"It's not as bad as it looks, Edie. Of course, we'll have to figure a way to get Zilwicki out of the picture. And damn quickly, too."
"Is he really as good as all that?" asked Lieutenant Karen Georgos. She pointed a slender finger at the now-dark HV. "What I mean is, that had all the earmarks of a show. Nobody as slick as Yael Underwood is going to spend that much time boring everyone with drab and dreary reality."
Captain Rozsak cocked an eye at another officer in the room, signaling him to provide the answer.
Lieutenant Commander Jiri Watanapongse levered himself out of a slouch in an armchair across the room. He'd been the most disgruntled of them all, watching the broadcast, and was still clearly trying to fight off a dark mood.
"He's that good, yes." He gave the holoviewer a sardonic glance. "Oh, sure, they milked the romantic angles for all they were worth. Heroic dead wife, stoic widower, plucky daughter, new love found in unlikely places, twaddledeedee, twaddledeedum. Beauty and the Beast, you name it, Underwood hauled it all out. But don't kid yourself. I can guarantee you that right this very moment-"
He cast another sardonic glance at the window. Somewhere beyond it, behind the curtains and the electronic shields Rozsak's people had erected as soon as they took possession of the hotel suite, rose the towering structure of Suds Emporium, the oldest and still tallest edifice in Erewhon's capital city of Maytag. TheSuds, as the Erewhonese called it, was an odd sort of building. It combined the functions of Maytag's most prestigious hotel, its largest commercial exchange, its most expensive boutiques-and, in practice if not in theory, was the real center of Erewhon's political life.
Most people assumed that the "Suds" of the title, as with the name of the planet's capital city itself, were testimonials to obscure figures from Erewhon's early history. Intrepid pioneers, no doubt, Erewhon's equivalent of Lewis and Clark.
Watanapongse, Rozsak's intelligence specialist, had done his research and knew the truth. The people who'd founded the colony of Erewhon, centuries earlier, had apparently had a wry sense of humor. So, digging up long-forgotten terms from the ancient history of Earth, they'd bestowed names which tweaked the respectable Solarian society they'd left behind, without that society even realizing it.
Today, Erewhon was as respectable a planet as any in the galaxy, even if it still retained some odd customs deriving from its origins. But it had been founded by a consortium of successful figures in organized crime, looking for a way to-the expression was still in use, although very few people in modern times understood its etymology-"launder the money."
The sardonicism in Watanapongse's glance, however, was not due to that. It came from the fact that he knew which odd collection of people was having a meeting simultaneously with this one, except-damn fools-they'd insisted on doing it in plush surroundings instead of, as he and Rozsak had opted, choosing a modest and less well-known hotel.
"Leave it to the Mesans," he sneered, "to insist on crapping in a gold toilet."
A harsh little laugh swept the room. By normal standards, none of the men and women gathered in that hotel room were especially burdened by finicky moral sentiments. But the contempt they held for Mesa and all its works was not simply that of hard-boiled military officers of a hard-boiled society. Even for them, Mesa was a byword for foulness.
"Our courier ship overtook theirs along the way. And since we had military-grade sensors and we got here first, we were able to catch them right after their junction translation and verify that it was the same Jessyk Combine vessel which left Manticore ahead of us."
He let that item get digested for a moment. The Jessyk Combine was one of the giant commercial enterprises which dominated the Mesa System. Manpower Unlimited, the galaxy's premier trafficker in genetic slavery, was another, and by far the most publicly notorious. None of them, however, were what could be called "ethical enterprises," and Jessyk in particular had close if informal connections with Manpower. The connections were distant enough-obscure enough, rather-that Jessyk had never been outlawed in the Star Kingdom, as Manpower had. But no one in the know doubted for a moment that wherever you found a Jessyk courier carrying information, Manpower would be getting it just as quickly as Jessyk.
"I can guarantee you," Watanapongse continued, "that the people gathered over there took even less pleasure than we did watching that recording. A lot less. They've run into Zilwicki in the trenches, which we haven't."
"And won't, if all goes well," added Captain Rozsak firmly. His eyes swept the room, his gaze harder than usual. "I trust that's understood by everyone. We've got no bone to pick with Anton Zilwicki, and only a fool-judging from all evidence-would pick a bone with him just for the hell of it."
Relaxed and normally good-humored he might be, but Luiz Rozsak was also the boss, and nobody doubted it. His brown eyes swept back across the room again, and were met by a little wave of nods.
"Good," he grunted. Then, more easily: "I admit he's a headache for us, so we'll have to figure out how to ease the pain. But nothing direct, people. The last thing we want is to draw that man's attention our way."
For a moment, his face assumed some of the sour expression that had earlier been on the face of Commander Edie Habib. In truth, Captain Rozsak was no fonder of "black ops" than any of his subordinates, for all that he was much better at it than most military officers. It was ultimately a filthy business, no matter how much perfume you sprayed over it. And while Luiz Rozsak was perfectly prepared to get his hands dirty in the pursuit of his ambitions, he preferred the dirt to be soil instead of sewer muck.
He swivelled his head and brought the most junior officer in the room under his gaze. Thandi Palane was the only Marine lieutenant in the group, and, even after a year, she still seemed a bit dazed at having been selected by Captain Rozsak to be one of his inner circle. As a junior officer from a backward frontier system, she'd assumed her career would be slow at best, and would soon enough stall out completely. She'd been resigned to that prospect, since even early retirement from the Solarian Marines was vastly superior to any life she'd have had if she'd stayed on her home planet. Ndebele was still under the control of the Office of Frontier Security, which meant-in practice, if not in the official theory of the Solarian League-that she would have remained the serf of Solarian bureaucrats and their allied conglomerates.
The last thing Thandi Palane had expected was an invitation to join the staff of one of the SLN's better-known fast-track captains. True, there was a trace-more than just a trace, in fact-of the "outsider" about Luiz Rozsak himself. But there was also the smell about him of an up-and-comer, too. Rozsak had already punched several tickets as a ship commander, and was now enjoying the prestigious status of a Central Staff officer detached for duty to one of the Solarian League's important sector provinces. Rank be damned. Above the junior levels, civilian connections counted for at least as much in an officer's prospects for advancement as official rank did, and Luiz Rozsak was now officially the second ranking officer in the Maya sector. He might not hold flag rank-yet-but most commodores in the SLN and not a few of its admirals would have given their eye teeth to be on his close terms with System Governor Oravil Barregos and his political chief-of-staff and Lieutenant Governor Ingemar Cassetti.
Rozsak was amused at the way Palane so obviously had to fight to meet his eyes. Sooner or later, he knew, he'd have to overcome that shyness. He needed followers who were self-confident in their own right, not simply obedient to him. He'd even considered the tactic of seducing the young woman, something he normally avoided with his subordinates, in the hopes that an affair with her much-idolized patron might rub away some of her social awkwardness. That he'd succeed in the seduction, he didn't doubt at all. Rozsak was a physically handsome man as well as a charismatic one, and the lieutenant had all the signs of a young woman with a crush on her glamorous boss. But he'd come to the conclusion such a course would be far more likely to do harm than good for Palane's development, even leaving aside the obvious dangers it posed for overall discipline.