“The same,” Peres said at last. “About the same.”
“Neither of your syndicates have tanks,” Vierziger said with a lazy smile. “For the sake of discussion, let’s assume L’Escorial employs, say, two hundred men more than Astra.”
His smile broadened, sharpened. “Of course, that’s twelve fewer than they employed at this time yesterday.”
The merchant giggled nervously, then choked.
“Details like that make a difference, you see,” Coke said mildly. “Not an insuperable difficulty, but a difference.”
He paused. When he continued, his mind broke the stream of words into thought segments, each as precise as if Coke were taking aim instead of speaking.
“Based on my provisional assessment,” he said. “I doubt my superiors at Camp Able would be willing to hire out any force smaller than a company of infantry and a company of combat cars. Fighting vehicles. To either of the parties on Cantilucca. And that will be expensive.”
Roberson leaned across the table. “How expensive?” he rasped.
Johann Vierziger was examining his manicure. “As a matter of comparison …” he commented toward his almond-shaped fingernails, “ …less expensive than being burned alive in your house, let us say.”
“Approximately three thousand Frisian thalers per day,” Coke said crisply. This was money, not lives. He was out of the mood of stark calculation which had gripped him moments before. “With add-ons, perhaps ten percent over. I estimate that the operation will take forty days, and as much longer as you dally about on your own end getting started.”
“That’s ridiculous!” Roberson blurted. The quoted figure had shaken him from his shell of despair. “That would make the cost of hiring your soldiers equal to the value of the gage the syndicate ships in a half-year! Not the profit, the value!”
“In other words, a quarter’s value of the gage shipped from Cantilucca as a whole,” Vierziger said with a gentle smile. “Since control of the total would be in the victor’s hands. Perhaps your hands.”
“And you could reduce your in-house security force,” Coke noted. His tone was flat, factual; not in the least cajoling. This is the deal, people. If you aren’t smart enough to take it, be assured somebody else will be. “I know, man for man the cost is much lower; but what the FDF offers is victory, and what you’re buying from those buffoons outside—”
His thumb hooked dismissively toward the door behind him.
“—is a stalemate that’s about to collapse on you.”
“It won’t work anyway,” said the Widow Guzman. She groped blindly to the side to grip Peres’ wrist. Hell of a thing to have to depend on that one for human warmth. “You can’t bring your armored cars to Cantilucca without the Confederacy learning, and for that they would react.”
Peres bobbed his head at the beauty of the thought emerging from it. “How much for just the infantry, Master Coke?” he asked. “That shouldn’t be very much, should it? We can slip men into the port in twos and threes, that won’t be a problem. Marvela doesn’t watch very closely.”
“The cost of three companies of infantry,” Coke said, “which would be the minimum I’d recommend—to my superiors—without armored support, is approximately the same. A Frisian infantry company isn’t simply a hundred troopers, Master Peres; but I take your point about the need to infiltrate the units rather than bringing them in formed, on a single hull.”
“That’s too much money,” Roberson moaned. He sat bent over, clutching his lower rib cage with both hands. “I can’t possibly manage that. We’re running at a loss as it is, with the force doubled and gage production down because we’ve squeezed the farmers so hard already.”
The Widow looked at the merchant with a face as blank as ice ready to shiver off a warming window.
“Now I’m not sure the difficulty’s as great as you suggest, Simon,” the gigolo put in unctuously. “Perhaps if the three of us go over the books …”
He pressed the Widow’s hand, then returned it firmly to her lap. This was Peres the Businessman, Peres the Wheeler-Dealer, not to be distracted by a woman’s needs.
“I’ve gone over the books,” Roberson retorted. “I’ve been going over the books. That’s why I’m concerned, Master Peres.”
Coke stood up, flanked by his companions in a motion so coordinated that it must have appeared pre-arranged. “We’ll leave you to your considerations, mistress, gentlemen,” he said. “Perhaps you’ll have occasion to see us again before we leave Cantilucca.”
Vierziger opened the door and stepped through it in the lead, as before. The anteroom had emptied except for ten or a dozen Astra gunmen. One of them threw the Frisians a mocking salute. The tension of the party’s entrance was gone.
The door to the private office was thick. It thumped shut behind Coke, amputating all but the first syllables of the voices raised within.
Coke smiled. Lieutenant Barbour’s software would polish and enhance the conversation into a form more clearly audible than it was for the three principals inside the office.
The jitney driver, looking both puzzled and pleased at having reached Silva Blanca safely, went off in search of a bar. The two Frisians were paying him as much for a day trip as he’d normally have earned in a week.
Of course, they hadn’t gotten back to Potosi yet; and it had taken the cold stare of Johann Vierziger (who’d wandered over “aimlessly” during the negotiations) to put the driver into a mood to deal. Margulies figured she owed her sergeant one for the help, not that he’d exactly done anything.
The Lord knew, though, she understood how the jitney driver felt. She didn’t suppose she could have a better man to back her in a firefight …but she wasn’t quite convinced Vierziger was human.
The village consisted of twenty-five or thirty buildings, constructed for the most part of local timber with shake roofs. Each house had its own chest-high fence of palings. A few chickens ran in the courtyards, though there weren’t as many as there should have been. Most households had small kitchen gardens as well.
The driver had stopped his three-wheeled vehicle as directed, in front of a largish red-painted house. It was the only structure in town that wasn’t naturally weathered wood, so Barbour had suggested the village headman likely lived there.
The intelligence officer was probably right. They couldn’t be sure until somebody acknowledged the Frisians’ presence.
“Hello?” Margulies shouted again. Nobody responded. Again.
She shifted the strap of her sub-machine gun. Probably not the best way to reassure the locals who were keeping indoors, but the gun was heavy, the sun was hot, and it had been a kidney-pounding ride in the curst jitney.
“The next time,” she muttered to Barbour, “I check to see if a planet’s got aircars before I agree to take a mission on it.”
“There’s aircars in Potosi,” Barbour said. “One at least, from the signature. It probably belongs to one of the syndicates, though. Like everything else bigger than these cyclos.”
Barbour viewed the village with interest and less apparent irritation than Margulies felt. From what Barbour said during the ride to Silva Blanca, he’d been purely a staff officer before transferring to the survey service. Probably hadn’t seen as many mud/stick/straw hovels as she had in the field police.
At least the intelligence officer was loosening up a little. Margulies had been a bit worried about him during training. Couldn’t complain about his competence, but a six-man team was too small for somebody whose eyes always seemed focused on his memories inside.
Margulies pulled out a handkerchief and lifted her helmet to wipe her brow. She wasn’t going to turn straight around and return to Potosi. She was too stubborn for that, and anyway she didn’t relish an immediate fifteen klicks in the jitney.