however hard he tried, because he couldn't prove he'd handed it to GalCorp. He knew who his employer was, but he didn't have a single shred of corroborating evidence, which meant he couldn't even try to cut a deal with the prosecutors in return for some sort of immunity. GalCorp could drop him right in the toilet without splashing its own skirts whenever it chose to, and it would, he told himself drearily. If he didn't do exactly what his masters told him to, they'd do exactly that.
His gloomy thoughts enveloped him so completely he hardly noticed the trip to Hillman Field, and it was with some surprise that he realized the taxi was landing. It set him down beside the pedestrian belt, and he slipped a five-credit token into the meter instead of using his card. The taxi computer considered, then burped out his change, and he climbed out and watched it speed away.
He glanced around casually before he stepped onto the belt. It was stupid of him, and he knew it, but he couldn't help it. Security didn't know what he was up to. If it had, he'd already be in custody, yet he couldn't quite suppress that instinctive urge to look for anyone who might be following him.
He grunted in sour, bitter amusement at himself and let the belt carry him through the concourse. His reservation was pre-cleared, but he had to change belts twice before the last one deposited him at the boarding ramp for the GalCorp Lines passenger shuttle. A human flight attendant checked his ticket, then ushered him into the first-class section.
'Here's your seat, Colonel Sanders. Have a pleasant flight.'
'Thank you.' Sanders leaned back in his comfortable seat and closed his eyes with a sigh. He still didn't know everything he was going to have to do, and he wished with all his heart that he wasn't going to find out. But he was. He'd been informed that the three 'associates' waiting to meet him aboard the passenger ship would have complete instructions, but the data he'd already been ordered to extract told him where he was headed.
Santa Cruz. It had to have something to do with the obsolete Bolo on Santa Cruz. There was no other reason for him to pull the data they'd wanted, but what in God's name did they want with a maintenance officer on Santa Cruz?
14
'All right, Colonel,' Paul Merrit told the woman on his com screen. 'If you're all set at your end, we can kick things off at oh-six-hundred tomorrow.'
'Can we make it oh-nine-hundred, Paul?' Consuela Gonzalez' smile was wry. 'My people are weekend warriors, and they like their beauty sleep.'
'Nine hundred suits me just fine, ma'am. It'll give me more time to lay my evil plans.'
'Huh! Some 'plans'! You're the one with the Bolo, amigo; my people are all expecting to die gloriously as soon as we make contact!'
'Half a league, half a league, half a league on,' Merrit murmured.
'Say what?' Gonzalez cocked her head, and he shrugged with a smile.
'Just a line from an old poem, ma'am. We'll see your people tomorrow.'
'Fine. 'Night, Paul.' Gonzalez waved casually at her pickup and killed the com, and Merrit stretched luxuriously before he climbed out of his chair and ambled off towards his bed.
'You ready to pound 'em tomorrow, honey?' he asked.
'I compute that the Militia are grossly overmatched,' Nike replied. 'I have studied the records of their previous exercises, and while I am impressed by the results and skill levels they have achieved, they have neither the firepower nor the command and control capability to defeat me.'
'The object is to demonstrate how handily you can defeat them,' Merrit yawned as he began undressing.
'Surely no one will be surprised by that outcome,' Nike objected.
'No,' Merrit agreed. 'But once you make contact, I want you to wipe 'em up as quickly as you possibly can. Go all out and use everything Major Stavrakas gave you.'
'Why?'
'Because I'm gonna use your telemetry and the recon sats to get every gory microsecond on chip, sweet
