Say it: the risk that this bright, competent, woman, attractive in all respects—would be loyal to her brother if push came to shove, instead of being loyal to the regiment of off-planet killers she happened to be working for at the moment. Surviving in a combat environment meant taking as few risks as possible, because the ones you couldn’t avoid were plenty bad enough.
CR was at present under the command of Senior Warrant Leader Edlinger; Buck Edlinger to his friends, and Huber knew him well enough from previous deployments to be in that number. Instead of doing a data transmission through the console, Huber made a voice call. It took a moment for Edlinger to answer; he didn’t sound pleased as he snarled, “Edlinger, and who couldn’t bloody wait for me to call back, tell me!”
“Arne Huber, Buck,” Huber replied calmly. He’d been shouted at before—and worse. Edlinger’d been squeezed into a place too tight for him to wear his commo helmet, and he wasn’t best pleased to be dragged out of there to take a voice call slugged Urgent. “I’ve got a problem that may turn out to be your problem too. Are your people working round the clock right now?”
“Via!” Edlinger said. “No, not by a long ways. You’re in Log Section now, Huber? What’re you about to drop on us? Did a shipload of blowers come down hard?”
“Nothing like that, Buck,” Huber said. Edlinger must have checked Huber’s status when Fencing Master came in for repair. “I want to check what three of your locals’ve been working on, and I want to check it when the locals and their friends aren’t around.”
“What d’ye know about maintenance oversight, Huber?” Edlinger said; not exactly hostile, but not as friendly as he’d have been if it hadn’t seemed an outsider was moving in on his territory.
“I know squat,” Huber said, “but I’ve got a tech here, Sergeant Tranter, who you gave curst good fitness reports to back when when he worked for you. And you can help, Buck—I’d just as soon you did. But this isn’t a joke.”
That was the Lord’s truth. This could be much worse than a company of armored vehicles getting bent in a starship crash.
“You got Tranter?” Edlinger said. “Oh, that’s okay, then. Look, Huber, I can have everybody out of here by twenty hundred hours if that suits you. Okay?”
“That’s great, Buck,” Huber said, nodding in an enthusiasm that Edlinger couldn’t see over a standard regimental voice-only transmission. “We’ll be there at twenty hundred hours.”
“Hey Huber?” Edlinger added as he started to break the connection.
“Right?”
“Can you tell me who you’re worried about, or do I have to guess?”
That was a fair question. “Their names are Galieni, Osorio, and Triulski,” Huber said, reading them off the display in front of him. “Do they ring a bell?”
Edlinger snorted something between disgust and real concern. “Ring a bell?” he said. “You bet they do. They’re the best wrenches I’ve been able to find. I’d recommend them all for permanent status in the Regiment if they wanted to join.”
Huber grimaced. “Yeah, I thought it might be like that,” he said.
“And Huber?” Edlinger added. “One more thing. You wanted to know what they’re working on? That’s easy. They’re putting your old blower, Fencing Master, back together. She’ll go out late tomorrow the way things are getting on.”
* * *
When Tranter came in with Bayes, the sergeant laughing as the trooper gestured in the air, Huber cued his helmet intercom and said, “Sarge? Come talk to me in my little garden of silence, will you?”
A console with regimental programming like Hera Graciano’s could eavesdrop on intercom transmissions unless Huber went to more effort on encryption than he wanted to. It was simpler and less obtrusive to use voice and the privacy screen that was already in place around his area of the office.
Tranter patted Bayes on the shoulder and sauntered over to the lieutenant as though the idea was his alone rather than a response to a summons. Huber was becoming more and more impressed with the way Tranter picked up on things without need for them to be said. Sometimes Huber wasn’t sure exactly what he’d say if he did have to explain.