Angel of Destruction

by Susan R. Matthews

  Of course not, Kazmer thought. The fence’s contact was here, and he was responsible for getting the goods to the drop site, and that meant Anglace. Not Isener. But the receiving officer didn’t know that. What she apparently did know provided no particular comfort, unfortunately.

  “This is system-wide, but only for ships of your weight class. There’s been more trouble at Port Charid, and the mercantile corporations are screaming for Fleet support.”

  Bad. Very bad. “I heard some gossip at Shilling,” Kazmer admitted, speaking slowly, hoping to encourage the receiving officer to talk. “A lot of inventory wastage going on at Port Charid. Some words about Langsariks, but that doesn’t make sense — where would they even get ships?”

  The shore patrol didn’t seem to be in any particular hurry to rush him to quarantine, so it couldn’t be an issue of any real urgency. He might have to pay off the Port Authority; that was going to be hard to manage with Fleet personnel on the premises. But he could still get through this all right.

  The receiving officer shook her head with evident relish for her role as the source of sensational information. “It’s not inventory wastage they’re yelling about. There was a raid at Port Charid a few days ago; they tortured half the crew and merely murdered the rest. Trashed the station’s warehouse storage with high-energy impact rounds. Battle cannon. Where they’ve been hiding those all this time is anyone’s guess.”

  Kazmer stood silent, stunned.

  They’d only been on vector for a few days. Had someone mounted another raid after the Tyrell job?

  Because she couldn’t be talking about the Tyrell Yards. She couldn’t be. There had been an inside man. Nobody had been tortured, that was why the Langsariks had planted an inside man, to get the information without resorting to uncertain and excessive means. They had all been alive when the freighter had left.

  “That’s, er, not common knowledge, pilot,” one of the shore patrol troops said, a little apologetically. “We’d appreciate it if you didn’t disclose any of the details to your people. Let’s get you to quarantine; there’s cots and food, and it’ll only be half a day.”

  It couldn’t have been the Tyrell raid.

  And if they suspected him, what point would there be in asking for his cooperative silence?

  Nodding politely to take leave of the receiving officer, Kazmer turned from her desk and went with two of the armed troops.

  Were they actually covering him?

  Or were they armed for show?

  It made no real difference. He couldn’t afford to try for a break. They’d have him within moments; and an attempt to flee was as good as a sworn admission of wrongdoing, whether it was theft or killing.

  He’d done nothing wrong . . . or nothing so wrong as that.

  He was innocent of any act of murder.

  And it was entirely beyond belief that Hilton Shires could be responsible for the torture, let alone the murder, of disarmed and helpless warehouse staff.

  Impossible.

  But if Fleet started to ask questions . . . if they were implicated, howsoever unfairly, in murder, and the Bench authorized preliminary inquiry, and there was enough incriminating evidence to convince someone to implement the Question —

  He couldn’t protect Hilton under torture.

  Kazmer had no illusions about the power of his own will in opposition to all of the tools and tricks that a Fleet Inquisitor had at command, and everyone had heard about the range of atrocity permitted an Inquisitor; there had been that Tenth Level Command Termination. Koscuisko. Kazmer had remembered the name of the Inquisitor, because a Sarvaw had good reason to be mindful of all of the descendants of Chuvishka Kospodar.

  He had to do something.

  But the first thing that he had, to do was wait, because this would all pass over. It had to. There was no connection between the freighter’s cargo and any murders. Fleet would let them go.

  There could be some penalty for the contraband they’d carried from Tyrell, but no more than that, and a good chance of getting off lightly even on that heading, since Fleet’s interests were focused on the search for murderers. Not mere pirates.

  Yes.

  That was right.

  Fleet had much more immediate concerns than one small-time operator from Port Charid, if there were murderers at large.

  Chapter Four

  Walton Agenis woke to the sounds of conversation in the house, an unfamiliar sensation — she was accustomed to quiet — and an unfamiliar voice. No, a familiar voice, but distantly so; coming from the kitchen, coupled with that of her niece.

  What, had Kazmer Daigule come to the front door, as Modice had admonished him to do?

  It wasn’t Daigule’s voice. It was deeper and lighter at the same time, lacking the reedy note of resigned weariness that gave everything the Sarvaw said its own characteristic wry humor. So Modice had another gentleman caller.

  Walton sighed and rose, belting her robe around her, working her bare toes into her scuffs while she waited for her head to clear of sleep. She couldn’t belt her robe around her waist, not really; because she’d never had much of a waist to belt anything around, being more or less all of one line from her shoulders to her hips with a miscellaneous diversion or two.

  She secured the robe’s ties around her middle instead and went out to find out who was courting Modice now, at this early hour of the morning.

  The voices were coming from the kitchen, and Walton could smell the grain soup cooking — Langsarik breakfast, grain soup with shaved meat. Once it had been a fighting ration, easy to cook, easy to eat, easy to digest; now it was just daily fare. They’d lost so much: or they’d given it away, and they’d given it away on persuasion from the man who was sitting in the kitchen with Modice, peeling a dish of gourds for a porridge.

  Garol Vogel.

  Jurisdiction Bench intelligence specialist, and the negotiator who had secured the amnesty responsible for the Langsarik settlement at Port Charid.

  Vogel rose hastily to his feet as Walton entered the room, snatching his old campaign hat off his knee to make a precise salute. Hat in hand. Well, of course, hat on head was impossibly incorrect, in a kitchen. For a moment Walton felt embarrassment on account of her rather worn robe; but Vogel’s own jacket had seen better days, too, so she put it out of her mind.

  “Flag Captain Agenis.” It was oddly formal of him to call her that; she had no fleet to command, and she didn’t know what the land-based equivalent of a space fleet commander might be. Militarization had come late to the Langsariks, their fleet originally nothing more than a well-ordered commercial enterprise with government oversight. She’d always thought that helped to explain their success as commerce raiders: their strong commercial foundation. “I’m sorry to come unannounced, Captain, and so early in the morning. It’s important that I meet with you. Should I come back later?”

  Her nightdress embarrassed him, robe and all. That was funny. If he was embarrassed by her nightdress, the sight of the kerchief that Daigule had given Modice would probably make him faint outright. It was worth a try.

  “Be seated, Specialist, it’s all right. Has Modice given you soup?”

  Probably not, because the grain soup was still cooking. Vogel declined to sit down. “With respect, ma’am. I wouldn’t have come this early at all if it hadn’t been business. You might want to hear what I have to say before you extend your hospitality, and I don’t want to share your meal under false pretenses.”

  He was a queer duck, was Vogel; she’d learned that much about him during the negotiation of the amnesty settlement. He slept on floors, ate when he remembered that he was hungry, and at one memorable meeting she had seen him rinse a drafting brush in his tea — and then drink his tea, having apparently forgotten that he’d rinsed his drafting brush in it.

  And yet on certain forms and protocols he was absolutely formal and excruciatingly diffident.

  “Vogel, we have a past relationship with you, and I accept that you speak f
or the Bench and not for yourself. Therefore, sit down and take grain soup on your behalf, and not that of the Bench. I grant hospitality to you, not to your Brief.”

  Now it would be rude of him to decline, so he accepted. He rolled his cap into a cylinder and thrust it deep into the left-hand pocket of his jacket before he sat back down to resume peeling gourds for Modice.

  “Thank you, ma’am. Most gracious.”

  Modice set the morning tea on the table, with syrup and ground spice-bark to sprinkle on top. She could be a discreet little soul, Modice. Now that Walton was awake and on line Modice concentrated on breakfast, quiet, efficient, and as much in the background as she could manage.

  Walton let her morning tea sharpen her consciousness, drinking in silence as Vogel peeled vegetables. She thought she could guess why he might have come. He’d wait for her to open the talks, though, his tact as much personal as professional; so once Walton felt a little more alert she fired the opening round.

  “What business brings you out to the settlement, then? Periodic status check, maybe.”

  But probably not. Vogel shook his head. He seemed a little more bald on top than he had been the last time she’d seen him, but his moustache was still thick and iron gray and showed no signs of thinning.

  “Special embassy, Flag Captain. Chilleau Judiciary sent me. Local area mercantile predation, concerns about the robustness of the amnesty.”

  Since this was what she’d suspected once she’d recovered from the surprise of seeing him, Walton had an answer at the ready. “As if Langsariks could raid warehouses in the Shawl from a settlement on Rikavie. We’d need transport, for a start. We haven’t got any.”

  She was almost glad he’d come with the issue; she’d been pondering the news and dreading the inevitable questions. No one had come right out and accused her of breaking faith — yet. Probably because people who were the least bit familiar with the Langsarik settlement had to realize how improbable the logistics were.

  Vogel tilted his head a bit to one side, presenting his case. “They’re small raids, but well mounted. Transport was stolen for the Okidan raid at least, so it could come from anywhere but has been coming from Port Charid. Never been more than two ships involved. So the thinking tends to be that if anybody could manage it, it’d be Langsariks, quarantine or no.”

  Walton frowned, and Modice set a dish of grain soup down in front of her. Plenty of pepper. It smelled very appetizing; Modice was a good cook.

  “I couldn’t so much as lay hands on a single freighter, Specialist. Not without someone noticing.” She’d only ever heard about single ships; where did “two ships” come from? “I could see a possibility that some of our young people might sneak into the occasional warehouse here at Port Charid. For creature comforts.”

  Vogel thanked Modice in a murmured aside for the dish she gave him. Modice smiled at him and took the dish of peeled vegetables and waste peelings away. Gazing at the surface of his dish of grain soup, Vogel replied to the food, with his eyes resolutely focused on the dish. Polite. Non-confrontational.

  “Freighters. And battle cannon. The pattern doesn’t exactly fit the Langsarik model, that’s clear from intelligence sources. But the Bench is responsible for the protection of property and the maintenance of good order, and the rule of Law.”

  “Battle cannon? That’s a good one.” Walton ate grain soup, thinking. Vogel had information she hadn’t heard yet, that much was now clear. “Where would I get battle cannon? Where would I hide battle cannon? If I had battle cannon, I certainly wouldn’t blow my cover on any given raid; I’d keep them safe until I decided I really needed them.”

  Vogel seemed to remember, suddenly, that it would be rude to leave his meal uneaten, and attacked the problem with his spoon, with a strange sort of convulsive thoughtfulness. Walton didn’t know whether Vogel’s focus was a strictly personal characteristic or one common to Bench intelligence specialists; she was just glad he’d remembered his soup before it got cold.

  If he’d come to court Modice, he would have tucked into it right away, in order to have the opportunity to compliment her cooking. So he had clearly gotten past the abstract sort of a crush he’d had on her.

  “Um. Good soup. Thank you, Modice.” But there was no particular weight to the phrase. Confirmed, then, Walton told herself: Vogel was polite as always, but he clearly had other things than her niece’s beauty on his mind. “I can’t answer that question, Flag Captain.”

  Question? Oh. About the battle cannon. Walton waited; Vogel spoke on.

  “But I’m not sure it matters. We have three issues here. There’s the apparent violation of amnesty.”

  He put a very careful weight on that word, apparent. Just enough to stress the hypothetical nature of the allegation without discounting the weight of the damning appearance.

  “Then there’s the Bench being pressured by the various big commercial interests with warehouses in the Shawl, along with other interests reluctant to invest, even at Chilleau Judiciary’s very persuasively phrased invitation, so long as the area is not secure. The Bench wants the commercial investment. Finally, somebody is out there robbing warehouses. Killing people.”

  All three issues were intimately related. She didn’t need Vogel to tell her that. “We may have been raiders, Bench specialist. We may have been good at it. But we were never murderers.”

  Had people been killed during Langsarik raids? Yes. She wasn’t going to deny it; she also didn’t need to explain to Vogel. They carried blood guilt, because people had died as a result of Langsarik actions; but it was not guilt for murders either premeditated or accepted as any sort of an acceptable concomitant to raiding. It had always been an unfortunate accident when it happened. They’d always done what they could to minimize the chances that people would get hurt, because it had never been blood that they’d wanted, but freedom. And survival.

  Now Vogel put the spoon down and met her gaze very directly. There was no accusation or deception in Vogel’s sharp gray-green eyes. “That’s as may be, Flag Captain. People are getting killed. There are capital crimes to account for. We don’t have very much freeboard here.”

  Always set his documents on reader, Vogel had. Shared information, full disclosure, no hidden agenda. Asking her to engage with him in partnership for the accomplishment of mutually beneficial goals: pacification, survival.

  Port Charid’s administration treated her very much like the only marginally trustworthy representative of a defeated and criminal people. They were forced to rely on her for head-count reports and policing the settlement, but it was strictly for lack of any other resources.

  Vogel was still negotiating with her as Flag Captain.

  “What do you need from me, Garol?”

  “Couple things. Thank you for asking.”

  Coming from almost anyone else, she would have sneered at the courtesy or simply ignored it. Anyone else, and it would have been meaningless; but Vogel meant it. Vogel was for real.

  Vogel was talking; Modice was washing dishes, quietly, in the background. “Not to be insulting, Flag Captain. But are we clear on what happens if Langsariks are found to be violating the terms of the amnesty agreement?”

  Yes. They were very clear. “Violation in substance of the amnesty agreement nullifies the Bench’s suspension of prosecution. Execution for some of us. The Bond for any of our young people who test out.” And Langsariks would test out well for enslavement under governor, Walton was uncomfortably sure of it.

  It took a person with character, ability, and unusual psychological resilience to qualify for the Bench’s most horrible punishment, the living death of enslavement as a Security bond-involuntary, conditioned to obey or suffer hugely disproportionate punishment from an internal governor, condemned to execute the orders of a Ship’s Inquisitor as the hands of a torturer.

  Langsariks could survive even that. Langsariks had what it took to make whatever sacrifices they had to make, in order to survive. “Penal colonies for everyo
ne else. Dispersal and death. Dissolution as a people and disenfranchisement for next of kin still living on Palaam.”

  The Langsarik pirates per se were not a large community; there were only about five thousand of them in total.

  But it was her community.

  Vogel nodded grimly. “The stakes are too high to risk any stratagems on either of our parts, Flag Captain. Before I go any further with this issue I’d like permission, to ask you up front, man to man. Just between us.”

  “Man to man,” was it? Walton knew what was coming. “All right. Ask away.”

  “Are you personally aware of anything going on within the Langsarik community that we need to know about that might have a bearing on the recent warehouse invasions. And have you any unexplained anomalies with your head-count and reconciliation reports.”

  Incriminate her own?

  Yes. If that was what it took to protect the community as a whole.

  Luckily for her she didn’t have to face sacrificing any of her people. “If I knew anything that would link any Langsarik to warehouse predation, I’d tell you, Vogel.”

  He would know that she was telling the truth; he’d as much as told her that her word was as good as her oath when he’d asked permission to ask the question. “But I don’t. So far as I know there isn’t anything going on. We’ve had the occasional anomaly — ” the Sarvaw mercantile pilot who had slipped through the fire-watch perimeter, for instance — “but nothing that might enable any plots. And I have no idea where we could lay hands on a freighter, let alone a battle cannon, not with what we have to work with here.”

  Modice had left the kitchen as Walton spoke; now she came back again, standing beside Walton where she sat, with her hands folded underneath the apron she’d put on to do the dishes. Modice was very white in the face.

  Vogel noticed.

  “Are you all right, pretty lady?” Vogel asked, gently; and Modice drew her hands out from underneath her apron. She had something in one hand.

  It was the scarf that Kazmer Daigule had given her, the night he’d turned up at Modice’s window.