Torch of Freedom

  And . . . if he'd gauged things correctly, Torch's populace as a whole had done exactly the same thing. They were about to find out. This would be Berry's first appearance in public since the assassination attempt.

  He'd damn well better be right. Or Berry would skin him alive. She might do it anyway.

  * * *

  The queen and her head of security emerged into the sunlight spilling onto the front entrance of the palace. Immediately, two things happened.

  The huge crowd gathered to greet her exploded in cheers, and a dozen guards moved in and surrounded her.

  A little over half of the guards were Beowulfers and the remainder were a mix of Ballroom people and Amazons, each and every one of whom had been carefully vetted. Vetted not only by Hugh himself, and Jeremy and Saburo, but by one of the members of the bodyguard that Ruth's father had brought with him.

  His name was Barry Freeman, and he'd been the only member of that Queen's Own detachment partnered to a treecat. The treecat's name was Oliver Wendell Holmes, and he'd been present throughout the process whereby Hugh put together Berry's new security team.

  Her first real security team, rather. Berry had insisted the unit be titled Lara's Own Regiment. "Regiment" was absurd at the moment, of course. But if the new star nation survived, it wouldn't always be.

  Hugh wished desperately that Barry and Oliver were still here on Torch. He'd have felt a lot better if he'd known there was at least one treecat able to sense the emotions of the people who came within striking range of Berry. Unfortunately, treecats who'd taken human partners were few and far between. The only one they'd had on Torch had been Genghis. Hugh missed him and Judson Van Hale more with every passing day, and not just from the utility perspective. Neither Genghis nor Judson—nor Harper—had hesitated for a moment. If they had, Berry would have died and the overall death toll would have been immeasurably worse. For Hugh Arai, that made all three of them his brothers, and species be damned.

  Yet there was a utility aspect to it, and Hugh had discussed the matter, at some length, with Winton-Serisburg and Freeman, the day before they left. They'd promised they'd do what they could when they got back to the Star Kingdom to see if some treecat-partnered Manticorans with the needed security experience and training could be freed up to serve for a time on Torch.

  "But don't get your hopes too high," Freeman had said. "There just aren't that many of us anywhere, much less with the skills you need . . . and, to be honest, we have to use the ones we've got to keep an eye out for whatever the hell they're using for these assassinations closer to home." He'd looked almost apologetically at Winton-Serisburg. "Her Majesty, Baron Grantville, Earl White Haven, Baroness Mourncreek . . . there are still a lot of people someone with this kind of capability"—like most of the Queen's Own who'd been to Torch, he didn't seem quite as sold as the Star Kingdom's official intelligence analysts on the notion that the someone in question spoke with a Havenite accent—"would like to see dead. And keeping them alive is going to use up a huge chunk of our available supply of 'cats."

  "Barry's right about that, and the pairings we do have are most likely to be found on Sphinx, probably working for the Forest Service," Michael had added. "But I'll raise it with my sister, Hugh, and we'll do what we can."

  * * *

  "Oh, good lord," said Berry, staring with dismay at her security guards. What would be upsetting her the most, Hugh knew, was not so much their presence as the fact that each and every one of them was armed with a pulse rifle—which they carried ready to fire. Lara's Own was making it as crystal clear as possible that they were prepared to shoot anyone instantly, on the slightest suspicion.

  True, the crowd itself didn't seem to mind. In fact, an even bigger roar of approval went up the moment the security guards closed in around the queen. But from the expression on Berry's face and the added pallor of her complexion, she was aghast.

  "Hugh . . ."

  He set his jaws. "Your Majesty, this is how it is. This is how it'll stay, at least until Manpower goes down for the count. If you can't stand it, then you'll need to get a new security chief."

  He wouldn't have been surprised if she fired him on the spot. He'd long since come to realize that while Berry always tried to accommodate people, she was very far removed from being meek or easily intimidated. But, instead, after a few seconds a little smile came to her face.

  "Is this as hard for you as it is for me?" she asked quietly. "The truth is, I really would like to fire you—but for a way better reason than this." A little accompanying gesture indicated not only the guards around them but also, in some indefinable manner, the whole panoply of security measures Hugh had erected. "Way, way better."

  He managed to keep his expression stern and alert. "Yes. It is. But there's nothing we can do about it now, so . . ."

  He decided that insisting on keeping both his hands free, given that he was the only guard around who wasn't openly carrying a weapon, was just plain silly.

  So, he extended his elbow. "May I offer you an arm, Your Majesty?"

  "Why, yes. Thank you."

  "And now, your ice cream awaits."

  * * *

  From the look on her face when they arrived at J. Quesenberry's Ice Cream and Pastries, Berry found those arrangements even more appalling than the ferocious security contingent that surrounded her. The whole place was vacant, except for the employees.

  "Hugh . . ."

  "Your Majesty, this is how—"

  "Oh, shut up," she said crossly.

  "I will point out"—he swept his hand around—"that the management is hardly complaining."

  That was . . . true enough, obviously. Since the whole city block had been closed off anyway, by other security guards, Quesenberry's staff had placed tables up and down the street. In the middle of the street as well as both sidewalks—anywhere they could find enough room to squeeze in another small round table and some chairs. They must have rented most of them. Apparently, they were expecting ten times as many customers as they'd gotten in the past, even on those days when Berry had shown up at the ice cream parlor.

  "Well . . ." She heaved a sigh. "Okay, then. I guess."

  She took his arm and more or less marched him inside. "But since you insist on getting rid of any other company, Mr. Arai, you'll have to provide me with all the scintillating conversation I need. And I warn you! If I catch your eyes roving about looking for Manpower agents hidden in the pastry bins, there'll be hell to pay."

  * * *

  Berry only had to scold him twice. With the interior of the parlor completely deserted except for the two of them and one employee, and with Lara's Own standing guard at the entrance, Hugh found he could relax a bit.

  Of the two times she caught him lapsing, one of them did indeed happen to be an excessive scrutiny of one of the pastry bins.

  (You never knew. A small bomb might be buried under those fruit rolls.)

  The other, and longer, lapse came when his suspicions fell on the one employee present. There were no good reasons for that suspicion, true. Not only was the employee slaving away at some new concoction Berry had decided to try; not only was she beaming her obvious approval of the queen's new security arrangements; not only was she probably the smallest and least threatening person in the employ of J. Quesenberry's Ice Cream and Pastries—the young woman stood less than one hundred and fifty centimeters and couldn't have weighed more than forty kilos—but she had one of Lara's Own watching her at all times, gun pointed almost right at her.

  (You never knew. She might be one of the ninjas of legend and fable, even if she did seem to be basking in the unusual attention.)

  Whether his conversation was scintillating or not, he did not know and never would. Mostly, he listened to Berry. He could do that for hours. She was one of those rare people who, in some uncanny way, made the phrase "idle conversation" something that denoted real pleasure rather than tedium. Maybe it was the way she was so obviously paying attention to the person she was talking to
, even when she was doing most of the talking.

  When they were readying to leave, she said, "This wasn't so bad, to my surprise. But I have to say I liked our first date better."

  "This was not a date," Hugh said firmly. Sternly. With granite resolve. "For you, it was an outing. For me, a security assignment."

  Berry smiled. There was something about that smile that Hugh decided he didn't dare think about it too much.

  "How could I have missed that?" she murmured.

  Damn the girl. Better still, damn Jeremy.

  * * *

  Before they made their exit, Hugh gave the detachment from Lara's Own a five-minute warning to get the street cleared. Then he had to extend it to ten minutes, and then to fifteen. The crowd that filled every seat at every table out there—just as Quesenberry's owners had figured they would—was friendly and cooperative. But they saw no good reason not to finish their dishes in a leisurely manner, and even in the best of circumstances it took time to get that many people to move. What could he do? Order Lara's Own to open fire? Berry damn well would have him skinned alive.

  When they were finally able to leave, he extended his arm once again.

  "If I may, Your Majesty."

  Berry nodded, placed her hand in the crook of his elbow, and they went out onto the street beyond.

  On the way back to the palace, a few minutes later, Berry got that peculiar little smile back on her face. "Did I mention that I have the ability—not always, sure, but more often than sheer chance can allow—to foretell the future?"

  "Ah . . . no, Your Majesty. You didn't."

  "It's quite true. And I'm getting another of those premonitions."

  "Which is what, Your Majesty?"

  "The day will come, Hugh Arai, when you will pay dearly and bitterly for each and every one of these blasted 'Your Majesties.' Mark my words."

  Hugh mused on the matter all the way back to the palace. By the time they arrived, he'd reached the tentative conclusion that as dire predictions went, that one had the potential of being quite delightful.

  The conclusion, of course, triggered off Hugh's overly-developed sense of duty again. And, again, he heaped silent curses on Jeremy X.

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  July, 1921 PD

  "Yes, Jiri?"

  Luiz Rozsak went right on methodically crushing gingersnaps for the eventual gravy as Commander Watanapongse appeared on his personal com. The rich, comforting smell of home-baked rye bread with caraway seeds was a subtle background incense for the stronger, more immediate scent of simmering sauerbraten, and, as usual, when he was occupied in the kitchen, Rozsak had set the com for holographic mode, which meant Watanapongse's head and shoulders seemed to sprout out of the counter before him while he worked.

  "Sorry to disturb you, Luiz, but I thought you'd want to hear about this ASAP." The commander grimaced. "I think we've just managed to confirm what Laukkonen was talking about back in March."

  "Laukkonen?"

  Rozsak's fingers paused in their work, and he frowned slightly. There were enough things breaking loose in the Maya Sector and its immediate environs for even Luiz Rozsak to need a handful of seconds to sort through his orderly mental files. Then he nodded.

  "Ajax," he said.

  "Exactly." Watanapongse nodded as the single word told him Rozsak had found the required memory and called it up. "This isn't from him, and it isn't as clear cut and . . . concise, let's say, as what he had for us, either. But it's from two separate low-level sources in two different star systems. Neither of them happened to have any senior StateSec officers who owed them money, but between the two of them, they've reported the departure of three rogue ex-Peep warships from their areas. There's a lot of little stuff—minor crap, the kind of barroom and restaurant chatter where people let things slip—to suggest all three of them were headed for the same rendezvous somewhere, as well. Obviously, we can't confirm that positively at the moment, but we have been able to confirm that the ships in question all left in a fairly tight time window. One which would match pretty well with what Laukkonen gave us from Bottereau, the StateSec guy who owes him all that money."

  "I'm not hearing anything about positively confirming their target," Rozsak observed, and Watanapongse twitched a slight smile at him.

  "No, you're not," he agreed. "But as we agreed when we talked about Laukkonen's original report, it's hard for me to think of another target in our area Manpower would be interested in beating on."

  "That assumes operations in our area are what's on their mind, though," Rozsak pointed out. "Given what seems to be going on out Talbott's way, they could be pulling in extra forces for that area."

  "They could be." Watanapongse nodded. "On the other hand, given the scale of the operation Terekhov busted at Monica, all the StateSec holdouts combined wouldn't matter a fart in a skinsuit. If we can figure that out, then Manpower probably can, too, so why waste an asset that's only going to disappear like snow on a griddle when it gets run over by the reinforcements the Manties have to be sending that way?"

  "Assuming the Manties have very much to send," Rozsak replied.

  "You know, Luiz, you really do seem to get more enthusiastic about playing devil's advocate whenever I catch you in the kitchen. I thought cooking was supposed to be a soothing pastime."

  "This is me being 'soothing'—or as close to it as I can get these days, anyway."

  Rozsak smiled crookedly, finished crushing the gingersnaps, set them aside, and wiped his fingers on the hand towel draped around his neck. He stayed that way for several seconds, his smile gradually fading into a slight frown, then exhaled heavily.

  "I don't suppose we've got anything new on what the Manties did to Giscard at Lovat?" he asked.

  "Not really." Watanapongse shook his head, and Rozsak grimaced.

  The assassination of James Webster in Old Chicago and the attempted assassination of Queen Berry on Torch had done exactly what he, Barregos, Watanapongse, and Edie Habib were convinced they'd been supposed to do: completely derail the proposed summit between Queen Elizabeth and President Pritchart on Torch. Elizabeth's reaction, Rozsak thought, had been almost as predictable as sunrise, particularly in light of the People's Republic of Haven's penchant for using assassination as a tool and the attempt on her own life which had been organized by Oscar Saint-Just. He had to admit that, in her place, he would have automatically been deeply suspicious of Haven, as well. Of course, he wasn't in her place. He didn't have her personal history—or the history of her star nation as a whole—with the People's Republic of Haven. And because he didn't, it seemed extremely unlikely to him that Pritchart would have gone about sabotaging her own proposed summit in such an elaborate and potentially disastrous fashion.

  Of course, that may be in part because you know—now—just how "disastrous" it looks like turning out after the fact, Luiz, he pointed out to himself. It's obvious Pritchart and Theisman didn't see whatever the hell it was Harrington used at Lovat coming any better than we did, so they couldn't have had any idea before the fact just how bad any fresh shooting was likely to be from their perspective. There is still the possibility that it was someone else in the Republic who wanted to sabotage the peace talks when it looked like outright military victory was comfortably in reach, too, I suppose. But still . . .

  "In the absence of any additional evidence one way or the other," he said out loud, "I think you and Edie are probably on the right track. God knows I'd love to know how even Manties managed to cram a two-way FTL link into something the size of a missile, but I don't see what else could account for Lovat."

  "I'd be happier if we had something more concrete than secondhand reports about it," Watanapongse responded.

  "We'd always be happier if we had something we don't have!" Rozsak snorted. "It's only the specific 'something' we have in mind that changes, isn't it?"

  Watanapongse gave an answering snort of agreement, and the admiral shrugged.

  "Well, since we don't have anything more
concrete than secondhand reports about Lovat, we can't begin to predict where that whole mess is going. And, since we don't have anyone inside Manpower's command and control loop, either, we can't be positive exactly what target they're planning to hit. I think, though, that we're going to have to assume—provisionally, at least—that they are planning on going after Torch. If that attempt on Berry Zilwicki was a Manpower-organized hit, they may have been after more than one bird."

  "Softening Torch up as well as getting the Manties and the Havenites shooting at each other again, you mean?"

  "That's exactly what I mean," Rozsak acknowledged. "And 'softening up Torch,' as you put it, would be a logical first step if they're planning on hitting it with a follow-up attack from space."

  "Those poor bastards can't seem to catch a break, can they?" Watanapongse asked rhetorically. "First they lose their survey ship, a week later somebody tries to assassinate their queen, and now it's looking more and more like Manpower plans on hammering them from space, by proxy, at least."

  "And the two navies most likely to be able to do something about it are busy shooting at each other again," Rozsak agreed. "Besides which, if I were a betting man—which, of course, we both know I'm not—" he and Watanapongse grinned at one another; Luiz Rozsak had never been interested in betting mere money "—I'd be willing to put a few credits on the probability that any instructions Manpower might give where Torch is concerned wouldn't contain the words 'Remember the Eridani Edict' anywhere."

  "I'm pretty damn sure they wouldn't." Watanapongse's short-lived grin disappeared. "And with Manticore and Haven shooting at each other again, Erewhon's going to want to keep its own military assets closer to home, just in case."

  "All right." Rozsak nodded to himself. "I think you're right about Erewhon, and even if you aren't, they're not the ones who have a treaty with Torch. We are. I want you and Edie to do a full staff appreciation on all of the intelligence information we've got about Manpower, outlaw StateSec ships, and anything else we can scrape up about the Manties' new targeting systems and known redeployment plans. I want to be able to brief Oravil on the entire situation, hopefully within the week."