Here was Building 93 of the Administration Annex, Fleet Headquarters, Port Tau Ceti. That was the only thing Kowacs knew for sure about the place.
Except that he was sure he’d rather by anywhere else.
Building 93 didn’t house clerical overflow. The doors were like bank vaults; the electronic security system was up to the standards of the code section aboard a Command-and-Control vessel; the personnel were cool, competent, and as tight as Nick Kowacs’ asshole during an insertion.
“Here, please, sir,” said the escort, stopping beside a blank door. He gestured. “This is as far as I go.”
Kowacs looked at him. He wouldn’t mind seeing how the kid shaped up in the Headhunters. Good material, better than most of the replacements they got . . . and Marine Reaction Companies always needed replacements.
He shivered. They’d needed replacements while there were Weasels to fight. Not any more.
“Have a good life, kid,” Kowacs said as the blue highlights in the doorpanel suddenly spelled special projects/teitelbaum with the three-stars-in-circle of a vice admiral.
The door opened.
Nick Kowacs was painfully aware that he was wearing the pair of worn fatigues he hadn’t had time to change when the messenger rousted him; also that the best uniform he owned wasn’t up to meeting a vice admiral. He grimaced, braced himself, and strode through the doorway.
The door closed behind him. The man at the desk of the lushly-appointed office wore civilian clothes. He was in his mid-40s, bigger than Kowacs and in good physical shape.
Kowacs recognized him. The man wasn’t a vice admiral. His name was Grant, and he was much worse.
I thought he was dead!
The man behind the desk looked up from the hologram projector his blunt, powerful fingers toyed with.
He grinned. “What’s the matter, Kowacs?” he said. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
Grant gestured. “Pull a chair closer and sit down,” he said. He grinned again. There was no more humor in the expression the second time. “Hoped I was dead, huh?”
Kowacs shrugged.
The chair along the back wall had firm, user-accommodating cushions that would shape to his body without collapsing when he sat in them. The one Kowacs picked slid easily as his touch reversed magnets to repel a similar set in the floor.
Keep cool, learn what hole you’re in, and get the hell out.
Nobody likes to talk to the Gestapo.
Though if it came to that, reaction company Marines didn’t have a lot of friends either.
Assuming the office’s owner was the vice admiral in the holographic portrait filling the back wall, Teitelbaum was a woman. In the present display, she wore a dress uniform and was posed against a galactic panorama, but there were probably other views loaded into the system: Teitelbaum and her family; Teitelbaum with political dignitaries; Teitelbaum as a young ensign performing heroically in combat.
Special Projects.
“You work for Admiral Teitelbaum, then?” Kowacs said as he seated himself carefully.
“I’m borrowing her office,” Grant said without apparent interest. He spun the desk projector so that the keyboard faced Kowacs, then tossed the Marine a holographic chip. “Go on,” he ordered. “Play it.”
Kowacs inserted the chip into the reader. His face was blank, and his mind was almost empty. He hadn’t really felt anything since the Weasels surrendered.
The message was date-slugged three days before, while the 121st was still on the way to Port Tau Ceti. An official head-and-shoulders view of Kowacs popped into the air beneath the date, then vanished into another burst of glowing letters:
FROM: BUPERS/M32/110173/Sec21(Hum)/SPL
TO: KOWACS, Miklos Alexievitch
SUBJECT: Promotion to MAJOR
Effective from this date. . . .
Kowacs looked across the desk at the civilian. The air between them continued to spell out bureaucratese in green letters.
Grant’s face was too controlled to give any sign that he had expected the Marine to react visibly. “Here,” he said. “These are on me.”
He tossed Kowacs a pair of major’s collar tabs: hollow black triangles that would be filled for a lieutenant colonel. “Battledress style,” Grant continued. “Since it doesn’t seem that you have much use for dress uniforms.”
“I don’t have much use for any uniforms,” said Nick Kowacs as his tongue made the decision his mind had wavered over since the day he and his Headhunters had taken the surrender of the Khalian Grand Council. “I’m getting out.”