“Yeah,” said Huber. Through the windscreen he could see the converted school and the temporary buildings behind it. Kelso throttled back.
Much better to have him for a friend; because the people whom Joachim Steuben considered enemies usually didn’t live long enough to worry about it.
* * *
This time Huber had his equipment belt unbuckled and his knife in his hand before he stepped out of the four-place aircar in which Sergeant Tranter had brought him to the Provost Marshal’s office. The sky of Plattner’s World had an omnipresent high overcast; it muted what would otherwise be an unpleasantly brilliant sun and was turning the present dawn above Base Alpha into gorgeous pastels.
Tranter had shut down the car in the street. He sat with his arms crossed, staring into the mirrored faceshields of the White Mice on guard.
The guards didn’t care, but the trivial defiance made Tranter feel better; and Huber felt a little better also. He wasn’t completely alone this time as he reported as ordered to Major Steuben.
“Go on through, Lieutenant,” said the faceless guard who took Huber’s weapons. “He’s waiting for you.”
Huber walked down the hall to the office at the end. The door was open again, but this time Steuben dimmed his holographic display as Huber approached. The major even smiled, though that was one of those things that you didn’t necessarily want to take as a good omen.
“Close the door behind you, Lieutenant,” Steuben said as Huber raised his hand to knock. “I want to discuss what happened last night. How would you—”
He waited till the panel closed behind Huber’s weight; it was a much sturdier door than it looked from the thin plastic sheathing on the outside.
“—describe the event?”
“Sir,” Huber said. He didn’t know what Steuben expected him to say. The truth might get some good people into difficulties, so in a flat voice he lied, “I was eating with my deputy in a restaurant she’d chosen. When we went out to get into her aircar, we were set on by thugs who’d been breaking into cars. Fortunately some off-duty troopers were passing nearby and came to our aid. My deputy went home in her own vehicle—”
He sure hoped she had. He didn’t have a home number to call Hera at, and the summons waiting at Huber’s billets to see the Provost Marshal at 0600 precluded Huber from waiting to meet Hera when she arrived at office.
“—and I returned to my quarters with the fellows who’d rescued us.”
“Want to comment on the shooting?” Steuben asked with a raised eyebrow. “The use of powerguns in the middle of Benjamin?”
“Sir,” Huber said, looking straight into the hard brown eyes of Colonel Hammer’s hatchetman, “I didn’t notice any shooting. I believe the business was handled with fists alone, though some of the thugs may have had clubs.”
Steuben reached into his shirt pocket and came out with a thin plastic disk. He flipped it to Huber, who snatched it out of the air. It was the pitted gray matrix which had held copper atoms in place in a powergun’s bore; a 1-cm empty, fired by a pistol or sub-machine gun.
Specifically, fired from Huber’s pistol.
“Sir, I don’t have anything useful to say about this,” Huber said. The bastard across the desk could only kill him once, so there wasn’t any point in going back now. “If it came from the scene of the fight, it must have been fired after we left there.”
“It’s old news, Lieutenant,” Steuben said, “and we won’t worry about it. If there had been a shooting incident . . . let’s say, if you’d shot one or more citizens of the UC, you’d have been dismissed from the Regiment. It’s very possible that you’d have been turned over to the local authorities for trial. Our contract with the UC really is in the balance as a result of what happened at Rhodesville.”
“Then I’m glad there wasn’t any shooting, sir,” Huber said. “I intend to stay inside the Liaison Office for the foreseeable future so that there won’t be a repetition.”
The holographic scenes on the major’s wall weren’t still images as Huber had thought the first time he’d seen them. What had initially been a tiny dot above the horizon had grown during the interview to a creature flying at a great height above the snowfields.