Two bloodshot, docile eyes looked out at her from holes in the package smothering his face. “Who are you?” he datavised. There
was no opening in the package for his mouth, only a ventlike aperture over his nose.
She datavised her identification code, then added: “Lieutenant Li Chang, CNIS. Hello, Captain, we received your notification
code at the Navy Bureau.”
“Where the hell have you people been? I sent that code yesterday.”
“Sorry, sir, there’s been a system-wide security flap for the last two days. It’s kept us occupied. And your shipmates have
been hanging around the ward. I judged it best that they didn’t encounter me.”
“Very smart. You know which ship I came in on?”
“Yes, sir, the
Villeneuve’s Revenge
. You made it back from Lalonde.”
“Just barely. I’ve compiled a report of our mission and what happened. It is vital you get this datapackage to Trafalgar.
We’re not dealing with Laton, this is something else, something terrible.”
Li Chang had to order a neural nanonics nerve override to retain her impassive composure. After everything he’d been through
to obtain this data… “Yes, sir; it’s possession. We received a warning flek from the Confederation Assembly three days ago.”
“You know?”
“Yes, sir, it appears the possessed left Lalonde before you got there, presumably on the
Yaku
. They’re starting to infiltrate other planets. It was Laton who alerted us to the danger.”
“Laton?”
“Yes, sir. He managed to block them on Atlantis, he warned the Edenists there before he kamikazed. The news companies are
broadcasting the full story if you want to access it.”
“Oh, shit.” A muffled whimper was just audible from behind the package over his face. “Shit, shit, shit. This was all for
nothing? I went through this for a story the news companies are shoving out? This?” An arm was raised a few centimetres from
the mattress, shaking heavily as though the package coating were too burdensome to lift.
“I’m sorry, sir,” she whispered.
His eyes were watering. The facial package sucked the salty liquid away with quiet efficiency. “There’s some information left
in the report. Important information. Vacuum can defeat them. God, can it defeat them. The navy will need to know that.”
“Yes, sir, I’m sure they will.” Li Chang hated how shallow that sounded, but what else was there to say? “If you’d like to
datavise the report to me I’ll include it on our next communiquÉ to Trafalgar.” She assigned the burst of encrypted data to
a fresh memory cell.
“You’d better check my medical record,” Erick said. “And run a review on the team who operated on me. The surgeons are bound
to realize I was hardwired for weapons implants.”
“I’ll get on to it. We have some assets in the hospital staff.”
“Good. Now for Heaven’s sake, tell the head of station I want taking off this bloody assignment. The next time I see AndrÉ
Duchamp’s face I’m going to smack his teeth so far down his throat he’ll be using them to eat through his arse. I want the
asteroid’s prosecution office to formally charge the captain and crew of the
Villeneuve’s Revenge
with piracy and murder. I have the appropriate files, it’s all there, our attack on the
Krystal Moon
.”
“Sir, Captain Duchamp has some contacts of his own here, political ones. That’s how he circumvented the civil starflight quarantine
to dock here. We could probably have him arrested, but whoever that contact is, they aren’t going to want the embarrassment
of a trial. He’d probably be allowed to post bail, that’s if he doesn’t simply disappear quietly. Culey asteroid is really
not the kind of place to bring that kind of charge against an independent trader. It’s one of the reasons so many of them
use it, which is why CNIS has such a large station here.”
“You won’t arrest him? You won’t stop this madness? A fifteen-year-old girl was killed when we attacked that cargo ship. Fifteen!”
“I don’t recommend we arrest him here, sir, because he wouldn’t stay under arrest. If the service is to have any chance of
nailing him, it ought to be done somewhere else.” There was no answer, no response. The only clue she had that Erick was still
alive came from the slow-blinking coloured LEDs on the medical equipment. “Sir?”
“Yes. Okay, I want him so bad I can even wait to be sure. You don’t understand that people like him, ships like his, they’ve
got to be stopped, and stopped utterly. We should fling every crew member from every independent trader down onto a penal
planet, break the ships down for scrap and spare parts.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Go away, Lieutenant. Make arrangements to have me shipped back to Trafalgar. I’ll do my convalescing there, thank you.”
“Sir… Yes, sir. I’ll relay the request. It might be some time before you can actually be transferred. As I said, there is
a Confederation-wide quarantine order in effect. We could have you taken to a more private area and guarded.”
Again there was a long interval. Li Chang bore it stoically.
“No,” Erick datavised. “I will remain here. Duchamp is paying, perhaps my injuries along with the repairs his ship needs will
be enough to bankrupt the bastard. I expect Culey’s authorities regard bad debts as a serious crime, after all that’s money
which is at stake, not morality.”
“Yes, sir.”
“The first ship out of here, Lieutenant, I want to be on it.”
“I’ll set it up, sir. You can count on me.”
“Good. Go now.”
Feeling as guilty as she’d ever done in her life, she turned quickly and datavised the screen to open. One quick glance over
her shoulder as she left—hoping to ease her conscience, hoping to see him relaxing into a peaceful sleep—showed his eyes were
still open at the bottom of their green pits; a numbed angry stare, focused on nothing. Then the screen flowed shut.
• • •
Alkad Mzu exited the Nyiru traffic control sensor display as soon as the wormhole interstice closed. At fifty thousand kilometres
there hadn’t been much of an optical-band return, the visualization was mostly graphics superimposed over enhanced pixel representations.
But for all the lack of true visibility, there was no fooling them.
Udat
had departed.
She looked out through the observation lounge’s giant window which was set in the rock wall just above the asteroid’s docking
ledge. A slender slice of stars were visible below the edge of the bulky non-rotational spaceport a kilometre and a half away.
Narok itself drifted into view; seemingly smothered in white cloud, its albedo was sufficient to cast a frail radiance. Faint
elongated shadows sprang up across the ledge, streaming away from the blackhawks and voidhawks perched on their docking pedestals.
They tracked around over the smooth rock like a clock’s second hand. Alkad waited until Narok vanished below the sharp synthetic
horizon. The swallow manoeuvre would be complete now. One more, and the resonance device she had secreted on board would be
activated.
There wasn’t really any feeling of success, let alone happiness. A lone blackhawk and its greedy captain were hardly compensation
for Garissa’s suffering, the genocide of an entire people. It was a start, though. If nothing else, internal proof that she
still retained the ardent determination of thirty years ago when she had kissed Peter goodbye.
“Au revoir
, only,” he’d insisted. An insistence she’d willed herself to believe in.
Maybe the easy, simple heat of hatred had cooled over the decades. But the act remained, ninety-five million dead people dependent
on her for some degree of justice. It wasn’t rational, she knew, this dreadful desire for revenge. But it was so sadly human.
Sometimes she thought it was all she had left to prove her humanity with, a single monstrously flawed compulsion. Every other
genuine emotion seemed to have disappeared while she was in Tranquillity, suppressed behind the need to behave normally. As
normal as anyone whose home planet has been destroyed.
The dusky shadows appeared again, odd outlines stroking across the rock ledge, matching the asteroid’s rotation.
Udat
would have performed its third swallow by now.
Alkad crossed herself quickly. “Dear Mother Mary, please welcome their souls to Heaven. Grant them deliverance from the crimes
they committed, for we are all children who know not what we do.”
What lies! But the Maria Legio Church was an ingrained and essential part of Garissan culture. She could never discard it.
She didn’t want to discard it, stupid as that paradox was for an unbeliever. There was so little of their identity left that
any remnant should be preserved and cherished. Perhaps future generations could find comfort among its teachings.
Narok fell from sight again. Alkad turned her back on the starfield and walked towards the door at the back of the observation
lounge; in the low gravity field her feet took twenty seconds to touch the ground between each step. The medical nanonic packages
she wore around her ankles and forearms had almost finished their repair work now, making her lazy movements a lot easier.
Two of the
Samaku’s
crew were waiting patiently for her just inside the door, one of them an imposing-looking cos-monik. They fell in step on
either side of her. Not that she thought she really needed bodyguards, not yet, but she wasn’t willing to take the chance.
She was hauling around too much responsibility to risk jeopardizing the mission over a simple accident, or even someone recognizing
her (this was a Kenyan-ethnic star system, after all).
The three of them took a commuter lift along the spindle to the spaceport where the
Samaku
was docked. Chartering the Adamist starship had cost her a quarter of a million fuseodollars, a reckless sum of money, but
necessary. She needed to get to the Dorados as quickly as possible. The intelligence agencies would be searching for her with
a terrifying urgency now she’d evaded them on Tranquillity, and coincidentally proved they were right to fear her all along.
Samaku
was an independent trader; its military-grade navigational systems, and the bonuses she promised, would ensure a short voyage
time.
Actually transferring over the cash to the captain had been the single most decisive moment for her; since escaping Tranquillity
every other action had been unavoidable. Now, though, she was fully committed. The people she was scheduled to join in the
Dorados had spent thirty years preparing for her arrival. She was the final component. The flight to destroy Omuta’s star,
which had started in the
Beezling
three decades ago, was about to enter its terminal phase.
• • •
The
Intari
started to examine the local space environment as soon as it slipped out of its wormhole terminus. Satisfied there was no
immediate hazard from asteroidal rubble or high-density dust clouds it accelerated in towards Norfolk at three gees.
Norfolk was the third star system it had visited since leaving Trafalgar five days earlier, and the second to last on its
itinerary. Captain Nagar had ambiguous feelings about carrying the First Admiral’s warning of possession; in time-honoured
fashion Adamists did tend to lay a lot of the blame on the messenger. Typical of their muddled thinking and badly integrated
personalities. Nonetheless he was satisfied with the time
Intari
had made, few voidhawks could do better.
We may have a problem,
Intari
told its crew.
The navy squadron is still in orbit, they have taken up a ground fire support formation.
Nagar used the voidhawk’s senses to see for himself, his mind accepting the starship’s unique perception. The planet registered
as a steeply warped flaw in the smooth structure of space-time, its gravity field drawing in a steady sleet of the minute
particles which flowed through the interplanetary medium. A clutter of small mass points were in orbit around the flaw, shining
brightly in both the magnetic and electromagnetic spectrum.
They should have departed last week,
he said rhetorically. At his silent wish
Intari
obligingly focused its sensor blisters on the planet itself, shifting its perceptive emphasis to the optical spectrum. Norfolk’s
bulk filled his mind, the twin sources of illumination turning the surface into two distinctly coloured hemispheres, divided
by a small wedge of genuine night. The land which shone a twilight vermillion below Duchess’s radiance appeared perfectly
normal, complying with
Intari
’
s
memory of their last visit, fifteen years ago. Duke’s province, however, was dappled by circles of polluted red cloud.
They glow
,
Intari
said, concentrating on the lone slice of night.
Before Nagar could comment on the unsettling spectacle, the communications console reported a signal from the squadron’s commanding
admiral, querying their arrival. When Nagar had confirmed their identity the admiral gave him a situation update on the hapless
agrarian planet. Eighty percent of the inhabited islands were now covered by the red cloud, which seemed to block all attempts
at communication. The planetary authorities were totally incapable of maintaining order in the affected zones; police and
army alike had mutinied and joined the rebels. Even the navy marine squads sent in to assist the army had dropped out of contact.
Norwich itself had fallen to the rebel forces yesterday, and now the streamers of red cloud were consolidating above the city.
That substance more than anything had prevented the admiral from attempting any kind of retaliation using the starships’ ground
bombardment weapons. How, she asked, could the rebels produce such an effect?
“They can’t,” Nagar told her. “Because they’re not rebels.” He began datavising the First Admiral’s warning over the squadron’s
secure communications channels.
Captain Layia remained utterly silent as the datavise came through. Once it was finished she looked round at her equally subdued
crew.
“So now we know what happened to the
Tantu”
Furay said. “Hellfire, I hope the chase ship the admiral dispatched kept up with it.”