Angel of Destruction

by Susan R. Matthews

  “I’m afraid I cannot in good conscience offer the use of this courier,” Cousin Stanoczk said with polite firmness to Hilton Shires. “It is not mine, and I am responsible for my husbandry of the Malcontent’s resources. What I can do is release some stores to you. I have a list.”

  Kazmer had put it together himself. He hadn’t understood why Stanoczk had wanted it, but it was complete: foodstuffs, clothing, and replacement parts, all held in Combine warehouses here at Port Charid. Kazmer was already serenely confident that the Langsariks had loaded all the contraband they’d been able to find out at the new warehouse construction site, where Feraltz had apparently been stashing it. Langsariks could move very quickly when they needed to.

  “How about your comps, then?” Hilton suggested. “I could steal them at gunpoint. If it would help.”

  Cousin Stanoczk raised his hands in a gesture of mock horror; he was holding something in one hand. “Oh, the Saints forbid that such a thing should come to pass, Shires. You’ll need the secure codes. Be gone when we get back, I’ve got an errand to run.”

  Stanoczk glanced back at Kazmer expectantly, glancing from him to whatever it was in his left hand. So Kazmer reached out and took it. The master code unit for the courier’s communications equipment. Top-of-the-line. Beautiful stuff.

  Stanoczk walked away toward the door at the back of the docking bay that would lead out to the receiving area and then out onto the street. Hilton stepped up to take the master code unit, but Kazmer could not quite bear to let go of it.

  “So you’re getting away?”

  Hilton looked confused, but his small frown of concern gave way almost at once to one of sympathy. He let his hand drop back to his side. “Yeah, Kaz. We’re out of here. Never thought it would end like this.”

  Kazmer had been part of the ending of it. But Hilton knew all about that; that wasn’t the problem. The problem was that Kazmer wanted to go too.

  “Probably for the best.” He had caused so much trouble for the Langsariks, directly and indirectly, and it had all been because he had wanted to help. He could hardly stand the idea that they were leaving; and for Gonebeyond space. Kazmer had always wondered what was out there. Hilton would get to find out, but Kazmer had given his life away to the Malcontent, and there was no going back on the bargain.

  “And we’ve got to hurry.” Hilton’s gentle reminder called Kazmer out of his self-pitying grief, his keen regret over the fact of Hilton’s going away. He liked Hilton. He wanted the best for him. Cousin Stanoczk’s comps were the best.

  Kazmer pressed the master code unit into Hilton’s waiting hand, and was almost ready to say good-bye with a willing heart; but he was interrupted before he could say anything more.

  “Sometime this octave, Daigule, if you please.”

  Cousin Stanoczk called out to him in a firm voice, not needing to put any venom into the rebuke for Kazmer to recognize it for what it was. Kazmer was the slave of the Malcontent. Cousin Stanoczk was his master. Kazmer blushed in vexation to be publicly called to heel, and ducked his head — unwilling to let Hilton know how hard it was to see him go.

  “You heard the boss. Don’t scratch the furniture, Hilton, it’s a nice ship.”

  He had to turn hastily and walk away, or he was going to say something he’d regret. Something stupid. Something like tell Modice I love her with all of my heart, or I would to all Saints I was going with you.

  He didn’t look back. He didn’t dare. Cousin Stanoczk was waiting for him impatiently, and he had no right to keep Cousin Stanoczk waiting. If it hadn’t been for Cousin Stanoczk, none of this might have happened. The Inquisitor would have questioned him, it would have gotten ugly, he would have said Hilton’s name. It would have been over, instead of just beginning, so how could he grieve just because he was not going to be allowed to be a part of it?

  “I’m sorry, Cousin Stanoczk.” Forgive me. “I didn’t mean.” To keep you waiting. Cousin Stanoczk didn’t seem interested in Kazmer’s incoherent attempts at an apology. Cousin Stanoczk took him firmly by the elbow and drew him out bodily into the receiving area.

  “Enough talk, Kazmer. We have work to do, and not much time.”

  The other members of Stanoczk’s crew were already waiting at the street entrance. They had a transport, and one of them was carrying a security hood. Kazmer wondered, dully, what Cousin Stanoczk had in mind. Over the past few hours, he hadn’t been paying much attention to anything outside the problem of the Langsariks. Stanoczk had kept him busy.

  They were six in all, with Kazmer himself and Cousin Stanoczk. The hired transport took them to the administrative headquarters of the Combine Yards in Port Charid and stopped outside one of the side entrances.

  “We won’t be long,” Cousin Stanoczk said to the man he had driving. “Stay alert. I don’t want any unnecessary complications.”

  Kazmer began to have an idea.

  Into the building and through the corridors — Cousin Stanoczk had clearly been studying a schematic. Kazmer had to hurry to keep up with the others. It was the storage vaults Cousin Stanoczk wanted; when they got there, there was a guard posted, but Cousin Stanoczk did not seem to be surprised.

  Kazmer stopped and stood waiting with the rest of them while Stanoczk went forward to speak to the guards.

  “I’ve come for your prisoner,” Cousin Stanoczk said. “Will you need a receipt? I have clearance.”

  They were just warehouse security, and they looked uncomfortable. By now every Dolgorukij in Port Charid knew who Cousin Stanoczk was. Dolgorukij noticed Malcontents, though they pretended to ignore their existence most of the time.

  The guards — there were two of them — traded glances. “I’m not sure about that, Cousin,” one of them said. Kazmer could tell by the degree of relationship that the guard was willing to grant to Stanoczk that he was feeling very uncertain indeed. “We weren’t told. We’d better wait for the Bench specialist.”

  “Normally I would agree with you,” Cousin Stanoczk assured the guards, speaker and silent alike. “But not this time. It is the honor of the Holy Mother herself that is at stake. The Malcontent requires the attendance of your prisoner at an inquest to be held in his honor. I take full responsibility.”

  An inquest, in the old and formal sense. An inquiry. A debriefing.

  Interrogation, but under the control of the Malcontent, and no Fleet Inquisitor to share the shameful secrets of the Combine’s sordid past — Kazmer could almost sympathize. The Bench would have Dalmoss and the other men being held even now at the Honan-gung Yards, for its interrogation. The Bench would naturally confine its questions to topics which interested the Bench; but the Malcontent would want the Angel of Destruction itself, and of all these prisoners only Fisner Feraltz — the apparent ringleader, chieftain, head — was likely to have any real information on the organization and operation of a terrorist society thought dead.

  The one guard looked at the other, then shrugged. “I’m sure it’s best for all of us,” he said. “I can’t imagine our Feraltz preferring to go to Fleet. But we have custody, Cousin. How can we in honor cede it to you?”

  The guards clearly did not know the extent of the problem. Vogel had obviously said nothing about Angels, or else the guard would have known quite well that Feraltz would almost certainly rather anything than to fall into the hands of the Malcontent.

  On the other hand — depending on what the guards themselves remembered of the horror stories of their youth — they might well be more, and not less, willing to see Feraltz in Stanoczk’s hands if they did know. They might feel more guilty about it, though, if personal malice came into play, so it was best that Cousin Stanoczk made no such appeal.

  “I can promise you absolutely that if you but tell the Bench specialist that I have assumed personal custody, he will understand.” Kazmer had to agree. Vogel might not hold the guards blameless, but he would reserve his wrath for the man who really deserved it — Cousin Stanoczk.

  The Malcontent was proof
against the displeasure of even a Bench intelligence specialist, or his name wasn’t Kazmer Daigule.

  The guard shrugged again. “Very well, Cousin, but I will have a receipt. Yes. Thank you.”

  Cousin Stanoczk had one already prepared.

  The guards opened the door to the storeroom they were using as a cell. Kazmer could see clear through to the back — it was a small room. Fisner Feraltz sat on a low cot with a strong-belt around his waist and his wrists shackled; when he saw Cousin Stanoczk standing in the doorway he stood up and took a step forward, his face full of alarm.

  “What’s he doing here, you can’t — I won’t — ” Feraltz had not accounted for the hobbles he wore. He fell flat on his face, full-length on the floor, and two of Cousin Stanoczk’s crew hurried forward with the security hood.

  Feraltz was imprisoned in the walking cage of the security hood before he found his voice. The heavy fabric covered him from head to mid-thigh; as Kazmer watched in bemused wonder at the efficiency of the operation, Stanoczk’s crew pulled Feraltz’s shackled hands deftly through a panel to the outside of the hood, sealing the panel up again so that Feraltz’s hands were isolated outside the hood.

  There was a mesh panel in the thick and impermeable material of the hood where Feraltz’s face would be, so that he could breathe; but Kazmer heard nothing but incoherent noises from beneath the hood.

  So they’d brought the gag as well.

  Kazmer thought of the bodies he’d seen at the Tyrell Yards, the look on the face of the dock-master; a woman who had been alive when he’d left her, a woman who had offered no threat to the raiders.

  He found that his instinctive sympathy for any man in Feraltz’s position — in the hood, and the gag — was absent.

  “Thank you, gentlemen,” Cousin Stanoczk said. “We’ll be leaving. Should you be rebuked by the Factor or by the Bench specialist for transferring the prisoner just be in touch, and the Malcontent will see that all is made right for you.”

  The crewmen who had hooded Feraltz were already moving him down the hall and toward the exit as Stanoczk spoke. Feraltz couldn’t walk very quickly with his ankles hobbled; but there were straps on the outside of the security hood, so the crewmen simply dragged Feraltz along with them. Kazmer hurried after them, while Cousin Stanoczk stayed behind for a moment to soothe any doubts that the two guards might have.

  It took no time at all to reach the waiting transport. They loaded Feraltz into the passenger compartment, secured between two crewmen; but there was a problem.

  It was a six-man transport, and Feraltz made seven.

  Cousin Stanoczk stood beside the transport with Kazmer, scratching his head behind one ear as if in confusion.

  “Well,” Cousin Stanoczk said. “Kazmer, this won’t do. I don’t have room for you. You’d better see if you can get a berth with your Langsarik friends, and you’d better hurry, too, if you don’t want to be left behind.”

  Kazmer frowned. What was Stanoczk saying? “Get a berth, Cousin Stanoczk, I don’t understand. Oughtn’t I be coming with you? I’ll get a for-hire and meet you.”

  Stanoczk shook his head with impatient disgust. “I don’t want you, Kazmer; I can’t use you, and the Langsariks need you. You’re a good pilot. You’re none of mine, though, so give me your halter and get out to the airfield.”

  Give him his halter?

  Was Stanoczk even speaking plain Standard?

  Kazmer stood and stared. Stanoczk reached out for him with a short sharp obscenity, pulling Kazmer’s collar open at the throat to snap off the red leash of the Malcontent in one quick and almost savage gesture.

  “We made a contract so that you could protect your friends, Kazmer, and your friends have not been protected. There is no contract. What part of ‘get out of my sight’ did you not understand?”

  This couldn’t be happening.

  It was too much to grasp.

  Kazmer seized Cousin Stanoczk by the shoulders and kissed him passionately, first on one cheek and then on the other. Free. That was what Cousin Stanoczk was saying. He was free.

  “Your for-hire is waiting,” Stanoczk pointed out. “Stupid Sarvaw.”

  Free to court Modice like an honest man.

  Kazmer fled from the street to the for-hire that Cousin Stanoczk had pointed out, the one Cousin Stanoczk had readied, waiting for him.

  He had to get out to the airfield. Now.

  Once he was away with the Langsarik fleet, he would see what the books said about how a man should honor the Malcontent, to give thanks for a miracle unsought but even so granted.

  ###

  It was four hours till dawn, and the Fleet Interrogations Group had cleared the Sillume exit vector hours ago. It would reach Port Charid soon. Unless the Langsariks left local orbit at Port Charid within the hour, they would have no chance of outrunning a predictable attempt on the part of the Fleet Interrogations Group to stop them short of the entrance vector.

  It was going to be complicated enough to move so many ships of so many sizes through the Sillume vector at something approaching one and the same time as it was.

  Shires had mustered ten freighters in all, with the one they’d confiscated from Fisner Feraltz’s people added in. There was loot on that ship that the Bench might want to have, to build its case against Feraltz’s cabal; but the Langsariks were going to need capital.

  Garol was sending them out into Gonebeyond space, and who knew exactly what they would find there?

  “You can come back, of course,” Garol said diffidently to Walton Agenis, standing beside her at the airfield. Watching the last of the Langsariks load. “Once the uproar’s settled down. We could try to work a rehabilitation. Think about it.”

  She shook her head. “I don’t think so. But I won’t rule it out. Hadn’t you better come with us, Garol? To, oh, preserve contact between the Bench and the Langsariks, maybe gain insight into the political situation in Gonebeyond. To the extent that there may be one.”

  Garol kept his voice even with a terrible effort. She couldn’t know how much he wanted to. “I have enough explaining to do at Chilleau Judiciary to keep me busy. Thanks for the offer, though.”

  He wanted to go.

  He liked the Langsariks. And Walton Agenis was in his heart, a woman of courage and wisdom and beauty and grace. A friend.

  She said nothing. Garol watched a for-hire pull up to the bottom of the load-in ramp, deployed on the tarmac before them. Kazmer Daigule stumbled out, almost tripping over his own feet in his eagerness to clasp Modice Agenis to his heart and spin around three times with her in his arms before disappearing with her up the ramp and into the ship.

  Cousin Stanoczk had warned him; sending word that since the Langsarik fleet was short on current experience at vector transits, having been land-based for more than a year, he was sending Daigule out on loan. So he said.

  Garol had his doubts about the “loan” part.

  “Come with me, then, Garol,” Walton Agenis said quietly. “Or I’ll miss your company. We could be good for each other, I think. I don’t want it to be that I’ll never see you again.”

  Passionate words, but she said them so calmly that it was too clear that it was the mere truth.

  It tore a hole in his heart and let all of his anguish out, all of his pain, all of his grief at what had become of the Langsarik settlement, all of his hopeless certainty that he was condemned forever to walk through the world and never be part of it, to see joy and love and never have any.

  He couldn’t handle it.

  Drawing her to him with a carefully controlled gesture Garol folded her to himself, standing for a long moment heart to heart with the Flag Captain of the Langsarik fleet, Agenis the Deep-Minded. Walton. Maybe not the only woman he had ever loved, but unquestionably the one he loved more deeply than any before her.

  She’d be all right.

  He’d be all right.

  He had to hold on to knowing she would be out there, somewhere, in Gonebeyond space, and that
if he ever saw her again, she would greet him with a bowl of her niece’s grain soup and pick up the threads of their conversation as though they’d never been apart from each other.

  “Not just yet.” He couldn’t let go of her. And he had to. Shires was waiting at a polite distance to escort his commander on board her flagship. It was the last to ferry Langsariks to the freighters that waited in orbit. They had to get away. “But I appreciate the offer. Maybe later, Walton, you’d better go.”

  He didn’t dare kiss her, nor did he need to.

  She stepped away from him and took a deep breath. “Very well. Not good-bye, Garol. See you later.”

  Sometime, someplace.

  She walked away from him past Shires, to the base of the loading ramp; and Garol knew that he had to say something, or hate himself for it for the rest of his life.

  So he waved. “Have a good!”

  Have a good trip. Have a good transit. Have a good escape. Have a good life.

  Apparently startled, she paused halfway up the ramp, looking back over her shoulder, then broke into a broad grin and waved back.

  It was just what he needed, no more and no less, and he turned his back on the freighter transport as the airfield’s leftover Dolgorukij ground crew closed up the ship, walking almost calmly off the scorched tarmac to take shelter in the control room, and watch her leave.

  They would make the vector. They would be gone before the Fleet Interrogations Group could intercept them, and the Fleet Interrogations Group had no Brief to try to do so — he intended to make that point very clear. As soon as the Langsarik fleet was safely away.

  He’d given up too much to let any six Fleet Interrogations Groups stand in the way of a successful escape.

  ###

  Standing in the traffic controller’s map room at Combine headquarters, Garol Vogel watched the Third Fleet Interrogations Group on its way to Port Charid, and the ragtag Langsarik fleet nearing the Sillume entrance vector at the far end of the vector aisle.