Firemask: Book Two of the Last Legion Series (12 page)

“Allah-be-damned if I know.”

“I do,” Froude said, a bit smugly. “By my figures, he’s good for perhaps a dozen missions, whereas the average soldier, without the stiffening your rigorous selection puts him through, would probably break after four, perhaps five. As for promotion, that’s not really a factor, given I&R’s greater casualty rate, so even with restriction in ranks, a good … and lucky … trooper will probably be promoted as rapidly as if he’d remained in a normal unit.

“That is the sort of thing I hoped you’d be interested in.”

Hedley ran a hand over his head, surreptitiously glanced at his fingers to see if any more hair was falling out.

“Dr. Froude, I’m damned if I know any of the answers, and maybe we
should
pay more attention to scientists. But can we bring this up later?”

“Of course. I merely wished to give you something for future consideration,” Froude said.

• • •

Garvin, immaculate in officer’s dress whites, sat at the long, curving and deserted bar of the Shelburne, looking out at the yachts moored offshore, lined by the setting sun. He sipped again at his drink, a smooth tropical concoction he knew better than to have three of, and wondered how he’d pass the evening.

Hedley’d grabbed him, asked how long it’d been since he’d taken a pass, then, when Garvin had to think for a minute, told him to get offpost and away from the flip-pin’ military before he rotted.

Njangu had agreed, told him to get gone, and, besides, Njangu might have something interesting to talk about when he got back, and so Garvin had gotten spiffed, and gone across the bay into Leggett, looking for trouble.

He remembered, a long, long time ago, when he’d just graduated from his basic training, spending an evening here, getting sleazed on by the band’s singer and landing in more trouble than he knew how to handle.

Garvin smiled, thinking of how long ago and far away
that
was. Not quite three years. Ancient history. He wondered what’d happened to the singer, Marya, that was her name, and hoped she still wasn’t singing here. Even as disgustingly celibate as he was, he didn’t think he’d ever be ready for someone like her again.

Someone came in the bar, sat on the other side of the waiter’s station, and ordered, in a rather nice contralto, a white cordial.

He glanced over as the bartender poured, and the quiet late afternoon shattered like broken crystal.

A moment later, Jasith Kouro recognized him as well.

“Uh … hello,” he managed.

“Hello,” she said.

The two stared at each other, the silence pyramiding.

“Thank you for the flowers,” she said. “And for rescuing me … us.”

Garvin tried to think of something clever, failed.

“It’s all right,” he managed. “You’re all right now?”

“Fine. The only reason I was in the hospital that long is I picked up some kind of infection.”

“Yeh,” Garvin said, knowing he was sounding very much a fool, wondering where his vaunted silver tongue had gone to. “Infections can be dangerous.”

“You look very good,” Jasith said, equally knock-wittedly.

“Thanks. And so do you,” Garvin said. “So what brings you out here,” he tried feebly. “Don’t you have everything delivered up on the Heights?”

Jasith looked at him, decided he wasn’t trying to be offensive.

“I’m meeting Loy here for dinner,” she said. “With some of his editors. They’re going to talk about how we should deal with the Musth. I think it’s going to be pretty dull, so I decided to show up early and fortify myself a little bit.”

“You’re probably right,” Garvin said. “In which case, you need what I’m drinking.” He nodded to the waiter, gave the order.

Jasith sipped at her drink when it arrived.

“Uhh … Garvin? You could run a speedster on this. I don’t want to be doing a strip show to keep everybody interested!”

“Why not? Or maybe, a better thing for you to do to make matters really interesting might be to ask the journohs how they think the Musth is going to deal with
us.
”

“What do you mean? So far there’s been no trouble.”

“As the man said as he passed the forty-fifth floor of the fifty-floor building he’d fallen off.”

Jasith looked around, saw no one, moved to the stool beside Garvin.

“Frankly, I
am a
little worried,” she said. “Loy tells me I’m being foolish, but the Musth were always miners, and my father always thought they wished they could control all of C-Cumbre’s mines.”

“I don’t think you’re being foolish at all,” Garvin said. “And I wish I could give you some hints. All I know, and you did not hear this from me, when the Musth left, they promised they’d be back, and not peacefully.”

“But they didn’t attack us when they did come back.”

“They also happened to get here at just the right time, too. Ran off Redruth and crew and looked a little bit like heroes. Maybe they’re biding their time for a bit.”

“So what are they going to do, and when?”

“Again, no answers. But I’d bet they’re looking for some reason, maybe just an excuse, to have a lot more to do with the way Cumbre’s run than they do now.”

“And if they do get more power, the first thing they’ll go after is me.”

“Your properties, anyway,” Garvin agreed. “You, I don’t think so. You’re not furry enough.”

Jasith giggled, then looked hastily away and concentrated on the sunset. After a time, without looking at Garvin, she said, in a low voice, “I guess I treated you pretty badly, didn’t I?”

Garvin thought of being polite, then of being honest, decided to say nothing.

“Everything just happened too quickly,” she said. “I wanted to run away, wanted to hide, didn’t know what to do.”

“So you married Loy Kouro,” Garvin said, unable to resist the jab.

Jasith took a deep breath, then said nothing, but nodded jerkily.

“You know,” she said, “sometimes I wish — ”

“Don’t,” Garvin said, voice harsh. “It’s hard enough already.”

Jasith lifted her drink, then set it down.

“I’m sorry,” she said, hastily got up, and went out.

Garvin stared at her barely tasted drink, then swiveled on his stool and looked at the exit.

“Son of a
bitch,
” he said in a low voice to nobody in particular.

• • •

“I think,” Doctor Froude said deliberately, “we might allow ourselves a glass of sherry.”

“Which is what?” Ho asked.

“Some sort of ancient wine, I think, that great thinkers allowed themselves when they accomplished something.”

“I think I’m going to have a straight shot of pure quill alcohol and dance naked on a tabletop,” Heiser said. “We’re getting very close, aren’t we?”

“Three of the last four permutations gave us range-on-range to J-Cumbre, to our moon Fowey, and to C-Cumbre. I’d call that close,” Froude said.

“What about number four?” Ho asked.

“I think you’re lost as a soldier, Ho,” Heiser said. “You’ve got such a grievously suspicious mind you ought to be a scientist.”

“Didn’t have the money for an education,” Ho said, uncomfortably.

“You will when this is finished,” Heiser said.

“What do you mean?”

“Never mind. Shut down. It is indeed, time for a drink.”

“I still wish we had an idea where that fourth range goes to,” Ho said. “If I projected it right, like you told me, it just ends up about half a diameter beyond M-Cumbre, and you said there’s nothing out there, right?”

“Right,” Froude said. “Wrong. I’m an idiot. When you take off from Camp Mahan in your Grierson, don’t you have some common departure point if you’re flying with other aircraft?”

Ho nodded. “Of course, we always set a Rendezvous Point on any mission. Why should the Musth be different? Which gives us our fourth point of congruence, and a place to start translating the charts’ other figures from.”

Froude smiled happily. “Now do we get our drink?”

“We do,” Ho said. “And I’m buying.” She bounced up from her desk, sending a keyboard and papers flying. “We Are Almost There!”

• • •

“Are you going to live?” Njangu asked solicitously.

“Doubtful,” Garvin moaned.

“So where’d you end up?”

“The last thing that’s clear,” Garvin said, “is being in one of those goddamned waterfront clip joints.”

“Were you with someone?”

“I don’t think so, but I sort of remember being with somebody a couple of hours earlier. I think I kept comparing them to … to somebody, and I think they got pissed and dumped me.”

“That’s all?”

“That’s all,” Garvin said. “Except this.”

He dug in his fatigue pocket, took out a huge roll of bills.

“I woke up with all these goddamned credits in every pocket.”

“Only you,” Njangu admired. “Any of the rest of us get shitfaced, and we wake up jackrolled in an alley. You make a profit on the deal.”

“Yeh, but I’d sure like to know why,” Garvin said. “Just about as much as I’d like a cold beer.”

“Tut,” Njangu said. “You’re on duty, and you don’t want to give a bad example.”

“I
am
a bad example.”

“Well, let me make life a little worse for you,” Njangu said unsympathetically. “After you left, Hedley called, and wanted to go play in the bushes. Seems SigInt picked up transmissions from way the hell out the end of Dharma Island. Very, very tight beam, punched straight on out to the edge of the system.

“About the same time, one of the remotes off L-Cumbre picked up an incoming. It held an orbit, and did a blurt-transmission in some code we don’t have on our books toward Leggett. The blurt-transmission, in turn, was responded to from that transmitter in the tules.

“Hedley said there was no way we could scramble anything but the
aksai
out to L-Cumbre in time to make an interception, and we’re keeping the lid on those suckers for the moment. But we could take the alert crew and jump on top of that transmitter.

“Which we did, about midnight last night, just about the time you were shifting into full drive.

“Dunno what gave us away, but we bashed on down, and found a little temp shelter, rations stacked up for a few days, and a beeeg mother transmitter, big enough to punch way beyond this system if it wanted.

“But nobody was home.”

“What’s Hedley’s explanation?”

“He got one about dawn,” Njangu said. “Seems the frequency is one that’s on the old books as common to Larix and Kura’s military.”

“Urgh.”

“Just that,” Njangu agreed. “Somebody, one of Redruth’s messenger boys, probably slid into the Cumbre system, got a report from an agent, or maybe gave an agent instructions, and headed out again. With a blurter, there would have been time enough to transmit a whole goddamned order of battle, either way.

“You remember we never did nail whoever was on Dharma smuggling guns to the ‘Raum from Larix/Kura during the uprising.”

“I remember very well,” Garvin said sourly. “So we know something, but we don’t know what it means.”

“Welcome to military intelligence. Now, doesn’t that make your hangover worse?”

• • •

“I’ve got something interesting,”
Mil
Angara told
Caud
Rao, “which I don’t have the slightest explanation for. Nor does Hedley.”

“Which means there might be something honorable or decent about the matter if neither of you can understand it,” Rao said.

“The Musth have started opening their consulates, which they’re calling places of information,” Angara said.

“I’ve already gotten reports on that.”

“Did anybody point out where these offices are being located?”

“Just in various city centers.”

“Where in the city centers is what’s maybe the problem,” Angara said. “I could bring up a projection if you want, but all that you really need to know is those places of information are in really cruddy parts of town.”

“All of them?”

“All of them.”

“Maybe the Musth look for cheap real estate,” Rao offered. His executive officer didn’t laugh. Rao thought for a moment.

“You know,” he offered, “if I were looking to create an incident, I might want to have my people right out in the open, where any asshole with a grudge could take a shot, which would account for the Musth wanting thessse counsssulssshipsss,” Rao mimicked. “What batsssshit.”

“Yeh.”

“And if I didn’t give a damn about taking a casualty or two, to make sure it was a real proper incident, I might suggest my people take walks through skid rows, wiggling their little heinies with bells on. I’d assume a secretary, or whatever the hell the Musth equivalent is, getting hisslashher ass in a crack would get things nice and stirred up.”

“Shit,” Angara said. “Not unlikely if that secretary’s office happens to be right next to Vagrant Central.”

“Exactly.”

Angara sighed. “So what are we going to do about it?”

“As if we don’t have enough already on the plate,” Rao said. “ ‘Kay. What we’ll have to do is put more troops on provost duty, making sure they ‘just happen’ to wander past the Musth areas around, say, dusk.”

• • •

“Boss,” Lir called. “Line three. Some muckety named Glenn. Wouldn’t say what he wants.”

Garvin glared at the two screens in front of him, minimized them, touched a sensor. The face of a used-up cherub appeared.

“This is
Alt
Jaansma,” Garvin said.

“Gy Glenn here,” the man said. “I’m senior partner with Glenn & Lansky, Attorneys-at-Law.”

“How may I be of service?”

“One of my clients, who wishes to remain anonymous, is quite patriotic,” the lawyer said. “The client feels that RaoForce isn’t sufficiently funded by the Planetary Government.”

“I couldn’t argue with him on that.”

“Because of this, my client is making a donation directly to the Force, in the sum of one million credits.”

Garvin blinked, scrabbled for his poker face.

“Pardon?”

“You heard me correctly.”

“That’s … well, that’s very nice, I guess, anyway,” Garvin said. “But I’m not the commander of the Force, Mister Glenn.
Mil
Prakash Rao — ”