Maxine cursed. But she handed over the weapon and went quietly. She’d owned a casino long enough to tell when her luck had run out. Today, it had come up snake eyes.
General Blitzkrieg knew he was in trouble the minute he heard the commotion in his outer office. There was only one person with the chutzpa to charge into his office and demand to see him without an appointment. “I know he’s in there, Major. Now, you can stand in my way and get run over, or you can step aside and let me in. Either way, I’m going to see him, whether he likes it or not.”
Blitzkrieg wished, not for the first time, that he had gotten an office with an emergency exit for these situations. But that would only postpone the inevitable. Like a trip to the dentist, this confrontation could be put off only at the price of worse pain later on. He pushed a button on his intercom and said, doing his best to sound nonchalant, “Major, no need to detain Colonel Battleax. Send her right in, if you will.” It sounded phony even to him.
The door opened and Colonel Battleax marched in. Through the open portal the general caught a glimpse of Major Sparrowhawk, whose expression indicated that she was no happier at being made the scapegoat for the delay than Colonel Battleax was at being made to wait. He was going to pay for both those mistakes, he realized. Sometimes he wondered what good being a general was if it afforded no protection from subordinates.
“Good morning, sir,” said Colonel Battleax. That was some small relief, he thought as he returned her very proper salute. At least she was going to observe the forms of military courtesy. Beyond that, he was unlikely to. find this a pleasant interview.
“Have a seat, Colonel,” he said, returning the salute. “To what do I owe the pleasure of your visit?” Keep up the fiction that you’re glad to see her, he thought, and maybe she won’t bite your head off this time. He didn’t put much trust in that notion, though.
Colonel Battleax settled into the chair facing Blitzkrieg’s desk. “I’ve been watching the news, General,” she said. “You’ve been pulling strings again.”
Blitzkrieg feigned surprise. “What are you referring to?”
“A news story from Landoor. It seems there were shots fired at the spaceport, presumably by antigovernment rebels.”
“Landoor…that name is familiar…”
“Of course it’s familiar,” said the colonel, losing patience. “You went horse-trading to the Joint Chiefs to get a Legion company posted there as the peacekeeping force. You don’t do that so often that you’re likely to have forgotten it, unless you’re getting senile even faster than anyone thought. You sent Phule’s Company-Captain Jester’s Company-to Landoor.”
“Why, yes, I suppose I did,” said Blitzkrieg. “It seemed a feather in the cap for the Legion…”
“Don’t pull that guff on me, General,” said Battleax. “Jester was a complete nonentity until he ordered that strafing on New Atlantis, as it was called then. You’ve taken his subsequent rise as a thorn in your side. Now you transfer him to the one place in the galaxy where there are people with a bigger grudge against him than yours. You expect me to believe this is unpremeditated?”
“Why, yes…er, no…” Blitzkrieg turned red. “Damn it, Colonel, what are you getting at?”
The colonel stood up and leaned forward over the general’s desk. “General, it’s time you realized that, whether or not you like Jester, he’s a rising star. If you’d accepted that all along, the entire Legion would have gotten credit for everything he’s done. Instead, he’s the shining exception. I can’t think of another Legion unit the Joint Chiefs would’ve been willing to put in such a sensitive position. Now if he falls on his face, he’ll take the entire Legion down with him. You may not be able to see beyond your own nose, but those of us who can aren’t going to let you get away with it.” She glared at him, then straightened up and added as an afterthought, “With all due respect, sir.”
“This is preposterous,” said the general. “I deny it all, of course.” He was sweating.
“Frankly, General, I didn’t expect anything else,” said Colonel Battleax. “If Jester comes a cropper on Landoor, there are some of us who will see that blame for it comes back to roost where it belongs. So I suggest you do whatever you can to insure that nothing untoward does happen to him.”
Blitzkrieg shrugged. “Really, Colonel, I don’t see where this is any matter for great concern. A Legion captain ought to be able to take care of himself. If he can’t, that’s a pity, but ultimately no reflection on us.”
The colonel nodded, grimly. “Very well, sir, if that’s how you intend to play the game, that’s how it’ll be played. Good day, sir.” She saluted and left the office.
Blitzkrieg leaned back in his chair. That hadn’t gone so badly, he thought. Still, best to keep a closer eye on the Landoor situation. If Jester got in trouble there, he might be able to devise a way to burnish his own reputation by riding to the rescue. Yes, that might be a very satisfactory way to profit from his enemy’s distress. He’d have to keep it in mind.
“He’s gone where?” Lieutenant Armstrong’s disbelief was written plainly on his face. He’d just poured his first cup of coffee, so his normal stiff bearing hadn’t quite had time to set in.
“Here’s the note he left with Mother,” said Lieutenant Rembrandt, shoving a piece of paper at her fellow officer. “At least he left a note-I’d have liked it a lot more if he’d told us in person, though.”
“We’d have tried to talk him out of it, which is why he didn’t ask us,” said Armstrong, glancing up from the note. “He has Beeker and Rev along, I see. Do we have any idea where specifically they’ve gone?”
“The rebel headquarters is somewhere on the mainland,” said Rembrandt. She waved a hand vaguely. “We don’t know exactly where. Mother couldn’t find any intelligence reports on it. The captain had already asked her. I was glad to hear that-at least he didn’t set out completely blind. But the rebels haven’t been enough trouble to justify close surveillance, up until now.”
Armstrong frowned. “No satellite intelligence?”
“The satellite network here is pretty rudimentary,” said Rembrandt, wearily. “The captain learned that when he was looking for that secret government project. There are a couple of old weather sats, dating back to the mining days, with add-ons for GPS and communications. But nothing military.”
“Nothing? Didn’t these people just have a war?”
“Sure,” said Rembrandt. She walked over to the coffee urn and topped up her cup. “But remember, with only one nation on this world, they didn’t have an enemy to keep tabs on. When that civil war broke out, their economy had collapsed, and neither side had off-world allies. It was a low-tech war all around-no armor, no air force, no long-range missiles. And no intelligence sats. Even after the war, the Army peacekeeping team never took the rebels seriously enough to spend the money on sats.”
“Well, I guess we should be thankful for small favors,” said Armstrong. “At least nobody’s got enough firepower to overwhelm a single Legion company if they decide to start shooting. I guess that’s an acceptable trade-off for the extra set of eyes.”
“I agree,” said Rembrandt, adding a dash of cream to her coffee. “Except we still need to figure out where the captain’s gone. If an emergency comes up, I want to talk to him before I do anything drastic.”
Armstrong looked up from his coffee cup. “I don’t see how that’s a problem,” he said. “We can zero in on their wrist communicators, right? Or is there something else you haven’t told me?”
“You got it. Everybody except the captain left their communicators behind,” said Rembrandt. “And he’s turned his off. I think he didn’t want the rebels to get their hands on advanced tech if they decided to take him prisoner. One communicator won’t do them much good; they need two or more to get any advantage from them.”
“Rats,” said Armstrong. “So we can’t get in touch with the captain unless he initiates the contact.”
“That’s the story,” said Rembrandt. “We better hope that nothing happens until he decides to come back.”
“We better hope the rebels don’t decide they’ve got a useful hostage on their hands,” said Armstrong.
“Yeah, I thought about that, too,” said Rembrandt. She drained her coffee and set down the cup. “Maybe you better get over to the comm center and see if you and Mother can figure out some alternate way to track down the captain.”
Armstrong picked up his coffee cup and rose from his chair. “I’ll get right on it,” he said. “Let you know if I hear from him.”