We Few

"Turn around to go after the planet after all?"

"No," the admiral said firmly. "That's precisely why the Prince—or whoever—specified that we arrive so early. Gajelis is stationed a tad over four hours from Old Earth on a zero/zero intercept profile. That means that if he wants to stop and drop into orbit around the planet, he'll have to go to decel roughly two hours after he begins accelerating towards the planet. But he'll have been accelerating for three and a half hours—it'll take about thirty-five minutes for Perimeter Security to pick up our TD footprint and get the word to him—before anything happens on Old Earth. He won't be able to decelerate and insert himself into orbit. In fact, by the time he overran the planet, decelerated to relative zero, and then built a vector back towards it, we'd be ru

"So they're screwed, Sir. Right?"

"Assuming—as I do—that Home Fleet's loyalty to Adoula is going to come unraveled in a hurry when Greenberg buys it and the fleet's officers realize someone's mounting an attempt to rescue the Empress, then, yes, Sergeant. Screwed is exactly what they'll be. But if they react quickly enough, they'll still be able to cut their losses and run for it. They'll be inside us, Sergeant. They can break for any point on the TD sphere, and the range will still be long enough for them to avoid us without much difficulty. Which means we could face a situation in which quite a lot of Adoula loyalists will get away from us. And if he gets away, as well—a distinct possibility, I submit; he's the sort of man who always has a rathole handy to dash down—we're going to be looking at a civil war whatever your Prince wants. In which case, I further submit, it would be nice if he didn't have any more ships on his side than we can help. Yes?"

"Yes, Sir," Julian said fervently.

"I'm so happy you agree, Sergeant," Helmut said in a dust-dry voice, then wheeled to give him another ferret-sharp smile. "Which is why we're leaving a little early, Sergeant Julian. I have a small detour I need to make."

"Who are these guys?"

"I du

Alexi Siminov referred to himself as a "businessman," and he had a large number of fully legitimate businesses. Admittedly, he owned only one of them—a restaurant—on paper; the rest he owned through intermediaries as a silent, and senior, partner. But the legitimate businesses of his small empire were quite secondary to its illegitimate businesses. He ran most of the organized crime in the south Imperial City district: racketeering, "protection," illegal gambling, data theft, illegal identities, drugs—they all paid Siminov a percentage, or they didn't operate at all.

"I thought they was just a restaurant," the gang leader continued, "but then I had to wonder. They smelled fishy. Then I guessed they was probably your people, and I made real nice to them. Besides, they've got heavy muscle. Heavier than I wanted to take on."

"If they were one of my operations, I'd have let you know," Siminov said, angrily. "They're laundering money. It's not my money, and I'm not getting my share of the action. That makes me upset."

"I'm sorry, Mr. Siminov." The gang leader swallowed. "I didn't know."

"No, you didn't," Siminov conceded. "I take it you shook them down?"

"We had to come to an agreement," the gang leader said with a slight but audible gulp. "They were pretty... unhappy about an... arrangement."

"And if they were one of my operations, do you think they would have come to an agreement?" Siminov's eyes flickered dangerously.

"Uh..."

"I suppose that logic was a bit too much for you." Siminov's lips thi

"No, sir," the gang leader said with a wince.

"Youdid come to an agreement though, right?" Siminov said quietly. "I'd hate to think you're losing your touch."

"Yes, sir. And you got your cut, sir."

"I'm sure. But not a cut of the action. Very well, you can go. I'll handle the rest."

"Thank you, sir." The gang leader backed out of the office, bowing jerkily. "Thank you."

Siminov rubbed his chin in thought after the gang leader's departure. The fool had a point; this group had some serious muscle. Mardukans were few off-planet, and of that few, quite a number of them worked as "muscle" in one organization or another, but always in tiny numbers. He didn't have any, and he'd never seen more than one of them at a time, yet this guy, whoever he was, had at least fifty. Maybe more. And they all had that indefinable air of people who could be unpleasantly testy.

Which meant the direct approach to enforcing his rules was out. But all that meant was that he'd need to use subtlety, and that was okay with him. Subtle was his middle name.

"Captain Kjerulf," Eleanora O'Casey said as she shook his hand. "Thank you for meeting with me."

They were in a fast-food establishment in the low-grav portion of Moonbase. She noticed that he showed no trace of awkwardness moving in the reduced gravity.

Kjerulf really did look a lot like Gro

"There are people who handle supplemental supplies, Ms. Nejad," the captain observed, shaking his head as he sat down across the table from her. "I'm afraid I can't really help you in that."

His casually apologetic, meeting-you-to-be-polite tone was perfect, but he knew the meeting wasn't about "supplementary supplies." Not with that "roses are red and sauerkraut's yellow" message header.

"I realize that this isn't, strictly speaking, your area of responsibility, Captain," Eleanora said. "But you are a very influential individual in Home Fleet, and the Mardukan comestibles we can supply would be a welcome change for your spacers and Marines."

"I don't handle procurement, Ms. Nejad," Kjerulf said in a slightly cooler tone, and frowned.

"Perhaps. But I'm sure you have some influence," she said. "Left. For now."

He'd opened his mouth to reply before she finished speaking. Now he closed it, and his eyes narrowed. With Adoula replacing everyone who hadn't been bought and paid for, she had a point. But not one that a comestibles supplier would make. It might be one that... someone else would make, but whether that was good or bad would depend upon who she represented. On the other hand, Marinau had ended up as a sergeant major in the Empress' Own, he knew that. So—

"Perhaps," he said. "A few of the captains might accept a suggestion or two. But that would depend entirely upon the quality of the... supplies."

Eleanora considered the captain's background carefully, and hoped like hell that he'd had the same general upbringing as Gro

"Some of our atul," she said, quietly, "are as moist as a fatted calf, Captain."

Kjerulf sat there for a moment, his face unchanging. Perhaps too unchanging.

"Impossible," he said finally.

"No, really," Eleanora replied. "They may be predators, but they're just as tasty—tasty enough even an Armaghan satanist would swear by them. I think you'd like one. They're vicious and deadly to their natural enemies, yes, but they provide a very fine... main course."

Kjerulf reached forward and picked a handful of fries off of her plate. He stuffed them into his mouth and masticated slowly and thoughtfully.

"I've never had... atul," he said. "And I've heard it's not very good, to be honest. And rare. To the point of extinction."