Carlos nodded as another man entered the bar. He had a clipboard propped against his belly. "Anderson, Capetti, Chung, Negron, Watterman— Woman Scornedis heading out in six hours. Lamon is the destination, with stops at Chukchi, Ciotat, and Trant. Standard compensation plus a twenty-five kilo freight allowance."

Carlos drained his beer and slapped his companion on the shoulder. "Thanks for catching me up, brother. I always enjoy talking with someone who's no fool and knows how the universe reallyworks."

24

Nadir Recharge Station, Tharkad

Federated Commonwealth

27 June 3055

 

Victor Steiner-Davion pounded his fist against the bulkhead of his cabin on the Barbarossa."What do you mean it will be five days before planetfall?" He spitted the station master with a vicious stare. "Why we were given clearance to come in here as opposed to the pirate point near Tharkad, I don't know, but fivedays to reach the planet?"

"Highness, please, try to understand. Even if you traveled at three gravities of acceleration, you would only shave a day off the time." The man clutched his hands together. "One and a half gravities is a much safer speed."

"I don't care about safety, dammit." Victor pointed at the porthole and the planet hanging like a jewel just beyond it. "That is my home.My mother died there and was buried there. I want to be there."

"Highness, there are government procedures ..."

"I don't care about the procedures!" Viptor's fist slammed into the bulkhead again. "Damn you, I amthe government. Recharge this JumpShip and we'll jump in closer."

"I can't."

"And I say you can!"Victor wanted to launch himself at the man, but he held back. He could see the image of Phelan in his mind, grinning at him and shaking his head. Before he could do something to spite that image of his cousin, Galen returned to the cabin accompanied by an older man with steely eyes and a face that looked chiseled from ice.

The ice man tapped the station master on the shoulder. "Go."

Victor nearly ripped into the new man, but he saw Galen shake his head slightly. The Prince held back as the station master left the cabin and the ice man closed the hatch. Taking his own time, the ice man made certain it was secure, then glanced at a boxy apparatus on his wrist. He punched two buttons, punched them again, then looked up.

"I am with the Intelligence Secretariat."

Victor leaned back against the bulkhead. "You're very welcome because I've seen damned little intelligence recently. "

The man ignored Victor's remark. "You're here and you're going in at 1.5 gees because of security concerns."

"I'm ordering this ship to recharge and jump in close so I can make Tharkad by tonight."

The ice man shook his head. "You're not."

Victor waved his denial away. "I am. I'm not concerned about an attempt on my life."

"Neither was your mother."

That hurt!Victor's hands knotted into fists. "You son of a bitch, who do you think you are?"

"I know who I am." The man's eyes sparked cold blue fire. "I'm the person assigned to make sure the maggots and vipers don't do to you what they did to the Archon. I'm part of the machine that is trying to find the animal who killed her. Right now, along with Kommandant Cox here and maybe your brothers and sisters, I'm the only person in this system who cares if you make it to Tharkad at all."

The man's directness and bloodlessness poured in through the hole in Victor's anger that the earlier remark had opened. The Prince bit back his desire to snap at the man and crossed to his desk. He sat down and pointed both Galen and this security man to chairs. "Fine, so you're doing your job. Does that include briefing me?"

The man remained standing. "Most is need-to-know basis."

"I need to know."

"He doesn't."

Galen smiled. "Excellent point, Agent Curaitis."

Galen started to get up from his chair, but Victor shook his head. "Galen can hear it as well. Whatever clearance he needs he has. If I can't trust him, I can't trust anyone.

Curaitis looked at Galen, then shifted his gaze to Victor. "The assassin used a very sophisticated plan to defeat the security around Archon Melissa. He realized, as we did later, that the one weakness she had was for mycosiaflowers. He used the pots in which they were kept to get to her."

As the man spoke, Victor sensed his anger, but it seemed unfocused. Mostly it was revealed in the rigid way he stood giving his report. It made Victor uneasy at first, but then he imagined that anger directed at those who wished him harm.

"We always varied your mother's schedule significantly to prevent an assassin from using a time bomb effectively against her. Whoever killed her knew that, and also knew that we use radio-frequency scanners to pick up RF modulations from the kind of computer chips used in a computer-controlled bomb. If the bomb's chips are shielded to prevent emission of RF mods, then they are also shielded from taking outside input through radiowaves. They have to be timers, but time bombs are unreliable."

Because you varied my mother's schedule.Victor nodded as he realized that Curaitis was not going to explain everything twice, so he paid even closer attention to his words. "How did the bomb work, then?"

"A plastic explosive—SX-497, manufactured on Hesperus II, in a lot lost in shipping—was shaped into a plant pot form. It was then baked to hardness and coated with an acrylic sealant to prevent sniffers from detecting it. The guts from four cellular visiphones were set up to start a magnesium-thermite fuse when a call came in to the number for which all of them had been programmed."

The Prince sat back. "But the cellular units must have given off RF mods, correct?"

"The pots were sealed with a semi-permeable rubber coating that allowed water through. The power supply to the cellular units was connected through a countdown timer that was itself powered by a water-conversion cell. When enough water leaked through the rubber to power the conversion cell, the connecting timer came to life and counted down. When it was done, the visiphones became live. All this happened after the last RF sweep on the room."

"Why wasn't one done later?"

Curaitis stared at Victor. "The digital watches, cellular phones, pacemakers, cybernetic limbs, and a number of the high-fashion gowns worn that night gave off RF mods. Sweeping later than five-thirty in the evening would have been futile. We believe the devices went live at six-thirty, half an hour after the doors opened and people started filing into the room. The assassin watched the speeches on the public-access holovid channel and made his call when your mother started to speak. Sometime thereafter the devices exploded."

Victor's jaw fell open. "You have the assassination on holovid?"

"Multiple angles. Review of the tapes are how we determined it was the pots that exploded and not the stand that held them."

"I want to see the tapes."

"Victor!" Galen half rose out of his chair. "Do you know what you're asking?"

"Galen, there might be something there that I—"

"No, Victor, no!" Galen almost leaped from his chair. "There is nothing on those tapes that Curaitis and the Secretariat specialists haven't already gone over. Just because you saw your father die does not mean you have to watch your mother die, too."