Usher downed his drink in one gulp and set the shot glass on the table. The motion was swift and sure. The shot glass didn’t even make so much as a clink when it hit the table top.

“Now get to the point, wonderboy. Why are you here? If you’re trying to set me up, don’t bother. My attitude toward SS is just as well known to Rob Pierre as it is to Saint-Just.” For a moment, a wicked little gleam came to Usher’s eyes. “But Pierre’s a bit fond of me, don’t you know? I did him a favor, once.”

Usher’s eyes came to Victor, and the gleam got a lot more wicked. “So go look for a promotion somewhere else.”

Victor started to speak, but cut his response short. The bartender had finally arrived. “What’ll you have?” he asked, as he refilled Usher’s shot glass without being prompted. The Marine citizen colonel was a regular in the place.

Victor ordered a beer and waited until it was served before speaking. “I’m not trying to set you up for anything, Usher. I need your advice.”

Usher was back to staring at his drink. The only sign he had heard Victor was a slight cock in his eyebrow. Victor hesitated, trying to think of the best way to say what he had to say. Then, shrugging, went straight to it.

“Durkheim’s been dealing with the Mesans. And their cult sidekicks here on Terra. That stinking outfit called the Sacred Band.”

Silence. Usher stared at his drink for a few seconds. Then, in another swift motion, drank half of it in one toss. “Why does that not surprise me?” he murmured.

The man’s apparent indifference caused a resurgence of Victor’s anger.

“Don’t you even care?” he demanded, hissing. “For the sake of—”

“Ah! Stop!” Usher flashed him that wicked smile. “Don’t tell me wonderboy was about to call on the deity? Rank superstition, that is—citizen.”

Victor tightened his jaws. “I was about to say: ‘for the sake of the Revolution,’ ” he finished lamely.

“Sure you were. Sure you were.” The Marine citizen colonel leaned over, emphasizing his next words.

“Poor, poor wonderboy. You just discovered that the Revolution has a few blots on its stainless escutcheon, did you?” He turned away, hunching his shoulders, and brought the glass back to his lips. “Why shouldn’t Durkheim get cozy with the scum of the universe? He’s done everything else. State Sec’s so filthy already a little more slime won’t even show.”

Again, Victor flushed at the insult; and, again, made no retort.

Usher started to down the drink, but paused. The pause was very brief. When he set the empty glass down on the table, he spoke very softly: “Did you know you were being followed?”

Victor was startled, but he had enough self-control to keep from turning his head. “Shit,” he hissed, momentarily losing his determination to avoid profanity.

The thin smile came back to Usher’s face. “I will be damned. I do believe you are the genuine article, wonderboy. Didn’t know there were any left. How well can you take a punch?”

The non sequitur left Victor’s mind scrambling to catch up. “Huh?”

“Never mind,” murmured Usher. “If you don’t know, you’re about to find out.”

The next half minute was a complete blur. Victor only had fragmented images:

Usher roaring with rage, almost every word an obscenity. Customers in the bar scrambling away. Himself sailing through the air, landing on his back. Up again—somehow—sailing onto a table. Usher’s face, contorted with fury, still roaring obscenities.

Most of all:

Pain, and Usher’s hands. Big hands. God, that bastard’s strong! Victor’s attempts to fend them off were as futile as a kitten’s attempts to pry open a mastiff’s jaws.

But he never quite lost consciousness. And some part of Victor’s brain, somewhere in the chaos, understood that Usher wasn’t actually trying to kill him. Or even really hurt him that badly.

Which was a good thing, since after the first few seconds Victor had no doubt at all that Usher could have destroyed him utterly. That much of the man’s reputation was no figment of the Revolution’s mythology, after all. Despite the terror of the moment, some part of Victor was singing hosannas.

The admiral and the ambassador

Edwin Young was a tall man, with a lanky physique. The uniform of a rear admiral in the Royal Manticoran Navy—stretched to the very limits of official regulations with little sartorial touches and curlicues—fit him to perfection. The man’s fine-boned features and long, slender fingers completed the image of an aristocratic officer quite nicely. So did the relaxed and languid manner in which he sat in his chair behind the large desk in his office.

Even at a glance, anyone familiar with the subtleties of Manticoran society would have assumed the admiral was a member of the nobility—and high-ranked nobility, at that. The intelligence captain who sat across the desk from him thought that the small, tastefully-subdued pin announcing Young’s membership in the Conservative Association was really quite unnecessary.

The pin was also against Navy regulations, but the admiral clearly wasn’t concerned about being called on the carpet for wearing it while in uniform. The only Manticoran official who outranked him on Terra was Ambassador Hendricks. As it happened, the Manticoran Ambassador to the Solarian League was in the same room with the admiral and the captain, standing by the window. And, as it happened, the ambassador was wearing the identical pin on his own lapel.

The intelligence captain’s eyes, however, were not really focused on the admiral’s pin. They were focused on the admiral’s neck. It was a long neck, slender and supple. Entirely in keeping with Admiral Young’s elite birth and breeding.

The captain was quite certain he could break it easily.

Not that he would bother, except as a side-effect. The captain had already considered, and discarded, several different ways in which he could snap the admiral’s neck. But they were all too quick. What the captain primarily wanted was the pleasure of crushing the admiral’s windpipe, slowly and methodically.

Eventually, of course, the vertebra would be crushed. The pulverized fragments would sever the spinal cord and complete the job. Probably too quickly, since the captain was an immensely powerful man and he could not recall ever having been as enraged as he was at the moment. But—

The captain restrained his fury. The effort involved was difficult enough that he only caught the last few words of the admiral’s concluding summary.

“—as I’m sure you will agree, Captain Zilwicki. Once you’ve had a chance to think it through in a calmer and more rational state of mind.”

Through ears still rushing with the sound of his own blood, the captain heard the ambassador’s voice chiming in:

“Yes. There is simply no reason they would harm your daughter, Captain. As you have pointed out yourself, that would be quite out of character even for the Peeps. As it is, this brutal and desperate deed goes far beyond normal boundaries of intelligence work.”

The captain’s blocky form remained still and unmoving in his chair, his thick hands clutching the arm rests. Only his eyes swiveled, to bring the pudgy figure of Ambassador Hendricks under his gaze.

The captain spared only a moment’s glance at Hendrick’s jowls. He had already concluded that the fat girdling the Ambassador’s neck would present no obstacle whatever to strangling him also. But he still favored two or three maneuvers which were quite illegal in tournament wrestling. And for good reason, since all of them would result in ruptured internal organs. The captain thought Hendricks’ obese appearance would be much improved, with blood hemorrhaging from every orifice in his body.

He forcedhis mind away from those thoughts, and brought his attention back to the ambassador’s words.