Free The War Machine: Crisis of Empire III by Roger MacBride Allen, David Drake Page A

readied to transfer the commander to his ship,” the AID announced in a rather self-satisfied tone of voice.
    Spencer laughed. “I guess you’d better get moving, Commander. Do good things.”
    Tallen found himself blushing for some reason. “Thank you, Sir,” he said, saluting as self-consciously as any academy midshipman. He turned and left the room, and Spencer thought that perhaps there was just a bit more bounce in the man’s step than when he came in.
    Spencer smiled and sat back down, glad he had been able to give a good man something he had earned. He knew he had gained an ally today, and was glad of that too.
    Once they got to Daltgeld, he was going to need all the friends he could get.

    ###

    Suss looked up from her desk when Al returned to his cabin. She was wearing the practical-looking coveralls again. Al had concluded they represented her real preference in clothing. The somewhat dour businesswoman and the nearly sleazy courtesan never made an appearance when she and Al were alone.
    He had also concluded that she would have slept with him if he had made approaches early on. Then it would have been part of her cover story, part of her job. It was too late for that now, though. The two of them knew each other. She could no longer see him as a chess piece in the game she was playing. Al Spencer had become a person to her—the sort of person whose self-respect would not permit him to go to bed with a woman for the sake of a KT cover story. By now she knew he did not expect sex from her as part of her job—and neither of them seemed prepared for the sort of commitment that would make sex a meaningful contact instead of a charade in the nude.
    Or maybe he was still too confused about his own life, and had wholly misread what he thought was the unspoken understanding between the two of them.
    The hell with it, he decided. Maybe all he had to do was reach over and undo the fastenings on that coverall, and the night would be one of wild passion for both of them. Maybe so. But he wasn’t ready for any such thing. He certainly hadn’t forgotten Bethany—or made anything but the first and smallest steps toward recovering from losing her.
    It didn’t help matters any that her cover as his courtesan obviously required that they sleep in the same bed. They slept side by side, and did not touch.
    But even having her close seemed a healing—though disturbing—presence to him. At least he knew he was confused. Maybe that was a start.
    And maybe it was time to get his mind on other things. “Good evening,” he said cheerfully. “How’s the homework coming?”
    She looked up at him and smiled. “Pretty well. I always like this part of the job—studying a new place, sifting through the facts, sitting and thinking. I was always one of those annoying girls in school who got perfect marks because they loved to study. Never gotten over it.”
    “Somehow I have trouble imagining you as a school child,” Spencer said.
    “And I had trouble imagining you as a captain or a judge of the law—but ya done good today, Cap’n. I was watching on the monitor system. I’m impressed.”
    “Good. Well, if you’re impressed with my authority and ability at the moment, maybe this is a good time to ask you more about our mission.”
    “I’m being sent in because KT agents have disappeared, and we presume they have been killed. You’re coming in as a cover—and as backup. The theory is that KT agents are very hard to kill, and anyone who could knock two or three of us off without getting caught is a pretty fierce character indeed. Until tonight, I didn’t know much more than that, so I couldn’t tell you more than that.
    “The thing is, everyone knows that the KT takes care of its own. There are legends—untrue but believed—that we have bombed whole planets down to slag in order to be sure of getting the guy who killed a KT op. We don’t seek to play that image down; it’s very useful to us. We really do try our