"Sit," Anton Zilwicki invited, pointing at the chair opposite him across the table. McBryde obeyed the one-word command, and Zilwicki slid a second cup of coffee across to him.
"This is better than the crap we have to serve out there," he said, this time making no effort to hide his Gryphon accent. "Of course, it could be laced with all sorts of deadly poisons. Would you like me to take a sip first?"
"Why?" McBryde smiled crookedly. "If I were going to poison me, I'd've taken the antidote first myself, then put the poison in both cups."
He accepted the coffee and—not without an internal qualm or two, despite his own words—sipped. It really was much better than the brew served to the diner's patrons.
Assuming of course that it wasn't poisoned, after all.
"All right," Zilwickis said, leaning back in a chair which creaked alarmingly under his weight, "now that we've both established our professionalism, suppose you tell me what it is you wanted to talk about."
"First, let me point out a couple of things," McBryde said. "As I already mentioned, if all I wanted was to get my hands on you and Cachat, I wouldn't need any elaborate tricks to pull that off. Or, rather, my chances of success would probably be higher just going straight after you and the diner in a brute force kind of way. Or, for that matter, waiting until you return to your quarters this evening and pouncing then. In other words, it will save both of us a lot of time and wasted effort if we just start out assuming that I really do want to talk, and that I'm not baiting some kind of incredibly devious trap by coming here."
"Speaking purely theoretically, I can more or less accept that," Zilwicki replied. "Of course, there's no telling what kind of devious strategy—other than getting your hands on me and my associates, that is—you might have in mind."
"Of course," McBryde acknowledged. "And, as it happens, I do have a strategy in mind. I don't know that I'd call it 'devious,' but I do rather suspect that it's going to come as a surprise to you."
"I'm not especially fond of surprises." There was an undeniable note of warning in Zilwicki's deep voice, McBryde noticed.
"This one might be the exception to your rule, Captain," he replied calmly. "You see, I want to defect."
Chapter Forty-Eight
"Well, I guess that's about the best we're going to be able to do," Luiz Rozsak said, He leaned back in his chair to arch his spine and rubbed his eyes with the thumb and forefinger of his left hand while his right hand cradled his coffee cup. "It's not perfect, but then again, nothing ever is, is it?"
He lowered his left hand to grin crookedly at Edie Habib, Dirk-Steven Kamstra, Laura Raycraft, David Carte, J.T. Cullingford, Melanie Stensrud, and Carmen Priola.
"I believe this is the point where my loyal minions are supposed to say 'Nothing except your brilliant battle plans, Sir!' "
"Well, Admiral," Habib replied for the others, "given our keen awareness of the aforesaid brilliance, we realize full well that, despite our best efforts to conceal it—so as to avoid embarrassing you, you understand—you must already be aware of the veneration, awe, and near idolatrous reverence with which we regard our fearless leader."
A chorus of chuckles ran around the table in Kamstra's flag bridge briefing room, and, for just a moment, Rozsak's grin would have looked quite at home on any urchin's face. And not just because he was amused, either. It was also a beaming smile (or as close to one as he ever permitted himself to come) of pure delight. He treasured those chuckles—and their proof of his subordinates' confidence and morale—like a miser might cherish diamonds or rubies.
Especially since every one of them knew that, in almost every way that counted, any defense of the Torch System they might mount would represent their own personal Rubicon. They might—might—get away with no one back on Old Earth noticing anything this time, but that wouldn't really matter in the longer term.
He took a sip of coffee, then let himself come back upright and regarded all of them with a considerably more serious expression.
"I genuinely do think this is the best we're going to be able to nail things down," he said. "If any one has any reservations at all—or if there's something you think we should revisit—this is the time to bring it up."
The others looked at one another, and then all of the ship commanders looked at Habib. Several eyebrows were raised, as if inviting the chief of staff to bring up anything they might have forgotten, but she only looked back and shook her head. Then she turned to Rozsak.
"I'm not saying something won't come up during the exercises, Sir. With that proviso and sheet anchor, though, I'd have to say I agree with your assessment. It's not perfect, but the tactical problem's got too many nasty pointy things growing out of it for 'perfect.' We've done our best to disaster-proof things, though, and I think it'll get the job done."
She was right about the thorniness of the situation, Rozsak reflected. It wasn't that any single one of his objectives here in Torch was all that complicated. It was simply that some of them were fundamentally incompatible.
First and foremost, there was the need to protect the planet itself. And it was entirely too likely—indeed, a virtual certainty as far as he, Habib, and Watanapongse were concerned—that the StateSec outlaws Manpower had recruited had no interest at all in putting "boots on the ground."
Manpower didn't want its ex-slaves back, especially after they'd enjoyed such a taste of freedom and vengeance. No, what Manpower wanted was to see Torch erased from the face of the galaxy, preferably in a way which would thoroughly discourage any future, similarly uppity thoughts on the part of its property. And the Eridani Edict's prohibition of deliberate, genocidal attacks on planetary populations was aimed at star nations—which knew the Solarian League Navy would come to call on them if they violated its restrictions. Since Manpower wasn't a star nation, and there was no legal mechanism for the Solarian League Navy to go after a non-Solarian corporation, the Edict was a moot point as far as it was concerned. And since its mercenaries represented a force which no longer had a star nation to call its own, the actual officers and crews carrying out the operations wouldn't be particularly concerned by the Edict, either. All of which meant the attackers would probably settle for pasting the planet with a few "accidental" cee-fractional missile strikes. A half-dozen hundred-ton missiles hitting the planet at sixty percent or so of light-speed should pretty much pasteurize its ecosystem and anyone living in it. Forty-gigaton-range fireballs tended to have that effect.
Which, in turn, meant providing enough missile defense close to the planet to keep that from happening.
Rozsak's second objective was, while accomplishing the first one, to suffer as few casualties of his own as possible. That meant using his range and maneuver advantages to the full. Unfortunately, units placed to provide missile defense around the planet would be effectively anchored to Torch. They wouldn't be able to maneuver freely without exposing the planet.
His third objective was to accomplish the first two without revealing his new weapons' capabilities to anyone outside the Torch System. Frankly, he didn't want anyone else to find out about them, even the Torches. That wasn't going to happen, of course, but it was particularly important to keep anyone in the Solarian League from finding out if at all possible.
Fourth, the best way to accomplish that third objective, was to see to it that no one who might be interested in sharing his discoveries with people Rozsak didn't want finding out about them just yet—which was to say, no one at all from the attacking force—escaped.