Iron Sunrise s-2

by Charles Stross

  “Uck.” Rachel popped the first pill, resigning herself to an evening of sobriety. “Toilet?”

  “Along the hall, door under the main stairs on the left. Cubicles all wired, of course.”

  “Guards?”

  “Two on the front, two on the back, and two on each landing. They’ve been briefed. Safeword is—”

  “ ‘Ghosts.’ I got it. And ‘dogs’ for an intruder.”

  “Right.” Tranh stood up. “You happy?”

  “As happy as…” Rachel gave it some thought: “…anyone would be in my shoes. How’s Elspeth taking it?”

  “I could phone her if you want?”

  “No, I don’t think so.” Rachel could see it all in her mind’s eye. A drably boring safe house on the other side of town, discreetly ringed by a prince’s escort of secret policemen. Ambassador Morrow would be trying to relax, with George Cho to keep her company, along with a subminister from the Ministry of External Affairs and her secretary, whatshisname. There was growing tension over Earth’s diplomatic corps muscling in on the mess: Earth was a third party with only a vague claim to involvement, thanks to the assassin’s choice of transport. The only reason Dresdener spooks weren’t handling this was the likely response of the Muscovite diplomatic corps if they dropped the ball. The ticking clock, the slowly rising tension as they waited for the call from the embassy. Anxiety: What if they’re right? And uncertainty: What if they’re wrong? And paranoia: What if these people from Earth are behind it all? It was enough to sour Rachel’s stomach, not a good way to start a long and stressful evening.

  She concentrated on her autonomic implants for a while. The Dresdener authorities had a serious bias against personal augmentation and the unregulated use of smart matter: Rachel’s ability to override her thalamus, accelerate her reflexes, and see in the dark would go down like a lead balloon if they came to light. But they wouldn’t, not unless someone came out of the darkness and tried to kill her. That was only too possible, now they were into the eighty-hour frame between the Romanov’s arrival and its clearance for departure from the beanstalk’s orbital dock. And she had reason to be nervous. Someone had managed to infiltrate three diplomatic residences, one of them under a state of heightened security, carry out three kills, and get away clean. That implied very good intelligence, or inside help, or both. And if the inside help knew about the substitution …

  “Time check,” said Tranh. “The first guests should be” — he glanced at the switch — “are arriving now.”

  There was a discreet knock at the main door to the outer room. “I’ll check it,” said Gail, walking over. Rachel slid out of sight behind the inner door as Gail held a brief whispered conversation. “It’s Chrystoff,” she said, and Rachel relaxed slightly. Morrow’s bodyguard was one of the few people on the whitelist — if he was an assassin, they’d lost before they even got started.

  “Good,” she said, walking back into the middle of the room. She caught the bodyguard’s eye: “You happy with this?”

  “No.” He returned the inspection. “But, you’re — it’s uncanny.” He looked tense. “It’s not you that I’m worried about.”

  “Indeed.” She nodded soberly. “I need to go downstairs and greet people. I really don’t expect our hypothetical hitter to risk witnesses, so as long as I stay out of view of the outside we should be all right. The fun starts if any of the guests goes out of bounds or when the hitter departs from the script. Ready?”

  Chrystoff froze for a moment, then gave a slight nod.

  “Then let’s get this show on the road.”

  SHOWTIME

  With the ship docked and resupply under way, Steffi was annoyingly busy. In addition to spending some of her off-hours with Wednesday — the kid had problems and needed a shoulder to unload on, but it was remarkably draining to be in the firing line — she was filling in for Max and Evan, running errands between Bridge and Engineering, generally acting as understudy and gofer for the executive team, and minding the shop while her superiors were dealing with the port authorities. If it went on this way, she’d be lucky to get any time on the surface at all — and after three weeks of constant work she needed to get out of the ship for a while very badly indeed. If she didn’t do her share on the surface, Svengali would have harsh words for her; of that, she was certain. Which was why Elena’s call from the purser’s office came as an unwelcome distraction.

  “Lieutenant? We have a situation here. I’m on tube four, northside. Can you come up right away?”

  Steffi glanced at the two engineering auxiliaries who were hooking up the ship’s external service cables — power, so they could strip down the number two generator, and crypto, so they could dump the bulk mail spool. “I can give you five minutes. That’s all. On my way. What’s the situation?”

  “I can’t tell you until you get here.”

  “What do you mean, ‘can’t’?” Steffi was already moving toward the nearest crew lift capsule. Got to sign off the cable hookup, then see Dr. Lewis gets her transport for the new surgery unit …

  “It’s very irregular.” Elena sounded apologetic. “I’ve got an override B-5.”

  “A—” Steffi blinked. “Okay, I’m on my way.” She twitched her rings to a different setting, then told the lift to take her to the lock bay. “Max? Steffi here. I’ve got a problem. Do you know something about an override B-5 coming up?”

  Max sounded distracted. “A B-5? No, I haven’t heard anything. You can try to field it if it’s within your remit. If it goes over your head, get back to me. I’m covering for Chi right now, so I’ve got my hands full.”

  “Uh, okay.” Steffi shook her head. “B-5, isn’t that a diplomatic exception?”

  “Diplomatic, customs, police, whatever. If they’ve got a warrant for a passenger, it’s the purser’s office. If it’s to do with shipboard ops, get back to me.”

  “Okay. Steffi out.” The elevator slowed, then opened its doors on the passenger country side of docking tube four. This level of the tube — a pressurized cylinder the diameter of a subsonic trash-hauler jet — was a wide corridor, ramping up at the far end into the arrivals processing hall of the station. At the ship end, various lock doors and high-capacity elevators opened off it. Just then, a trickle of passengers were idling on their way portside. Elena and a crewman from the purser’s office were waiting by the barrier with a passenger — no, wait, he was on the wrong side, wasn’t he?

  “Hello, Elena. Sir.” She smiled professionally. “How can I help you?” She sized him up rapidly: dark hair, nondescript, young-looking with the self-assurance that came with age, wearing sandals, utility kilt, and a shirt in a style that had been everywhere back home. Then he held up a small booklet. With a white cover.

  “My name is Martin Springfield,” he said diffidently, “and I’m attached to the UN special diplomatic mission currently in residence in Sarajevo.” He smiled faintly. “Nicky didn’t look like this last time I was aboard, I must say.”

  “Nicky? Excuse me?” Elena was trying to catch her eye, but too late.

  “That’s what we called her back in the yard. Must have been eight or nine years ago.” Springfield nodded to himself, as if confirming something: “I’m sorry to have to pull this on you, but I’m here because Ambassador Cho needs some questions answered urgently. Is there somewhere private we can talk?”

  “Private—” Steffi’s eyes nearly crossed as she tried to reconcile conflicting instincts: Get this annoying civilian out of the way so I can go back to work; and oh shit, government stuff! What do I have to do now? “Um, yes, I suppose so.” She cast a warning glance at Elena, who shrugged and looked helpless. “If you’d be so good as to step this way? Can I have a look at that, sir?”

  “It’s genuine,” Elena volunteered. “Carte blanche. He’s who he says he is. I already checked.”

  Steffi forced herself to smile again: “I’m sure you did, or you wouldn’t have called me.” She looked at Martin. “Follow me.”

  As if
everything wasn’t complicated enough, as she turned, a small clot of people were coming down the tube — a couple of staff entertainers, one or two business travelers, a handful of tired-looking recently thawed steerage customers with their shipping trunks, and Wednesday. Wednesday noticed her at the same time and couldn’t leave well alone. “Uh, Lieutenant Grace? Are you busy? I just wanted to say, I’m sorry about the other day—”

  “It’s all right,” Steffi said tiredly, wondering how she was going to talk her way out of this. “Are you all right? Going groundside, I see — do you have anything in mind? Some sightseeing?”

  Wednesday brightened slightly. “I’m sightseeing, yeah.” Then she was abruptly sober. “There’s a memorial ceremony tomorrow at the, the embassy. In the capital. Anyone from Moscow who’s in-system is invited. It landed in my mailbox this morning. Thought I ought to go. It’s been five years, empire time.”

  “Well, you go,” Steffi said hastily. “If you need to talk when you get back to the ship, feel free to call me — I’m just a bit snowed under right now.” To her relief Wednesday nodded, then hurried off to catch up with the flock of day-trippers. What did I let myself in for? she wondered. After that devastating breakdown on the first night, she’d sat with Wednesday for a couple of hours while she poured out her grief. It had left Steffi wanting to strangle someone — starting with whoever had killed the kid’s family, followed by the kid herself when she realized how much of a time sink Wednesday could be. But she’d filed a report with the stewards, disentangled herself carefully, and when she checked the next day Wednesday seemed to be fine. And she was spending a lot of time with the troll from B312. They were resilient at that age. She’d been made of rubber herself, back when her parents were splitting up; but she didn’t remember collapsing on a total stranger’s shoulder and spilling her soul, or trying to pick a fight over supper. Spoiled, like most rich kids, she figured. Wednesday had probably never had anything to worry about in her life.

  Steffi reached the crew elevator and realized with a start that the man from the embassy was still with her. What is he, the human glueball? she wondered.

  “We can find a corner of the executive planning suite, or maybe a conference room. Or if it’s okay with you, I can go check on a couple of jobs I’m meant to be supervising.” Let’s get you out of my hair, huh?

  “If you can check those jobs in person, I’ll just tag along and stay out of your way while you’re doing it.” Springfield leaned against the side of the lift car. He looked either tired or worried — or both. “But I’m afraid I’m going to be generating a lot of work for you. Ambassador Cho sent me to poke around here because I’m the nearest thing to a shipping specialist he’s got. We have a bit of a needle and haystack problem, I’m afraid. Specifically, we have reason to think that one or more of the long-stay passengers have been using this vessel as a vehicle for serial naughtiness at the last few ports of call.”

  The elevator began to slow as it neared the power hookup bay. “Are we talking about smuggling, sir? Or barratry, or hijacking? Because if not, I don’t see what this could possibly have to do with WhiteStar. It’s been a remarkably peaceful voyage so far.”

  The doors hissed open, and Steffi stepped out. Yuri was leaning against the wall beside the big gray switchbox. “All hooked up, ma’am. Would you like the tour?”

  Steffi nodded. It took her only a minute to confirm that Yuri and Jill — who had hurried off, needed elsewhere — had done a good job. “Okay, let’s test it, turn it on, and sign it off.” She waited while Yuri called down to the engine room and ran through the checklist before tripping in the circuit. The cabinet-sized switchbox hummed audibly as it came under load, nearly fifty megawatts of electricity surging into it through superconductor cables no fatter than Steffi’s thumb. “Okay, here’s my chop.” She signed off on Yuri’s pad, then sealed the cabinet.

  “Let’s go find a conference room,” she told Martin. “If you still feel you need to check our records … ?”

  “It’s not whether I feel any need, I’m afraid,” he said quietly, then waited for the lift pod doors to close: “I don’t expect you to have any trouble in flight. The person or people we’re looking for are more likely to be causing trouble groundside.”

  “Trouble? What kind of trouble?”

  Springfield looked grim. “I can’t tell you. But it’s bad enough to get a full-dress diplomatic mission out here to paper over the cracks. If you want confirmation, wire Victoria McEllwaine in Legal back at WhiteStar head office and ask her what you should do. Meanwhile, I need to go over your entire passenger manifest since the current cruise began. And your temporary staff, for that matter — anyone who’s been here for less than six months. I may also need to gain access to staterooms. If you can’t authorize a search, point me at someone who can. Finally, I need to make an inspection tour of your engineering spaces and check cargo consignments for certain destinations — any small to medium items that have been drawn out here by passengers, checked in from Earth, Turku, and Eiger’s World.”

  “Is that all?” Steffi asked disbelievingly. He’d outlined enough work there to keep someone occupied for a week. With passenger churn approaching 40 percent per destination, they’d gone through six or seven thousand embarkations, not to mention the Entertainments staff: they’d shipped an entire chamber orchestra from Rosencrantz to Eiger, never mind the other irregular performers that Ents kept hiring and firing. “I’d better get you sorted out right away. If you don’t mind, I’m going to boot you upstairs to my CO — I’m due off duty in two hours with shore leave tomorrow.”

  “Well, I won’t keep you — but let’s get started. I’m supposed to report back within twenty-four hours. With results. And then I may have to call on you to help me arrest someone.”

  Meanwhile, Frank was groundside and frustrated. “Can you explain why they won’t see me? I made this appointment forty-three days ago; it’s been cleared via the consulate in Tokyo. Is there some kind of problem?”

  “Problem.” The man on the small screen cleared his throat. “You could say that.” He eyed Frank curiously. “I’m afraid we’re in the middle of a staff training drill right now, and Minister Baxter isn’t available. Also, all embassy engagements have been scaled back, and I can’t find any mention of you in our workgroup diary. Would you like to make a fresh appointment for sometime next week?”

  “My ship leaves the day after tomorrow,” he said as calmly as he could manage. “So next week is right out. Would Minister Baxter be available for a phone interview instead? If security is a concern, there’s no need for face-to-face contact.”

  “I’ll just check.” The screen blanked for a moment, then: “I’m sorry, sir, but the Minister isn’t available at all until next Thursday. Can I help you make any alternative arrangements? For example, by long-range channel?”

  “I’ll have to check my budget,” Frank admitted. “I have a limited bandwidth spend. Can I get back to you on that? Would you mind just double-checking that I’m not on your list anywhere? If the Minister’s unavailable, would it be possible to arrange a chat with Ambassador Morrow instead?”

  “I’m sorry, but the Ambassador’s busy, too. As I said, sir, this is about the worst possible week you could have asked for an interview. If you leave things with me, I’ll see what I can do, but I’m making no promises.”

  Frank put his temporary phone away and stood up tiredly. At times like this he felt as if he was walking blindfolded along a corridor pre-greased and strewn with banana skins by a cosmic jester. Why now? Why did they have to lose the fucking thing now, of all times? A quote from Baxter, or even Morrow, admitting that their colleagues were being stalked — that would be explosive. Only they weren’t playing ball. The whole thing smelled like a discreet security lockdown: scheduled interviews canceled, public appearances held to carefully controlled zones with vetted guest lists, the bland stench of denial hovering over the rotting corpse of business as usual. Just like one of Mom’s dinner par
ties when she’d been trying to break back into the charmed circle of political movers and fixers who’d dropped her the first time around, after her electoral defeat.

  The air was still cool and slightly damp in the park, but the heated benches were dry enough to work on. Frank folded up his mobile office and stood up. The poplars were flowering, and he walked slowly under a ceiling of catkins, bouncing and shedding in the morning breeze. The path merged with two others at one of the bronze war memorials that were heartbreakingly common hereabouts. Frank paused for a minute to scan it with his glasses, capturing the moment forever. Almost a hundred years earlier, at this very spot, an enemy battalion had put up a spirited resistance to the forces of the All-Conquering. Their souls, large and warlike, had gone to Valhalla: the victors had raised the stele not out of magnanimity but with the more subtle intention of magnifying their own prowess. Nobody likes to boast that they massacred a bunch of terrified, starving, ill-equipped conscripts, Frank reminded himself. It’s easier to be a hero when your vanquished enemies are giants. Something he’d have to bring up if he ever got close enough to interview the honorable Elspeth Morrow. “So how does it feel sentencing to death 140 million children, 90 million crumblies, and another 600-million-odd ordinary folks who were content to mind their own business and don’t even know who you are?”

  Farther along the path Frank passed a patrolling gardener ’bot. Judging from the smell, it was collecting and fermenting either slugs or waste from the citizens who walked their dogs at dawn. The trees were farther apart on this walk, with park benches between them and fields stretching away beyond. Each bench bore a weathered pewter plaque, stained almost gray by age: In loving memory of Private Ivor Vincik, by his parents, or Gone forever but not forgotten, Artillery Sergeant Georg Legat. The park wore its history as proudly as a row of medals: from the memorials to the fallen to the white charnel house built from the skulls and femurs of the enemy battalion, used by the groundskeepers to store their lawnmowers.