Changer of Worlds

No one could fault the hours that he put in, and none of his subordinates were about to criticize the work habits of the second most powerful man in the People’s Republic of Haven. But that didn’t mean that Tsakakis and his people liked it. Unlike Saint-Just, some of them actually preferred a semi-regular schedule with comfortable chunks of time allotted to such mundane concerns as sleep, or perhaps a modicum of a social life. A little time with a wife or husband on some sort of predictable basis wouldn’t have come amiss, either.

Not that any of them would ever consider complaining about their charge’s schedule. That would have been… unwise. Even more to the point, it would have been a quick way to get themselves removed from the citizen secretary’s protective detail, and for all its worries and inconvenience, there was fierce competition for that position. Outsiders might have been surprised to discover that, yet it was true. It wasn’t so much that StateSec’s perso

Still, protecting the most hated man in the entire People’s Republic was scarcely a tension-free vocation. Only a lunatic would think he had even the most remote chance of penetrating Saint-Just’s security screen, but historically speaking, lunatics had an unfortunate track record of success. Or of at least taking out the odd bodyguard in the attempt. All of which tended to keep one on one’s toes.

It also helped Tsakakis to take his boss’s unpredictable and inconvenient work schedule with a certain philosophical acceptance. Yes, it made his life difficult. But it also made it even more difficult for a potential assassin to predict the citizen secretary’s movements with any degree of confidence. And if his principal’s habit of disordering all of the citizen lieutenant’s carefully worked out schedules without warning kept his entire team off balance, it also prevented them from settling into a comfortable, overconfident rut.

Tsakakis reminded himself firmly that staying out of a rut was a good thing, but it was unusually difficult at the moment. He had no idea what could have inspired the citizen secretary to get up four hours early, but it would have been helpful if he’d mentioned the possibility that he might do so before he turned in for the night. If he had, Tsakakis and the normal daytime security commander could have coordinated their schedules properly. As it was, the citizen lieutenant had been forced to screen Citizen Captain Russell—again—to alert her to the fact that Citizen Secretary Saint-Just would not, in fact, be at home where she expected to find him when she and her people reported for duty. The citizen captain was as accustomed as Tsakakis himself to such sudden and unpredictable alterations, but that didn’t make her any happier about being awakened at two in the morning so that she could start waking up all of the rest of her people, as well. It hadn’t made her any less grumpy, either, and even though she’d known it wasn’t Tsakakis’ fault, she’d torn a strip off his hide just to relieve her own irritability.

Tsakakis gri

They reached the citizen secretary’s private office, and Tsakakis wiped the grin off of his face and assumed his on-duty expression as Saint-Just disappeared into his i

As public figures went, Oscar Saint-Just was more willing than most to accommodate the desires of his bodyguards. A lifetime as a security professional in his own right had a tendency to help a man appreciate the difficulties of his security staff’s duties. And the fact that no more than a few trillion people would have liked to kill him gave a certain added point to his responsiveness. But there were one or two places where he drew the line, and one of those was his steadfast refusal to permit an armed bodyguard actually in his office. Tsakakis would have been happier if he’d been allowed to stand his post where he could keep the citizen secretary directly under his own eye, but he knew how fortunate he was not to have to put up with the sort of eccentric whims and all too frequent temper tantrums that came out of someone like Citizen Secretary Farley. And at least Saint-Just didn’t raise any fuss over electronic surveillance.

Tsakakis unsealed his uniform tunic and hung it over the back of another chair, drew a cup of coffee from the urn in the corner, and settled himself comfortably for another thankfully dull, boring watch.

* * *

Major Alina Gricou swore with silent venom. Damn the man! They’d known he had a penchant for unpredictable movements, but why in hell had he had to pick this night, of all nights, to suffer from workaholic insomnia?

She forced her temper back under control, but it was hard. Her strike team packed the cargo compartment of the unmarked civilian air van claustrophobically, and she found herself longing for a proper assault shuttle’s com systems with an almost physically painful intensity. She could feel her people’s tension like an extension of her own. Every one of them knew the official plan as well as she did, which meant that all of them also knew that the operation’s carefully choreographed timing had gone straight down the crapper.

Gricou didn’t know why the execution code had been sent now, with so little warning—there hadn’t been time for neat, orderly briefings—but she suspected that she wouldn’t have liked the reasons if she had known what they were. All of the ones which occurred to her had to do with things like security breaches, and the thought that their targets’ SS security teams might be waiting for them had not been a palatable one.

And now this.

She closed her eyes and forced herself to think things through. If she absolutely had to, she could use her battle armor’s internal com to contact General Conflans, but that had to be a last-ditch option. She wasn’t particularly concerned about the security of the encrypted transmissions, but StateSec maintained a round-the-clock listening watch, and any military-band transmissions from unmarked civilian vans hovering just outside the residential tower which the commander of State Security called home were likely to arouse all sorts of suspicions.

All right. If he wasn’t here, there was only one other place he could be. And maybe that was actually a good thing. Gricou had never truly been happy about going after Saint-Just at home. Killing civilians in job lots was what StateSec did, not what she did, but she’d known going in that collateral civilian casualties would be unavoidable if she and her strike team met any organized resistance in a residential tower. But if he’d gone into the office early, there wouldn’t be any civilians around. Or not any i