“March?” came Bishop’s voice as March joined the flow of pedestrians heading for the docking bays or their jobs at the station’s hydroponic facilities. “Can you hear me?”
“Clear as a bell,” said March.
“Captain March,” came Vigil’s voice next. “I have successfully synced to this communications channel. Quantum encryption is at the maximum level allowed by the available processing power. We should be able to communicate securely.”
“Why, March,” said Bishop. “You didn’t tell me your ship’s computer had such a charming voice. No wonder you had no need to seek out female companionship.”
March would have rolled his eyes, but he wanted to keep an eye on the crowds around him. “For God’s sake, Bishop. You can’t flirt with a pseudointelligence.”
“I take that as a challenge.”
“That’s been the downfall of a hundred spacefaring human civilizations since the discovery of hyperspace,” said March. “Some lonely fellow programs an artificial intelligence to flirt with him, and it goes berserk and wipes out all the organic life it can find.”
“Fortunately, I am a restaurant owner, not a software developer,” said Bishop.
“Well, thank God for that.”
The crowds remained heavy as March approached the cargo corridor outside of Bay 156. Several freighters had come in, and cargo handlers unloaded and loaded crates and barrels and pallets of goods, assisted by drones. March wove his way through the crowds and came to Bay 156’s airlock. Four men in the jumpsuits of Ronstadt Private Security Corporation stood there, sidearms holstered at their belts, their faces locked in a scowl as they glared at everyone in sight.
“What’s your business here, friend?” said one of the security men.
March reached into his jacket, a flicker of amusement going through him as the Ronstadt men reached for their weapons. He produced one of the documents that he and Bishop had forged last night and handed it over. “Courier. Got a bonded and sealed thumb drive for one of the passengers on the Fisher.”
The security man looked at the paper identifying March as an official courier of the Royal Message Corporation, grunted, and handed it back. “Fine. You can wait in the bay. You got a breath mask?” March nodded and tapped the mask and goggles that hung from his belt. “You might need that. The atmosphere field sometimes cuts out during landings.”
March shrugged. “I’ve got my instructions. I’ll wait.”
“Suit yourself,” said the security man, jerking his head towards the airlock. “It’s your funeral.”
March walked through the airlock and into the cavernous bay without another word. Save for a few additional scorch marks on the stone from plasma bolts, there was no sign of yesterday’s fight with Lorre’s thugs. March and Bishop had restacked the crates before leaving the bay, and March checked them over. There was no one hiding within them or behind them, and the door to the service corridor was locked, the metal still scarred from a plasma bolt.
He did a complete circuit of the bay, checking everything, and climbed onto the service gantry, examining the integrity of the fuel lines and the other equipment. Everything seemed to be in working order, and he found no bombs or waiting traps. He then checked the atmosphere field generator and found it in better condition than he expected. Whatever Lorre had planned, it didn’t involve sabotaging Bay 156, or it was so subtle that March had missed it entirely.
No. March couldn’t second-guess himself. Too much of that and he would leave himself unable to act when the moment of crisis came. His brutal trainers among the Machinists had emphasized that no plan of battle survived contact with the enemy, and the ability to think flexibly and adapt was the hallmark of the successful warrior. His trainers had done their job well. Perhaps too well – March had been able to think so flexibly that he had left the Final Consciousness behind and defected to the Kingdom of Calaskar.
So he would simply have to keep his eyes open and react to stop whatever Lorre intended. March disliked the thought. In his experience, whoever took the lead and forced his enemy to react tended to win the fight.
Still, he had his own advantages. Vigil was monitoring from the Tiger, and all March needed to do was to get the Vindex twins, get them to his ship, and head for hyperspace. Bishop’s bribes had ensured that Ronstadt security personnel patrolled the cargo corridors from Bay 156 to the Tiger’s bay. March supposed it was possible that Lorre had bribed some of the security men, but March could take a number of them in a fight.
For now, though, he could do nothing but wait, so wait he did.
March positioned himself in the corner, not far from the sealed door to the access corridor, and waited. He had spent a large amount of his life waiting, both in his years as an Iron Hand and since he had joined the Silent Order, and he was good at it. His mind sorted through his plans in an orderly fashion, while he stressed and relaxed the muscles of his leg and his arm of flesh in a systematic way, not enough to induce muscle fatigue but enough to keep the muscles from getting stiff.
About an hour later, an alarm began blaring, the red warning light flashing over the airlock door. March looked up towards the roof of the landing pit and saw the blaze of ten thousand stars overhead.
Then something blocked out the stars, something big and metallic with running lights along the side.
“Here we go, Jack,” came Bishop’s voice in his ear. “The Fisher is beginning its final approach to the station. ETA for docking in three minutes.”
“Any sign of attackers?” said March, reaching for his belt and drawing his breath mask and goggles over his face.
“Negative, Captain,” said Vigil.
“There are only five other ships outside the station,” said Bishop. “Three ore freighters, a privateer departing with what is probably a falsified flight plan, and an ice miner heading to harvest some water from the rings of one of the gas giants in the outer system.”
“What about that privateer?” said March, watching the bulk of the Fisher maneuver overhead. Sometimes passenger liners looked sleek and streamlined. The Fisher, alas, looked like a stack of cargo containers welded together in a vaguely rectangular shape. No wonder the owners had to supplement their incomes by smuggling. “If I was going to blow up the Fisher, I would use a privateer.”
“I would, too, and it’s a heavily armed craft,” said Bishop, “but your computer says the privateer’s vector is all wrong.”
“It is, Captain March,” said Vigil. “The other craft are not well-armed enough to attack the Fisher before it reaches Rustbelt Station.”
“What about the station’s weapon systems?” said March.
“Everything looks green,” said Bishop. “All of the systems are on standby, and none of the warheads or beam emitters are even armed yet.”
“All right,” said March. “So we can assume that Lorre isn’t going to shoot down the Fisher before it docks. He’s going to let it land. Whatever he’s got planned, it’s going to happen between here and the Tiger.”
“There are no signs of anomalous or suspicious activity in the Tiger’s landing bay,” said Vigil.
“Hell,” said March. He wanted to scratch his jaw, but the mask made that impossible. “Suppose it would be too much to hope for something obvious. But knowing Lorre, anything obvious would be a distraction. Constantine, keep an eye on the security cameras from here to Bay 93.”
“There aren’t many,” said Bishop, “and some of them are off-line.”
“Better than nothing,” said March, and then a gale of wind drowned out his words.
The Fisher was coming in for a landing, disrupting the atmosphere barrier as it descended. March stepped to the side, gripped the doorframe of the service corridor door with his metal arm, and anchored himself there, the wind tugging at his jacket as the decrepit liner maneuvered into the bay. The Fisher extended its landing struts and landed with a thump that made the stone floor vibrate.
March waited as the Fisher’s pilot finished the landing pr
ocedures, no doubt preparing a bribe for Heitz in the process. Two ramps opened on the bottom of the craft, a ventral one for passengers, and a wider one at the stern for cargo. The airlock door to the cargo corridor hissed open, and both cargo handlers and drones came into the bay, heading for the ramp at the stern of the ship.
Passengers began to disembark from the dorsal ramp, and March waited, drifting closer to ramp as he did. In the increasing chaos of the crowd, no one paid any attention to him, but the flood of cargo handlers and drones provided ample cover for any assassins. He grimaced, pulled off his breath mask and goggles, and waited, scanning the passengers. Most of the passengers were young and middle-aged men, either young men coming to the outer reaches to find their fortunes or middle-aged men to rebuild their lives after some disaster. Very few women and children, which ought to make it all the easier to spot Roanna Vindex and her brother. March took another look around the crowd, trying to find any assassins or attackers in their midst, but nothing caught his eye.
He turned his head again and saw Lady Roanna Vindex descend from the ramp.
March had thought her picture beautiful, but the picture had not done her justice. Her hair was thick and black, her eyes bright and blue, her features strong and sharp. She wore a loose travel jumpsuit of dark blue, the sort that could be sealed against a vacuum in the event of a hull breach, but even the baggy garment could not completely hide the curves of the body beneath it. To his great annoyance, March found her attractive, almost compellingly so. He disliked the feeling since it could interfere with his mission.
Because he was so focused upon Roanna, it took March’s brain a second to notice the obvious.
There was no sign of Thomas Vindex.
Censor had said that the twins were traveling together after Roanna had gone to get her brother away from the Machinist cell. A man walked alongside Roanna, speaking to her in a low voice, but March didn’t recognize him, and there had been no mention of him in Censor’s report. The man was older than Roanna but younger than March, fit and strong with close-cropped brown hair and brown eyes in a shaven face. Everything about him – his stance, his posture, the way he gestured as he spoke with Roanna - screamed that he was an officer of the Royal Calaskaran Navy. Probably a junior officer.
So what was Lady Roanna doing traveling with a junior officer instead of her brother?
“Constantine,” said March. “You see Lady Roanna?”
“That I do,” said Bishop. “Fine looking woman, isn’t she?”
“You see Lord Thomas?” said March.
“No, I don’t,” said Bishop. “I don’t recognize the man with her, either.”
“Vigil?” said March.
“I ran facial recognition algorithms based on available data,” said Vigil. “Based on camera footage, I calculate a ninety-eight percent chance Lord Thomas Vindex is not visible on our camera feeds.”
“Complications,” said Bishop, voice grim.
“Hell,” said March. “All right. I’m going to make contact. Keep an eye out.”
He walked through the crowd, heading straight for Roanna and her companion. Roanna did not notice him approaching. The young man did, and he straightened up, putting himself between March and Roanna. The noblewoman blinked in surprise, and her blue eyes fell on March with an intensity that he did not like.
“Whatever you’re selling, we’re not interested,” said the man. He even sounded like a crewer of the Royal Calaskaran Navy, with the same crisp, precise voice the drill sergeants beat into their charges.
“Not selling anything,” said March. “I need to talk to you about something urgent.”
“No,” said the man.
“Sam,” said Roanna, touching his arm. Sam subsided at once. “Who are you, sir, and what do you want?”
March glanced around the crowds. “Not here. I bet you don’t want anyone to hear what I have to say.”
“This is a risk, my lady,” said Sam.
“Obviously,” said Roanna with a hint of asperity. “When I have done anything else for the last two months? But there is no harm in talking. We might learn something useful.”
“Very well,” said Sam. Like March, he wore a dark jacket over his jumpsuit, and he opened it just enough to let March see the shoulder holster under his arm. “But we don’t want any trouble.”
March could have killed them both before Sam’s hand had gotten anywhere near the gun.
“I’m not fond of trouble myself,” said March. “Over here, please.”
He jerked his head towards the base of the service gantry, and Roanna and Sam followed him. March noticed how confidently Roanna walked, just as he noticed the pleasing sway of her hips beneath the jumpsuit. He also observed how Sam hovered over her like a protective shadow, his scowl never wavering as he watched March. Clearly, he had concluded that March was dangerous – which was a point in his favor, come to think of it.
“I’ll level with you,” said March once they were out of earshot of the other passengers. “My name’s Jack March. I’m a privateer with a light freighter, and Lord Sebastian Vindex hired me to pick up his two youngest kids and get them off this rock and to Antioch Station.”
“Lord Sebastian hired you to kidnap Lady Roanna, then?” said Sam, his hand twitching towards the gun beneath his jacket.
“No,” said March. “He hired me to take Lord Thomas and Lady Roanna to Antioch Station aboard my ship. He didn’t tell me the whole story. Said there was trouble and he wanted it kept quiet, and he pays well enough, so I didn’t argue. Anyway, my ship is a short distance from here. Once Lord Thomas disembarks, we can all head there and leave at once.” He decided to play a hunch. “Your boyfriend can come, too.”
Roanna only blinked, but Sam flinched as if March had slapped him, his face reddening a little.
“Lieutenant Samuel Heath is my bodyguard, Captain March,” said Roanna with perfect calm. “I fear you have misinterpreted the nature of our relationship.”
To judge from Heath’s expression, March didn’t think he was the only one.
“I don’t spend much time around nobles,” said March. “But I know you’re in danger, and I know that the sooner you leave Rustbelt Station, the better. As soon as Lord Thomas joins us, I can take all of you to Antioch Station immediately.”
Roanna drew herself up, her cool expression turning imperious. “Captain March, you overstep yourself. I am at Rustbelt Station entirely by my own decision, and I will remain here for at least three days, probably more. Once I have completed my business, you can then take me to Antioch Station at my leisure, but do not presume to give me orders.”
March stared at her. The cool mask remained in place, but he saw the tightness around her eyes, the pulsing vein in her throat.
“You’re in trouble,” he said.
“Sir, you presume…” she started.
“You’re in trouble,” he said, his suspicion hardening into certainty. “And you don’t know where your brother is.”
Roanna said nothing. For a moment the mask cracked, and beneath the hauteur of a Calaskaran noble, he saw a terrified young woman.
Or she was an excellent actress.
“Not…presently,” said Roanna.
“My lady,” said Heath.
“I know where he is going to be in three days,” said Roanna. “Which is the essence of the problem.”
“We cannot trust this man, my lady,” said Heath, glaring at March. “He could be working for…our enemies.”
“The Machinists, you mean?” said March, and a little twitch went through Roanna, while Heath’s scowl hardened. “I know your brother got himself involved with some bad people. I know you went to get him out once he came to his senses. And I know the Machinists want you dead for it.”
“You’re very well informed, Captain March,” said Heath.
“Yup,” said March. “So you’re in trouble.”
“Why would you bother yourself with my troubles?” said Roanna.
“Because I
don’t get paid unless you and your brother get to Antioch Station,” said March.
Roanna laughed a little. “Clarity of purpose is a fine thing.”
“What can you do to help us?” said Heath. His eyes were still narrow, but he hadn’t pulled Roanna away.
“For one, I have a ship,” said March. “For another, if your brother is in trouble, I have a lot of experience with trouble. Might be able to get him out of it.”
“I don’t trust you, Captain March,” said Heath.
“Of course you shouldn’t,” said March. “Trust isn’t necessary. Let’s go to a neutral location and talk.” He would have preferred to have gotten Roanna onto his ship, but he could see there was no way he could talk Roanna and her bodyguard into that. “Then we’ll see if I can help with your trouble.”
“Very well,” said Roanna. “We…”
“My lady,” said Heath. “This is a mistake.”
“Maybe,” said Roanna, “but we have to take some risks, Sam. Captain March is not incorrect. We have indeed found trouble, and we will need help dealing with it. You have a location in mind, Captain March?”
“Friend of mine owns a restaurant,” said March. “He won’t mind some visitors.”
“A friend?” said Heath. “Yes, and I’m sure this friend of yours isn’t a slaver or a pirate or some other lowlife.”
Bishop laughed in March’s earpiece. “Charming young man.”
“If he was a lowlife, he wouldn’t own a restaurant,” said March.
Heath’s scowl did not waver. “If…”
“Enough,” said Roanna, her voice quiet. “Very well, Captain March. We shall put ourselves in your hands. Please lead the way.”
“Right,” said March. “Follow me. Keep your eyes open.”
“You’re expecting trouble?” said Heath.
“Always,” said March. “This way, please.”
He walked across the bay, joining the last of the crowds leaving the Fisher. Fortunately, most of the passengers had disembarked, and the flood of people had drained away, leaving only a few stragglers. March stepped into the cargo corridor and looked around. A steady stream of cargo drones rolled away from the Fisher, carrying the ship’s cargo to its destinations on the station. The Ronstadt men stood the entrance to the bay, scowling at everything in sight. Nothing seemed amiss, so March turned, intending to lead Roanna and Heath to the Emperor’s Rest.
Silent Order: Iron Hand Page 6
