“You should be sleeping,” Mary told me. She was wearing a Confederacy Navy uniform. “Sir Isaac insisted.”

“Yes, Captain Popov,” I staggered slightly. Fatigue. “Duty, ma’am.”

“We’re in colony mode,” Mary said. “I’m Colonel Popov at the moment. No, I’m not sorry about being redundant. There’s no command conflict. I get to relax, take shore leave, and I like routine. I’m learning the battle captain thing, but that’s a scary place where you thrive.”

“What does Sir Isaac want with me?” I asked.

“Colonel Marx is with him,” Mary said as we entered an office suite reserved for visitors. Inside were three people: Sir Isaac, Karla Marx, and a cat named Gunga Troll.

The cat vocalized and jumped at my chest—I caught her.

“Sometimes I wonder about you, Troll,” Marx muttered.

“It did look like a leap of faith,” I said as Troll licked at my neck and ear. “Is this everybody?”

“Why did you allow Lieutenant Anton Monk to depart?” Sir Isaac demanded.

Georgia entered from a back office. I could tell that this meeting was more Confederacy than Arc Dios because Georgia was wearing a power suit. Karla was wearing her Navy uniform. Only Gunga Troll was not in uniform—unless you count her cat collar.

“Chess,” I said. “My excuse is that had I arrested Lieutenant Monk for assaulting Bettie, all I would have gotten was Lieutenant Monk and a minor Argentine official named Guevara. I wouldn’t have gotten the network behind him. Monk had authorization to be armed and that authorization didn’t trigger Arc Dios’ security alerts. I hope that I’ve patched that shortcoming. What command is Lieutenant Monk from?”

“DECO,” Georgia said as she sipped her coffee drink between sentences. By smell, I guessed it was sugar-free, fat-free, with imitation whipped cream, chocolate, caramel, and a little coffee. “DECO is riddled with bureaucratic control freaks that managed to pass a CAP test. Bit by bit we’ve been reassigning personnel not suitable for combat command to DECO. When evacuation and colony operations cease, DECO will be absorbed into the battle for Earth-At. We’ve been quietly purging Central Command of unsuitable personnel.”

“I ran into the security firewall again,” I said, “so I had to wait for you to either reprimand me or authorize an investigation. I seem to be getting both.”

“Smart ass,” Karla muttered as she took Troll from my arms.

“Consider yourself reprimanded,” Sir Isaac said. “When you said ‘chess,’ did you mean 3-D chess?”

“The Star Trek game?” I shook my head. “Sir, I’m afraid that I never learned to play that game. Besides, there are five dimensions in standard chess. The board itself has two dimensions. Game turn is the third dimension, the time dimension. The fourth dimension is in the white player’s mind. The fifth dimension is in the black player’s mind. There are other ways to look at the game, but each player sees only four dimensions unless it’s possible to intrude upon the other player’s mind dimension.”

“You’re babbling,” Sir Isaac grumbled. “You need sleep, but it can’t be helped. Can we give him something to wake him up?”

“His babble is useful at times,” Karla said as she petted Troll’s head. “Let him babble.”

“I think I short-circuited Senor Guevara’s attack,” I said. “Sensors were reset to intrude and I identified every person with a weapon. There were a dozen stingers present, including Lieutenant Monk’s. All were in the possession of Confederacy personnel. There was only Senor Guevara’s .380 pistol. He actually relaxed when I confronted him. I think that fist fight was supposed to be the signal to attack but I don’t know who the target was.”

“You were the target,” Sir Isaac said. “Juan Guevara was supposed to shoot you. You were still in battle armor and wearing a pair of short swords. You did leave missiles and plasma carbine in the armory. When you showed up in armor as ordered you weren’t vulnerable any more.”

“I think I see,” I recited. “You already knew of the assassination attempt and you let it happen. I seem to have short-circuited your investigation. According to Bruno, Senor Guevara had a cyanide capsule—something else that got through the security screen somehow. The fight seemed to have been a distraction—they didn’t realize that the conference rooms have a stinger system. I suspect that Bettie was disabled because she was in position to see the hand-off.”

“It was a dead drop,” Mary said. “I was monitoring the situation but you didn’t act like bait.”

“I wasn’t playing chess,” I quipped. “I was a pawn. Three nations and DECO were involved—at least. What happened to those delegates that I sent home?”

“They were swapped without incident,” Sir Isaac informed me. “We were aware that you were targeted but we had faith that you’d survive. Don’t lecture us about endangering others.”

“I hadn’t even thought of that,” I yawned, swayed. “Sir, permission to sit.”

Moments later I was sitting with something brown and steaming in a 12-ounce cup. Lots of caffeine, no sugar, no dairy. With the chess analogy in mind I had to ask “are we the black player or the white? White made the first move.”

“Does it matter?” Georgia asked. “The game is on.”

“So what does the board look like? And what’s the plan?”

“First, we’re going to restrict you to Arc Dios for this one,” Sir Isaac said. “You were involved in ground operations because we needed to give you experience. Now you have to develop others. In three or six months you’ll be able to visit the moon bases or other ships. We might even clear you to visit Earth. Right now, you’ll practice delegation of activities to others and run your part of the operation from here. Understand?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Colonel Marx will run the operation. She’s going to base her household here.”

“Safest place in the universe,” Karla said. “I’ll have to leave Troll here, too.”

“Gunga Troll will miss you.”

“Did she say that?” Karla asked.

Gunga Troll meowed in affirmation.

“You’ll work through Georgia to get in contact with either me or Marx,” Sir Isaac said. “Now that you’re out of danger, we can tell you more.”

It was explained to me that DECO was attempting to take over Earth Defense Force command. The plan was that upon penetration of major Sa’arm forces past the asteroid belt, DECO would be dissolved and three things would happen to DECO personnel. Some would revert to Earth control under EDF. Some would be transferred to CentCom and from there to combat forces. A few would be discharged from Confederacy service.

“I need you to train a death squad,” Sir Isaac’s words were a bombshell. “You set it up so that it won’t be abused. Sometimes we might have to send an assassin to remove another Johnny Dorman.”

“What’s their chain of command, sir?” I asked.

“They report directly to you. I send the kill orders. Colonel Marx is my deputy. If we’re both gone, use your judgment. If we’re both gone, something really bad just happened. I send the kill orders, you carry them out.”

I remembered Buzz Price. “How often will I be dispatching assassins?”

“Hopefully, never,” Sir Isaac said. “You have extensive experience in assassinations already. Why do you use techniques that mimic natural death or accidental death when you could drop a megaton warhead?”

“Saving lives,” I said. “I killed to stop the killing.”

“You’re the right man for the job. I trust that you’ll set up a system that will run itself.”

I had no moral high ground to object. There were probably several other death squads already in existence—Confederacy death squads. Secretly killing problematic people has a lot of appeal. I had plenty of blood on my hands. High CAP scores didn’t make me a good man.

“So you are M and Tom is your double-oh,” Karla said.

“I’m more Matt Helm fan than James Bond.” I claimed. “Donald Hamilton was better with the gun stuff. Ian Fleming’s spycraft is a matter of public record. I don’t know were Hamilton learned his.”

“I prefer Jason Bourne,” Sir Issac said.

“Jack Ryan for me,” Georgia said.

“I’m not into spies,” Mary said. “Give me Captain Janeway.”

“Is that Star Wars?” Karla asked.

“Star Trek,” Mary replied. “I did like Captain Elizabeth Swan.”

“Let’s get back on track,” Sir Isaac said. “Your first assignment, Major Lawrence, is me. I want your plans on my desk in 72 hours.”

“Aye, aye, sir. May I get started?”

“Not for 90 minutes,” Sir Issac ordered. “Mary, keep him busy until then.”

After Georgia, Karla and Sir Issac left, Mary Popov asked me if I was really going to kill Sir Isaac.

“The question is do I wait 4300 minutes or execute in 101 minutes?” I asked.

“You can’t kill Sir Isaac!”

“I wasn’t ordered to count coup,” I replied. “Second-guessing one of my bosses is bad form, don’t you know?”

“You really have a bad fake English accent.”

“That’s one reason I’m not an actor.”

“Everything’s a joke to you!”

“There goes my career as a stand-up comedian.”

“How are you going to do it?”

“AI,” I prattled out a file name, 978083642767, and commanded a hard copy print.

“Print what?” Mary was puzzled.

“Op Plan, of course,” I said. I got up, staggered to the wall, and when the wall spewed out a bound book, I took it over to the desk. “Read, Colonel Popov. Or do I need to call you Captain Popov?”

“I don’t understand.”

“Always have a plan,” I said. “Here it is.”

Mary was clearly shaken. She immediately placed me under arrest.

“Thank you, ma’am. A long nap in the brig would be nice.”

Mary activated the intercom and paged Lilith. She also paged a Marine squad. Lilith arrived immediately and Mary explained the situation to her.

“Did you read his plan?” Lilith asked.

“I’m trying to stop him.” The Marine squad entered the office. “Take Major Lawrence to the brig and keep him under guard.”

Major Williams, the Marine detachment commander, was with the Marines. Major Williams acknowledged the orders and saluted, then I was escorted the long distance from office to brig.

“Whatever you did, Tom, you really upset Mary.”

They processed me at the brig. Why bother with prison suits other than a prisoner collar? As for furniture, the cell didn’t have room—basically the cell was a cube eight feet by eight feet by eight feet entered through a portal that disappeared, sealing in the prisoner. The French oubliette had nothing on Arc Dios. Worse, once inside, the cube slowly rotated just to disorient. The floor, walls and ceiling changed positions. There was plenty of air filtering through the surfaces, and unless there was reason to stress the captive, temperatures could remain comfortable. Light was provided by one or more of the six surfaces glowing. Yes, a medical tube would have been more space-efficient, but the brig had been designed as a “time out” chamber using a different philosophy. Food and water could be provided—but the prisoner would have zero control over the process. Gravity could be increased or decreased or left at one gravity. The surfaces could be rock-hard or pillow soft. Want to confuse the subject on the passage of time? I didn’t know all of the features of the brig nor did I have time to find out—but I detected slight time distortions and took a lot of wild guesses at unseen capabilities.