Orphan's Triumph

TWENTY-SEVEN

FORT MEADE IS A SHORT DRIVE FROM REAGAN, but a tilt-wing picked up Jude, Howard, and me, sped us above the guideway traffic, then delivered us to the tarmac fifty feet from where the hourly fleet orbital lingered, just for us.

Also fifty feet from us a staff-driven pool car had parked. Pinchon stood, feet planted, arms crossed, in front of the shuttle’s extended belly ladder. His cheeks were more sunken, his lips more tightly drawn, than when I had met him at the Waldorf. I paused in front of him, and he cleared his throat.

Before he could speak, I said, “I’ve got the retirement papers with me. Effective on my signature, you said? Because it may take me a while to get around to signing them. If that’s okay, General?”

For a moment, he stiffened. Then he stood aside. “God-speed, General.”

I laid my hand on the belly ladder’s rail and climbed aboard the shuttle.

As we strapped in, Jude asked, “Who was pucker-face?”

“My new boss.”

“So he doesn’t know much about your job yet?”

“He knows when to get out of the way.”

Ninety minutes later, Jude, Howard, and I stepped out of the shuttle onto the arrival platform in a launch bay aboard the Tehran .

The Tehran had been held in orbit for us, delaying its long-scheduled departure to Mousetrap for refit. Tehran ’s refit had also been pushed back, so she could barrel straight through the Mousetrap, jump again, then deliver us to Bren a couple of days faster. Normally priority-transport procedures would have cost a couple of days while we changed to a fresh outbound cruiser at Mousetrap.

Tiny in the vast bay, between us and the exit hatch from the bay into the ship proper, stood Tehran ’s skipper.

His chin thrust out, his feet were planted, and his arms were crossed, in a pose like the one Pinchon had assumed when we met in front of the up-shuttle’s ladder. But it was clear that the skipper wasn’t about to get out of the way.