He shook himself. It had been a business transaction, nothing more, he told himself, and knew he lied. Oh, it had been business, and the money his secret sponsor had slipped him had cleared his debts . . . for a time. Until the next time. But the sensual thrill of knowing, even as Scott crumpled, that his bullet had blown his target's aristocratic heart apartthat had been his true reward. And the reason it had been so easy to accept the next assignment, and the next.
Yet in the end, the very people he hated with all his soul had won. "Professional duelist," they'd called him, when all the time they'd meant "paid killer." And they'd been right. He admitted that here in the quiet, empty room. But he'd killed too many of them, even when his sponsors would have been willing to settle for a wound. The blood taste had been too sweet, the aura of fear too heady, and finally the Corps had had enough.
He'd killed a "brother officer"as if the uniform a dead man wore should matter! He wasn't the first serving officer to do so, but there were too many bodies in his past, too many families that owed too many debts. They couldn't try him for murder, for duels were legal. He'd faced his opponent's fire, and they couldn't prove he'd accepted money for it. But they'd all known the truth, and they could bring up his entire record: his gambling, his women, the adulterous affairs he'd used to lure targets onto the field, the arrogance he'd let color his relations with senior officers as the terror of his reputation grew. And that had been enough to find him "unfit to wear the Queen's uniform" and led to that bright, hot morning and the slow, degrading tap of the drums.
And it had led here, as well. Here where the money was good, but even here the money was only part of it. Only the means to an end that let him sneer at their self-proclaimed nobility of purpose and avenge himself upon them again and again, even if they never knew it.
His nostrils flared, and he pushed himself up out of the chair.
All right. He'd been warned that the operation was in jeopardy, and its security was his responsibility. So be it. There were too many records, too much evidence, in this facility, and as his employer had said, the lab was only hardware.
There were ways to evacuate, and there were ways to evacuate, he thought with a slow, hungry smile. If he had to leave the equipment behind, then he could at least abandon it in a way that would give him personal satisfaction.
He opened the com room door and walked briskly down the hall. He had arrangements to make.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
The well-dressed man looked vaguely out of place in the luxurious office's comfortably cushioned chair and his civilian clothing, despite his expensive tailoring. His face was dark and lean, the sort of face which has been trained to say only what its owner wants it to say, and his eyes were hard as he accepted the chilled glass and sipped. Ice rattled like brittle music as he lowered the glass, and his host sank into a facing chair and tried not to look anxious.
"I was sorry to hear about your . . . unanticipated problems, Mr. Canning." The visitor's voice was deep and well-modulated, almost gentle, but his host shifted uncomfortably. "I trust," the visitor went on, "that they aren't of such a nature as to interfere with our timetable?"
Wallace Canning, the People's Republic of Haven's consul on the planet Medusa, felt sweat bead his forehead. His guest might be in civilian clothes, but every time Canning looked at him he saw the uniform he ought to have been wearingthe green and gray uniform of a rear admiral in the People's Navy with the hourglass and sword of Naval Intelligence.
"I can't say for certain," he said at length, picking his words with caution. "Everything is too up in the air and unsettled. Until we know what this Harrington is going to do next, the best we can do is guess and double-check our potential vulnerabilities."
"I see." The business-suited admiral leaned back in his chair, swirling his drink in his hand and listening to its icy tinkle, and pursed his lips. Canning tried not to twitch under his level regard.
"It seems to me," the admiral resumed after a moment, "that there's been some sloppy execution at this end, Mr. Consul. We were assured the situation was under control. Indeed, I expected this to be a routine visit to receive your final readiness report, and now I hear that you can only `guess' about what the opposition is going to do next." He shook his head. "Any covert operation has a built-in risk factor, but we've put too much time into this one, and Operation Odysseus is too important for guesswork or field operations that can be completely overturned by a single new factor."
"It can't be helped, and it's no one person's fault, either here or in the field," Canning said, choosing to assume the role of a man defending his subordinates and not himself. "And the `single factor' you refer to was a complete wild card no one saw coming, here or on Haven. We couldn't see it coming, AdmSir, because there was absolutely no way to predict that we'd get someone like this lunatic assigned to Basilisk Station after all these years."
"I am aware of that. In fact, Mr. Canning, I was the one who chose the original timing for Odysseus's activation when Pavel Young was assigned here."
"Yes. Well, things were moving exactly according to plan until she turned up. Since then" Canning broke off and shrugged, raising one hand, palm uppermost.
"I understand the change in circumstances, Mr. Canning." The admiral spoke with the patience of one addressing a very small child, his eyes deceptively mild, and the consul writhed internally but knew better than to protest.
"Moreover, unlike you, I have a dossier on Commander Harrington," the admiral continued. "I'm sorry to say it isn't as extensive as I'd like. As you may know, NavInt seldom builds an in-depth package on anyone who hasn't yet made list, unless they come from a particularly prominent family. All we have on her are the standard clippings and her public record, but even those are enough to indicate that she's an entirely different proposition from an over-bred cretin like Young. And, all in all, I would be forced to agree that Harrington is scarcely the sort of officer one might reasonably have expected that oaf Janacek to assign to his own private little hellhole out here."
Canning relaxed a tiny bit, only to tense anew as his guest smiled thinly.
"Nonetheless, Mr. Canning, I can't escape the conclusion that you've taken your security too lightly. From the very beginning, you seem to have relied not on your own precautions but almost solely on the RMN's inefficiency. Granted," he waved a hand gently, "that inefficiency was part of our original planning, but you shouldn't have relied on its continuation. Certainly it should have been evident that your arrangements required a drastic reevaluation as soon as Harrington started shaking things up."
"I" Canning stood and crossed abruptly to the liquor cabinet. He poured himself a martini with hands that trembled slightly, took a swallow, then turned back to the admiral.
"I have taken some precautions, Sir, whatever you may think. Admittedly, they were long-term, routine measures, and I'll concede I was slow to realize what was happening and adjust to Harrington's presence, as well. But I've been here over six local years, and this is the first Manticoran officer who's even bothered to check manifests against canister numbers in all that time."
"If that were all she were doing, Mr. Canning, or even if she were just arresting smugglers, I would be far less concerned," his guest said with deadly precision. "But that isn't all she's doing, is it? She's actively supporting Matsuko and the NPA. The local manpower she's released from customs and space control duties alone would constitute a major threat to operational security. When you add the overflights she's ordered to what your informants are reporting" He shook his head sadly, and Canning took another long swallow of his drink.