A Prison Unsought

by Sherwood Smith

  Faseult said to his back, “There are several factions, sir, among prominent Service Families. Though speculation and social competition are intense, our reports indicate nothing definite beyond that.” Which is as neutral a description of the claws and teeth behind those smiling Douloi masks as I can manage.

  Now the admiral did turn. “What about the Aerenarch?”

  The commander looked down at the signet ring on his hand. The ruby eyes of the sphinxes winked in the subdued lighting of the admiral’s office. “I don’t know. He is active socially, but . . .”

  “You have learned nothing more about his leaving Arthelion?”

  Faseult shook his head. “Nothing.”

  “We’re running the discriminators full-time on the data from incoming ships,” added Willsones, “and that’s one of the top priorities in the search pattern. We’ve turned up nothing beyond what we already know.” She rubbed her eyes, looking tired.

  Nyberg gazed across the room at the official portrait of Gelasaar hai-Arkad, forty-seventh on the Emerald Throne. Though he was the admiral’s head of security, Faseult knew there was much that Nyberg didn’t share with him; he was a very private man. But he was sure that this uncertainty weighed heavily on the admiral.

  “And someone wants it kept that way,” Faseult added. “Whoever caused the murder yesterday in the South Cap alpha shuttle bay.”

  “The laergist?” asked Nyberg.

  “Yes. He was on Arthelion, assigned to assist one Leseuer gen Altamon, an artist from Ansonia reporting on the progress of that planet’s petition for admission to the Panarchy. She died at the Enkainion.”

  “And?”

  Faseult motioned to Willsones, who returned to her seat.

  “As I indicated, there was nothing new in the ship’s data-nodes,” she replied, “but a search of the records here turned up a vid about her from the Stella Novostu organization, done a month before the Enkainion. It shows her equipped with an ajna.”

  Nyberg turned to Faseult, who shook his head. “We found nothing on the body, nor in his cabin on the ship that brought him here. We are questioning the other passengers, but only as a matter of course: he was killed with a neuro-jac, which usually implies a professional assassination. Which might,” he added, “be related to the body we found only hours later in one of the sub-transits off of Alpha. This one had died of a neurotoxin, perhaps Quartan—one of the slow and painful ones.”

  Nyberg sighed and sat down again behind his desk. He put his elbows on its surface and rubbed his forehead with the fingertips of both hands.

  “I think we can assume the existence—up until then, at least—of a recording of the Enkainion,” he said finally. He sat up. “But that does us no good now.” He turned to Ng. “Captain, have you anything to add?”

  “Nothing,” she replied. “Except, oh, an intuition, if you like: the Aerenarch may surprise us all.”

  Nyberg merely bowed politely, and Willsones exchanged glances with Faseult. Alone, they would have commented; before Ng, who was largely an unknown quantity, they maintained the safe shield of strict protocol.

  So why is she here? Despite Faseult’s admiration of Ng and her record, it had taken him aback when Nyberg attached her directly to his staff, and it surprised him again when she was invited to this session. Hitherto Nyberg’d had little use for the fiercely independent cruiser captains, who—entirely within the wide-ranging limitations of their standing orders—were notorious for their disregard of the careful infrastructure of Central Command.

  “We’ve little time,” Nyberg said. “We’ll have to force the issue so that a decision can be made, one way or the other.” He turned to Willsones. “Admiral, can you work up a communication conveying that deadline, and link it to one of the most recently arrived couriers? I want to announce it without revealing its true source.”

  Willsones nodded, apparently unsurprised. “Not hard at all. You don’t want an image, then?”

  He shook his head. “Too hard to explain, don’t you think?” He smiled grimly, with a gesture taking in both Ng and Willsones. “And there’s another reason. Commander Faseult believes there may be a leak in the Jupiter Project. If we put the right amount of information in this communication, whoever is at the other end of the leak may reveal a bit too much knowledge.”

  Nyberg turned to Faseult. “Commander, I want you to monitor social affairs in the oneill. Your man Vahn is doing an excellent job with the Aerenarch, but we’ll need a lot more intelligence about the people he sees.”

  Faseult nodded, resigned.

  “Captain,” continued the admiral, turning to Ng, “I’d like you to sound out your officers and crew, and others, if you like, concerning a mission to Gehenna. But don’t even hint that it’s being considered—I don’t want to tip our hand.”

  Ng said, “Begging your pardon, sir, but I’ve already begun.”

  Some of the tension in Nyberg’s face eased. “I thought as much.” Then it was back again, more focused. “But remember, it may never come to pass. We cannot defy whatever government may form here—that could shatter what remains of the Panarchy.”

  Now Faseult knew the reason she was there. Whatever government the civilians managed to put forward could very well be short-lived if any of Semion’s former cadre of captains showed up. There’s no room for gloating at the way the civilians are ripping at one another for position, Faseult thought as Nyberg dismissed them. Their ballroom and bedroom skirmishes would be nothing to the infighting we’d face if either Koestler or sho’Bostian or Imry survived their battles and suddenly skip in.

  Faseult paused at the door and looked back. Nyberg had not moved; he gazed up at the picture of the Panarch, his thoughts obviously thousands of light-years distant.

  Was any of that man’s strength of purpose and visionary skill in the one remaining son? Faseult shook his head and walked out.

  “He may surprise us all.” I hope for all our sakes that Ng is right.

  o0o

  Lokri looked down from his ceiling holograph of the black void of space when the annunciator chimed outside his prison cell.

  No one had been to see him since Marim had come a few days after he’d been locked in this vault. Obviously he was considered too dangerous for visitors. Either that, or the Telvarna crew, quite understandably, had left him to his fate, and were pretending with all their might they had never known him. He wasn’t all that sure he wouldn’t have done the same.

  He got to his feet, wary though there was nothing he could do to defend himself; he sauntered toward the visitor’s alcove, because all he had left was pride, though that was eroding as well.

  Instead of some grim-faced interrogator or Naval officer pretending for the sake of “justice” to be his representation, the face that appeared was grizzled, ugly—and familiar.

  “Montrose?” Lokri dropped into the pod on his side of the dyplast.

  Montrose’s smile was grim. “You were expecting Eusabian?”

  “I wasn’t expecting anyone, until they remember I’m here and haul me out for my mock trial before hustling me off to summary justice.” His teeth showed on that last word.

  “Did you know that your sister is here?”

  Nothing could break the bonds of anger and pain shackling Lokri since he’d found out that his sister was alive, and on Ares. Not even being arrested had hit him this hard; that ghost had ridden him since he first escaped from Torigan.

  “Yes,” he said. “They do permit me a semblance of news. Though no communication.”

  “Is that why you’re sulking? Because she hasn’t been down to visit you?”

  Lokri half-rose. “Is there a point? Because I need to get back to counting stars on the projected field.” He waved a hand lazily overhead, unable to hide the revealing tremble in his fingers.

  Montrose gave an impatient sigh, but he saw that tremble, and the desolation in Lokri’s thin face that he tried to hide. Montrose knew the nicks weren’t starving their prisoners, but Lokri w
as not eating. He said much less forcefully than he might have, “No, I put up with a search down to my DNA to come here because two jobs don’t keep me busy enough.”

  Lokri expelled his breath. “Your pardon. Speak, I’m listening.”

  “Apology accepted.” Montrose planted his hands on his knees and leaned forward. “You might not know that your sister is living on board Tau Srivashti’s glittership. Mean anything to you?”

  Lokri shrugged. “Archon of what, Timberwell? Interesting rep. I don’t remember anything else.” He laughed. “It has been a while since nick politics was an interest of mine.”

  “Well, it’d better be one now,” Montrose said soberly. “I came down here to tell you several things. First, Marim hasn’t been back because she was forbidden. Everyone was; I think Jaim got the Aerenarch to speak to his guards to let me come, on the grounds that I’m your physician, and though they look after your physical well-being, I am in charge of your mental health.”

  “What did I do to deserve that?” Lokri flicked his hand up, an old Douloi gesture that he’d never quite eradicated from muscle memory. Montrose recognized it because he, too, sometimes betrayed his own past.

  Lokri amended, “I mean, the sudden lack of visitors. Not your presence, which is a welcome change.”

  “You didn’t do anything. It’s what—I think—someone tried to do to you.”

  Lokri sat back. “What are you trying to tell me?”

  “This is only a guess. Based on the absence of information, nothing more, but quite suddenly you were declared off-limits to all. Vahn, the chief guard at the Enclave, would neither confirm nor deny my guesses, which I thought revealing.” As I am certain I was meant to.

  Lokri crossed his arms, but his sardonic expression was more habitual than any indicator of his mood. “Go on. You had arrived at my sister. Who I scarcely remember.”

  “There is evidence she believes she’s in danger.”

  “I can see the nicks wanting to kill me, but who’d want to kill Fierin?”

  “Who wanted to kill your parents?”

  “I did,” Lokri said with a bitter laugh. “Ask the nicks.”

  Montrose snorted dismissively. “My job cooking for the Arkad doesn’t take me but a couple of hours a day—until he starts entertaining. If he does. So I lend a hand at the general infirmary, where I hear things.” He paused.

  “I’m listening.”

  Montrose nodded. “May be no connection at all, but one of the people on the courier your sister came in with was assassinated when he walked out of the lock. Another one just got challenged to a duel. Two more have shown up with a mysterious rash—one that appears as a side effect of a highly illegal truth serum.”

  Hot and corrosive burned Lokri’s anger: at Montrose, at Fierin, at his parents, at himself. Especially at himself and his total helplessness. “My parents were killed fourteen years ago. I don’t see how there could be any connection between that and any of this—including any problems Fierin might have gotten herself into.”

  Montrose shrugged. “All I’m telling you is what I’ve heard. That sister of yours is walking soft, walking soft indeed. She’s seen everywhere on Srivashti’s arm, and though I think him the worst sort of excrescence, I’ll admit he knows how to guard his own. But the rare times she’s alone she’s been talking to some odd choices. Jaim. Ivard.”

  “Crew of Telvarna.” Lokri hated the sharp stab of hope. Hope always betrayed you.

  “I’ll know more if she manages to sit down next to me in a transtube,” Montrose said with a laugh.

  Lokri shook his head, the anger dissipating in the cold glare of logic. “Why would she waste time with you? If she knows who my crewmates were, she knows the damned Arkad was with us. If anyone can help her, or me, if she’s even remembered who I am, it’s your Aerenarch.”

  “Wrong,” Montrose said.

  “You can’t be telling me that the Arkad doesn’t have any power,” Lokri protested.

  Montrose pursed his mouth. “That’s a difficult question. On one hand, he’s the titular head of what remains of the Panarchy. On the other, there’s this: Every time he pisses, they hear the splash on every comm from the brig to the bridge. He can’t scratch his ass without Vahn’s security team running scan first.”

  “So he can’t actually do anything?”

  Montrose shrugged. “There’s no government, and there can’t be one until they either try to get the Panarch off Gehenna or else declare him officially dead. If the Arkad won’t, then it has to be done by the Privy Council, but they’re all dead, or with the Panarch, so who’s going to name their successors?”

  For the first time in what seemed a century Lokri thought past his immediate problems. “Arkad said at Granny Chang’s that he wanted to run a rescue. That wasn’t just gas?”

  Montrose shook his head. “He doesn’t talk about it at all. Nor—” His black brows slanted sardonically. “—does he talk about how he escaped that hell-spawned bomb in the Mandala, though the rest of these chatzing honey-voiced nicks sure whisper about it. Whether because of that or for some other reason, he hasn’t declared his father dead.” He sat back in his pod. “Let’s leave him aside for now. As to your sister, and whatever else may be going on, I will be listening.” His eyes narrowed, his familiar, heavy-boned face menacing. “I have my own reasons. Meantime, what I want from you is what happened on Torigan.”

  Lokri shook his head. “For whose entertainment?”

  Montrose snorted. “You think we’re wired here?” He laughed. “What an irony—delicious. You’re probably in the only place that is dead-walled.”

  “Don’t you carry some kind of device?”

  “Locator,” Montrose said, touching his wrist. “Simple location signal. They don’t have enough staff to listen to the chatter of all the riffraff they’ve got gathered here.” He laughed again, but it was not humorous this time.

  Lokri rubbed his jaw. “All right.” He sighed. “I’ll give it to you, if you’ll see that it gets to her. If she asks. But first, about the Arkad. You said he can’t do anything. But—?”

  “But the potential is there. Or someone must think so, anyway.” Montrose’s smile was grim. “Because someone has tried three times to kill him. Now, then, let’s have that story. Every detail you can remember.”

  TWO

  Jaim slid Vahn’s palm-jac into his wristband and then picked up the chip he’d designed himself. He tilted it slightly from side to side, watching the subdued lighting of his room glint off the ID holo on it, its simple pattern indicating a custom burn. Then he slipped it into his tool pouch and picked up the new boswell Vahn had issued him. Bulkier than usual, it was fitted with a clone-cell monitor attuned to the Aerenarch’s genome, able to detect any type of poison, including Helix. He grimaced as he slipped the boswell onto his wrist, and went out.

  He found Brandon in the garden room, standing behind Ki at the central console. Brandon looked the part of the Aerenarch, wearing a tunic of severe cut, with no decoration—the richness was in the fabric. Dark trousers and single-seam boots completed the sartorial catalog; as accessories Brandon added excellent posture, a simmering blue gaze, and the Arkadic bone structure honed by nearly fifty generations.

  Jaim wondered what Vi’ya might make of the energy that he could feel clear across the room. Though Brandon had not said anything about the impending visit to Archon Srivashti, the signals were there: this was more important than an afternoon of Douloi chatter, dancing, and games of chance.

  “Shall we go?”

  They walked in silence down the pathway to the transtube portal. Halfway there, in a spot Jaim had already chosen, he waited until Brandon, who walked a little ahead, turned, and then reached for him just out of peripheral vision.

  If he had trained the Aerenarch properly, Brandon should be subliminally aware of the change in Jaim’s breathing, the shift of cloth—

  And Brandon whirled around, one hand deflecting, body shifting not to the left, as expe
cted, but to the right. Jaim had already begun to adjust to the expected defense, and had to shift to accommodate; Brandon’s speed, his high-voltage defense, was another indicator of the adrenaline spike caused by this impending visit.

  They exchanged a flurry of light blows, both with a care to their clothing. It would not do to arrive sweaty and disheveled at Archon Srivashti’s glittership.

  The transtube took them to the lock. Jaim checked everything, then they stepped inside the gig that awaited them.

  A glance at the console showed a bank of peaceful green lights. Still, Jaim inserted his chip, and his nerves flared hot and cold when the console overlay showed a blinking red light deep within the engine system.

  Brandon controlled his own reaction, then he touched his boswell. (Request another gig, and we advertise this.)

  (I can disable it,) Jaim returned. He tapped at the console for a while. (But it’s locked out; I’ll have to do it manually.)

  (Is it set on a timer?)

  Jaim entered a different code. (No. It’s set to blow the hull when we are a certain distance from either ship or station.)

  (So we don’t take anyone with us to hell. Tidy.)

  Jaim expelled his breath, reaching into his pocket for the microtools he rarely was without.

  (Want help?)

  Jaim shook his head. (You’ve never been in the engine of one of these things. Marim would find it a tight fit.)

  Jaim lifted the hatch and squeezed his way down into the bowels of the gig. He took a deep breath, calming the animal part of his mind that yammered in terror at the terribly cramped quarters, trying not to think about the tremendous energies constrained all around him by a few centimeters of metal and complex twists of energy. Once he reached the tampered node, he squirmed around uncomfortably to reach his tool pouch and set to work. His hands labored automatically, his mind moving fast.

  Four times. Five, counting that damn Helix. His guts tightened at the thought of the Helix. Somehow the attempts to kill Brandon seemed cleaner than that; upon analysis, the genetic poison turned out to have been intended to disable the Aerenarch with a nasty form of dementia, but not otherwise harm him. He might well have lived out his natural span—the perfect setup for anyone aiming at a Regency, Montrose said when Jaim told him about it. Brandon hadn’t said anything at all.