"Bastard."
"Y' been talkin t't' m' mum again."
"Don't wait up. Just leave me some stregg."
"Maybe," Cind said. "I'm going to need a couple three more while Kilgour tells me I really do know what's going on."
"On wi' y' lad. 'Tis late, th' relief's goin't oot in a few minutes, an' Ah suspect th' sincer'ty ae the boyos 'crost th' street. Ah'll put a frick ae y'. Sure th' next Mantis reunion th' tape'll be a big hit."
Sten gestured obscenely, wanted another stregg, but decided not. It was hard to play drunk if you really were brain-burned. Besides, he had to find a security guard's uniform that fit.
Less than an hour later, the Imperial security platoon walked its rounds in a formal manner. The platoon was brought to a halt at each post. An order was bellowed by the watch commander. The relieved guard saluted, came to port arms, and doubled to the rear of the formation. The new guard also saluted and went to his post. Then the platoon moved on.
The new guard walked his post in a military manner for a while, then stopped to relieve himself. Across the wide avenue, the two watchers noted that he set his weapon down and steadied himself against a wall with one hand before he did.
The guard secured his fly and turned. Then he remembered the willygun, hastily turned back, and brought it back to shoulder arms. He walked a few paces, then the weapon evidently became uncomfortable. Against standing orders, he loosened the sling and carried the weapon over his shoulder.
He walked his rounds twice more. One of the watchers thought he saw the glint of a container at the man's lips, and certainly his pace seemed to get a bit more erratic. The guard returned to the gate and hunched into an alcove against the wind, a few meters away from the post's sentry box. The guard was motionless for a few minutes.
The two men exchanged glances. The first started to whisper something, and the sentry box's com buzzed. And buzzed. And buzzed. The guard roused himself, stumbled hurriedly to the box, and answered the com.
The willygun sat, momentarily forgotten, in the alcove-and the sentry had his back to it. By the time the guard finished his loud and laborious explanation and shut the com off, the willygun had vanished.
Kilgour, watching a frick-screen from dry, warm, and semi-drunken comfort in Sten's office, waited a few more minutes before activating Phase Two, which was the sergeant of the guard finding the sentry drunk and the weapon missing and ordering him to durace vile.
He poured Sten a double when he heard the sentry coming down the passageway.
Now for Phase Three, which could take place at any time. Buried in the butt of the willygun was a small transmitter. It was in receive mode at present. In an hour or two, after it had been moved to wherever the thieves were dumping the stolen arms, Kilgour would activate that transmitter for a directional signal. And, whether the gun had been stolen by profit-oriented thieves or by one or another of the private army members, it would end up in an interesting place.
At that point Sten and Alex could decide what Phase Four might be.
"Clean, lad. Clean like the old days," he congratulated Sten as he entered the office and sank into a chair.
"Clot the old days. Damned wind goes straight to the bone. Where's Cind?"
"Th' lass said she c'd do a better lush'n both of us workin' tandem. An' she muttered some'at aboot some old warrior needin't his bones wanned."
Sten grinned and slid the untouched stregg over to Kilgour. "Then I'll be saying good night, Laird Kilgour. I'm retiring to meditate on the sudden benefits of old warrior-hood."
"Aye. An' Ah'll be thinkin't, i' m' celibate mis'ry, ae whae nastiness com't next."
The next nastiness, not surprisingly, was provided by the charming beings of the Altaics and was far bigger than a bugged weapon in some death squad's possession.
Admiral Mason, even more grim-faced than usual, informed Sten of the events. There had been little for him or the Victory to do of late-praise some benevolent godlet who must have gotten lost and passed through the Altaic Cluster-and so Sten had ordered Mason to assign his ships out to various ELINT duties through the cluster.
Mason had objected, mostly because it was Sten doing the ordering, but had shut up when Sten pointed out that he trusted absolutely no one here in the Altaics including the embassy's own intelligence sources and staff-who, if they had been efficient, certainly should have filed earlier warnings on what had happened.
Mason reported formally, requesting permission to speak to Sten alone. Sten ran a secretary, a code clerk, and his protocol chief out, and sealed the office from all electronic surveillance. This sealing automatically alerted Kilgour to eavesdrop from his office next door.
Mason, without preamble, set up a small viewer and keyed it on. A holograph formed on Sten's desk. It showed the barricades set up at the main entrance to Pooshkan University, the students manning them, and then the students being attacked. The livie, blurry and short, purportedly had been made by a tourist from another world whose cab had gotten lost and ended in the middle of the melee. The livie was a forgery, of course-it did not show the armor that the military had used in smashing the students, and the attackers now wore plain coveralls rather than issue army uniforms.
"You have seen this?" Mason said.
"I have. Once an hour for the last week on every pirate broadcast around."
"Version B," Mason said, and dropped in another fiche.
The same scene, except this time there weren't many humanoids at the university. Now, the barricades were manned by Suzdal pups—and the attackers were Bogazi.
"Wonderful," Sten said. "Where'd you get this version?"
"As per your orders, I punted the San Jacinto out to run a bigear between the Suzdal and Bogazi. They picked this up on an open broadbeam that any of the Bogazi worlds could pick up."
"Would you care to bet," Sten said, "that if the San Jacinto had waited around for a while it could've snared the same livie, but with the Bogazi as victims?"
"No bet. Sir." The San Jacinto was another of Sten's secret advantages—the destroyer was brand new, named after the spy ship that had been the first Imperial warship officially destroyed by the Tahn. The DD consisted of weapons, engines, and sensors, and in fact was only marginally more liveable if vastly larger version of a tacship.
"So everybody's propaganda machine has turbochargers on," Sten said. "How long until the crusade starts will be—oh. You have more."
Mason did—but this was far too touchy for anything other than verbal from the San Jacinto's captain to Mason and thence to Sten.
The jihad was already under way. Two full Suzdal fleets—one the official fleet that the Khaqan had permitted for "local security," the second a ragtag of armed transports, smugglers, and perimeter patrols—were assembling.
Amid the intership and -system raving, the Imperial ship's analysts had determined the target. The Suzdal proposed nothing less than a full destruction raid on the Bogazi's capital world. The cancer must be excised to its roots, no matter the cost on either side. The Bogazi had, for far too long, been allowed to...
"Allowed to attack, burn, chop, destroy, eviscerate, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera," Sten said. "And of course the equally levelheaded and pragmatic Bogazi are massing to defend their realm.
"The defense, once it is successful, will become a to-the-last-fowl attack on the vile hounds of Suzdal, correct?"
"Yes, sir."
"This job gets more and more pleasurable by the minute. Kilgour. In with you."
Alex, without bothering to explain, was through the door.