The sensor tech patted the jamb of the doorway into the headquarters building as well. Each time his hand touched, he left behind an irregular disk of self-adhering material, as unremarkable as a splash of clear lacquer. Each palm-sized swatch contained an audio pick-up and transmitter, powered by micro-flexions in the crystalline structure of its matrix material.
Though not precisely invisible, the bugs appeared to be merely areas of random gloss to anyone but an expert looking for them. Cantilucca wasn’t a place where the survey team expected to find expert sensor technicians.
The front half of the ground floor was a single room, thronged now by fifty or sixty blue-clad gunmen. Men in full uniform formed a corridor, not quite a gauntlet, between the outer door and the inner one in the partition wall at the back. Astras in less formal attire were relegated to stand behind the elite.
Vierziger led. Daun, with another bug palmed and waiting, walked behind him, and Coke brought up the rear. The air stank of nervous sweat.
“These are the tough guys?” sneered a man as big as Sten Moden. A scar twisted up his cheek and forehead, filling one eyesocket with a mass of pink tissue. “Don’t look much to me!”
“Now, boys, the Widow wants to see them,” the messenger pleaded.
“This one looks like a fairy!” cried a man carrying a sub-machine gun and a slung grenade launcher. He reached out to pinch Vierziger’s cheek.
Coke lifted his hand into the air, visible to everyone in the big room. Simultaneously, Vierziger’s light cape ballooned as his arm moved.
The muzzle of Vierziger’s chased and carven pistol bloodied the Astra’s lips. The fellow yelped in surprise and would have lurched backward. The men behind hemmed him in too straitly to move.
“Does he indeed, my friend?” Vierziger said in a lilting whisper. “That’s not surprising, is it? Since he is a fairy. Do you have a problem with that?”
The little killer punctuated each sentence by tapping his pistol forward, hard enough to chip the Astra’s teeth. Blood smeared the iridium barrel.
Coke said nothing. His hand held the fat tube of a bunker buster. The grenade’s red safety tab was lifted, and only the Frisian’s index finger held down the arming spoon.
“Do you?” Vierziger’s pistol lifted so that the muzzle centered on the Astra’s right eye.
“No sir. No sir!”
“Just as well, isn’t it?” Vierziger said conversationally. He tugged out the Astra’s shirt with his left hand and wiped the pistol clean with it. The weapon vanished as suddenly as it had been drawn.
Coke put the live grenade back under his cape. Vierziger walked to the inner door. The corridor between the Astra lines was half again as wide as it had been before.
Nobody spoke for a moment, but pandemonium broke out in the anteroom when Coke closed the door behind him. Most of the noise seemed to be laughter, directed at Vierziger’s battered victim.
Dark wood paneled and furnished the inner room. There were no windows, and the several lights were point sources which accentuated the darkness beyond the surfaces from which they glared.
An old man, a lushly attractive young man, and a woman in late middle age sat on the other side of a heavy table. The woman rose to meet the Frisian delegation. She had strong, handsome features, but she was trussed into clothing a size or more too tight for her soft weight.
“I am Stella Guzman,” she said, extending her hand to Coke’s touch. “The Widow, you may call me. I’ve been president of Astra since my husband passed on three years ago.”
The woman’s male companions stood up as she identified herself. The younger one put his hand on Widow Guzman’s shoulder in a gesture of ownership. He smiled: appraisingly at Coke, disdainfully at Daun, and at Johann Vierziger with a spark of different interest
Coke found the young man’s warm glance at Vierziger to be utterly disorienting. Presumably wolverines can be considered sex objects also …but this Cantiluccan gigolo wasn’t by any stretch of the imagination of the same species as Johann Vierziger.
“This is my friend and advisor Adolpho Peres,” the Widow said, covering with her own hand that of the man’s on her shoulder. She patted it affectionately. Either she didn’t see the look Peres gave Vierziger, or she was very complaisant.
“And on this side,” she went on, extending a hand toward the other man, “is Simon Roberson, who has been of great help in Astra’s business transactions. Master Roberson is a goods supplier with outlets all over Cantilucca.”
Roberson wasn’t, in fact, nearly as old as Coke had initially judged. Rather, he was sick with worry. The cause of the merchant’s stress could have been any number of things; but given that Roberson was the man Evie Hathaway said bankrolled the Astra syndicate, Coke would have been interested in hearing the fellow’s assessment of the relative strength of the sides.
The weaker party was usually willing to pay more for support….
“Mistress, gentlemen,” Coke said, bowing over the hand. “These are my associates Master Daun”—he nodded—“and Master Vierziger. As I’m sure you’re aware, we’re part of a survey team for the Frisian Defense Forces.”
“This is a lovely table,” said Niko Daun, stroking first the underside, then the top, of the piece. In fact, the wood was dented and ringed from long use. He beamed a smile toward the Cantiluccans.
Peres sneered at the sensor tech. “Sit down, gentlemen,” he said to Coke. “I doubt we’ll need help from mercenaries, but we’re willing to listen to your offer. Will you try some of my private-stock gage? Or perhaps liquor?”
Roberson glared at the gigolo with impotent hatred. Widow Guzman winced, patted Peres’ hand again, and reseated herself.
“Water for us, I think,” Coke said. He unfastened his cape and hung it over the back of the heavy, leather-upholstered chair. The fuel-air grenade was clipped to his belt again, with the safety tab latched down.
“I wouldn’t mind trying your gage, Master Peres,” Vierziger said in his usual soft, cultured voice. Coke wondered where the little man came from originally. “A demi for a start, if you please.”
“We don’t have an offer for you, mistress,” Coke said. “We’re a survey team, as I said. We’re here to observe conditions on Cantilucca and report on them. I’ll be sending message capsules to Nieuw Friesland on a regular basis, probably daily, while we’re here.”
Vierziger took a pale green stim cone from the tray Peres offered him. “If you have proposals, we would of course forward them to Camp Able,” Vierziger said as he set the injector against the inside of his left wrist and triggered it. “If not, well. We’d have to look for other interested parties.”
It was useful to have two FDF negotiators present, though the team hadn’t been deliberately structured that way. Vierziger was along simply as muscle, as a bodyguard.
Whatever the little man had been in the past, it wasn’t merely a sergeant in the field police.
“Stop this nonsense!” the Widow Guzman snapped. “At any moment, it all could—burn, explode. What is it you’re offering, Major Coke, and what price do you put on your …merchandise?”
“That depends somewhat on the circumstances,” Coke said, nodding at the woman’s candor. Peres hadn’t brought the water Coke requested. He’d have liked something to do with his hands besides spreading them on the tabletop. “How many troops of your own are there?”
Peres frowned, then shrugged. “Eight hundred,” he said. “Nine hundred, perhaps. And we have six tanks.”
“And L’Escorial?” Coke said.
Peres and Roberson exchanged glances behind the Widow’s head. If it wasn’t an ulcer that grayed and twisted the merchant’s features, he was sure on the way to giving himself one.
The Widow Guzman stared toward the far wall. Her eyes were empty and her plump fingers tented before her. Coke thought of Pilar Ortega touching her crucifix as she contemplated bleak horror.