I looked at one of the commandos as he walked toward me, an empty spot on hisshoulder showing where Pix had been sitting. Pix himself, I noted, was alreadysettling onto Ixil's shoulder. "Speaking of being in time, Commander, what'sthe status of the lodge?"
"It has been taken," he said, his voice flavored with a thick regional accent.
"I have only now been so informed."
"What are you talking about?" Brother John demanded. "You said—"
"Well, they didn't all go down the rabbit hole," I explained apologetically.
"A
second group was hidden somewhere in or near the lodge to take care of anyoneyou'd left outside the ship. Once the commander learned from Pix's memoriesthat Nicabar and the others were being held hostage there, he knew to call in thedetails to the reserve troops as soon as they popped in here."
Tera looked at Brother John, then back to me. "But I thought you worked forthese people," she protested. "You said you owed them a half-millioncommarks."
"So I did," I acknowledged. "And so I do. But you see, I was working forsomeone else long before Brother Johnston Scotto Ryland came out of the woodwork and smilingly mortgaged my soul. For that matter, long before I even ran up thedebt that attracted him to me in the first place."
And then, finally, she got it. "You mean—?"
"Yes," I said, straightening up into an almost-forgotten military attention. Ihad my pride, too... and it had been a long time since I'd been able to saythis to anyone at all. "I'm Major Jordan McKell, EarthGuard Military Intelligence, detached on Special Covert Branch duty. May I also introduce my boss: ColonelIxil T'adee, Kalixiri Special Command for Drug Enforcement. Our job these pasttwelve years has been to work our way inside the Spiral's worst drug andgunrunning organizations and try to bring them down."
I turned to Antoniewicz. "And as I said before, Mr. Antoniewicz," I addedquietly, "I'm very pleased to meet you. Badgemen all over the Spiral have beenwaiting a long time for you to come out of your hole so that you could finallybe arrested. I'm honored you chose to do it for me."
CHAPTER 25
IT WAS NOT exactly what you would call a cheerful group that was gatheredaround the table in the lodge dining room a little after dawn the next morning, butit beat to hell the atmosphere that had been there the last time around. Partlyit was the smaller and more intimate nature of the assemblage, with Shawn andChort off somewhere being debriefed, Ixil directing the group looking over theIcarus, and Antoniewicz and his assorted plug-uglies long gone under heavy Kalixiriguard. The fact that Cameron had had time for a shower probably helped a lot, too.
"I hope you know how close you came to getting your neck broken last time wewere in here," Nicabar commented, picking carefully at the Kalixiri militarydelicacies the occupation troops had whipped up. It was a far cry from Chort'sgourmet Craean stew, but the taste was adequate and it was certainly fillingenough. "When you turned that plasmic on me I figured all that talk aboutEverett was just you stalling while you waited for your pals to arrive."
"You'd never have made it even halfway to my neck," I told him. "Antoniewicz'sthugs would have cut you down in a heartbeat if you'd tried anything.
Includinggoing for your gun, incidentally, which is why I drew on you in the firstplace."
He snorted gently. "I thought I was being reasonably subtle about it."
"You were," I agreed. "But I haven't spent twelve years in Intelligence workwithout knowing what a surreptitious grab for a weapon looks like. Give mesome credit."
"Personally, I give you a great deal of credit," Cameron commented around amouthful of food. Alone of the four of us, he was already on his secondhelping.
"You had me fooled all the way down the line, from Meima to our little chat atthe other end of the star-bunny trail, right up to the moment those Kalixiricommandos popped in and nearly gave me a heart attack."
"Sorry about that," I apologized. "Though I did wonder after our talk at theedge of forever whether you'd finally figured me out."
"I knew you weren't as simple as you seemed," he said, shaking his head. "But beyond that I didn't have a clue."
"You might have told him," Tera said, a touch of reflexive accusation in hervoice. "He certainly wasn't going to tell anyone in there."
"But he would be coming out sometime," I reminded her. "And I didn't yet knowwhat the circumstances of that homecoming were going to be."
"And it's infinitely safer in this sort of game if no one has had even a peekat your cards," Cameron said, rising to my defense. "Sir Arthur explained all ofthat in his message."
"What message?" Tera asked.
"A note from my boss," I explained. "Retired—sort of—General Arthur SirGraym-Barker, former Intelligence Level Two Overseer and the Earthsidedirector of this quiet little combined-services unit Ixil and I have been involved withall these years. The commando team brought it through the stargate with themso that your father would know what was going on."
"Unlike the rest of us," Nicabar said pointedly. "So what was that fluff youspun to Tera about having been kicked out of EarthGuard?"
"Not a single bit of fluff to it," I assured him. "The court-martial wascompletely and totally official. It had to be—I was trying to worm my way intothe center of the Spiral's underworld, and everything in my record had tostand up to the kind of scrutiny we knew it would be getting someday. The time Ispentwith Customs and Rolvaag Brothers Shipping was more of the same windowdressing, with the added value of giving me practical training in the sorts of things asoon-to-be smuggler needs to know. When I was finally ready, they gave me theStormy Banks and instructions to pile up a mountain of debts and turned meloose."
"And that was when you met Ixil?" Nicabar asked.
"Actually, Ixil and I go back all the way to my EarthGuard days," I said. "Infact, he was the one who spotted me while trolling for prospective recruitsand suggested to Uncl—I mean, Sir Arthur—that I be invited in. He spent mytrainingyears building up his own sordid background, so that when we publicly linkedupwe were about as sorry a pair of misfits as you could ever hope to meet."
"And you already knew this General Graym-Barker?" Tera asked, looking at herfather.
"I met him about fifteen years ago, when we were developing an advancedtargeting-system countermeasure for military stealthers," Cameron said. Hemade a face at me. "Of course, I thought he really was retired now or I never wouldhave contacted him in the first place. The last thing I wanted was for theleakybureaucratic sieve at Geneva to get hold of any of this."
"So that's why you were on Meima when this whole thing started," Tera said, turning back to me. "You never did answer that question."
I nodded. "Sir Arthur told us your father was in some kind of trouble on Meimaduring one of my check-ins and asked us to swing over and assess thesituation.
I'd been wandering around the local tavernos for nearly four hours looking forhim when we finally ran into each other."
I looked at Cameron. "Interestingly enough, he even said that, depending on how serious the danger you were in, I was authorized to do whatever was necessaryto protect you, up to and including blowing my cover if there was no other way.
Shows you just how highly you're considered up there in the corridors ofpower."
"I'm honored," Cameron murmured. "That's rather amusing, really, consideringthat I was prepared in turn to tell whoever he sent everything about theIcarus if there was no other way to secure his help."