Part 65: INTERLUDE: STAHL

Stahl got up and Alycia said. “Are you leaving?”

He smiled at her. “Not just yet, I thought now that most of the big wigs are gone and the band plays nice old Earth tunes I know, I decided to get up and ask you for a dance.”

She got up just a little too fast to appear dignified and with a deep smile. “You truly are a master tactician, old man. A simple offer and all my defenses are obliterated.”

They joined a few other couples already dancing, almost all of them humans knowing the old music.”

“I think it is you who is the master of tactics here.” He said to the woman.”Only you know I like this type of music. I bet the Orchestra leader had specific orders.”

“A girl has to do what a girl has to do.”

“Will you come along when we leave in three days?” He asked her

“No, I need to be here for a while. The Diamond Ball draws them near like moths to the light, the assassins and terrorists and the insane. We caught more this year, than ever before.”

“I thought the Union is stable and the general public is as content as can be?”

“Of course and they are, you know better than anyone how big our Union had become. There is no way we can please everyone. For a political system with so many different cultures keeping a government approval rating of over ninety percent without being a police state or a dictatorship is an achievement unprecedented in any history we know of and the numbers haven’t changed much in over the last thousand years.”

He swirled her around and showed he was a good dancer.”Yes I know all this of course I was just wondering because you said there were more this year.”

“Not only did we add 1500 more talents to the PSI corps this year, we have Narth now as fully integrated agents. Our best agents can scan a crowd for so called trigger thoughts, the Narth Agents scanned all Pluribus before I could even finish my explanation. The reason I am so busy is that we followed more leads than ever. You know of course that your Midshipmen have foiled a big problem right here.”

Stahl gasped. “I have seen Eric the entire time, what did he do?”

“Your wonder boy did nothing tonight. He behaved very nicely. It was Midshipman Wetmouth who caught a group of Sin 4 Assassins with Shaill pheromone gas and knocked the living daylights out of six of them before they even knew what hit them, and Midshipman Mao Vouza caught the one that almost got away, complete with a real and active Spore bomb in the basement. It’s not just Eric, it looks like other Midshipmen of your big ship are just as amazing. Maybe you should introduce them to your protégé, maybe they would be a great team.”

The old admiral swirled her around once more with a deep smile. “You are supposed to know things, my beautiful witch. Look over there. Right next to Eric, that is Hans Neugruber a Saturnian, the Dai Har-Hi is the son of the Dai lord, there is Krabbel, Circuit, Mao Vouza, Elfirata the princess. The black guy introducing the Zulu King to the Dai Lord is Shaka his son. Only one missing, Wetmouth but that is the Olafson gang and the Narth that stands on Eric’s other side is no official member yet, but belongs to that group as well. Each one of them quite remarkable, together they manage to amaze me every day and that isn’t as easy as it sounds.”

She stared over there and then in his rugged heroic face. “And you have put them together.”

“I had a hand in it yes, but I had no idea they would work out together, they went beyond anything I expected. I had some luck to find one or the other, but not ten at the same time.”

“What are you going to do with them once they graduate?”

“The other old man had an idea and I think it is the best he had in decades.”