Blood Orbit_A Gattis File Novel

by K. R. Richardson

  “Excuse you? Because we are both mets? Solidarity among the muddied class?”

  Starna bowed his head. “That’s not all of it. You know how hard it is to get ahead here when every part of what you are—bi-colored, addicted, ambitious, all the rest—is another mark against you, another reason to keep you out. It all piles up and you think that if you—if I were just one less bad thing it might be forgivable, might be possible . . . But I am as far up the ladder as I’ll ever be. I was . . . content with that until you came here.”

  Starna raised his head and gazed at Dillal. His skin had the dusty pallor of illness, his eyes sunk in verdigris shadows. His hands shook with a slight tremor and he crossed his arms, tucking his hands into his armpits to stop it. He waited for the CIFO to respond, but the other man remained silent.

  “It sounds as if I’m confessing,” Starna said with a weak laugh. “As if I’m justifying this leak you think I’m guilty of. Or blaming you. I’m not. I’m doing everything I can—everything you’re willing to give me—but I could be so much more to you.”

  Dillal shook his head. “There is no more. I can’t save you. I can’t lift you past the same difficulties I’ve overcome to get here—I haven’t got that power and this fight isn’t won by favor or trickery.”

  Starna glowered. “I haven’t lied or betrayed any confidences. I haven’t asked for favors. Only recognition. Which I would expect—yes, expect—from someone as much like me as you are. I’ve worked for everything and I didn’t go crying to Pritchet to get ahead.”

  “But my problem remains.”

  Starna looked slightly panicked. “What are you going to do?”

  “Nothing. I can’t ask for a security review based on the transmission of information I will not admit exists. I’m neatly trapped unless I can serve up an appropriate perpetrator before Corporation House falls on me.”

  “You need a scapegoat.”

  “That would satisfy most of the sharks and even Pritchet. But it won’t satisfy me.”

  “You’d still be the CIFO. You’d have another chance to make things right.”

  “There’s more to make right than one case, but this one does offer a crack in the wall. If I can solve it properly, the wall may eventually come down. Which is why this . . . leak disturbs me so.”

  “It’s not me,” Starna repeated, giving Dillal an earnest look, “but I’m still no use to you because I’m unstable and addicted and one of us.”

  Dillal put his hand out as if he could stop the tech’s stream of self-recrimination. “Starna. The problem is not who you are or what you are. It’s what you’re willing to become. For one of us—even with your skill, ambition, intelligence—you must be willing to risk everything or nothing can change.”

  Starna closed his eyes again, breathing heavily and turning his face away. “You think less of me because I’m not . . . able to make that leap.”

  The inspector shook his head and snorted. “Willing, not able—and I would have to despise most of the planet if that were true. But you and everyone like you will remain as you are and where you are if nothing changes.”

  “I’d rather open a vein than continue in this hell.”

  “More than two hundred years,” Matheson said. “Cold air and pressure kisses . . .” Maybe he didn’t have all the pieces—or he was standing too close to see the picture—but he knew the pattern the scattered objects formed. “The Dreihleen have always been here, haven’t you? The Dreihleen and Ohba are human—not some other race brought here to work—and you’ve been here since the beginning, even before the Gattian First Settlement families.” It’s all of a piece.

  He opened his eyes to peer at her curiously. “Aya, why would Venn’s choices be limited to prostitution and sewing? Those weren’t your choices . . .”

  Aya let out a harsh snort. “She’s not read or math! Most Dreihleen are work from time they’re eight, or families starve—no time for school. I’m lucky my mother’s teach me before she’s die, or I’m work for Minje, not him for me.”

  “Most Dreihleen can’t read, can they?”

  “Of course they’re not! Corporation’s not provide schools here, just like they’re not give us access to th’net except by hardline that’s choked stupid. If we’re learn, we do it ourselves.”

  “The corporation keeps you ignorant and isolated and too busy just staying alive to rectify that. And that’s why you don’t—can’t trust me. Why the Dreihleen won’t speak—Merry hell . . . You need us to fail.”

  Aya stepped very close and stared down at him, resting her hand on his shoulder. “What you’re saying?”

  “Blackness . . .” Sickening despair choked him. He squeezed his eyes shut against it, as it dragged on him like the cooling weight of the cloth against his back. He squirmed under it and groaned. “This thing . . . if we solve it, we’ll destroy something so precious it’s worth the blood of innocents. But if we don’t, it’s the beginning of the end for the Dreihleen, and the Ohba after them.”

  Aya pulled the cloth away and he heard it thump into the sink. He struggled back to his feet, still achy and unsteady. Her gaze bored into him. “Tell me why you’re say these things.” Her voice was low and sharp as the edge of a blade.

  He held onto the counter edge and returned her stare. “You know why. The Dreihleen—all of you—are plodding toward your death, keeping your heads down and hoping for some way out of it. That’s what your Sunday speakers offer—that desperate, precious, killing hope. One in particular—whoever he is—is tied up in this. The irony is that whatever he’s offering isn’t salvation or safety anymore. It’s poison. It’s put all of you at the corporation’s mercy. And believe me—corporations have none when their own survival is at stake. If Dillal and I don’t solve this case soon, GISA—on behalf of Gattis Corporation—will simply arrest whoever they want and make them disappear forever.

  “But if we solve this case, it will destroy that idea, that speaker, who’s given you all such hope. If it’s not him, it’s his close associates who’ve done this and taking them down will destroy that hope—that’s the only thing that makes sense of this entire, horrible situation.”

  “When you’re find them, what you’re do? What you’re do that’s not as bad as the corporation will do?”

  He cut off his rising fear and panic, closing his eyes and catching his angry, aching breath. Why did he care so much that she should believe him, talk to him? Not just for the case, not just because he didn’t want to think he’d been had. “I am not the corporation any more than the men who did this are the revolution—or whatever it is they represent. They murdered your neighbors. They did it in cold blood, and whatever cause they may support, their actions made it filthy. It will never be clean or noble so long as they are free. You were angry enough to howl over the injustice of it. I can see how furious you are about the whole screwed up system that caused this. You know who these men are—” Of course she did! Of course! He’d even said it and not really realized . . . but now the light was on and it illuminated so much.

  Matheson grabbed her by the shoulders. “Mother of stars, Aya! Tell me who they are! You have to know—you and Minje run this shop where they sit and talk. You know who, and you know what they’ve done. If they are taken quickly the cause won’t be harmed, but the longer we have to wait, the worse it will get—Pritchet changes the rules every day.” His frustration only made the pain in his muscles worse. He felt it crawling over him, tightening his neck and shoulders, driving a pain like a spike through his head and making him dizzy.

  Her eyes sparked with strange color in the work lights as she looked into his. “You’re ask if you’re can trust me. What answer you’re have now?”

  He thought about the Ice Parade and the rooftop. “It’s yes. Or I wouldn’t ask for your help.” In spite of everything that I don’t know.

  The corners of her mouth lifted a little. “I’m tell you names, but you’re have to stay and wait.”

  “Why? Don’t you understa
nd—”

  “More than you. You’re ask me to betray Friends, but is only the bad dogs you’re need. I’m not throw them all to the cats. And I’m not throw you to them either.” Then she plunged her hands into his hair and kissed him.

  Shocked, he let her go, but she held on. He pushed her back. “What are you doing?”

  “I’m kiss you.” It had been a terrible kiss, abrupt, unschooled, and messy, but the touch of her against the only parts of him that weren’t bruised sent his imagination places his body was incapable of following.

  “Why?” he demanded. “You don’t—”

  “I’m kiss you so you’re know I’m true and you’re trust why I’m ask you to wait.”

  He peered at her in confusion. “What?”

  She put her hands on his chest and closed her eyes a moment, seeming to listen for his heartbeat through her palms. “Is not safe you’re go where they are. They’re kill you whether I’m show you or not.” She looked at him again. “But you’re wait until morning, they’re come to you—is Sunday.”

  The park was less than a block away. “And the kiss . . . ?”

  “I’m trust you with my breath.”

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Day 5: Sunday—Early Morning

  There was no sun yet, only the faint glow of Angra Dastrelas marring the sky from below the crater’s lip. Matheson peered at it between swollen eyelids.

  Aya had persuaded him to stay. He’d laid on her bed and let her minister to his aches and injuries until he couldn’t keep his eyes open any longer. Now he felt better than he had a right to, but his shoulders and hips were still too bruised to let him sleep on his side or back, so he’d bunched the pillow under his chest and now lay with his head hanging forward. His neck was stiff and made crackling sounds as he tried to ease his position.

  Aya’s cool fingers stroked up his spine and into his hair at the base of his skull, then dug into the tight muscles. He grimaced, but didn’t object.

  “Your sleep’s bad,” she murmured.

  “I never sleep well, even when I haven’t been used as a sparring dummy.”

  “Were much quieter when you’re in this bed before.” She continued massaging his neck with one hand and her voice floated up beside him as he kept his face turned toward the mattress.

  “The situation was different.”

  “You’re wait for me to tell what I’m promise, a piece I’m cut from myself, from my neighbors.”

  “Aya,” he said, sighing. “I don’t ask out of a desire to harm them. If you can’t bring yourself to tell me, I can’t force you—I won’t—but I have to find—”

  Her hand stilled on his neck. “I’m say, I’m do. But I’m not do this for you. I’m speak because of you. What I’m do for you’s protect you from youthful stupidity. You’re understand?”

  “You think I’m an eager idiot who’d rush into the Tomb and get killed. Or cause the deaths of people you care about.”

  “You’re think with your passion too much.” Her low voice held a bitter edge. “And I’m think of what hope I’m sold, how it’s beautiful, but chewed inside by worms. Hope’s all we’re own of dreams in daylight. We’re hold hope or we’re die. But I’m raise my head from blind dreams and I’m see blood behind us and more ahead. What we’re want and what we’re do for it’s cost too dear. It’s not hope that’s kill us—it’s the worms within. I’m help you pluck them out, but not more.”

  He turned his head with care and looked toward her. Beneath the sheltering shadow of the loft’s roof, she was only a shape beside him. “You cleave to the ideal.”

  “I’m not let it go—but I’m see the difference between where we’re go and how we’re go there, and who we’re follow.”

  Matheson smiled a little.

  “I’m not spend you as well,” she added. She took a long breath and let it sigh away. “In the morning, you’re find two men—Hoda Banzet, Osolin Tchintaka. But not now. Promise you’re wait.”

  “I’ve held to that promise. Dawn’s only a few hours away, so why do you ask me again?”

  “You’re have your names, you’re go—for your work, for your inspector. I’m want keep you longer for myself.”

  “For yourself?” The idea staggered around his head.

  He heard her nod more than he saw it in the deep gloom. “First I’m see you, I’m think you’re pretty.”

  Matheson grunted in ironic amusement. “Pretty . . .”

  “But too young and perhaps foolish.”

  “No doubt of that.”

  “But each time we’re speak, there’s fire in you. Even when you’re say things that bring me anger, pain, there’s fire and it’s leap to me like a spark. Close by you, I’m foolish, too. You’re too bold—”

  “I’m too bold?”

  “You’re try to kiss me.”

  “You kissed me.”

  “Before.”

  “When I was pretty.”

  After a minute, she whispered, “I’m refuse you and fear you’ll go. But you’re stayed and asked for something of me. Is not as others do and if you’re pretty or not’s no part of why I’m ask you to stay now.”

  The conversation hung in the dark while Matheson lay in silent astonishment. “You would be the first person ever who doesn’t care what I look like, what I have, or who I’m—who I know.” He’d almost said “related to.”

  “Where you’re come from that you’re know only selfish, stupid people?”

  “Someplace I left.”

  “And you’re come here, to find criminals who murder their own?”

  “That wasn’t exactly what I was looking for . . .” He shifted, taking his weight on his forearms, even though it sent sharp pains up his shoulders and across his back.

  Aya rearranged herself beside him and stroked his back as he settled into a new position. His eyes closed again as he drifted toward sleep.

  “How you’re not believe this thing’s done by strangers?” she whispered.

  He was too sleepy to hold onto his thoughts and let them sneak out. “All Dreihleen,” he murmured. “Denny and Venn knew who killed them. Trusted him . . .”

  “How’re you prove it?”

  “The wounds. Dillal knows . . .”

  “Santos is dead.” The text message woke Matheson at 0527. “Orris may wish to question you.”

  The day was still only a suggestion on the horizon, drawing dim shapes on Aya’s walls. The MDD’s luminous screen was the brightest thing in the room and he saw the message clearly as he lay on his stomach in the bed. Matheson snatched the mobile off the floor and struggled upright to sit at the edge of the bed, wincing and stifling his grunts of discomfort.

  Aya turned in the bed beside him, her fingers trailing over his hip. He held her hand a moment as he caught his breath and forced himself awake. Then he let go and carefully wiped the grit of sleep from the corners of his eyes, feeling the complaints of body bruises and the tenderness around his nose. At least nothing felt like it was tearing apart now.

  He stared at the message and his breath hitched painfully. “No . . . no, no, no,” he mumbled. “Merry hell.” He rubbed his eyes again, but the words didn’t change.

  Aya sat up, turning to him and touching the back of his neck. “Eric?”

  “I—” He was dumbstruck—couldn’t form a sentence that made any sense. “Wait.” He shook her off and stood, staring at the mobile, blinking and trying to think.

  She got out of the bed, too, and came to stare into his face, confused. “What is’t?”

  “I can’t—”

  He walked out of the loft and onto the open roof, into Aya’s garden, still staring at the message as if it would mean something else if he looked long enough. He started entering a reply. “What . . .” He broke off and tried again. “Where? And what about his wife? Is she all right?”

  In a moment, his mobile blipped: request for a voice conversation from Dillal. Matheson heard Aya step onto the white gravel behind him, then stop. He checked t
hat the camera was off before he tapped “accept” and sat down on the edge of a bench among the potted plants, feeling suddenly dizzy. “Sir?”

  The background was noisy, but Dillal’s voice sounded low and immediate, as if he were speaking directly into Matheson’s ear. “Mrs. Santos is well, but upset. She’s being escorted to her family home. She discovered the body perhaps forty minutes ago when returning from the harbor fish market. Orris notified me as a courtesy, since Santos was also of interest in our case.”

  Matheson held back a dozen questions, shaking his head and trying to put them in order. His last conversation with Santos had been bizarre at best, but still . . . “How?” he asked after a moment.

  “Hanged.”

  The word jolted him. “What?”

  “Orris is inclined to call it suicide.”

  “What about you?”

  There was a long silence while the sound in the background changed, dropping to near-silence and then rising again to the sound of wind and distant traffic. Dillal grunted as something thumped and clattered near him. “Without an autopsy, strangulation by hanging does appear to be the cause. His neck wasn’t broken, though he did fall, judging by the abrasions.”

  Matheson didn’t manage to mute his microphone before his rush past Aya and to the toilet to vomit. He could too easily imagine the scene and he wished it was as easy to purge from his mind. He gagged over it for a few more seconds. He started at the touch of Aya’s cool hand on his back. He waved her away before rising unsteadily to rinse his mouth and face with icy water.

  He had kept hold of the MDD and the sound of wind reminded him that Dillal and Aya were still listening. He went hot and cold in mortification, ducking his head and slipping past her. “I’m sorry,” he mumbled as he stumbled back outside. There just wasn’t enough air . . .

  “It’s early in the day for gruesome revelations,” Dillal responded. “Luckily for you, only I heard that. Unluckily for me.”