He staggered to his feet and went to shave.
He made it to the staff conference, barely, and sagged into his usual seat at the head of the table. It was a full meeting, held therefore in the roomy refinery conference chamber. General Halify and an aide sat in. Tung and Thorne and Auson, Arde and Baz, and the five men and women picked to officer the new recruits ringed the table. The Cetagandan ghem-captain sat opposite the Kshatryan lieutenant, their growing animosity threatening to equal the three-way rivalry among Tung, Auson, and Thorne. The two united only long enough to snarl at the Felicians, the professional assassin from Jackson's Whole, or the retired Tau Cetan major of commandos, who in turn sniped at the ex-Oserans, making the circle complete.
The alleged agenda for this circus was the preparation of the final Dendarii battle-plan for breaking the Oseran blockade, hence General Halify's keen interest. His keenness had been rather blunted this last week by a growing dismay. The doubt in Halify's eyes was an itch to Miles' spirit; he tried to avoid meeting them. Bargain rates, General, Miles thought sulkily to him. You get what you pay for.
The first half hour was spent knocking down, again, three unworkable pet plans that had been advanced by their owners at previous meetings. Bad odds, requirements of personnel and material beyond their resources, impossibilities of timing, were pointed out with relish by one half of Miles's group to the other, with opinions of the advancers' mentalities thrown in gratis. This rapidly degenerated into a classic slanging match. Tung, who normally suppressed such, was one of the principals this time, so it threatened to escalate indefinitely.
"Look, damn it," shouted the Kshatryan lieutenant, banging his fist on the table for emphasis, "we can't take the wormhole direct and we all know it. Let's concentrate on something we can do. Merchant shipping—we could attack that, a counter-blockade—"
"Attack neutral galactic shipping?" yelped Auson. "Do you want to get us all hung?"
"Hanged," corrected Thorne, earning an ungrateful glare.
"No, see," Auson bulled on, "the Pelians have little bases all over this system we could have a go at. Like guerilla warfare, attacking and fading into the sands—"
"What sands?" snapped Tung. "There's nothing to hide your ass behind out there—the Pelians have our home address. It's a miracle they haven't given up all hope of capturing this refinery and flung a half-c meteor shower through here already. Any plan that doesn't work quickly won't work at all—"
"What about a lightning raid on the Pelian capital?" suggested the Cetagandan captain. "A suicide squadron to drop a nuclear in there—"
"You volunteering?" sneered the Kshatryan. "That might almost be worthwhile."
"The Pelians have a trans-shipping station in orbit around the sixth planet," said the Tau Cetan. "A raid on that would—"
"—take that electron orbital randomizer and—"
"—you're an idiot—"
"—ambush stray ships—"
Miles's intestines writhed like mating snakes. He rubbed his hands wearily over his face, and spoke for the first time; the unexpectedness of it caught their attention momentarily.
"I've known people who play chess like this. They can't think their way to a checkmate, so they spend their time trying to clear the board of the little pieces. This eventually reduces the game to a simplicity they can grasp, and they're happy. The perfect war is a fool's mate."
He subsided, elbows on the table, face in his hands. After a short silence, expectation falling into disappointment, the Kshatryan renewed the attack on the Cetagandan, and they were off again. Their voices blurred over Miles. General Halify began to push back from the table.
No one noticed Miles's jaw drop, behind his hands, or his eyes widen, then narrow to glints. "Son-of-a-bitch," he whispered. "It's not hopeless."
He sat up. "Has it occurred to anyone yet that we're tackling this problem from the wrong end?"
His words were lost in the din. Only Elena, sitting in a corner across the chamber, saw his face. Her own face turned like a sunflower toward him. Her lips moved silently: Miles?
Not a shameful escape in the dark, but a monument. That's what he would make of this war. Yes …
He pulled his grandfather's dagger from its sheath and spun it in the air. It came down and stuck pointfirst in the center of the table with a ringing vibration. He climbed up on the table and marched to retrieve it.
The silence was sudden and complete, but for a mutter from Auson, in front of whom the dagger had landed, "I didn't think that plastic would scratch …"
Miles yanked the dagger out, resheathed it, and strode up and down the tabletop. His leg brace had developed an annoying click recently, which he'd meant to have Baz fix; now it was loud in the silence. Locking attention, like a whisper. Good. A click, a club on the head, whatever worked was fine by him. It was time to get their attention.
"It appears to have escaped you gentlemen, ladies, and others, that the Dendarii's appointed task is not to physically destroy the Oserans, but merely to eliminate them as a fighting force in local space. We need not blunt ourselves attacking their strengths."
Their upturned faces followed him like iron filings drawn to a magnet. General Halify sank back in his seat. Baz's face, and Arde's, grew jubilant with hope.
"I direct your attention to the weak link in the chain that binds us—the connection between the Oserans and their employers the Pelians. There is where we must apply our leverage. My children," he stood gazing out past the refinery into the depths of space, a seer taken by a vision, "we're going to hit them in the payroll."
The underwear came first, soft, smooth-fitting, absorbent. Then the connections for the plumbing. Then the boots, the piezo-electric pads carefully aligned with points of maximum impact on toes, heels, the ball of the foot. Baz had done a beautiful job adjusting the fit of the space armor. The greaves went on like skin to Miles's uneven legs. Better than skin, an exoskeleton, his brittle bones at last rendered technologically equal to anyone's.
Miles wished Baz were by him at this moment, to take pride in his handiwork, although Arde was doing his best to help Miles ooze into the apparatus. Even more passionately Miles wished himself in Baz's place.
Felician intelligence reported all still quiet on the Pelian home front. Baz and his hand-picked party of techs, starring Elena Visconti, must have penetrated the planetside frontier successfully and be moving into place for their blow. The killing blow of Miles's strategy. The keystone of his arching ambitions. His heart had nearly broken, sending them off alone, but reason ruled. A commando raid, if it could be so called, delicate, technical, invisible, would not benefit from so conspicuous and low-tech a piece of baggage as himself. He was better employed here, with the rest of the grunts.
He glanced up the length of his flagship's armory. The atmosphere seemed a combination of locker room, docking bay, and surgery—he tried not to think about surgeries. His stomach twinged, a probe of pain. Not now, he told it. Later. Be good, and I promise I'll take you to the medtech, later.
The rest of his attack group were arming and armoring themselves as he was. Techs checked out systems to a quiet undercurrent of colored lights and small audio signals as they probed here, there; the quiet undercurrent of voices was serious, attentive, concentrated, almost meditative, like an ancient church before the services began. It was well. He caught Elena's eye, two soldiers down the row from himself, and smiled reassuringly, as if he and not she were the veteran. She did not smile back.
He probed his strategy as the techs did their systems. The Oseran payroll was divided into two parts. The first was an electronic transfer payment of Pelian funds into an Oseran account in the Pelian capital, out of which the Oseran fleet purchased local supplies. Miles's special plan was for that. The second half was in assorted galactic currencies, primarily Betan dollars. This was the cash profit, to be divided among Oser's captainowners to carry out of Tau Verde local space to their various destinations when their contracts at last expired. It was delivered monthly to Oser's flagship on its blockade station. Miles corrected his thought with a small grin—had been delivered monthly.