18: Unease, Contingency, Disagreement, Risk, Corner
“We don’t know that it’s him.”
“No, but who else, given blackmail from something that Truder knows and activity at his bases?”
“We don’t have enough information, no matter how it looks, to do what you propose.”
Sturl shrugged. “We don’t have to do it now. But we must be ready for it when it comes.”
Musaiysic shook his head. “Even if it is Truder… this plan is insane. It opens us up to too many threats. We should wait until we are forced to go through with it.”
“We can’t wait until then. We have to make sure we do it in time, and put it in motion with what Lawrenceson gave us, and the rest.”
“It’s just too risky. We can’t predict what the reaction will be.”
“We can predict it’ll be a lot fucking worse if it isn’t us.”
“Why don’t we just buy Lawrenceson off? We’ve given him a planetary directorship, there are enough minor promotions above that for us to delay him for years.”
Sturl leaned forward, annoyed at having to spell it out. “The more we give him, the stronger we make Truder’s organization. Lawrenceson is already building a network. Truder will not be pacified no matter what we give his pawn.”
“But we don’t know he’s involved—or even alive.”
“Again we come back to this. We’ve gone around for hours. If it’s not Truder, we might risk doing nothing. But if he’s active, we must have a plan—and this is it.”
(250 words)
20 Sep 2006 at 07:14
The action is hotting up nicely. You’re good at plot – very refreshing.
The recent HP ‘trouble’ is providing an interesting background to this work.