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  He slid over one of the chunks of gold, wondering if they'd ID him as from Sheida.

  "Federal mint," the woman frowned after a glance at the imprint on the bar. "We haven't seen many of these."

  "Neither have I," Joel replied with his patented vapid smile. "I did some contract work for the Federals and that's what they paid me with."

  "I still need to assay it." The woman sniffed. She rubbed the metal on an emery block, then dropped a solvent on it. There was a brief hiss and she compared the color to a chart. She gave another sniff and put the gold on a scale, frowning all the while. Finally she looked up with a reduced frown.

  "There's a fixed value on these," she said, rummaging in a drawer until she pulled out a sheet of paper. She compared the date, then shrugged. "Four hundred twenty-three credits."

  "Close enough for government work," Joel replied. "I need it in as small a package as possible."

  The woman opened her cash drawer and extracted a handful of bills, stamped bronze coins and some loose silver in irregular chunks. She put the silver on the scale and added a tad more then slid the whole under the bars.

  "Three hundred credits in cash," she said, counting out the bills. "Five twenty-cred pieces and twenty-three in silver."

  "I've never seen these," Joel admitted, picking up one of the bills. It was printed on one side with the eagle of the UFS and on the other with an image of some person he didn't recognize. It said "Fifty Credits" on it. He rubbed at the printing and the ink stayed in place.

  "It's the new scrip currency they're distributing," the woman explained. "It can be exchanged for fifty chit credits anywhere in the UFS. If you go to one of the unincorporated towns, most of them are willing to accept it, too."

  "Seems a bad trade for gold," Joel temporized.

  "Well, if you walk back in with that we give you the exact same amount, less a two percent transaction fee," the woman replied, clearly used to explaining the facts of life to utter newbies. "Or, if you have an account with us we waive the transaction fee."

  "So you act as a bank as well?"

  "Yes, we're Federally licensed and act under charter of Idoma," the woman said. "It's a bit different than before we chartered, but not much. And we're insured against loss, which is a nice feeling. Too many moneylenders and changers have been robbed since the Fall. Now it's a Federal offense and the inspectors will chase anyone who robs a Federal bank to the ends of the earth."

  "Or one of Paul's regions," Joel noted. "Okay, I'll take it. Can you direct me to someplace to sleep? I'm leaving tomorrow."

  "The Hotel Brixon is nice," the lady said, pointing out and to the left. "And they have a good dining room."

  "Thank you for all your help," Joel replied, picking up the cash and slipping it in his pouch. "I'm sorry I can't open an account."

  "Well, perhaps if you spend more time here," the woman replied. "Chian is really growing, almost like a second capital city. There's always work to be had."

  "I'll consider it," he said. "Have a nice day."

  "What is it that you do, again?" the woman asked.

  "Contract work," Joel replied, as he turned away. "I like to think of it as . . . salvage."

  * * *

  The man currently using the name Martin St. John sipped at surprisingly good wine and looked around the crowded tavern. He wasn't casing his fellow diners. The Brethon merchant who had had the misfortune to meet the seemingly friendly young man on the road from Setran was returning from a good sales trip. It was the merchant's nuggets of silver, each the size of a knucklebone—the preferred currency in Ropasa over the inflationary paper scrip of New Destiny—that had paid for the bad stew and good wine to follow.

  The wine was the reason the inn even existed. The building had been at the crossroads for literally millennia, first as an inn dating back to the time of the Hundred Years' War, then as a private residence that was maintained across the millennia. The last owner had used his wine cellar, and the broadsword that hung over the fireplace, to reestablish it as an inn in the years after the Fall. Until he ran afoul of New Destiny's Changed legions and the ownership had passed to cronies of New Destiny.

  The food had been better before the coming of the new owners. But they had held onto the wine cellar. In time, they might even learn how to make a decent stew.

  But for now, it was good enough. He was out of the rain that was pissing down outside, he had a full belly, and the mature claret was putting him into a nearly expansive mood.

  That was until the door opened and a tall, spare figure walked in out of the rain.

  The man took off his broad-brimmed hat and shook it, looking around the room with eyes that were almost entirely white. The denizens of the inn looked at the stance and, most especially the eyes, and turned away, the conversation dying for a moment then picking up to an almost unnatural chatter.

  Martin hoped that the man was looking for someone, or something, else. But the newcomer caught his eyes and smiled in an entirely friendly way and then made his way across the crowded room.

  "Brother Martin," Conner said. "What a pleasant surprise."

  "Surprise, hell," Martin replied, bitterly. "What the hell do you want, Brother Conner?"

  The Brotherhood of the Rose had existed before the Fall. In the pre-Fall world, there was very little need, or reason, for criminality. It required both incredible cunning and a deep desire to do harm; when literally anything could be had at a whim, crime took on a truly bizarre form.

  For the Brotherhood it was a game, a way to while away the time between birth and death in a world surfeited with luxuries. To steal a woman's virginity and betray her trust, to find the one thing that a person cherished and relieve them of it, to kill, in a world where everyone was protected by energy fields, nannites overcame toxins and healing was virtually instantaneous, took cunning and skill, especially since the few remaining police of the Council had access to investigation technology that was nothing short of magical. And it was a matter of points among the "Brothers" to do such things with style.

  In the Brotherhood, Conner had racked up a truly amazing point total.

  Since the Fall, the skills that Martin had developed had kept him warm, fed and as comfortable as it was possible to be in the Fallen world. He realized that all of those things might be coming to an end. Or not.

  "How have you been?" Conner said, sitting down across from him and crossing his legs at the ankles. He waved to the server, a young man who looked harried by all the customers, and looked back at Martin. "How's tricks?"

  "Oh, you know," Martin said, leaning back also. "I get along. This and that."

  "Yes," Conner said, smiling. "I'm sure. I passed a bit of a gaggle on the road. It seemed that some local merchant had been set upon by vagabonds. Such a terrible thing. Paul's doing all that he can to reduce crime in the areas under his control. I'm sure that the ne'er-do-well will be caught in time."

  Martin tried not to gulp as he took a sip of wine that suddenly tasted of vinegar. Before the Fall, getting caught generally led to close supervision. In extreme cases, and he knew he fell into the latter category, a brain-wipe might have been ordered, with a nice, docile personality imposed upon the criminal.

  Since the Fall, crime was generally a local thing. If a thief was caught, the locals tended to be direct and final. Rope was cheap and, after all, could be reused.

  With the coming of Paul's legions, though, things had changed. Paul had much better uses for criminals than making corpses. His legions were always looking for new bodies, bodies that gave up their own energy to be Changed into the brutal, bestial beings that served as the bulk of his army.

  It included a brain-wipe, of course, but instead of a nice docile personality and a life of ease, if not interest, the former thief became just one more orc to be sent into the camps.

  "I'm sure," he said. "How are you?"

  "Well, I have to admit that I've found an employer," Conner said, taking the cup of wine that the harried serving boy ha
d fetched for him ahead of a dozen other customers. "I hate to think that I'm going legit."

  "Legit, yeah," Martin snorted. "I can just see you pulling down a pay-chit."

  "Well, I have to admit that regular food, the money to buy clothes . . ." he said, eyeing Martin's weather-beaten ensemble, "has a certain pleasure to it. Especially since the jobs so far have been . . . right up my alley."

  "I hate to think of the body count," Martin said.

  "Well, as it happens, I've currently got too many projects to handle on my own. So I've convinced my employer that I could find suitable . . . subordinates. Such as yourself."

  Martin eyed him for a moment, then shook his head.

  "No. I don't know what racket you've gotten yourself into, but I know I can't trust you as far as I can throw this inn. I think I'll just keep going my own way, thanks."

  "I'll add," Conner said, more or less ignoring him, "that the offer would include a pardon for any little offenses that you might have, accidentally I'm sure, committed against the caring government of New Destiny." Conner smiled in an open and friendly manner. "Such as a certain merchant on the Setran road."

  "Who in the hell are you working for?" Martin asked, his eyes narrowing.

  "Why, New Destiny of course," Conner smiled. "Such a fresh and forward looking name, don't you think. Do say yes, Martin, it would mean the world to you."

  Martin flexed his jaw and took another sip of wine, then nodded.

  "Okay, what's the job?"

  "It seems that those rascals from the United Free States are getting concerned about a certain fleet that is building on the coast," Conner said.

  Martin just nodded; the movement of the Changed legions, and all the provisions to support them as well as the building of a fleet of ships, was impossible to miss anywhere within a hundred klicks of the ocean.

  "They seem to think that the mer will do them some good," Conner continued. "I've been tasked, among other things, with ensuring that the mer, one particular group of mer to be clear, don't ally with the UFS. One way or another."

  "Where are they?"

  "Well, that's the nice part," Brother Conner said. "It seems they're located in the Isles off Flora. So you can look forward to a relaxing sea voyage and then a pleasant tropical vacation."

  "I'm not going to be able to do much about this by myself." Martin frowned, but given the cold autumn rains outside, a tropical vacation sounded just about right.

  "Of course not," Conner snapped. "You'll be . . . managing a group of orcas and a new breed of Change called ixchitl. You'll be the control. I've a fleet of six ships that will take you to meet them and then carry you to the Isles. They're some of the first completed and you'll have Changed marines as well as their leaders under your command. Stop the alliance with the mer, wipe them out if you have to, and destroy the UFS group, and their ships, at the same time. Our information is that they're sending a new type of ship, a 'dragon-carrier.' The dragons, wyverns actually, aren't going to be a problem; they don't have a way to attack the ships. Is all of this clear enough for you or do I have to write it down in words of one syllable?"

  "No, that's clear enough," Martin said, looking at the shutter-covered windows beaten by rain. "When do I leave?"

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Jason coasted to a stop parallel and slightly above Bruce the Black who was observing a group of mer, men and women, repairing one of the fishing nets. The material available for the nets was horrible, a type of long seaweed, a green algae in reality, whose "stems" were soft and pliable. Braided it was marginally effective as a net unless someone tried to capture, as in this example, a school of dorado, which were some of the fastest fish in the sea.

  But between the nets, and scavenging for crayfish and the sea plums, and the occasional large fish that hunters like Jason speared with bone-tipped harpoons, hunger was kept at bay. That was about all that could be said about the happy life of the mer-folk. Oh, and the Work went on.

  "Representatives Freedom come," Jason pulsed. The mer, unlike dolphins or other marine mammals, used gills and had no air available to create sonar. Instead they had a small bone, equivalent in basic design to those of the inner ear, located in the nasal passages in their forehead. They could send commands to the bone that pulsed their words and turned them into high frequency sonar. It was also adequate, barely, to maneuvering in zero visibility, be that in the dark or in a cave or even in light silt. And they could receive and process, to an extent, the sonar images created by the delphinoids, who had a much more advanced system. But for conversation, the mer relied on verbal shorthand.

  "Destiny, too," Bruce answered. The name "the Black" referred to a joke that had circulated early in his years as a mer. He had said that his real purpose was to find the treasure of an ancient pirate named Blackbeard and spent a fair amount of time in the search. He was anything but black. His skin was a nearly perfect white, his hair was blond and his tail-section was covered in golden scales. But someone had called him "Blackbeard" and it had stuck, even after he became one of the leaders of the Work, the apparently eternal project of putting the coral reefs back into a "prehuman" condition.

  The Fall had set back the Work, beyond question. Even Bruce the Black had been forced to recognize that hunting and gathering on the reefs was a necessity, not a barbarous hobby. And sea plum, a human-generated weed for all intents and purposes, which had been ruthlessly pruned, was now tended with nearly the same care as mer-children. But the Work went on.

  Bruce the Black had been one of the most notable members of the mer community and he had been an outspoken proponent of continuing the Work to the best of their ability. It had been taken up as an article of faith among the mer, that the Work was more important than any temporary squabble among the Powers-That-Be.

  Sometimes Jason wondered if there might not be more to life than the Work. Such as, for example, trying not to get trampled by the oncoming war.

  "Fight will," Jason said.

  "Fight/lose," Bruce replied. "Always fight/lose. Neutral are. Neutral stay."

  "Freedom . . ." Jason replied.

  "Destiny! Freedom! Fight/lose! Neutral stay!" The last was said with a blat of sound borrowed from the dolphins. In tonal shorthand it said "I'm the leader and you're not and you will obey!"

  Jason, however, recognized the undertone, that of a porpoise mother chastising her infant, and was less than happy about it. There was, however, not much that he could say in return.

  "Freedom representative Talbot. Going am."

  "Where?" Bruce asked, finally turning to look at the younger mer.

  "Hunt will," he said with a contemptuous gesture at the nets. "Food need. Neutral stay." With that he turned and gave a powerful flick of his tail, enough motion that the water assuredly washed over the older mer.

  If Bruce took it as an insult, that wouldn't bother Jason one bit. He was half tempted to pee in his wake.

  * * *

  Herzer turned down an offer to have dinner with Edmund and gravitated to the officers' mess instead. For one credit chit he was served overcooked and oversalted roast beef, lumpy mashed potatoes with slightly burned gravy and greens cooked to mush. However, he consoled himself that it was better than monkey on a stick. He didn't recognize any of the people in the mess, except occasionally by sight. He'd checked around and there were none of his class currently present, not that there had been many survivors. After dinner he drifted back to his room, uncertain about where to go or what to do. He could get all spiffied up and go to the O-club bar and get shit-faced, but that had little appeal. There were always some women hanging around and if he flashed his medals he'd probably get laid. But he liked to think that he was beyond that. He lay down on his bed and tucked his hand behind his head, and tapped his prosthetic in thought. He should have gone to dinner at Edmund's. He'd barely said hello to Rachel and Daneh, who were two of his favorite people on earth. He should go to the bar; at least with a few belts in him he could probably sleep. The bottom line
was that he had gotten so used to having something to do, constantly, that he didn't know how to relax anymore.

  Finally he stripped off his tunic and opened up his wall locker. It took him two checks to determine that he had, precisely, zero civilian clothes.

  "Herzer, you're getting way too into this shit," he muttered. Finally he pulled out an undress tunic and a field cloak and stomped out of the quarters.

  He headed downtown in the general direction of Tarmac's tavern, then took a left and, on an impulse, headed for the public baths. When he got near them he stopped and whistled. What had once been a rather small set of three wooden buildings was now a complex of at least half a dozen. And from the traffic going in and out half the town was there.

  He headed up the front entrance and passed through one of several doors. There was a small antechamber, heated against the growing cold of fall, and he stripped off his cloak before passing through the second set.

  The far room, which smelled of chlorine and was, frankly, overheated, had tables down either side with at least six people at each of them. He didn't recognize any of them and he hoped that it was mutual. He stepped to the right where a teenage girl wearing a bathing suit nodded at him.

  "Lord, you're a big one," she said with a smile. "I haven't seen you before."

  "I haven't been here in . . ." He had to stop and think for a moment. "Oh, at least two years. So I think you'll have to walk me through the procedures."

  "Well, I have to stay here or I'd be happy to." She grinned. "But it hasn't changed much." She dipped under the desk and came up with a bag marked with a complicated symbol and a wooden marker. "Take the bag, go through the doors. There are disrobing rooms in there and towels. Grab a towel, put all your stuff in the bag and give it to an attendant. They'll seal it and you keep the marker."

  "What are all the buildings?"

  "Well, there's a shower room, please pee and take a shower before you climb in the baths," she said with her first frown. "There's one building for women-only baths, another for men; they're marked. Then there's the pool room, which is unisex. You can eat in there as well. And the fitness center."