something up. You’ll find it worth your while more than monetarily. Only see you
keep Lee Quale from indiscretions. I’ll fill you in on it as soon as I find out
more. Vittorio’s gone. Dayin’s… lost. I’ve need of some reliable, intelligent
assistance. You read me, Bran?”
Hale nodded.
“I’ll talk with you about this tomorrow,” he said then very quietly. “Thank
you.”
“You all right here?” Hale asked.
“If I’m not,” he said, “you take care of it. Hear?”
Hale nodded, discreetly left. Jon settled back with somewhat more assurance,
looked at his guest, who sat easily in front of him.
“I take it you trust this person,” Jessad said, “and that you want to promote
him in your affairs. Choose your allies wisely, Mr. Lukas.”
“I know my own.” He drank a sip of the scalding coffee. “I don’t know you, Mr.
Jessad or whatever your name is, Your plan to use my son’s id I can’t permit.
I’ve arranged a different cover… for him. A tour of Lukas interests: a ship’s
outbound for the mines and his papers are on it.”
He expected outrage. There was only a polite lift of the brows. “I have no
objection. But I shall need papers, and I don’t think it wise to expose myself
to interrogation obtaining them.”
“Papers can be gotten. That’s the least of our problems.”
“And the greatest, Mr. Lukas?”
“I want some answers. Where’s Dayin?”
“Safe behind the lines. No cause for worry. I’m sent as a contingency… an
assumption that this offer is valid. If not, I shall die… and I hope that’s not
the case.”
“What can you offer me?”
“Pell,” Jessad said softly. “Pell, Mr. Lukas.”
“And you’re prepared to hand it to me.”
Jessad shook his head. “You’re going to hand it to us, Mr. Lukas. That’s the
proposal. I’ll direct you. Mine is the expertise… yours the precise knowledge of
this place. You’ll brief me on the situation here.”
“And what protection have I?”
“My approval.”
“Your rank?”
Jessad shrugged. “Unofficial. I want details. Everything from your shipping
schedules to the deployment of your ships to the proceedings of your council… to
the least detail of the management of your own offices.”
“You plan to live in my apartment the whole time?”
“I find little reason to stir forth. Your social schedule may suffer for it. But
is there a safer place to be? This Bran Hale—a discreet man?”
“Worked for me on Downbelow. He was fired down there for upholding my policies
against the Konstantins. Loyal.”
“Reliable?”
“Hale is. Of some of his crew I have some small doubt… at least regarding
judgment”
“You must take care, then.”
“I am.”
Jessad nodded slowly. “But find me papers, Mr. Lukas. I feel much more secure
with them than without.”
“And what happens to my son?”
“Concerned? I’d thought there was little love lost there.”
“I asked the question.”
“There’s a ship holding far out… one we’ve taken, registered to the Olvig
merchanter family, but in fact military. The Olvigs are all in detention… as are
most of the people of Swan’s Eye. The Olvig ship, Hammer, will give us advance
warning. And there’s not that much time, Mr. Lukas. First… will you show me a
sketch of the station itself?”
Mine is the expertise. An expert in such affairs, a man trained for this. A
terrible and chilling thought came on him, that Viking had fallen from the
inside; that Mariner on the other hand… had been blown. Sabotage. From the
inside. Someone mad enough to kill the station he was on… or leaving.
He stared into Jessad’s nondescript face, into eyes quite, quite implacable, and
reckoned that on Mariner there had been such a person as this.
Then the Fleet had shown up, and the station had been deliberately destroyed.
v
Pell: Q zone: orange nine; 1900 hrs.
There were still people standing in line outside, a queue stretching down the
niner hall out onto the dock. Vassily Kressich rested his head against the heels
of his hands as the most recent went out in the ungentle care of one of Coledy’s
men, a woman who had shouted at him, who had complained of theft and named one