The Prodigal Sun
Page 25
Then she glimpsed a shadowy figure rush past her through the gloom, its right arm still outstretched from the blow that had struck her assailant.
Sabra disappeared behind a flurry of limbs, screamed once, then reappeared a moment later, pinned by a hand at her throat against the wall under the broken sign.
Her face twisted into a rictus of pain and surprise. Roche sympathized. It had all happened so fast that not even she could quite believe it.
The arm that held the woman to the wall was attached by muscular shoulders to a profile Roche recognized instantly.
“She’s dead,” said Cane, his voice hushed and breathless, almost in awe. His eyes were fixed on the dying woman’s face. “She just hasn’t realized it yet.”
Roche watched in horror as Sabra struggled once against the grip around her throat, then went still. Slowly, the pain went out of her eyes—although the fear remained.
“You can let her go, Cane.” Roche clambered slowly upright, wincing. “Cane!”
“You die so easily,” he mused, almost to himself, and let the woman’s body slide to the floor. He followed it with his eyes, then turned to look over his shoulder at Roche. Seeing her shock, he said, “I don’t enjoy it, you know.”
“No—” She took a deep breath, and amazed herself by believing him. “I believe you.”
“But I should,” he said softly. “I feel it inside. I was made to kill, wasn’t I?”
Roche gathered the courage to touch his arm. His skin was hot and dry and seemed to quiver under her fingertips. “I’m not going to damn you for that,” she said. “You probably just saved my life—again.”
He shook his head. She sensed that he was clearing his mind rather than disagreeing with her comment. She removed her hand.
When she gingerly touched behind her ear, where Sabra had punched her, her fingers came away slippery with blood: another injury to add to her collection. As she felt her side where Sabra’s first shot had nicked her uniform, the tug of the chain on her wrist reminded her of the valise. There was a slight dent where the bullet had struck, but otherwise it was undamaged.
she said.
Glancing down to Sabra’s body, Roche sighed and said, “We’d better head back. If you remember the way, that is.”
Cane nodded numbly in the near darkness. “Should we bring her with us?”
“No,” she said, already dreading the reception they would receive. “I think she can wait here a little longer. We’re going to have enough problems as it is.”
14
Sciacca’s World
Port Parvati
‘954.10.33 EN
1500
Halfway along the corridor leading back to the elevator shaft, Roche’s left arm began to tingle as data flowed through it.
replied the AI.
Roche groaned aloud. Turning to Cane, she said, “You didn’t kill your guards as well, did you?”
“No. I knocked them out on the floor above where you got out.” He shrugged. “I had no choice. If I was going to help you, I needed to act immediately.”
Roche nodded, grateful for small mercies: at least they only had one body to explain, not three.
“But how did you know?” she said after a few more steps along the wet and litter-strewn floor. “About Sabra, I mean.”
“She said she was taking you to the medical center,” Cane replied. “But she got out of the elevator on the twenty-third floor. The medical center is on the fourteenth floor.”
He made it seem simple. Almost too simple. She knew how it would sound to the rebels: easier to believe that Cane had deliberately set out to follow Roche and Sabra with the intention of killing the woman who had spoken out against him in the meeting. Even Roche found his story slightly incredible.
Yet Cane himself had urged caution at the meeting, agreeing with Sabra on almost every point. That alone was enough to convince Roche he was not lying—that and the fact that he had saved her life. But would it be enough for the rebels?
Cane walked solidly beside her, as untroubled and indefatigable as ever—and with an expression that was, as always, impossible to read. His pace matched hers perfectly—slow but steady, in sympathy with her conflicting need both to hurry and to nurse new injuries. The fleeting moment of vulnerability she thought she had detected in him earlier had long since passed. She wondered if anyone could truly reach the innermost depths of him; indeed, so perfect was his control that sometimes it seemed as though he had no depth at all. Just another soldier doing his duty, without remorse or doubt—a robot in Pristine Human form, programmed to kill.
Yet Sabra had touched him; she was sure of that. Somehow. On a level Roche could never hope to reach, although she was—for the moment at least—his putative ally.
The remainder of the walk to the elevator passed in silence. As they rounded the final bend and the doors came into view, Roche realized that she had hardly begun to decide how she would break the news to Haid. Every time she went over it in her head, it sounded clumsy and cliched:
Sabra started it—
Cane acted in self-defense—
I had no choice—
If there was any other way...
The elevator approached all too quickly. Had Haid followed Roche’s request, he would already be waiting for her on one of the upper floors. She had only minutes left in which to decide how she was going to handle the explanation.
When they came to a halt by the doors, Roche eyed Cane uncertainly. “Maybe you should stay down here for a while,” she said. “Until things quiet down.”
“No,” he said. “Better to get it over with.” He reached out for the elevator button. Before he could touch it, however, the doors pulled back with a hiss.
Facing them, in the elevator, were Haid and three rebel guards. Roche automatically backed away; Cane stood his ground without apparent concern for the projectile rifles raised and pointing at them.
Haid waved at the guards to lower their weapons and stepped out to greet the two of them. “Sorry to startle you,” he said. “I thought it best to meet you halfway.”
“How did you...?” Roche fumbled for the words.
“Find you?” Haid smiled. “Simple, really. We triangulated the data glove’s short-wave transmission, tracing the signal back through the receiving stations throughout the building. What the Box told me only confirmed what we had already learned for ourselves.”
Annoyance and discomfort suddenly tangled inside her. “You didn’t trust us?”
“One of the most important rules in covert operations is never to design a safe house without a back door. This way leads to one of ours, and given what you’ve learned since you arrived, it seemed sensible to—”
He stopped suddenly, peering along the dim corridor. “Where’s Sabra?” he asked. Catching the dark expression on Roche’s face, he added: “What’s happened to her?”
Roche opened her mouth to reply, but Cane spoke before the half-planned words had even formed in her mind.
“She’s dead,” he said simply and without emotion.
Haid’s face hardened, and he stepped back as though Cane had physically struck him. The rifles came up again, and this time the rebel leader did not order them down.
“You’re not j
oking, are you?” His artificial eye narrowed, fixing itself upon Cane.
“No,” said Cane, returning Haid’s monocular challenge evenly. “I killed her.”
“I can explain.” Roche stepped in quickly. “Please, Haid, just give me a chance. It’s not what it seems.”
“I hope so,” said Haid, keeping his glare on Cane. “I honestly hope so.”
* * *
“Okay.” The scarred woman made no effort to conceal her hostility. “Tell me again, and this time don’t leave anything out.”
Roche floundered for a moment. Leave anything out? She had told her story as completely the last time as the time before, and the time before that, when Haid had interviewed her. What could she possibly have forgotten?
Then she realized: this was an oft-used trick of interrogation. By making the suspect feel that she had omitted something from a fabricated tale, new and crucial information might sometimes be forthcoming. Confession by overcompensation.
Roche sighed, and patiently began the recital from the beginning. She had left the meeting with Sabra, and had exited the elevator on the twenty-third floor...
The woman rerecorded Roche’s story, along with each and every nuance of her face. A thick scar warped the woman’s own upper lip into a permanent sneer, and Roche wondered if a psychological trauma had similarly twisted her personality. This, the fourth time Roche had described the events of the last few hours, elicited no response other than wordless, yet obvious, contempt.
Apart from the woman, Roche was alone in the holding bay. Two armed rebels guarded the other side of the door.
Cane had been removed to another cell after their initial interrogation by Haid, and Roche hadn’t seen him since. If he was alive or dead, she had no way of knowing— although she suspected the former was more likely to be true, knowing the man’s amazing constitution.
Halfway through her “confession,” the intercom buzzed. The woman put aside her work slate to take the call, casting a warning look at Roche as she did.
Haid’s voice over the intercom was terse. “That’s enough for now, Rasia. Have the commander escorted back to her room and make sure she stays there. Tell the escort to talk to no one on the way. I don’t want word leaking out before I’m ready.”
Roche pushed forward to the intercom. “Ameidio, this is Roche. What the hell’s going on?”
“I’ll call you when I’ve decided.” With a click, he severed the line.
Roche backed away from the intercom as the guards entered the room. “Okay, okay.” She let herself be led from the holding bay, with the scarred woman bringing up the rear. She had no choice. Until she spoke to Haid, her options were severely limited.
On the way to her room, she passed a couple of faces she recognized from the refectory the previous day. One nodded at her, showing no awareness of the events that had transpired since they had last met. Roche nodded back, unable to prevent the blush that spread up her neck and into her hairline. She cursed herself for feeling like a traitor.
When they reached her room, the guards keyed it open and motioned for her to enter. She did so, noting first of all that Maii had left during her absence, and second that the lock on the inside of the door had been disabled. She turned to protest, but was met with the stony sneer of the scarred woman.
“Don’t expect mercy,” said the woman. “We look after our own down here.”
With that, the woman slammed the door shut and locked it. When the sound of footsteps outside had faded into silence, she let go the breath she had been holding.
Mercy? Roche wasn’t expecting mercy. She would settle for justice, any day.
Still, she supposed she shouldn’t be too hasty. In their situation, she might have behaved the same.
announced the Box into the silence.
She shrugged and sat down on the edge of the bed. “I guess that’s to be expected,” she said.
“How about unofficial?”
“Okay,” she said, lying back on the bunk. “Show me.”
Her left eye greyed for a moment, then cleared. The familiar stream of news, from places near and distant, flowed past her: wars, accidents, negotiations, science, deaths. Even after so few days trapped on Sciacca’s World, much of it made reference to current events that were unfamiliar to her, making her feel isolated from the rest of the COE and the galaxy beyond. At least three major conflicts near the Commonwealth were completely unfamiliar to her, and there were many more beyond— more than she was sure was normal. She wondered if the background level of violence in the galaxy had indeed risen without her being aware of it, or if that impression was merely a result of her recent isolation.
One name, however, stood out: Palasian System.
She recalled hearing about it being quarantined just prior to her leaving the Midnight. Now it had been declared the site of a “major catastrophe” and sealed off to all traffic. Not even aid or rescue ships could breach the blockade. No explanation was offered as to the cause of the catastrophe, however, before the data stream moved on to another war that had broken out in a distant part of the galaxy. Whatever had happened to the Palasian System, it must have been serious to warrant such utter isolation.
Suddenly struck by a thought, she turned her attention back to the Box. “Have you been monitoring this?” she asked.
“Has there been any mention of the Midnight?”
Roche nodded. “Or they want to take the Dato by surprise.”
“True.” Roche frowned as another thought occurred to her. “But why would—?”
The sound of the door opening interrupted her in mid- sentence, although the question remained sharp in her thoughts: Why would the COE Armada suppress the information?
Making a mental note to follow this up later, she rose to greet her visitor.
“Roche,” said Haid. The rebel leader looked haggard and drawn, as though he hadn’t slept for a week. He was alone.
“I would invite you in,” Roche said, unable to keep the bitterness from her voice. “But that seems inappropriate given the circumstances.”
Haid closed the door behind him and turned to face her. “You have no reason to resent me,” he said. “I’m not here officially.”
“Does that mean you’ve reached a decision?”
“Well, your story checks out,” he said. “As I said earlier, there’s a shaft leading from the old sector to the surface—our back door. At the exit from the shaft, we found Edan Malogorski. Sabra had arranged to meet him there to take you to the landing field. It looks like she was going to sell you to the wardens for the bounty.”
Roche sat up on the bunk. “That seems obvious.”
“Maybe.” The rebel leader sighed. “I have my doubts, though.”
“I thought you just said that my story checked out.”
“I have no doubts about what she intended to do; the facts are irrefutable. The why, though, is a different matter. In the elevator, according to your statement, Sabra said that she thought Cane was under your control. It’s my guess she believed that by getting rid of you, she’d be rid of Cane as well. Maybe she was more concerned with my safety than the money.”
“And maybe you’re being overcharitable regarding her motives.” Roche remembered the implied jealousy in the woman’s words,
the fierce resentment she had harbored toward the new woman in town. “She certainly made it clear, from the day I arrived, that she’d rather Cane and I weren’t around. Regardless of Cane’s past, or my dealings with you—”
“She was simply wary of you,” Haid interrupted. “As we all are with strangers.” Haid paced the length of the room once, then returned to face her. “If I am being overcharitable, as you say, then it’s because I knew her better than you did. I served with her when she was a lieutenant on the Transpicuous before I went out on my own. When I was sentenced here...” He filled the pause with a sigh. “It was she who took me from the gutter. Everything I’ve done here, it was with her aid. If she had an ulterior motive in turning you in, then it was to help me, not for the money.”
Haid stopped talking, his one empty eye socket red. Roche could sense his pain as palpably as the dust on his clothes, in the tone of voice and the lines of his face. He needed to believe what he was saying, needed to believe that his old friend hadn’t betrayed his trust. And Roche could sympathize. She herself had been betrayed often enough in her youth, to the point where she had avoided close friendships ever since. Who was she to call into question the strength of a relationship she had had no part of? Furthermore, she conceded, he might even have been right.
“Unfortunately,” Haid continued after a moment, “the facts have leaked. And they are damning, whichever way they are interpreted.”
Roche took a deep breath. She could sense that they were approaching the real reason for his visit. “Go on.”
“Well, on the one hand, I’m being pressured to turn you in myself, by those who think Sabra had the right idea. They’re supported by another camp, who believe that you and Cane led Sabra into the old quarter to murder her. Taken together, these two factions comprise a majority of us down here.”