by Jo Zebedee
“Uhm. So Merenilo’s target is one of the other three… if not all three.”
Assaun nodded.
“The ship’s pilot… the cargo-master and… a general crew-member…” She peered at Assaun. “Which one? I’ve checked their records, and there’s nothing to be seen in them.”
Assaun abruptly straightened. He moved up a step to peer at the street. “They just left the Sikkir,” he said.
Finesz could hear voices, laughing and joking, on the other side of the road. A loud “Hey!” rang out. Rapid footsteps on pavement, moving away. Another voice complained, “Not again!”
Assaun had gone. Finesz climbed the stairs onto the street. On the opposite pavement, five people watched a figure running away. Lihik was hot on his heels. Assaun jogged along Finesz’s side of the street in the same direction.
Finesz gazed at the crew of Divine Providence. All five were dressed in dark coveralls, standard garb for starship crew. She identified each one, having seen their pictures during her research earlier. The hatchet-faced blonde with the scowl was Captain Murily Plessant. Beside her, hands on hips, stood a beautiful platinum blonde with the abundant curves of a starlet from a low-class entertainment: ship’s engineer Marla Dai. A tall and lanky man, long-faced, long-haired and long-moustachioed, glared at the fleeing Merenilo. That was ship’s pilot Lexander Lotsman. Behind him, a short plump balding man, cargo-master Adril Tovar, glanced nervously from Captain Plessant to Lexander. And finally, a slim and smooth-featured youth with long hair in a pony-tail: Casimir Ormuz, general crew-member. His eyes and mouth were wide open in shock.
One of the five was involved in this conspiracy Finesz was investigating. It seemed ludicrous. They were proles, ordinary members of the disenfranchised population. According to their records, they had never visited Shuto. They had never left Makarta Province, had not been further capital-wards than Darrus. Yet…
Dai certainly looked like no stereotypical ship’s engineer, and Plessant appeared forged in too hot a furnace for a captain of a data-freighter. Lotsman and Tovar, Finesz discounted. Ormuz, on the other hand… There was something patrician about the young man. Dress him in finery and he could pass for a noble. If, of course, that were not a crime: arrogation.
“It was the Housecarl,” said Lexander. “Again.”
Finesz jerked in surprise. How had they identified Merenilo?
“You’re sure?” demanded Plessant.
Both Tovar and Lotsman nodded.
The captain swore, loudly and fluently.
“Who was that chasing him?” asked Dai. Her voice, a musical contralto, fitted her face and figure.
“No idea,” replied Lotsman. “Lucky for us, eh?”
“I’m sure you could have beaten him, Lex,” proffered Ormuz.
There was another puzzle. According to Assaun, the ship’s pilot and cargo-master had successfully fought off a trained regimental officer—
Assaun. And Lihik. Finesz abruptly realised she had left the two to deal with Merenilo. She hurried back towards the street where Sayara waited in the van.
Divine Providence’s crew were moving too. They headed in the opposite direction. Finesz glanced back and caught a curious stare from Ormuz. She swore under her breath. She should have waited until they had left.
She reached the vehicle, clambered in and switched on the caster on the dashboard.
“Assaun? Lihik? Report.”
A moment of silence.
Assaun’s voice spoke from the dashboard speaker. No picture: the miniaturised caster’s eye was too inconvenient to use while on the move. “Ma’am. Subject is heading down Haribi. We think the railway. I’m cutting ahead.”
“Lihik?”
A whisper: “Twenty yards behind him. Not many people about. Hard to keep out of sight.”
“Stay further back,” ordered Finesz. “Assaun’ll be waiting at the train station.”
“Problem.” That was Assaun.
“Problem? What problem?” asked Finesz.
“Open platform here in Amwadina. In Dardina, second class is blocked off from first class. Won’t be able to see where he gets off.”
“He’s going back to his hotel, surely?”
“Ma’am.” Finesz couldn’t tell if Assaun was acknowledging her guess or commenting on it. Certainly, it was a valid assumption. But if it was wrong…
“What do you suggest?” Finesz asked Assaun.
“You on the train,” came the reply.
Finesz blinked in surprise. It was such an obvious solution, yet it had never occurred to her. Admittedly, she was an officer and not trained for the sort of field-skills trailing a suspect would require. She came to a decision:
“I’ll head for the bridge, and pick up the train there,” she told both troopers. “Let me know which one he catches.”
She turned to Sayara. “You heard him.” There wasn’t much time. If Merenilo caught a train within the next ten minutes, he could be at the bridge station in thirty minutes. It would take the van almost as long to thread its way through the maze of Amwadina’s streets to the river bank. She called up a city map on the navigation-console.
“Wait.”
Finesz slowed. That had been Lihik.
He spoke again: “Subject turning into an alleyway.”
“Cutting across to another train station?” asked Assaun.
Lihik: “Maybe.”
Assaun muttered something under his breath.
“This way cuts through to Mahattë Street,” said Lihik.
Assaun again: “Station at Mahattë and Ginaz. He’s heading there?”
Lihik: “Maybe.”
“Corruption!” Assaun’s breath came heavier. “I’m further away. Leaving station now.”
“Wait.” That was Lihik. “He’s— uhn.”
Silence.
“Lihik?” demanded Finesz.
“Lihik?” demanded Assaun.
There was no reply.
“Assaun, what in heavens is happening?”
There was an extended pause; Assaun said, panting, “Man down.”
Finesz swore under her breath. First Rafeer; and now… Lihik? She felt a total amateur for letting the investigation go so badly wrong.
“Heading there now,” Assaun said.
“I’ve got it pinpointed on the city map,” Finesz replied. “I’ll meet you.”
“What about the mark?”
“Damn Merenilo! If he’s killed Lihik, I’m pulling him in and we’ll force what we want to know out of him!”
The van drew to a halt at the head of the alleyway on Mahattë Street—a dark maw between two buildings, its depths impenetrable. Finesz fetched a powerful lantern from the equipment locker in the rear of the vehicle and gingerly entered the alley. She flicked on the lantern. Blue-white light blazed out, throwing the texture of the walls, the trash on the ground, into stark relief. The alleyway was longer than the lantern-beam reached. There was no way of knowing what was beyond. Wishing she had thought to bring her sword, she moved forward cautiously. Assaun had been nearer. He should be somewhere in the alley. And Lihik: dead? wounded?
Something moved in the darkness at the furthest extent of her lantern’s light. Finesz took another step forward. Assaun! He gazed at her, although he could likely see nothing but a circle of brightness. He was crouching, bent over a crumpled shape on the ground. Finesz rushed forward.
“Lihik?” she demanded.
Assaun rose to his feet and wiped his palms on his trouser legs. “Merenilo,” he said.
“Merenilo?”
Finesz threw the lantern-beam across the figure on the ground. It was the regimental-lieutenant. He was lying on his back, legs twisted to the side, one arm flung wide. His sword was still in its scabbard. “How— ?”
“Stabbed in the back.”
At Assaun’s words, Finesz shifted to peer at Merenilo. There was no visible wound on the regimental-lieutenant, but a gliste
ning puddle of darkness spread on the ground beneath him. In death, his face had lost its character and become an expressionless mask. The eyes were open and gazing at infinity, the hair in its military cut unruffled, the jaw slack.
“Where’s Lihik?” she asked.
Assaun gestured back down the alleyway. “Further back. They got him too.”
“Dead?”
The trooper nodded.
“How far?”
“Thirty yards.”
Finesz closed her eyes. A fiasco. Norioko had called her his “most discreet” investigator and here she was: two dead troopers and a dead regimental-lieutenant. And no leads. No leads that made sense. Merenilo’s actions had panicked someone. But who? Neither Rafeer, Lihik nor Assaun had spotted a second tail on Merenilo. The OPI troopers were good but whoever had murdered Merenilo must be better.
“Call in a scene-of-crime team,” she ordered. “I want to know everything there is to know about Merenilo’s murder.”
“Ma’am,” acknowledged Assaun. He stepped to one side, bent his head and began murmuring.
Finesz dropped to her haunches and placed the lantern on the ground. Up close, she could see the muscles of Merenilo’s arms and chest through the cloth of his tunic. He had been at the peak of physical fitness, a highly-trained soldier. The Imperial Housecarls was reputed to be a soft billet—a deterrent to any invasion of Toshi, the capital city of Shuto—but not all of the regiment took its responsibilities so lightly. Regimental-Captain Advezer would not have sent Merenilo halfway across the Empire if he had been incapable of looking after himself.
She began patting down the body. Pass-card. Regimental-Lieutenant Kyrel demar Merenilo, Imperial Regiment of Housecarls, had not been travelling under an alias. She slid the pass-card back into the tunic pocket from which she had pulled it. There was something else in there. Gingerly, she slid two fingers in and fished around. It was a small square enamel badge, an escutcheon, depicting an archway formed from a pair of red flowers with intricately-whorled petals and thorny stems. Finesz frowned, not recognising the coat of arms. She had seen Merenilo’s in his file and this certainly was not it.
She rose to her feet and slipped the escutcheon into one of her own pockets. Perhaps it was the break for which she had been waiting.
CHAPTER EIGHT
The jolly boat had only just been winched into its berth when Vengeful left her station. The warship accelerated rapidly. She was on a parabolic course, plotted to avoid the system’s traffic and bring her down towards the polar regions of Maradagaz, the Darrus system’s gas giant. Only in the sub-jovian’s gravity well, where spacetime was stretched by the planet’s mass, would Vengeful be able to transfer to the toposphere.
Vengeful was a battlecruiser, as fast as a cruiser but more heavily-armed and –armoured. Her bow bristled with sensors beneath the armoured door covering the six-foot aperture of her directed-energy main gun. Within the hull, the gun’s barrel stretched her entire length, giving it an effective range of almost 500,000 miles. The smaller, multi-barrelled turrets of close-defence weaponry dotted her superstructure, sides and belly. Painted the black of space, she was invisible to the naked eye. Only the broken lines of lit scuttles scattered along her length gave her away to a nearby observer—a constellation travelling in close formation.
Ships of Vengeful’s class were elite warships of the Imperial Navy, second only to the ponderous battleships in prestige. They were more useful because they did not require a host of support vessels. Battlecruisers were the armoured fist which enforced the Emperor’s will.
Vengeful, however, was not Imperial Navy.
In her day cabin aboard the battlecruiser, the Admiral—a hawk-faced woman with a shaven head—regarded the discoloured spot on the wood panelling where the ship’s crest had once hung. She stood before that pale scar, her hands clasped behind her back. Vengeful had once had another name, as had the Admiral… But she had forsworn her name when she first set foot on the path she now trod. One day, perhaps, she would reclaim it. One day, Vengeful would earn a place on the honour list of warships which had distinguished themselves in battle. Certainly, the Admiral felt herself at war, a covert war of secretive blows and counter-blows, against an enemy that refused to show itself or its hand.
Perhaps, mused the Admiral, a battlecruiser was too clumsy a weapon in such a war.
In such a secret conflict, what use the armoured fist?
The Admiral felt the absence of her lieutenant of intelligence keenly. She did not worry for Lieutenant-Commander Rinharte: there was no danger to the mission. But she missed her counsel. Rinharte was the only other person aboard Vengeful with full knowledge of the Admiral’s aims. Rinharte was a confidante, the Admiral’s good right-hand.
The caster on the Admiral’s desk sounded a whistle. She crossed to it and opened the connection with a stab of the finger.
“Admiral?” It was Lieutenant-Commander Arril demar Voyna, Vengeful’s lieutenant of battle order. “Reg/Acq have detected an Imperial Navy ship in orbit about Maradagaz.”
The Admiral frowned. “I understood there were no vessels assigned to this system.” In contrast to her austere features, and the forbidding lack of insignia on her black uniform, her voice was musical and her diction the product of the best of breeding.
“According to our intelligence, there are none, ma’am.”
“Then what is it doing here?” the Admiral snapped. She paused, let out a low sigh. “Never mind, Mr Voyna. The ship is here—there is no arguing that fact. Identify her. Once we know which vessel she is, we can decide on a strategy. Our presence in the Darrus system must never be known.”
“Aye, aye, ma’am.”
“Let me know the moment you—” She changed her mind. “No, I’ll come to my bridge.”
“Aye, aye, ma’am.”
The Admiral closed the connection. Voyna was a conscientious officer: he would do his duty. The Imperial Navy was not the Admiral’s enemy per se but she could not afford to have Vengeful’s location known.
The Imperial Navy vessel in orbit about Maradagaz was Sabre Horn, a frigate of the Mountain Hunter class. She was no match for a Renown class battlecruiser. In an exchange of fire, the frigate would last only seconds. Destroying her would be… No, not easy, decided the Admiral. Unnecessary bloodshed was never easy. She had hardened herself to accept the cost of this war she waged, but she rued the necessity that had forced her to choose the role she now played. She would not forsake honour. Agents of her enemy, however difficult they were to identify, she felt no qualms on destroying. Others, representatives of the Imperial apparatus for instance, were more problematical.
Yet Vengeful had a decisive blow to strike in the Ralat system. Nothing could be allowed to stand in the way of that.
“Admiral? There is a puzzle here.”
The Admiral turned to the railing of the Captain’s Bridge, a platform cantilevered out over the conning tower well, and looked forward at a sloped wall of mullioned glass—the roof of the conning tower: star-speckled space, the rich apricot light of Maradagaz creeping across Vengeful’s sharp-prowed hull. Above her, the forward edge of the Spotting Top, an enclosed platform at the top of the mast, cast a shadow over the conning tower. She dropped her gaze, down to Lieutenant-Commander Voyna. He stood three levels below her, at his station on the Registrations/Acquisitions deck, but his voice sounded from the communications-console behind her. His image too appeared on one of its many glasses. She ignored it. Behind his foreshortened figure below, a mechanician knelt—a broad back, little else to be seen—busy swapping hoses on a console in order to pump its data to the battle-consultant beside her.
Below her, the five decks of the conning tower lay stacked one above the other, cored by the conning tower well and cupped within the U-shape of the Captain’s Gallery. Across the well and down a level, the Pilothouse. Below it, Fire Control. Beneath that, one below the other, Registrations/Acquisitions, Signal House, and Signal
Distributing Office. At the bottom, the great hall of the forecastle. In the aft half of the conning tower, deck by deck up towards the Captain’s Bridge: the chapel, Computation Office, Intelligence Office, Chartroom, and Captain’s Office. And behind her, the Captain’s Suite.
The departments overlooking the well were vital to the smooth running of Vengeful.
“A puzzle, Mr Voyna?” The Admiral turned to her communications-console, clasped her hands behind her back and regarded his likeness. “If you would care to explain?”
The lieutenant of battle order nodded. “Sabre Horn is not on patrol, nor is she on picket duty. According to traffic-control, she docked at Tanabria Station on arrival in the system, then made her way out here. She seems to be just… waiting.”
The Admiral gave a grim smile. “Then Major Skaria is to be commended, Mr Voyna. He has called it right and we must be properly grateful.”
“Indeed, ma’am,” he said.
The Admiral turned to peer at the battle-consultant beside her on the Captain’s Bridge. It was her most useful tool. She took the two steps to its side and put her hands to the edge of its machined-metal top. Beneath her palms, she felt the thrumming of its computational engine and the throbbing of hoses pumping in data. Beneath her gaze, the circular glass occupying most of its top swam with colours, a window into some other universe. She ordered, “Lay in an approach vector. All hands to quarters.”
Sitting square in the centre of the circular glass floated the bloated orange ball of Maradagaz. In a stately celestial dance about this orbited the planet’s twelve moons. Sabre Horn, the target, was shown as a small red arrowhead. Bright lines grew and branched amongst the satellites. These were the possible vectors of the target and the Admiral’s ship. They looped in graceful parabolic curves, a willowy tree of probabilities. Tactical code scrolled past at comfortable eye-tracking speed. The Admiral’s thoughts, however, were not on the upcoming exchange of fire—
Where are you, Rizbeka?
Are you safe?
Have I sent you into danger?
