LET'S GO TO PRAGUE
by John Ringo
CHAPTER 1
A PLAN IS HATCHED



"Let's go to Prague, Johnny!"

John Mullins looked across at his partner and seriously
contemplated pegging him in the head with his beer mug. Instead
he slid the container of thin, sour brew aside and let the next drop
of condensation hit the tabletop.

He recalled the heady days when they first arrived at Seaforth Nine.
The most prestigious base in the entire Havenite Republic had just
been taken intact by a coup de main and since ONI was already
going to be pouring over it, what better use could it be put to than
stabling the elite Covert Insertion Teams. Heady days indeed; the
unit had been barracked in a converted warehouse behind the
Manticoran consulate on New Ghuanzou.

As it turned out, there were worse things than New Guano; the
"most advanced base" the People's Republic of Haven had ever
produced turned out to be a dump. Make that a dump and a half.

Much of the interior partitioning was of wood, for Christ's sake.
Combined with the fact that the dessicators didn't and the chillers
wouldn't, the place was a perpetual steam bath. It said much that
teams had been trying to get moved up in the mission roster, just
to get the relative luxury of beating around on Silesian tramp
freighters and risking their lives behind Peep lines.

But that didn't mean he was willing to take leave in Prague.

"So, for our leave, you want to go beat around on tramps for two
weeks, maybe a month, spend a couple of tension-filled months
hoping we don't get picked up by StateSec and then have to hop
tramps back? In what possible way does that differ from work?"

"I hear it's lovely in the spring," Charles said with a sardonic grin.
He pushed his hair back and chuckled. "And we can drink as much
of that fine Peep beer as we choose. Besides, you know how
much you love your work."

When Charles Gonzalvez wasn't on a mission he was the spitting
image of a mad scientist. Same wild hair, same crazed, glazed
expression, same oddball sense of reality. He would be discussing
Peep information system security in one breath and be off on how
best to kill a sentry in the next.

Come to think of it, that was pretty much how he acted when he
was on a mission.

Gonzalvez been through a half a dozen partners before he and
Mullins met up. Nobody wanted someone who was that . . . frenetic
when they were snooping and pooping around in the Peep's back
yard. But, somehow, he and Mullins made a great pair. The hyper
aristocrat from Manticore A and the quiet farmboy from Gryphon
balanced each other. Or, perhaps, enhanced each other; there was
no question that they were both the most experienced insertion
team and the most successful. The former sort of assumed the
latter; losses in CITs ran upwards of thirty percent per mission.

Insertion teams had a variety of uses, from direct reconnaissance,
checking out Peep installations and equipment, to retrievals.
Sometimes there were defectors to be pulled out or cells to be
extracted or the occasional deep mole to be rescued. There was
one Manty intelligence agent, Covilla, who had been supplying
information for years from deep in Peep territory. That operative
was one of the survivors, but not all were so capable. Or lucky.

The People's Republic of Haven had some pretty decent
counterintelligence goons in their State Security. They were quite
good at compromising cells and rolling up lines. So all too often
some poor unsuspecting CIT would go strolling into what was
supposed to be a safe house, only to find out that "safe" is a
relative term.

Gonzalvez and Mullins had, so far, managed to avoid that fate.
Whether it was Johnny's habit of never accepting anything at face
value or Gonzo's ability to extract any information he needed at the
drop of a cred piece, the two of them had survived every mission,
despite some hairy encounters. And if nothing else worked, they
had both proven on several occasions that, stolid or wacky, they
were, in that delightful phrase, "good with their hands"; the very few
times that it had come down to violence the situation ended up in
their favor.

But he still wasn't going to Prague.

"How are we getting there?" Mullins asked, finishing the beer with a
grimace. It really wouldn't have taken that much to improve the
living conditions on Seaforth, but the fact that insertion teams were
on the base was so secret it was hard to complain to the right
people. "Minister, we need to upgrade the living conditions on
Seaforth." "Why?" "Uh . . ."

"It's not like going to Basilisk or Manticore; we can't just jump on a
freighter. Where are the travel documents coming from? The
cover gear? Where, precisely, are we going to get the internal
Peep documentation?"

"Ah, well," Charles said with a grin. "That's not a problem, old boy.
Let's just say that Q has some files on his computer he doesn't
want coming to life."

"Well, sure, doesn't everyone?" Mullins said. "But . . . wait . . . you
cracked Q's computer?"

"Boredom doesn't befit me, old boy," his partner replied. "I asked
him, politely, for an upgraded extraction pack. When he said no,
what was I to do but take it as a challenge? All I was really looking
for was inventory information. How was I to know he had a thing for
wee beasties."

Mullins choked back a laugh and shook his head. "You're serious."

"Disgusting really," Charles said, taking a swill of beer. "So, are we
going to sit in this bleeding steam bath for the next few months or
what?"

"What's wrong with just going home?" Mullins asked. "You go to
Manticore and hang out at the family estates and I'll . . ."

"Go home to the farm?" Gonzo asked with a grin. "Wander down to
the local pub and not show off the uniform you don't have? Not
impress the girls with the medals you can't wear?"

"Oh, shut up."

"I suppose we could go down to south coast and hang out on the
beach," Charles continued. "Watch all the swabbies wandering
around in uniform, telling their tales of how they all fought with the
Salamander at Basilisk and Grayson. Flexing their nonexistent
muscles and flashing their measly collection of ribbons."

"I get the picture . . ."

"While the girls ooh and ahhh . . ."

"All right . . ."

"Then we can go to the bar and watch the bartender filling up their
mugs for free . . ."

"I really do understand . . ."

"While we're spending all our credits on overpriced sex in a canoe
beer . . ."

"All right . . ."

"You know, very close to water . . ."

"All right . . ."

"When we could be in Prague . . ."

"I'll go . . ."

"Wearing StateSec uniforms, not having to pay for our really good
beer . . ."

"I'LL GO . . ."

"Impressing the girls with our stories of how we were in on the kill
of the Salamander . . ."

"I said I'LL GO! Okay, enough. I give. You're right!"

"I knew you'd see it my way old boy."

"Thanks."

"And it really is lovely in the spring."

CHAPTER 2
SUPPLY AND COMPROMISES



"Hallo, Q! Beautiful day isn't it?"

The position of covert operative supply officer had been known as
"Q" since time immemorial. The reason was lost in the mists of
time, but various reasons, most dependent on the nature of the
current holder, had been suggested over the years. "Quality
officer" was one. The current holder of the title suggested "Queer
Bastard" to most who had to deal with him.

"You don't have a mission scheduled," Q said, waving at the door.
The severely overweight supply officer was bent over what
appeared to be a beer flask, picking at the base with a dental tool.
Whatever was involved must have been very small because he
had a video loupe slipped over his right eye. "And I don't have any
interest in listening to your whining. Get out."

"Oh, is that any way to treat a friend?" Charles continued. "We're
just here to pick up a few items for our leave."

"And what makes you think I'd let you have anything to take on
leave?" Q asked, straightening up.

Johnny always imagined Q as some weirdly transformed
amphibian. He had a wide mouth with fat lips and a foreshortened
forehead that gave his face a faintly piscine look. Combined with
the hundred kilos or so that he could stand to lose, the impression
of an annoyed toad was hard to ignore.

"Oh, nothing old boy, just these," Charles said, handing the supply
officer an envelope.

Q accepted it suspiciously and opened it with a closed expression.
After a moment he took off the loupe and went to his computer. A
few taps later he was rubbing his jaw.

"These were obviously planted on my system," the supply officer
said with a questioning tone.

"Don't think so," Mullins interjected. "Files are logged onto secure
systems."

Q made a moue of distaste and tapped a couple more keys. Only
then did his expression start to become more waxen.

"I took the liberty of locking down the evidence while I was in there,
old boy," Charles said. "Just doing my job as a good citizen. Those
pictures are illegal just about everywhere but New Las Vegas; and
they're questionable even there. What that fellow is doing with the
goat . . . tch, tch, tch . . ."

"Err . . ."

"And that picture of you and the sheep . . ."

"What picture???!" Q said then hit a series of other keys. His head
tilted to the side and an unfathomable expression crossed his
face. "Hmmm . . . . But that's definitely a fake!"

"Hard to prove, old boy," Charles said. "What with all the others . . .
I mean, you're not even a Marine."

"Hey!" Johnny said.

"Sorry old boy."

"Bastard," the supply officer said, giving up.

"Definitely," Gonzalvez said, handing him another envelope.

Q opened this one with a great deal more trepidation and his eyes
widened as he read the list. "What in the hell do you want with
these?"

"Going on leave, old boy," Johnny interjected with a creditable
mimicry of his partner. "Prague's beautiful in the spring,
don'cha'know."

With Q's more than willing support, getting to Prague was
remarkably easy. With their bags marked as "Secure Material:
Courier Only" they got a ride on a destroyer headed for Basilisk
easily enough. Once there they changed identities to Silesian
diplomats and, again, cleared customs without incident. A tramp
freighter to Chosan, another change of clothes and in less than two
weeks they were sitting in a bar in downtown Prague.

"You were right, Charles," Johnny said in Allemaigne. "The beer is
definitely better."

One of the oddities that had led the then Private John Mullins from
the Marines to the insertion teams was his ease with languages.
What oddity of genetics had permitted a farm boy from Gryphon to
smoothly learn nine languages, and he was working on Egyptian,
was unsure. All that he knew was that he only had to hear one for a
few days and before he even realized it, he was idiomatic.

Stranger things had happened in the universe. But not many.

"So are the girls old boy," Charles said, slipping a ten credit coin
into the thong of the dancer in front of him. "So are the girls."

Prague had been settled by a society of Aryan racial homongenists
from old Earth. The planet itself was a paradise with a temperature
and weather regime remarkably similar to Earth's and the residents
were among the "prettiest" to be found in the human settled
worlds. Soon after landing the initial nutcases that had founded the
colony were tossed out and a more realistic social structure based
upon constitutional democracy was installed. The colony, which
had been rather small to start and well off the main trade lanes,
was nonetheless undergoing a real renaissance when the Peeps
landed.

Since then it had been turned into just another Peep slave planet.
Albeit with very pretty blond and red-headed hookers.

The People's Republic of Haven was, technically, the most
egalitarian society in all the galaxy. Or at least that was what their
Ministry of Information would have the rest of the galaxy believe. In
reality, the social stratification, especially on subject planets such
as Prague, was horrible. There were a few Peep senior officials
who lived like Roman emperors, their StateSec and Navy officers
who enforced the peace and lived like barons and knights, and the
common people. The last group survived however they could and
many of the females survived in the oldest profession in history.
Any of the remarkably good-looking girls in the room could be had
for less than an hour's pay of the State Security captains he and
Gonzalvez were dressed as.

Charles watched the dancer step down off the stage and into the
arms of a StateSec major and sighed. "Story of my life, really."
Then he gasped at the sight of the next girl up.

Her hair was red and long enough that the braid was woven into her
minimal clothing, a half bra and a thong that left very little to the
imagination. Her breasts were high and almost unnaturally firm, but
the clothing was brief enough to determine that there were no
scars; indicating that the lift was natural. Her shape was an almost
perfect hourglass topped by a heart-stoppingly beautiful face.

"A girl like that should be in videos," Charles said, nudging his
partner. "Not dancing in a cheap strip-joint."

When there wasn't a response he looked over at Johnny, who was
frozen to the chair, his mouth open.

"She's good looking, my friend, but not that good looking," Charles
said.

"Ugah . . ." was the only response he got.

"Are you all right, Johnny?"

"Oh, God," Mullins finally gasped. "I'm dead."

"What's wrong?"

"Never mind," Mullins said, starting to stand up. "Maybe she hasn't .
. ." but before he could leave his chair the girl had danced her way
across the raised stage and now was dancing directly in front of
him.

To top off her looks, she was an extraordinary dancer.

"I think I need a cold shower," Charles said as she entered a
series of complicated sinuosities. "Several cold showers."

"Hi, Rachel," Johnny said in New French.

"Hi, Johnny," Rachel replied. "Long time." She bent over
backwards until she was a curve balanced on her toes and
fingertips then swayed back and forth. "Remember this one?"
* * *

"So you used to date her?" Charles asked when the dancer had
left the stage.

"It's a long story," Johnny replied. "I was on a mission in Nouveau
Paris–" He stopped as Rachel walked up. She had thrown a light
blue robe on over her bra and panties but the sheer material didn't
so much cover as reveal enticingly.

"It's . . . good to see you again. Although unexpected," Mullins said
huskily.

"Yes, no letters, no contact at all," she said then slapped him as
hard as she could. "That is for promising to marry me and then
running away like a coward."

"Marry?" Charles said getting to his feet and moving over a stool
as Johnny rubbed his cheek. "What a cad; undoubtedly a ploy to
get you into his bed. I, on the other hand, am a gentleman, milady.
Charles Gonzalvez, at your service."

"Pleased to meet you," she said in Allemaigne, sitting down
between them. "How did you get stuck with this jerk?"

"Ill-luck of the draw," Charles replied, kissing her hand. "If it permits
me to worship at your feet, however, my luck has changed."

"Hah!" she replied turning back to Johnny. "I see you made
captain. Apparently StateSec is dragging the bottom of the barrel."

"I got redeployed," he said lamely. "It was . . . suggested that
marrying . . . well a lady with a shady background would be a
negative influence on my career. Actually, it was a lot more direct
than that; my commander told me that if I contacted you again he'd
send us both to Hades. I didn't want to get you in trouble."

"Nice off-the-cuff excuse, there," she said. "I forgive you for
leaving; it was the promise of marrying that ticked me off. I thought
you were serious there for a while."

"I was," Johnny said, looking her in the eye. They were, as he
remembered, a deep purple, also natural. For some reason the
phrase "the wine-dark seas" came to mind. After a moment he
shook himself. "I was. I . . . also promised to get you out of the
Republic."

She carefully looked around, then at Charles. "I take it you didn't
hear that?"

"What? My partner speaking treason?" Charles said. "Not yet. Get
a grip, Johnny."

"I will," Mullins said. "I . . . It's good to see you, Rachel."

She paused for a moment then stroked his cheek. "It's good to
see you, too, Johnny."

Mullins shook his head and then smiled. "I don't suppose you're
free tonight?"

Even her laughter was perfect, a delighted peal like bells in a
carillon. "You don't give up, do you?"

"Not where you're concerned," Mullins said.

"Well, no, I'm not free tonight," she said maliciously. "I've got a hot
date."

"Oh . . ." Mullins sighed. "Okay."

"But maybe later," she continued, stroking his cheek again. "Come
back tomorrow night, okay?"

"Okay," Johnny said.

"I have to go," she said, standing up and arranging her robe. "Take
care."

"I will," Mullins said watching her walk away. Then: "Shit."

"Bit of a spark there, still, old boy," Charles said, patting him on the
back.

"I nearly shot myself when I got back from that mission," Mullins
replied carefully, taking a deep pull off of his beer.

"Well, I have to admit she is spectacular, but is that really an
appropriate response?"

"I don't know," Mullins said. He upended the liter glass then raised
the empty and waved it back and forth. "It was my response."

"I say," Charles replied with a shake of his head. "I have to ask,
though: Is she . . . available for hire?"

"Only to the highest bidder," Johnny said with a laugh, picking up
the new glass that the bartender set down. "When I was dating her
she was a mistress to the second assistant minister of
information."

"Bloody good conduit," Charles said with raised eyebrows.

"I wouldn't know; I never tried to recruit her," Johnny said. "And
then the mission went bust and we barely got out alive. If I'd had
the ability to blackmail Q back then, I'd have gone back to Nouveau
Paris to find her. But I didn't; I just tried to forget. For a while, the
only thing that helped was drinking myself into a stupor. And I think
that's what I'm going to do tonight." He put the freshly refilled glass
of heavy brown ale to his lips and sucked until it was empty.
"Bartender!"
* * *

"CORDELIA RANSOM SHE HAS NO BALLS!" Mullins sang as the
two of them staggered down the deserted street. As with most
Peep planets, Prague City tended to roll up the sidewalks after
dark.

"Why . . . extac . . . exac . . . why are we going homeward without
female accom . . . without some women?"

"SAINT JUST'S ARE VERY SMALL!"

"Really, we should be accomp . . . sup . . . there ought to be
women."

"ROB PIERRE . . . oh, never mind I can' think of a rh . . . rhyme for
Pierre. We're returning to our domi . . . domic . . . rooms without
women because wine giveth the desire and taketh away the ability."

"Okay, Shakespeare," Charles said. "If you're so smart, where's a
bathroom?"

"Vo ist eine toiletten!" Johnny yelled to the empty streets.

"We're returning to our domic . . . to our rooms unaccompanied
because of your girlfriend aren't we?"

"Ah, an alleyway," Johnny said. "I haff found our toiletten."

"Aren't we?" Charles asked again as they both stumbled into the
darkness of the alley and leaned against the wall.

"Aaaah," Mullins said in relief. "You could have taken anyone home
you wanted. I was . . . un . . . disin . . . I didn't want to."

"So it was because of your girlfriend," Charles said, clearing the
tubes.

"If you shake it more than twice, you're playing with it," Mullins
declared.

"Halt!"

"Christ, I'm just peeing on a wall," he complained as a body
rounded the corner and plowed into him.

Mullins might have been three sheets to the wind but his survival
instincts were highly trained. The body, it appeared to be a male in
uniform, was spun in place and slammed into the wall as he
wrapped the head into a snap-grip. In another moment the
struggling figure would be lying on the ground with a broken neck.

"Don't," Gonzalvez said in Allemaigne. "He's being chased by
StateSec."

"Good point." Johnny shifted his forearms and applied pressure,
clamping on the nerve juncture. The "sleeper" hold was almost
considered a myth; it required training, precision and strength to
apply it properly. But John Mullins had all three in abundance; in
less than two seconds the figure slumped.

"Grab his legs," Mullins muttered, dragging the body behind a
dumpster and coming back out. He resumed his position as a
flashlight-toting figure rounded the corner.

"Get that damned light out of my eyes!" Mullins shouted. "Who the
hell are you?"

"Sorry, Sir," the StateSec private said diffidently, lowering the light.
"But I'll need to see some ID. We're after a fugitive."

"Bloody local buffoons," Charles muttered in Nouveau
Paris–accented French. He waggled his member and put it away,
pulling out his ID tag. "Here," he continued in Allemaigne.

The private ducked his head and scanned the badge and the
"captain's" retina, returning it and doing the same with Mullins'.
"Thank you, Sirs. Did you see anyone pass this way?"

"Negative. Who are you looking for and what is the local contact
point?" Mullins asked as clearly as he could enunciate.

"We were told that Admiral Mládek is attempting to defect," the
private gushed.

"What?" Gonzo gasped, right on cue. "The head of Fleet
Communications?"

"Yes, Sir. We've closed down three Manty spy operations tonight
and the captain says we're closing in on two more! General Garson
is in charge; he was sent here by StateSec command in New
Paris."

"Damn, I suppose this is important," Charles said. "You're doing a
fine job, Private. If you have any questions for us, or need any
help, we're in the New Prague Hotel, room 313."

"Yes, Sir," the private said, making a notation on his pad. "I have to
go continue the search, Sirs."

"Carry on, Private," Johnny said. "You're in the best traditions of
StateSec there."

"Thank you, Sir," the private said, trotting back out of the alley.

"Oh, bloody hell," Charles muttered. "I'm sober old boy, how 'bout
you?"

CHAPTER 3
A HATCH IS PLANNED



No operative has just one bolt hole and whereas their digs had
been in the New Prague Hotel, room 313, they had also rented a
seedy flat on the bad side of town.

Prague City was bisected into north and south sections by the
Aryan River. The north section was the business district with the
better homes and flats on the north edge. Also on the north side
was the Peep Building, pardon, the "People's Building," and the
StateSec headquarters.

On the south side was the industrial region and the local police
headquarters. Prague City, like all Peep cities, had no crime
problem. Just ask Cordelia Ransom. Everyone was happy and
industrious, focused on the important mission of destroying
Manticore, the aristocratic enemy of the People.

Strangely, South Prague City never made it into any of Cordelia
Ransom's tridee broadcasts. In South Prague City, carrying a body
into a building was only notable in that it was being carried in.

Not that anyone in South Prague City was going to notice anything
at any time.

Johnny turned away from the window as the figure in the chair
stirred. "Headache?"

The admiral, which was what they had by his uniform, was a heavy-
set man, probably in his sixties by his looks. He didn't have the
appearance of one of the jumped up proles that made up much of
the modern Peep senior officer corps. From his look he was
probably a holdover from the Legislaturalists.

The officer felt the bonds restraining him to the chair, moved his
lips under the tape on his mouth, looked at the two men in prole
clothing and nodded.

"Three things," Charles said, standing up with a cup in one hand
and a knife in the other. "Listening?"

The admiral nodded again, looking at the knife.

"First thing. We're not StateSec, we're Manty Intelligence. Second
thing, you were trying to defect and nearly got nabbed by
StateSec. Third thing, we're not your pickup group but we're going
to try to get you out. However, if you mess about, we'll kill you just
as happily. Still want me to cut you loose?"

The officer nodded then grimaced as Mullins first ripped off the
tape then cut his bonds.

"I have no knowledge of what you are talking about," the admiral
said, looking around the dingy room. "I am a citizen admiral of the
Fleet; there will be absolutely effective repercussions if State
Security thinks they can simply 'disappear' me."

"Uh, huh," Mullins said. "That wouldn't even fly with the Peeps and it
doesn't get far with us."

"And, let me guess, old boy," Charles said cocking his head. "
'Absolutely effective' would be your code word to determine if
we're really ONI. Sorry, chap, we're not actually part of your pickup
team so we can't give you the counter-code."

"Again, I have no idea what you are talking about," the admiral said
firmly. "I am a loyal citizen officer of the People's Republic."

"Ah, okay," Johnny said. "In that case, there's a StateSec private
we got you away from who is probably angling for sergeant." He
grabbed the admiral by the arm and yanked the larger officer to his
feet. "He'd probably get an instant promotion if he caught you."

The admiral looked from one to the other as Charles cut the
bonds. "I am not attempting to defect," he said desperately. "I am
a loyal officer!"

"General Garson is here," Mullins said. " 'All the way from Nouveau
Paris!' I'm sure he'll be happy to listen to your protests."

"If . . ." the admiral paused and gulped. "If you're Manty
Intelligence, shouldn't you be trying to kidnap me? I could be
carrying important information."

"Nope," Mullins explained. "You're not worth our lives if you're not
willing to talk; Manticore doesn't use harsh information extraction
methods. And, besides, we have another mission here. We only
picked you up because it looked like an op had gone bad. If you're
really a 'loyal officer of the People's Republic' we'll turn you loose,
finish our mission and depart."

"We'd prefer to kill you," Charles said, putting away the knife and
taking the admiral by the arm. "But it's against our basic rules of
engagement. Pity. So, let's go meet that private, shall we?"

"Wait," the admiral said, holding up a hand. "Just . . . wait. Okay.
Yes, I was attempting to defect."

"Good, now that we have your confession . . ." Charles said in a
harsh Nouveau Paris accent.

"Oh, shut up, Charlie," Mullins said with a laugh at the frozen
expression on the admiral's face. "He's joking. Not a good one.
Major John Mullins, Admiral and this is idiot is Major Charles
Gonzalvez. Pleased to make your acquaintance."

"A pleasure to meet you," the admiral said with a sigh. "What went
wrong?"

"I have no idea; we really aren't part of your pickup team. What
happened?"

The admiral shrugged and looked out the window where dawn was
just beginning to break. "I was supposed to go to a dry cleaners
and drop off a pair of uniform pants. The code was that I wanted
triple pressing, no starch."

"I know the laundry," Mullins said. "Lee's Cleaners on Fur De Lis
Avenue?"

"That one," the admiral nodded. "I was half way down the block on
my way to it when I was knocked off my feet by an explosion.
When I got back up . . . boom . . . no more Chinese laundry."

"Somehow I doubt it was a gas leak," Charles said dryly.

"My doubt as well. I started to walk away and then saw State
Security officers coming from every direction. I . . . I admit I
panicked. I dropped the pants and ran."

"Best thing you could have done," Johnny said. "StateSec would
have hung you on suspicion."

"I had been running and hiding for nearly two hours when I ran into
you two. And that's all I remember. Now, how are you going to get
me out of here?"

"What?" Mullins said. "Why should we do that?"

"But . . . but ONI set up my defection! You have to get me out!"

"Not really, old boy," Charles replied. "It's not our mission. Just
because someone else blew it, doesn't mean we have to fix their
abortion. I think you're on your own."

"You can't do this!" Mládek said. "Admiral Givens herself is
involved in the planning for this!"

"Sure she is," Mullins said disparagingly. "She gets involved in
every two-bit admiral that jumps ship."

"I'm not just a 'two-bit' admiral," Mládek snarled. "I was in charge of
Fleet communications operation and design. Although StateSec is
fine at finding thugs to beat people in the head, they don't have a
clue when it comes to Fleet communications and they had to use
my personnel to design and maintain their systems. I saw all their
traffic. And I know things . . . let's just say that I know a few things
that Admiral Givens really wants details on. I'm serious. If you
leave me here you might as well defect yourself or Givens will gut
you alive."

Mullins looked over at Gonzalvez who nodded slightly.

"Well . . . crap," Mullins said. "Getting us out was going to be
interesting enough. Getting you out, too, will be ugly."

"You have means," the admiral said with a wave. "Make contact
with your chain; activate an emergency escape plan. Whatever it is
you do when a mission goes bad."

"Well, as to that," Mullins replied with a chagrined look.

The admiral listened intently, occasionally shaking his head.

"You've been drinking," he said when Mullins finished. "But even
though it smells like a distillery in here, I can't believe you've been
drinking enough to make up that story. And I doubt you're joking . .
."

"He's not," Gonzalvez said. "But before you decide to launch into a
lecture, consider the fact that if we had not chosen to take our
holiday on your sunny little planet, you would now be at the tender
mercy of StateSec."

"That's a good point," the admiral said, subsiding. "But it still
doesn't help us get off the planet."

"The laundry's gone," Mullins said. "There's a butcher shop and
Aunt Meda's in addition. You know any others, Charlie?"

"Aunt Sadie's?" Gonzalvez said. "There's a flower shop on
Holeckova, but this is the first I've heard of Aunt Meda's."

"Aunt Meda's House of Pain," Mullins replied. "It's a whorehouse
with a sadomasochistic workout center called 'The House of Pain'
as cover. And I know two safehouses. But if much of the network
has been burned, who knows if any of them are clear?"

"How come you get the topless dancers and Aunt Meda's and I
always get the flower shops and laundries?" Charles asked.

"God loves me and He hates you," Mullins replied. He jerked his
head toward the admiral. "We need to get him out so we need to
make contact. There's also Tommy Two-Time, but if I've got my
druthers I won't bother with a double agent."

"You go," Gonzalvez said. "The Admiral and I will stay here and
play gin rummy or something."

"I'll need a contact term for the flower shop," Mullins said. "Just my
luck it'll be 'I need some pansies for the prom.' "

"Flowers or friends, Johnny?"








CHAPTER 4
SOMETIMES YOU GET THE BEAR



John walked past The House of Pain on the far side of the street,
his head down, feet moving in the approved prole shuffle.

Aunt Meda's had been the last contact on his list and it was open.
Contact, however, was problematic. The gym was on a generally
unfrequented side street but today, for some unknown reason,
there were several people wandering around.

In this corner, wearing an old shabby overcoat and fingerless
gloves, nursing a bottle of cheap red wine, was a common street
person. Such could be found in the more out-of-the way areas of
Prague City but Aunt Meda's was on the better side of the tracks
and street people should have been swept up by security. Ergo, it
probably wasn't a street person at all.

Coming in the opposite direction from John was another prole.
This one was a female and fairly good-looking. In fact, too good-
looking. She didn't have the sallow skin from low-quality food that
proles generally sported and her prole walk wasn't quite right.
There was just a bit too much of the bounce to it.

Ergo, not a prole. Maybe a hooker or dancer dressing up as a
prole, but unlikely.

Confirmation that the prole wasn't came when the woman, probably
a StateSec officer, brushed against him and subjected him to a
fairly professional patting down.

He apparently passed since she continued on her way but as he
turned the corner to head back to the safehouse his heart sank;
there was a group of local police waiting around the corner, their air
car grounded on the sidewalk.

"You!" One of the patrolmen, faceless in heavy body armor and
helmet, waved him over as two more took up positions on either
side.

"Name," the officer said. It wasn't a question, it was a demand.

"Gunther Orafson," Mullins replied in badly accented French. He
proffered his ID tag then spread his legs, placed his right hand
behind his head and held the left out, palm up; it was a position that
proles learned early.

The officer put the tag in a slot, then waved the pad in front of
Mullins' face and over his outstretched hand.

What the system thought it was doing was reading personal
information of one Gunther Orafson, assistant boom operator at
the Krupp Metal Works factory. It took a retina scan, surveyed
fourteen points on his fingers and palm, compared his facial
infrared topography to its database and took a DNA scan, all in
under two seconds.

What it was actually looking at was some very advanced
Manticoran technology.

Gunther Orafson had been stopped years before by someone
very like John Mullins, except at the time the Mullins counterpart
had been dressed like a local police officer.

Using a device that looked identical to the one this officer was
using, he had taken all of Gunther Orafson's vital statistics and put
them into a database. One checkpoint, fifteen minutes on a busy
day, could garner dozens of identities, and the CIT teams had
access to all of them.

Now the results of all that labor bore fruit. The police officer's pad
looked at Mullins' eyes, and adjustable implants reflected an
excellent facsimile of Gunther Orafson's retinas. The pad scanned
his face and a thin membrane reflected Gunther Orafson's IR
patterns.

The rest was the same. DNA patterns on fingerprint gloves and
even a pheromone emitter for the more advanced detectors,
everything screamed "Gunther Orafson."

Except his face. And the Peep system was so "advanced" they
didn't even bother with a picture on the ID tag.

All of it was dissected and spit back to central headquarters. There
it was compared with Gunther Orafson's data and accepted or
denied.

The system apparently liked what it saw because it quickly clucked
green and spit out the tag.

"What are you doing here?" the officer asked.

It was an abnormal question so Mullins let a bit more nervousness
enter his voice. "I live in the seventeenth block of Kurferdam
Street. I went to the market on Gellon because I had heard they
had meat. But they were out. I am returning to my flat."

"I know where you live you idiot," the officer said, handing the tag
back. "Get home. There will be a curfew tonight."

"Yes, Sir," Mullins said with a duck of his head. He continued on his
way immediately; despite the fact the cop-thug had probably come
from a prole background, proles didn't talk to cops and vice versa.

It had seemed like a routine stop but given the proximity to Meda's
it was unlikely. A pity, really. For all her personal . . . quirks, Meda
had been a lady.

And, worst of all, it only left Tommy Two-Time; every other contact
had been taken down by StateSec.
* * *

"Hiya, Tommy," Mullins said, trying not to breathe as he walked in
the door. Among the many reasons not to deal with Tommy Two-
Time, the regular fecal smell from his overloaded bathroom had to
be high on the list. It had to be the worst smelling "herb" shop in
the universe.

Thomas Totim was an herbalist. Often that was a high profile
profession; in a society where "universal medical care" meant
waiting four hours for a drunken doctor to look at your skull fracture,
herbalists and midwives were the most medicine that many proles
saw in their lives.

The shelves were sparsely populated with a variety of inexpensive
herbal remedies while along the left wall a locked case held
"harder" or more valuable materials. The far wall was lined with
refrigerators, cases and aquariums; many of the odder materials
available to the modern herbal doctor had to be used "fresh" from
any of thousands of species alien to humanity's home planet.

But Tommy wasn't that kind of an herbalist. He had all the herbs,
and he could do a pretty good herbalist patter. But people came to
Tommy when they needed something harder than St. John's Wort;
the shelves were covered in dust and most of the aquariums were
filled with the dying remnants of their original populations.

"Oh, shit," Tommy said looking out the door. "I can't believe you
just walked into my shop."

"Long time," Mullins replied fingering a dangling root that was
covered in mold. It might be the way it was supposed to be, but
with Tommy it was more likely to just be neglect. "What are you
scamming this week? Spank? Rock?"

Under the early Legislaturalists many common soft drugs had been
legalized. The technical reason was to reduce the rationale for
street crime but the unspoken rallying cry was "A drugged prole is
a happy prole." There was even a Basic Living Stipend entry for
"pharmaceutical drug use."

However, even the Legislaturalists, and later the People's
Government, weren't stupid enough to legalize Spank, which
turned a male into a tunnel-borer rapist then drove him insane after
about five uses, or Rock which turned a person so inward that
addicts commonly drifted off and never came back. There were
others that inquisitive researchers had developed over the
millennia, and Tommy could get them all.

"What, you join StateSec, 'Johnny'?" the drug dealer asked. "I
don't think so. You and your buddy are the hottest thing on the
planet."

"That what you're hearing, Tommy?" Mullins replied, looking around
at the dust-covered sundries on the shelves and tapping on the
glass of an aquarium. It was the only one that wasn't filled with
gunk. Instead, five Gilgamesh River Devils looked back at him.
Each of the semi-sentient, highly-carnivorous "fish"—actually a
dual-breathing amphibian—followed his hand with all six eyes,
clearly hoping he would get close enough to remove a nibble with
their three centimeter teeth.

The river devils were piscine shaped, with sucker tipped "arms" in
place of pectoral fins that they used for locomotion in their
terrestrial mode. They were all flashing through a dozen colors as
chromatospores changed the hue of their skin through all the
colors of the rainbow. Some scientists theorized that the color
changes were a primitive form of communication. Having seen a
group of river devils first distract and then surround a cow on a
Gilgamesh riverbank, Johnny was pretty sure the scientists were
right. Except for the "primitive" part. "Who's looking for me?"

"You, your buddy and some admiral. And everybody," the dealer
continued nervously. He had the shoulder-length hair that was
practically the badge of the professional herbalist but the circular
bald patch on the top ruined the look. Now he rubbed the top of his
head nervously and looked out the door again. "I do mean
everybody. StateSec has flipped; the admiral's got some of their
codes and secret information. And the Manties are pissed; their
whole network in Prague City is just gone and according to them
you did it."

"Oh?" Mullins said carelessly. The news was like a punch to the
gut, but he wasn't going to let Two-Time know it. "Where'd you
hear that?" He noticed the river devils were spreading out with one
raising a surreptitious suction cup towards the top of the tank and
decided it was time to back up.

"There was a snatch team in town to pull the admiral. Some of
them got caught but the rest left word that you guys were out of
sanction. I guess you'd better head for Silesia and get a job
beating up old ladies for quarters."

"Maybe," Mullins said. "But right now the question is getting off-
planet. I need some papers."

"Like I'm going to help you with that," the dealer said with an honest
laugh, a needler suddenly appearing in his hand. "You're worth a lot
but the admiral is worth more. Where is he?"

"Tommy, you're going to get busy with me?" Mullins said with
honest surprise.

"You got swept coming in the door," Two-Time replied. "No body
armor, no weapons. So you can either answer the question or I can
fill you full of needles and then call StateSec. Or just forget you
were ever here after I feed you to the devils; they handle terrestrial
proteins just fine and they even digest the bones."

"Tommy, after all the years we've been friends," Mullins replied,
shaking his head. "For it to end like this."

"I was never your friend," the dealer said. "The admiral. One . . ."

Mullins shook his head and twisted sideways, grabbing the drug
dealer by the hair as the needle-gun fired.

Most of the needles missed entirely, common even at short range
when an untrained firer jerks the trigger, but a few hit him in the
abdominal region. And slid off his T-shirt.

Mullins wasn't wearing anything that showed up as body armor to
Peep scanners; despite the officially egalitarian stance of the
People's Republic, armor was permitted only to police and senior
members of the government; some pigs were more equal than
others.

But that didn't mean he went out naked as a bird either; his T-shirt
was made of a high-tech high-density microfiber material,
uncommon outside of Manticore and a few Sollie systems, that
absorbed much of the blow from the light-weight needles and
stubbornly resisted penetration.

The effect was like a punch to the stomach but John Mullins had
been hit in the gut plenty of times and shrugged this blow off as
well.

Tommy Two-Time was not so lucky.

Ignoring the needles, Mullins slammed the drug-dealer's throat into
the hard wood top of the counter, cracking the counter and filling
Tommy's throat with blood. Then, to make absolutely sure he
wouldn't be telling any tales, the Manty agent twisted Tommy's
head around until he was looking back down his spine.

"I've been wanting to do that since the first time I saw you sell a kid
Rock," Mullins commented quietly, stepping around the counter
and shoving the body out of the way. The late drug dealer had
voided himself on exit from this mortal plane, but it was
unnoticeable over the stench from the toilet.

Mullins picked up the needler and hammered the lock off of the
small lockbox under the counter. All it contained were a few
unmarked vials and some change in the form of small sheets of
silver and gold. Since the standard monetary form in the People's
Republic was a highly traceable electronic transaction related to
the identity chip, the metal currency was standard on the black
market. However, since virtually everyone used the black market
for even everyday purchases, probably the only person who didn't
use the sheets was Cordelia Ransom.

It still couldn't be his main stash, or his main cash, so Mullins did
some hunting. Finally he found both the drug and money cache
under a panel behind the noisome toilet. From the looks of things
Tommy hadn't caught up with his supplier recently; there was more
than enough cash to sustain them for months. Or get them off-
planet if they could find a trustworthy forger.

The toilet, once unplugged, served to deal with the drugs, and the
sheets of metal were easy enough to secrete around his body. As
long as he didn't get stopped on the way back, everything should
be fine. And if he did get stopped, the local cops would just
assume he was a money mule and confiscate the cash.

Which would be unfortunate since they were apparently going to
need the funds.

He started to leave and stopped, looking at the body stuffed under
the counter. After a moment he smiled.

A few minutes later he left the store after having wiped all the
surfaces he touched. On his way out he turned the sign to "closed"
and locked the door.

CHAPTER FIVE
SOMETIMES YOU BARE THE GETS



"I'd say something light and quippy," Charles said. "But the only
thing that comes to mind is: 'Crap.' "

"Congratulations, Admiral," Mullins said. "You just changed from an
annoyance to a life-preserver."

"Yes, if you get back with me, all, or most at least, will be forgiven,"
the admiral said. "That, however, is a large 'if.' "

"I'm out of contacts," Gonzalvez said. "And I don't have a prober
system with me, so I can't try to play with the local police system
and fake us up materials from that." He blew through his lips and
shook his head. "I'm stumped, Johnny me lad." He hung his head
and whistled through his teeth. "Bloody hellfire."

"I've got one contact," Mullins replied grudgingly.

"Oh, my," Charles chuckled, looking up. "You're serious?"



Mullins stepped out of the shadows and nodded. "Hello, Rachel."

The dancer was dressed in prole clothing, a heavy gray cotton
jacket and similar slacks against the early spring night air. The style
on Haven leaned more towards flashy clothing and bright, tawdry
make-up, but on the "occupied worlds" there was no BLS for the
commoners, it was a day-in-day-out struggle for survival under the
unbending yoke of the Ministry of Industry and only the cheapest
materials were made available for the "unassimilated" populations.
However, like the police agent near Aunt Meda's, there was no
mistaking her for a common prole.

She tilted her head to the side and sighed. "I guess StateSec
officers don't have to worry about curfew?"

"Something like that," he said. "Can I come in?"

She paused and looked at him for a long time then nodded.
"Okay."

The fourth-floor flat was surprisingly neat and clean, for all it was
small. It was mostly one room with a fold-up bed, a couch, a small
table, tridee and tiny kitchen. There was a small bathroom to the
side with a shower just visible. There appeared to be no heat and
the room was like an icebox.

"Nice," he said. "But not as nice as Nouveau Paris."

"It's a dump," Rachel replied, taking off her coat and pulling down
the makings of tea. "What can I do for you as if I don't know?"

"It's . . . not what you think," Mullins said, sitting at the small table.
"There are some things you don't know about me."

"Well, you're wearing prole clothing, so apparently one of them is
that you're an undercover agent." She put a pot in the warmer and
set it on heat.

"Not for StateSec," he said carefully. "I'm a Mantie."

"Sure you are," she said with a chuckle. "And I'm Cordelia
Ransom. Pull the other one, it's got bells on."

"I'm serious, Rachel. That's why I wanted to get you out of Peep
space. I couldn't be with you here; I'm from the Alliance."

She turned around and looked at him soberly. "You're serious."

"As a heart attack. And I'm in trouble."

"And you brought it to me," she said angrily. "You're a God-
damned Manty spy and you've brought your troubles to me?"

"Yes, I did," he replied. "You're the only person I can trust
anymore, Rachel. If you want to turn me in, fine. I just ask for a few
minute's head start. But I need your help. Please."

"Oh, man," she said, shaking her head. "Why me? That question
was rhetorical, buddy." She took the pot of tea out of the heater
and poured two cups. "Honey, right?"

"You remembered." He smiled, wrapping his hands around the
mug for warmth.

"I have a very good memory," she snapped as she sat down. "I
can remember things like that for over four hundred men."

"Oh."

"This is not going to be cheap," she continued. "You had better
have money."

"I do, and some materials that might help." He paused for a
moment and then shrugged. "But we've got a couple of other
problems. We also have a citizen to get out, a defector."

"This general that everyone is so up in arms about?" she asked,
taking a sip of her tea.

"Admiral. Yes."

She took another sip and set it down, gripping the bridge of her
nose and squeezing. "Oh, Johnny."

"How bad is it?"

"In case you didn't notice, our club gets a lot of military," she said
softly. "It was nearly empty tonight; there has been a general call-
up by StateSec. They're all looking for your friend. I don't even
know how you made it to the flat."

"I want you to come, too," he said in a rush.

"Not that again!"

"I'm serious. I nearly drank myself to death when I had to leave
Nouveau Paris. Please come with me this time; it won't be safe for
you here after we're gone."

"We'll talk about it later," she said, patting his hand. "Right now we
have to get you and your friends somewhere that StateSec won't
find you."

"I'm not sure anywhere is that safe," he replied.
* * *

"Where are we going?" John said as they sloshed through another
puddle.

They had proceeded to the basement of Rachel's tenement where
a metal plate had given access to a series of tunnels. Most of them
had to do with maintenance for the billion and one things that go on
out of sight and mind in a city. Besides sewers, there were forced
air pipes, electrical lines, active foundation supports and a host of
other items, most of which required occasional maintenance.

And very few of which were ever seen by "surface" dwellers,
including police.

It was through this gloomy world, lit only by occasional glow-
patches and a pale chem-light in Rachel's hand, that they had
progressed. Once, in response to an almost unnoticeable mark on
a wall, she had rapidly backtracked. When a group of dispirited
Naval personnel had gone by them as they huddled in a side tunnel
the reason had become clear.

He had followed her slavishly, and carefully not asked any
questions, for nearly an hour. But if his reading of signs and
general sense of direction wasn't completely off, they were very
near the river. And the police headquarters.

"Not much farther," she whispered. "The one place that no one will
bother looking is?"

"Where nobody would be dumb enough to go?" he answered.

"Exactly," she continued, pulling aside another metal plate and
glancing around the room beyond. "Specifically, in the basement of
the police administration building."

He looked at the room beyond. It appeared to be completely filled
with junk. There were old-style monitors, chairs with one wheel
gone and piles and piles of manuals. All of it was covered in dust.

"How did you find this place?" he asked.

"I have friends in low places," she replied. "Where are your friends
and how do I keep them from killing me when I tap on the door."

"They're over in Southtown." He gave her directions to the flat and
shook his head. "Just knock and tell them who you are; secret taps
are for amateurs. You'll need this, though."

He pulled what looked like a dangling thread off the prole jacket
and licked it. Then he held it up to his mouth and said: "All Clear,
Kizke."

"What is that?" she asked, taking the somewhat sodden string.

"Just give it to Charles. He'll compare it to my DNA map. There's a
way to fake it, but it's hard and beyond Peep tech. We think. That's
what professionals use. Also, we need some back-ups. If anything
happens while you are gone, now or later, I'll make a chalk mark on
the side of the postal box on the fourteen hundred block of Na
Perslyne. And I'll leave a message about where to contact me on
the underside of the south bench by the duck pond on Wenceslas
Square."

"Okay," she said. "I guess this is real spy stuff?"

"We use the word 'agent,' " he replied with a grin. "And, yeah, the
term is 'tradecraft.' Can you remember what I said?"

"Mark on the postal box in the fourteen hundred block of Na
Perslyne, south bench, duckpond Wenceslas, Mister Super-spy.
But when I come back, if I don't tap like this," and she gave him a
demonstration, "kill whoever comes through the door. Sometimes
StateSec will mimic an appearance."

"I think StateSec would find it difficult to mimic you," he said with a
smile. "Thank you for this, Rachel."

"You're welcome, and you owe me."



"Well, this is a pleasant little love nest," Charles said, ducking
through the door.

"I'd say it was nerve-wracking waiting for you to get back," Mullins
replied. "But I always figure you're dead anyway."

"Terribly uplifting old boy," Gonzalvez replied. "Glad I feel the
same way about you."

"Rachel, we do have to talk," Mullins continued. "I don't get you
having this little bolt hole or knowing your way around underground
so well. I deal with Peeps and proles all the time; they don't
generally find their way around underground by preference."

"I have friends . . ."

"I heard that one," Mullins replied as Gonzalvez subtly shifted to
block the exit. "Now tell me the rest."

"Okay," she sighed. "I do have friends. Some of them are in the
resistance."

"Friends like we were . . . are . . . friends?" Mullins asked.

"Sort of," she replied, stone-faced. "After you left things got very
sour for me on Nouveau Paris; I had to leave in a hurry. 'Friends'
got me here and have . . . helped from time to time. I help them
from time to time in return."

"Mule?" Charles asked.

"Generally," she replied. "But I'm not really a member of the
resistance; just a working girl trying to make her way the best she
can."

"No warrant for you?" Johnny asked.

"No, it never got that far."

"Can these . . .  'friends' get us passage out?"

"For a chance to make contact with Manty Intelligence? Of course
they will."

"I'm not sure we can support them," Charles pointed out. "Most of
them have been designated as terrorist organizations by the
People's Republic; supporting them is a political decision at that
point."

"Understood," Rachel replied. "But this is a chance for a hard
contact and some positive PR, if only in your intelligence service."
She sighed, looking around the room. "They're really not terrorists;
they have a strict military/industrial target only policy. Sometimes
civilians do get killed, but only those working on military equipment
and manufacturing; they don't go bombing restaurants."

"Or strip-joints," Charles interjected. "Do you feed them
information?"

"No, I don't," she replied. "I mean, sometimes a little, but I'm not a
spy for them or anything. Sometimes I find out something they
really have to know and I pass it on to a cell I trust. I'll have to bring
them in on you guys; they're my only source of travel documents."



"Stop here," Rachel whispered. "You're not going to crack on me,
are you?"

The man who would only answer to the name "The Great Lorenzo"
raised himself to his not inconsiderable height and gathered the
rags of his suit.

"Am I not the Great Lorenzo?" he asked in a mellifluous voice. "It
is not a great role, but it is a speaking part. I shall do my trouper's
best."

"Lord, this was a bad idea," she whispered. "Okay, they probably
put out sensors, so you'd better get into role."

The man nodded and reached in his pocket, extracting a bottle of
cheap whiskey.

"You shouldn't need that," she snapped. "You already smell like a
distillery."

"But if I do not, my hands will shake," he noted logically.

"They're supposed to shake!"

"Only in the role within the role," he returned and upended the
bottle, taking a single hard slug. "Now I am prepared," he added,
tucking the bottle away as his face slowly softened into subtly
different lines. He now had the overall visage of a drunken bum,
but there was a cold light in his eyes and his demeanor, while
stooped, had a hint of athleticism. "Ah, what a tangled web we
weave, when first we practice to deceive!"

"Aloman?" she asked, stepping deeper into the gloom.

"Shakespeare," he sighed. "So few remember the Bard."



John slid the plate aside and nodded at Rachel. "Glad you're
back."

"No names," she said. "This is a friend in the resistance. He can
get you passages."

John looked the rebel visitor up and down. He appeared to be just
another street bum; sallow face, palsied hands. The torn clothing
was better than most, but not significantly. However, if anyone
knew looks could be deceiving it was Mullins. "You?"

The bum slowly straightened until he was at his full height and
looked at the admiral. "Yeah, that's Mládek," he said in a deep,
gravely voice, ignoring Mullins. "First you grind us under the Legs
then you grind us under the Peeps and now that the fire's too hot
for you you turn tail and run." He spat on the ground in front of the
Peep officer and smiled at the Manticorans. "Give him to me for an
hour; I'll sweat out everything you want to know."

"Enough," Rachel said. "We don't have time for this."

"Yeah, I can get you documents," the rebel replied after a glance at
the woman. "But there's a problem. I've got three; Rach said you
wanted four."

"How long to get four?" Charles asked.

"Why should we?" Mládek snapped. "For God's sake, I'll buy you a
piece of ass when we get to Manticore; leave the bint."

"You know," Mullins replied mildly, not turning around. "I just need
to get you to Givens alive. There's nothing saying I have to leave
you the use of your legs." He cocked his head to the side and
looked at the visitor. "We need four."

"Ain't gonna happen any time soon," the visitor replied, scratching
his chest. "And eventually they will find you; they've got Mládek's
DNA for sure and probably yours by now. They'll use chem-sniffers
eventually."

"Rachel, you are not staying on this planet," Mullins said. "They are
going to be looking for you this time." He paused and shrugged,
looking at the floor. "We already drew straws. Just in case. I lost."

"He did," Charles replied sourly. "He really, really did. I was there."

"Well, that makes a hell of a lot of sense!" Rachel flared. "I go
back to Manty space and you stay here? What, exactly, am I going
to do in Manticore? And how are you going to survive here?"

"I can get by," Mullins said. "As soon as it's clear the admiral is
gone, things will cool down. I can make it. As for you, the one more
or less constant in Manticore these days is a labor shortage; you
won't have to worry about finding a job and it won't be as a dancer,
either."

"I've got nothing against being a dancer," she said narrowly.

"No, but I do," he replied. "When you get to Manticore, find another
job. Okay?"

"Okay, I'm not staying," she said after a moment's glare. "Take the
pictures. We'll retouch them as necessary for clothing; I'll have to
get that later. Two male sets and one female."

"I can do those as well," the rebel said. "I've got a lovely set of
three, by the way. You're Solarian business representatives."

"Good," John replied. "The Peeps bend over backwards for
those."

"Rachel will be the head of the group," the bum continued, handing
out briefing papers. "She's the CEO of Oberlon, Inc. and a really
nasty individual. Unfortunately, the CEO of Oberlon is about ninety
and looks it, so we'll have to age you a bit."

"I'll live," Rachel said as he took the first picture.

"You'll be her son," the rebel continued, handing Gonzalvez his
packet. "You're the heir apparent, but the old biddy won't die. So
you're stuck in an eternal 'momma's boy' routine."

"Joy," Gonzalvez said, smiling as stupidly as possible at the
camera.

"That will look great," the visitor said. "You're the executive
assistant, Admiral. You don't talk much, just open doors and make
coffee."

"That I can handle," Mládek said, glowering at the camera.

"And one to grow on," the rebel continued, taking Mullins' picture.

"What in the hell was that for," he asked, suspiciously.

"If I come up with another identity in the next day or so, do you
want it or not?"

"Want," Mullins admitted.

"So there you are," the visitor said, putting away his gear. "One big
happy family."

"And already planning the murder," Gonzalvez said flipping through
his briefing papers. They were remarkably professional for what
appeared to be a completely amateur organization.

"You'd better get up pretty early in the day, sonny," Rachel
quavered. "How do you think I took over the company from your
father?"

"One big happy family, indeed," Mládek laughed.


CHAPTER 6
Cliché: Another Word for Inevitable



Charles waited until the rebel was gone, then smiled.

"Good news, the Manty team didn't get captured. The people who
were picked up were all locals; they don't know what happened to
the Manties."

"How do you know that?" Rachel asked.

"Between the Admiral and me, we managed to hack into the police
databanks," Charles said with an impish grin.

"What?" Rachel shouted. "Are you crazy?!"

"Shh, keep your voice down," the admiral replied, gesturing at a
dataport. "We were clean. We were already inside their physical
security and their electronic security was laughable."

"Why take the risk?" she asked. "What if they tracked you
internally?'

"Not much chance of that," Charles said, buffing his nails on his
tunic. "I, am a genius."

"Well, genius, we're going to need to change locations," she
snapped. "You have five minutes to make it look as if you were
never here."

"Women," Charles said with a shake of his head. "Never satisfied."

"Men," Rachel replied. "Never paranoid enough."
* * *

Mullins smiled through the window as Rachel grounded a beat up
air car in front of him.

"Hi, lady, can I get a ride to the Metropolitan Museum?"

She looked at him for a moment then shook her head. "We don't
have a Metropolitan Museum; it got destroyed in the Peep War and
never rebuilt. What did you do to your face?" He was much heavier
looking with fat cheeks and dark hair in place of his natural aquiline
blond look.

Mullins slid into the seat and worked his jaw. "Charles blackmailed
our supply guy into giving him the latest and greatest ID kit. And it
seemed like a good idea to change identities again."

Rachel had been unwilling to let them stay in the basement another
minute and, realistically, they had already been in one place too
long. She had led them back out through the sewers and tunnels to
a temporary hide and told them to meet her in twenty minutes. That
had been more than enough time for Charles to produce a few new
local identities for all of them except the admiral. He had a new ID
as well, but unfortunately the retina scan wouldn't match up.

"I've got another hide you can move to," Rachel said, pulling the
car up and into traffic. Prague was no longer a rich world but the
traffic was still fairly heavy, stacked up at least six levels. The
ground level was relegated to hover-trucks with the next three
levels dedicated to general traffic and the top two to "platoon"
groups: cars moving under computer control over long distances.
East–west streets were on interleaving sections with north and
south so that only the ground level had to stop at intersections.
This also created "dead zones" between lanes that the more
aggressive drivers used for passing. "But it requires going up on
the surface and with all the patrol activity . . ."

"How bad is it, lassie?" Charles asked as a patrol van passed
overhead fast enough to rock the shuddering car. The van had
been in the dead zone and at the intersection it quickly cut
downward into a parallel lane then back up to pass the slower
traffic.

"Lots of roadblocks, lots of random stops," she said. "StateSec is
even more intrusive on the conquered planets than they are on
Haven. I think we got you hidden just in time. It took them about a
day to get organized and now they're all over the place. Oh, by the
way, there's an all points bulletin out for Tommy Two-Time. A
person of your general build was seen going into his shop but all
the surveillance equipment was disabled or destroyed. You . . .
wouldn't happen to know anything about that?"

"Tommy, he sleeps with the fishes," Mullins said. "God, I always
wanted to use that line!"

"You are so weird," she snorted. "I think this is just about the time
to have a car chase. It's always about this time in the movies. What
do you think, Mister Super-Spy?"

"I've always managed to avoid them," Johnny admitted. "I hate
flying, actually."

"Well, good," Rachel said as she rounded a corner. "Hopefully our
luck will hold out."

"Or, maybe not," John said as he looked at the line of cars.

"This was not here an hour ago," Rachel snarled at the roadblock.

"It's cool," Mullins replied softly. "My ID should pass just fine. Just
play it like any normal roadblock."

"What about the admiral?" she asked.

"Retina scanners sometimes act up," Charles answered. "All the
other data will match just fine. And the local police retina scan for
the admiral is wrong."

"You didn't tell me you diddled the ID database," Rachel hissed.

"You didn't ask," Gonzalvez replied with another grin. "Anyway, the
retina scan should come back garbled and everything else will
pass. They'll let us through."

"Okay, but I don't like it."

"And don't try to run," John added. "This POS will never be able to
out-fly the police vans. For that matter, we'll be zoomed in on from
every direction and they'll be tracking us a half a dozen ways. Just
play it cool."

"I am," she replied as the first van passed, scanning her
registration. It swung around behind her and took a position above
and behind. "I was," she continued.

"That's not good," John said. "They don't scan ID internally, so they
had to have reacted to the registration. Who's this registered to?

"Me," Rachel said, adjusting her rearview mirror and checking her
lipstick.

"I think they're on to you, Rachel."

"I think they are too," she sighed, touching up her hair. "Damn it,
Johnny, I did not need this crap."

"Okay, on my mark we kill everyone in sight," Charles said with a
snort. "Or at least try."

"Hopefully it won't come to that," Rachel replied quietly. "And
unless it does, don't do anything stupid."

Mullins looked around at the block. There were four cars in front of
them, three like themselves hovering at about five meters and the
first one grounded and being checked by the local constables.
There were two police vans there, and the one behind them. As he
watched, two of the constables at the block walked back to their
own vans, one going to the rear.

"I think we're screwed," Mullins replied. There was an alleyway on
his side, but the vans were going to have IR sensors so unless
they could get underground and lose the cops on foot, they weren't
getting away. "When I say 'now,' put the car in drive and jump out
on my side; hopefully some of them at least will chase the car."

"I don't think that's an option either," Rachel said as one of the two
vehicle cops extracted what looked like a rocket launcher and fired
at her car.

"JESUS!" Mullins yelled, pulling open his door as the rocket
slammed into the side of the vehicle.

But instead of an explosion, there was a simple "pop" and the car
shuddered in mid-air.

"EMP round!" Rachel yelled. "Get back in the car!"

"It's dead!" Mullins said but the sudden shudder as it lifted upward
belied him. Then he was thrown backwards in his seat.
"Whoooaaa!"

Mullins had been in enough simulators to have a fair clue about
how many Gs he was pulling and the little "rattletrap" car was
accelerating far too quickly for its appearance.

"Friends in low places?" he grunted.

"My cousin's a mechanic," she hissed in reply, banking around the
side of a building at the sight of blue lights in the distance. The car
narrowly missed the side of the far tower, actually tapping on one
of the empty flagpoles jutting out from it. "He installed an engine
from an old Prague Defense Force mobile gun. It's designed to
drive a mini-tank."

"How did it survive the EMP round?" Mullins asked. "We should
have been sitting on the ground!"

"It's a military engine," she said, in a tone reserved for a not very
bright four-year-old. "Ever heard of shielding?"

He glanced behind them and winced as another police van joined
the chase, slipping into the upper lane to prevent a break in that
direction.

"They're going to be tracking us on the satellites," he mentioned.
"Not that it looks to matter."

"I've got the transponder turned off," she commented. "But you're
correct about them being able to track us visually. Not that it
matters at the moment. But hang on."

The traffic ahead was slowed by an air car in the center middle
lane that seemed incapable of making up its mind. The driver was
either old or drunk because the car was weaving a pavane up and
down, crossing through the dead zones and nearly entering the
lanes above and below, as well as from side to side.

Rachel appeared not to notice, diving into the lower dead zone and
accelerating towards the car fast enough to rattle the cars above
and below in her wash. Just as it seemed she would hit the
wandering vehicle it drifted upwards and she slid through the slot
into the relatively open area ahead of it. As they blasted past,
Johnny caught one brief flash of a white patch of hair and a pair of
hands that clutched the steering-yoke at least six inches over the
driver's head.

Unfortunately, Rachel's maneuver placed the car in the
intersection, going the wrong way. Her sudden appearance in the
cross-lanes caused cars to veer in all three dimensions and
windshields in at least a half dozen cars turned blue as the auto-
pilots went into spastic fault-mode.

Mullins looked back and shook his head in wonderment at the
snarled mess behind them. Half the cars that had been around
them were down or bouncing from side to side, the police vans
had either grounded or slammed into the surrounding buildings
trying to avoid various obstacles and the intersection was filled with
cars on apparently random ballistic tracks.

"You just made yourself very unpopular in this town," he
commented.

"Stuff happens," Rachel said, pulling all the way up into the control
lanes and then down to avoid a slow section of traffic. "I was
getting tired of Prague anyway."

"Oh," he said as she banked through the next intersection,
slammed on the brakes and turned into a mostly abandoned
multistory garage. "So this isn't the first car chase you've been in,
is it?"

"No," she replied, raising the car up a story through an open hole
and then spinning it to tuck neatly between a pair of rusted hover-
trucks. There was nothing else on the level, but while the position
gave a good view of the garage, it was nearly impossible to see
the car where it sat. She quickly shut down the counter grav and
then looked though the back window.

"And now we go?" he asked. "We're out of sight; we should . . .
leave. Right?"

"Wrong," she said, looking at her watch. Outside the sound of
sirens got louder and louder. There seemed to be quite a few of
them.

"They'll have picked up the signature of the engine," he pointed
out. "They'll be looking all over for it."

"You think?" she asked. She looked at her watch again and then
nodded. "Time." In the distance there was a dull boom. A moment
later the sirens began to fade. She leaned forward and fiddled with
an almost unnoticeable knob under the dashboard then turned the
car back on. It no longer throbbed or rattled.

"Your cousin?" Mullins asked dryly.

"He's a very good mechanic," she replied, pulling out from
between the trucks and dropping back down through the hole.
Turning right she pulled around a stairwell and parked beside a
stripped air car. Johnny didn't recognize the model—presumably it
was a preinvasion Prague design—but it was pretty and clearly
made for speed.

"Give me a hand," she said, leaning down and pulling a lever.

Johnny shook his head as the body of the car lurched slightly then
he joined her in lifting it up and away from the chassis.

"I've really got to meet this cousin of yours," he said. The sports
car body, like the clunker body, was made of lightweight plastic and
dropped onto the "rattle-trap" chassis perfectly. In under thirty
seconds a slightly the worse for wear sports car rocketed out of
the top of the garage and into the sky.

"My, that was refreshing," Mullins said. "Okay, Rachel, give. Your
average stripper doesn't have a military grade, shielded turbine in
her car. In fact, on Prague, she doesn't even have a car."

Rachel sighed and shook her head. "I do a few things more for the
resistance than I told you. I'm not an agent for them, but I do mule
work and also some of what you would call 'tradecraft'; your lecture
about putting a mark on a box wasn't the first time I'd heard of that.
And I really do have a cousin who does conversions on vehicles;
I'm the person who gets them to the resistance. And he does other
work, including some sabotage. He's surveilling us and had placed
a bomb on a chemical plant. When he saw us blocked in he set it
off. Then the police had more important things to do than chase
down a hooker who maybe had met one of the suspects they are
looking for. And, of course, I'm very good friends with one of the
local resistance leaders."

"Very good friends?" he asked.

"Is that all you can ask about?" she asked in exasperation. "If
you're going to worry about each of my friends you're going to
spend all your time on that subject alone. I've got a lot of friends,
okay?"

"Okay," Mullins said with a shrug. "As long as we can get you off
planet before your friends can't keep you alive."

"I've reluctantly come to the same conclusion," she said.

"Who is this vehicle registered to?" Mullins asked as a police van
swept through an intersection; it's car-comp would have
automatically scanned their registration as it passed.

"The local StateSec commander's daughter," Rachel said with a
faint smile. "As long as we don't have to go through another block,
we're fine."

She pulled into another multistory car-park and placed the car in an
out-of-the-way corner.

"They were going to be tracing us as soon as they reviewed the
data from the satellite," she continued, getting out of the car. "So
we need to get down in the underground again."


CHAPTER 7
If It's Stupid and It Works, It's Not Stupid



Johnny looked at the walls of the fumed wood elevator and shook
his head. "Where, exactly, are we going?"

The travel from the abandoned car had been short, which in
general was not a good idea. They had exited the car-park in the
basement, gone through a few tunnels and then entered the
elevator in another basement. This one had been packed with the
usual sort of industrial laundry machines found in hotels. But if this
was a hotel, it was much more upscale than anything Mullins had
previously found on Prague.

"This was the VIP quarters for visiting Legislaturalists," Rachel
said. "It's since been taken over by StateSec for pretty much the
same use."

"You mean, we're in a StateSec building?" Gonzalvez snapped.
"Are you insane, woman?"

"No," she said. "I have an apartment here."

Mullins tensed for a moment then decided to let her live. "Why?"

"Why do you think, Johnny?" she replied as the doors opened.
"Let's just say I'm . . . maintained in it by a local StateSec officer."

"And if he decides to just drop by?" the admiral asked. "We're to
hide in the closet, yes?"

"He won't be dropping by," Rachel replied. "He's off-planet at the
moment. And everyone knows why he has the apartment, but not
for whom, and he's the deputy commander for Prague. So they're
not going to be questioning his mistress. Not if they want to stay off
of Hades. And if you have a better idea where to hide you, I'm
open to suggestions."

There wasn't time for any as the doors opened on the corridor.
Rachel stuck her head out then gestured right. A short distance led
them to a door that opened at her passkey.

The apartment was large and airy, two story with the main hall rising
to the full height with a balcony overlooking it. There was a mural on
one wall depicting a pastoral scene along the Prague River and
furniture that looked to be mostly Old Earth antiques. A brief tour,
conducted by Charles on a careful sweep for any detection
equipment, revealed similar luxury throughout including a jacuzzi, a
shower area large enough for a platoon of drunken Marines, a
sunken bathtub, a collection of "adult novelties" that was practically
a store in itself and a shower-massage.

"Why a shower massage?" he asked when he got back to the
overstocked kitchen.

"I have to have something for myself," Rachel pointed out. She
was making a sandwich which consisted of two pieces of bread, a
pile of alfalfa spouts and a half a bottle of hot sauce marked with a
skull and crossbones. As soon as it was done she stuffed the
entire load in her mouth.

"M g'ung sh'er," she mumbled, then cleared enough space to talk.
"Nobody should come to the door. If they do, we're screwed. If
there's so much as a knock, alert everyone and head out the
window."

"I'll slip some tell-tales out the door," Charles said. He gestured at
her open mouth. "Unless you know something I don't, the Peeps
don't normally sweep in high microwave range."

"No, that's okay," she said after a moment. "Just don't get caught."

"They're self mobile," Gonzalvez replied.

"Next dibs on the shower," Mullins said, taking a bite of the
sandwich. "This is really wimpy hot sauce."

Rachel laughed and gestured around. "Raid as you wish. I'm not
planning on coming back and it's less than my pig of a boyfriend
deserves." With that she walked out of the kitchen and towards the
stairs.

"As long as everything's there tomorrow, we're set," Charles said.
"Of course, something will go wrong. But I intend to worry about
that tomorrow."

"I don't suppose . . . ?" Mládek asked, lifting the bottle of wine.

"Go ahead," Mullins replied. "Just don't get so drunk you can't
move."

"Well, say what you will about her boyfriend," Gonzalvez said from
the depths of the refrigerator, "but he has excellent taste." He
leaned out and flourished a jar. "Arellian caviar, Nagasaki shrimps
in wine sauce and New Provence compote."

"A going away party," the admiral said with a sad smile. "I suppose
it's appropriate."

"Just don't party too hard," Mullins replied.

"The condemned man ate a hearty meal," Charles said. "I'm
surprised you're eating as well as you are, frankly."

"Why worry about it?" Mullins replied. "You guys go, I'll keep my
head down and eventually we'll make contact again."

"Sure, easy," Gonzalvez replied.

"I'm not planning on being here in the morning," Mullins said, taking
another bite of sandwich.

"Cutting out early?" Mládek asked. "Don't get yourself picked up
and blow our cover."

"I won't," Johnny replied. "I'll probably take the window exit.
Anyway, I thought you should know."

"Well, I would have known anyway," Charles replied. "I laced that
as well as the door."

"Just as well," Johnny said, finishing off his sandwich. "I'm planning
on having another beer and maybe a few of those fish-eggs on
toast."

"It's caviar, you Gryphon barbarian," Gonzalvez said.

"Sure, sure," Johnny replied, picking up a canister of caviar and
scooping some out with a finger. "This isn't too bad. Any potato
chips around?"



John opened up the door to the closet in case there was anything
that fit. He was willing to put on the sweaty prole outfit he had been
running around in but if there was anything a tad cleaner it would be
nice. He hadn't been able to ask Rachel after her shower because
she had yelled that it was free and then disappeared into one of
the bedrooms.

As it turned out Rachel's mysterious boyfriend had plenty of
clothes. He appeared to be a bit on the hefty side compared to the
Manty but there was one suit that looked to be Mullins' size.

Johnny contemplated it balefully for a moment then dropped his
towel and tried on the shirt. It fit. So did the cummerbund and
pants.

He looked in the mirror and sighed.

"Okay, I guess there have to be some studs around here
somewhere."



When he came down from the shower he felt a bit better about his
outfit; Rachel had changed into an electric blue Beowulf pantaloon
set. The material was semitransparent, responding oddly to
reflected light; when the light was shining directly at it the material
was opaque, but in shadow or with glancing light patches it would
go completely transparent. As she moved it revealed and covered
seemingly at random, always covering far more than it revealed.
Try as he might, Mullins couldn't determine if she was wearing a
cat-suit underneath or absolutely nothing at all.

It was frankly hypnotic and went remarkably well with the archaic
tuxedo that was the sole clothing Mullins could find that fit.

"Well, aren't you the pair?" Gonzalvez said with a laugh.

"I thought that might work for you," Rachel said, lifting a glass of
champagne in his direction. "I picked it up for Bonz hoping he
could get it around his fat middle. No such luck."

"Well, it fits," Mullins admitted, shooting the cuffs and rolling his
shoulders uncomfortably. "But I'd rather be wearing prole clothes;
if we have to run this is going to stick out like a sore thumb."

"Well then, we'll just have to avoid making a run for it," Rachel
replied, handing him a glass of champagne. "To a flawless
escape," she said, raising the glass.

"To a flawless escape," Mullins replied tapping his glass to hers
and taking a sip. "That ain't half bad."

"It's an excellent vintage," Mládek said reaching past for a glass.
He was back in his own prole outfit and still drying his hair. He took
a sip and sighed. "I'll miss New Rochelle grapes."

"You should try some of the Copper Ridge sparkling wines,"
Charles responded, working the wine around in his mouth. "This
seems a tad raw."

"Raw? New Rochelle's one of the finest vintages known!" Mládek
responded hotly.

"I think we can leave them to this," Rachel said. "I seem to
remember that you actually can dance."

"Well, my mother never admitted that I had gotten any good at it,"
Mullins said, as he set down the glass. "But mom had two left feet."



"Darling, your only problem as a dancer is that you're too tall and
refuse to follow where I lead," Rachel said, her hips thrusting from
side to side.

"You took the words right out of my mouth," Mullins replied,
completing a complicated twist that ended with his ankles locked
behind hers and his hips following her in time. "When did you learn
to suvala?"

The had been dancing for over two hours, the tunes segueing
through a dozen styles. From the mirror-dance to the minuet, from
the suvala to the Hyper-Puma Trot, the two of them had been trying
to best each other. Rachel was far and away the more natural
dancer, but Mullins, if anything, knew more styles and was more
precise in each.

"I know a girl from New Brazil," she replied, her lips inches from his
cheek.

"You know this dance is illegal on Grayson?" he asked in a
whisper, leaning in to her ear, his hips grinding against hers.

"Silly people," she husked back then disengaged. "Charles?
Admiral? We're going to bed."

"Ah, really?" Charles asked. "So soon? The Admiral and I were
just about to come to a conclusion in regards to the superiority of
the Tancre strain of grape bacterium."

"I'm afraid not, old boy," Mládek replied. "Dautit is still the superior
bacteria."

"But only for higher sugar content! My God man . . ."

"No, I mean we're going to bed; you guys can stay up as long as
you'd like."

"Oh."

"Since you're sacrificing yourself for me tomorrow, it seemed the
least I could do," she said, taking John's arm.

"Well, I'd get all huffy," Mullins replied. "But what the hell; take what
you can while you can get it is my motto."

"See if you get anything with a motto like that," she said with a
chuckle.

But she relented after suitable persuasion.



Mullins rolled over and patted the bed beside him then opened his
eyes to a pallid dawn light.

Rachel was gone.

"Charley?" he called, rolling to his feet and grabbing his head.
"Ooooo."

"I see you're bloody up," Gonzalvez said, staggering in the door. "I
think your girlfriend slipped us a mickey. According to my sensor
logs she slipped out the window about three A.M. local time. Of
course, I was sleeping the sleep of the dead."

"Blast," Mullins snarled. "Probably that damned champagne."

"I thought it was a tad bitter," Charles said.

"All the gear is set up for her. I still can't get off-planet!"

"Oh, I don't know about that," Mládek said, entering the room with a
large package in his hands. "This was on top of my clothes."

Mullins rubbed his head as the admiral opened up the package and
laid out the contents.

"Two sets of male clothing, one set of female," Charles said,
picking up the documents. "I need to run these through my
scanner, but they look good. And you're the female, Johnny my
lad." He tossed the appropriate ID over to the admiral with a
chuckle.

"Ooooh!" Mládek said with a snort. "Uggh. You make a terribly ugly
female, Major Mullins."

"Thanks very much," Johnny said snatching the document out of
the admiral's hand. "You're right, I do," he continued, looking at the
documents.

"I do not care to be set up, John," Charles said.

"Neither do I," Mullins replied. "But so far she's been helping us. I
mean, if she wanted to hand us to StateSec, she could have last
night."

"So we just go with the modified plan?" Gonzalvez asked. "That
doesn't feel right, Johnny."

"If you have a better suggestion, lay it out there," Mullins snapped.
"I just had a great night, barely remember it and have one hell of a
headache."

"And you're about to be dressed up as a very ugly woman," the
admiral interjected, somewhat cruelly Mullins thought.

"Thanks. I needed that," Mullins replied. "And we're short on time.
We need to get into character and get out of here. Now."

"Okay," Gonzalvez said. "As long as I don't have to be the ugly
woman."



CHAPTER 8
Beauty and the Beast



The airtaxi trip was uneventful, but when the taxi pulled up to the
curb, the shuttle port was crawling with security.

"Get the bags Manny," Mullins said querulously as he lifted himself
out of the cab with the aid of a cane. "These Haven barbarians
don't have skycaps!"

"Yes, Mother," Gonzalvez said, paying the driver then lifting the
massive set of luggage out of the boot. "We have to hurry or we'll
miss our lift."

"They had better hold it until we arrive or their captain will live to
regret it," Mullins said loudly as one of the local Prague cops
arrived with his hand outstretched.

"Papers," the security man said, looking away. The woman was
obviously Solarian and you'd think she would have taken advantage
of a face-lift. Or, hell, a full biosculpt.

"Manny! Give this idiot our papers!"

"Mother!" Gonzalvez replied as Mládek silently handed over the
papers for the whole group.

"We're on the 1550 shuttle," the admiral said deferentially.
"Mistress Warax is a Solarian trade delegate and must not be
delayed."

"She will be," the cop grunted, scanning the paperwork and then
remotely scanning the threesome. "There's a one hundred percent
increase in security; it's bound to slow you down somewhat."

"Whatever for?" Gonzalvez said, marshaling the bags.

"We've got three or four Manty spies running around," the cop
replied with a nod. He handed back the paperwork and gestured
into the terminal. "Sooner or later they'll either make a break for the
spaceport or we'll run them to ground."

"Well, that's not our problem!" Mullins snapped, leaning on his
cane. "I warn you, if you delay my departure, Rob Pierre himself
will hear about it! You understand me, sonny?"

"Yes, Mistress Warax," the cop said. "If you'll please proceed into
the terminal. Will you need assistance? A float chair can be
arranged."

"Yes, of course I need assistance, you moron!" Mullins replied.
"Do you think I use this damned stick as an affectation?!"

The float chair was hastily summoned and Mullins rode into the port
in semi-regal fashion. It was a well-known fact that without the
covert support of members of the Solarian League, the
Haven/Manticore war would have been long over, in Manticore's
favor. So it was no surprise that their cover as Solarian trade
representatives was a key to favor. It would not, however, keep
them from being intensely scrutinized on the way to the shuttle.

Gonzalvez confirmed their reservation on the Solarian liner Adrian
Bayside then led the group towards the long line for the final
security scan. As he did, an overly abundant blonde, obviously a
local and gorgeous in a trimly cut suit, cut in front of him.

"It looks like they're choosing every fifth person for a full-body
search," Gonzalvez said. "That's . . . new."

"And unpleasant," Mullins replied softly.

"I don't think you have to worry," Mládek said sardonically as the
StateSec guards who were "assisting" the usual security started to
swarm around the blonde who had cut them off.

As she approached the security scanner, the head of the StateSec
detail waved her out of line and pointed towards a side door; she
had apparently been "randomly" selected as a potential threat.

"Pass," the guard said to Mládek as they approached the scanner.
He was looking towards the side door angrily in the realization that
he was going to miss the show. "Pass, pass, just get on through,"
he snarled.

The scanner field was a more advanced system than the simple
hand scanners of the guards; among other things, if it was set high
enough, it could conceivably detect not only the fact that Mullins
was male, but that he and Gonzalvez were loaded with special ops
"goodies." They were well concealed, but with some of the
technology transfers from the Sollies, there was a possibility of
detection.

So it was with a certain amount of trepidation that Mullins
clambered off the float chair and muttered his way through the
scanner. As he did, however, he had to repress a chuckle.

The scanner had two lights, one red and one green. The green
was supposed to shine all the time as a tell-tale. However, the
lights occasionally went out and given the Havenite approach to
maintenance it was no surprise that this one was dark. However,
what was also interesting was that the scanner was unplugged; the
plug was sitting on the ground, a meter from the wall socket.

Mullins was morally certain he knew what had happened. The local
guards had been told to crank the scanner through the roof. But
after a few hours of constant false alarms, they had surreptitiously
unplugged it so they could return to their regular routine.

Whatever had caused it, they clearly had nothing to fear. Mullins
unobtrusively tapped Gonzalvez on the ankle then gestured at the
plug as he walked through. The scanner, naturally, gave nary a
beep, even at the metal in his cane.

He suppressed a grin as he took Gonzalvez' arm for "assistance"
then started to join Mládek. At that moment, though, there was a
shout from behind them.

"You three, halt!" The captain of the StateSec detail, returned from
his "security check" of the dangerous blonde, gestured at the
bored local guard.

"What in the hell is that scanner doing unplugged?" the StateSec
captain snapped.

"Uh," the local guard said.

"Plug it back in," the captain snarled. "You three, back through the
scanner!"

"The hell if I will," Mullins said, waving his cane. "Do you know who
I am?"

"No, and I don't care," the StateSec officer said dangerously.

"Now Mother," Gonzalvez said soothingly. "We should do as the
Captain says."

"I'll have you know that I know Rob Pierre!" Mullins said. "And he
will not be happy that you have slowed us on our way back to
Despartia!"

"Captain," one of the local guards said, trotting up and panting. "Is
your communicator turned on?"

"What?" he asked, reaching down and activating the device. "No. I
was . . . monitoring a procedure that required my undivided
attention. And what is it to you?"

"Nothing, Sir," the private said, coming to attention. "But you might
want to contact Colonel Sims. All of the communicators in your
team were turned off; he thought you'd been taken out but there
wasn't any incident report. The thing is, the Manty spies have been
cornered in a warehouse in the company of a local woman. Team
Five has them pinned down, but the Manties have some heavy
firepower. Colonel Sims is calling in all of the StateSec units."

"Shit," the captain snarled. "You," he said, pointing at the scanner
operator. "Get that plugged back in and get the rest of them
through the line. You," he continued. "My team is in the
interrogation room. They should be about done. Get them while I
call the Colonel."

"Yes, Sir," the private said sardonically. "In the interrogation room,
huh?"

"Never you mind that," the captain snapped, striding away.

The scanner operator waited until he was out of sight then waved
to Mullins.

"You can go, Mistress. My apologies for the delay."

"Not your problem," he replied in a querulous voice. "But I've got
the name of that captain. If he thinks Colonel Whatsisname is a
problem, just you wait until I get done with him."

He got back on his float chair, which had been helpfully brought
around the scanners, and proceeded towards the gate.

"We're early," Gonzalvez said.

"I know. I'd figured more time getting through security."

"So we just lie low?" Mládek said.

"Yeah," Mullins replied, guiding the float chair over to a corner near
the gate. "I'm going to take a nap; I had a long night."

Gonzalvez snorted then looked up as the blonde came into the
gate, still straightening her clothing. "I'd like a long night with that."

"She doesn't look too happy, does she?" Mullins muttered.

"Not particularly," Gonzalvez said. "Ah, there's our scanner tech."

"Go see if he's got any information on what's going down
downtown," Mullins said.

Gonzalvez walked over to the tech, who was obviously headed for
his break, and waved him down.

"Pardon me, good fellow," Gonzalvez called. "I was just wondering
if you could tell me something."

"Depends on what it is," the tech replied with a smile to reduce the
sarcasm.

"The other fellow mentioned some sort of a shoot-out downtown,"
Gonzalvez said. "I'm just curious about it."

"Well, there was a group of Manty spies we've been chasing all
week," the tech said. "That's the reason for the alert here. Anyway,
they have them cornered someplace. That's all I know. I'll keep my
ears open on break and if I hear anything else I'll tell you. But why
do you want to know?"

"Just curious," Gonzalvez replied. "Excitement, danger, foreign
adventures," he said with a relish. "It's all so wonderfully alien to my
usual life, you know."

"I can tell," the tech said with a snort. "That's your mother?"

"Yes," Gonzalvez said with a sigh. "The head of Oberlon when she
was twenty-nine and now no one can pry her out of the seat,
don'cha'know."

"Well, good luck," the tech said with a chuckle. "I'll keep you
posted."

Gonzalvez went back to the group and sat down. Mullins was
flipping through a pad that contained very reasonable, if wholly
imaginary, business reports on a company called "Oberlon" while
Mládek was just sitting staring out the windows at the shuttle port.

Gonzalvez glanced back over at Mullins and realized that he was
riveted on the blonde.

"Mother, is there something wrong?" he asked, clearing his throat.

"Uh, no, dearie," Mullins said, returning to his pad.

"She doesn't appear to be your type, Mother," Gonzalvez clucked.

"Go away, dear," Mullins said.

"On the other hand, she is mine." Gonzalvez chuckled and walked
over to the blonde.

"That was idiocy at the security scanner," he said, holding out his
hand.

"Thank you," the girl said, looking up at him with a pinched
expression. "But I've had about all the male attention I can handle
for the day."

"I'm sorry," he said with a rueful smile. "I can understand. But I
thought you'd like to know that the guy in charge of the security
detail caught some hell for a completely different reason. He's
likely to lose his captaincy."

"Thank you," the girl said curtly. "Now if you'll just leave me alone I
can try to get back some of my bearing. Or at least center my
aggression."

"Okee-dokee," Gonzalvez said, stepping away as the scanner tech
came across the gate area with a smile on his face.

"Good news?" Gonzalvez asked, intercepting him well short of the
girl.

"For us," the scanner tech said with a grim grin. "Not for the
Manties. When they saw all the reinforcements coming, including
your captain friend, they blew themselves up. So it's over."

"Yes, it is," Gonzalvez said shaking his head. "Those poor people.
I know they are your enemies, but I can't help but feel for them."

"Well, yes," the tech said, adjusting his perceptions. "A terrible
tragedy. But at least now the security won't be so intense and you'll
be sure to catch your shuttle."

"Yes, that will be for the good," Gonzalvez said, shaking the tech's
hand. "Thank you very much for all your help."

"No problem. Have a good trip."

Gonzalvez sat down by Mullins and took a breath.

"You heard?"

"I heard," Mullins replied. "We'll talk about it when we get back."

"Boarding for the Adrian Bayside will begin in just a moment." A
slim female in Bayside Lines uniform appeared at the gate door. "I
would like to have anyone with mobility problems, very small
children or priority passes to come up first."

"Well, two out of three ain't bad," Mullins said, holding up a hand.
"Give me a hand sonny," he quavered.

"Yes, Mother," Gonzalvez said with a sigh. "Coming, 'Robert'?"

"I suppose," Mládek said, standing up and smiling. "Let me give
you a hand, there, Mistress."

"Such nice boys," Mullins said, shuffling towards the personnel
tube. "You'd never know I met his father in a spaceport bar, would
you?"

"Mother!"



CHAPTER 9
Hell Hath No Fury Like a Woman Admiral. Period.



After surviving extraction from Prague, sneaking through Peep
space and convincing the Manty contingent on Excelsior that they
weren't really double agents—look, here's a Peep Admiral
Defector for proof!—Mullins thought it was likely that he would die
right here and right now. Or, at least, he halfway wished his heart
would just stop or a rock would drop on him or something.

"What in the ever living hells was going through what might, with
leniency, be referred to as your mind?!" Admiral Givens was not
known for raising her voice. And she did not now. The very fact that
they practically had to strain to hear her tongue-lashing, which was
just winding up after more than thirty minutes that had traced the
course of their idiocy from generations before, through infancy and
up to the present day, made it worse.

"Well, we did get the Admiral back," Gonzalvez pointed out.

"It's clear proof that your mother dropped you on your head as a
child that you think that question was other than rhetorical, Major
Gonzalvez," the admiral continued. "The only reason that Excelsior
didn't sanction you was that you brought the Admiral back. And that
was a good thing. His information, I'll admit, was useful
confirmation."

"Confirmation, Ma'am?" Mullins asked. "He had a head full of
StateSec secrets and codes!"

"All of which, and more, Honor Harrington brought back two weeks
ago," Givens said.

"Harrington?" Gonzalvez blurted. "She's dead."

"So we all thought," the admiral replied. "But, in fact, she ended up
on the ground on Hades. She staged the largest prison breakout in
history and returned with not only a half a million prisoners, but
reams of data on StateSec procedures and communications and
some political prisoners that the Havenites had insisted had been
dead for years."

"So," Mullins said. "We went through all of that for confirmation?"

"Exactly," Givens snappped. "You two are the most consummate
foul-ups I have in my entire organization. I cannot let you out of my
sight for more than thirty seconds without you involving yourself in
some intensely moronic encounter. I don't care if you live through
them; the chaos that you leave in your wake more than makes up
for your survival. The whole point is to enter and exit seamlessly,
causing not a ripple while you are there. Not killing double agents,
blowing up buildings, getting in car chases and otherwise
disporting yourselves like you're playing a game. Is any of this
getting through to you two hydrocephalic morons."

"Yes, Ma'am!"

"I'm not in this business to build structures just for you to kick them
down like a couple of children who find a pretty vase to break! This
is not going to be a short war and we need all the intelligence we
can gather; sending you two to a planet is like asking to have the
entire system shut out for the rest of the war! Am I getting through
to you?"

"Yes, Ma'am!" they chorused.

"I don't even know why I waste my breath," she muttered. She
finally took a deep breath and leaned back in her chair, steepling
her fingers. "What I want to do is space both of you, both for the
good of NavInt and for my own sanity. But, as a personal favor to
Agent Covilla I have agreed to give you a reprieve."

"Ma'am?" Gonzalvez said, stunned.

"Agent Covilla said that the two of you were of some assistance to
her in her mission to extract the Admiral," Givens replied, touching
a button on her desk. She waved as a woman walked through the
door. She appeared to be about thirty, standard, plain and blunt
featured, with male-short blond hair. She was wearing the uniform
of a captain with ONI markings. "She personally convinced me that
despite your amateurish blunderings on Prague, not to mention the
reason you were there, that I should let you off with no more than a
warning. Do I have to spell it out for you?"

"No more unauthorized adventures?" Gonzalvez asked, glancing
sideways at the woman. He had never seen her before in his life.

"That should go without saying. No, if you ever get that screwed up
on a mission again, authorized or unauthorized, I will personally
strap you to a missile and fire you out the tube. Do I make myself
clear?"

"Clear, Ma'am," they both chorused.

"Captain Covilla?" Givens said. "Do you have anything?"

"No, Ma'am," the captain said. Her voice was gravelly; she'd either
spent a lot of time shouting at some point or she'd had a bad
experience with death pressure. "I'd like a moment of Captain
Mullins' time."

"Very well," Givens said, pointing to the door. "Dismissed."



All three found themselves out in the corridor, looking around at the
busy scurrying of NavInt.

"Confirmation," Gonzalvez muttered. "We put our butts on the line
for confirmation!"

"Typical," Covilla growled. "Captain Mullins, if you could step down
to my office, please?"

"Yes, Ma'am," Mullins said. "What about Captain Gonzalvez?"

"Well, he can get started on the paperwork."

"Paperwork?" Gonzalvez said suspiciously.

"Your unauthorized adventure was expensive," Covilla said. "We're
going to have to sort out which part was duty and which part was
not. And you're going to be paying back the non-duty portion.
Come on, Captain."

He followed her to her office, noting that she had a decidedly un-
ladylike gait that bespoke significant time in small-craft. He came to
attention as she walked around her desk and sat in the room's sole
chair.

"Do you have anything you want to add to the debrief?" she asked,
flipping a pad across the desk. "You can stand at ease."

"I just have a question," Mullins said, spreading his feet apart and
placing his hands behind his back in a position closer to parade
rest.

"If it doesn't violate your need to know," Covilla responded with a
thin smile.

"How was the rest of your trip back?" he asked. "I mean, after the
scene at the shuttle-port, Rachel."

Covilla leaned back and steepled her fingers in a manner identical
to Admiral Givens. "How long have you known?" she asked,
swinging her chair back and forth. Her voice was now honey
smooth.

"I wasn't sure until just now," Mullins said. "But the blonde at the
shuttleport smoothed her hair back in a manner identical to the way
you do. And her pushing into line was a bit too coincidental. As
soon as I'd made that connection, backing up and finding all the
places where you'd managed us was easy. So what really
happened?"

"I was the backup for the defection," she said. "I had figured out
that the Chinese laundry was compromised, doubled, but I couldn't
abort the Admiral. So I blew up the laundry."

"When you said you had 'something to do' that first evening, you
were serious," Mullins said with a chuckle.

"And I drove the Admiral to you," she continued. "I couldn't get him
out and spoof StateSec at the same time."

"And the apartment?"

"Oh, that was really my boyfriend's," she replied, tiredly. "You use
the weapons that God gives you, John. One of my weapons is my
body."

"And it's one hell of a weapon," he said with a smile. "So where
does this leave us?"

"I'm not sure," she replied. "I'm not in your chain of command,
exactly, but we're close. If we continue it could be construed as
fraternization."

"You know what?" John replied. "I really could give a rat's ass."

"Same here," she said with a smile, reaching up and peeling off the
mask. She picked at a few pieces of plasflesh and rolled them on
her finger. "I'm due about a year's leave. How about you?"

"I'm not sure I can get any ever again," Mullins replied with a shrug.
"And I'm not going to be able to afford it."

"Don't worry about Patricia, I know where the bodies are buried,"
Rachel said. "As for the charge issue, I just told Gonzalvez that to
get him out of our hair. Where should we go?"

"Anywhere but Prague," Mullins said with a shudder.

"I hear Gryphon is beautiful in the winter," she said with a grin.