by Gary Gibson
She thought for a moment. ‘It was more that I decided to take a career break.’
He looked amused. ‘And do drug smugglers take career breaks?’
‘This one does.’ She licked her lips. ‘Look, I can’t thank you enough for everything you’ve—’
He waved a hand. ‘We’ve got a lot of history between us, Megan, and even criminals like you and me have to trust someone. You asked for help, and I gave it, but that doesn’t mean it’s free.’
‘I know I owe you.’
‘Yes,’ he agreed. ‘And also for the information you asked me to get.’ He made a practised gesture in the air. ‘Especially for that.’
Glyphs appeared in the air by his hand, and Sarbakshian reached out to touch one of them. It quivered momentarily before expanding to reveal several screeds of data.
‘Regarding your friend Anil Sifra,’ said Sarbakshian, ‘his dropship is still docked with the Liberia.’
‘That’s all?’ she shook her head. ‘I’m paying you to tell me that?’
‘Look, everything’s changed since the flood. The Accord has investigators operating all over Aguirre. It knows it’s been caught napping, and badly, so when it’s not dealing with the disaster, it’s trying to limit other kinds of damage – primarily political. That means it’s watching people like you and me very, very closely. I have a contact on the Liberia, but common bribery isn’t working nearly as well as it did just a couple of days ago.’ He squinted as if in pain. ‘And, much as I hesitate to sully our friendship with such a mundane and lowly matter, there does regretfully remain the matter of recompensing those very individuals who are taking it upon themselves to watch over your friend at considerable personal risk.’ At this, he pressed one hand over his heart, and flashed her a grin.
Megan regarded him coolly. ‘I already told you, I’m good for it.’
Sarbakshian nodded and waved the glyphs away. ‘We’ll discuss that more in a moment. First, however, I would very much like to know if you intend to kill this man Sifra.’
‘I’m not sure that’s any of your business, Sabby.’
‘But it is my business,’ he insisted. ‘Sifra is well known, since he’s closely linked to the former TSA’s First Families. Those are very powerful people, Megan. If they were to realize I aided you in killing one of their own, who would be able to protect me from them? You?’
She stared at him in disbelief. ‘You didn’t forget that I’m a machine-head, did you? You do understand I have a pretty good idea of just how much firepower you’ve got stashed all around this lair of yours? Not to mention those three men who followed me here after I disembarked from the tram.’
For a moment, Sarbakshian looked startled, but he recovered quickly, slapping his knee and laughing loudly in a manner that was only slightly less than convincing.
‘However, I’m not going to pay you in money,’ she declared, ‘but in knowledge.’
Sarbakshian’s expression clouded. ‘What the hell are you talking about?’
It was her turn to make a gesture in the air. She wafted a tiny glowing star towards Sarbakshian, who caught it with ease. He glanced at her impatiently, then glanced down at his open palm. Data flowered around him.
She watched as he sorted through the contents of the data package she had just given him, examining first the technical data and then the financial projections. She knew how he had been a communications engineer in a previous life, and so would immediately understand what he was looking at.
When he finally waved it all away, some minutes later, he wore a rather dazed expression.
‘There’s no way to maintain that level of coherence,’ he said hoarsely, ‘over that kind of distance, using tach-net communications technology. It simply isn’t possible.’
‘You’ll be able to license that data towards the development of a new generation of tach-net nodes, with minimal to zero signal loss and at a fraction of the current cost, reaching all the way across the Accord. It’ll be the start of a second revolution in faster-than-light communications technology, and you won’t have to waste your time just scrabbling for a living on this pissant world or any other, Sabby.’
He shook his head in bewilderment. ‘What the hell are you doing smuggling sans de sezi when you have access to something like this? You could be richer than the Schellings, or even the Besters.’
‘I don’t like to attract attention,’ she said. ‘And if I myself tried to use that information to make money, I would most definitely get the wrong kind of attention.’ She leaned towards him. ‘Put it this way: I’ve been saving it towards a rainy day, for a very long time.’
He shook his head. ‘There’s something about you that’s always intrigued me, Megan Jacinth. You’re the proverbial mystery wrapped inside an enigma. You came out of nowhere . . . I have no idea where you even got your implants.’
She looked at him, surprised. ‘You’ve been looking into me?’
‘I look into everybody,’ he said. ‘I trust people, but I’m no fool. I don’t rely just on gut instinct. I had the feeling that one of these days I was going to find out something surprising about you, but never anything like this. Why me, Megan? And why now?’
‘For one thing, it’s going to take years before that data starts paying out, and I can’t wait that long.’ She took a deep breath before continuing. ‘I need a ship, Sabby – one that can keep me alive for months, preferably years. You’re the only person I can think of who could possibly find me one at short notice.’
He began to chuckle, the sound dying on his lips when he noticed her expression. ‘Oh, my God,’ he said. ‘You’re serious.’
‘And it has to be equipped with a nova drive,’ she added.
His smile faded entirely. ‘Now I do know you’re crazy. You just can’t buy a ship like that.’
‘Back in the old days,’ she said, ‘the Three Star Alliance had a couple of small, nova-equipped scout ships used for exploration and mapping. One or two of them are still missing, since the Accord’s never been able to find them.’ She paused for effect. ‘But in fact I know they’re being used to transport sans de sezi all across the colonies.’
Sarbakshian paled. ‘How could you know about . . . ?’
‘Except the cost of maintaining them was too high,’ she continued, ‘not to mention the fact that they became so hot to handle that you and your partners couldn’t even offload the damn nova drives they contained.’ She shrugged. ‘Did I get any of the details wrong?’
Sarbakshian looked haggard and defeated suddenly, shrinking into his seat. ‘I should kill you,’ he muttered.
‘You could,’ she agreed. ‘But you won’t, because you’ll assume I’ve made arrangements for everything I know about those missing ships to be transmitted to the relevant authorities if I don’t check in at a certain time and place.’
‘I have people who could torture that information out of you.’
‘I know you, Sabby. You don’t work that way. You never have. And you’ve been looking for a way out of this business for a long time. Or so you told me the last time you talked me into bed, back on Corkscrew.’
She saw all the fight go out of him.
‘Fine,’ he said, waving one hand. ‘The ships were a dreadful investment – one of my worst. They nearly bankrupted me.’
‘So do we have a deal?’
‘Yes, damn you. We have a deal.’ Sarbakshian’s gaze dipped momentarily towards her chest. ‘We’d make a wonderful team, you and I. You have the body of an angel, and the mind of a hungry snake. Maybe if you stuck around . . .’
‘I wish I could, Sabby. But I owe a favour to another old friend.’
Sarbakshian shook his head and leaned over the table, to pick up a pitcher full to the brim with a pale liquid that smelled faintly of flowers. ‘Then, unless you’re really in a hurry, how about a drink to old times?’
‘Sabby.’
Megan watched him, with her head propped up on one elbow, as Sarbakshian coughed violently and ro
lled onto his back, swallowing with evident difficulty. Although the bedroom was dimly lit, she could see that when he opened his eyes they were rimmed with red, while his face was pale and bloodless. There was no sign of the lusty energy he’d demonstrated just a few short hours before, when she had allowed him to believe he was seducing her.
‘God damn you, look at you,’ he said, staring at her. ‘How does anyone drink that much and wake up without a hangover?’
‘Another benefit of being a machine-head,’ she said. ‘Full functional control of the diuretic system, the increased ability to process alcohol – so no hangovers.’
He thought for a second. ‘So were you only faking becoming drunk last night?’
‘You’ll never know,’ she said, and nodded past him. ‘I woke you up because you have an alert, and it looks like an urgent one.’
Sarbakshian twisted his head the other way to see a pale red globe floating by his bedside. He reached out and touched it, and it vanished like a soap bubble. Whatever it was must have been private, because she could see nothing more. ‘It’s your friend Sifra,’ Sarbakshian grunted. ‘He’s on the move. His dropship’s just departed the Liberia.’
Megan pulled herself out of the bed and looked around for her clothes. ‘Any idea where he’s heading?’ she asked, finding and pulling on her underwear.
‘I had someone put a tracking device on that ship of his, and it’s heading east.’ Sarbakshian frowned. ‘Well, well.’
‘What?’
He turned and looked at her. ‘It’s heading for the Montos de Frenezo. He seems an interesting fellow, your Sifra.’
‘About what you’re thinking,’ she said, ‘I don’t know the answer.’
‘What was I going to ask?’
‘Whether he had anything to do with what happened to the Demarchy. If I knew, I swear to God I’d tell you. But right now I have to go.’
She hunted around until she found her top, and pulled it on. She looked down at him, still sprawled amidst tangled sheets. ‘There’s just one more thing I need from you, Sabby.’
He chuckled. ‘After last night, I’m ready to say yes to just about anything.’
If Sarbakshian regretted making that offer before hearing just what it was she wanted, he did a good job of hiding it.
An hour later, Megan boarded his personal jump-car and started checking its systems. It wasn’t machine-head compatible, but required only a minimum of manual intervention. All she needed to do, Sarbakshian told her, was tell it where she wanted to go. Manual control was entirely optional. Megan would have preferred something a little more interactive – something she could genuinely control – but, for all that, it was a surprisingly roomy beast.
It was also, she knew, his pride and joy: its lines sinuous and curving and sleek, almost verging on the organic. But beneath that sporty exterior lurked the guts of a powerful machine designed to keep its occupant from being shot out of the sky.
‘Okay, Sabby,’ she murmured, as she found her way into the tiny cargo area at the rear of his jump-car, ‘let’s see what you’ve got tucked away in here, shall we?’
She soon found the bulkhead he’d told her to look for, feeling around its side until she found the hidden switch. A concealed door then clicked open, revealing a veritable arsenal of weaponry. She saw long-range neural disruptors, pocket-sized hunter-seeker drones with k9-enabled neural networks that could identify individual human targets according to their scent, a rack of zero-kickback high-powered rifles, and a small cache of throwaway energy weapons suitable for a dozen uses – after which they could be used as grenades.
Not bad, she thought, not bad at all.
When you say you’re going away for a long time, he had said to her in the moments before her departure, you make it sound as if you don’t mean to come back at all?
She had pressed a finger to his lips, but his frown hadn’t quite disappeared. She knew what he was thinking: that, wherever she was going, she wasn’t expecting to come back alive. Otherwise, why hand him so much potential for wealth?
She activated the vehicle’s primary systems and took a moment to check up on Sifra’s recent movements. His dropship had indeed landed deep in the heart of the Montos de Frenezo, half a world away from Aguirre.
The next time we meet, Anil, she said to herself, it’s going to be on my terms.
NINETEEN
Megan
2751 (twelve years before)
Megan stepped down from the astrogation chair twenty minutes after Tarrant had demanded the presence of herself and Bash in the ship’s lounge, meanwhile wondering why the Wanderer’s signal had cut off so unexpectedly.
She felt a growing sense of unease as she made her way down through several decks to reach the lounge. When she met Bash halfway, they continued together in silence. She felt a sharp pang of regret as she remembered her first meeting with Tarrant and Sifra in the same lounge, several months before.
They arrived to find Tarrant sitting on a couch facing the entrance, a large aluminium case resting by his side. He stood up and pointed what looked like some kind of gun directly at Bash.
Megan heard a soft hiss of air, like a suddenly indrawn breath.
‘What the hell . . . ?’ exclaimed Bash.
She turned to see him examining a tiny, sliver-like dart protruding from his chest. He reached down to pluck it out, then tipped forward, with his knees folding under him.
The door closed behind them. She turned, startled by the sound, to see Sifra advancing towards her, wearing his nerve-induction gloves. He had obviously been waiting just out of sight behind the door itself.
Sifra grabbed hold of her before she had a chance to react. It was as if molten lava flooded across her skin. Her legs gave way and she hit the floor, a liquid warmth spreading round her groin.
She saw Bash lying unconscious nearby, and felt a depth of terror she hadn’t experienced in many years.
Sifra deactivated his gloves, then, with Tarrant’s help, dragged her over and dumped her on another couch.
‘Get the inhibitor,’ said Tarrant.
She willed herself just to reach out and take hold of his throat, to wrap her lean, strong fingers around the neck of her former lover and squeeze, and yet her muscles refused to obey her. She watched helplessly as Sifra opened the silver case Tarrant had brought with him. He withdrew a device of some kind, pressing its muzzle against the base of her skull. There followed a sharp stab of pain that brought tears to her eyes.
Sifra stepped away from her, allowing Tarrant room to tug both her wrists behind her back and secure them with a plastic tie. All the while, she struggled feebly, but to no avail.
The two men stepped away and grabbed hold of Bash, dragging him up onto the couch that Tarrant had been sitting on when they entered.
‘You aren’t one half the man people think you are,’ she managed to gasp at Tarrant. ‘Not one hundredth. And I hope I die and go to hell, just so I can be on the reception committee when you finally get there.’
‘Nobody’s dying,’ said Tarrant. ‘In fact, the inhibitor I just injected you with is going to help keep you alive.’
She twisted her head from side to side as if she could shake the damn thing loose. ‘What the fuck is an “inhibitor”?’
‘Something that should keep you safe from the Wanderer.’
‘Keep me safe?’
Tarrant gave the cord securing Bash’s wrists an experimental tug, then nodded as if satisfied, before coming to stand before her with hands on hips. ‘There are some other things we didn’t tell you. When the Kelvin was here, the crew tried communicating with the Wanderer by conventional means.’ He shook his head. ‘It didn’t work. Sifra tried again, on our own approach, but he got the same results. But what you don’t know, Megan, is that the Wanderer was somehow able to communicate with the Kelvin’s crew through their two machine-head pilots, but in a way we still don’t really understand. Unfortunately, the two pilots didn’t come too well out of the experience.’<
br />
Megan felt a terrible sense of dread. ‘What are you talking about?’
Tarrant squatted before her, so his face was level with her own. ‘Right after the Kelvin got within hailing distance of the Wanderer,’ he said, ‘they found one of their pilots lying unconscious in his quarters. He never regained full consciousness and, less than a day later, the other pilot suffered what initially appeared to be a seizure. Unlike the other guy, he did regain consciousness, and it rapidly became clear the Wanderer had found a way to speak to the Kelvin’s crew through them.’
She realized that in a strange way she had been expecting something like this. Even after Tarrant’s dreadful act of betrayal less than a week before, there had been some part of her that still believed his actions were caused by a misguided belief that the ends justified the means. Now she understood he was in fact a monster more terrible than she could have ever imagined.
‘In some way,’ Tarrant continued, ‘the Wanderer was able to communicate with the pilots directly, via their implants, but something about that experience blew half their synapses. The first pilot died after a couple of days, without ever waking up; the other suffered such bad epileptic attacks that they had to sedate him.’ He shrugged. ‘And that was the moment it chose to attack.’
‘So how did they get away, with their pilots compromised?’
‘They managed to revive the surviving pilot long enough for him to jump them to safety. He wound up dead of a brain embolism just days after they arrived back at Kjæregrønnested. And that,’ Tarrant concluded, ‘is why we shot you with an inhibitor. It should keep the Wanderer from taking control of your higher-level machine-head functions, the way it did with the Kelvin’s pilots. We’re going to need you well enough to get us back home, once we’re done here, after all.’
‘You didn’t shoot one into Bash. Why not?’
Tarrant returned her look without saying anything.
