"Yessir."
"Now, get me double-ganged to those Honjo hardheads."
"Aye, sir. Do we have a final destination?"
Sten didn't answer.
Not because he didn't have an answer, but because one secret of being a live conspirator was never telling anyone anything until just before it happened. In fact, he had two, now that true miracles had happened and he had not just a ship, but the beginnings of a fleet.
The first one he hadn't exactly decided on. But it would be close to center stage, since all good rebellions require some kind of Bastille-bashing to get started.
The second?
Mahoney had shouted "Go home," as he was dragged off to his death.
And Sten had finally figured out exactly where Mahoney meant. Even if he still had not the slightest idea why or what.
Or so he hoped.
CHAPTER TWO
RANETT DUG HER elbow into a sleepy-eyed clerk's ribs, trod hard on a naval officer's toes, and, with practiced carelessness, dumped hot caff on a bureaucrat's swollen paunch.
As she punched through the crowd, she strewed apologies in her wake: "Pardon... So sorry... How clumsy of me..."
If anyone had been awake enough to notice, they would have seen that Ranett moved with the oiled ease of a combat veteran. She slipped through the crowd at full tilt. Leaping across openings. Forcing gaps where none existed before. AH the while she kept her eyes focused on her eventual goal—the enormous doors leading into the Arundel Castle pressroom.
At the door she was brought up short by a black uniformed mountain. The golden insignia on the guard's sleeve was an ornate / with an 5 twisted around it like a snake. Wonderful, her mind snarled... Internal Clottin‘ Security.
She flashed her sweetest smile. Guaranteed to melt the hearts of most reasonably heterosexual males. "Excuse me, please..." Ranett started to duck under his arm and slip into the pressroom. Inside, she heard a briefer's dry voice. The clots have already started, she thought. I'll skin somebody's hide for this.
Again, the IS man barred her way. "Press only," he snarled.
Ranett kept the sweet smile pasted on. "Then, that means me." She whipped out her credentials and held them steady for the big stupe's beady eyes. He looked closely at the credentials, then at her face. Taking his damned good time.
"Looks like you, all right," he said. Then he gave her a malicious grin. Double wonderful, Ranett thought. A media hater.
"You still can't go in."
"Why the clot not?"
The IS man jolted. The sweetness on Ranett's face was gone now. Her tone dripped icicles. But after the moment's hesitation, the guard failed to take warning.
"Orders, that's why," he growled. "The briefing's already in progress... No one may enter or leave until it's over."
A heartbeat later his self-satisfied smile was replaced with a look of pure terror as Ranett unleashed her pent-up fury.
"Get out of my way, you pumped-up little scrote," she snarled. "You let me in there this instant, or I'll fry your pubes for breakfast."
She let him have it for a full one and a half horrible minutes. Scorching him and the wall on either side with blasphemies and foul threats equal to anything the IS man had ever heard—up to and including introducing him to the Emperor's chief torturer.
As each second of the ninety dripped away like a full year, the name on the press ID started registering in his tiny brain. TTie woman flaying him alive was a legendary newsbeing. Ranett had covered the Tahn wars from the front. Survived the nightmare years when the privy council ruled. Produced prizewinning livie documentaries that even he had watched in awe. Mighty government and corporate chieftains had been known to flee like small boys caught in dirty little acts when she showed up with her recording crew.
When she paused for breath—or new inspiration—the IS man did his best to ooze out of her way. He was busy deserting his post—he'd rather face his hyena-voiced sergeant than this woman—when he heard the big doors hiss open, then closed. He looked behind him. Managed a breath... long and shuddering. Ranett was inside. He was safe until the press conference was over. And clot his orders.
Fleet Admiral Anders—Chief of His Majesty's Naval Operations—did a little mental swearing of his own when he saw Ranett duck into the crowded room and cozen some young fool out of an aisle seat.
Up until now, the thing had gone perfectly. When he had first gotten news of the drakh that had hit the fan in the Altaics, he had put his press crisis officers into motion before he had even gotten orders from the Emperor.
The admiral's critics—all silent now—believed him far too young for his post. Also too consciously handsome and smooth. A man who had climbed quickly to the top through political talent, rather than military. In fact, his combat medals had all been won by staged fly-ins to recently cleared enemy territory. He had fired many shots in anger, but all skillfully executed memos and press releases.
His first act as Chief of Naval Operations had been to create the emergency press-pool system the beings before him were operating under. The rules were simple: (1) Only newsbeings cre-dentialed by his office could attend a Crisis Briefing. (2) Only questions pertaining to the "facts" presented in the briefing would be entertained. (3) Only authorized spokesbeings were permitted to be questioned. (4) Any violations of the first three rules might be deemed a breach of Imperial security and all parties prosecuted for treason.
Still, there were certain realities to handling the media. Some of the beings before him were stars as popular as any livie heartthrob. And they commanded salaries of such size that they were powerful corporations in their own right.
Fortunately, most of them were tame. One part of Anders's genius was he recognized that even a gadfly must join the institution it torments to become a rich and famous gadfly.
Ranett didn't fit this mold. She was merely famous. She had no desire for wealth. Cared nothing for her fame... except as a powerful tool to be used to get her way.
Which was why when Admiral Anders drew up the list of reporters to be called, he was forced to include her name. But it went on the bottom. Careful instructions were given for the call to go out too late for Ranett to attend.
But here she was. In clotting person. Despite the hour-— Anders had purposely set the crisis briefing for two E-hours before dawn—Ranett looked frighteningly awake. Unlike her punchdrunk colleagues who yawned and nodded all around her, halfheartedly bending an ear as Anders's pet briefing officer continued the jargon-laden drone.
"... So much for the history and physical makeup of the Altaic Cluster. You will find planetary thumbnails, relative-grav data, and time-conversion charts in the materials we've already handed out," the officer said.
"Also included is a fact sheet on the four principal races: the Jochians and Torks. Both human. And the
Suzdal and Bogazi. Both ET. It will be helpful to recall that the Jochians are the majority race. And each of the races harbored historical hatred of the other."
There was a dry rustle of documents as the officer moved on. "Next... the political backdrop. The details are well known to you all. However, to sum up. Anarchy threatened when the Em-peror's trusted ally, The Khaqan, died. He was a member of the Jochian majority. It was unfortunate the heavy workload and detail-driven nature of his duties prevented The Khaqan from grooming a successor.
"The Emperor appointed Doctor Iskra—a prominent Jochian scholar and devoted citizen of the Empire—as the new leader..."
Ranett was getting the range now. She could see by the glazed look on her colleagues' faces that nothing important had been said... yet. But they were over an hour into the briefing. The dry lecturer in front of her was only one of several who had come before. Obviously, all of them had outlined equally unimportant facts. It was certainly not news that things had gone into the slokhouse in the Altaics. A leakproof news blackout had been slammed down for some time now. Ranett herself had just returned from an attempt to visit the sector. Her ship had been ordered back to Prime by someone very powerful, just short of its destination.