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  “A man has to draw the line somewhere.”

  “Draw it somewhere else. There’s enough for two and my mom taught me better than to set a meal on the table and not offer some to a guest.”

  “Your mother is a wise woman.”

  The apartment hadn’t been designed with entertaining in mind. Every last bit of it could accommodate a maximum of two people, and only if they didn’t mind practically sitting on top of one another. When she’d set a second plate, set of silverware, and glass on the table, there was barely any room to spare, and in order to have room for his knees, Garotte had to shift his chair partially into the den.

  Winters ladled out a scoop of casserole onto each plate. It was a steaming, oozing symphony of mushrooms, butter, cream, and breadcrumbs. The kind of meal more concerned with the taste buds, the belly, and the soul than the heart, the arteries, and the blood pressure.

  “Iced tea?” she asked, pivoting to pull a pitcher from the refrigerator.

  “Please.”

  She topped off two glasses, then slid a sugar bowl onto the last available bit of table and took a seat.

  “Silo, I must say, I never dreamed you would be so gloriously domestic in your civilian life.”

  “You shouldn’t be dreaming about me at all, buster. Now there’s a lot to work out before we figure out what we’re going to do about that mess you made.”

  “Granted this is a powder keg with a twenty-year fuse, but in my defense it was lit by a combination of incomplete intelligence and poor decisions on all sides. It takes more than one man to cause a problem of this size.”

  “Yeah? What about that union march that almost turned ugly on Golana? That had your grubby fingerprints all over it.”

  He shrugged. “Guilty. I’m rather proud of that one.”

  “What’s the goal on Vye-7?”

  “The initial goal, and thus the one that failed to be achieved in rather epic fashion, was to place the Kruger Militia in a position to become the dominant on-planet faction. They are intelligent, disciplined, and have a clear respect for both diplomacy and politics.”

  “Why didn’t they take over already?”

  “Because their opponents lack the same respect for diplomacy and thus have been first to fire on nearly any large-scale confrontation. The Piranhas are the classic criminal gang, funded by drugs and weapon trafficking and dominated by larger-than-life personalities who are more about charisma than foresight. The Broadline Syndicate takes a more corporate approach. They get most of their money by controlling large manufacturing, mining, and hubs. They’re the ones who seem to have found a well-armed benefactor. We are about to venture into exceptionally classified territory, so I do hope you’ve not lost your discretion during your time in the private sector.”

  “Out with it. And hurry up. The casserole’s going to get cold.”

  He loaded up his fork. “What happened a few weeks ago was part of a months-old plan designed to ignite what had been a fairly tepid rivalry between the Piranha and the Broadline Syndicate. We arranged for a massive repositioning of inventory, then manipulated global traffic patterns to put them on a collision course. Shots were fired in a manner designed to convince each side the other had been responsible, and thus a firefight was to have resulted, the conclusion of which would be both the Piranhas and the Broadliners weakened to the point of relatively simple defeat by the Kruger Militia. A combination of the Piranha putting all their eggs in one basket and the Broadliners having far more effective basket-smashing equipment than we had anticipated left the Piranha all but wiped out and the Broadliners barely scratched. As we speak the Syndicate is in an all-out offensive. Within three weeks they’ll have wiped up the last of the Piranha, and then it’ll be on to the Kruger Militia, who won’t stand much of a chance.”

  Garotte shoveled the food in his mouth, then paused.

  “Any good?” Winters said.

  “… This is transcendent.”

  “I’ll give you the recipe. It’s really easy. Mostly just mushrooms, butter, and cream.”

  “Alas, such a meal as this lies beyond my meager culinary capacity. Though I am a fair hand with an aperitif.”

  “A monkey can mix a cocktail.”

  “Spoken like a woman who has never had one of my cocktails.”

  They alternated eating and speaking, Winters more than willing to talk with her mouth full while Garotte was more genteel in his communication.

  “First thing’s first. Why aren’t we taking this to the major interested parties? Bring it to the TKUR and the Orion Consortium and let a bunch of bureaucrats hammer out sanctions and the like.”

  “The short answer is because the only evidence of this was turned up during a covert mission that my prior employers would not be eager to have revealed. The long answer is because we are looking at months on the long side and weeks on the short side before the Broadline Syndicate is likely to solidify control, after which point any further attempts to solve the problem are a bit of a slammed-barn-door-behind-a-fleeing-horse situation. The wheels of justice grind a bit too slowly to be of use here, and on general principle I prefer to keep the problem-solving out of the hands of bureaucrats when possible.”

  “Fair enough. So, seeing as how you’ve come looking for me, I suppose whatever you’ve got in mind involves high artillery or similar.”

  “At least in part. One way or another we are going to have to complete the job that was intended by my previous mission. The Piranha will soon be no more, so we must hobble the Broadline Syndicate, and as the Kruger Militia is not presently in possession of the equipment or personnel to do so reliably, we shall need to take up the slack in this tug-of-war. A fair bit of that means knowing the details of their equipment and the proper tactics to counter it.”

  “That much I could help with, if I had anything resembling the authority or the equipment.”

  “I’ll handle the authority aspect. Manufacturing authority is my bread and butter these days.”

  “I don’t mean credentials or security codes. I mean actual authority. A soldier who carries out a mission is a hero. The same person working alone is a lunatic with a gun.”

  “As long as the job gets done I’m not one to worry about labels.”

  “Well I am, but there’s enough other problems to solve first that I’m willing to leave that until later.” She took a few bites of the meal. “The breadcrumbs could have toasted up a bit better. Maybe if I had one of those brûlée torches… and that’s another thing. Equipment. They didn’t exactly let me take home any souvenirs when they booted me out, so if you want me to do anything besides give you advice, there’s the little issue of finding something for me to use.”

  “No issue at all. I’ve got connections with individuals who may be willing to part with a few choice items. … Is this basil?”

  “Flat leaf parsley. Speaking of folks willing to part with military hardware without too many questions, how do we know these Broadline Syndicate people didn’t just get a black-market hookup?”

  “Early indications are that, of any group on that planet, the Piranhas are more likely to get a legitimate black-market connection, but naturally it only takes one particularly resourceful member of the organization to get his hands on some goods. We’ll have to do a bit of investigation to be sure, so we know both precisely what we’re dealing with and how to shut down the flow of goods. As it stands I haven’t been able to identify any anomalous traffic patterns indicating covert shipments of arms to the planet, but the planetary surveillance is in a downright primordial state. It’ll take some high-end equipment to get a proper read on the flow of cargo.”

  “And that leaves the biggest issue. How exactly are we paying for this?”

  “Ah yes. Funding. Once we come up with a worthwhile scheme, I’ll see if I can’t get an official blessing from someone with rule of law down on the planet and a pocketbook to match.”

  “… You’re just going to shop around a mission for someone to authorize and p
ay for?”

  “This is the art of war, Silo. And like many fine artists, from time to time we must find a patron if one does not seek us out.”

  They ate silently for a while, each churning over the facts as they had presented themselves. It wasn’t until each had finished the meal that Winters was ready to talk again. She stood to gather the plates, but Garotte stopped her.

  “Please, you provided the meal. I believe the social contract demands that I handle the dishes as a result.”

  “Yeah, you can start with that,” Winters said. “Depending on what sort of boneheaded decisions I end up making, you’re going to owe me a heck of a lot more than a sink full of dishes.”

  Garotte got to work, Winters standing beside him with a dishrag awaiting drying duties.

  “You’re asking me to derail my whole life to help you do something no one asked you to do, or would let you do if they knew you were planning it. And all that is after you already derailed my life by getting me kicked out of the Earth Coalition Marines.”

  “Technically speaking, my dear, what I’m doing is offering to re-rail you to your original purpose. This is beyond any shadow of a doubt the sort of work a Special Forces team would be dispatched to handle, if it were to have occurred under the umbrella of any official military. That means that, had the unpleasantness of the past not occurred, this is just the sort of thing you would have been dutifully executing.”

  “Again, there’s a big difference between doing it for your government and doing it on your own say-so.”

  “Oh, without a doubt. And a fair amount of that difference is the compensation. It does not speak well of your current employment that you’ve not been able to afford an apartment with a bloody dishwasher.”

  “It was hard enough finding one with an oven. With a kitchen this small you don’t get an oven and a dishwasher. Now quit changing the subject. How do you see my life going, once this job is done? You think I’m going to use up my vacation time on the security gig to lob some grenades and then just come right back to civilian life?”

  “Heavens no, my dear. I’m expecting you to get a taste of combat again and remember what it is like to truly be alive.”

  “I’ll be a criminal.”

  “Bah. The law is fluid, flexible, and regionally unique. If there is one thing I know how to do, it is slip through the loopholes of galactic policy. You leave the legality to me and we’ll be getting medals of distinguished service from three different defensive ministries within a year.”

  “I don’t know…”

  “You do know, you just don’t want to admit it. What I’m offering is a chance to do what you were born to do: save lives, maintain peace, and do things that matter. The alternative is what? Reading books, trying new recipes, and fretting over the whos and whats and whens and wheres of the flavor of the month on the most pointless and superficial planet the human race has ever produced?”

  “Hey! Reading and cooking are both worthy pursuits. And Venus is delightful… for the most part.”

  “Ah. Well then. I didn’t realize you’d found your new calling in life. Forgive my intrusion.” He finished the last dish. “I don’t suppose you’ve kept in touch with anyone from the old days who might still have some fire in his or her belly.”

  “Watch it, buster.”

  “I only mean that I need someone who is still a soldier.”

  “Hey!” she barked, jabbing him in the chest. “I was born a soldier and I’ll die a soldier.”

  “Being born a soldier and dying a soldier doesn’t mean much if you don’t live as one. Do you think you’re the only munitions expert I’ve worked with over the years? Do you honestly think I don’t have a list of mercenaries as long as my arm that would kill, literally kill, for the opportunity to do this job? I came to you because we both know the last time you really lived was the last time you had a mission to do. I can’t guarantee things will go our way. I can’t guarantee there won’t be a war. I can’t even guarantee we’ll survive. But I can promise you this. You’ll feel the fire in your veins again, and when your head hits your pillow at night you’ll know what you did that day mattered. Now I’ve gone out of my way to put this little meeting together in a way that wasn’t liable to smash your life to bits just by asking. I don’t have the time for you to be of two minds on the subject. When I leave here, it’s with a yes or a no, and either way the mission moves forward. Now let’s hear it. Don’t think, don’t debate, what does that soldier inside you say?”

  “Yes,” she said, eyes flashing and tone certain.

  “That’s my girl. You’ve got until Monday to put your affairs in order. We’ve got a lot of travel to do, pack accordingly.” He fished into his pocket. “And until I can find someone with a fat enough wallet and a deep enough sense of honor to bankroll our little enterprise, consider this an advance on your eventual compensation.” He dropped a roll of fifty-thousand credit chips into her hand, each worth twenty credits.

  She glanced down at it. “… You just handed me a million credits. Just like that.”

  “Well you don’t suppose I’ve been risking my life all these years out of the goodness of my heart, do you? A good job well done without much of a trail of evidence is worth a pretty penny.”

  “You could have mentioned that.”

  “You didn’t strike me as the financially motivated type.”

  “I’m not, but it sure would have greased the gears a little bit.”

  “A fine lesson to retain for the future. To that end, start making a list of required equipment, with special emphasis on hard-to-acquire items.” Garotte took her hand and kissed it as though he were bidding farewell to royalty. “We are going to do great things, my dear.”

  With that, he took his leave. Winters, now alone with her thoughts, ran through the list of recent revelations. Each fact weighed down upon her further, but beneath it all was something strange. She had the sort of nervous, anxious anticipation and excitement she remembered from the closing days of summer while she was in school. As terrible as the forthcoming process was going to be… there was something revitalizing about the mere thought of it.

  She flopped down on the couch and picked up her slidepad. As she listed off the tools of the trade she would need to have in order to be properly prepared for the ill-defined mission ahead, the anxiety diminished and the anticipation increased.

  “Okay,” she said, eyes wide as she saw images of the latest large-bore weaponry. “This may not be all bad…”

  #

  Tessera’s main starport sat at the edge of the Rackton Amphitheater. It followed the model of the rest of the planet: lots of flash, very little substance. It sported the largest terrarium ever created, three Olympic-sized swimming pools for some reason, and a full zero-gravity training facility. Jessica Winters had found her way to one of the facility’s six retail wings, each of which would have been large enough to be considered a mall on any other planet, and staked out a seat outside a coffee shop to wait. At some point in the next hour Garotte would be arriving. He’d left a cryptic message regarding where she should meet him and what she should bring, and that their funding and equipment problems had been solved. The line about the equipment was the most useful as it meant she could pack light, just a few changes of civilian clothes and a handful of other essentials. Anyone who had spent time receiving proper military troop training, and thus had done long-haul hikes with full gear, knew how to pack with maximum efficiency.

  She sipped a warm apple cider with cinnamon and scanned the crowd for Garotte, trying to avoid dwelling on the seismic shift her life had taken in just the last few hours. Not twenty-four hours ago she had been comfortably—if not quite happily—employed. She had a neat little apartment, a steady income, a small circle of acquaintances, and a book club. Now her job was on hiatus, she’d had to ask her neighbor to water her plants for the unforeseeable future, and she was waiting for the no doubt overly dramatic arrival of the man responsible for this upheaval.

&n
bsp; Her slidepad beeped. She dug it out of her pocket and found a vague message from an unlisted username. Luggage cart/tram approaching from 3 o’clock position in 45 seconds. Be on it.

  She subtly scoped out the indicated direction and, sure enough, saw a hovering tram zipping along above a guide rail. It was an automated conveyance, little more than a moving bench with a bit of space to drop one’s belongings during the sometimes-arduous trip from one gate to another. She gathered her bags over one shoulder and stepped forward, easily maneuvering onto the vehicle when it stopped briefly to let off its only other passengers. Fifteen seconds later a man with Garotte’s build stepped on, dressed in the overalls of a member of the maintenance crew. He had on a pair of tinted safety goggles, and a pair of sound-deadening earmuffs hung around his neck. He gave her the detached nod of a stranger acknowledging the presence of another stranger.

  “Going on a trip?” he asked.

  His British accent was gone, replaced with an odd dialect one tended to hear if one lingered around the lower-income neighborhoods of Rackton. She’d never quite been able to work out where it had originated, but it reminded her of Russian.

  “Evidently,” she said.

  He nodded again. “Stupid question, I suppose. Not many folks come here and don’t go on a trip.” He tugged his jumpsuit. “Except folks like me.”

  “I imagine.”

  “Lots of work to do, over in baggage claim number 81.”

  “Ah,” she said.

  Reaching into his pocket, he pulled out a clunky bit of electronic apparatus with a screen, beefy antennas, and an absurd number of ports. He tapped out a few sequences on it, and five seconds later, red lights around the edge of the tram signaled what she imagined was some sort of fault condition, and the whole vehicle shifted to a narrower sidetrack that whisked them through a service entrance into the dimly lit innards of the starport.

  Unlike the customer-facing portions of the station, the behind-the-scenes was stunningly efficient and austere. The corridor they traveled through now was only a few fractions of a meter wider than the tram itself. Exposed pipes and wires provided easy access for inspection and repair. The corridor ran from the subbasement to nearly the roof. It almost looked like an elevator shaft stretched to the width of the entire building. All around them, a two-dimensional ballet of vehicles slid upward and downward to avoid each other on their way to various tasks. Now that there were no pedestrians to get in the way, the tram’s speed gradually increased until the wind was whistling in their ears.