Renegade (47 page)

They weren’t headed back to
Phoenix
because Erik was concerned that while they waited for Trace,
Phoenix
was a sitting duck at hub dock. She couldn’t go anywhere — vastly outnumbered she’d be out-positioned and out-gunned anywhere in the system, except at a full sprint for jump, which they couldn’t do until Trace had finished her mission. If he returned to
Phoenix
now, Erik feared that she’d just become too tempting a target for someone who decided to just wear the nasty publicity, and kill two birds with one stone. But if hitting
Phoenix
left LC Debogande still loose on station, it was less tempting. Better to spread out for now, and hope that multiple assassinations was more than Fleet was prepared to wear, locked in a battle of public appearance as they were.

Private Lemar saw the running girl first, sprinting from a hallway adjoining the park and hurdling a flower bed. “Ware right! Runner, two o’clock.” She was coming straight for them, short blonde hair, slim, not especially fast or graceful, but plenty scared. Then came the cops, four grey uniformed with light armour, another two plain clothes, guns and tasers out. All the marines took a knee on the grass, rifles aimed without needing to be told… and Erik recalled to do the same before Dale planted him face down.

One cop aimed a taser, while a plainclothes aimed a pistol, yelling at her to stop. She was just ten meters away when Dale sprang up and advanced on both her and the cops, rifle aimed and yelling. “Put it down! Put it down or I will fire on you! Put it down now!” Then other marines were joining in, and civvies in the near vicinity were running, freezing or falling for cover as some had been taught.

The cops backed up fast, and Erik caught the girl as she stopped and gasped. Evidently she
had
been heading for them, not just passing through.

“Whoa whoa whoa!” yelled one plainclothes, both hands in the air. “Chill, just chill! That’s a suspect, we just want our suspect! Look, all guns are away, just cool it marines!”

“You do
not
point loaded firearms at the backs of running civilians!” Dale yelled back, his own weapon still aimed with deadly precision. “And you
sure as hell
don’t do it with armed marines in the line of fire!”

“Right, okay!” the plainclothes agreed. “Lower the rifle, please! We just want our suspect, that’s all.”

Erik looked at the gasping girl — she was maybe Lisbeth’s age, maybe a bit older. Pretty but for the bloody nose and swelling eye. “Lieutenant Commander Debogande!” she gasped desperately. “Don’t… I have to speak to you! They know! They know your Captain’s dead, they all know!”

“Who knows?”

“I can’t say!” She stared at him with meaningful intensity. A civilian, in jeans, blouse and boots… too well dressed to be some street thug, and clearly white collar, not some blue collar dock grunt or engineering tech. Who would the cops want so badly they’d point guns at her while she was running away? “
Phoenix
!
Phoenix
is in danger!”

“Lieutenant!” he told Dale. “We’re taking her. Fleet privilege, ship security comes first.”

“Fleet privilege buddy,” Dale snarled at the cops. “Take a hike!”

“That’s seriously not a good move,” the plainclothes retorted.

“Arguing with
Phoenix
marines is seriously not a good move,” Dale corrected. “We matter, you don’t. Fuck off.” The cops didn’t seem to take it well. Where cops got the notion that Fleet marines were arrogant, Erik had no idea.

His Debogande Inc account was certainly still working at the hotel lobby. The fact that the local banks owed maybe ten percent of their net capitalisation to Debogande Inc-related business probably had something to do with it. The desk manager’s eyes widened to see his ID-linked account appear on the screen. Erik told him to skip the description of room services and specials — he’d stayed at such places before, and could fill in his marines.

In the big elevator riding up, Private Ricardo thought to check the blonde girl’s handbag with apologies, as the girl held a cloth one of them had found to her nose. In the handbag, a taser… recently used, Ricardo thought, as she sniffed the discharger. Powerful enough to do some proper damage, not just stun.

“Seriously boys,” Ricardo told them all exasperatedly. “It takes the girl to check the handbag? ‘Cause this one’s cute and pretty and couldn’t possibly hurt you?” Ricardo had a crewcut, tattoos and a granite jaw. The look of displeasure suited her entirely.

“She was the LC’s catch,” said Dale. “Good job LC.”

“What part of ‘personal protection for officers on station’ do you find hard to understand?” Erik said sharply. “Like what part of ‘don’t let one of our alien prisoners shoot another of our alien prisoners’ don’t you understand? Or ‘don’t let mutinous crew try to kill the LC?’” The marines in the elevator shifted uncomfortably. “I love my
Phoenix
marines, but you guys whine about non-standard duty worse than little girls forced to eat their vegetables.” He took the taser off Ricardo and shoved it on Dale. “You take it. Try not to shoot yourself in the ass.”

The silence that followed was oddly respectful. In truth he probably should have thought to check the girl’s handbag in case she was armed… but as Private Ricardo had pointed out, the girl
was
slim and pretty, and scared and bloodied, and it hadn’t occurred to him. But ultimately it was the marines’ responsibility to correct for his oversights — they were the urban combat specialists, not him, and they were trained to expect judgement failures from less-trained spacers. If marines had a flaw, it was that they were trained to blow shit up, and disdained other duties as less important. He’d been wanting to point it out to them for a while now, but hadn’t dared. Dale’s jibe had seemed the perfect time… plus he was getting genuinely sick of it. But instead of resenting it, a few of the marines in the elevator were now almost smiling, like a sparring partner who’d just been caught with a good right hook, and appreciated it.

“You use that taser recently?” Dale asked the girl. She nodded. “On who?”

“Cop,” she said, muffled by the cloth.

“He still alive?”

“She. Don’t know.”

Exasperation and rolled eyes from the marines. “Now we know why they were chasing her,” someone remarked.

The girl pointed to her face. “She hit me first!” Indignantly. “Asking for it.”

The elevator arrived at the high floor, and Gunnery Sergeant Forrest led them off with a cautious glance left and right, rifle ready. “Straight on,” Erik instructed with a glance at wall signs, and they walked down the hotel hallway. “What’s your name?” he asked the girl.

“Ivette. I’m from Apilai, I work for an insurance company, Allied Heuron. They’re a Spacer company, I’m a Worlder. I got told yesterday I could stay if I changed to Spacer citizenship… so I’d have to give up property rights on Apilai, inheritance. I’d have to live up here half the year forever. Keep my money up here. No thanks.”

Sergeant Forrest arrived at big double doors at the end of the hall, and looked at the keycard Erik had given him. “This the one?”

“Yep,” said Erik. “Go in.” Forrest opened the doors, onto a huge presidential suite, the far wall entirely glass, overlooking the park they’d just left, and the amazing upward view of the Hoffen Station hub. Marines whistled, staring around as they entered.

“Standard room for you LC?” one asked.

“You bet,” said Erik. “Five adjoining bedrooms, three bathrooms, should do for all of us. View of the park in case anyone comes at us from there, you guys can check the rest of the layout for yourselves. Lieutenant Dale, security status is yours.”

“Aye sir,” said Dale, and went to do that. Erik escorted Ivette to the bathroom while she washed up in the sink. Her nose didn’t appear broken, and her lip was cut. Her nose wouldn’t stop bleeding, which seemed a first for her, so Erik wetted some tissue and put it firmly up her nostril.

“Thank you,” she managed, still shaking a little from recent adrenaline. “I… I came to find you. I heard you were here, and I…” She looked uncertain how much more to say. Erik could guess. To know he was here, and where to find him, suggested eyes on the inside. Spies. People watching.

“Heuron Dawn,” he said. Her eyes evaded him. “I’m not the police. I’m concerned for the safety of my ship. You said they think Captain Pantillo’s actually dead?” Still playing along, just in case.

“They’re sure of it. I don’t know how they know.” She looked at him questioningly. Erik said nothing. “He was going to run for office, you know. For Heuron, in Spacer Congress. Everyone thought he had the votes, when you put together Spacers and expat Worlders. They’re saying that’s why Fleet killed him, and why they’re kicking all the expat Worlders out.” Staring at him cautiously. No doubt she’d also heard what Fleet were saying, on Homeworld at least. That
he’d
killed Captain Pantillo. It was in her eyes, that fear. Erik was not accustomed to anyone being frightened of him. Tavalai maybe, but not humans. And he’d spent so much time lately around tough women with no physical fear of him at all, that he’d almost forgotten how he might appear to a young, slim civilian girl who now found herself very vulnerable in a strange hotel room with the big male commander of the legendary
UFS Phoenix
. And his heavily armed marine contingent.

“What are they going to do?” Erik asked her. “If the Captain was their saviour, what will they do now?”

She stared at him for a moment. “You should run,” she said suddenly. “It’s going to get nasty. Everyone here remembers
Phoenix
,
Phoenix
was one of the liberators of Heuron. We want you to get out, now.”

“I can’t leave Heuron, my marine commander is on Faustino doing important business.” He felt his blood beginning to run cold, a chill prickling the hairs on the back of his neck.

“Then pick her up and leave!”

“Why? What’s about to happen?”

Ivette took a deep breath. “I can’t say. But it’s about to become very unsafe for Fleet ships at Hoffen. Trust me. If you stay here, you won’t be spared.”

L
inley’s direction
had Trace ask the whereabouts of an engineering tech, whom she then asked about ‘Mr Turner’. That brought her here, down a long tunnel walk between several habitats, occupied by huge pipes and the whine of great pumping engines. The air here was hot, generators throbbing in confined space, the huge pipes thudding rhythmically as they pulsed with liquids used in the extraction of minerals far beneath the surface.

The access gantry was a steel walkway along the pipes, lit by sodium yellow light. After ten minutes of low-G bouncing they emerged into the main pumping station, where pipes from five different directions converged into a massive tangle of machinery, pumps and engines. Workers examined controls, and shouted conversations above the noise amid the multi-level gantries. Trace climbed two flights to the top gantry level beneath the domed ceiling, and saw an office door built into the lower part of the dome.

She indicated to Kono, who indicated in turn to the marines. They spread across the gantries, weapons casually to hand and not threatening. A few struck up conversations with curious plant workers, who understandably wondered what was going on. She brought Kono with her to the office door, and considering there was no hope of her knock being heard above the noise, turned the handle.

Beyond was a makeshift office. The outer wall was curved to match the outer wall of the plant below, with several large portholes offering a wide view of the silver ice horizon, some near Crondike buildings alive with light, and Heuron V’s huge gas hemisphere looming large beyond. The floor beside and behind the door arced upward, the ceiling of the domed plant behind, its irregular space lined with storage shelves and access steps. Crates filled the shelves, and some odd artefacts, clearly alien. Some long, decorated poles that might be weapons, a box on a frame that might be an instrument… and numerous other things Trace had never seen before, and could not guess at.

Down the sloping floor before her were chairs, tables and several large transparent display screens. Writing in alien text raced across each of them, and on a table in the middle, light scanners raced back and forth across the pages of a big, bound leather book. A little robotic manipulator turned the page, the light and screen writing paused, then raced on once more across the new page.

To one side, a man looked up from another small screen upon a table filled with odd screens, tables, even some scrambled paper files. Behind him, a small kitchen in an even more cramped corner, obviously far less important than all these big screens dominating the room, and the artefacts across the shelves behind. He looked up at Trace and Kono in alarm. “What do you want?” he growled at them.

“Stanislav Romki,” said Trace. “Are you him?”

The man looked them up and down, eyes narrowed. His head was shaved, perhaps purposely. His stare was baleful, intense, with large dark eyes. “Who’s asking?”

Kono circled left, rifle half raised. “If you’re thinking about a weapon under that table, please don’t,” he said.

The bald man held both hands cautiously where they could be seen. “I’m not
quite
that stupid, Staff Sergeant. You’re
Phoenix,
aren’t you? Which would make you Major Thakur.” Looking hard at Trace.

Trace nodded. “That’s correct, Mr Romki.”

He didn’t dispute the identity. “How did you find me?”

“I won’t reveal sources,” said Trace. “But my Captain told me about you. He said he’d never met anyone who knew the things you knew.”

“He’s right,” Romki said darkly. “No one else does.” He got up, swinging his bodyweight easily from the chair in the low-G. Over his jumpsuit, he wore a leather vest with red and black markings. Chah'nas, Trace thought. With only two armholes. A custom made thing, and if it was anything like the real ones, it would have inlaid armour and hidden weapon sheathes. “Why is
Phoenix
in Heuron? Shouldn’t you be at the parades?” Romki was middle height and not especially imposing, and had the smooth, educated tones of a sophisticate. But from his manner, Trace got the impression of a man who spent his life studying aliens because humans didn’t agree with him.

“There’s quite a few people in Heuron at the moment who you’d think would be at the parades,” said Trace. “Yet somehow managed to end up here.”

Romki considered her for a moment, some of the tension fading. An air of grim resignation crept into his expression. “Here, um…” he looked around at his cluttered kitchen. “Would you like a drink? Either of you? Coffee, beer, water?”

“Water please,” said Trace, with a surreptitious gesture at Kono to lower the rifle. “Staff Sergeant Kono has coffee, white, sugar if you’ve got it.”

“Oh I’ve got sugar,” said Romki, moving lightly to his kitchen. “I know people who can get me real sugar, minus the inspections. Please, take a seat.” Neither of them did. In low-G, standing was no burden anyway. Trace strolled to the big leather books before the display screens. “They’re chah'nas,” said Romki, glancing her way. “I got them my last time in chah'nas space. The screen on the left is doing the literal translation, and then the other one is doing the contextual… you know the thing with chah'nas tongues, the grammar is all contextual, you need to know which frame-setting you’re in or else you’ll get the whole meaning wrong. So one for the literal, and one for the contextual, then I cross-reference them at the end and see what we can sort out. All my own design.”

“You travel there a lot?” Trace asked.

“There, lots of places,” said Romki with a shrug, as the coffee machine gurgled. “I’m supposed to be there now.”

“Fleet don’t know you’re here?”

“Not today,” said Romki, warily. “They know about this little hidey-hole, of course, but I’m hardly ever here, and I wasn’t supposed to be back for months yet. I come here so I don’t have to put up with all the bullshit customs at Apilai — this way if I want to just pop in and out, I don’t have to bother customs or Fleet or anyone. And these tough mining boys outside?” He pointed at the door. “They’re all unionised and they don’t take shit from Fleet, so no spies. No surprise they let you guys through though, half of them have either family in the marines, or were marines themselves.”

“Fleet command, and rank-and-file marines, are two very different things,” Trace acknowledged.

Romki nodded knowingly. “And since you’re not here to arrest me, I guess there’s something else going on?” He leaned on his bench, waiting for the coffee machine. “Something to do with your Captain? Finally ended up in trouble with his own Fleet, has he?”

“You could say that,” Trace conceded. The problem with someone who was not a people-person, getting a feel for where he stood on things could be like extracting teeth. And if she assumed he was somehow ‘on her side’, whatever her side was, and it turned out he wasn’t… well she wasn’t in the mood to start killing civvies just to shut them up.

“Smartest Fleet captain I ever met,” said Romki. “That’s not saying much, mind you. Pack of pole-climbing square heads, most of them. But Pantillo sought me out. Had lots of ideas about chah'nas and tavalai, about the empire and the uprisings… a lot of them wrong, but he was on the right track. And he actually listened when I corrected him — incredible how many smart people refuse to do that, even confronted with people who know a lot more than they do. We’ve kept in touch since, but we do it quietly. As you’d know, given you’re here.”

“So you’re not allowed to talk to anyone?” Trace surmised.

Romki chuckled tiredly. “No. I’m not much of a conversationalist, apparently. I’ve been told I talk but don’t listen.”

“So why stay employed by Newtown University? If you can’t take students, teach, lecture, publish, give interviews? Surely if your research is that secret, Fleet would just employ you in some Intel department?”

“You don’t think they’ve offered?” Romki snorted. “They’ve offered all right, with all the generosity of a crime lord suggesting you do business together. Or else, you know?” He made the shape of a pistol with one hand.

“So why don’t you?”

“Because fuck them,” Romki snapped. “Fuck all of them. They don’t want me to work, they want to shut me up. They’ll disappear me into some little cubicle if they can, and that’ll be the last anyone ever saw of Stanislav Romki. Sixty years I’ve been doing this. I’ve lived with chah'nas, I’ve even lived with tavalai, I speak the languages… I have five volumes of history on the Chah'nas Empire, two million words, all blocked from publication under the security laws. Too sensitive, they say. These people are scared of facts. And there’s nothing in all human space that scares me like human leadership scared of facts.”

The coffee machine stopped gurgling, and Romki poured, controlling his anger with difficulty. Then he came with coffee to Staff Sergeant Kono, and water for Trace.

“Thank you,” said Kono, noticing a decoration on Romki’s sleeve. “You know the blades?”

Romki glanced at his sleeve. “Yes. Do you know
kon-dra-kis
?”

“I know a little. I know you need four arms to do it properly.”

Romki shook his head. “There are many different forms, the good instructors make allowances.” He indicated his storage shelf. Up against the wall on a rack rested a pair of sheathed blades, above red-and-black body armour. “It’s an amazing art. I’m not all that good but I hold my own against their kids. Misunderstood people, the chah'nas. I’ve many friends there, and I miss them whenever I’m here.”

“We’re about to be seeing a lot more of them,” Trace suggested, watching him carefully.

Romki’s eyes darted a little. “Perhaps.”

“You’re hardly ever here, but you somehow managed to be here for this.” Trace indicated back toward Hoffen Station, and the unfolding mess of Fleet Command’s ordinances. “You knew it was coming, didn’t you? And you’re a student of history, and you couldn’t miss it. Did your chah'nas friends tell you that humans were about to open their territory to chah'nas ships?” Romki gazed at her, unblinking. “I bet a lot of rank-and-file chah'nas aren’t thrilled at having to open their territory to humans, either.”

Romki folded his arms. “Why don’t you just tell me why you’re here, Major? What trouble is your Captain in? I know Fleet High Command have never liked him. I was given a list of people I’m
especially
not allowed to talk to, people they said flat out they’d
destroy
me if I was caught talking to them. His name was right at the top.”

“We’ve been in Merakis,” said Trace. “Chah'nas beat us there. Unopposed by Fleet. Bunch of tavalai historians and others were there waiting for humans to arrive, they got a face full of chah'nas instead. All massacred.”

Romki barely blinked. “Well that was always going to happen. What was
Phoenix
doing in Merakis?”

“On the way to Merakis,” Trace added as she ignored the question, “we ran into a hacksaw nest. We took some of their corpses for salvage.”

Now
Romki looked amazed. “You destroyed a nest single-handed?”

“Just now we pulled up alongside an alo warship at Hoffen Station dock. And wouldn’t you know it, our hacksaw corpses reactivated and started moving, like some reanimated bodies from a horror movie.” Romki stared. Not astonished at the revelation. Just stunned, Trace thought, that someone was confronting him with it. “You knew,” she said pointedly. “There’s a connection between hacksaws and alo, isn’t there? Is there also a connection between hacksaws and chah'nas? Because I figure that if Fleet Command were going to threaten to shut you up over anything, that would just about do it.”

Romki exhaled hard, eyes closed. “Son of a bitch,” he murmured. And took a deep breath. “Look, come and sit. Sit!” he insisted, beckoning them over to the kitchen. He pulled a couple of chairs from the table, a low-weight skid on the floor, then took one and sat. Kono sat on his sideways, while Trace turned hers backward and rested hands on the back, both seeking easier ways to stand up fast if necessary. Romki leaned forward intently.

“I’ve had this place scanned for bugs, I’ve revealed confidential information before and not been arrested for it, so it’s clean.” He took another deep breath. “You should understand. Half of Fleet don’t want me shut up, they want me dead. The other half love my work and keep me funded, it’s always a guessing game to know which half is in the ascendency at any time. But I’ve a civilian profile and I’ve told certain trusted journalists about it — it would be incredibly damaging for them if I mysteriously vanished, and they don’t dare the publicity. Yet. You wanted to know why I stay employed by the university — that’s why. Friends, contacts, public profile. Newtown has some of humanity’s best scholars, they’d miss me if I vanished. Mostly I go there to cultivate contacts who’d make life difficult for Fleet if they killed me. I’ve also got little data bombs out on various worlds and stations. Trusted people will release that data if I go missing, and it will be… hideously embarrassing for Fleet if that happens. It’s one big reason I was happy to talk to your Captain, he’s yet another person who’d cause Fleet difficulty, thus making me safer.”

“Why?” asked Trace. “What are you studying that could make you that much of a target?”

“How about,” Romki said with methodical clarity, “a linguistic link between alo and hacksaws?” Trace blinked. “We’re speaking English. Do you know where English came from?”

“Not my area of expertise,” Trace admitted.

“Wasn’t it, like, the regions around old England?” Kono suggested, frowning as he strove to remember something he’d read. All kids had some old Earth history thrown at them in school. A few even remembered it.

Romki looked encouragingly at the big Staff Sergeant. “Britain,” he corrected. “Go on.”

“Well there were the local English, then the… wasn’t it the Vikings? And the French.”