Death of a Starship (17 page)

Including, he realized, fog.
Golliwog suddenly wondered how much nanotrace there was around him.
The glittering fog of high-end defensive tech would be utterly
anonymous in this environment.
Something
had to be maintaining the
cohesion of the junk cloud – most of it would have dispersed on its
own, scattered by the angular momentum of this little system. The
localspace cloud made rapid maneuvering challenging, too. He
realized that this selfsame chaotic nonsense might in fact be quite
a good defense. Especially if one was chronically underfunded and
short on supplies.

He had to admit, they had a certain
style.

As Yee reached the lock just ahead
of him, one of the locals dropped down from the shadowed space
behind the overlit glyphs. Yee pushed off from the decklip of the
lock, putting space between her and the intruder. It took Golliwog
a few precious seconds to realize what had set the doctor so
suddenly in motion.

The local wasn’t wearing a
suit.

He was a freak, too. Golliwog knew
from freaks, given the circumstances of his own short life. This
one was three meters tall, lanky as a sipping straw, with dead
white skin, red body armor and a red cross tattooed on his
forehead.

And apparently capable of
standing around in hard vacuum. Not much frightened Golliwog,
but
that
scared
him.

Yee’s voice crackled in his helmet,
tight, controlled, “Microthin skinsuit. Fucker’s showing
off.”

The fear slumped through Golliwog’s
guts, already turning into a hot ball of anger, when the
red-and-white bastard spread sparkling gossamer wings and went
after Dr. Yee.

Golliwog amped up his own systems,
going into full offensive mode, and shot his skinsuit on an
intercept course with the enemy’s most probable vector.

“
Angel!” Yee shouted, starfishing
her body to meet her attacker.

Angel? He wasn’t sure how Yee knew
their opponent’s name, but it didn’t matter. What mattered was that
this Angel would have several precious seconds to tear at Yee
before Golliwog could close.

But then, Dr. Yee was a Marine
pathfinder.

Golliwog opened a carrier signal
from the chips inside his head, to see if there were any
Naval-grade nano spread around him. There was a flashing ripple in
the fog, but he didn’t get the correct countersigns. His open
weapons underneath his skinsuit, Golliwog snatched at
likely-looking junk as he hurtled toward the combatants.

Angel came at Yee hands forward,
wings wide, like red vengeance. Yee’s open-limbed posture let her
fold around Angel’s left hand as soon as he caught her. Golliwog
saw that blow land, saw the shock ripple through Yee’s skinsuit,
but still she used Angel’s arm as a lever, twisting the hand and
forearm against the natural range of motion of the elbow to give
her control of his actions and effectively neutralize his advantage
of velocity.

That move would have disabled any
ordinary human who didn’t get free in time. Angel didn’t bother to
twist free, but his arm didn’t break backward either. Yee simply
ran out of range-of-travel, her body absorbing another shock as she
stopped unexpectedly.

She held her grip on Angel’s wrist,
though.

Golliwog closed then, his original
course calculation being only a few percentage points in error. He
swung the ice-covered strip of metal in his left hand, aiming
through the gossamer wing toward the red-clad back, even as his
right landed for a grip on Angel’s flank – in low-gee combat, a
blow was close to meaningless if the combatant was not also
anchored to the opponent’s body.

But the wing, almost illusory to
the eye, slowed the swing of Golliwog’s right hand to a crawl, then
a stop. He felt a fire in his nerves, followed by a frightening
dullness, as both biological and enhanced circuits shorted
out.

Golliwog’s right hand landed above
Angel’s hip in that moment, and he converted his momentum to a sort
of hug, trying to duck his head and upper torso beneath the sweep
of the wings, aiming for the lower back.

Angel’s left leg folded upward in
reverse – a skeletal impossibility in Golliwog’s considerable
experience – sweeping a foot into the line of travel of his chest.
Golliwog rolled close into this move, trying to take the blow on
his side instead of his sternum, even as he heard Yee broadcast a
startled grunt and saw a spray of icing blood gleaming in the light
from the station’s glyphs.

The backward kick connected with a
crack of Golliwog’s carbonmesh-reinforced ribs. But he was closed
in now, close, hugging Angel’s right leg with his deadening left
arm. Golliwog flipped another metal strip into his right hand and
stabbed upward into Angel’s groin. Between the legs, he saw Yee
land a two-legged kick on Angel’s face.

Someone short and chubby in a
skinsuit and softbubble helmet swam across Golliwog’s line of site,
arms waving madly. Angel went limp, releasing Yee. Golliwog took
that moment to drive his metal into the groin one more time – no
one had released
him
. Even as the blow landed, Yee’s voice crackled in his helmet,
wavering and shrill as he’d ever heard it: “Stand down,
Golliwog.”

Despite the order, Golliwog held
his follow-through, making sure Angel felt it. No point in breaking
his training now. Was that rebellion or loyalty? Crimson ice
trailed from Yee’s suit, punctuation to both emotions.

‡

Menard: Halfsummer Solar Space,
The Necklace, Shorty’s Surprise

“By the bones of Saint Tikhon!”
Menard shouted. This was a disaster. The blesséd angel had started
a fight it couldn’t finish. That alone was astonishing.

Who
were
these people?

The three combatants circled
warily. The smaller of the two strange fighters was in a bad way,
he could see, but there was something wrong with the angel as well.
The...wide...stranger seemed to have trouble controlling his
movements.

The Chor Episcopos took a deep
breath, prayed for wisdom, then spread his arms wide. The cross
stenciled on the breast of his skinsuit should make his status
clear enough. That they had stopped fighting told him these
newcomers weren’t Black Flag or random criminals – those sorts
wouldn’t have bothered to break off until they’d prevailed or been
thoroughly beaten. Which in space tended to be an especially final
result.

The particulate fog around him
glittered in a new pattern, flashing light and dark as if something
invisible rippled through it. He didn’t know what that activity
meant, but it didn’t seem good. Progressing with deliberate
movements borne of both caution and clumsiness – he was
suit-trained and vacuum-rated, but Menard would never have expert’s
comfort in microgravity – he made his way to the huge
airlock.

There was no comm plate that he
could find there. Menard patted the outer shell of the station,
looking among the welded and hammered artwork of tortured faces and
exploding suns for a control panel access. He had no success, but
as he searched the lock slid open, four sections retracting at
shallow angles to one another in a bright diamond of
light.

One very large man stood there
anchored to the deck, backlit to an angular silhouette, carrying a
very large weapon. Menard turned to look at the angel and its
erstwhile combatants. The silver-bright ripples in the fog had
thickened around them while his attention was focused on the
hatch.

All three were still.

The very large man waved Menard
into the lock. As he drifted inside, a group of hard-suited flyers
appeared out of the junk cloud – they must have exited another lock
nearby. His last sight of the battle scene was a net being fired
toward the angel.

The very large man snapped the Chor
Episcopos’ helmet off as soon as there was sufficient ambient
pressure in the lock chamber. His own followed a moment later,
releasing a cloud of red hair which fuzzed out in the microgravity.
The very large weapon remained poised at the ready though, he
noticed. It was a ballspitter – personnel suppression at its
finest, not intended to be fatal. Though this particular
ballspitter was the biggest such device Menard had ever
seen.

“
It is that you have one minute to
be telling me what you are of doing here,” his captor said in a
thick Franco-Minionese accent.

She was a woman, Menard
realized. Another tailored freak like the fighter outside. What
God’s people did to their own bodies was both a sin and a tragedy.
Right here, right now, his only leverage was to stand on his
position. “I am the Honorable Reverend Chor Episcopos Jonah Menard.
I am here to serve a Writ of Attainder against Micah Albrecht
and
Jenny’s Little
Pearl
.”

“
And it is for this reason your
beast she jumped upon strangers? The forty five seconds, Chor
Episcopos.”

“
I beg forgiveness. My, ah, beast,
is an angel, a servant of the Patriarchy.” He could not bear false
witness, sadly enough in this case where it might have been
convenient. Menard felt a fleeting longing for McNally’s creative
approach to ethics and regulations. “It judged danger to my person
and my mission from the strangers. I am not certain
why.”

The very large woman cocked her
head for a moment, listening. Then: “What is it the building number
of the Security Directorate of the Personnel Bureau? My pardon, of
the Personnel Bureau of the Directorate?”

“
Three seventeen,” blurted Menard,
surprised at the question. That was Prime See detail, not common
conversational fodder out here in the fields of Empire. Trivia, to
be sure, and a clever way of checking his claim, but an odd thing
for these people to know.

Her head cocked a moment more. “To
be congratulated. You are living. You word for bond on the
others?”

“
Others? I don’t know the two who
fought the angel.”

“
We judge the angel is to have
won, so the others they are the prisoners of you.”

“
Who
are they?”

“
How you say...hit team? Naval
Oversight? We kill them now, or they are on your bond,
yes?”

Naval Oversight hit team? Menard’s
head was whirling as he crossed himself. “I...I
cannot...”

The very large woman shook her head
imperceptibly.

“
Yes,” he said, catching the hint.
“They are on my...my bond.” How in Heaven’s name was he going to
manage that?

“
Good answer, Chor Episcopos.” She
leaned close. “Is it that you will be celebrating the Mass, Your
Reverence? I am wanting of the confessional, myself, and perhaps
others here also.”

“
Ah...of course
my...my...child. A priest is always with God.” Maybe this was the
guidance he had sought in prayer. “Ah...do you know of
Jenny’s Little Pearl
? Or
Ser Albrecht?”

She shrugged. “I am not hearing of
them.” Then she handed him back his helmet. “If you are wishing to
continue the breathing, to put this on.” Pressure alarms were
already wailing as he clipped his helmet into place and turned to
face his prisoners.

Prisoners?

Naval Oversight. Menard shuddered,
a cold weight in his chest.

‡

Ten minutes later Menard had been
confined within an overtall, narrow storeroom. The guard had
deposited him in here, then departed to leave the priest briefly
alone with an array shipping containers stacked at odd angles,
secured against the micro-gravity. He’d spent a few moments
contemplating recent events and ignoring the ache in his knees,
until the recent combatants arrived with another round of guards
and a couple of too-casual medics. They hustled about, focusing
mostly on the very small, very dark, very angry woman suffering
from a severe crushing blow to the chest, vacuum burn across
several puncture wounds, blood loss and two dislocated hips. She
had been stripped to the skin and strapped to a board. Menard tried
not to call attention to her shame by his glances, but suspected
this woman knew no shame. Her overmuscled, sullen companion cradled
his arm and refused assistance. No one wanted to go near the angel,
which was sticky-netted to a shipping crate, where it was folded
over emitting a strange whine, like a distressed power
converter.

The woman stared at Menard as if
her eyes had cutting edges, but stayed silent ‘til the medics
sprayed up her wounds, packed their crash bags and
departed.

“
Who the hell are you?” she asked
in a pained, wobbly voice as soon as the locals were out of the
room.

“
I’m the reason you’re still
alive,” he snapped, still rattled. “You may call me Chor Episcopos
Menard.” He was immediately ashamed of his aggressiveness, but
something in her attitude brought out the worst in
Menard.

“
And that...abomination?” She
tried to turn her head to look at the angel, but her neck muscles
apparently weren’t cooperating. “One of the Patriarch’s
finest?”

“
Not many people survive an
argument with an angel.”