"They might go for it? That's great!" Leroy said. "Very good news indeed."
I'd just finished telling Leroy the short version of my visit with Executive Commander Mori of the Hellfire Legion. After the disaster of my first attempt, contacting and communicating with the Hellfire Legion had gone incredibly smoothly: I was able to return to Vespucci, hail the HFGB-Silverfire, apologize for the intrusion, then arrange a meeting in Magellan. Still...
"Might," I reminded him. "Mori was cautious, and I don't blame him. Not only is the offer strange to begin with, the last time I had anything to do with the Hellfire Legion I was working for the Liberty Navy and trying to shoot them down."
"But that was before the incident with the Liberty Department of Defense," Leroy responded.
Which was true. If it hadn't been for that, I probably wouldn't have made as much progress as I did. I took another sip of the lightly carbonated prune cider that Leroy had brought and looked out the window of our private booth. The view of Planet Manhattan was spectacular, well worth the price of the booth. Still, I was glad that Leroy was paying.
I hadn't expected him to come all the way out to Manhattan to meet me personally, but he had. One moment I was ordering a sandwich in the Newark Station bar, the next Leroy Fenning had popped out of nowhere and offered me a drink to go with it. And not just anything, I thought with a grin, the best prune soda Sirius had to offer, imported all the way from the orchards of Canaria. What a great guy. As I found out, he'd been in Liberty for a couple of days, so that he could get in touch with me quickly once I made contact with the HF. I took another pleasant sip, then it was back to business.
"So, here's what we're looking at so far," I said. "It looks like getting a working model is right out: they custom build each of their advanced scanners right into the ship it's designed for. Mori asked if we could bring the ship in question to Phoenix shipyards, I figured that wouldn't fly and told him so.
"And you were right," said Leroy. "That's right out."
"I did, however, say that we would be completely content with just appropriate blueprints. Not surprisingly, Mori wasn't too excited about that idea: they don't want to give up their technology. He was, however, open to another idea: we give them partial blueprints, just enough for them to know how to integrate their scanning technology into the target vessel. They use those to write a set of blueprints that would only work for that unique ship configuration...and we would use those blueprints to build and install the scanner."
"Wonderful!" Leroy said. "We can do that, I'm sure we can provide some schematics that are detailed enough to build a scanner for but that don't give away any information we don't want to spread."
"One catch, " I said. "They want their men to supervise the installation. They actually wanted us to send the ship to their shipyards, which is plainly impossible. I did get a 'maybe,' though, for the idea of having them provide a team of technicians."
Leroy was quiet for a long time. I didn't blame him: it was quite the pickle. On one hand, the Zoners needed this scanning technology for the Discovery Project. On the other hand, any technicians sent by the Hellfire Legion would undoubtedly see way too much.
"Well, " Leroy said quietly, "I'm not sure we're going to have a choice. I doubt we could get the scanner properly installed without their help. So we're just going to have to take them into our confidence."
"Are you sure that's a good idea?" I asked. "Odds are, they'll talk to somebody."
"What would you have me do?" Leroy said blankly. "Kill them?"
"No!"
"Imprison them?"
"No."
"Wipe their memories?"
"No. We shouldn't harm them."
"Then the only choice we have left is to trust them."
Leroy was right, and knew it. He continued. "Make sure you emphasize the importance of sending technicians that know how to keep their mouths shut. No doubt they'll tell Hellfire leadership everything they can, but I think we can trust the leadership to keep quiet and not interfere. After all, this has nothing to do with any of Hellfire's interests."
"True enough," I conceded. "So, I can tell them we're OK with the blueprint-exchange plan and that they can send a team of technicians to install it. What about money?"
"Let me worry about that," Leroy said. "You just get a price."
"And one more thing," I continued. "They wanted proof of my identification. I've promised to send them everything I can, but I think the biggest problem will be proving that I'm working for the Zoners."
"Have them contact me directly. I'll provide them all of the proof of that they need."
"Thanks Leroy," I grinned, then finished my drink. "I'll let you know how it goes."
![[Image: aedos_mini.jpg]](http://students.cs.byu.edu/~sushi/aedos_mini.jpg)