Chapter 43

Thandi wasn't able to meet with Captain Rozsak until the following day. By the time he arrived back in Erewhon system from Smoking Frog, managed the lengthy surreptitious transfer to the Felicia—and got some sleep—almost twenty-four hours had passed.

So, by the time she was ushered into the compartment which she'd managed to squeeze out for the captain and his immediate staff on the increasingly jam-packed slaver ship, she'd already made up her mind. She wasn't going to be consulting with Rozsak, simply extending him her resignation.

She felt a bit guilty, given all that she owed the captain. Guiltier still, when she saw how crowded he and his staff were. Rozsak had apparently shared a bed with Colonel Huang, the night before, with the two female members of his staff who had accompanied him to the Felicia—his XO Edie Habib and Lieutenant Karen Georgos—sharing the other. Watanapongse, she knew, had shared a bed with Lieutenant Manson in his own, even tinier, compartment.

Watanapongse was present, along with Habib and Huang, when Thandi came in. Manson was not—and, as soon as she'd ushered Thandi into the compartment, Lieutenant Georgos closed the hatch behind her, not entering herself. The two junior staff members were not, apparently, going to be invited to join. Thandi was almost sure that the reason was because Rozsak—or Watanapongse, more likely—had already figured out the reason she'd requested an interview.

Rozsak confirmed it immediately. "I have a bad feeling you want to offer me your resignation, Lieutenant Palane." The captain was sitting on a chair against the far wall, his hands laced over his belly. He nodded politely toward the bed next to him, the only vacant place left in the compartment. "Please, have a seat. Let's talk about it."

Thandi was standing at attention, wearing her SLN uniform rather than the simple jumpsuit she'd been wearing most of the time since she came to the Felicia. She'd had that uniform brought over just the day before, anticipating this moment. Her beret was tucked under her armpit, her hands clasped behind her back.

"I'd prefer not to, Sir. Yes, that is why I came. And I've already made up my mind."

Rozsak studied her for a moment. "Sit anyway, Thandi," he said abruptly. "There are other things to talk about. Other aspects of the matter, let's say. I'm not going to tell you that I'm happy about this. I'm not, and I'd be delighted if you reconsidered. But I'm not planning to give you a hard time about it, I promise." He glanced at his staff members. "None of us will."

Put that way, Thandi thought it would be sheer rudeness to refuse. She moved over and, somewhat gingerly, lowered herself to the bed. The very edge of it, sitting ramrod straight.

Seeing her pose, Rozsak smiled. "For God's sake, Thandi, relax. I'm not going to bite you. Sure as hell not after hearing Jiri's report of the mayhem you've been passing out around here. 'Great kaja,' no less."

A little chuckle went around the room, which Thandi found herself joining. Whatever else, Luiz Rozsak was a genuinely charming man. Charismatic, in fact, in the way that relaxed and good-humored and supremely self-confident people can be.

When the chuckle died away, Rozsak's expression was solemn. Just this side of grim, actually.

"I'm wondering how much of your decision was determined by the last assignment I gave you. More precisely—I'm sure you didn't shed any tears over killing Masadans and Scrags—by what lay behind it." His voice was flat, harsh. "And I'm not going to pretend that we don't all know what I'm talking about. Yes, I was responsible for the murder of Hieronymus Stein. As well as a number of innocent people who were taken out at the same time, including, I discovered later, two kids. That was not part of the plan, by the way. That was the Masadans' doing. But—such things happen, especially when you employ maniacs like them, which doesn't relieve me of the responsibility for it."

He cocked his head, waiting for her reply.

Thandi hesitated, before giving it. Not from caution, simply in order to put the words as precisely as possible. She wasn't going to lie, she decided—not even fudge the truth—but, on the other hand, she also wasn't going to evade behind any false pretenses.

"Some, Sir. But it's not the killings themselves, so much—not even the dead kids." She thought of her growing plans to assault Kuy. Plans which she would carry through, when and if the time came, knowing full well that innocent people—probably some kids, too—would be among the fatalities.

"It's . . . all the ruthless manipulation and maneuvering. And for what? No offense, Sir, but I just can't see anything in it except the worst kind of power politics. And I've discovered that I don't enjoy any more being on the top of the pile—fairly high up, anyway—than being on the bottom."

"A lieutenant is hardly 'high up,' Thandi," observed Edie Habib.

"It is when you come from Ndebele, XO. Way high up."

Habib nodded, acknowledging the point. Watanapongse smiled serenely. Huang's smile—the burly lieutenant colonel had been born and raised on an OFS planet himself—was not serene in the least.

Throughout, Rozsak had not smiled at all. "I can understand that, Thandi. But I would ask you to consider—just for a moment—that maybe my willingness to play power politics might work out for the best. I'm not about to deny my own ambitions, but . . . the same could be said for just about any significant figure in history. Including, for that matter, Hieronymus Stein. He was not the saint he was made out to be, you know—and, sure as hell, his daughter isn't. That man never missed a single chance—not one—to increase his influence and prestige."

Thandi said nothing. She tried to keep an expressionless face, but suspected she was just looking mulish.

Rozsak sighed. "I'm really not a monster, Thandi."

That, she could answer. "I've never once thought you were, Sir." Seeing his quizzical eyebrow, she shook her head firmly. "I don't. I understand what you're doing—even why you're doing it. And if you want to know the truth, I think you'll probably make a hell of a good ruler as well as conqueror. Way better than the swine we've got running the show in the Solarian League nowadays, that's for sure."

Seeing the stiffness those last words brought to everyone in the room—it was a subtle thing, but Thandi didn't miss it—she sniffed. "I am not stupid. Not even uneducated, any longer. I figured out some time ago what you—this inner circle, here—were up to. I knew it even before I figured out the truth about the Stein business. You're figuring the Solarian League is about to come apart at the seams—and you intend to grab as big a chunk of it as you can. Who knows? Maybe all of it."

Rozsak was now giving her a flat-eyed look which, if it didn't quite match the one Victor and Jeremy X could manage, came awfully close. "And what would you say if I offered to bring you into that 'inner circle,' Thandi?" He unlaced his hands and sat up straight. "Piss on the subjunctive tense. I will offer you a place in it. Along with an immediate promotion to captain and—I guarantee it—as fast a promotion track as I can manage. Which—you're right—I intend to eventually include the modern equivalent of a marshal's baton."

So, there it was. Spread out before her, wide open—dreams greater than any girl from Ndebele could have even imagined. Nor did Thandi doubt for a moment that Rozsak was being perfectly sincere. This was no ploy. This was for real.

She felt calmness settling over her, and knew that she would never lose it for a lifetime. Whatever else happened in the years ahead, she would always be grateful to the captain for that. Not the offer, but the fact that only that offer could have finally reassured her. Thandi Palane had compromised a lot, in her life, given much away. Traded it away, rather. But she'd never traded herself.

"No, thank you, Sir. I appreciate the offer, believe me I do. But . . . how to say it? I've got no hard feelings at all, Sir. You have my word on it. I just want a different life, that's all."

She met Rozsak's eyes, levelly and evenly. Trying, as best she could, to match Berry's sort of gaze. Rozsak seemed to examine her, for a while, before he finally looked down and nodded.

"Fair enough, Thandi. Your resignation is accepted, and—my word on this—there's no hard feelings on my part, either."

"Thank you, Sir." She rose and started to turn away. Rozsak's hand on her sleeve halted her.

"Come back again tomorrow, Thandi. Better yet, arrange a meeting in some larger compartment, big enough for my staff and whoever else you think should attend. There's still the matter—ha! to put it mildly—of planning the assault on Congo. I've got some news to report, from Maya, which you'll all want to hear. And let me suggest that we keep your resignation a private matter, for the moment."

Thandi saw the captain and his staff members exchange a meaningful glance. Huang cleared his throat. "There's an option you'll want to think about, Thandi. We could—just for a time, and just for the record—keep you on the Marine Corps rolls. With an immediate promotion to whatever rank it'd take to make it plausible that you were leading a rather large unit of Marines in the assault."

The lieutenant colonel grinned, rather evilly. "I'd be your adviser. Staying in the shadows while you get the limelight. It'd give you a chance to lead a large unit in action, for the first time, under ideal circumstances. It's pretty much what we were planning to do, anyway. The only difference is that your public resignation comes afterward."

Thandi looked from him to Rozsak. "All I'm suggesting, Thandi," the captain said, "—now that you've settled your nerves by resigning—is that you start thinking about the situation from a tactical and political viewpoint. Get some advice from the people you've grown close to. I'm talking about Professor Du Havel and Jeremy X. Your friend Victor Cachat also. There would be advantages to the way we're proposing to do it. Advantages to you as well as to us."

He made a little waving motion. "But you don't have to give me an answer right now. Just set up the meeting I requested, would you?"

Thandi nodded, saluted, and left the compartment.

Out in the corridor, Thandi exchanged a polite nod with Lieutenant Karen Georgos and went on her way. She had to struggle a bit to keep her steps at a normal pace, instead of striding. Some part of her wanted to get away from that compartment as fast as possible.

Not from shame, or guilt—or even fear. It was simply the reaction of a human being who crosses paths with a behemoth, and survives the encounter. Unscathed, as it happened—but still eager to put some distance between them.

Once she was around a bend and out of sight, Thandi stopped and leaned against the bulkhead. Her arms crossed over her chest, and she took a few breaths.

She hadn't been lying. She didn't think Captain Luiz Rozsak was a monster. He was not an evil man. Neither cruel nor even deliberately callous. An amoral man, certainly. But Thandi was not a hypocrite, and knew perfectly well that she herself could be called "amoral." Not in all things, perhaps. And so what? Captain Rozsak was not amoral in all things, either. Just . . . in those things which touched on his ambition.

That great, sweeping, behemoth ambition. That ambition whose appetite reminded Thandi, more than anything else, of the great predators which roamed the oceans of her home planet.

Those creatures were not monsters, either. Just giant predators, doing what predators do. A beneficent force, even, if you could step back and consider the planet's ecology as a whole. They not only kept the population of Ndebele's other sea life in balance, they also provided immediate sustenance for a multitude of symbiotes and scavengers.

None of which kept an encounter with one in the open sea from being a terrifying experience. And Thandi now knew—for a certainty—that whatever else she wanted from her life, being a scavenger or a predator's symbiote was not included.

She relaxed then, bringing up the image of her newly acquired "little sister" to purge the vast frightening image of a sea beast swimming through the deeps. She held the image, as tightly as a drowning woman would clasp a lifevest.

I love this girl.  

After Thandi left, there was silence in the compartment, for perhaps half a minute. Then Edie Habib's face grew tight.

"Dammit, somebody's going to have to come out and say it. I guess the XO always gets the really crappy assignments. So here it is: She knows too much."

Rozsak glanced quickly at Huang, and then at Watanapongse. The Marine officer's face was stony. Watanapongse's . . . serene, oddly enough.

Huang's reaction was predictable. Understanding the importance of it—the last thing he could ever afford was losing the trust and loyalty of his combat leaders—Rozsak gave voice to the stone. "I gave my word, Edie. To one of my own officers."

But Habib was an excellent XO; which meant, among other things, that she was persistent in probing for error. "Yes, Captain, that's true. And I will tell you what else is true—and everybody here, including Kao, knows it damn good and well. It's not going to be the last time you went back on your word, in the years ahead. Not where we're going, if we ever expect to get there."

That, too, was the simple truth. But hearing it just made Huang's face grow stonier.

"Still," Rozsak demurred, "it's not a thing to do lightly. Having a name for having a word is worth . . . maybe not its weight in gold, but damn close. Which we will also need, where we're going. If there's any bigger pitfall in the path of ambition than being too clever for your own good, I don't know what it is."

Watanapongse's expression had remained serene throughout. Rozsak found himself curious.

"Why are you so blasé about the matter, Jiri?"

"Because it's a moot point, that's why. Unless everybody here suddenly develops the intelligence of a vegetable—no offense, XO, you're just doing your job—then it ought to be obvious why the idea of assassinating Thandi Palane is just plain dumb. Not even that. 'Insane' comes closer."

"Why?" demanded Habib. But there was more relief than anything else in her tone. Edie hadn't proposed the idea because she liked it. She'd be as glad as Rozsak to be convinced otherwise.

Watanapongse levered himself up, from his relaxed slump. "Let's start with the fact that trying to assassinate Palane is a bit like trying to assassinate a tiger. Easier said than done. Who, after all, would we normally have given the assignment?"

Huang rasped a little laugh. "Thandi Palane."

"Exactly. But leave that aside. The woman's not superhuman, after all. With our resources, I'm sure we could figure out a way to do it. Which . . . might even work. And then what?"

Watanapongse shook his head. "Oh, yeah. A really bright idea. In order to protect ourselves—from a very remote threat, since Thandi Palane is almost certain to keep her mouth shut—we kill a woman who is simultaneously—"

He began counting off on his fingers. "The girlfriend of the Republic of Haven's best secret agent; a man who is—I've seen him in action—one of the deadliest men you'll ever meet.

"The protector and close friend of Berry Zilwicki, whose father Anton would probably be Manticore's best spy if the idiots hadn't fired him—and, whether in or out of uniform, has demonstrated several times just how dangerous it is to cross him.

"And—oh, perfect!—we'd also be assassinating a woman one of whose close associates now is a certain individual by the name of Jeremy X. You have heard of him? If you want more character references, just check with Manpower. Ask for their body count department."

He slumped back in his chair, the serene smile returning. "Just forget it, Captain. This is one time when doing the right thing and the smart thing happen to coincide. There is absolutely nothing I can think of you doing in this situation which would be stupider than killing Thandi Palane. Unless you want to spend the rest of your life—probably a short one—looking over your shoulder."

By the time Jiri had finished, Edie Habib was looking very rueful. "Never mind," she said, in a little voice. "I never even raised the idea. Honest."

Rozsak chuckled. "Just doing your job, XO, as always. But I think Jiri's pretty well settled the issue. And I can't say I'm unhappy about it. Not at all. I can handle a bad taste, but that one would have been really foul."

Rozsak expected that to be the end of it, but, to his surprise, Watanapongse spoke again.

"Besides, it's probably a moot point from another angle, anyway. I'm quite sure that, by now, some other people have figured out the truth about the Stein killing."

"Who?" demanded Habib. "Our security's been tight as a drum, I'm sure of it."

"Victor Cachat, for one. About him, I'm positive." Catching Habib's quick angry glance at the compartment door, Watanapongse shook his head. "No, no, XO—he didn't get it from Thandi's pillow talk. He's smart, that's all. Better, being honest, at this kind of black ops than we'll ever be. And he was right in the middle of it, remember. He'll have figured it all out by now, don't think he hasn't."

"Who else?" grunted Huang.

"Hard to say. But I wouldn't be at all surprised if that too-damn-smart Manticoran princess does—the real one, I mean, Ruth Winton. Anton Zilwicki certainly will. So will some of the Erewhonese. It's not as if it's all that hard to figure out. Not for someone who's good at this kind of work, and takes a look at the determination with which Thandi saw to it that no witnesses survived."

Rozsak wasn't really surprised, nor was he upset. He'd calculated on this possibility from the beginning.

"Okay," he said. "It's fallback time, then. Speaking of which"—smiling, now—"I have good news from Smoking Frog. I had my meeting with the governor, and he was most deeply upset at what I had to tell him. Confess to him, rather. Oh, yes. Shocked and distressed, he was. But he also agreed that this Congo situation provides us with a perfect way to sweep the dirt under a shiny public rug."

Everybody in the compartment was now looking cheerful. "Indeed so," said Jiri. "There are always conspiracy theories floating around, whenever somebody gets assassinated. Who but a handful of malcontents is going to believe them—when they see the glorious role played by Captain Rozsak's flotilla in the liberation of Congo? Especially when the people in the know—all of them—have every reason to keep their mouth shut. Given that, to a considerable degree, the liberation's success depends on maintaining the good will of Maya Sector and its governor."

Rozsak cleared his throat. It was a harsh sound. "And given, as well—the governor made a point of this—that Cassetti will have to take the fall. Quietly, of course. But that should be enough to satisfy everyone who knows the truth and wants a sacrificial lamb. Goat, rather. Cassetti was too nakedly in love with power to have been a popular man. He'll do very nicely, and it clears him out of the way."

He chuckled. "Odd, isn't it? The way things sometimes work out. Thandi Palane's the one I would have given that assignment to. And I don't think it would have bothered her at all."

Huang made a little noise, as if he'd started to say something and then choked it off. Rozsak glanced at him. Then, seeing the meaning in his eyes, looked away.

Oh, that's good, Kao. "Black ops" with a vengeance. And the truth is, I really don't think Palane would mind doing us that last little service. 

"Perhaps . . ." he mused aloud, "—he's still here, you know, staying at the Suds—Cassetti will want to accompany the expedition to Congo. I'm sure he will, once I suggest it to him. That'd add luster to his name, after all . . . which could certainly use some help, as black as it's become in so many quarters."