"Why I'm here on Prime. Hoping I'd be able to get my toady rep to do something. Should've known better. He's been bought and sold so many times, he ought to have his soul in for a rebuild.
"Sorry. Man doesn't respect somebody whining."
During the wait, it was very natural for Suvorov to buy Chapelle a meal at a very expensive restaurant—and express amazement when he found out that Chapelle was an ex-landing controller.
"Did a lot of things. Have to, when you're out on the frontiers. But I could never handle all the things you people have to keep in your mind." He paused. "Not prying... but what the hell are you doing stuck down there in that slum? You don't have to answer."
Chapelle did, of course.
Suvorov was aghast. "Guess you feel sorry for yourself for not having shoes till you run across the man with prosthetics," he said. "You really got the shaft."
He ordered a second bottle of wine.
Chapelle, being a near-teetotaler even when he had credits, got a little drunk. And so did Suvorov.
"You know, Chapelle," he said over dessert. "One thing I'm sorry I never had was a son. Nothing left behind once I'm gone.
"Clotting Emperor—sorry for the language—is going to make sure of that."
They had brandies, and he called for the bill.
Outside the restaurant, Suvorov looked at Chapelle and apologized. He had gotten his guide and new friend drunk. It sure as hell would not be safe for the young man to go down those mean streets in his condition.
Chapelle should come stay with him. Hell, that clotting mansion he was leasing had room for a whole recon force.
Chapelle, stomach and mind full, found it easy to agree.
He also found it easy to agree the next day when Suvorov suggested that Chapelle might consider staying on. "Guess we both know I need a guide around this clotting planet. Besides, you're easy to talk to, son.
"I really like what you've been telling me about the Emperor. Learning a lot, I am."
Six weeks later Suvorov presented Chapelle with a willy-gun—and showed him the previously sealed shooting gallery below the mansion.
CHAPTER FORTY-NINE
Lady Atago's headquarters/home was as Spartan and single-purpose as her mind. The furnishings were sparse and deliberately uncomfortable. It was not a place for lounging but for quick decision making. Aides came with their reports, sat on hard nervous edges for her decision or comments, and then were quickly gone, to be replaced by others.
The only thing on her desk was a small, framed fading fax print of the Eternal Emperor. She kept it there to focus herself constantly on her enemy. Atago would have been mildly surprised to learn that her opponent had done something similar; her picture had recently gone up in place of Lord Fehrle's in the Eternal Emperor's office.
On the far black-glass wall was a constantly changing map of the disputed areas. The Imperial positions were in red, the Tahn in green. The green areas had been swiftly dwindling of late, pinching in from the sides, with a red spearhead driving toward the Fringe Worlds. Even Erebus, that distant system Lady Atago had single-handedly turned into one of the great war factories of history, was firmly in Imperial control.
In any age Lady Atago would have been considered a military genius. And since Fehrle's death she had been poring over the battle map, desperately searching for an unexpected blow that would reverse the tide.
Although she had never heard of the man, Atago would have known and approved of Napoleon's decision to land 35,000 troops in Egypt, seemingly far from the main contest. And she would have been dismayed at his failed attempts to flank Britain in Ireland. The reasoning was sound; it was only the application that had gone wrong. And, as happened to many great generals, it was the details that were overwhelming her. The only thing that was clear to her was that whatever the target, she had to set the stage first. She needed a victory, and she needed it badly.
The only place she could see such a victory coming was in the Fringe Worlds. The most frustrating thing about that was that she had to wait for the Emperor to play the card before she could attempt to trump him. And Lady Atago was too much of a Tahn to be good at playing a waiting game.
Adding to that frustration was the constant barking of her aides, calling her attention to this, bemoaning that, and continually demanding that she concentrate on the bottom line. Early that morning, for example, her financial advisers had descended, warning her of the empty treasury and waving demands for payments from allies and neutrals alike.
"Tell them to wait," she had said angrily. "I haven't heard of any Imperial bankers dunning the Emperor. And this war has to be costing him five or six times what it's costing us."
"That's different," one adviser had said. "The Emperor has a financial history. We don't. Besides, he's fighting on borrowed funds at three percent interest. We're fighting at upwards of fifty percent."
Lady Atago did not know whether to scream for the adviser's instant execution or to cry, although crying was something no Tahn did easily. It wounded her soldier's soul that this conflict could boil down to something so filthy as money. But the advisers assured her that all was not lost.
After the Fringe Worlds battle—assuming victory—they would be able to bargain for much better terms, and the money tap would be turned on again. But for the time being, the only thing she could do was order the seizure, stripping, and selling of everything of value.
Her advisers did not dare tell her that there was almost nothing left. Even the plas inner walls and insulation in the meanest of Tahn dwellings had already been carried away by the tax collectors and sold for scrap.
And so, blocked from action at every corner, Lady Atago turned inward. If she could not yet fight, she would put the Tahn house in order. At the top of her agenda was the leaked list of seventy-two traitors. She attacked the problem with cold glee. The Tahn military police were already sweeping them up.
Along with the seventy-two they were arresting anyone connected with those foul beings. Not only that, but more and more names were surfacing daily. Lady Atago realized that some of the victims were innocent—their names appeared merely because they had made the wrong enemies. But that was a fact she was willing to live with. Besides, she had a list of those who were providing the names. She was already ordering police visits to those homes. Filling the jails and military tribunals with suspects was providing an outlet for her frustrations. It was a new and different kind of body count, and she pursued it with relish.
And so it was a flushed and glowing Lady Atago who ushered Wichman into her office. If only the livies could capture this, he had thought as she greeted him. She was beautiful and sensuous and deadly—every millimeter of her tall, flowing form was that of a great Tahn hero. To see her, to be near her, was to realize that the current difficulties were momentary, that victory must eventually fall to the righteous.
The purpose of Lord Wichman's visit was to aid Atago in ferreting out wrong-thinkers. He came armed with Lo Prek's steadily mounting evidence of criminality and corruption on Heath.
Lo Prek had examined thousands of police and intelligence log entries and had sifted out evidence that Heath was in the grip of a wave of crime and dissidence. Moreover, he had tracked many of the crimes that appeared to be minor hooliganisms back to the bureaucracies and officials responsible. That many of the tarnished were in fact blameless did not matter, because Lo Prek had uncovered a pattern that led to the flawless conclusion that an Imperial conspiracy was behind the crime wave.
Lo Prek was correct in every detail, including the fact that Sten was not only behind that conspiracy but directing it. That was the only point that Wichman disbelieved and for the moment withheld from Lady Atago. When Lo Prek had haltingly spelled out his findings, Wichman had only buried a smile at the man's obsession.