Except none of them ever had names attached. They were just “some tech,” “this one doctor,” “this guy”…
Piata’s guy had a name. Brahm Rajandur.
She hesitated—it would cost. “What the hell.” She flipped open the screen again, lighting it up and starting the meter. She entered the name and sat back.
NOTICE OF POSITIVE STATUS
In recognition of his outstanding service in the advancement of Moontwo’s medical team, Brahm Rajandur is effectively and officially cleared of all public debts owing the Governing Board and Public Finance Committee of Moontwo as of 11:21:30:14:09,
Emiliya was on her feet so quickly she barely remembered to slap the screen down to shut it off. She was out the door and sprinting down the narrow dormitory hallway to hammer on Piata’s door.
Piata slid the door open. He was grinning.
“Gotcha.”
She was panting and had to swallow before she could speak. “What is this? Is this a fake?”
Piata shook his head. “It’s for real.”
“How? What? Did he discover a better cure for ugly? What?”
Piata’s tarnished-gold eyes flicked right, then left. “Come on in.” He stepped back, giving her room. “We don’t need to share this with the whole world.”
The light panels were all on and Emiliya blinked in the simulated sunshine as Piata slid the door shut. Piata’s room was a match for hers in size and furnishings, but he’d splashed out for some active screens. The walls showed scenes of Dazzle in its heyday, just as if he had a window onto a street.
“Have a seat.” He nodded toward the bed. She sat stiffly on the edge. Piata leaned back against the desk and folded his arms, grinning at her. “And it’s okay to talk. As far as the ears know, I’m spending the evening with a good vid.” He nodded toward the shining street scene on his wall.
You wired the room? It was a hell of a risk. If they caught you, when they caught you, you could be kicked right off Hospital, credentials revoked, which left you with no legal way to make a living.
Get out of here. You shouldn’t even be talking to him. But she could still see that public notice in her mind.
“You talk,” she said, trying to sound much cooler than she felt. “You’re the one who’s so in the know.”
Piata nodded. “I’ve been trying to keep an eye out for… extras. Stuff I can do, or get, that might just help my balance with the Clerks and the Administrators.”
Translation: You’ve been hacking the databases looking for something you might be able to get hold of that somebody up the chain might want to buy. Emiliya shifted her weight. She knew Piata was a bit on the fringe, and that he liked to play up being the pirate, but she’d thought that was all skin.
Seems I’ve misjudged you. For a moment, her mind’s eye transposed Piata’s pretend-pirate face over Kapa’s real-pirate one. The similarities made her shiver.
“And in the course of so doing,” Piata went on, “I’ve gotten hold of the criteria the cell-masters are looking for in the saints.”
“Criteria?”
“Yes. You don’t think all this scanning you’re going to be doing is for smuggled goods, do you?”
“I thought it was just for data.” Everything was about data. Every person, every living thing Hospital got its collective hands on, was scrutinized to see if it could yield some new scrap of information that might become valuable. A bunch of healthy specimens from the rich and well-cared-for Solaris worlds would be too good to waste. She’d heard rumors that the marketing wing was setting a “Solaris Standard” for health treatments.
To make a standard, you needed a baseline.
But Piata shook his head. “They’re looking for some very specific stuff. And when they find it, they’ll want the body it’s in for analysis and replication.” He met her gaze. “And we figure they will be more than willing to compensate whoever brings that body in.”
Emiliya pulled back. “You are not talking about kidnapping a saint.”
“What if I told you it wasn’t the first time?”
“Are you out of your mind?” she exclaimed. “Even the Blood Family wouldn’t risk cutting up a saint. The Solarans take worlds apart for that kind of crap.”
Piata leaned forward. “Look at me, Emiliya. Do you think I’m joking you now?”
She looked. She looked for a long time. “What exactly do you want from me?”
“I just want to know if you find a match to a set of criteria and which of them it is. That’s all.”
“Then what?”
“Then you’re part of the team, and we all get our debts cleared and go positive.”
Go positive. Cash instead of debt. Cash is freedom.
Getting caught was the end of it. Even having this conversation, even thinking the thoughts that filled her mind was dangerous.
“Piata, I’ve got family back there. The idea was I’d be able to buy them out.”
“So, you give the positive balance to them.” He spread his hands. “What do I care? There’ll be plenty to go around.”
Her own hands gripped her forearms, nails digging into cloth. It took every ounce of will she had to suppress the eagerness rising in her. She could go positive. She could save them after all. And she wouldn’t have to crawl to Kapa or to Amerand, didn’t have to go into yet another kind of debt…
“I can’t risk it,” she said out loud to Piata.
“Go back to your room and take a look at the announcement about Rajandur. Take a good, long look.” Piata leaned forward, and his voice dropped into a seductive murmur. “They want a saint. They can’t just take one themselves. The saints will balk a little, you know? Maybe even pack themselves up and head back home. Out of reach. If we do it, if we make it look like a kidnapping for ransom, or a robbery gone wrong, then their hands are clean and we’ve got the most precious commodity in the system. We will be rich, we will be free, and we will most definitely be gone.”
“Why me?”
“Because you’re heading up the scan team and in a lovely confluence of events, your boyfriend’s their babysitter.”
“He’s not my boyfriend.”
But if I get out…
If she was free and out among the black-sky worlds, she could bring him out with her. They’d be free together. Free to be together. And she wouldn’t have to be grateful to him, or dependent on him. They’d look out for each other because they wanted to, not because they had to. It’d be what she wanted to have with Kapa, before he vanished and left her stranded.
Free. Black-sky free.
Piata shrugged. “He’s your friend, and their babysitter. You’re going to be able to get closer than any of us.” His sly grin turned positively feral.
Emiliya sat there, hearing the sound of her own harsh breathing, feeling the hammering of her heart. She heard what Piata was offering. She saw the picture he was drawing, and it was beautiful, especially when she added her own details.
But Emiliya was a daughter of Oblivion and there were things that would not leave her. Running the tunnels she learned that the best thing to have was something somebody else wanted. It gave you power, and a way to make them pay.
But the other thing she’d learned was that the worst thing to have was something somebody else wanted. They’d kill you for it.
Emiliya looked up at Piata and saw him in a whole new light.
“I’m in,” she said.
NINE
TERESE
As such things go, the trip out to the Erasmus System wasn’t too bad. Like long medical procedures, space travel is essentially dull. The destinations can be exciting, even awe-inspiring, but the actual transit involves sitting in some variant of a tin can while falling through vacuum, for a long time.
In our case, the tin cans were roomy and designed to be comfortable for bored or nervous passengers. The acceleration was gentle, to give us time to adapt to the lighter gravity we were heading for. With all the personnel we were carrying, there were ple
nty of people to talk to and get to know, which meant you didn’t have to make yourself jittery playing XPs or spending too much time with the same couple of people.
Plenty to keep me distracted from the fact that I had waited until after we left to finally send a message to David. It was short. I’ll be back, I said. I promise. It was all I could do.
Once, the faster-than-light part of this process had been handled by massive gates. A ship could jump out to anywhere at all, but it could only get back to its point of origin if there was a gate to jump back through. This meant the worlds nearest the gates saw a lot of traffic—and a lot of money.
Jasper and Felice Erasmus had built their little empire around the gate system. That empire was brought down by the basic fact that human beings can never leave well enough alone. Understanding improved. New power sources were developed and the size of power cells shrank. The internal drive became reality and the need for the gate network—and gate port worlds—vanished.
Despite the comfort of my surroundings and the available distractions, I had far too much time to ruminate on my last, and very unofficial, meeting with Misao.
I had been on my way back from a run, short of breath and slightly sweaty. Spring was making its first slushy inroads into Chicago airspace and I’d been out to see the ice breaking up on the lake. At first, I hadn’t recognized the man who turned toward me from where he had been standing at the entrance to the Palmer House garden. For a second, I even had the wild hope it might be David, but when I saw who it really was, I pulled up short and stood there, wordless.
“Walk with me,” Misao said.
I obeyed, too startled to do anything else. I fell into step beside him as he turned west up the Owens Street walkway.
He didn’t seem to have any destination in mind. We just strolled through the chilly wind toward the glorious pink-and-gold sunset. A few kids ran past on one side. I hunched my shoulders, the sweat cooling my skin down to the point of goose pimples, and wished he’d suggest we go back to the Palmer House, or just tell me what the hell was going on. Misao was only wearing a thin, open coat and hadn’t seemed to feel the cold. He just walked with a measured pace, his eyes straight ahead.
We reached the escalator for the El station. I stopped, rather awkwardly. “I think this is your exit,” I said, gesturing toward the rising stairs.
Misao faced me and I saw a strange sharpness in his green eyes.
“This situation is bad, Terese,” he said softly. “Not just because of the hot spot. The whole thing stinks. If I could, I’d pull all of you out. I just wanted you to know that.”
I had no answer. I didn’t recognize the angry, diminished man in front of me.
“We’ve missed something and we’re still missing it,” he went on. “You’re being sent in blind, and I can’t do a thing about it.”
He didn’t want anyone at HQ to hear us, I had realized belatedly. He didn’t want anyone to hear him.
I tried to shrug it off. “We’ve gone into the dark before,” I said softly. We had—I had—and we’d come out in one piece. Mostly.
How had I come to be the one reassuring Misao?
“Not like this.” Fury roughened his voice. He hadn’t been angry at me. He was angry at the world, at the higher-ups and the lower-downs who couldn’t tell him what he needed to know. “Our best people have said we’ve got all the intel there is, but I can’t make myself believe that. The situation is focused around Bianca, I’m sure of it.”
As soon as he’d said Bianca’s name, I heard Siri again. You have no idea what she did for you.
But Misao would know.
“Was I your idea, Misao? Did you ask Siri to tell me her little theory about Bianca? As if I might not be motivated enough?”
All the anger I’d seen in him a moment before dissolved slowly into disappointment. He looked away quickly. When he spoke again, I barely heard him.
“Of all my people, I thought you were one who was not convinced that I am a manipulative mastermind. I brought you back because I need you. Because despite everything, you remain one of the best coordinators we have.” The wind gusted hard, and Misao sucked in a great breath. “Two years ago Bianca tried to tell me that Erasmus was ready to explode. But she didn’t have the proof, and even if I wanted to believe her, there was nothing I could do.”
He drew one tan-gloved hand out of his pocket and laid it on my arm. I couldn’t remember a time he’d touched me. Misao was my distant, steady boss. He did not come down to us, he did not come out with us. He was apart, distinct.
“Be careful. Be thorough,” he said to me that cold afternoon. “Be sure, Terese. Before you make any move.”
I swallowed and nodded, and I had gotten out of there as fast as I could, so I wouldn’t have to witness for one heartbeat longer the inconceivable sight of Marshal-Steward Misao pleading.
Finally, there came the hard lurch between the end of the jump and the beginning of slower-than-light acceleration. Siri and I sat side by side in the cabin we’d shared, in two swaddling loungers with the webbing drawn tight over our legs and torsos. I had claimed the couch closest to the window. With the active screen pulled open across my lap and the window in front of me, I took my first look at our hot spot.
Whatever else may be said about it, the Erasmus System is beautiful. Its sun is a vigorous, young yellow. Its ten planets are all gas giants: the Divine’s own jewels floating in the blackness. Our ultimate destination was truly impressive. R3ES3—which the pilots and the returning aid workers called “Reesethree”—had probably been destined to be a star, but it hadn’t quite cleared the final hurdle to start its gases fusing. It remained a huge gas giant turning lazily on its axis displaying chaotic bands of sulfur yellow, rusted orange, and startling scarlet. Many-armed hurricanes—great swirls of black, white, and tan—crawled across the lanes of color.
Even from this far out, we could make out some of Reesethree’s moons. Five of them were almost Mars-sized and seismically stable. But more important, one of them was Europan—it had a world’s worth of water concealed under a shifting layer of ice. This was enough to make the moons suitable for human habitation, at least by sufficiently determined human beings.
I didn’t spend too much time on the scenery, as spectacular as it was. What I really wanted to see were the jump gates. We were heading straight toward them, so I was able to tap the fleet’s scopes and get a good long look.
There is no mistaking jump gates for anything but artificial constructs. Mother Nature does not make cubes, and even if She did, She would not cut perfect circles out of each side, then make the things float.
The Erasmus gates were old. They tumbled through the darkness—giant dice in a game the gods had finally decided to let us in on. Their extinguished lights made dark spots and lines on their scored and pitted hides. One sat with a side perpendicular to the plane our ship traveled on, another pirouetted on its corner, showing me each of its blind eyes in turn as we flew past.
I stared at them, searching for some sign of activity, any sign of life. Because if we had gotten it right, the Erasmans were going to launch their war through those gates.
The three of us—Vijay, Siri, and I—had been in one of the endless briefings in Misao’s office. At that point, I was still in enough pain from my rebirth to be…overly direct.
“How could a little piece of chaos in the third ring be able to launch a war that could reach the Solar System?”
Vijay had folded his arms and crossed his legs, businesslike, distanced, and a little disgusted. At me or the situation? “Alone, they probably can’t,” he said. “But while they’ve been trying to keep some kind of hold on power in their own system, they’ve also been expanding their influence into some other little pieces of chaos.”
“Little pieces of chaos which, coincidentally, also still have jump gates on the edges of their systems,” added Siri. “And which could be brought back online fairly easily and used to launch…anything at all.”
I had stared at them. They were talking science fiction. The idea that someone could launch a fleet of microdrones, or infectious spores, or something else exciting, using old jump gates was a horror XP staple. Such an attack might not take down an inhabited system, but it would tear it up badly, and it would be extremely difficult to tell where the attack had come from, let alone to stop it once it got started.
“They’d destabilize the entire FTL-transit network,” I said. “Nobody would allow outside ships into their system. Trade between the diaspora worlds would grind to a halt…”
“Which may be part of the idea. Destabilize the whole system, then be smack-dab in the center when it comes to building it back up again.” Misao worked his desk’s commands, cross-loading more scenario workups.
There was a kicker that the horror shows seldom bothered to consider. The internal drive works on the same principle as the gates. Anything you can do with a gate, you can do with an ID ship, only it would require fewer people and leave fewer witnesses.
“Why not take apart their gates?”
Siri’s smile had been bitter. She brushed a speck of dust off her neat cobalt-blue slacks. “Because if this is a viable plan, they could simply smuggle the plans out to one of their partner systems.”
“Then there is the diplomatic question,” said Misao. The frustration in his voice had strained to get out. “If we start taking apart all the old gates we can reach, we are going to undo far more than some antiquated hardware.”
Of course. I rubbed my forehead. Interfering with something an independent system considers its property inevitably makes you more enemies than friends. And worse, it can also cascade in an uncontrollable manner. And just going around saying, “Hey, someone might be trying to weaponize the gates, let’s take them apart, okay?” was probably a diplomatic nonstarter.
A cold, even voice pulled me back to the present.
“Erasmus traffic control to ship provisionally identified as Miranda I. Your approach has been recorded by our scopes. You will respond with the identification codes for your ship, the fleet vessels, and the piloting personnel within sixty seconds or we will begin countermeasures.”
Bitter Angels Page 10
