Alkad had seen worse rooms when she was on the move thirty years ago. The hotel charged by the hour, catering for starship crews on fast stopovers, and citizens who wanted somewhere quiet and private to indulge any of a variety of vices which modern technology could provide. There was no window, the hotel was cut into rock some distance behind the cliff at the end of the biosphere cavern. It was cheaper that way. The customers never even noticed.
Big holograms covered two of the walls, showing pictures of some planetary city at dusk, its jewelscape of twinkling lights retreating into a horizon of salmon-pink sky. The bed filled half of the floor space, leaving just enough room for people to shuffle around it. There was no other furniture. The bathroom was a utilitarian cubicle fitted with a shower and a toilet. Soaps and gels were available from a pay dispenser.
“This is Lodi Shalasha,” Voi said when they arrived. “Our electronics supremo, he’s made sure the room’s clean. I hope. For his sake.”
The young man rolled off the bed and smiled nervously at Alkad. He was dressed in a flamboyant orange suit with eye-twisting green spirals. Not quite as tall as Voi, and several kilos overweight.
Student type, Alkad categorized instantly, burning with the outrage that came from a head stuffed full of fresh knowledge. She’d seen it a thousand times before when she was a lecturer; kids from an easy background expanding their minds in all the wrong directions at the first taste of intellectual freedom.
His smile was strained when he looked at Voi. “Have you heard?”
“Heard what?” the tall girl was immediately suspicious.
“I’m sorry, Voi. Really.”
“What?”
“Your father. There was some kind of trouble at the Laxa and Ahmad offices. He’s dead. It’s all over the news.”
Every muscle in the girl’s body hardened, she stared right through Lodi. “How?”
“The police say he was shot. They want to question Kaliua Lamu.”
“That’s stupid, why would Kaliua shoot my father?”
Lodi shrugged hopelessly.
“It must have been those people running to the offices. Foreign agents, they did it,” Voi said. “We must not let this distract us.” She paused for a moment, then burst into tears.
Alkad had guessed it was coming, the girl was far too rigid. She sat Voi down on the bed and put her arm around the girl’s shoulders. “It’s all right,” she soothed. “Just let it happen.”
“No.” Voi was rocking back and forth. “I must not. Nothing must interfere with the cause. I’ve got a suppressor program I can use. Give me a moment.”
“Don’t,” Alkad warned. “That’s the worst thing you can do. Believe me, I’ve had enough experience of grief to know what works.”
“I didn’t like my father,” Voi wailed. “I told him I hated him. I hated what he did. He was weak.”
“No, Ikela was never weak. Don’t think that of your father. He was one of the best navy captains we had.”
Voi wiped a hand across her face, simply broadening the tear trails. “A navy captain?”
“That’s right. He commanded a frigate during the war. That’s how I knew him.”
“Daddy fought in the war?”
“Yes. And after.”
“I don’t understand. He never said.”
“He wasn’t supposed to. He was under orders, and he obeyed them right up to his death. An officer to the last. I’m proud of him. All Garissans can be proud of him.” Alkad hoped the hypocrisy wouldn’t taint her voice. She was alarmingly aware how much she needed Voi’s people now, whoever they were. And Ikela had almost kept the faith, it was only a white lie.
“What did he do in the navy?” Voi was suddenly desperate for details.
“Later, I promise,” Mzu said. “Right now I want you to activate a somnolence program. Believe me, it’s the best thing. We were having a hard enough day before this.”
“I don’t want to sleep.”
“I know. But you need it. And I’m not going anywhere. I’ll be here when you wake up.”
Voi glanced uncertainly at Lodi, who nodded encouragingly. “All right.” She lay back on the bed, shuffled herself comfortable, and closed her eyes. The program took hold.
Alkad stood up and deactivated the chameleon suit. It was painful peeling the hood off her face, the thin fabric stuck possessively to her skin. But the room’s cool air was a tonic; she’d sweated heavily underneath it.
She split the seal on her blouse and began to wriggle her arms out of the suit.
Lodi coughed frantically.
“Never seen a naked woman before?”
“Er, yes. But . . . I. That is—”
“Are you just playing at this, Lodi?”
“Playing at what?”
“Being a good-guy radical, a revolutionary on the run?”
“No!”
“Good. Because you’re going to see a lot worse than a bare-arsed woman my age before we’re done.”
His skittish attitude calmed. “I understand. I really do. Er—”
Alkad started on the trousers, they were tighter than the hood. “Yes?”
“Who are you, exactly?”
“Voi didn’t explain?”
“No. She just told me to alert the group for possible action. She said we must be careful because the asteroid was probably under covert surveillance.”
“She was right.”
“Yeah, I know,” he said proudly. “I was the one who worked out the Edenists were spreading those spiders.”
“Clever of you.”
“Thanks. Our junior cadres are cleaning them from critical areas, corridor junctions and places. But I made sure they skimp around this hotel; I didn’t want to draw attention to it.”
“A smart precaution. So do these cadres of yours know we’re here?”
“No, absolutely not; nobody else knows. I swear. Voi said she wanted a safe room; I even paid cash.”
Maybe I can still salvage this after all, Alkad thought. “Tell you what, Lodi; I’m going to have a shower first, then afterwards you can tell me all about this little group of yours.”
* * *
As with most crews when they were docked, Joshua liked to book in at a hotel even if it was only for a single night. It wasn’t necessarily more convenient than staying in the Lady Mac, it just made a change. This time, though, the crew returned to the starship; and Joshua depressurized the airlock tube once they were all back on board. It would hardly stop anyone in an SII suit, but Lady Mac had her fair share of internal defence systems. And besides . . . at the back of his mind was the notion that a possessed would be hard-pressed to wear and operate a spacesuit; if Kelly was right, their rampant energistic ability would completely screw up the suit’s processors. He sealed himself up in his sleep cocoon with his paranoia reduced to its lowest level in days.
It was a sombre breakfast as they began to drift into the galley cabin and collect their food five hours later. Everyone had accessed the local news companies. Ikela’s murder was the premier item.
Ashly glanced at the galley’s AV pillar as he plugged his cereal packet into the milk nozzle.
“Got to be a cover-up,” the pilot grunted. “Too much smoke, too little fire. The police should have made an arrest by now. Where’s someone as prominent as this Lamu character going to hide in an asteroid?”
Joshua glanced up from his carton of grapefruit. “You think Mzu did it?”
“No.” Ashly retrieved the now-chilly packet and gulped down a mouthful of the mushy wheat paste. “I think someone trying to get Mzu did it; Ikela just got in their way. The police must know that. They simply can’t blurt it out in public.”
“So did they get her?” Melvyn asked.
“Am I psychic?”
“Such questions are irrelevant,” Beaulieu said. “We don’t have enough information to speculate in this fashion.”
“We can certainly speculate on who else is trying to nab her,” Melvyn said. “For my money, it
’s got to be the bloody intelligence agencies. If we can confirm she made it here, so can they. And that’s serious trouble, Captain. If they can kill someone like Ikela with impunity, they’re not going to worry much about riding over us.”
Joshua switched his empty carton of grapefruit for a can of tea and a croissant. He stared around at his crew as he chewed on the bland pastry (another reason he liked hotels, free-fall food was always soft and tacky to avoid crumbs). Melvyn’s words were unsettling, none of them were really used to personal, one-on-one danger; starship combat was so very different. Then there was the possibility of encountering the possessed as well. “Beaulieu’s right, we don’t have enough data yet. We’ll spend the morning rectifying that. Melvyn and Ashly, you team up; I want you to concentrate on industrial defence contracts, see if you can find traces of the kind of things Mzu would require for retrieving and deploying the Alchemist. Principally, that’ll be a starship, but it’ll still need fitting out; if we’re really lucky she could have ordered some kind of customized equipment. Dahybi, Beaulieu; try and find out what happened to the Daphine Kigano alias, where she was last seen, her credit disk number, that kind of thing. I’m going to find out what I can about Ikela and his associates.”
“What about me?” Sarha asked indignantly.
“You’re on duty in here, and you don’t let anyone apart from us on board. From now on, there will always be one of us on the bridge. I don’t know that there are any possessed in Ayacucho, but I’m not risking it. There’s also the intelligence agencies to consider, along with local security forces, and whoever Mzu is lined up with. I think now might also be an appropriate time to take the serjeants out of zero-tau just in case events turn sour. We can pass them off as cosmoniks easily enough.”
* * *
Ione was finding the whole sensation of independence most peculiar, both individually and in unison with the mirror fragment minds in the other serjeants. Her thoughts were fluttering across the affinity band like birds fleeing a hurricane.
We must try and separate more, she said.
To which her own thoughts replied: Absolutely.
She felt like giggling; the kind of giggle that came from being tickled by a merciless lover: unwelcome yet inevitable.
The affinity contact with the other three serjeants reduced, paring down to essential information: location, threat status, environment interpretation. She couldn’t help the little frisson of eagerness at the experience; this was the first time she had ever been anywhere outside Tranquillity. Ayacucho might not be much, but she was determined to soak in as much of it as she could.
She was following Joshua out of the transit capsule which had delivered them from the spaceport. The axial chamber was just a low-gee bubble of rock, but at the same time it was a bubble of rock which she hadn’t seen before. Her first foreign world.
Joshua got into a waiting tube lift and sat down. She chose the seat opposite him, the composite creaking as it adjusted to her weight.
“This is all so strange,” she said as the lift moved off. “Part of me wants to be next to you.”
His face became immobile. “Jesus, Ione, why the fuck did you shove your personality into the serjeants? Tranquillity’s would’ve been just fine.”
“Why, Joshua Calvert, I do believe you’re embarrassed.”
“Who me? Oh, no, I’m quite used to sexless two metre monstrosities making a pass at me.”
“Don’t be so grumpy. It’s unbecoming. Besides, you should be grateful. My instinct is very protective towards you. That might give me an edge.”
Joshua’s retort was lost somewhere in his throat.
The lift’s doors opened on a public hall in the asteroid’s commercial district where several late office workers scurried to work while a pair of mechanoids cleaned the walls and floor. It was less spartan than the axial chamber, with a high, arched roof and troughs of plants spaced at regular intervals. But it was still only a tunnel through rock, nothing exuberant. Unfortunately the serjeant didn’t have lips that could easily be compressed into a pout, otherwise she would have done it. She really wanted to see the biosphere cavern.
Joshua started off down the hall.
“What do you hope to accomplish here?” she asked.
“T’Opingtu is a big company; someone will have been appointed to run it straightaway. And Ikela would make sure his replacement is someone he can trust, someone from his immediate circle. It’s not much, but it’s the best lead we’ve got.”
“I really don’t think you’ll be able to get an appointment today.”
“Don’t be such a downer, Ione. Your trouble is Tranquillity is incorruptible and logical, that’s all you’re used to. Asteroids like Ayacucho are neither. The size of the contract I’m going to dangle in their faces will get me straight into the top office. There’s an etiquette to this kind of business.”
“Very well, you get in. Then what?”
“I won’t know until I get there. Remember this is strictly a data acquisition mission, everything is helpful even if it is only negative. So keep your senses open and your memory on full record.”
“Aye, Captain.”
“Okay, now we’re primarily interested in anything we can learn about Ikela’s life. We know he was an Garissan refugee, so who did he move with from the past, was he a strong nationalist? Names, contacts, that kind of stuff.”
“My personality didn’t suffer any damage during the replication process, I can think for myself.”
“Wonderful. A bodyguard with an attitude.”
“Joshua, darling, this isn’t attitude.”
He stopped and jabbed a finger at the husky construct. “Now look—”
“That’s Pauline Webb,” Ione said.
“What? Who?”
Three people were marching down the public hall towards Joshua. Two African-ethnic men flanking a white woman. He didn’t like the look of the men at all; they were wearing civilian suits, but combat armour would have been more appropriate. Boosted, and no doubt containing a wide variety of extremely lethal implants.
Pauline Webb stopped a couple of metres short of Joshua and gave the serjeant a curious glance. “Your appointment is cancelled, Calvert. Collect your crew, get back in your starship, and go home. Today.”
Joshua produced his most nonchalant grin. “Pauline Webb. Fancy seeing you here.”
Her narrowed eyes gave the serjeant another suspicious glance. “This situation is not your concern anymore.”
“It is everybody’s concern,” Ione said. “Especially mine.”
“I didn’t know you things could operate independently.”
“Now you do,” Joshua said politely. “So if you’ll just step aside . . .”
The man directly in front of Joshua folded his arms and planted his feet slightly apart, a true immovable object. He smiled carnivorously down at Joshua.
“Er, perhaps we could come to an arrangement?”
“The arrangement is simple,” Webb said. “If you leave, you get to live.”
“Come on, Joshua,” Ione said. The serjeant’s all-too-human hand closed on his shoulder, forcing him to turn.
“But—”
“Come on.”
“That’s smart advice,” Webb said. “Listen to it.”
Ione let go of his shoulder after a few paces. A fuming Joshua allowed her to escort him back down the hall towards the lift. When he glanced over his shoulder Webb and her two troopers were standing watching him.
“This isn’t her turf,” he hissed at the serjeant. “We could have caused a scene, made trouble for her. The police would have sorted her out as well as us.”
“Any incident with the authorities here would have been resolved in her favour. She’s a CNIS officer assigned to Mzu; the local Navy Bureau would have backed her, and you and I would be in deep shit, not to mention jail.”
“How the hell did Webb know where I was going?”
“I imagine Lady Mac’s crew is under clandestine surveill
ance right now.”
“Jesus!”
“Quite. We will have to withdraw and come up with a new strategy.”
They reached the lift doors, and Joshua datavised for a ride back to the axial chamber. He cast another glance over his shoulder to check on Webb, a sly smile germinating on his face. “You know what this means, don’t you?”
“What?”
“The agencies don’t have her yet. We’re still in with a chance.”
“That’s logical.”
“Of course it’s logical. We may even be able to turn this to our advantage.”
“How?”
“I’ll tell you when we’re back in Lady Mac. Everyone’s going to have to undergo decontamination first. Christ knows what sort of covert nanonics they’ve stung us with. We’ll be broadcasting our own thoughts back to them if we’re not careful.”
The lift doors opened and he stepped inside. Someone had slapped half a dozen twenty-centimetre circular holomorph stickers at random over the walls, with a couple more on the ceiling. One was at head height; it started its cycle, a tight bud of lavender photons swelling out from the centre into the form of a scantily clad teenage cheerleader. She shook her silver baton enthusiastically. “Run, Alkad, run!” she yelled. “You’re our last hope; don’t let them catch you. Run, Alkad, run!”
Joshua stared at it in stupefaction. “Jesus wept.”
The cheerleader winked saucily, and syphoned back down below the sticker’s surface. Three more began their cycle.
18
Arnstadt fell to the Organization fleet after a ninety-minute battle above the planet. The Strategic Defence network was hammered into oblivion by Capone’s antimatter-powered combat wasps. There had been some advance warning from the Edenists, giving the local navy time to redeploy their ships. Three squadrons of voidhawks had arrived from the habitats orbiting one of the system’s gas giants, reinforcing the Adamist vessels.
None of the preparations altered the final outcome. Forty-seven Arnstadt navy ships were destroyed, along with fifteen voidhawks. The remaining voidhawks swallowed away, withdrawing back to the gas giant.
The Night's Dawn Trilogy Page 191
