“Keep your filthy hands off me!” Grayle said. Steuben must’ve switched on the external microphones, for the assemblyman’s voice sounded as clear as if she’d been in the compartment with them.
She turned to face the car and shouted, “You in there, whoever you are! Hired killers! You know the election was rigged! And you know that you’re charging ten times what the citizens think they’re paying for your services! Tell them!”
“Take her away, Kuiper,” Steuben said, sounding vaguely bored. “I’d rather you not shoot her in the legs so that she has to be carried, but do that if she won’t come peaceably.”
“You know it’s true!” Grayle screamed. When the trooper reached for her shoulder she slapped his hand away, but instead of resisting further she marched down the chute and turned toward the truck where her aides were being held. Her head was high, and she didn’t look around.
Steuben smirked at Huber. “She’s right, you know,” he said conversationally. “The election was rigged. The Freedom Party would’ve taken forty-four percent of the seats if your friend Captain Orichos hadn’t manipulated the vote count.”
Huber looked sharply at the smaller display above the big screen, a 360-degree panorama from the command car. Mauricia Orichos stood watching the parade with three other Gendarmery officers, a few meters behind the White Mice who did the sorting. They followed Grayle with their eyes until she’d disappeared into the box of the truck.
“Orichos did that?” Huber said.
“She asked us for technical help so it could be done without detection,” Steuben said, looking up at the panorama with a faint smile. “I provided someone from my signals section. It would’ve been extremely awkward if Grayle had become Speaker and tried to take the Point out of the war.”
As Steuben spoke Patronus turned slowly toward him, like a rat hypnotized by the slowly waving hood of a cobra. Steuben focused his ice-colored eyes on the traitor and said, “I believe I told you—”
He broke off in the middle of the passionless threat for another giggle. “But then,” he continued, “with Mistress Grayle in hand, we don’t have to worry about other threats to hold over our friends, do we? I suppose we could just dismiss the rest of the prisoners . . . though I don’t believe we will for the moment.”
He gestured Patronus back to the screen and the line of prisoners resuming their procession through the chute. Patronus obeyed with the slow, jerky motion of an ill-made automaton.
“Was the rest of it true too?” Huber asked harshly. His throat hadn’t recovered from the ozone he’d breathed during the battle, but he and the major both knew there was more to his tone than that. “About the costs being higher than they know?”
Steuben shrugged. “In a manner of speaking,” he said. “The governments of the Outer States believe the Regiment’s price is only about twenty percent of the real figure. . . . But don’t worry: our fees are being paid, and line lieutenants don’t have to worry about where the money comes from.”
“I suppose not,” Huber said. He tried to make his mind go blank, but he couldn’t manage it. “Sir, if you don’t have any further duties for me here . . . ?”
“You don’t like our company?” Steuben said, his smile flashing on and off like a strobe light. “All right, Lieutenant. You’re free to leave.”
Major Steuben rotated his chair toward Huber again. His face, too pretty to be handsome in a man, was suddenly as hard as chilled steel. “The offer remains open, Lieutenant,” he said. “You should feel flattered, you know.”
“I appreciate your confidence, sir,” Huber said. He turned to the hatch; it opened before he could touch the control plate.
Huber stepped into the gathering darkness. Grenade launchers continued to work, the choonk/wham! choonk/wham! punctuating the sound of drive fans and power tools. Troopers were pulling maintenance on their vehicles with spares the column had brought from Base Alpha. The white flashes of the bombs were quick speckles through the fabric of tents bulging outward before they collapsed.
Mauricia Orichos saw Huber come out of the command car. She stepped away from the group she was with and waved to him.