Fontein lowered his cup and stared into it for several seconds, then raised his head and looked squarely into McQueen’s eyes.

“You might be right about that,” he said finally. “But Oscar may just surprise you yet. And even if he doesn’t, even if you actually manage to pull it off, what in God’s name pushed you into trying it in the first place? My God, woman! You may pull it off, but you had to be insane to risk everything on one throw of the dice this way! And please don’t try to tell me that you were ‘ready’ for all of this. I’ve been assigned to you too long not to recognize when you’re improvising as you go along.”

“Of course I’m improvising,” she told him. “I didn’t have much choice when you and Saint-Just decided I had to go, but I won’t pretend that I had all of my own plans firmly in place.” She shook her head. “I never thought Pierre would authorize my removal before we knew for certain that the Manties were on the ropes.”

“What are you talking about?” Fontein demanded, and McQueen’s eyebrows rose at the genuine surprise in his voice.

“Please, Citizen Commissioner,” she said. “I won’t pretend I was happy to learn that Saint-Just had authorized you to move against me, but I decided that I should consider that was only business, not personal. Under the circumstances, it’s hardly necessary for you to try to pretend he hadn’t, though.”

“But he—” Fontein began, then cut himself off. He stared at her for several seconds, and then chuckled with absolutely no humor at all.

“I don’t know why you think Oscar was planning to remove you any time soon,” he told her, then waved one hand in the air as he saw her expression of disbelief. “Oh, I’m not saying that he hadn’t decided you had to go, Citizen Secretary. I’m only saying that anything he and I discussed was at a very preliminary stage. The, ah, evidence preparing stage, one might say. In point of fact, I was instructed not to act against you in any other way without his specific authorization, because the Citizen Chairman hadn’t authorized him to act.”

It was McQueen’s turn to be surprised. Almost against her will, she found that she actually believed him, and she began to chuckle herself.

“It would have been much simpler all around if you could have just told me that, Citizen Commissioner,” she said after a moment. “If I’d had just two more weeks to put things together, Saint-Just never would have known what hit him, much less had time to respond! Still, I suppose all’s well that ends well.”

“I still believe that congratulating yourself on victory could be a bit premature,” Fontein said. “On the other hand, you’re right about Oscar’s failure to suppress your little mutiny quickly. And if you truly do have the rest of the Committee in your pocket, I suppose the odds are that you really will manage to pull it off in the end. I trust you won’t think any less of me if I admit that I would prefer to survive rather than to die a principled but useless death. I don’t suppose you’d care to troll any offers of high office under the new regime under my nose to entice me to shift allegiance, would you?”

“I can if you want me to,” McQueen replied. “Of course, you’re not stupid enough to believe me if I do. No, Citizen Commissioner. I don’t believe I trust your cupidity enough to attempt to bribe you with the offer of a platform from which to intrigue against me in turn. What I’m offering you is a chance to sign on for the record, with the understanding that afterward you will be provided the opportunity to slip away into quiet and obscure retirement on some nice Solarian planet of your choice with a comfortable pension tucked away in some Solarian bank. I believe you know me well enough to know that I’ll keep my word about allowing you to retire… as long as you do retire. And that if you don’t retire, I won’t make the mistake Saint-Just did and leave you alive to make problems in the future.”

She smiled pleasantly at her people’s commissioner, and as if against his will, Fontein smiled back.

“Such candor is rather refreshing,” he observed. “And I suspect that I can legitimately convince myself that lending you my public support is actually my duty on the grounds that anything which brings the fighting to a close quickly will reduce both the civilian casualty count and the probability of long-term instability for whatever regime replaces Citizen Chairman Pierre’s.”

“So you’ll publicly endorse my authority?” McQueen pressed.

“Let’s just say that I’m inclining in that direction. I would, however, like the opportunity to speak with the members of the Committee who are currently your… guests first. Both to assure myself that they really are your guests, and also that you’re not, ah, exaggerating the level of support you enjoy from them.”

“I believe that can be arranged, Citizen Commissioner.”

Esther McQueen stepped back into the War Room. Bukato looked up from a conversation with Captain Rubin and General Conflans and started to walk across to her, but she waved him back to his conference. It looked like they were discussing something important, and good as her news was, it would keep.

She folded her hands behind her, and turned back to the visual display of the smoke and flames littering the Octagon’s approaches. Lights were coming on in the residential towers outside the actual defense grid perimeter, and she shook her head.

Look at that, she thought. A goddamned war going on less than three kilometers away, and I’ll bet two-thirds of them are just sitting there watching out their windows while we kill each other! What a hell of a thing when the citizens of the capital city of what’s supposed to be a civilized star nation have seen so much bloodshed that they don’t even head for the hills when it starts up all over again.

She shook her head again and watched the red disk of the setting sun dropping behind the tops of the towers to the west of the Octagon.

Maybe I should decide to take it as a compliment—a sort of comment on their faith in the accuracy of our fire control! She snorted. They probably figure one bunch of politicos is as bad as another. God knows I would, in their place, by now. I wonder if they really care which of us wins, or if they’d just prefer for us to finish one another off for good and get it over with?

She gazed at the setting sun a moment longer, then drew a sharp breath, and turned briskly back to the War Room. There were things to do and people to talk to, and she had a lot to accomplish yet.

I didn’t really expect to make it to noon, she told herself. But I did, and however hard I work at restraining Ivan’s optimism, I really do think he’s right. We’ve got the bastard. He needed to nail us by nightfall, and he hasn’t.

“Sir, you have a com request from Citizen General Speer.”

This time, Oscar Saint-Just didn’t even acknowledge the information. He only reached out and pressed the stud to accept the call.

“Citizen General.” He nodded to the woman on the display, and she nodded back.

“Citizen Chairman.” Saint-Just’s face tightened ever so slightly as someone applied that title to him for the first time. There was a subtle message in Speer’s choice of words, and he wondered if perhaps she might have more of a point than he realized… or chose to admit to himself, at least.

Just how badly do I want Rob’s job? I know that I’ve always told myself that only a madman would want it, but did I really mean it? And if I did, then why aren’t I on the com to McQueen right now, trying to work out some sort of compromise to end this thing without killing any more people? Vengeance for Rob is all well and good, but isn’t it just possible that there’s something else at work here, as well?