"That clottin' council that killed the Emperor's decided that we're lice on the body politic. Mainly 'cause we still have enough AM2 to hold together. They think we've got more'n we actually do—they don't know when a gypsy can't wander, he dies.
"So there'll be an open order on us. Seize our ships. Seize our cargoes. Seize the fuel. What happens to the people on board... not mentioned."
"Th' Guard'll nae honor that."
"The Guard's changed. Some of them won't. But some of them will. And how many systems think the universe'd be better without us stealin' their chickens, gold, and daughters? Too clottin' many.
"We are not going to wait this time. We are not going to try to turn invisible or hide.
"Your Tribunal's a damn slender reed, Sten. But it's the only one we can see in this clottin' swamp that's risin' up on us.
"So there'll be feasts an' speeches an' debates an' prob'ly a clottin' knifin' or two. Don't mean drakh. You'll end with us swearin' eternal fealty. Or anyway until the privy council's dead meat or you happen to leave the barn unguarded.
"Enough of that." Ida forced herself into cheerfulness. "So I'm takin' this clottin' tub on a recruitin' drive, eh? You housebroke yet?"
"Nae, lass. Tis nae healthy. Drink i' one end, piddle oot th' stern. Keeps th' system on-line."
"You'll fit right in," she said. "Fill the glasses, Admiral. Damn, but I like that! Clottin' gadje Admiral for a barkeep!"
Sten poured. "Don't mind bartending at all, Ida. By the way, two sets of thanks. First for taking care of our money... now this."
Ida and Alex drained their glasses. Sten just sipped at his. Ida frowned.
"I can't stay long," he explained. "I've got my own little trip to take."
"And where, Admiral, does it say in the clottin' regs you can't travel with a crawlin' hangover?"
Sten considered. No, it didn't.
And so, yes, he did.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Sten landed on Prime World with two covers: a livid scar and an Impossible Quest. The scar was a benign parasite, surgically transplanted onto his face. Nearly two centimeters wide, zigzagging artistically from his scalp line to the corner of his eye and down to his chin, it was part of the "Great Lorenzo" dicta: The best disguise is the simplest, and one that won't blow off in a strong wind. Anyone looking at Sten would see only the horrible scar, no matter how carefully he instructed his mind to be polite. Sten had used versions of the gimmick before, from a alk-ridden nose to partial baldness to a simple, completely shaven head. It worked—almost all the time, at least.
Sten's main concern was that when he extracted from Prime, the parasite might have decided it had found a home everlasting. Kilgour reassured him.
"Dinna fash, lad. I' thae happens, we'll score y' a wee eyepatch an' y' kin join th' pirates."
The Impossible Quest was equally simple. Truth: At the close of the Tahn wars one David Rosemont had appeared on Prime. A flashy, loud-talking, loud-living entrepreneur, he announced his newest business-converting Imperial spacecraft, particularly the tiny, evil tacships, into luxury yachts. Regardless of the inherent absurdity of the premise, Rosemont prospered. For a minute and a half.
Prime's Fraud Squad had taken an interest in Rosemont—his company, yet to produce a single yacht that anyone could find, looked very much like a con game. And then Rosemont vanished, leaving bare bank accounts and a warehouse with three tacships inside. All of that was true.
The harried but friendly—and badly scarred—man appeared on Prime.
False: His name was Elijah Braun. Sten/Braun was credentialed as a private investigator, working for a law firm located on a faraway world between Lost and Nowhere. Rosemont had an heir, who wanted whatever estate existed. Braun knew that the man had not been declared legally dead yet, but the heir was convinced that Rosemont was a victim of foul play, rather than a con who had skated with the swag. Braun was convinced that the heir, already rich, was drug-addled. But a case was a case. Besides, he prattled to the official issuing him his sixty-day visa, it would give him a chance to see Prime, the center of everything and the universe's Most Glamorous World.
"You've seen too many livies, Sr. Braun. Or else you're a history buff. Prime ain't what it was, and it's getting less like it every day."
The official glanced hastily over his shoulder to make sure that his innocent statement had gone unheard. But Sten filed that glance. Unsurprisingly, the privy council's internal security was in full.
Sten noted them everywhere: street cleaners who ignored litter but noted passersby; inept waiters with big ears; clerks who never clerked but listened; block wardens; concierges who asked questions far beyond what was normal. All precautions by the privy council against a largely nonexistent threat. And they were expensive precautions—the council was spending money for all those informers, money it simply did not have.
Sten marveled once again at the odd tendency all too many beings had to want to spy on their neighbor for any reason whatsoever.
None of them thought beyond the moment of what would surely happen when—not if—the privy council fell. Sten remembered the riots on Heath near the end of the Tahn wars. Not only had the mob ripped anyone in uniform apart, but they had revenged themselves on the Tahn's amateur gestapo in the process.
Not that Sten felt sorry for them. He just wanted his cover to stay intact long enough for him to get in, find what he was looking for, and go home.
He did, however, take a precaution. The current powers did not know everything. Mahoney had told him of a few, very secure, disused safe houses on Prime that might still exist. One at least did. Sten armed himself with a secondary set of false documents that were stashed there.
He then proceeded in his role as Braun. He found an inexpensive hotel, found the landlord of that warehouse, and taped the three hulks inside. He interviewed investors and acquaintances of the vanished Rosemont. He went to the Fraud Squad. They gave him access to their files, and a Visitor's ID.
Braun, over a period of days, professed first bewilderment and then suspicion. He was starting to believe that the heir might be right. Rosemont had not vanished. Something had happened to the man. He did have some less-than-palatable acquaintances on the back-alley side of town. Murder, maybe. Suicide? Rosemont, Braun said, had appeared very depressed before he vanished, then turned suddenly cheerful. "He found his back door," suggested a bunco expert, but he gave Braun the names of some friends in Homicide.
Then, timidly, he asked permission to speak to the chief of Homicide. "Y're crackers, an' you're wastin' your—an' her—time. But she's got a policy. Talks to anybody, no matter how loony."
Braun said he was aware that Chief Haines was very busy, especially in these troubled times. So he had prepared a summary of his investigation, complete with a list of questions he would like to ask. He clipped a copy of his Visitor's ID to the fiche, and it went forward.
Sten felt like drakh. He was preparing to use—and possibly jeopardize—a friend and former lover.
He had often wondered about their affair. In one way, it had been the only "normal" relationship Sten had experienced. But in another, they had been lovers by circumstance, co-investigating a conspiracy. And their affair had never really ended—Sten had gone off to fight a war, been captured, escaped, and returned to combat. Haines had been drafted into Military Intelligence, and somehow they had never reconnected. He had thought, sometimes, before the privy council made him outlaw, of dropping a line to her, just to see... see what, Sten? If there's still a there there?
Probably, he thought, Kilgour was right. Both of them were getting "morally corrupted"—and getting too moral to soldier successfully in the dirty midnight wars they had grown up in.