Kiera hesitated. The SD centre was in the counter-rotating spaceport. She was certain the habitat itself would be safe from
attack. Rubra would never allow that, but the spaceport might be a legitimate target.
Just as she took a reluctant first step towards the door the black bakelite telephone on her bedside table started to ring.
The primitive communications instrument was one which worked almost infallibly in the energistic environment exuded by the
possessed. She picked it up and pressed the handset to her ear. “Yes?”
“This is Rubra.”
Kiera stiffened. She’d thought this room was outside of his surveillance. Exactly how many of their systems were exposed to
him? “What do you want?”
“I want nothing. I’m simply delivering a warning. The voidhawks from Kohistan are currently eliminating the habitat’s industrial
production capability. There will be no more combat wasps to arm the hellhawks. We don’t like the threat they present. Do
not attempt to resupply from other sources or it will go hard on you.”
“You can do nothing to us,” she said, squeezing some swagger into her voice.
“Wrong. The Edenists respect life, which is why no hellhawks were destroyed this time. However, I can guarantee you the next
voidhawk strike will not be so generous. I have eliminated the habitat’s SD platforms so that in future it won’t even be as
difficult for them as today’s strike. You and the hellhawks will sit out the rest of the conflict here. Is that understood?”
The phone went dead.
Kiera stood still, her whitened fingers tightening around the handset. Little chips of bakelite sprinkled down onto the carpet.
“Find Dariat,” she told Stanyon. “I don’t care where he is, find him and bring him to me. Now!”
• • •
Chaumort asteroid in the ChÂlons star system. Not a settlement which attracted many starships; it had little foreign exchange
to purchase their cargoes of exotica, and few opportunities for export charters. Attendant industrial stations were old, lacking
investment, their products a generation out-of-date; their poor sales added to the downwards cycle of the asteroid’s economy.
Ten per cent of the adult population was unemployed, making qualified workers Chaumort’s largest (and irreplaceable) export.
The fault lay in its leadership of fifteen years ago, who had been far too quick to claim independence from the founding company.
Decline had been a steady constant from that carnival day onwards. Even as a refuge for undesirables, it was close to the
bottom of the list.
But it was French-ethnic, and it allowed certain starships to dock despite the Confederation’s quarantine edict. Life could
have been worse, AndrÉ Duchamp told himself, though admittedly not by much. He sat out at a table in what qualified as a pavement
cafÉ, watching what there was of the worldlet passing by. The sheer rock cliff of the biosphere cavern wall rose vertically
behind him, riddled with windows and balconies for its first hundred metres. Out in the cavern the usual yellow-green fields
and orchards of spindly trees glimmered under the motley light of the solartubes which studded the axis gantry.
The view was acceptable, the wine passable, his situation if not tolerable then stable—for a couple of days. AndrÉ took another
sip and tried to relax. It was a pity his initial thought of selling combat wasps (post-Lalonde, fifteen were still languishing
in the starship’s launch tubes) to Chaumort’s government had come to nothing. The asteroid’s treasury didn’t have the funds,
and three inter-planetary ships had already been placed on defence contract retainers. Not that the money would have been
much use here; the two local service companies which operated the spaceport had a very limited stock of spare parts. Of course,
it would have come in useful to pay his crew. Madeleine and Desmond hadn’t actually said anything, but AndrÉ knew the mood
well enough. And that bloody
anglo
Erick—as soon as they’d docked Madeleine had hauled him off to the local hospital. Well, those thieving doctors would have
to wait.
He couldn’t actually remember a time when there had been so few options available. In fact, he was down to one slender possibility
now. He’d found that out as soon as he’d arrived
(this time
checking the spaceport’s register for ships he knew). An unusually large number of starships were docked, all of them arriving
recently. In other words, after the quarantine had been ratified and instituted by the ChÂlons system congress.
The Confederation Assembly had demonstrated a laudable goal in trying to stop the spread of the possessed, no one disputed
that. However, the new colony planets and smaller asteroids suffered disproportionately from the lack of scheduled flights;
they needed imported high-technology products to maintain their economies. Asteroid settlements like Chaumort, whose financial
situation was none too strong to start with, were going to shoulder a heavy cost for the crisis not of their making. What
most of these backwater communities shared was their remoteness; so if say an
essential
cargo were to arrive on a starship, then it was not inconceivable that said starship would be given docking permission. The
local system congress wouldn’t know, and therefore wouldn’t be able to prevent it. That cargo could then (for a modest charter
fee) be distributed to help other small disadvantaged communities by inter-planetary ships, whose movements were not subject
to any Confederation proscription.
Chaumort was quietly establishing itself as an important node in a whole new market. The kind of market starships such as
the
Villeneuve’s Revenge
were uniquely qualified to exploit.
AndrÉ had spoken to several people in the bars frequented by space industry crews and local merchants, voicing his approval
for this turn of events, expressing an interest in being able to help Chaumort and its people in these difficult times. In
short, becoming known. It was a game of contacts, and AndrÉ had been playing it for decades.
Which was why he was currently sitting at a table waiting for a man he’d never seen before to show up. A bunch of teenagers
hurried past, one of the lads snatching a basket of bread rolls from the cafÉ’s table. His comrades laughed and cheered his
bravado, and then ran off before the patron discovered the theft. AndrÉ no longer smiled at the reckless antics of youth.
Adolescents were a carefree breed; a state to which he had long aspired, and which his chosen profession had singularly failed
to deliver. It seemed altogether unfair that happiness should exist only at one end of life, and the wrong end at that. It
should be something you came in to, not left further and further behind.
A flash of colour caught his eye. All the delinquents had tied red handkerchiefs around their ankles. What a stupid fashion.
“Captain Duchamp?”
AndrÉ looked up to see a middle-aged Asian-ethnic man dressed in a smart black silk suit with flapping sleeves. The tone and
the easy body posture indicated an experienced negotiator; too smooth for a lawyer, lacking the confidence of the truly wealthy.
A middleman.
AndrÉ tried not to smile too broadly. The bait had been swallowed. Now for the price.
• • •
The medical nanonic around Erick’s left leg split open from crotch to ankle, sounding as though someone were ripping strong
fabric. Dr Steibel and the young female nurse slowly teased the package free.
“Looks fine,” Dr Steibel decided.
Madeleine grinned at Erick and pulled a disgusted face. The leg was coated in a thin layer of sticky fluid, residue of the
package unknitting from his flesh. Below the goo, his skin was swan-white, threaded with a complicated lacework of blue veins.
Scars from the burns and vacuum ruptures were patches of thicker translucent skin.
Now the package covering his face and neck had been removed, Erick sucked in a startled breath as cool air gusted over the
raw skin. His cheeks and forehead were still tingling from the same effect, and they’d been uncovered two hours ago.
He didn’t bother looking at the exposed limb. Why bother? All it contained was memories.
“Give me nerve channel access, please,” Dr Steibel asked. He was looking into an AV pillar, disregarding Erick completely.
Erick complied, his neural nanonics opening a channel directly into his spinal cord. A series of instructions were datavised
over, and his leg rose to the horizontal before flexing his foot about.
“Okay.” The doctor nodded happily, still lost in the information the pillar was directing at him. “Nerve junctions are fine,
and the new tissue is thick enough. I’m not going to put the package back on, but I do want you to apply the moisturizing
cream I’ll prescribe. It’s important the new skin doesn’t dry out.”
“Yes, Doc,” Erick said meekly. “What about… ?” He gestured at the packages enveloping his upper torso and right arm.
Dr Steibel flashed a quick smile, slightly concerned at his patient’s listless nature. “ ’Fraid not. Your AT implants are
integrating nicely, but the process isn’t anywhere near complete yet.”
“I see.”
“I’ll give you some refills for those support modules you’re dragging around with you. These deep invasion packages you’re
using consume a lot of nutrients. Make sure the reserves don’t get depleted.”
He picked up the support module which Madeleine had repaired and glanced at the pair of them. “I’d strongly advise no further
exposure to antagonistic environments for a while, as well. You can function at a reasonably normal level now, Erick, but
only if you don’t stress your metabolism. Do not ignore warnings from your metabolic monitor program. Nanonic packages are
not to be regarded as some kind of infallible safety net.”
“Understood.”
“I take it you’re not flying away for a while.”
“No. All starship flights are cancelled.”
“Good. I want you to keep out of free fall as much as possible, it’s a dreadful medium for a body to heal in. Check in to
a hotel in the high gravity section while you’re here.” He datavised a file over. “That’s the exercise regime for your legs.
Stick to it, and I’ll see you again in a week.”
“Thanks.”
Dr Steibel nodded benevolently at Madeleine as he left the treatment room. “You can pay the receptionist on your way out.”
The nurse began to spray a soapy solution over Erick’s legs, flushing away the mucus. He used a neural nanonic override to
stop a flinch when she reached his genitals. Thank God they hadn’t been badly injured, just superficial skin damage from the
vacuum.
Madeleine gave him an anxious glance over the nurse’s back. “Have you got much cash in your card?” she datavised.
“About a hundred and fifty fuseodollars, that’s all,” he datavised back. “AndrÉ hasn’t transferred this month’s salary over
yet.”
“I’ve got a couple of hundred, and Desmond should have some left. I think we can pay.”
“Why should we? Where the hell is Duchamp? He should be paying for this. And my AT implants were only the first phase.”
“Busy with some cargo agent, so he claimed. Leave it with me, I’ll find out how much we owe the hospital.”
Erick waited until she’d left, then datavised the hospital’s net processor for the Confederation Navy Bureau. The net management
computer informed him there was no such eddress. He swore silently, and accessed the computer’s directory, loading a search
order for any resident Confederation official. There wasn’t one, not even a CAB inspector, too few ships used the spaceport
to warrant the expense.
The net processor opened a channel to his neural nanonics. “Report back to the ship, please,
mon enfant
Erick,” AndrÉ datavised. “I have won us a charter.”
If his neck hadn’t been so stiff, Erick would have shaken his head in wonder. A charter! In the middle of a Confederation
quarantine. Duchamp was utterly unbelievable. His trial would be the shortest formality on record.
Erick swung his legs off the examination table, ignoring the nurse’s martyrdom as her spray hoses were dislodged. “Sorry,
duty calls,” he said. “Now go and find me some trousers, I haven’t got all day.”
• • •
The middleman’s name was Iain Girardi. AndrÉ envied him his temperament; nothing could throw him, no insult, no threat. His
cool remained in place throughout the most heated of exchanges. It was just as well; AndrÉ’s patience had long since been
exhausted by his ungrateful crew.
They were assembled in the day lounge of the
Villeneuve’s Revenge
, the only place AndrÉ considered secure enough to discuss Girardi’s proposition. Madeleine and Desmond had their feet snagged
by a stikpad on the decking, while Erick was hanging on to the central ladder, his medical support modules clipped on to the
composite rungs. AndrÉ floated at Iain Girardi’s side, glowering at the three of them.
“You’ve got to be fucking joking!” Madeleine shouted. “You’ve gone too far this time, Captain. Too bloody far. How can you
even listen to this bastard’s offer? God in Heaven, after all we went through at Lalonde. After all Erick did. Look at this
ship! They did that to it, to you.”
“That’s not strictly accurate,” Iain Girardi said, his voice tactfully smooth and apologetic.
“Shut the fuck up!” she bawled. “I don’t need you to tell me what’s been happening to us.”
“Madeleine, please,” AndrÉ said. “You are hysterical. No one is forcing you to take part. I will not hold you to your contract
if that is your wish.”
“Damn right it’s my wish. And nowhere does it say in my crew contract that I fly for the possessed. You pay me my last two
months in full, plus the Lalonde combat bonus you owe me, and I’m out of here.”
“If that is what you want.”
“You’ve got the money?”
“
Oui
. But of course. Not that it is any of your business.”
“Bastard. Why did you leave us to pay for Erick’s treatment, then?”
“I am only a captain, I do not claim to perform miracles. My account has only just been credited. Naturally it is my pleasure
to pay for dear Erick’s treatment. It is a matter of honour for me.”