He cocked an eyebrow.
“I said I was happy!” Huber said. Via, he was going to have to watch himself. It’d be a hell of a note to come through a mission like this one and then be shot because he mouthed off to a stone killer like Joachim Steuben.
He smiled—at himself, but it was probably the right thing to do because the major giggled in response.
“That one!” Patronus said, pointing at the image. His hands were clean but he’d chewed his fingernails ragged.
Major Steuben’s right hand moved minutely, then clicked the switch that controlled the laser marker. Huber didn’t see him look around, not even a quick glance, but the pipper was centered on the forehead of the grim-looking man who’d brushed his full moustache in an attempt to cover the scar on his cheek. “That one,” Steuben repeated into the PA system.
In a quick voice, bobbing his head to his words, Patronus continued, “That’s Commander Halcleides, he took over after Commander Fewsett—that is, when he died.”
“What happens next?” Huber asked. He didn’t exactly care, but he knew Deseau’d ask when he got back to Fencing Master and he wanted to have an answer. “You’ll shoot them?”
Patronus turned with a furious expression. “They’re traitors!” he snarled. “They deserve to die!”
Steuben made a peremptory gesture with his left hand. His head didn’t turn, but Huber saw his eyes flick toward the former aide.
“Master Patronus,” Steuben said without raising his voice, “I’d appreciate it if you’d attend to your duties while the lieutenant and I speak like the gentlemen we are. I don’t want the bother of replacing you.”
He giggled again. To Huber he added, “Though shooting him would be no bother at all, eh, Lieutenant? For either of us, I suspect.”
Patronus was on a seat that folded down from the sidewall. He turned again to face the screen across the front of the compartment, pointedly concentrating on the prisoners shambling through the identification parade. His face flushed, then went white.
Huber looked at the man who’d first planted evidence on his friends and now was fingering his closest colleagues for probable execution. In a good cause, of course: the Regiment’s cause. But still . . .
“No, Major,” Huber said. “It wouldn’t be much bother.”
“But to answer your question,” Steuben continued, “no, we’re not going to shoot them, Lieutenant. They’ll be shipped off-planet to a detention center; an asteroid in the Nieuw Friesland system, as a matter of fact. The Colonel believes they’ll be a useful . . . reminder, shall we say, to the government of the Point as to what might happen if it suddenly decided to back away from its support for the war with Solace.”
“Th-the-there,” Patronus said, pointing at the strikingly attractive woman going through the chute. His outstretched hand trembled. “Talia Mandrakora, she was in charge of propaganda.”
“That one,” Steuben said, highlighting the woman. To Huber he added, “Do you fancy her, Lieutenant? I dare say you could convince her that the only chance she has to survive would involve pleasing you.”
Huber felt his lip curl. “No thanks,” he said. “I don’t have trouble finding company for the night.”
“I’m sure that’s true,” Steuben said with a smirk. He rotated his chair toward the screen again. His posture didn’t change in any definable way, but he was no longer the man who’d been joking with catlike cruelty. “And now, I think, we have the personage we’ve been waiting for.”
The prisoners waiting to walk through the chute parted, glancing over their shoulders and then lowering their faces as they pushed clear. Melinda Riker Grayle strode through the gap which fear rather than respect had opened for her. She was no longer the woman who’d cowed her colleagues in the Assembly. She wore a white uniform but the right sleeve had been singed and at least some of the stain on her trousers was blood. Nonetheless she walked with her back straight, glaring toward the command car.
“Invite Assemblyman Grayle to join her associates in our van, if you please, Sergeant Kuiper,” Steuben said into the pickup.
Grayle walked alone into the chute. The trooper there hesitated, his arm raised but not fully extended.