When she reached Laxa and Ahmad the Edenist team was already inside. Two agents stood guard out in the corridor. Monica stepped
wearily through the crumpled door, drawing her pistol.
Samuel drew his breath sharply. “Damnation.”
“What?” she asked. By then they had reached the conference office anteroom. The partizan bodyguards were all sprawled on the
floor with limbs twitching erratically. Six Edenists stood over them, their TIP pistols pointing down. Three scorch lines
slashed the walls where laser fire had burned the composite. A pair of spent nerve short-out grenades rolled around on the
carpet.
“Where’s Mzu?” Monica asked.
Samuel beckoned her into the conference office. The partizan leadership had been caught by the nerve short-out pulses, but
the door and security screening had saved them from the worst effects. They were still conscious. Four of them. The fifth
was dead.
Monica grimaced when she saw the broad char mark on the side of Ikela’s skull. The beam had fractured the bone in several
places, roasting the brain to a black pulp. Someone had made very sure his neural nanonics were ruined. “God, what happened
here?”
Two Edenist agents were standing behind Feira Ile, their pistol muzzles pressed into his neck. His wrists had been secured
in a composite zipcuff behind his back. Crumbs of vomit were sticking to his lip; he was sweating profusely from the grenade
assault, but otherwise defiant. A laser pistol was lying on the table in front of him.
“He shot Ikela,” Samuel said in bewildered dismay. He squatted down beside Ikela’s chair. “Why? What was the point? He was
one of yours.”
Feira Ile grinned savagely. “My last duty for the Garissan navy.”
“What do you mean?”
“Ikela flew escort duty on the Alchemist. He probably knew where it is. Now he can’t tell you.”
Monica and Samuel swapped a grim glance.
“She’s gone, hasn’t she?” Monica said bitterly.
“It would seem so.”
“Fuck it!” She stamped over to Kaliua Lamu, who had an agent holding him upright in his chair. “Where did Mzu go?” Monica
asked.
“Screw you.”
Monica gave an amused glance at the other partizans around the table. “Oh, come on, Kaliua,” she said sweetly. “You were eager
enough to tell us this meeting’s location.”
“Liar!”
She took out a Royal Kulu Bank credit disk. “A hundred thousand pounds, wasn’t it?”
“Bitch whore! I never,” he shouted at his comrades. “It wasn’t me. For Mary’s sake, it wasn’t.”
Monica grabbed his chin, and slowly exerted her boosted grip. Kaliua Lamu gagged fearfully at the force which threatened to
shatter his jawbone.
“You said I’d better be certain when I finish you. Well, I intend to be extremely thorough extinguishing your life unless
I know where she went.”
“I don’t know.”
“Debrief nanonics would be the pleasant option, but we don’t have time for that. Fortunately, old-fashioned pain can still
produce some pretty impressive results during field interrogation. And they trained me very well, Kaliua.” She pushed her
face centimetres from his bugging eyes. “Would you like to try calling my bluff? Or perhaps you think you’re strong enough
to resist me for a couple of hours after I’ve fused your neural nanonics into ash? Once they’re dead you can’t block the pain.
And the field way to fuse neural nanonics is with electrodes. Crude, but it works. Guess where they’re applied.”
“No. Please! Don’t.” His eyes were watering as he started shaking.
“Where then?”
“I don’t know. I promise. She was gone when we finished. I told you she was supposed to be waiting outside for us to finish.
But she wasn’t there.”
“Then who did she leave with?”
“It was a girl, my bodyguard said. Ikela’s daughter, Voi. She’s tall, young. They were talking together and never came back.
Honestly
, that’s all I know.”
Monica let go of his chin. He slumped back in the chair, trembling in relief.
“A tall girl,” Monica whispered. She was looking at Samuel in dawning dismay as the memory blossomed. She hurriedly accessed
the neural nanonics memory cell she’d kept running to record the operation.
In the corridor on the way up. Two girls, one tall and black, the other white and small. Pressed against the wall in alarm
as she and Samuel ran past. The memory cell image froze. Green neon grid lines closed around the smaller girl, calculating
her height. It matched Mzu’s. So did the approximated weight.
A backpack fitted with a long shoulder strap hung at the girl’s side.
Monica had seen that backpack once before. Never in her life would she need help from neural nanonics to remember that time.
The backpack had been flapping behind a small spacesuit-clad figure who was clinging desperately to a rope ladder.
“Dear God, we walked right bloody past her,” she told an aghast Samuel. “The bitch is wearing a chameleon suit.”
Lady Macbeth
slipped slowly into place above the docking cradle, her equatorial verniers sparkling briefly as Joshua compensated for drift.
Optical-band sensors gave a poor return here; Tunja’s ruby glow was insipid even in clear space, and down where Ayacucho lurked
among the disk particles it was an abiding roseate gloom. Laser radar guided the starship in until the cradle latches clamped
home.
The bay’s rim lights sprang up to full intensity, highlighting the hull, their reflected beams twisting about at irregular
angles as the thermo-dump panels folded back into the fuselage. Then the cradle started to descend.
In the bridge not a word was spoken. It was the mood which had haunted them all the way from Narok, an infection passed down
from captain to crew.
Sarha looked over the bridge at Joshua for some sign of… humanity, she supposed. He had flown them here, making excellent
time as always. And apart from the kind of instructions necessary to keep the ship humming smoothly, he hadn’t put ten words
together. He’d even taken his meals alone in his cabin.
Beaulieu and Dahybi had told the rest of the crew of the Norfolk possession, and how concerned Joshua had been for Louise.
So at least Sarha knew the reason for his blues, even though she found it slightly hard to believe. This was the Joshua with
whom she’d had an affair for over six months last year. He was so easy about the relationship that when they did finally stop
sleeping together she’d stayed on as part of the crew without any awkwardness on either side. Which was why she found it difficult
that Joshua could be so affected by what had happened to Louise, by all accounts a fairly simple country girl. He
never
became that entangled. Commitment wasn’t a concept which nested in his skull. Part of the fascination was his easygoing nature.
There was never any deceit with Joshua, you knew just where you stood.
Perhaps Louise wasn’t so simple after all. Perhaps I’m just jealous.
“Going to tell us now, Captain?” she asked.
“Huh?” Joshua turned his head in her general direction.
“Why we’re here? We’re not chasing Meyer anymore. So who is this Dr Mzu?”
“Best you don’t ask.”
A circuit of the bridge showed her how irritated everyone was getting with his attitude. “Absolutely, Joshua; I mean, you
can’t be sure if we’re trustworthy, can you? Not after all this time.”
Joshua stared at her. Fortunately, belaboured intuition finally managed to struggle through his moping thoughts to reveal
the crew’s bottled-up exasperation. “Bugger,” he winced. Sarha was right, after all they’d been through together these people
deserved a better style of captaincy than this. Jesus, I’m picking up Ione’s paranoia. Thank God I didn’t have to make any
real command decisions. “Sorry, I just got hit by Norfolk. I wasn’t expecting it.”
“Nobody expected any of this, Joshua,” Sarha said sympathetically.
“Yeah, right. Okay, Dr Mzu is a physicist, who once worked for the Garissan navy—”
They didn’t say much while he told them what the flight was about. Which was probably a good thing, he guessed. It was one
hell of a deal he’d accepted on their behalf. How would I feel if they’d dragged me along without knowing why?
When he finished he could see a mild smile on Ashly’s face, but then the old pilot always did claim to chase after excitement.
The others took it all reasonably stoically; though Sarha was looking at him with a kind of bemused pique.
Joshua hitched his face up into one of his old come-on grins. “Told you, you were better off not knowing.”
She hissed at him, then relented. “Bloody hell, wasn’t there anybody else the Lord of Ruin could use?”
“Who would you trust?”
Sarha tried to come up with an answer, and failed hopelessly.
“If anyone wants to bail out, let me know,” Joshua said. “This wasn’t exactly covered in my job description when you signed
on.”
“Neither was Lalonde,” Melvyn said dryly.
“Beaulieu?” Joshua asked.
“I have always served my captain to the best of my ability,” the shiny cosmonik said. “I see no reason to stop now.”
“Thanks. All of you. Okay, let’s get
Lady Mac
powered down. Then we’ll have a quick scout around for the doctor.”
• • •
The Dorados Customs and Immigration Service took seventy-five minutes to process the
Lady Mac’s
crew. Given the quarantine, Joshua had been expecting some hassle, but these officers seemed intent on analysing every molecule
in the starship. Their documentation was reviewed four separate times. Joshua wound up paying a five-thousand-fuseodollar
administration fee to the chief inspector before they were confirmed to be non-possessed, had the appropriate Tranquillity
government authorization to be flying, and declared suitable citizens to enter Ayacucho.
The lawyers were waiting for him at the end of the docking bay airlock tube. Three of them, two men and a woman, their unfussy
blue suits cloned from some conservative chain-store design program.
“Captain Calvert?” the woman asked. She gave him a narrow frown, as if uncertain he could be the person she wanted.
Joshua rotated slightly so his silver star on his epaulette was prominent. “You got me.”
“You are the captain of the
Lady Macbeth
?” Again the uncertainty.
“Yep.”
“I am Mrs Nateghi from Tayari, Usoro and Wang, we represent the Zaman Service and Equipment Company which operates here in
the spaceport.”
“Sorry, guys, I don’t need a maintenance contract. We just got refitted.”
She held out a flek with a gold scale of justice symbol embossed on one side. “Marcus Calvert, this is a summons for fees
owing to our client since August 2586. You are required to appear before the Ayacucho civil claims court at a date to be set
in order to resolve this debt.”
The flek was pressed into Joshua’s palm. “Whaa—” he managed to grunt.
Sarha started giggling, which drew a cool glare from Mrs Nateghi. “We have also filed a court impounding order on the
Lady Macbeth”
she said frostily. “Please do not try and leave as you did last time.”
Joshua kissed the flek flamboyantly and beamed at the woman. “I’m Joshua Calvert. I think you should be talking to my father.
He’s Marcus Calvert.”
If the statement threw her, there was no visible sign. “Are you the
Lady Macbeth
’s current owner?”
“Sure.”
“Then you remain liable for the debt. I will have the summons revised to reflect this. The impounding order remains unaffected.”
Joshua kept his smile in place. He datavised the flight computer for a review of all 2586 log entries. There weren’t any.
“Jesus, Dad, thanks a bunch,” he muttered under his breath. No way—absolutely not—would he show the three vultures how fazed
he was. “Look, this is obviously an oversight, a computer glitch, something on those lines. I have no intention of contesting
the debt. And I shall be very happy to pay off any money owing on
Lady Mac’s
account. I’m sure nobody wants this regrettable misunderstanding to come to court.” He jabbed a toe at Sarha whose giggles
had turned to outright laughter.
Mrs Nateghi gave a brisk nod. “It is within my brief to accept payment in full.”
“Fine.” Joshua took his Jovian Bank credit disk out of his ship-suit’s top pocket.
“The cost in 2586 to the Zaman Company for services rendered comes to seventy-two thousand fuseodollars. I have an invoice.”
“I’m sure you do.” Joshua held out the credit disk, anxious to be finished.
The lawyer consulted her processor block, a show of formality. “The interest accrued on your debt over twenty-five years comes
to two hundred and eighty-nine thousand fuseodollars, as approved by the court.”
Sarha’s laughter ended in a choke. Joshua had to use a neural nanonics nerve impulse override to stop himself from snarling
at the lawyer. He was sure she was doing the same to stop her equally blank face from sneering. Bitch! “Of course,” he said
faintly.
“And our firm’s fee for dealing with the case is twenty-three thousand fuseodollars.”
“Yes, I thought you were cheap.”
This time, she scowled.
Joshua shunted the money over. The lawyers hauled themselves away down the corridor.
“Can we afford that?” Sarha asked.
“Yes,” Joshua said. “I have an unlimited expense account for this trip. Ione’s paying.” He didn’t want to dwell on what she’d
say when she saw the bill.
I wonder why Dad left in such a hurry?
Ashly patted Joshua’s shoulder. “Real chip off the old block, your dad, eh?”
“I hope he hurries up and possesses someone soon,” Joshua said through gritted teeth. “There’s a few things I’d like to talk
to him about.” Then he thought about what he’d just said. Maybe not as funny and cuttingly sarcastic as he’d intended. Because
Dad was there in the beyond. Suffering in the beyond. That’s if he wasn’t already… “Come on, let’s make a start.”
• • •
The club he wanted, according to the spaceport personnel, was the Bar KF-T; that’s where the action was. Along with the dealers,
pushers, and pimps, and all the rest of the people in the know.