“Nik? Is that you?” Niebecker called from his office, and Ashton stepped to the door.
“Yes, Your Excellency,” he replied. “I came in a bit early; the personal assistant the temp service sent you yesterday was rather untidy.”
“Yes, well, I don’t think I’ll be needing to use them again, after today,” Niebecker said with a smile. “Have a seat, please.” He waved a hand at the chair on the other side of the desk.
Ashton sat, and trained his attention on the consul.
“What can I do for you, sir?” he asked.
“I think you have it reversed, Nik,” Niebecker said, smile growing into a grin. “I would like for you to become my personal assistant. You have shown me in recent weeks that you have the aptitude, and you also have at least a beginning understanding of the unspoken work going on here…”
“Yes, sir.”
“Can you type?”
“Um.” Ashton flushed. “A little. I’m not very fast.”
“No matter. The receptionist already does a good bit of the needed typing; I’ll simply let her do that. How well can you use your nanites? Can you create files with them and push those files through VR?”
“Reasonably well, sir. I’ve been in the Sintaran Empire for about a year and a half, maybe as long as two years; I’ve picked up on most of that.”
“Good, good. We may not even need that typist. Can you compose a letter and send it to a printer?”
“Yes, sir. It’s how I communicate with my family at home. What family I have left.”
“Oh? What happened to them?”
“Old age,” Ashton shrugged. “I was a ‘wupsie’ in my parents’ older years. Most of my relations were well older than me.”
“Aha. I see. Who is left?”
“Mama, Aunt Beatrice, and Uncle Josef.”
“Do you write them often?”
“Not really. I write Mama about once a month, and she writes back if she feels up to it. That’s all.”
“Does your mother write often?”
“No. Her health is deteriorating,” Ashton pretended to explain. “I’ve been expecting to hear from Aunt Beatrice that she passed, ‘most any time now.”
“I see. Which makes Rikhard’s arrival even more important.”
“Well, it does, yes, sir.”
“That clinches it, then,” Niebecker decided. “Nik, I want you to take the assistant’s office, starting today. I will double your salary, to ensure it is appropriate to a personal assistant to the consul, and that should help ensure that you and your young man – soon to become wife, I assume? Or husband?”
“I hope so, sir. That’s the direction I’m headed with it. And I think Rik prefers the term husband.”
“Good. This way, you’ll have a salary suited to help establish your household. Does Rikhard plan to take a job as well?”
“I’m not sure yet, sir. We were…” Ashton broke off and flushed slightly. “We were talking about having some in vitro work done and starting a family. He wants children, and he wants to stay home to take care of them. I was a bit doubtful we could afford it, let alone any time soon…”
“I see. And this will help?”
“I have no idea,” Ashton admitted. “I don’t know what – wait, you said you were doubling my salary?”
“I can triple it after the first month.”
“Damn!” Ashton exclaimed, then clapped a hand over his mouth. “I beg your pardon, sir!”
“I take it,” Niebecker said through laughter, “that will help?”
“Yes, sir!”
“And you will help me with matters as you have been doing, and run errands both standard and more clandestine, provide a sounding-board for me – all the things you have already been doing, as well as some secretarial-type work?”
“That sounds terrific to me, Your Excellency!”
“Very good. We have a deal, Mr. Lindberg.” Niebecker held out a hand, Ashton took it, and they shook. “And now that you are my personal assistant, you need only call me ‘Your Excellency’ when there is another official in the room; for now, just call me Mr. Niebecker.”
“Thank you, You- uhm, Mr. Niebecker.”
“Very good. Go make that office your own, then.”
“Yes, sir!”
On Sintar, in Imperial City, on the top floor of IPD New Headquarters, Director Lee Carter got a very specific ‘incoming message’ alert. He opened it in VR, reading it in the lower half of his vision.
To: DirLCarter
From: Carolina InfoDumpPlease
Subj: Request
Director Carter, we have had a coded request from your team on Carolina. They request a classified, deep-ops line so they may communicate with family. Also they appear to have infiltrated the Annalian consulate in Franklin, as desired.
~C.I.D.P.
Carter sat back in his desk chair, thinking. He checked the date; Honda would only have just arrived there the day before. And he has no family on Sintar. But I didn’t set up the InfoDump connection with the Carolina IPD until after Nick left, so only Honda has that link. Therefore, he decided, it’s probably Honda contacting me for Nick. He managed to find Nick, who has already gotten into the consulate. But with Cally pregnant, he’s anxious and wants to check on her and the baby. Hell, he probably just misses her, too. Well, let me see what I can do.
He called a private channel.
“Hey, baby,” Brigadier General Maia Peterson – Carter’s wife, and the head of Investigations for the Imperial City Police; the overall head of the ICPD, Harold Quan, was now a major general – said from the other end.
“Hi, hon,” Carter said. “How’s it going?”
“Pretty well, pretty well. The Team just took down a burglary ring over in Imperial Park North, just outside the Park Boulevard.”
“Hey, that’s good. I heard
