Crown of Slaves

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

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"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 protégé 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 i

"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 Gi

It was Gi

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

Once Gi

"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 pla

Which was a pity, in many ways, he reflected. Because since no one would ever guess, none of them would appreciate the steel-nerved courage—and total confidence in her chosen marksman—required for someone to do what she had just done.

Even as the thought flashed through his mind and the corpse catapulted away, Palane dove to the floor of the terrace herself. Her com was in her hand before she landed, already barking out orders.

Rozsak's eyes ranged the terrace. Everybody was now on the floor, shielded by the terrace's low retaining wall, except for one particularly determined holorecorder crew. His eyes met the hard gaze of Anton Zilwicki.

Rozsak didn't have any trouble at all interpreting that gaze. That's it, Rozsak. Don't even THINK about taking it any further.

The Solarian Captain gave Zilwicki a minute little nod. Then, a second later, found himself matching gazes with Jeremy X. The head of the Ballroom was on the terrace floor not far from Zilwicki, his hand pulser gripped in his hand.

To the holorecorder viewers, it would simply look like the natural reaction of an experienced gunman. But Rozsak didn't misunderstand the meaning of that flat-eyed stare—nor the fact that while Jeremy's weapon wasn't directly pointed at him, it wasn't pointed all that far away, either.

He gave Jeremy the same tiny nod. Yes, yes, yes. That's it. This black op is over.

In truth, he was glad of it himself. As cold-blooded as he was, even Rozsak would have found it difficult to order Palane's murder. But it was all a moot point, anyway. Watanapongse had been correct: Palane was by no means the only person who had figured out the truth behind Stein's killing. Only a lunatic would start a private war with the likes of Anton Zilwicki and Jeremy X—even leaving aside Victor Cachat.

Cachat wasn't there. Rozsak hadn't expected him to be, since the Havenite agent was doing his best to keep his own involvement in the affair as much of a secret as possible.

He was startled to hear Berry speak calmly. He'd expected the girl to be in something of a state of shock. He was even more startled by the half-whispered words themselves. They carried to his ear quite clearly, even under the shouts of the crowd and the cries of alarm rising from the media crews.

"Victor's keeping guard over the former Mesans who decided to stay. Not the settlement—they're safe enough—but the ones who came in to surrender individually. For the moment, they're all being kept in the old barracks."

Half-propped on an elbow, Rozsak looked down at her. The back of Berry's head was resting on the terrace floor, her eyes fixed on him. It was a gaze far more hostile than he'd ever have expected to encounter from the girl.

"Didn't think of that, did you?" she whispered, icily. "The retaliation that angry ex-slaves might visit, after the killing of someone they think is a liberator of sorts."

He hadn't thought of it. Startled, he glanced at Palane, still on the floor barking commands into her com. It was an act, he knew—by now, the Scrags would be dead and the cover-up well under way—but it was a very good one. He had no doubt at all that the media would be fooled. To all appearances, Palane was organizing a manhunt.

"Thandi thought of it, though," Berry whispered. The underlying contempt in her tone was not disguised at all.