Part 41 (2/2)

And then, finally, she got it. ”You mean-?”

”Yes,” I said, straightening up into an almost-forgotten military attention. I had my pride, too... and it had been a long time since I'd been able to say this to anyone at all. ”I'm Major Jordan McKell, EarthGuard Military Intelligence, detached on Special Covert Branch duty. May I also introduce my boss: Colonel Ixil T'adee, Kalixiri Special Command for Drug Enforcement. Our job these past twelve years has been to work our way inside the Spiral's worst drug and gunrunning organizations and try to bring them down.”

I turned to Antoniewicz. ”And as I said before, Mr. Antoniewicz,” I added quietly, ”I'm very pleased to meet you. Badgemen all over the Spiral have been waiting a long time for you to come out of your hole so that you could finally be arrested. I'm honored you chose to do it for me.”

CHAPTER 25.

IT WAS NOT exactly what you would call a cheerful group that was gathered around the table in the lodge dining room a little after dawn the next morning, but it beat to h.e.l.l the atmosphere that had been there the last time around. Partly it was the smaller and more intimate nature of the a.s.semblage, with Shawn and Chort off somewhere being debriefed, Ixil directing the group looking over the Icarus, and Antoniewicz and his a.s.sorted plug-uglies long gone under heavy Kalixiri guard. The fact that Cameron had had time for a shower probably helped a lot, too.

”I hope you know how close you came to getting your neck broken last time we were in here,” Nicabar commented, picking carefully at the Kalixiri military delicacies the occupation troops had whipped up. It was a far cry from Chort's gourmet Craean stew, but the taste was adequate and it was certainly filling enough. ”When you turned that plasmic on me I figured all that talk about Everett was just you stalling while you waited for your pals to arrive.”

”You'd never have made it even halfway to my neck,” I told him. ”Antoniewicz's thugs would have cut you down in a heartbeat if you'd tried anything.

Including going for your gun, incidentally, which is why I drew on you in the first place.”

He snorted gently. ”I thought I was being reasonably subtle about it.”

”You were,” I agreed. ”But I haven't spent twelve years in Intelligence work without knowing what a surrept.i.tious grab for a weapon looks like. Give me some credit.”

”Personally, I give you a great deal of credit,” Cameron commented around a mouthful of food. Alone of the four of us, he was already on his second helping.

”You had me fooled all the way down the line, from Meima to our little chat at the other end of the star-bunny trail, right up to the moment those Kalixiri commandos popped in and nearly gave me a heart attack.”

”Sorry about that,” I apologized. ”Though I did wonder after our talk at the edge of forever whether you'd finally figured me out.”

”I knew you weren't as simple as you seemed,” he said, shaking his head. ”Butbeyond that I didn't have a clue.”

”You might have told him,” Tera said, a touch of reflexive accusation in her voice. ”He certainly wasn't going to tell anyone in there.”

”But he would be coming out sometime,” I reminded her. ”And I didn't yet know what the circ.u.mstances of that homecoming were going to be.”

”And it's infinitely safer in this sort of game if no one has had even a peek at your cards,” Cameron said, rising to my defense. ”Sir Arthur explained all of that in his message.”

”What message?” Tera asked.

”A note from my boss,” I explained. ”Retired-sort of-General Arthur Sir Graym-Barker, former Intelligence Level Two Overseer and the Earthside director of this quiet little combined-services unit Ixil and I have been involved with all these years. The commando team brought it through the stargate with them so that your father would know what was going on.”

”Unlike the rest of us,” Nicabar said pointedly. ”So what was that fluff you spun to Tera about having been kicked out of EarthGuard?”

”Not a single bit of fluff to it,” I a.s.sured him. ”The court-martial was completely and totally official. It had to be-I was trying to worm my way into the center of the Spiral's underworld, and everything in my record had to stand up to the kind of scrutiny we knew it would be getting someday. The time I spent with Customs and Rolvaag Brothers s.h.i.+pping was more of the same window dressing, with the added value of giving me practical training in the sorts of things a soon-to-be smuggler needs to know. When I was finally ready, they gave me the Stormy Banks and instructions to pile up a mountain of debts and turned me loose.”

”And that was when you met Ixil?” Nicabar asked.

”Actually, Ixil and I go back all the way to my EarthGuard days,” I said. ”In fact, he was the one who spotted me while trolling for prospective recruits and suggested to Uncl-I mean, Sir Arthur-that I be invited in. He spent my training years building up his own sordid background, so that when we publicly linked up we were about as sorry a pair of misfits as you could ever hope to meet.”

”And you already knew this General Graym-Barker?” Tera asked, looking at her father.

”I met him about fifteen years ago, when we were developing an advanced targeting-system countermeasure for military stealthers,” Cameron said. He made a face at me. ”Of course, I thought he really was retired now or I never would have contacted him in the first place. The last thing I wanted was for the leaky bureaucratic sieve at Geneva to get hold of any of this.”

”So that's why you were on Meima when this whole thing started,” Tera said, turning back to me. ”You never did answer that question.”

I nodded. ”Sir Arthur told us your father was in some kind of trouble on Meima during one of my check-ins and asked us to swing over and a.s.sess the situation.

I'd been wandering around the local tavernos for nearly four hours looking for him when we finally ran into each other.”

I looked at Cameron. ”Interestingly enough, he even said that, depending onhow serious the danger you were in, I was authorized to do whatever was necessary to protect you, up to and including blowing my cover if there was no other way.

Shows you just how highly you're considered up there in the corridors of power.”

”I'm honored,” Cameron murmured. ”That's rather amusing, really, considering that I was prepared in turn to tell whoever he sent everything about the Icarus if there was no other way to secure his help.”

”Just as well you didn't,” I said. ”You start showing your cards to someone and you never know if someone else is looking over your shoulder.”

”As opposed to just dropping the cards faceup on the table,” Nicabar commented dryly. ”I thought Tera was going to have a stroke when you announced in front of everyone who she really was.”

”I presume you've figured out why I did that?” I asked.

He nodded. ”It took me a while, but eventually I got it.”

”Well, I haven't,” Tera said, frowning at me. ”I a.s.sumed you were just tired.

Or suddenly gone senile.”

”Tired, yes; senile, possibly,” I said. ”But not on that account. Remember, I'd already checked the Icarus and knew the Kalixiri were aboard and the trap there was set. What I didn't know was what kind of contingency plan they had for anyone left behind in the lodge, whether they'd be able to move quickly enough to get you out. I made sure that Everett knew who you were so that you'd be brought back to the s.h.i.+p with us. You were in no danger from Antoniewicz-as he'd already explained, you were far too valuable to simply shoot out of hand.

Whether or not the commandos arrived in time to save me, they would certainly be in time to save you.”

There was a flicker of movement across the room, and I looked up to see Ixil step in through the wooden archway. ”Ah, there you are,” he said as he came toward our table. ”Not sitting with your back to the door this time, I see.”

”Don't be snide,” I reproved him with an air of injured pride. ”You know perfectly well I just didn't want my gun pointed anywhere near Brother John and his goons when they burst in on us. Any news?”

”All sorts of news,” he said, pulling up a chair and sniffing appreciatively at the food. Pix and Pax weren't nearly so reticent; they bounded straight off his shoulders and headed for the serving plate. ”The pilot tried to scramble the preliminary helm setting he'd been coding in, but we were able to reconstruct it. The combined force landed twenty minutes ago inside Antoniewicz's estate.

They report it's been secured.”

”Combined, eh?” I commented approvingly as Nicabar spooned some of the Kalixiri food onto his plate for the two ferrets. ”I take it that means Sir Arthur was able to get Geneva to loosen up and send some human troops to a.s.sist.”

”I believe he convinced them this operation had nothing to do with the Icarus and the Patth ultimatum,” Ixil said. ”Which is not entirely untrue.”

”Not entirely at all,” I agreed. ”I hope they're being careful-Antoniewicz isbound to have a few b.o.o.by traps set up for unexpected visitors.”

”I'm sure they are.” Ixil looked over at Cameron. ”The other news you may be interested in is that there was a bit of confusion off Trondariok about two hours ago. A s.h.i.+p identified as the renegade freighter Icarus barely escaped from a group of three customs cruisers.”

Cameron threw a startled look at Tera. ”The Icarus? Was seen where?”

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