"Not this man," the stranger said. His left hand came out from under his cape with a holochip which he set on the table. He wore a pale gray glove, so thin that it could've been a second skin.
He squeezed the chip to activate it, then withdrew his hand. The two ex-soldiers stared at the image in disbelief.
"It's a trap, Spence!" Whitey said. He reached for the toolchest again, but he couldn't find the print-activated lock with his thumb. "He's setting us up for the chop!"
The stranger turned. "You little fool," he said. The cape concealed his features, but his tone of poisonous scorn was unmistakable. "How do you think you're worth setting up? If you were worth killing, you'd have been shot out of hand. He would've shot you himself!"
Whitey banged the heel of his hand on the toolchest and scowled. "It's still crazy!" he said, but his voice had dropped from a shout to an embarrassed mutter.
Spencer prodded the holochip with a thick, hairy index finger, then looked up at the stranger's smoky face. "Why do you want him dead?" he said. His voice was suddenly husky and soft, as though he'd just awakened.
"I told you," said the stranger. He shrugged. "Personal reasons."
"It happens I've got personal reasons, too," Spencer said. "He shot a buddy of mine on Dunderberg for thinking there was better use for a warehouse of good liquor than burning it. That was twelve years ago; hell, fourteen. But it's a good reason."
"Robbie shouldn't have gone for his gun, Spence," Whitey said sadly. "He'd been into that whiskey already or he'd have known better."
"Did I ask your opinion?" Spencer said. "Just belt up, Whitey! D'you hear me? Belt up!"
"Sorry, Spence," the mechanic said in a low voice. He pretended to study the travelling hoist latched against the wall of the garage.
"Anyway," Spencer said, his voice harsh again, "it don't matter what your reasons are, or mine either. It can't be done. Not without taking out a couple square blocks, and even then I wouldn't trust the bastard not to wriggle clear. I don't care how much money you promise."
"I'll guarantee you a clean shot at the target," the stranger said. He made a sound that might have been meant for laughter. "You won't be close, but you'll have a clear line of sight. Then it's just a matter of whether you're good enough."
"I don't believe it," Whitey said. "I don't believe it."
The stranger shrugged. "I'll give you a day to think about it," he said. "I'll be back tomorrow."
He paused in the doorway and looked back at them. "He has to die, you know," he said in his soft, precise voice. "Has to."
Then he was gone, sliding the door closed behind him.
Spencer lifted the bottle to his lips and finished it in a gulp. "I'm good enough, Whitey," he said. "But bloody hell. . . ." They stared at the fist-sized image of Joachim Steuben projected by the holochip.
Danny Pritchard stood at the balcony railing, looking out over Landfall City. A few fires smudged the clear night, and once his eye caught the familiar cyan flash of a powergun bolt somewhere in the capital's street. Those were merely incidents of city life: the real fighting had been over for nearly a month.
Danny'd been born on Dunstan, a farming world where everybody was pretty much equaclass="underline" equally in debt to the Combine of off-planet merchants who bought Dunstan's wheat and shipped it to hungry neighboring worlds at a fat profit. Nobody on Dunstan would've known what a baron was except as a name out of a book, so for that whimsical reason Danny'd refused the title of Baron when President Hammer offered it to him. He was simply Mister Daniel Pritchard, Director of Administration for Nieuw Friesland.
Danny hadn't been back to Dunstan since he left thirty-odd standard years before. His homeworld was a peaceful place. It didn't need soldiers, and until he took off his uniform on the day Colonel Hammer became President Hammer, Danny Pritchard had been a soldier.
Nobody on Dunstan could've afforded to pay Hammer's Slammers anyway. The Slammers weren't cheap, but in cases where victory was the difference between having a future or not . . . well, what was life worth?
"Danny?" Margritte said, coming out onto the balcony with him. She'd put a robe over her nightgown. He hadn't bothered with clothing; the autumn chill helped bring his thoughts into perfect clarity.
That didn't help, of course. When there's no way out, there's little pleasure in having a clear view of your own doom.
"Just going over things," Danny said, smiling at his wife. He wished that she hadn't awakened. "I didn't mean to get you up, too."
Margritte had been as good a communications officer as there was in the Slammers, and as good a wife to him as ever a soldier had. There was nothing she could do now except give him one more problem to worry about.
Danny chuckled. No, when you really came down to it, he had only one real problem. Unfortunately, that one was insoluble.
"You're worried about Steuben, aren't you," Margritte said. The words weren't a question.
"Joachim, yes," Danny said, following the path of a low-flying aircar. It was probably a police patrol. The repeal of the ban on private aircars in Landfall City wouldn't come into effect till the end of the month, though a few citizens were anticipating it.
They were taking more of a risk than they probably realized. There were still military patrols out, and the Slammers' motto wasn't so much "Preserve and Protect" as "Shoot first and ask questions later."
Danny grinned faintly. Troops blasting wealthy citizens out of the sky would make more problems for the Directorate of Administration, but relatively minor ones. A number of Nieuw Friesland's wealthy citizens had been gunned down in the recent past—the former owners of this palace among them.
He had a breathtaking view from this balcony. The palace was a rambling two-story structure, but it was built on the ridge overlooking Landfall City from the south. It'd belonged to Baron Herscholdt, the man who'd regarded himself as the power behind President van Vorn's throne though he stayed out of formal politics.
Herscholdt was out of life, now; he and his wife as well, because she'd gotten in the way when a squad of White Mice, the security troops under the direct command of Major Steuben, came for the baron.
Danny was used to being billeted in palaces. He was even used to the faint smell of burned flesh remaining even after the foyer'd been washed down with lye. What he wasn't used to was owning the palace; which he did, for as long as he lived. It was one of the perquisites of his government position.
For as long as he lived.
"Steuben has to go," Margritte said, hugging herself against more than the evening chill. "Can't the colonel see that? There's no place for him anymore."
"Joachim's completely loyal," Danny said. He tried to put an arm around his wife. Now she flinched away, too tense for even that contact. "He won't permit the existence of anything that threatens the colonel."
Danny sighed. "That works in a war zone," he said, letting out the words that'd spun in his mind for weeks. "We go in and then we leave. The people who hired us can blame everything that happened on us evil mercenaries. Then they can get on with governing without the bother of the folks who'd have been in opposition if we hadn't shot them."
Margritte shook her head angrily. "Maybe it'll work here too," she said. Her voice was thick, and Danny thought he caught the gleam of starlight on a tear. He looked away quickly.
"President Hammer isn't leaving this time," he explained quietly. "Shooting everybody who might be a threat will only work if you're willing to kill about ninety percent of the population."
He barked a laugh of sorts. "Which Joachim probably is," he added. "But it isn't possible, which is something else entirely."
"Steuben isn't stupid," Margritte said. She suddenly reached for Danny's hand and gripped it between hers; she still wouldn't turn to look at him. "He's . . . I don't think he's human, Danny, but I believe he really does love the colonel. Can't he see that unless he steps aside, the colonel's government can't survive?"