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"Yes, sir. It's off if he refuses to cooperate with Intelligence. He has to name all the conspirators."
Plekhanov looked significantly at Cziller. "Get your men on that, Bruno. It's a start. All right, Blaine, get your ship fixed up and scoot." The Admiral stood; the interview was over. "You'll have a lot to do, Captain. Get to it."
2 The Passengers
Horace Hussein Chamoun al Shamlan Bury pointed out the last of the articles he would take with him and dismissed the servants. He knew they would wait just outside his suite, ready to divide the wealth he was leaving behind, but it amused him to make them wait. They would be all the happier for the thrill of stealing.
When the room was empty he poured a large glass of wine. It was poor quality stuff brought in after the blockade, but he hardly noticed. Wine was officially forbidden on Levant, which meant that the hordes of wine sellers foisted off anything alcoholic on their customers, even wealthy ones like the Bury family. Horace Bury had never developed any real appreciation for expensive liquors. He bought them to show his wealth, and for entertaining; but for himself anything would do. Coffees were a different matter.
He was a small man, as were most of the people of Levant, with dark features and a prominent nose, dark, burning eyes and sharp features, quick gestures, and a violent temper that only his intimate associates suspected. Alone now, he permitted himself a scowl. There was a printout from Admiral Plekhanov's writers on the desk, and he easily translated the formally polite phrases inviting him to leave New Chicago and regretting that no civilian passage would be available. The Navy was suspicious, and he felt a cold knot of rage threaten to engulf him despite the wine. He was outwardly calm, though, as he sat at the desk and ticked off points on his fingers.
What had the Navy on him? There were the suspicions of Naval Intelligence, but no evidence. There was the usual hatred of the Navy for Imperial Traders, compounded, he thought, because some of the Navy staff were Jews, and all Jews hated Levantines. But the Navy could have no real evidence or he wouldn't be going aboard MacArthur as a guest. He'd be in irons. That meant Jonas Stone still kept his silence.
He ought to keep silence. Bury had paid him a hundred thousand crowns with a promise of more. But he had no confidence in Stone: two nights before, Bury had seen certain men on lower Kosciusko Street and paid them fifty thousand crowns, and it shouldn't be long until Stone was silent forever. Let him whisper secrets in his grave.
Was there anything else undone? he wondered. No. What would come would come, glory be to Allah... He grimaced. That kind of thinking came naturally, and he despised himself for a superstitious fool. Let his father praise Allah for his accomplishments; fortune came to the man who left nothing to chance; as he had left few things undone in his ninety standard years.
The Empire had come to Levant ten years after Horace was born, and at first its influence was small. In those days Imperial policies were different and the planet came into the Empire with a standing nearly equal to more advanced worlds. Horace Bury's father soon realized Imperialism could be made to pay. By becoming one of those the Imperials used to govern the planet, he had amassed immense wealth: he'd sold audiences with the governor, and hawked justice like cabbages in the market place, but always carefully, always leaving others to face the wrath of the hardnosed men of the Imperial service.
His father was careful with investments, and he'd used his influence to have Horace Hussein educated on Sparta. He'd even given him a name suggested by an Imperial Navy officer; only later did they learn that Horace was hardly common in the Empire and was a name to be laughed at.
Bury drowned the memory of early days in the Capital schools with another beaker of wine. He'd learned! And now he'd invested his father's money, and his own. Horace Bury wasn't someone to laugh at. It had taken thirty years, but his agents had located the officer who'd given him that name. The stereographs of his agony were hidden in Bury's home on Levant. He'd had the last laugh.
Now he bought and sold men who laughed at him, as he bought votes in Parliament, bought ships, and had almost bought this planet of New Chicago. And by the Prophet-blast!-by damn he'd own it yet. Control of New Chicago would give his family influence here beyond the Coal Sack, here where the Empire was weak and new planets were found monthly. A man might look to-to anything!
The reverie had helped. Now he summoned his agents, the man who'd guard his interests here, and Nabil, who would accompany him as a servant on the warship. Nabil, a small man, much smaller than Horace, younger than he looked, with a ferret face that could be disguised many ways, and skills with dagger and poison learned on ten planets. Horace Hussein Bury smiled. So the Imperials would keep him prisoner aboard their warships? So long as there were no ships for Levant, let them. But when they were at a busy port, they might find it harder to do.
For three days Rod worked on MacArthur. Leaking tankage, burned-out components, all had to be replaced. There were few spares, and MacArthur's crew spent hours in space ca
Slowly MacArthur was put back into battle worthy condition. Blaine worked with Jack Cargill, First Lieutenant and now Exec, and Commander Jock Sinclair, the Chief Engineer. Like many engineering officers, Sinclair was from New Scotland. His heavy accent was common among Scots throughout space. Somehow they had preserved it as a badge of pride during the Secession Wars, even on planets where Gaelic was a forgotten language. Rod privately suspected that the Scots studied their speech off duty so they'd be unintelligible to the rest of humanity.
Hull plates were welded on, enormous patches of armor stripped from Union warships and sweated into place. Sinclair worked wonders adapting New Chicago equipment for use in MacArthur, until he had built a patchwork of components and spares that hardly matched the ship's original blueprints. The bridge officers worked through the nights trying to explain and describe the changes to the ship's master computer.
Cargill and Sinclair nearly came to blows over some of the adaptations, Sinclair maintaining that the important thing was to have the ship ready for space, while the First Lieutenant insisted that he'd never be able to direct combat repairs because God Himself didn't know what had been done to the ship.
"I di
"Not unless you want to be cook too, you maniac tinkerer! This morning the wardroom cook couldn't operate the coffeepot! One of your artificers took the microwave heater. Now by God you'll bring that back. .
"Aye, we'll strip it oot o' number-three tank, just as soon as you find me parts for the pump it replaces. Can you no be happy, man? The ship can fight again. Or is coffee more important?"
Cargill took a deep breath, then started over. "The ship can fight," he said in what amounted to baby talk, "until somebody makes a hole in her. Then she has to be fixed. Now suppose I had to repair this," he said, laying a hand on something Rod was almost sure was an air absorber converter. "The damned thing looks half-melted now. How would I know what was damaged? Or if it were damaged at all? Suppose. ."
"Man, you wouldna' hae troubles if you did nae fash yoursel' wi . ."
"Will you stop that? You talk like everybody else when you get excited!"
"That's a damn lie?'
But at that point Rod thought it better to step into view. He sent the Chief Engineer to his end of the ship and Cargill forward. There would be no settling their dispute until MacArthur could be thoroughly refitted in New Scotland's Yards.