In Fire Forged: Worlds of Honor V-ARC (11 page)

And growing rapidly beneath their bewilderment was the hard edge of anger.

Because they too had undoubtedly watched the hated Harrington’s execution over a year ago. They’d probably had a few drinks to celebrate the event afterwards, and savored that moment during the bitterness of defeat and pullback and more defeat. Now, however the Manties had pulled it off, that small victory had been snatched away from them.

Even Peeps, Charles mused, must eventually get tired of being lied to by their leaders.

Armond took a deep breath, coming back from somewhere in an unpleasant distance. He thumbed the remote, and Harrington’s image and speech vanished in midword. “Well,” he said. “Isn’t
that
interesting?”

“Events out here never fail to amaze me,” Charles murmured. “At any rate—”

“Yes,” Armond cut him off. “My apologies, Mr. Dozewah, but I think we’re going to have to end things for today. Can we pick it up again tomorrow morning? Say, around ten o’clock?”

“Certainly,” Charles said, taking a last sip of his brandy and standing up. “Feel free to look over the documentation. I’d ask that you don’t take the papers out of this building, though.”

“Of course,” Armond said, reaching across the table for a quick handshake. “We’ll see you tomorrow.”

“I’ll look forward to it.” Charles started to step away from the table. Then, pretending he’d almost forgotten, he reached over and picked up the Redactor. “I have to take this with me, of course.”

“Of course,” Armond said, his mind clearly elsewhere. “Have a pleasant evening.”

A minute later Charles was walking down the sidewalk toward his hotel two blocks away, trying to figure out what Harrington’s unanticipated return was going to do to the Manty/Peep war and, more importantly, to Charles’s own sales pitch.

The most immediate effect would be to put Pierre and Saint-Just into the grandmother of all snits, which was probably why Armond had cut the meeting short. The government would be sending out messages to all their top weapons designers, demanding results
now,
and Armond was probably trying to figure out what he was going to say when the empty-faced State Security emissaries came calling.

The real question was whether Armond’s CYA speech would include a mention of Charles and his magic Redactor.

Maybe he should just cut his losses and get out. He could get a berth on the next liner heading for League space—hell, for
anyone’s
space—and leave this dirty, grimy, depressing world and its evil people behind him—

“Charles Dozewah?”

Charles jerked. The two men had come up behind him, silently and smoothly and professionally. “Yes,” he confirmed cautiously.

One of the men held out a gold-embossed identity card. “State Security,” he said. “Come with us.”

Charles looked at the other man. There was something in his stance that said he was hoping for an excuse to get violent. “I’m a citizen of the Solarian League,” Charles protested.

“Yes, we know,” the first man said. “Come with us.”

*
   
*
   
*

They took the Redactor, of course, along with his clothing and jewelry. A full search followed, clearly designed to be as intrusive and humiliating as possible. After that, they gave him a jumpsuit and soft shoes and put him in a private cell about the size of four coffins.

And for six days they just left him there.

It was an old technique, of course. The captive was given time to brood and worry about all the possible things his captors might be preparing to do to him.

Still, there were other, equally ancient techniques that were even worse. These they did not use. They fed him regularly, though the gruel was thin and tasteless. The cell’s sanitary facility at least afforded a modicum of dignity, though accessing it was somewhat challenging in a room where the ceiling was too short for him to stand upright.

More interestingly, they allowed him a full period of sleep each night, uninterrupted by lights, noises, or rough hands. If Charles didn’t know better, he would think he was being treated like a VIP prisoner.

He
did
know better, of course. Whatever forbearance the Peeps might be showing right now on account of his Solly citizenship would take a sharp turn downward the minute they figured out exactly who he was.

Even that level of courtesy would vanish completely once they figured out what he knew.

Because Charles knew things. Things that no non-Peep should ever know. Including some things that no one outside of Saint-Just’s own top people should know. If his interrogators found out he knew those things, he would learn just how barbaric the People’s Republic of Haven could be. He had to make sure no one discovered the extent of his hidden knowledge.

Or else he needed to find a way to use that knowledge to his own advantage.

It was just after breakfast on the seventh day when his cell was unlocked for the first time and a pair of large dour men hauled him out of his cracker-box kennel and took him down a plain gray corridor to an interrogation room.

The interrogator was already seated on the far side of a heavy-looking table, his dark gray suit a match for the gray of the walls, ceiling, and floor. “Charles Dozewah?” he asked briskly, his eyes on the papers in front of him as the guards cuffed Charles to an equally heavy wooden chair across from him.

“Yes,” Charles said. The interrogator was much older than he’d expected, somewhere in his mid-fifties. Possibly even older than that, depending on which generation prolong he was. That by itself was ominous, since in Charles’s experience younger trainees were usually given first crack at new prisoners in order to hone their skills.

“Or is that Charles Navarre?” the interrogator corrected himself, finally looking up and peering unblinkingly into Charles’s face.

Charles suppressed a grimace. So they’d figured it out. He’d hoped they wouldn’t, but down deep he’d known it was inevitable. “Who?” he asked anyway, just in case.

“Charles Navarre,” the interrogator said. “The man responsible for the destruction of the People’s Naval Ships
Vanguard
and
Forerunner.
Not to mention the theft of a sizeable sum of the People’s money.”

“Ah—
that
Charles Navarre,” Charles said. “Though technically speaking, the
Forerunner
was an Andermani ship.”

The interrogator’s expression didn’t even crack. “Thank you,” he said as he started to gather his papers together. “That’s all we wanted to know.”

“Actually, it isn’t,” Charles said, forcing his voice to remain calm even as his heartbeat suddenly picked up. Was that all they wanted to know before they turned him over to the torturers? “I’d like you to get a message to Citizen Secretary Saint-Just for me. Tell him that I know about Ellipsis, and that in three days everyone else will, too.”

A slight flicker of something might have touched the interrogator’s eyes as he finished collecting his papers and stood up. He gave Charles one final probing look, then circled the desk and left the room. Charles’s two guards stepped to his sides and started uncuffing him from the chair.

They took their time, with the result that the interrogator was nowhere to be seen by the time Charles and the guards returned to the corridor. Mentally, he crossed his fingers; but instead of heading back toward his cell, they led him off in a different direction entirely.

So the gamble had failed. They were indeed taking him to a torture room. Not for the gathering of information—the interrogator should have asked at least a few questions if information was what they wanted—but for the simple animalistic pleasure of revenge for the little con he’ll pulled all those years ago.

Considering how much that scam had cost the People’s Republic, they were likely to make his death as slow and lingering as possible.

He had been stripped naked and strapped to a table when the interrogator arrived and held a brief and inaudible conversation with the black-gloved man who seemed to be in charge of Haven’s version of the Inquisition. A minute later, a clearly unhappy torturer bit out an order, and Charles was unstrapped and hauled off the table. The interrogator led him down the hall to the guardroom and pointed him to one of the showers.

The cubicle contained badly missed soap and an even more badly missed razor. Charles made full use of both, and when he emerged a few minutes later, he felt like a new man. The interrogator was waiting with a set of Peep clothing; silently, he handed it to his prisoner. Charles dressed, and then waited as the interrogator added a set of wrist and ankle chains to the ensemble.

He was double-checking the locks on the wrists when his eyes suddenly met Charles’s. “If you’re lying,” he said, his voice dark and deadly, “not even God will have mercy on you.”

This time it was Charles’s turn not to speak. The interrogator held his gaze another few seconds, then jerked his head toward the door.

Five minutes later, they were in a sealed van, driving down the streets of the capital.

*
   
*
   
*

Citizen Secretary Oscar Saint-Just was looking a little pale today, Charles thought as a set of palace guards marched him across the expanse of the State Security dictator’s office. Or maybe this was his normal skin tone, and the publicity photos and HDs of him were routinely touched up. Certainly a man who could create an entire fraudulent HD of a Manty naval officer being hanged wouldn’t balk at having a little cosmetic work done on his own image.

Just as the interrogator had on their first meeting, Saint-Just pretended he didn’t see Charles as the prisoner was marched to his massive desk and secured to a chair in front of it. Unlike the chair in the prison, this chair was at least comfortably padded.

The guards strode out, and Saint-Just continued to work in silence. Charles sat motionlessly, cultivating his patience, knowing the other would make the first move when he deemed the time was right.

Two minutes later, it finally was.

“So,” Saint-Just said, setting his papers aside and eyeing his visitor. The interrogator had been quite good with the cold, deadly stare, but Saint-Just had the man’s efforts beat hands down. “You’re here to plead for your life.”

Clear and direct, with no word or mind games. Rather as Charles had expected. “Actually, Citizen Secretary, I’m here to offer a deal that will benefit us both.”

“Really,” Saint-Just said. “And why should I believe anything you say? Because of this?” He reached into a drawer and pulled out the Redactor Charles had been dangling so enticingly in front of Armond and Miklos.

“Neat little gadget, isn’t it?” Charles asked, slipping automatically into sales-pitch mode. “It feeds whatever image you want into a ship’s sensor line—”

“It’s useless,” Saint-Just cut him off, tossing the Redactor contemptuously toward an unoccupied section of his desk. “A typical warship has hundreds or thousands of sensor lines. Your shipyard agent would have to have a dozen accomplices working overtime to deal with all of them.”

“It does exactly what I claimed,” Charles pointed out. “I never vouched for its practicality.”

“As you also never vouched for the practicality of the Crippler?” Saint-Just countered.

Charles winced. The Crippler had been at the heart of his last scheme against the People’s Republic, a beautiful little gadget that could collapse a ship’s wedge from a million kilometers away. And like the Redactor, it had worked exactly as advertised…up to its inherent limits. “The Crippler worked perfectly against the proper targets,” he reminded Saint-Just evenly. “And the Redactor would work equally well against, say, a freighter with its considerably fewer number of sensor systems.”

“That might be useful if the People’s Republic was engaged in large-scale piracy,” Saint-Just said acidly. “We’re not. We’re in the middle of a war. How do you know about Ellipsis?”

The old, traditional out-of-the-blue change of subject. Even men as subtle as Saint-Just occasionally fell back on the obvious ones. “I have information sources everywhere,” Charles said. “Most of them nameless, unfortunately, so I can’t tell you where this particular tidbit came from.”

Saint-Just’s lip twitched. “The Navy, no doubt.”

“Could be,” Charles agreed. “I imagine they weren’t pleased when you took everything away from them.”

“No, they weren’t.” Saint-Just cocked his head. “And how exactly is it that you think the universe will know about it in three days?”

“Messages have already been sent out,” Charles said, as coolly and calmly as if it were actually true. “If I should disappear for more than ten days—and trust me, there are people, even on Haven, who are always kept informed about my movements and whereabouts—those messages will lead their recipients to everything I know about the ship.”

Saint-Just’s expression twitched, just noticeably, on the word
ship.
“And you don’t think we can beat those names out of you before that time limit is up?”

Charles shrugged, forcing down a shiver. “It’s possible,” he conceded. “But if you try and fail, you’ll be throwing away the best resource to come across your path for many a day.”

“The
Ellipsis
?”
 

Charles gestured toward his chest. “Me.”

For a long moment Saint-Just sat motionless, eyeing Charles like a tiger sizing up a prospective bit of lunch. Then, his gaze softened, just a bit, and he settled back into his chair. “Tell me everything.”

Charles took a careful breath. Right here, right now, was his only chance to prove to Saint-Just that he was worth more alive than stretched out on a torture rack.

And the first part of that proof, as Saint-Just had demanded, was indeed to tell him everything. “The
Ellipsis
is a Manty heavy cruiser,
Star Knight
-class, which you got hold of early in the war,” he said. “My source was a little vague on where it came from, but I’ve always assumed it was attacked by pirates while escorting some VIP.”

“Actually, it was escorting a freighter taking missile technology to Alizon,” Saint-Just said. “And its attackers weren’t
exactly
pirates.”