by John Appel
“Flight deck here,” came across the all-hands channel. “As you probably noticed, we attracted some unwanted attention on the way up. Amazonas is preparing to maneuver for a new rendezvous, but we’ll need to make a couple orbits before we can mate up. New rendezvous in one hundred fifty minutes and change.”
She tried to relax and pretend that she was just on a trip to the hub. The medic who’d ministered to her earlier came up to check on her. “She’s solid,” the sergeant told him, and Noo gave her best affirmative nod. Her discomfort eased and she engaged the sergeant in conversation for a while. The sergeant hailed from Jakarta, one of the First Fourteen worlds like Ileri, and a founding member of the Commonwealth.
Five tense minutes passed. Noo tried to see if she could spot the incoming craft and thought a particular bit of silver in her view field might be one of them.
The pilot fired the rocket again, and the thrust pressure actually made Noo feel better physically even as she realized this was bad news. Damn, but she hated being strapped down in this metal and composite can in the sky. She was tired of nameless, faceless enemies coming at her and her family. She was pissed off at Miguna and his faction for breaching the peace. She wanted, needed, to be free to operate, to chase down leads, to find the shit-lickers who’d shot Saed and killed Ita and all those others, to snap restraints on them and tell them they’d been clipped.
The motor cut out while she was trying to organize her thoughts, anger fueling her despite the exhaustion and her body’s rebellion. “New hostiles, a pair of cutters, launched on us,” the pilot said. “Be prepared for sudden changes in acceleration.”
She saw the planet swing through her view as the pilot spun the ship onto a new heading. The giant stood on her chest again for a few seconds as the rocket fired once more.
Then, suddenly, a pair of brilliant flashes lit her window, and whoops once again filled the passenger compartment. The sergeant joined them this time, and a series of smaller flashes appeared, closer by.
CHAPTER
TWENTY-FIVE
Toiwa
Secure Interview Suite #3, Constabulary HQ,
Ileri Station, Forward Ring
Toiwa stepped briskly into the interview suite’s observation room. “What did you need me for?” she said, a bit more harshly than she intended to Valverdes and Imoke, who sat inside. She’d managed a short, chemically induced nap, but Remex always left her feeling irritable despite supposedly being free of side effects. She waved her subordinates back into their seats as Chijindu slipped in behind her and secured the door. “Sorry. Fatigue’s no excuse for discourtesy. You had something to show me?”
Valverdes walked to the one-way glass separating the observation room from the interview room proper. The subject, a solidly built middle-aged man in a prisoner’s jumpsuit, sat restrained to his chair, which was itself bolted to the floor. A medic hovered nearby, scanning feeds from the biomonitor patches attached to the subject’s neck, arms, and temples. “Who authorized a medically assisted interview?” Toiwa snapped, this time with genuine anger. They might be on a war footing, and might yet have to resort to such measures, but she’d be damned if it wasn’t going to be done by the book and only on her say-so.
“Those are for treatment, not interrogation,” Valverdes said. “The prisoner began exhibiting distressing physical symptoms, so Sergeant Imoke halted the interview and called for someone to check him out.”
“What kind of symptoms?”
“The man looked like he was going to have a seizure episode,” Imoke said. “Face flushed, his breathing became rapid and irregular, and his limbs alternated between twitching and locking up.”
“So why call me?” Her initial flash of anger had subsided but being called away for such a relatively trivial matter, given everything else going on, seemed like a waste of her time.
Valverdes, sensing zer boss’ mood, jumped in. “Because this is one of the people who attacked the Commonwealth agent. And the third one in a row to exhibit these symptoms when their interrogator began asking certain types of questions.”
That certainly got her attention and set her police brain in motion. “Once is chance, twice is coincidence, three times is deliberate action,” Toiwa said, and the others nodded. “What kinds of questions brought the episodes on?”
“Three things,” Imoke said. “First, what led them to attack M. Ogawa. Second, what they intended to do with her after incapacitating and capturing her. And third, if they had any connection to Councilor Walla.”
That was a left turn that left her tired brain behind. “Why ask about Walla?”
“We never found any sign she’d had martial arts training,” Imoke said. “The same for these suspects.”
Toiwa sat down, still confused. “Sergeant, this is all quite fascinating, but why are you pursuing this now with everything else going on?”
Imoke and Valverdes exchanged glances before he tossed her a data packet. “On a hunch, I asked M. Okafor to look for correlations between unusual activity on the illegal networks she’s been probing and the incidents preceding the coup.” He flipped open the table’s projector field and a table with several columns appeared: dates, times, locations, and three columns color-coded for each of the illegal networks. “The patterns are obvious once you know to look for them. The Saljuan cell shows activity before and during the outbreak of assaults and disappearances over the last three months. I’ll speak to them in a moment.” He highlighted a different portion of the chart. “This is more relevant to these people. What Okafor calls the ‘dark net’, that one shows a spike in activity during the attack on M. Ogawa, as well as bursts during a number of the One Worlder protests.” He scrolled down to a huge spike at the bottom. “This traffic came right before the coup, and the attacks here on-station.”
“Sweet leaping Mother,” Toiwa breathed. She stood and paced the room. Exile-era computer code; the Saljuan accusations that Ileri was dabbling in the forbidden tech; the sudden surge of Miguna and his followers.
Sweet Mother, what if we were playing with this? What if it got out?
“Bundle all of this up and shoot it to the Prime Minister’s people down the cable,” she said. “Ask if they’ve got prisoners with similar symptoms, and if they’re seeing any of the same kinds of infonet anomalies we are.”
Toiwa’s djinn buzzed with a message bearing a military priority code. She flashed the tactical hand sign for hold and popped open the message window. “Toiwa here.”
The head and shoulders of a dark-skinned woman with a fine-boned face and close-cropped hair appeared in her window. “This is Commander Habila of the frigate Lomba, on picket duty by the station. We’ve gotten a flash notice from Naval Operations that I’m to relay to you. The Saljuans are making a broadcast.”
Toiwa swept her hand through the field, making it viewable to everyone in the room. “I’m sharing with some of my staff. Go ahead, Commander.”
“Coming through.” The window blanked before switching to the faces of Minister Dinata and Captain Andini.
Dinata spoke, her tone haughty as her expression. “We have waited patiently for the people of Ileri to bring their world into order so that we can conduct our lawfully permitted inspection to follow up on evidence the Star Republic of Salju has received concerning the development and experimentation with technologies forbidden under the Accords of 83 PE. Sadly, the government of Ile
ri has proved incapable of doing so.”
“Sweet Mother, are they going to retaliate for their lost inspection team?” Imoke said. Toiwa waved him into silence.
“—find it necessary to act on the information we have received. I have directed Captain Andini to maneuver the Iwan Goleslaw to rendezvous with a newly identified objective.”
Andini took over, her tone strictly businesslike, that of a professional doing her job. “We will maneuver to close proximity and match orbits with orbital manufactory designated Albert Therese Five Seven Bolo. When we achieve stable orbit approximately fifty kilometers from the objective, our inspection team will launch via boarding craft to conduct their activities. Any interference with the transit of the Iwan Goleslaw will be met with lethal force. Any interference with the inspection team at any point of their mission will be met with lethal force. I will commence maneuvering at 1355 New Abuja time.”
Dinata spoke up again. “The Star Republic of Salju will regard any acts taken against this vessel as an act of war. Any party that gets in our way will be dealt with harshly.”
The Saljuans’ window cut out.
“Those incredibly arrogant bastards,” Toiwa said. She had a vague notion that ships would have to move to avoid potentially being regarded as threats to the Iwan Goleslaw, but for the most part, that wasn’t her problem. “Thank you, Commander Habila. Will you have to leave us?”
“No, Governor,” Habila said. “We’re tucked in close enough to the station, astrographically speaking, so unless they come to dock here, we’re well out of their way. And if they do try to dock here, I’ll be reinforced. We’re to deny them access.”
“I see. Does the PM or your command have any other information or guidance for us?”
“Not yet, ma’am. We’ll pass any developments onto you immediately.”
“Thank you.” She looked at her subordinates. “Any questions for the Commander?” Both shook their heads. “Very well then. Toiwa out.”
“I’ll notify the department heads,” Valverdes said, rising.
Toiwa signaled for zer to remain. “In a moment.” She turned to Imoke. “You mentioned there was more to say about the Saljuans. With them taking action, I’d better hear it.”
“Yes, Governor. First of all, microbiome analysis has confirmed all the prisoners we captured in the raid where we found Councilor Walla are all Salju natives.” It was technically possible to alter one’s microbiome to disguise the world of one’s upbringing, but it was a difficult feat, with potentially unpleasant side effects. “Second, the technical forensics team tells me they’ve found signs two of the fabbers from their safe house were used to construct projectile weapons with performance characteristics consistent with those used in the assassination.”
“Dammit.” Toiwa leaned back and rubbed her eyes. “We’ll have to let the PM know about this too. Who else knows about this?”
“Just us and a pair of forensic techs. I let them know that if word leaked, they’d be cleaning organic waste tanks by hand for the rest of their lives. They told me, I told Inspector Valverdes, and ze put the records under your seal.”
“Good.” Links between the Star Republic and the assassinations were a serious matter beyond her pay grade, even as governor; they rose to the level of foreign policy, which was expressly not her charge. But what did that mean in terms of finding out the truth?
What it meant, she decided, was that until someone told her otherwise, pursuing the case was still her patch. What to do with that information, on the other hand, was manifestly not. That hadn’t changed, when she’d gone from simply Commissioner to Governor. But why did it feel different?
She opened her eyes and saw her people watching her; Valverdes attentive, Imoke concerned. “All right. Anything else about the Saljuans we took?”
“No, ma’am. They’ve remained mute and declined to answer questions, or even to ask for counsel.”
“Keep them secured, then, until we’ve got something more to go on.” She looked at Valverdes. “We need to play things defensively overall, but we need some kind of small win, soon. Something to encourage the people holding out, but also to start reclaiming the initiative.”
“You have something in mind, Governor?” Imoke asked.
“I’m thinking about the airplant in rebel hands here in the forward ring.”
Imoke looked grave. “That seems like it might be the most vulnerable point we’ve got access to,” he conceded. “But it will still be a tough nut. When do you want to move?”
“As soon as it can be put together,” Toiwa replied. “I want Miguna’s people taken down a notch. And I want them out of my damned ring.”
CHAPTER
TWENTY-SIX
Meiko
CPC Amazonas,
Ileri Orbit
Amazonas wasn’t the smallest starship Meiko had ever shipped in, nor was it the most confined. The countless lighters carried by the great driveframes, used in every part of the Cluster but the New Arm, were all smaller. And she’d spent one memorable trip during the war in an overloaded Second Wave-era battlerider, converted into an independent starship. There’d scarcely been room for two people to pass in the corridors of that flying relic.
But Amazonas was a close second where feeling confined was concerned. Commonwealth patrol cruisers were meant for extended-duration, independent missions. Extended duration meant lots of room for stores, which meant less room for people. Meiko imagined a team of psychologists, naval architects, and logistics specialists cloistered within a design suite somewhere in the great Novo Brasilia shipyard complex, running simulations on just how tightly you could pack humans together, and for how long, before the crew succumbed to behavioral sink conditions. After the designers backed off five percent for a little safety margin, bam, you had a patrol cruiser.
Captain Gupta had the crew quarter modules tucked in next to the cylindrical main hull rather than out on their extensible booms for spin. This kept Amazonas ready for action on short notice but meant the vessel remained in zero-g. This was no problem for Meiko and even Zheng got her space head back quickly. Noo and Teng, however, fared less well.
Meiko pulled herself into the four-person bunk space they’d been allocated and found Noo tucked into her acceleration bunk but still awake, while their companions dozed. She thought Noo looked somewhat better, or at least less likely to need a barf bag every fifteen minutes. “I thought you might be napping like the others,” she said quietly, coming to rest against the wall of their tiny common area. Her fingers wrapped around the handhold automatically and she swung into the same up-and-down orientation as the other woman. She didn’t think Noo was quite ready for conversation with a person floating at a ninety-degree angle to herself yet.
Noo grimaced. “I tried. Maybe later.” She gingerly undid her safety straps and swung herself into a sitting position with care. Meiko had seen this in zero-gravity rookies before; old habits of what should be vertical stuck with the brain. “What’s the word?” Noo asked.
“Fari’s going to be all right,” Meiko said. “She did pick up an infection but the surgeon’s got her started on a cleaning regimen and is putting a regeneration matrix in place. She’ll be on light duty for a time but ought to recover fully.”
Noo’s lips twitched with the hint of a smile. “She’s a tough one, my girl.”
Meiko smiled back. “She certainly is. I wonder who she takes after?”
“Spirits help her, that child—Saed too—got stuck with Fathya and me as role models. It’s a wonder she turned out as well as she did.” She licked her lips. “How’s the pilot?”
“She’ll be all right too,” Meiko said. “The surgeon has a lot of experience with this sort of thing. Not too surprising for a military doctor, I suppose.”
“They’ve revived her?”
“Not yet. She’ll be easier and safer to transport in stasis, so they’re keeping her in for now.”
“I see.” Noo’s eyes took on a distant look, but not qui
te that of someone with a private AR window. “What’s going on out there?”
“You haven’t looked at the feeds?”
“Your people cut us off when the shuttle docked, so we can’t access the network,” Noo said. “Not that I blame them, given the clusterfuck going on.”
“Huh. Well, I’ll see if I can persuade someone to at least let you get the news feeds,” Meiko said. Her face went grim. “It’s not good.” She popped open an AR window and began plucking out news items, bundling them into a packet as she filled Noo in. She explained about the relative standoff in space, the assassination of the Prime Minister and the fighting across the planet and on the station. “Given the number of coordinated attacks, Miguna’s following is bigger than anyone realized.
And he’s trying to claim both that he’s simply taking action to quell the unrest caused by the attacks, and that the attacks against what he calls the corrupt prior government were totally justified.”
Noo looked like she wanted to spit. “Miguna’s a weasel,” she said. “There was talk about him moving up to the station and running for governor, serious enough that Fathya and I had to discuss contingency plans in case he actually came and won. Any word from the station?”
Meiko finished assembling the news packet and tossed it over. “The rebels claim they control it, but Captain Gupta is in touch with Minister Vega, who says it’s still contested.” Meiko frowned. “The governor is definitely dead, but they missed Toiwa, who’s acting governor now. That’s not good for the rebels, I think. I’d want to take her out if I was trying to seize control of Ileri Station.”
“Toiwa’s a pain in my ass, but I’m with you,” Noo said with a nod. “If there’s enough people left in the Constabulary who give a shit about what they’re supposed to do, instead of being pissed off at the dash going away.”
“I think you’ll find the Commissioner has a knack for inspiring loyalty in her people,” Zheng said. Meiko glanced over and discovered the lieutenant and Teng were awake. Meiko flipped her news packet to each of them. Teng began browsing it as Zheng pulled herself from her bunk with languid ease. “It seems to me the question is, how can we best help?”
