Service for the Dead

by Martin Delrio

  “Oh.” She sounded bad, even to her own ears. She could not afford the weakness, once she was in public. But there was nobody in here except herself and her Bondsman, who did not count. Relentlessly, she quashed a half-formed wish that she could rest for a little longer. “How long has it been since—”

  “Twelve days, while you were ill and the ships were recharging and refueling.”

  “Twelve days!” The exclamation hurt; she sat breathing hard for a minute, then went on, “Are we still at Saffel Station?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then I have to get up now.”

  “I don’t suppose I can stop you.” He paused, as if weighing his next words. “Just for the record, Galaxy Commander, you’re currently held together with staples and surgical glue. Now is not the time to pick fights.”

  “I do not pick fights.”

  This time Murchison said nothing, but his expression was eloquent enough without words.

  “All right,” she said. “You’ve got me.” It felt good to lapse for a moment into the casual speech patterns of the alternate persona she’d adopted when she was traveling across The Republic of the Sphere as a soldier of fortune. Tassa Kay had met a number of people like Ian Murchison—steady, reliable types who did their duty and didn’t worry too much about the greater scheme of things—and she’d liked most of them. She’d probably have liked Ian Murchison as well. “I do pick fights. But I’ve usually got a reason for it when I do.”

  “I’m just saying—”

  “ ‘Not now.’ Right.”

  Moving carefully, she swung her legs over the side of the bed and tried to stand. Murchison reached out and supported her with a hand under one arm. Success.

  She stayed that way for a moment, taking stock. Legs holding her up—good. Head clearing more moment by moment—good. She tried a few careful steps, then said, “As long as I don’t make any sudden moves, it’ll do. Time to go out and put the fear of me back into people.”

  “No need to worry just yet.” She wasn’t certain about the note in Murchison’s voice, but she thought it might be amusement. “They’ve all been too busy promoting themselves to bother causing trouble.”

  For a moment she failed to understand him. Then she remembered that he was not Clan, or at least not yet, and would not know.

  “Trials of Position,” she said. She laughed under her breath, but cut it short when the knife wound protested. “I suppose I did create a couple of openings at the top.”

  She contemplated, for a moment, the beautiful chaos of it all. The Star Colonels who had been junior to Marks and Dorn would have begun it by challenging one another for seniority. Then the more ambitious Star Captains would have started their own round of challenges for the empty Star Colonel slots, and the ripple effect would have extended all the way down into the ranks. She shook her head regretfully, and pushed Tassa Kay and her taste for brawls and bad company well back into the dark recesses of Anastasia Kerensky’s mind.

  “I need to get out there,” she said. “Before somebody else gets the idea that they can do this job better than I can.”

  “Sit back down. I’ll find you some clothes.”

  “Who do you think you are, giving me orders?” She sat down on the edge of the bed anyway, and watched him searching efficiently through her duffel.

  “Your Bondsman.” He emerged from the duffel with a pair of hip-riding trousers and a loose shirt. “You should be able to wear these and not mess your bandages up too much.”

  Murchison helped her dress. His touch was asexual and oddly impersonal, and in a way she was glad of it. The last time a man’s hands had touched her in those places, it had been Nicholas Darwin, Jacob Bannson’s mole.

  “I cut his throat,” she said suddenly. “And hung his body up for the carrion birds.”

  “I know,” said Murchison. He was helping her on with her boots—tall boots—to make her into Anastasia Kerensky whether she felt like being Anastasia or not. “I was there.”

  “What did they do with Marks and Dorn?”

  “Out the air lock to space.”

  “Good.” She was fully dressed now, armored in the identity of her rank and Bloodname, ready to go and walk alone among her Wolves. “Then our business here is finished, and it is time to make the jump to Terra.”

  25

  Highlander Encampment

  Belgorod

  Prefecture X

  April 3134; local spring

  In the regimental encampment near Belgorod, Tara Campbell lay awake. The night air was cold, but the weather in general had grown perceptibly warmer since she and her Highlanders had first arrived, and there was the smell of a thaw on the wind. She’d had a long day, followed by a long evening spent in discussing possible strategies and tactics—and the vexing question of just where, exactly, was Anastasia Kerensky—with her senior commanders. She’d collapsed at the end of it on the cot in her command tent and tried to sleep.

  She could, she supposed, have taken a hotel room for herself in downtown Belgorod, or stayed in Geneva on The Republic’s hospitality. She could even have looked up one or another of her parents’ old Terran friends, either diplomatic or military, and begged for a place to stay from them.

  She could have, but she didn’t. She’d been taught from childhood—by her parents and others—that she could not expect to lead men and women whose hardships, and even small inconveniences, she could not be bothered to share. If the Northwind Highlanders were going to be relegated by the Exarch and the Senate to freezing in tents on the Russian plain, the least the Countess of Northwind could do was freeze right along with them.

  The sense of her own righteousness didn’t make her any warmer, unfortunately, or the cot any more comfortable. She was still awake well after midnight when her aide, Captain Bishop, appeared at the entrance to the tent and cleared her throat.

  “There’s a message coming in for you, ma’am. At the communications tent.”

  “Now?” Tara sat up, grabbed her fatigue trousers and blouse from the folding chair by the head of her cot, and started pulling them on in the dark. “Is it the Steel Wolves?”

  “No, ma’am.” The regret in Captain Bishop’s voice sounded genuine. “It’s Jacob Bannson. A radio message from his private DropShip. He’s landing in eighteen hours, and he says he wants to talk to you.”

  “Bannson?” Tara’s mind was blank. She couldn’t imagine what the business tycoon would have to say to her under these circumstances. She shook her head to clear it, reminding herself that Bannson might want to talk to Tara Campbell, the Northwind aristocrat, or to Tara Campbell, the politician, rather than Tara Campbell, the commander out in the field. Just because she tended to forget her other identities from time to time didn’t mean that anyone else ever did. “What does Bannson want with me?”

  “He says it’s about Paladin Ezekiel Crow.”

  “Bannson? Has word on Crow?” Tara’s mind raced as she pulled on her socks and began lacing her boots. No matter how rich and important Bannson was, he wasn’t worth going over frozen ground barefoot for. “What does Jacob Bannson have to do with Ezekiel Crow?”

  “Damned if I know, ma’am,” Captain Bishop replied. “But he says you’ll be interested.”

  “He does, does he? We’ll see about that.”

  Tara shrugged her heavy wool greatcoat over her shoulders, jammed her beret on her head, and left the command tent at a pace not quite a run. Anastasia Kerensky and the Steel Wolves would have been worth running for. Jacob Bannson wasn’t. Quite.

  The communications tent was dimly lit, and empty except for the soldiers keeping the night watch. Tara slid into the empty chair at the main console and took the handset that the tech handed to her.

  “Tara Campbell here.”

  She waited through the pause as signals traveled back and forth—the jerky rhythm of a radio conversation at space-travel distance. Then, “Jacob Bannson, Countess.”

  “My aide says you want to speak to me about”—thi
s wasn’t an encrypted conversation, and she chose her next words with care, wishing that she knew how much Bannson had already betrayed onto the airwaves—“a certain person.”

  “That’s right.”

  “What do you want to say about—that person?”

  “I have some information that you might find interesting.”

  “Not over an unsecured line.”

  “A meeting, then,” Bannson said. “Where?”

  She didn’t have to think long. Jonah Levin was a friend, or at least had believed her unsupported word enough to send his man out looking for the missing evidence. He’d want to hear whatever Bannson had to say. “Geneva.”

  “Geneva it is, then. The penthouse suite at the Hotel Duquesne. I’ll be waiting for you. Bannson out.”

  Tara gave the handset back to the tech on duty and turned to her aide. “Things are starting to move. I don’t want to set anything into motion that isn’t moving already, so direct contact with Paladin Levin at this point might be a bad idea.”

  “If you say so, ma’am.” Captain Bishop was still frowning at the radio console as though Bannson were there in person. “Does that guy really think he can get the penthouse suite at the best hotel in town just by showing up and asking for it?”

  “Yes, he does. And he’s right.” Tara didn’t think that this was the best time to mention that she could have done the same—only with her name, not money, to open the door. “It doesn’t matter. I want you to get busy with the communications listings, and track down the personal number of a man named Burton Horn. It may be unlisted. Lean on people and use my authority if you have to. I’ll back you.”

  Captain Bishop nodded. “Burton Horn. What do I say once I’ve got him?”

  “Tell him to find his employer as quickly as possible, and bring him to meet me in Geneva at the Hotel Duquesne.”

  26

  Rue Simon-Durand

  Geneva, Terra

  Prefecture X

  April 3134; local spring

  Roughly twenty-four hours after the Countess of Northwind had seen her sleep, or lack of it, so unexpectedly interrupted, in Geneva Paladin Jacob Levin was walking back to the Pension Flambard from the small neighborhood restaurant where he had eaten dinner. The evening was dark and still, and few people were about. The occasional vehicle passed by him on a hum of tires or a sigh of hoverjets, its shadow looming up and fading again in the circles of pale yellow light thrown onto the sidewalk by the street lamps.

  It was a pleasant night. A light breeze, not yet fully springlike, but hinting nevertheless at the eventual possibility of spring, blew toward the lake. The taste of dinner’s roast lamb with rosemary still lingered on Jonah’s lips, as did the bouquet of the wine. The meal had been excellent, even for a man whose thoughts remained preoccupied as his had been by the developments of the past few days.

  The data disc Burton Horn had recovered from the Pescadore Rus in Belgorod had not left Jonah’s possession since the former GenDel employee had delivered it to him. Jonah suspected—though he would not alarm Madame Flambard by saying so—that his rooms in the pension had been searched at least once, and he was unwilling to let such damning evidence fall into other hands.

  Tomorrow, he thought, with the Countess of Northwind’s concurrence, he would present the data disc to the Exarch. A formal investigation would follow, and much adverse publicity. Damien Redburn would undoubtedly want to keep everything quiet until the investigation had officially settled the question of who, exactly, had sold out whom on Northwind, but Jonah didn’t think that he would succeed. News as shocking and frightening as this—that a Paladin, one of the seventeen most trusted men and women in the entire Republic of the Sphere, could have betrayed and abandoned the very people whom he had been sent to help, and slandered their leader to the Exarch afterward—would find its own way of getting out.

  “Lift ’em up.”

  The voice was that of a stranger. Jonah saw that a man with a slug-pistol had come out of the shadows ahead and was standing in front of him.

  “What is—” he began.

  “It’s a robbery, Gramps.”

  Jonah raised his hands. In his peripheral vision, he saw another man approaching from his right. And there was a third coming up from behind, his presence made known by the scuffling of his footsteps.

  “Over there.” The man with the slug-pistol gestured toward a nearby alley.

  “It wasn’t in his room,” the man coming up from behind said. “So it’s got to be—”

  The gunman said, “Shut up.” And the man behind fell silent.

  Not ordinary robbers, then, Jonah thought, and resigned himself to putting up an active resistance. The small amount of money in his wallet was not worth disturbing the quiet of the evening with violence. The data disc currently residing in his inner jacket pocket was another matter altogether.

  He turned toward the alley. At the moment when his side was toward the gunman, with his narrowest aspect exposed, he reached out with his left hand, grabbed the gunman’s arm by the sleeve, and pulled it straight out.

  At the same time he pressed in toward the man, letting the side of his leg, with his weight behind it, push at the man’s knee and bend it backward. The knee joint resisted, then gave way under the pressure with an audible crack. The man grunted in pain and lost his grip on his weapon. Jonah took it.

  He didn’t want to fire the slug-pistol. In the dark and confusion, he had no way of telling what kind it was, how well it had been maintained, or even if it was loaded. Instead, he threw it as hard as he could at the upper torso of the man on his right—who was now, after Levin’s rightward turn and this fellow’s collapse, the man in front of him.

  The man sidestepped to dodge the impact. Jonah, seeing an attacker off balance, with his plans—whatever they had been—disrupted, took the opportunity to move forward.

  He stepped in close, and struck the bottom of the man’s chin with the heel of his hand. The man collapsed.

  Something moved in Jonah’s peripheral vision. It was the man who had come up behind him, now on Jonah’s right. He was lifting his arm, raising a firearm of his own before Jonah could move or react. A shot sounded.

  Jonah braced himself for the burning pain. It never came. Instead, the gunman lowered his arm, sank to his knees, and fell to his face on the sidewalk.

  “Good evening, Paladin,” Burton Horn said. The former GenDel messenger stepped out of the shadows and replaced his own handgun in his pocket. “The Countess of Northwind sends her greetings, and begs me to inform you that she wishes to discuss the matter of Ezekiel Crow with you, in private, as soon as possible.”

  “I have her to thank for your timely arrival, then.” Jonah was not going to let Horn outdo him in the sangfroid department, even though the voice of reason—sounding, as it so often did, very much like the voice of Anna—would not be stopped from pointing out the foolishness of such a reaction. “Do you know who these men are?”

  “I saw them in Belgorod not too long ago,” Horn said. “They were trying on hats. My contacts tell me that they work for Alexei Suvorov.” He glanced over at the trio of dead or unconscious men. “Some of his more expendable talent, at a guess. Not up to your weight, anyhow.”

  “I don’t know. If you hadn’t stopped that last one, I’d be dead by now.”

  “Maybe,” said Horn. “But you didn’t look like a guy who was getting ready to give up.”

  “If you say so. But I’ve gotten shot before, and believe me, the experience doesn’t get any more enjoyable with repetition.” Jonah looked down at his attackers where they lay on the pavement. The one with the broken knee was starting to groan and twitch feebly. “Suvorov’s men, you said. Am I supposed to know that name?”

  “I don’t think so,” Horn replied. “But I get the feeling that someone you do know, does know it. And right now, we should probably go someplace else before the police arrive and start to ask us a lot of awkward questions.”

  27


  Hotel Duquesne

  Geneva, Terra

  Prefecture X

  April 3134; local spring

  The last time that Tara Campbell had stayed in the Hotel Duquesne, she had been a five-year-old girl following in her Senator mother’s wake. She remembered the marble pillars in the main lobby as being much bigger, like stone trees holding up the sky, and the concierge as an enormous and godlike figure in gold braid and a majestic waxed mustache. The current concierge had to be the same man—you couldn’t possibly find two mustaches like that, even in Geneva. But he was shorter now than she was.

  Tara pushed away an inexplicable feeling of disappointment. She was aware of Captain Bishop at her shoulder, trying very hard not to appear impressed by the surroundings. She didn’t think her aide would be cheered by the information that the Countess of Northwind had paused to mourn the loss of another bit of her younger self.

  “Countess!” The concierge was beaming at her over the sweep of his mustache. “It’s an honor to have you with us again! Will you be staying here long?”

  “I’m sorry, Emil. I’m just here for a conference. I’m in Belgorod, with the rest of the Northwind Highlanders.” She saw his face start to fall, and couldn’t help herself. “Though if things run late, my aide and I may need rooms for the night.”

  “It would be our pleasure, Countess,” Emil assured her. “Alas, your mother’s usual suite is currently occupied.”

  “That’s all right. Whatever you have will do if we end up staying. For now, if you could let Mr. Bannson know that I’m coming up—”

  “Of course.” Emil bustled off.

  Captain Bishop, in the wake of his going, murmured, “If you don’t mind me asking, ma’am, just what was your mother’s usual suite?”

  Tara felt her face reddening, and was grateful for the dim lighting of the Duquesne’s lobby. “The penthouse,” she admitted. “Captain, the way things look, whatever’s going down may well be above even my rank, let alone yours. But I’m in it already, and you’re not. Go buy yourself a drink in the hotel bar and keep yourself safe from guilt by association. I’ll call for you if I need you.”