Angel of Destruction

by Susan R. Matthews

  The voice at the other end sounded a little surprised, but seemed to be recovering. “He’s a new man, Bench specialist, here this morning I believe. It shall be done. When may I tell the Factor to expect you, sir?”

  Don’t. It’s better if he doesn’t expect me. Garol resisted the temptation. He’d already lost the advantage of surprise anyway. As if he needed surprise when he was just giving an in-briefing, not probing for information.

  Madlev would be expecting some questions.

  Best to get them out of the way up front.

  “Give me an hour. I’ll be seeing you. Thanks for making the time.”

  When Garol Vogel walked into Factor Madlev’s office — shaven and suited in uniform dress, and exact to the hour — he was not entirely surprised to find Jils Ivers waiting for him, with a documents case in one hand and a face that spoke code. She had something interesting, then. She was a fast worker.

  Garol was surprised to see Fisner Feraltz there as well — the sole survivor of the raid on the Okidan Yards, the man he’d interviewed in the private hospital at Nisherre. Feraltz didn’t look much recovered to Garol; he was still braced from head to foot on his right side. Hadn’t been doing his physical therapy, Garol concluded. Feraltz bowed a little stiffly in response to Garol’s nod of greeting, but there was no other way to move in all that bracing but stiffly.

  Factor Madlev was a big man whose face seemed fractionally too large for his head, even with his very full beard taken into account; but there was no faulting his enthusiasm, or his manners. Now that Garol had given Feraltz the nod, Madlev came forward to meet Garol with hearty goodwill, offering a greeting that seemed perfectly genuine.

  “Bench specialist Vogel. An honor, sir. I’m Shiron Madlev, Factor Madlev, people call me Uncle. Or, er, Factor. You’ve met my foreman, I think? Welcome to Port Charid; we are very glad to see you.”

  “Pleasure to be here. Yes, in fact, I had a talk with Feraltz before he was released from hospital. Good to see you on the road to recovery, Feraltz.”

  Garol returned the Factor’s eager embrace with one of moderate warmth, not entirely comfortable with Madlev’s effusions of joy. “The Bench is deeply concerned about recent events in Rikavie, Factor Madlev, and we’ll do our best to get to the bottom of the problem. I see my second has anticipated me, however.”

  No, she’d come because she knew he’d come here as soon as he got back from the settlement. The rental company’s locator on the speed machine would have told her when that had happened. She wasn’t supposed to be able to read the machine’s locator, it was private information, after all. Proprietary to the rental company. But rank had its privileges; also its problems, inconveniences, headaches, warts, and the occasional lethal surprise.

  “Yes, honored by two such visits, and on the same morning. Please. Be seated. Can I offer?”

  Offer what? Offer anything. It was a subtle lure, equally receptive to requests for money or drugs as bean tea or cavene. Garol discarded the cynical reflection as uncalled-for, and settled himself. Feraltz simply leaned up against the Factor’s desk, keeping to the background, resting his right leg; no sitting down in that medical web, or at least no sitting down in any chair with arms. No room.

  “You’re very kind.” Garol had eaten breakfast already, a big bowl full of Modice Agenis’s grain soup. Not that it was anyone’s business. “Nothing for me, thanks. Just a moment or two of your time. The intelligence reports contain no anomalies in the head-count and reconciliation reports, yet rumor insists that Langsariks are responsible for recent raids in the Shawl of Rikavie.”

  Madlev shrugged with a smile, as impervious to Garol’s lure as Garol to his. “Bench specialist. We have so few resources. What can I tell you? We have no choice but to rely on the Langsariks themselves, for self-policing.”

  Madlev was a little too big for his chair, which could barely contain the span of his broad thighs. Broad powerful, not broad fleshy, but the effect was a little ludicrous all the same; it reminded Garol of a grown man trying to make use of a child’s seat, for want of anything more appropriately sized.

  “Quite so. Very true.” Madlev wasn’t in a very expansive mood, it seemed; but it was hard to believe that Port security wouldn’t have caught on by now, if something was going on. If. “But you do periodic spot checks, I understand. And there haven’t been any problems there?”

  The Bench had put the Langsariks here at Port Charid, but hadn’t stationed any police resources to monitor them — that was up to the Port Authority. As far as the Bench was concerned the ban on transport was all that had been needed to ensure that Langsariks stayed here. Port Charid was responsible for overseeing that ban; how did Port Charid explain the apparent access of Langsarik raiders to hulls on which to raid?

  Madlev nodded. “That’s right, Specialist Vogel. We do unannounced spot checks three times a week, and we haven’t found anyone missing yet.” Madlev’s response was ready and complete enough, but Garol thought there was a hint of defensiveness there all the same. “There have been one or two minor discrepancies, but all explained to my complete satisfaction. No transport gone missing from Port Charid either, and I think we’d notice, Bench specialist. They’re good. If it’s true what they say, of course, and there’s no proof. Is there?”

  No help there, in other words. Walton Agenis had claimed she didn’t know where she’d find a freighter; Factor Madlev apparently had no insight on the question — none that he was willing to share, at least.

  “The public word is very much Langsarik,” Jils said, in a tone of mild — very mild — reproof. “It seems unnecessarily complicated to speculate on some unknown responsible party. They are Langsariks. And they are dangerous.”

  She was feeling Madlev out, Garol knew; repeating only what she’d heard said. Garol found her remarks a little distasteful, even so. Jils hadn’t forgiven the Langsariks for having been as successful as they were. She seemed to have no room in her heart for admiration for the discipline and sacrifice of a worthy foe; or she felt it as keenly as he did, but would not acknowledge any foe worthy that challenged the rule of Law, let alone as profitably as the Langsarik fleet had done.

  Madlev shrugged with his palms upturned in a gesture of conciliatory petition. “Of course everyone says Langsariks. They’re a defenseless target. When were Langsariks ever stupid, though? And what would endangering the settlement be, if not sheer idiocy? No. I don’t believe it.”

  It was interesting for Madlev to be so definite, with his foreman still visibly marked by injuries sustained in the Okidan raid. Feraltz didn’t seem to find Madlev’s insistence distasteful, even so. That was right: Feraltz’s story had been that the raiders couldn’t be proved to be Langsariks. Feraltz was on the Langsarik side, at least as far as sympathy went.

  “We’ll get it straightened out, Factor Madlev. That’s what we’re here for. Though I do have a personal request to make, as well.”

  “Yes, anything.” Factor Madlev didn’t really have much room to lean forward in his chair; his legs were too long for its height, so that leaning forward looked more awkward than sincere. He seemed to know that. “Office space. Local transport. Communications links; dinner. Anything.”

  All of which Garol could arrange just as well or better for himself, but there was no advantage to be gained by gratuitous rudeness. “You have a Langsarik in the warehouse. Hilton Shires.” He had mentioned wanting to see Hilton when he’d made this appointment; had Madlev been told? “I have a message from his aunt; I promised I’d pass it on.”

  That, and he wanted access to Shires.

  Garol was ready to believe that Agenis had told him the truth when she’d said that her hands were clean; she had more sense than to try to shield any guilty parties at the expense of the entire Langsarik settlement. That made the problem more complicated, but less stressful to Garol personally.

  The scarf was a signal of some sort, and Agenis had chosen to let Garol deliver it. Agenis wanted Hilton to cooperate, in o
ther words. Garol didn’t need to know the ins and outs of it. All he needed to know was who was raiding, where they were, and how to stop them before they brought horror and destruction down on the heads of innocent people.

  “Yes, of course. Immediately. Fisner?” Madlev pushed himself out of his too-small chair with evident relief; and Feraltz straightened up, clearly ready to receive instruction. Why didn’t Madlev have all of his chairs done large enough to suit his size? Garol wondered. Was it because of the negotiating advantage Madlev gained, when people were foolish enough to read physical awkwardness for a relative dullness of wit and failed to shield their strategies or secrets accordingly?

  Jils stood up, too.

  Feraltz moved awkwardly toward the door, talking as he went. “I’m still at a bit of a disadvantage, Bench specialist, so I’ve taken the liberty of asking Dalmoss to come and escort you. He’s one of our floor managers.” There was a man waiting in the Factor’s front room, newly arrived since Garol had gotten here; the man came forward at a signal from Feraltz.

  “Dalmoss will take you to Shires’s workstation, so you can talk privately if you like. Without publicity. And here’s Dalmoss. Dalmoss, these are Bench intelligence specialists Vogel and Ivers, looking for Hilton Shires.”

  Perhaps not exactly “looking for,” Garol thought. Wasn’t there an implied accusation or assumption of guilt of some sort there? He’d asked to see Shires, he hadn’t come looking for Shires to question him. And yet that could be what the foreman thought he was going to do; the foreman didn’t seem to like the idea, either.

  “If you’ll come with me, gentles. I’ll take it from here, sir. Shires? He’ll be in receiving reconciliation this morning, we can run him to earth there. As it were.”

  Maybe he was being oversensitive, Garol decided. To consistently decline to identify the Langsariks as guilty, and then imply howsoever indirectly that Shires was a person of interest for a Bench investigation — it would mean that Feraltz was a hypocrite, or seriously ambivalent, or so secure in his conviction of Langsarik innocence that he hadn’t given the phrase a second thought.

  Overreacting.

  Yes.

  As an Abstainer, Feraltz was probably avoiding the drugs he needed to manage his pain. That would more than cover any apparent inconsistencies in his communications. He was probably exhausted, and almost certainly distracted by the trouble his still-healing injuries were undoubtedly giving him.

  Yet something was ever so slightly off-kilter; and Garol didn’t know what it was.

  Oversensitive.

  He’d talk it all out with Jils, as soon as he’d concluded his errand for Walton Agenis.

  ###

  Hilton Shires set his mark to another line of audit code on the receiving report with a sense of accomplishment too thoroughly mixed with a sense of the ridiculous to be completely enjoyable.

  He was learning to do receiving reconciliation and inventory management. The acquisition of new skills was an intrinsic good. There was no telling when it might turn up suddenly useful to be able to audit a cargo in record time and present a fair report on wastage and dilapidation.

  But he was also Hilton Shires, a once-lieutenant in the Langsarik fleet that had exercised its own particular if not inimitable brand of wastage and dilapidations against cargoes permanently diverted from warehouses much like this one and absorbed directly against the bottom line of somebody else’s books.

  The contrast made for meditation that was not free from bitterness. It wasn’t because he was ungrateful. The warehouse crew didn’t go out of their way to be friendly, no, but he’d known Dolgorukij kept to themselves when he’d accepted the job. He’d been glad to accept the job. He’d wanted the money, and moldering in settlement without anything constructive to do could only lead to trouble.

  He was glad to see the foreman coming toward him from the direction of the administrative offices; he could take a break from congratulating himself on learning how to count cargo crates. A little self-admiration went a long way. He had little enough he could admire in himself these days. Who was that with the foreman?

  He watched them come.

  Middling-sized man, square-shouldered and light on his feet, where had he seen that uniform before? Bench standard trousers, over-blouse, cap, footgear; but the color was a peculiar gray, and there was no rank that Hilton could see.

  Bench intelligence specialist.

  The woman, too, a little on the short side but as sturdy as a chisel. Once Hilton identified the uniform in his mind he remembered where he’d seen those people before, or at least the man. Garol Vogel. The man who had made it all possible, the settlement, the amnesty, Hilton’s job, everything. He had a lot to thank Vogel for, but in his heart he knew that genuine thanks were owing.

  So he would be polite.

  His foreman waved to him, having obviously realized that Hilton had noticed them; so Hilton signed off on the counter — never leave a counter unsecured and open, he’d been told; otherwise, it was vulnerable to unauthorized emendation that would invalidate the count — to join the foreman and the people he had with him. He hadn’t heard there were Bench intelligence specialists in Port Charid. Bench intelligence specialists were devious that way.

  “Hilton Shires,” the foreman said to Vogel, as Hilton approached. “This is the man you want? The Bench specialists are asking after you, Shires. Don’t be too long, though, there’s a lot to be done before we can load-out that shipment for storage, and our freighter’s due to dock in less than two days.”

  Right.

  The foreman walked on. Hilton stopped short and waited for Vogel to open the discussion.

  “Garol Vogel,” Vogel said, politely, in case Hilton hadn’t recognized him, Hilton supposed. “I’ve just been out to see your aunt. There’s a problem with raiding in the Shawl, I expect you’ve heard all about it.”

  As indeed he had. “Not since the hit on the Tyrell Yards.” If there had been anything since then, it was news to Hilton. “Disgusting waste of time and energy. Not to mention the vandalism.”

  Vogel shook his head. “Nope, that’s the last one. Till the next one. The Bench is worried, Shires; people are talking about Langsariks.”

  As if he didn’t know, Hilton told himself, indignantly. The crew here in the warehouse were good about it — they seemed genuinely to admire the Langsarik fleet’s history of successful, if ultimately futile, resistance to assimilation within the embrace of the Jurisdiction. The Combine itself hadn’t been all that eager to make treaty, if he remembered his history correctly.

  “Target of opportunity, Specialist Vogel. Specialist Ivers? Good to see you again. You were at the talks, weren’t you?”

  She wasn’t giving him much of a reaction one way or the other, listening politely but without response. It didn’t matter. He was just making his point. “You’ll remember the terms, I expect. The Langsarik fleet to yield all transport and articles of war or aggression, including such weapons that might otherwise be granted for defensive purposes. The Bench to decline to exercise judgment on condition that behavioral guarantees are met. Yes, people talk, Specialist Vogel. But not even my aunt could manage to attack a warehouse in the Shawl from a shack on Rikavie. And if she had, she wouldn’t have made such a sloppy botch of it.”

  People had been murdered. The authorities were keeping the details close in order to avoid compromising evidence; a person didn’t need much imagination to guess at the general outlines of the crime. Langsariks had been commerce raiders. The Bench had called it piracy, but there was a world of difference between assisting the creative redistribution of material resources and killing people while one was at it.

  “Even so.” Vogel’s voice was reasonable, even sympathetic. He had an open manner that invited confidence; it seemed to indicate an honest heart — as far as that went. “The Bench isn’t always as careful as we’d like about politically volatile situations. Primary value is the rule of Law and the maintenance of the Judicial order, which mea
ns that the appearance of an issue can be an issue. The Flag Captain says she doesn’t know of anything going on in-house. Suggested that we see if you had heard anything.”

  Hilton felt himself redden in the face with vexation. Aunt Walton had said that? Sent Vogel here to get his assurances? Maybe she’d been thinking about speed machines. It was true he’d succumbed to temptation and borrowed one without having had the opportunity to ask permission. He’d paid for the repairs, hadn’t he? That machine had been better than new once the work had been finished, too. He had even been invited to wreck another of old Phiser’s speed machines anytime.

  “What Walton Agenis doesn’t know about what’s going on in settlement isn’t worth knowing. If she says there’s nothing, then there’s nothing, Bench specialist. But since she told you to ask me. No. I haven’t heard any hints of raids or thievery from any Langsariks I know. People are depressed, not stupid.”

  Vogel nodded. “Good enough for me, Shires. Your aunt is a woman of her word. In fact, the Bench granted amnesty on the strength of that word, pretty significant sign of respect there.”

  So don’t embarrass her, Vogel was saying. What made Vogel think he was involved in anything? Vogel was an intelligence specialist. He surely knew exactly how much weight it was appropriate to give the gossip of idle minds.

  “And well placed, Bench specialist.” His response sounded a little stiff and offended to himself, but Vogel didn’t seem to take offense. He just reached into the front of his uniform blouse for a packet of some kind.

  “I agree. Well, we’ll be going, Shires; if you hear anything that might help us discover who’s responsible for the Tyrell murders, I hope you’ll let us know. Here. The Flag Captain asked me to give this to you.”

  It was a scarf, and a hideous one, an incredibly garish length of cloth patterned in great gouts of completely incompatible colors. Even the color tones themselves were mismatched.