Guardians of Paradise (Hidden Empire)

by Jaine Fenn

  She commed for a cab and got it to drop her round the corner from a certain back-street brothel. The place was about as seedy as Stonetown got, furnished in shabby red and faded gold, with a pervasive odour of sweat and sex. She asked for ‘Peach Blossom’, and after paying the appropriate introduction fee was led to a room decked out in dark colours probably chosen because they didn’t stain. The incense burning on the dresser almost hid the smell of previous clients. ‘Peach Blossom’ was about Nual’s own age, with a heavily made up face and obviously enhanced breasts. She was a little disconcerted to find a female client waiting for her, but at Nual’s gesture sat on the bed next to her. As they chatted lightly, Nual dived into the girl’s mind, looking for her tie to Kahani - and was surprised to discover that ‘Peach Blossom’ - real name Lori - was his half-sister.

  That Kahani had let Lori languish in this flesh-market while he was riding high in the favour of the ngais did nothing to enhance Nual’s opinion of the man.

  The memory Nual created in Lori’s mind was probably less convincing than the one she had left in Roake’s head, but it should be enough to cover her tracks. Nual already knew from Taro that the best way to survive in the trade was not to dwell too closely on time spent with clients. She transferred a generous tip to the girl’s account and left her sleeping peacefully in the large, tawdry bed.

  She unfolded her cloak from her bag and once covered sneaked down the back stairs to the building’s dank basement. The half-dozen doors off the dingy corridor looked identical, but she knew which one she needed. She gave three short knocks, paused, then knocked twice more.

  ‘Who is it?’ called a male voice from inside.

  Trying to keep her intonation the same as Lori’s she said, ‘It’s our father’s littler one.’ A stupid code phrase, which he’d insisted on.

  ‘Is there a problem?’

  ‘No,’ she said, ‘but I have a package for you, from Roake.’

  ‘Why the hell didn’t he call me to let me know it was ready?’

  ‘He didn’t say.’

  ‘What’s wrong? You sound a bit odd.’

  Nual cursed the limitations on her powers imposed by the physical barrier of the door. ‘Just a client . . . I’m fine now. Shall I leave the package outside?’

  ‘No, wait there. Hang on.’ She heard the sound of a bolt being drawn. She stepped to one side and drew the cloak around her, dropping her head to hide her face. The door opened a crack and she looked up carefully to see Kahani peering into the corridor, a small pistol in his hand. His wary expression grew more confused at finding no one there. He pulled the door wider.

  Nual stepped into his field of view and threw back her cloak. She stifled his cry with a thought, grabbed him and charged into the room, kicking the door shut behind her.

  The room was tiny, a store cupboard with a makeshift bed and a rickety table. She pinned Kahani to the wall with one arm, raised her other arm in front of his face and very slowly extended one of her blades. For this it would be worth paying the fine.

  He began to gibber excuses, his eyes round with terror.

  She didn’t bother to reply, just went straight in, riding on his fear. Olias Kahani had a very interesting mind - unpleasant, but interesting. He was only half islander, and the behavioural constraints imposed by the ngai’s honour system both annoyed and bored him. He genuinely believed himself above such concerns as compassion and morality, seeing them only as signs of weakness. He would have been far more at home somewhere like Khesh City. He particularly delighted in betrayal; the chance to screw over those around him was the highest excitement, particularly when - as often happened - he could arrange for someone else to take the blame.

  Nual found such cunning detachment almost admirable, in a detestable way. It was certainly a reminder of how great the range of human worldviews could be, locked as they were in their individual heads with little or no idea what those around them were thinking. Sidhe experienced no such divisive variety in their outlook and motivations . . . except for her, of course.

  Once she had full access to Kahani’s mind she took her time extracting the information she needed, and she did not worry about breaking any mental constructs to get it.

  Despite his skill, Kahani’s mistakes were starting to come home to roost now the extent of his perfidy was coming to light. His wife, finally tiring of his lies, had left him a few months before, though he had turned the marriage break-up to his advantage when questions were being asked at work, claiming he’d been under a lot of pressure due to his wife’s unreasonable behaviour . . .

  He’d started setting up their mission soon after, playing the ngais off against each other as he loved to do. He told Ruanuku-ngai one of Tawhira-ngai’s top researchers wanted to defect, a rumour they’d already heard from another source; when Ruanuku set up the mission to extract him, he also tipped off Tawhira-ngai. As part of Kahani’s manoeuvrings he had got hold of the floor-plans for the island research base, provided by an agent within Tawhira-ngai . Rather than pass these on to Ruanuku-ngai he had withheld them, a bargaining chip in case things went wrong. Now the big players were wanting nothing to do with him, he was in negotiation with several smaller ngais to sell the plans. The plans alone made the effort of finding Kahani worthwhile.

  Delving further into his acutely twisted mind, Nual discovered Tawhira-ngai had wanted the extraction brought forward because of her and Taro - the ngai wanted the Angels involved and captured - but Kahani had no idea why Tawhira-ngai had such an interest in Angels.

  Finally Nual decided there was nothing more to be gleaned from Kahani’s mind. She withdrew until some awareness of her physical surroundings returned. She could hear his breathing, harsh and uneven, and smell the stench of urine where he had lost control of his bladder.

  She had no doubt that the world would be a better place without this man. She released her hold on his neck at the same time as she stopped his heart.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  ‘You’re not dead!’

  Jarek felt Bez’s cry like a physical blow, the vibrations in the air assaulting his eardrums. He looked over at her, carefully ignoring the way her skin fluoresced and shimmered. ‘No . . .’ he began, the word oozing out between his lips, ‘I’m—I’m not dead . . .’

  ‘Oh, Tand,’ she continued more quietly, ‘I thought I’d lost you.’ She reached out towards Jarek’s face.

  Ah - she thought he was someone else. An easy mistake to make in shiftspace; he’d made it himself, sometimes when he was alone.

  He caught her hand and she looked at it, alarmed. ‘Bez, listen to me. You’re hulloci—halla—Bez, this isn’t real. We’re in transit. The shift is playing tricks with my - your - mind.’

  ‘My . . . mind?’

  ‘Yes, that’s right. Weird shit is going to happen. You just have to let it. Try to . . . go with the flow.’ Talking his passengers down during transit was getting to be a habit.

  If anything her expression was growing more glazed. Suddenly she blinked rapidly, then looked dismayed. ‘Gone . . . Nothing there.’

  ‘No, everything’s still here, only . . . it’s a bit fucked-up right now. This will pass. Honestly, it will.’

  ‘We’re in transit?’ Finally she looked directly at him.

  ‘Yes!’

  ‘I didn’t think that had happened yet . . . but it must have.’ She stiffened. ‘You’re touching me. Please don’t.’ Jarek let go of her hand. ‘I want . . . leave me alone now.’

  Jarek hesitated. She sounded in control again, but he knew from experience that when someone as tightly wound as Bez went off, they really went off.

  ‘I mean it,’ she said, sounding almost normal. ‘It’s better if I . . . I’ll deal with this. Alone. Please.’ Jarek let her go and pulled himself up onto his couch. Unless she fell down the hatch into the rec-room - and he’d hardly be able to do anything to stop that happening - there was not much she could do to hurt herself on the bridge.

  He kept an eye on Bez f
or the rest of the transit, looking away whenever she looked towards him. She occupied herself by watching her hands, flexing and curling the fingers, all the time muttering under her breath. She sounded like she was reciting strings of numbers.

  At one point she froze, hands held out in front of her, palm-up, fingers clawed so hard that the tendons stood out. Distinctly, she said, ‘What those bitches made you do—’ then started to cry. Jarek began to get up, ready to comfort her, but she shook her head and shrank away. ‘Don’t—’ she said.

  He didn’t. Eventually she stopped crying and went back to muttering.

  When reality finally returned he called over, ‘Bez? Are you all right?’

  ‘I will be,’ she whispered. ‘Just give me some time.’

  He suspected sympathy would probably only embarrass her further; he’d let whatever darkness drove her remain her own affair for now while he got to work restarting the ship’s systems. Everything came up without a hitch. He sent a transponder burst to local traffic control; a couple of minutes later he received an incoming com.

  ‘Gerault TC to incoming ship: we show a transponder mismatch. Your code is not on record. Hold off until we have queried your transit entry-point. Repeat, do not approach until your ID has been verified.’

  Jarek replied in what he hoped was a tone conveying mild confusion and willing co-operation, ‘Not sure what’s happened there, but you go right ahead. We’re in no hurry.’ He waited, counting the seconds needed for the message to travel between the beacon and the hub station and for any reply to return, but there was nothing further. He allowed himself a relieved sigh. The man’s threat to send a message back to Tarset wasn’t a problem. In fact, they were counting on it.

  Changing the Judas Kiss’s transponder signature had been relatively easy. The surface content of a ship’s broadcast ID was largely up to the captain; what mattered was the embedded quantum key, which had to match ConTraD’s records . . . or not. Bez had created a brand new key and spliced it into his ship’s transponder message, something Jarek hadn’t even realised was possible. Naturally the ID he was using now wouldn’t match the local system records for the Judas Kiss. In fact, it wouldn’t match any ship local traffic control currently had on record.

  He levered himself out of his couch and wobbled over to Bez, who was still sitting on the floor. When he reached out to help her up she gave him a slightly panicked stare, then took his hand.

  ‘Let’s get ourselves a drink while we wait,’ he said as he helped her stand.

  ‘I need to get clean,’ she whispered.

  ‘Sure. I guess things’ll all happen by themselves now, anyway. Either your mirror-worm did the business or it didn’t.’

  ‘It did,’ she said with a self-assurance he didn’t feel up to questioning.

  While Bez showered, Jarek drank caf and tried not to fret. At the precise moment the Judas Kiss had made its transit from Tarset, Bez’s worm had been racing back at the speed of light, piggy-backing the beevee message that was registering the transit with ConTraD and using this unique opening to insinuate itself into the usually inviolate records of the Consolidated Traffic Database. The timing had to be perfect, hence the need for her to be on the bridge as they entered shiftspace. Once her worm got access to ConTraD it would insert new registration data for a nonexistent ship with the quantum key that Jarek was now using; a fraction of a second later her update would overwrite the record that showed the Judas Kiss had just made a transit, replacing it with the now-valid ID of the new ship.

  She’d already set off other updates lying dormant in Tarset’s network. As a result, the local records would now show that the Judas Kiss had been sold to an independent dealer after tests revealed a fault in its grav-drive that would require a complete refit. The modified records would show that Jarek Reen had used the credit from the sale to buy himself into a newly initiated freetrader partnership. Bez had inserted the fictitious partnership’s ship registration details, along with a comprehensive history that would stand up to all but the closest scrutiny, into the Freetrader archive before they left. The ship in question would be a perfect match for the records her mirror-worm inserted into ConTraD.

  The really clever bit should be occurring about now—

  Jarek planned to hang around here for only as long as it took his transit-kernel to recharge (he still felt faintly nauseous whenever he thought about what that actually meant); meanwhile, Gerault Traffic Control would send back the ship’s new transponder ID to Tarset Traffic Control, who would match it against ConTraD. ConTraD should confirm that the ID did contain a valid key for a ship, but that the ship it belonged to had been inactive, listed as under repair, for some years; for some reason the update to put it back on the active ships’ list hadn’t been caught up in the regular synchronisation sweeps. Everyone knew how tardy freetraders could be in registering their dealings, and the update routines that propagated shared data throughout human-space weren’t entirely reliable outside the core systems. These things happened occasionally. They’d flag it up manually to keep the records in synch and avoid a similar problem at the next system. After all, it had to be a mistake: the ship’s quantum key was present on ConTraD, and no one could hack the Consolidated Traffic Database.

  Bez had referred to this kind of update as an ourobourus; it was not logically possible, yet it held together on the assumption that it was.

  It did rely on a human being deciding to intervene to keep their data nice and tidy. Fortunately traffic controllers did generally like their data to be tidy.

  Jarek finished his caf. Bez was still in the shower. He resisted the urge to get up and pace.

  Finally his com chirped. ‘Heart of Glass, this is Gerault Traffic Control. The issue with your ship’s records has now been resolved. You are cleared for approach or onward transit.’

  Jarek expelled a relieved sigh. It had worked.

  Goodbye, Judas Kiss. Hello, Heart of Glass.

  That night Nual didn’t dream of Taro. Despite her attempts to reach out to him, her dreams remained the usual uninformative mish-mash of subconscious churnings. She hoped her failure reflected the fickle nature of dream communication and not Taro’s worsening condition.

  She slept late, but awoke with a clear head for perhaps the first time since Taro had been taken. She sat on the lumpy bed and thought through her options.

  Olias Kahani had believed Tawhira-ngai would keep Taro alive and on the island where he’d been captured, so any rescue mission would mean returning there. Possession of the floor-plans for the island facility gave her an advantage, but she still needed to solve two major problems.

  The first was how to get there. The island was pretty remote. In theory she could catch a skim-boat out to the nearest tourist island, but when she checked her com she could find no direct service from Stonetown, so the journey would take a while. After that she would have to fly for several hours. Once she got there, she would need some way of getting Taro out, as he was unlikely to be in any state to fly himself.

  She concluded that she needed to hire her own transport and driver, ideally something as stealthy and discreet as the aircar they’d originally used.

  Kahani’s com provided her with plenty of interesting contacts, but she was cautious about using them; her naïveté with the shell game when they’d first arrived had shown how little she knew about the wheelings and dealings of the human underworld. Even with her Sidhe edge she could easily come unstuck . . .

  If only Jarek was here, Nual thought. She needed his experience, not to mention his driving skills - they could even use his ship for the rescue, though she hated to think how many traffic regulations that would break. His last message had said he was heading her way, but he would be a few days, and in the meantime he might not be able to pick up her messages. She had already informed him that Ruanuku was the ngai responsible for turning the boys from Serenein into transit-kernels, and now she sent him a file, with as much encryption as she could afford, containing a download
of the juiciest data taken from the late Sirrah Kahani’s com. Until he got back in contact she had to assume she was on her own.

  She would have to contact Patai again.

  She had left a positive association in his mind, though nothing strong enough to overcome his common sense, and she was relieved when he agreed to meet her later that day. If he could help with transport, that just left her with the second problem: the forceshield protecting the island. Kahani had set up the original run, which meant he must have known the arrangements for turning it off. Nual went back through the information she’d gleaned from Ruanuku’s traitor. It wasn’t like the pilot’s knowledge; that had become part of her when he surrendered himself to her. The information she had got from Kahani was incomplete, a snapshot of stolen facts, images and emotions that would most likely start to fade if she did not access them.

  But there was still a lot there, and Nual was determined. After a while she found what she needed: the shield had been deactivated by a low-level Tawhira employee Kahani had been blackmailing with certain recordings made at the brothel where his sister worked. Kahani did not think the blackmail victim - who was apparently otherwise loyal to his ngai - had been caught, so in theory she could pretend to be Kahani and get him to turn the shield off a second time. She used Kahani’s com to send him a text message, stating he might be required to repeat the favour he had recently done for his ‘uncle’. If the man had been compromised, then the message would tip off Tawhira-ngai, but it was a risk worth taking.