Let's Go To Prague
Honor Harrington 08.3
(2003)*
John Ringo

Contents

	Chapter 1		A Plan Is Hatched
	Chapter 2		Supply And Compromises
	Chapter 3		A Hatch Is Planned
	Chapter 4		Sometimes You Get The Bear
	Chapter 5		Sometimes You Bare The Gets
	Chapter 6		Cliché: Another Word For Inevitable
	Chapter 7		If It's Stupid And It Works, It's Not Stupid
	Chapter 8		Beauty And The Beast
	Chapter 9		Hell Hath No Fury Like A Woman Admiral. Period.

Chapter One
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 Two
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 Three
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 Four
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 Six
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 Seven
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 Eight
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 Nine
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.

The End