Lord Banshee- Fugitive

by Russell O Redman

  Begum had left while I slept. Marin and Toyami had roused her and rushed her through the washroom with a bulb of stims before helping her dress and run out the door. There was no need for a clean uniform, since a standard part of every spacer’s promotion party was to be stripped naked and presented with a shiny, clean uniform carrying the new insignia. What happened in between those two events depended entirely on the officer and zer colleagues. I supposed we would hear about it later that day.

  Raul had wanted to wish Begum goodbye, but had joined everyone else for an hour of sleep. Marin had deliberately saved him from temptation by ensuring that he slept through her departure.

  We were still under acceleration, so had not reached the Khrushchev yet, but must be well past the Gandhi. I would have to ask how Begum’s transfer to the Hammerhead had gone, but since no one seemed disturbed, I presumed it was flawless. I wondered idly if the Hammerhead had left for the Moon already.

  Leilani, Sergei and Katerina were awake. Doctor Tran was watching us now, fretting over my medical monitor that would need to be refilled on the Moon at my current rate of consumption.

  He also fussed over Katerina. I was pleased to hear that Katerina was healing quickly. Bullets through the belly can damage a lot of organs and the wounds are ferociously painful, as I knew from personal experience.

  Tran joked that the bullet had been as mysterious and soft-hearted as she was. The TDF had taken a full day to identify it. The shooter had thrown his gun away (probably involuntarily as the TDF marines took him out), and it had become lost in the pile when other potential assassins discarded their own weapons. Forensics had finally identified his gun as a low-G target pistol, not a normal assassin’s weapon. The bullet was a fat, soft, low-speed plastic slug that made a satisfying smack against a target and squashed into a round nub to mark the point of impact. If he had fired the target pistol directly at her heart, he might have cracked a rib. Instead, it had cut through the soft tissues of her abdominal wall and sliced a few blood vessels before stopping in her stomach. The wound had been bloody and painful, but easy to repair. They had closed the hole in her stomach lining immediately, of course, and sealed the blood vessels. The muscle and soft tissues were knitting together nicely. The bullet, fatter than normal but not flattened into a disk, had been difficult to spot at the time. It was still inside her, moving slowly and harmlessly down her intestine.

  Tran laughed that the assassin might have been more effective if he had sung her a spacer weeper, which might have broken her heart. The evidence all around him proved that a Banshee’s heart was invincible to anything but love. He promised to write a ballad that told how the Angel of Love had eaten a bullet to save the Deng and would pass it as soon as her doctor allowed enough roughage in her food to form a stool.

  Katerina laughed, and said his promise was the sweetest aftertaste she had ever had from eating a slug, which she had done once on a dare when she was a girl. Sergei guffawed and told him everything about the idea stank, especially the ending when it emerged. Leilani added that if he kept it short, the marines on the Mao might sing the song before every meal, to remind themselves that the drek served in a TDF mess was good for something.

  Listening to the laughter, I suspected Tran was trying to flirt, but with a medical sense of poetry that did not survive translation into normal human language.

  As I listened to their banter, I also realized that Katerina never referred to Evgenia by her full name, but always as Eve, and that the whole tone of her voice changed when she did. I wondered if I had somehow seen a latent attraction between them, whether they had a previous history that I had seen sometime, or whether the mere act of pushing them together had made something happen. I had no idea whether the whole Eve-Kat thing had a future, but I suddenly felt pity for Tran’s pathetic attempt to attract Katerina’s attention.

  Thinking back to Raul and Marin the previous night, I had to agree that we were a romantic mess and I wondered briefly if it was worth trying to sort it out. With my current plans, I would not be with the team long enough to finish anything I started now. It would be better to let them work out their own future. The Spacer, Cap and Cripple wanted to try anyways. The Ghost just felt too busy to be bothered.

  With a shock, I realized what the Ghost was busy doing. Yesterday, I had only the conviction that I needed to do something. Today, I had a plan to implement the Mission, a Path to follow. When I closed my eyes, I could visualize the path of golden bricks leading across a grassy, moonlit moor. Each brick was a Step, an action to complete or a decision to be made:

  I would go to Valhalla and return as a whole man.

  I would formulate a shape for the new government, something achievable.

  I would explain to the team what was needed.

  I would shepherd them past Martian Intelligence to the Earth to rejoin Vishnuram.

  I would hide separately, to give them the required deniability.

  I would surrender myself to Terrestrial authorities, to be sent to the Moon for prosecution.

  As always, the golden Path ended in the churning blackness of a Hellgate. I would confess to every lying, murdering atrocity I had ever committed, and would explain what purpose had been served. My execution would finally satisfy the Martian people’s need for Justice. Mars and the Earth would understand why everything had gone so badly wrong, and how to heal the wounds I had left.

  The rest of the team knew enough now to run for cover, with a backup if they were caught. After the Martians had finished my execution, they would be able to continue the longer mission on their own. My part, at long last, would be done, but the team had a future with work to do. Our days of incubation and inaction were nearly over.

  It was a simple plan and the Path was incomplete, as it had to be so early in the operation. The biggest gap was that Martians had not yet claimed legal jurisdiction over the Earth and Moon. I was sure they would, once Mars itself was secure, but the whole plan depended upon them making that claim. Nor had they occupied the earth stations, but the incoming fleet would do that with a certainty. I had no idea how we would get to the Earth or where we would go. These kinds of details always take work but resolve themselves in time.

  I realized with a heart-stopping lurch that I could only make this plan work if I knew Leilani was either safe or dead of natural causes. If she was captured, I would do anything the Martians demanded, ANYTHING, and the Earth would plunge into a new dark age. If the Martians killed her, I was not sure I could force myself to forgive them. If I could not forgive them, I would not be able to endure the trial. I would fight to avenge her murder, and the Earth would be dragged to its destruction. It was not rational, it was deeply selfish, but I knew it was true. Ensuring that she was safe was a required Step along the Path, a flaming, golden brick of necessity.

  Slowly I willed myself back into calmness. Everyone knew I loved her – the Soiree had ensured that. I had already asked Raul to keep Leilani safe. Evgenia had heard that request. I would ask all the others as well. I could only hope they would understand the depth of the imperative. A threat to Leilani was a threat to my entire universe, and by extension a threat to theirs, in a way that was not the least bit mystical.

  I would explain it to them. They would keep Leilani safe. I would be free to save Mars from itself, and in the process to save the Earth. The plan would work. It had to.

  I needed a distraction, so I asked Tran to undo me. That used a few minutes and left me hungry and restless. I headed first for the washroom, grateful that I was in low-G and would not fall over while I worked off the effects of the paralysis. I was still hungry, but had missed my exercise the previous day, so I headed next to the exercise room and worked myself for an hour. Sergei came in, but Leilani came with him, so the discussion had to wait. I finished off and requested breakfast, then went back to our room. Everyone was up by then, including all the doctors, and keeping Leilani safe was not a topic I wanted to address with a lecture or a group discussion.

&n
bsp; Suddenly, I was missing the MI office. I really needed a small private room for such confidential discussions. A place where ultra-secret conversations would not be recorded, or if recorded would not be understood. There was a small jingling ring inside my head. Everyone else had been attacked by emojis because they had private comm channels, most of which were encrypted. I had been free because I had none, but now I had a filter that would keep any channel clean. Out loud I asked if everyone had installed the new filter yet and was not surprised to hear a chorus of yeses.

  I sent a quick request to the MI office to set up a private comm channel for the team with military grade encryption. The answer came back that things were quiet now, but were expected to pick up within the hour, so if I could come up immediately it would be helpful. I told everyone to look lively because rumour had it that life would become exciting within the hour and I wanted a report as soon as I got back. Then I headed out the door, requesting an escort to the MI office.

  No wonder everyone but me had private comm channels. They were easy to set up, given a list of members and a seed for the quantum key that I generated from the second letter in the name of every place I had worked on Mars, ignoring the regional prefix. It was a long key because I had worked in a lot of places in my career as the Agent, Assassin, and Ghost, but fortunately it was only needed to initialize the encryption, after which the quantum channel would be used to create an unbreakable key for each message. I added everyone on the team, excluding Molongo who had largely withdrawn from our daily operations. Thinking of our discussions yesterday, I added Begum, Morris, and Singh. If they objected I could easily remove them. In case of an accident, I designated Leilani and Vishnuram as co-owners of the channel with rights to make changes. I would have to discuss both lists with the team.

  As we worked, I asked in an offhand manner if the operator had been able to attend Begum’s promotion party. He said, yes, but it was the saddest promotion party he had ever attended. Begum had shown up with only two hours to spare. Stepping through the door, she had asked everyone to skip the orgy bit, because for the first time since joining the TDF it would have felt like a betrayal. She added that she was on sex suppressors until she and Raul were both free to join the fun.

  Instead of the usual cheering and lewd suggestions, her colleagues had made profound apologies for hazing her with rude nicknames for the ballad. They had not been fully aware of the horror inside the Manila Bay, since Begum had been the only Com officer to venture deep inside. Most of the other officers had stayed with the transports, hearing second-hand tales of nightmare from the marines that were easily dismissed as exaggeration. The doctors had sheltered them from the worst of the injured crew. They had misjudged conditions in the Manila Bay because of the timely and well-organized defense of the Mao, not recognizing that command on the stricken ship had been disabled by the emoji attack before the bug infestation overwhelmed the ship.

  They only realized how hard she had fallen for Raul when she yelled at them and fled the room in tears. She had already told them, of course, but was so over-the-top after one day together that they had thought it a joke.

  After her outburst, they had spoken again with the marines who had been gone with them. They finally understood why the marines had insisted on the honour guards, in defiance of Cap Wang’s orders. Initially, the marines who accompanied Raul and Begum on the Manila Bay had proposed that the two of them needed the honour, but the marines who accompanied the Banshees on the Deng knew that they had all been critically involved, even the ones who waited on the Mao. The explosion of the Manila Bay had elevated the honour from “well deserved” to “absolutely imperative.” I warned him that Begum had missed the point, along with almost everyone else.

  He nodded solemnly. They had not mentioned it to Begum, but they were trying to think of a way to explain the honour guards to Cap Wang, now the Acting Admiral and far too busy to listen to backtalk on a disciplinary matter. He thought the best approach might be to rewrite the ballad, doing it properly this time, with Admiral Wang as the target audience.

  He was ashamed to admit that he had suggested the nickname Piggy, after the not-quite heroic Pig in the Chinese classic novel Journey to the West, with Raul in the role of Monkey and myself in the background as the well-intentioned but ineffectual Sanzang.

  He solemnly promised that he would be more respectful next time. The officers would ask the marines to help in the composition. It might be fifty years before the security classification would expire and the ballad could be performed in public. No matter. If Wang listened and revoked the disciplinary records, the song would have done its work.

  He sighed and returned to the promotion party. Begum had accepted their apologies, and they had spent a while in a group cry-and-hug. They spent the rest of the time reminiscing about good times and bad, battles fought, friends lost. They worried a lot about the near future. There were more tears and many regrets for opportunities missed. She had been passed around continuously for more hugs and kisses, but they postponed the swap of uniforms to the very end, to prevent the new clothes from becoming soiled.

  He finished off with the comment, “You know, we all tried to pair up with Begum. She is the best – witty, smart, kind, quick-thinking, calm under fire, cute as anything, and an utter dear – but she thinks of us as brothers and sisters, not as life mates. I sure hope this Raul fellow measures up, or he will have to answer to the whole crew.”

  But then he paused and suggested I had better get back to my quarters because things were heating up already. I ran back to our room beside the guards.

  As I stepped through the door, the assembled team whirled around. Raul declared, “Good. You are back. Begum is about to fight a battle!”

  I felt the world skew sideways. “Tell me we are not already in a shooting war!”

  “Almost,” he said, “Audio on channel 2879, visuals up here, although at this distance everything looks like dots.”

  “What has happened.”

  “Right after you went to sleep, the Cap started to broadcast an appeal for help from every ship in the TDF. The earth stations picked it up over the next half hour, as though they were just bringing their systems online again. As you probably expect, the Magellan and Kamehameha were the last to respond, and they added that their damage was minimal so the other stations took priority. Immediately after that, the Martian fleet fired up their ion drives. They were already accelerating, moving towards the normal flight lanes, but with no visible mercury emissions. I would have found that perplexing before I learned about the Fairy Dust. I did a check and all the ships that had been at the earth stations used an ion drive to leave port, then shut it off as they started the long outbound coast. Their maneuvers since then have been mercury-silent, probably using a rail-gun drive like the Fairy Dust, until just a few minutes ago.

  “The Stingray came in far south of the Martian Fleet and assumed its position near the Gandhi, but the Hammerhead took a couple of additional hours to prepare before moving out. I looked at Begum’s requested crew assignments. She kept all the engs, no matter how unstable, and took two of our spare laser targeting pods. It seems that all but one of the pods on the Hammerhead were destroyed by the bugs, but the racks that hold them are only glued, not corroded. The comm antennae are similarly glued. The missiles and rail guns are hopeless, but she thought she could get one fully functional comm antenna with a partially functional spare, and two fully working lasers in place before they had to move. I will bet every one of the engs were up front, cleaning like mad.

  “As the Martians got closer, the Mao began to send friendly messages welcoming them as saviours and worthy representatives of their world. It looks like one each is going to the Magellan and Kamehameha. All the rest are en route to the other stations. The Port Authorities on the other four stations are advising that only two berths are operational for freighters, and one for transports, all on the north-south axis.

  “All the TDF ships are sending a transport to the
nearest station, if they have one in working order, probably crowded beyond capacity with marines in powered armour with full weapon racks. And probably a bunch of hole-patching equipment.

  “I was surprised to hear how often they need hole-patching tools on warships fighting pirates. It seems that asteroid mines produce a lot of loose debris, and often skimp on clean-up. Warships approach at very high speeds and get punctured by pebbles that should never have been released into space. I suppose some of the pirates that blew themselves up without an apparent reason might have encountered the same debris.

  “Anyways, everything looked fine until the Hammerhead requested permission from the Port Authorities on the Gandhi to depart for the Moon, on a course far north of the incoming ships. One of the Martian ships broke formation and has been racing to get close enough to fire missiles at the Hammerhead that would not just get picked off by rail guns and lasers. They are claiming for the Novosibirsk Aryans the glory of striking the first blow against the Ghost Followers, so they clearly do not know about Mindy’s attack.

  “If they follow a standard pattern, they will fire one armoured missile that will blow just outside effective laser range to force us to pull in our own weapons and antennae. A second volley can then get close enough to do damage. They will have to fire several volleys to draw down the capacitors that power the Hammerhead’s lasers, and a FAS can recharge faster than any other class of ship in the TDF. Our lasers have also improved their power by a factor of ten and their beam divergence by a factor of two since the Incursion. I wonder if they realize that?

  “Begum herself called to the attackers – I recognized her voice – pleading with them to break off. You can check; her actual words in Mandarin were ‘Comrades, why are you attacking? Did you not hear that the Mao is welcoming you as friends?’ I thought that was a nice touch, given that the new Emperor has declared his dynasty is the Mao, and that the ancient chairman used comrade as his favourite form of address.