Angel of Destruction

by Susan R. Matthews

  That was his cue.

  Garol left the dock-master’s inner office, checking the transmits as he passed. He wanted this on record. He’d promised the First Secretary something to look at.

  He opened the door of the dock-master’s office and stepped out into the docking bay. The two people that the dock-master had called didn’t pay much attention to him. As far as they were concerned he was probably someone from the freighter, which explained why they didn’t know him.

  The freighter captain stared, though, and Garol greeted him with a cheerful wave.

  “Hello there,” Garol called. “My name is Garol Vogel. Bench specialist. And you’re under arrest.”

  The shock on the freighter captain’s face was quickly replaced with an expression of satisfied vindication. The freighter captain clearly could hear the people leaving the freighter, behind him. He didn’t have to look to know that they were his men and they were armed.

  “I don’t think so,” the freighter captain — the raid leader — said. “Specialist Vogel. The man we Langsariks have to thank for our vacation here at Port Charid, and all of this lovely loot. Really very much indebted to you, sir.”

  It was too bad for the raid leader that the people he heard coming out of the freighter were not his troops with weapons. They were Langsariks with weapons. Jevan was looking behind the freighter captain at the people coming out of the freighter, and there was horror clearly evident on Jevan’s face. He probably recognized Shires right off. He might not recognize Shires’s commando, but he wouldn’t have to know them by name to realize who they were.

  “You’re not Langsariks, and it hasn’t been a vacation, but I will accept responsibility for the arrest. You’re Dalmoss, I expect.”

  The raid leader’s confidence seemed to falter for the first time. None of the assembled warehouse workers was staring in shocked alarm at the armed men he clearly believed he had at his back. The dock master had clued them in by now, and they were watching with keen interest, but no fear. The raid leader did not go so far as to look over his shoulder to see what was there: not yet. He glanced with almost perfectly concealed nervousness up toward one of the docking bay’s security monitors, instead.

  “My name is Noman,” he said.

  Well behind the raid leader, Shires had stepped clear of the captured crew of the freighter, unshipping a peculiar set of small stones or spheres that hung at the end of multiple strands of cord that looked to be about as long as he was tall.

  “Just as well.” It took Garol a moment to realize what Shires was doing. Once he grasped Shires’s plan, Garol did what he could to put it forward. This was a dangerous and determined enemy, one they had been lucky to manage as well as they had done so far. They could not afford to risk any uncontrolled events so close to a complete triumph. “Dalmoss went to Geraint, after all. Funny thing, though. How do you suppose he turned from Pettiche into Dalmoss? And rose from the dead, because there were no survivors at the Tyrell Yards, were there? Especially not Dolgorukij ones.”

  Out behind the raid leader Shires had started his ropes spinning. All of the spheres were tethered to a common ring; he put them into motion one by one, over his head.

  When he had them all moving together he started to walk forward. Garol imagined he could hear the sound that the heavy spheres made whistling through the air, straining at the ends of the ropes. A rotor. A windmill. A wheel of a theoretical sort, but deployed hub to rim by wrist action rather than rim to hub by friction.

  “I don’t know anything about Dolgorukij.” The raid leader seemed determined to carry his course through. “But I am grateful to that fat old Madlev. His warehouse is a great hiding place. You could tell him I said so — if you weren’t going to Hell — ”

  There it was, the telltale twitch of the hand toward the blouse, the reach into a pocket. For a bomb. Garol braced himself to spring, aiming low, knowing he had to cross the distance between them before the raid leader had a chance to arm his suicide device.

  A whistling sound of thrown spheres sliced through the air like knives, the rope-wheel wrapping itself around the raid leader with a ferocious impact that pinned his arms and dropped him to the floor of the load-in bay in one swift movement. The raid leader shouted once in pain as the spheres took him, then once again as his head hit the ground; it happened too quickly for Garol to be able to reach him in time to break his fall.

  Garol was with him in an instant, however, checking the pocket first before he dared check for breathing or a pulse. There would be a suicide device, and he’d seen evidence of an implosion grenade at Tyrell. Dying now would leave him with a definite sense of anticlimax. Garol expected to enjoy the denouement; for that he had to manage to live through to it.

  The bomb was a tidy one, flat and innocuous in appearance. Garol sat back on his heels to examine it, turning it over and over in his hands and thanking the blind gods of fortunate happenstance for Dolgorukij arrogance. The suicide device had not been primed, or it would have been much easier to detonate. The raid leader — and Garol believed it probably was Dalmoss — had not been truly prepared to die, and Garol knew he might well owe his life, and those of everybody else nearby, to that one lapse in discipline.

  Dalmoss stirred on the ground, coughing painfully as he regained consciousness. Shires came up to retrieve his spheres, grinning in enjoyment of his catch. “Don’t move, floor manager,” Shires warned, cheerfully. “Cracked ribs. Maybe fractured arms. You’ll do yourself an injury, lie still. Hardly recognized you. New beard?”

  The Dolgorukij, Jevan, had suffered himself to be bound by the dock-master herself, staring down at Dalmoss in a clear state of shock. “I don’t understand,” Jevan said. “I don’t have the first idea who these people are. I’ve never seen them before in my life.”

  Which people?

  The false Langsariks that Shires’s people were marching out of the freighter under guard?

  Or the Langsariks themselves?

  “I’d like to believe you,” Garol assured him. “Don’t worry. Everything will be sorted out soon enough. All we need from you now is a little patience.”

  Some of the warehouse crew was bringing a stretcher for Dalmoss, one with stout straps to secure an unconscious patient. Another of the warehouse crew walked behind, towing the medical cart — the emergency medical technician, clearly enough. “Dock-master. We need help securing these people for transport. Can you hold them here for a few hours, while I arrange for an armed escort?”

  He didn’t want them under Langsarik guard. There were limits to the amount of temptation one could put before the best of people before they lost their sense of proportion in a rage for vengeance.

  “We have a very nice transfer case for a refrigeration unit,” the dock-master pointed out, agreeably. “You may remember having seen it. Easily modified for adequate segregation of belligerent parties. It’ll be our pleasure.”

  Transfer case for a refrigeration unit?

  Transfer case.

  “Quite so. If you’d just be so kind as to secure these people, then, dock-master, being mindful of Shires’s very useful warning in handling the raid leader. His name is Dalmoss. We hope he’ll be in adequate condition to answer several questions of extreme interest.”

  He liked this dock-master; she stood for no nonsense, but she knew the value of a good joke. He had brought his Langsariks in a transfer case for a large refrigeration unit. What more poetic prison could there be?

  “Oh, we’ll be much more careful with them than they were with any of our warehouse people. My word on it, Specialist Vogel.”

  And he believed her.

  Which was good: because he had to get to Port Charid as quickly as possible, now, to lay his evidence before First Secretary Verlaine and get that Fleet Interrogations Group turned around.

  With this raid timed the way it had been, he hadn’t a moment to waste. The Fleet Interrogations Group would be coming off the vector within four hours from now. And it was four hours fro
m Honan-gung to Port Charid.

  He could try for a contact with Chilleau Judiciary from here, from his station in the pod within the dock-master’s inner room; but he needed Feraltz in hand before he published any bulletins. Try as he had, he hadn’t quite convinced himself to trust that task to Cousin Stanoczk. Religious rivalry, the honor of the Dolgorukij Combine, saving face for the Autocrat — no. It was too risky. He had to do it himself.

  “Thank you, ma’am, you’re a gentlewoman and a scholar. Shires. Let’s get out of here.”

  They would take the freighter back to Port Charid and park it off in orbit; Cousin Stanoczk would come aboard to ferry them down to Port Charid, as soon as they could get there.

  Composing his message to the First Secretary in his mind, Garol followed the Langsariks up into the freighter for its preflight checks, happy to note a team doubling back to the opposite flank of the ship to close up the access portals in its side.

  He was almost ready to relax and look forward to the confrontation with Feraltz yet to come.

  ###

  Fisner Feraltz sat at his desk in the administration area of the warehouse construction site after the day shift had gone to their dinners, reviewing the daily work sheets and smiling to himself.

  All over but the shouting.

  The Fleet Interrogations Group was due within nine scant hours. The freighter — with all the riches that the Holy Mother had bestowed upon Her faithful servants — would be leaving for the Sillume vector at any moment.

  The distress call had been sent more than five hours ago now.

  Not from Honan-gung itself, not really; from the freighter, but through the Honan-gung dispatch, so that there was no telling any difference. The port was even then preparing what relief ships it could muster, but it would be too little and too late.

  Just like the Tyrell raid.

  Just like Okidan, and the raids before; the earlier — less sophisticated — raids, when they had still been learning their role. It almost made one admire Langsariks. Learning to raid had been a useful measure of the caliber of the opponent that they faced; and the absolute requirement for the ruthless extirpation of any such challenge to Combine primacy at Port Charid.

  All of the progress that the work crews had made, really, it was an admirable effort. These people had organization. Self-discipline. A good work ethic. How pleasant it was to know that he was not even going to have to pay for their work. He was free and clear of a good two weeks’ wages for the entire construction effort.

  Was there a way to paper that fact over and take the additional tithe for the Angel’s use?

  And his.

  There was a good proportion of this wealth due him, not as a reward, but so that he could show what influence and luxury a man could earn in the service of the Holy Mother. Recruitment. As he had been recruited; and yet he had needed no such appeal to venal motives to gain his allegiance, but only this, position and authority and trust.

  There was someone in the outer office but Fisner paid them no mind, absorbed in happy calculation. Until Hariv knocked almost in a panic at the door, opening it — before Fisner had a chance to agree to be seen or refuse to be bothered — to reveal the very unwelcome apparition of Bench Specialist Garol Aphon Vogel and Factor Madlev behind him.

  Fisner sprang to his feet. He had an escape route, there was a washroom adjoining his office with an extra door that let on to an adjacent office whose exit was at the back of the administrative area. But why should he flee?

  He bowed to Factor Madlev instead and remained on his feet to show deference to his superior. Factor Madlev would encourage him to be seated, he had been badly wounded scant months ago, after all.

  Factor Madlev did not invite him to sit.

  “Good to see you,” Vogel said. “I was hoping we’d find you in. I’ve just come from Honan-gung, Feraltz, and it shouldn’t surprise you to hear that the things I found out there make me very interested in your answers to some questions of Bench interest.”

  Behind Vogel, Madlev frowned, clearly unhappy. Factor Madlev had brought the Port Authority with him; none of the Angel’s own people. All of the Angel’s people were at Honan-gung, all except him. What did Vogel mean, he’d just come from Honan-gung? Vogel had gone to Chilleau Judiciary. Vogel was days away from Rikavie.

  Unless it had been a ruse from the beginning . . .

  Fisner sat down. If this was to be a confrontation, it would be on his own terms. “I can’t imagine what you mean, Bench specialist.” He could draw Vogel out, find out what Vogel knew. Then he’d know what Vogel didn’t know. That would be a start on a strategy. “I had thought you were at Chilleau Judiciary.”

  It was true that Vogel hadn’t been with the First Secretary when Factor Madlev had called just hours ago, though. After Factor Madlev had received the distress call from Honan-gung. The First Secretary had done the only thing he could have done; Fisner had taken care to leave him no choice. Did Vogel know that?

  What did Vogel know?

  Vogel wasn’t saying. “As I have been, and expect to be in the future. These people will escort you to detention, Feraltz, to wait for the Fleet Interrogations Group arriving from Dobe. If you’d be so kind.”

  Factor Madlev’s discomfort would permit him to endure in silence no longer. “But the Bench warrant was issued against Langsariks, Bench specialist,” Madlev said, as Fisner watched Vogel’s face avidly. “Not four hours gone past. When we told the First Secretary at Chilleau Judiciary about the distress call from Honan-gung.”

  Fascinating, Fisner thought. Vogel had to be exhausted: there was no other possible explanation for the nakedness of the dismay in his face.

  “Honan-gung sent no distress calls, Factor Madlev,” Vogel said, flatly. “I was there. I know.”

  Vogel’s emphatic insistence seemed to put Madlev on the defensive. “Nevertheless, Specialist Vogel, Port Charid received a distress call from Honan-gung five hours ago. We were unable to get a response from Honan-gung on any frequency. We had to put it before the First Secretary.”

  Fisner closed his eyes and bowed his head as his heart sang.

  It was so clear, so perfect, and so beautiful.

  Vogel had set a trap at Honan-gung, but Vogel hadn’t stopped the distress call — perhaps he hadn’t realized that Dalmoss’s freighter would be sending one.

  Vogel had put Honan-gung on transmission silence while he returned from Honan-gung to Port Charid to make his crowning arrest, that of Fisner himself.

  And even as Vogel had made his triumphant pilgrimage from Honan-gung to Port Charid, the Holy Mother had put out Her hand to turn his purpose to Her service. Factor Madlev had done what any decent honest man would do on receipt of such a distress call, he’d called for help, and Chilleau Judiciary had had no grounds to deny him — because the First Secretary was as much in the dark about Vogel’s actual whereabouts and activities as Fisner himself had been.

  Vogel had come from Honan-gung in triumph, to arrest him.

  But the Angel of Destruction had triumphed over all.

  “Well,” Vogel said, and the word seemed all too inadequate for the worlds upon worlds of emotion that it bore. “We’ll have to contact the First Secretary immediately, then. Nothing is changed, Feraltz, you are still under arrest, and there will be a reckoning in time. Factor Madlev. If you’ll have your people take charge of the prisoner, I’d like to get back to Port Charid to contact the Bench at Chilleau Judiciary.”

  Vogel was wrong about that, too. There would be no reckoning. After all the Holy Mother had shown him of her power, how could he doubt for so much as a moment that she would bring him out of threatened captivity to honor and glory?

  He would be looking forward to witnessing Vogel’s discomfiture, on that day. It was uncharitable of him, yes, perhaps.

  He owed Vogel no charity.

  Vogel had done his utmost to thwart the sacred Will of the Holy Mother. Vogel deserved to suffer humiliation in return for his misguided meddling, if not
worse.

  “It’s all right, Factor Madlev,” Fisner declared firmly, as though Factor Madlev had hesitated to do as Vogel directed. Factor Madlev had not perhaps moved very quickly to put Fisner under arrest, but he seemed to cherish no reservations whatever beyond the reflection on his own pride to have his foreman accused, and looked a little puzzled, as Fisner continued.

  “I have nothing to hide. Take me into custody, I’ll be fully exonerated of whatever it is the Bench specialist means to accuse me – ” which Vogel had neglected to divulge, which was a disappointment, he could have started to work on his story — “whatever that is. Shall we go? Guards?”

  He would be out of custody again before daybreak. Perhaps before supper.

  Vogel would realize that he was powerless against a far more formidable opponent than he could possibly imagine; and Fisner would go free, to watch the painful and appropriate conclusion to Vogel’s misguided Langsarik experiment with amnesty at Port Charid.

  Chapter Twelve

  Shutting the door behind him, Garol Vogel turned to pace in Factor Madlev’s now-empty office, where the secured-communications portal was kept. He didn’t want any witnesses. He had no confidence in his own discretion at this point, and he was not willing to berate the First Secretary in front of any local authorities that might lose respect for the Bench because of it.

  Keying the transmit, Garol sat down at Factor Madlev’s desk and engaged the privacy nets in the walls, mechanically, not really thinking about it. This was a disaster. He had worked so hard to prevent it. What was he going to do?

  “Bench specialist Garol Vogel. For First Secretary Verlaine, priority transmit, urgency immediate.”

  He couldn’t sit still.

  He lunged to his feet from the chair in a convulsive movement, snatching his worn campaign hat off his head and crumpling it in his hands, stretching it and twisting it in a fury of agonized self-reproachful emotion before he jammed it back down at the back of his head, as though it were a personal enemy whose ultimate despite was to be worn on the head of a Bench specialist — all the while pacing, quartering the room in precise measure left to right, front to back, on the diagonal.