Banzet nodded, rocking. “He’s would kill for this. He’s do.”
“And you think he’ll kill you.”
“Like Denny’s killed the girl.”
“With a gun?” Matheson asked.
Banzet shook his head, still hysterical, but not as spasmodic. “Z’plasma. Like the girl. He’s got no gun now.”
Matheson frowned. “But there was a gun.”
“Two. We’re give them back.”
Dillal stepped into the young man’s view. “Back to whom?”
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Day 6: Late Afternoon into Evening
“Got the guns off a blue dehka. With the bullets. From old Ohba cat.”
Dillal’s expression darkened and his voice was sharper than before. “You’re got guns from an ofiçe?”
Banzet seemed confused. “I’m say! The guns from the dehka. The bullets from the red-tar, but dehka’s brought them.”
“How you’re know where they’re come from?”
“We’re see her—the tunnel. That’s how I’m go. Back the tunnel. I’m give her my gun. Give her man my word, all my money t’help me go.”
“Her man,” Matheson asked, “what did he look like?”
Banzet scowled and bumped one fist against his head as if were knocking the memory back into place. “Big. Old. His clothes’re all striped black.”
“Did you hear his name?” Matheson continued.
“No. He’s take the gun, sends another—a quiet one—who’s show me how to go. I’m come here.”
“What happened to the other gun?”
“Dehka’s told us where t’leave them. But I’m not. Too scared.”
“Scared of what?”
“Oso.”
“You weren’t afraid of the Ohba or the ofiçe?”
Banzet blinked as if it hadn’t occurred to him. “Not as much as Oso.” He turned to Dillal. “He’s kill me. For what we’re did.”
“GISA will kill you for what you did,” the inspector replied, dead level. His voice had lost its Dreihleen buzz and roll, become colder, more Central. “Venn and Denny. And fourteen more deliberate deaths in the commission of armed robbery. Capital murder.”
“We’re not make that plan! We’re didn’t mean t’hurt them!”
“All dead anyway. All left this world.”
“Denny’s fault! He’s take my torch and kill the girl! And then Oso—Oso’s shoot him.”
“But the rest all died. Not just by bullets. By the plasma burns through their necks and temples, just like Venn.”
Banzet covered his face again and Dillal wrenched his hands away, leaning over Banzet as he sat struggling to free himself. The inspector pushed and the chair lurched backward a little until it was rocked back on its rear legs, teetering as Dillal held Banzet’s wrists tight, balanced for the moment, but it would be so easy to let go . . .
Banzet tensed his arms, quivering and taking sharp, fearful breaths through his nose, but holding as still as he could. Dillal leaned toward him, pushing a little harder until Banzet met his eyes, cringing.
The inspector kept the chair off kilter, but not far enough to fall, as he stared, unblinking, into Banzet’s face. “You were there with him,” Dillal said, cold and level. “You planned it with him. You killed with him—not just the easy way, not just at a distance with a gun, but close enough to taste their fear on the air, close enough to smell the burning of their flesh. You did not refuse. You did not come to confess. You ran and would keep on running if you could.”
“He’s say I’m had to! He’s say I’m no choice! Say no one will know—we’re safe if they’re all die.”
“And are you safe? Safe from him? Safe from me?”
“Didn’t mean t’kill them.” Banzet sounded as if he were choking on his fear and guilt.
“What you did—reloading the guns, using the pen torch—that speaks of premeditation, not panic. So what did you intend? What did you really mean to do?”
“We’re only mean t’rob them—jasso full of lying vultures,” Banzet cried, terrified tears starting down his face and his jaw clenched so tight Matheson could hear his teeth grind. “What’s matter we’re take from them?”
“Matter—? I should drop you on the floor and leave you with the vultures outside. They’ll pick your bones just like this boy’s.”
Dillal let go with his right hand so the chair swung unsteadily toward Zanesh, who pushed himself up against the wall, standing in the corner like a vision of death. Banzet writhed and shrieked through bared teeth. Dillal opened his remaining hand. The chair crashed down, spilling Banzet onto the floor facing Zanesh.
Dillal stood over Banzet, turned toward Zanesh. “Is this what you expected to be your fate? This slow death? Starved, cut, raped, beaten . . . For knowing what you did, Tchintaka sent this boy here to die. Not a clean death with a bullet or a knife. Not what you imagined. For robbing his neighbors. For killing Denny. You would die for the things he did, as well as your own crimes.”
I can’t . . . Matheson took a step. Dillal shot him a stern glare and turned back to Banzet, who was still staring at Zanesh as if mesmerized. Matheson froze, fascinated and appalled.
“Tell me why,” Dillal said in a low voice. “Why Tchintaka thought it acceptable to rob the Paz da Sorte’s customers, why he wanted the money.”
Banzet’s trembling was becoming stuttering, shaking hysteria. Zanesh crouched back to the floor, frowning at him.
“Is for th’revolution,” Banzet said.
Dillal’s face was turned too far from Matheson, but Zanesh could see it and he pressed himself back against the wall in terror, scrambling for the corner—for any extra distance from the inspector, whose hands balled into fists, every tendon tight to the quaking point. Dillal leaned forward . . . paused, arrested in motion as if time had stopped . . .
And stepped back, breathing harshly and tearing his gaze away.
Banzet cowered and looked over his shoulder at the inspector and then to Matheson, terrified.
Dillal turned on his heel, putting his back to Banzet and Zanesh. Matheson held his own ground, though—merry fucking hell—he wanted to back away. The inspector’s face was like something torn in two: the right side a grimace of agony and rage, the left as still as death. Dillal bowed his head and clasped his hands together until the knuckles went white. He brought his knotted hands up to his forehead and pressed them against his brow.
“For the revolution,” he muttered and took a long, shaking breath. He was still for a moment but for the slightest quiver in his fists and shoulders.
Then he exhaled in a gust and dropped his hands as if his anger exhausted him. The tension flowed out of his shoulders and he rolled his head a little before he raised it. Now his face was tired but calm and he wiped a runnel of gory liquid from his cheek. “Why did he choose Paz?”
No one answered.
Dillal turned and looked at Banzet and Zanesh. He repeated his question in a calm voice. “Why Paz?”
“Be—because they’re profit from oppression,” Banzet stammered.
Dillal sighed. “You are saying that the jasso exists and thrives because of the structure of the law, and the owners—all the business owners who go there at Spring Moon—benefit from the system that oppresses the Dreihleen. Is that correct?”
Banzet nodded slowly, watching Dillal as if he expected the man to spring at him any moment. “As you’re say. They’re vultures, cannibals.”
“For that you chose to rob them. People like your own family.”
Banzet shook his head. “Oso’s idea.”
“You didn’t dissuade him.”
“Was not supposed to be killing. I’m not—”
Dillal waved him quiet. “Yes, yes. You wouldn’t have gone along with that. Leran might have. But not you.”
Banzet breathed in relief and squirmed over to sit against the wall a meter from Zanesh. Dillal looked at the boy, who had sunk down to sit in his corner again with his arms loose ar
ound his shins.
Zanesh nodded. “Z’what I’m hear. They’re never mean t’kill.”
“I see. But I have a problem.” Dillal said. “You I can save.” He turned to Banzet. “But you . . .”
Banzet leaned his head against the wall. “I’m for leaving this world, do I’m want or not. Oso’s kill me or someone else. How’s different?”
“Help me find Tchintaka and I can make it different.”
“Why . . . you’re help me?”
“You killed, but you did not plan it. I want the one who did.”
Air seemed to flood back into Matheson’s lungs. He hadn’t realized he’d stopped breathing or that he’d clenched his jaw so tightly his teeth ached until the tension left. The relief felt more personal and so much bigger than it should have been.
Dillal and Matheson rushed the paperwork to move Zanesh and Banzet back to Ariel in their custody. The port at Ejeirie was surprisingly busy and they didn’t have to wait long for a short hop to Port Hyldra to connect to outbound transport back to Angra Dastrelas.
They arrived at Port Hyldra amid an unusual flurry of incoming orbital drops. Transferring Banzet and Zanesh to the next transport was complicated by the swift movement of troops from the drops to smaller, swifter craft to make room for more incoming drops.
“That’s why we had no trouble getting transport,” Matheson said once their two prisoners were secured in the passenger pod.
Dillal turned away in fury. “Something’s gone bad,” he muttered. He looked the worst Matheson had seen him since they’d met—ill, sweaty, and the prosthetic eye wasn’t tracking properly. “This has the look of a coordinated build up to a push.” He frowned on only the right side of his face. “Damn him—Pritchet promised me a day at the least. We’ve had twelve hours and this is far too much manpower for an assault on Ang’Das’s ghettos.”
“It might not be a push.”
“What else would it be?” Dillal snapped.
Matheson grabbed the arm of a passing crewman. “Hey. We’ve been off grid—what’s all this troop activity about?”
The man stared at him. “You didn’t hear the news? There’s some kind of unrest between the drecks and the humps back on Ariel—some bunch of one killed a bunch of the others and Corporation House is moving to settle it before anything gets too out of hand. They’re expecting a sympathy move out here in the camps, so they’re pulling in a bunch of reserve from out system.”
“Merry fucking hell.” Matheson’s guts twisted. No. No, no . . .
The crewman glared at him. “Don’t blame me, pretty boy. I didn’t pull this lot. I just run ’em up.”
“Yeah, I understand . . . Thanks.”
The man hurried away to his duties.
“Stay close to our prisoners,” Dillal said. “Whether this is meant to cause us, in particular, grief or not, tempers are already high. I’ll see if I can get access to the vessel’s information stream.”
“But—” Matheson started, his personal worries getting in front of the professional ones for the moment.
Dillal peered at him with his normal eye. “Trust me. And have some faith in Aya and Minje. Now go.”
He pointed Matheson toward the rear of the transport as he began forward at a slower than usual pace. Banzet and Zanesh were right where Matheson had left them and they had acquired no company. Zanesh had become quiet and withdrawn; he barely glanced up as Matheson entered, and flicked his gaze back to the deck once he recognized who it was. Banzet seemed relieved to see Matheson, but it could just have been that he wasn’t Dillal.
“You’re think he’s can do what he’s say?” Banzet asked.
“If we get you in without a problem, he will,” Matheson replied in a cool voice. He was on the fence about Banzet’s deal with the inspector to give evidence in exchange for a guarantee that he wouldn’t be executed. Is killing one person for the deaths of others the right thing to do? He was equally uncomfortable with Banzet’s squirming over the particulars of his guilt. He didn’t refuse to kill—he did it and admitted it—but he seems to think being panicked and revolted after the fact should exonerate him. Dillal had quite a different view, but the details weren’t for Matheson to quibble over—how would I feel if I were certain of what I did at Camp Donetti? They had one of their two remaining perpetrators and they had a witness, if they could protect them both long enough to bring the case to trial and keep Corporation House from razing the ghettos—or the internment camps. Matheson had more sympathy for Zanesh, who had nothing to look forward to anywhere.
Matheson made sure the two Dreihleen were secure and as comfortable as they could be in the circumstances, and withdrew to the other half of the pod. Dillal arrived less than ten minutes later and closed the barrier that separated the prisoners from the rest of the pod.
The inspector sat on the edge of one passenger sling and went through his pockets, laying several flat packets on his knees and drawing out a black, hooked instrument. “It’s unclear if there’s been any new violence between Dreihleen and Ohba yet, but the possibility grows. The rumor about the Dreihleat and Ohbata connection has been leaked to media,” he said, his voice quiet. “A great deal is being made of the ammunition and guns. We have one weapon and Banzet’s told us where we can secure the other once we reach Ang’Das, but the fear mongering is already at full boil. We need to show that the ammunition and weapons are from an outside source.”
“What source? I mean . . . they’re from the Ohbata . . .”
“But they were provided by this ‘blue dehka’ Banzet mentioned. We need to identify that individual.” He leaned his head back, then pressed the hooked edges of the black tool into his left eye with a grunt of pain. Matheson cringed, but watched in horrified fascination as the inspector twisted and wrenched the mechanical eye from its socket. Dillal lifted the ocular away and laid it on one of the packets on his lap before taking one of the others and blindly tearing it open to extract a pad of material that he raised to the socket. Then he leaned forward, holding the pale wadding over the empty frame. A dark pink stain spread into the material.
“Dillal?”
The inspector gagged and coughed for a moment. “This is worse than I’d thought. Matheson, if you would, open the other packet on my knee and hand me the pad inside it?”
Queasy, Matheson did as he was asked and watched Dillal drop the used material to the floor and replace it with the fresh fabric. The stain was slower to spread this time and the inspector sat up, wiping the frame and socket with a delicate touch.
“Are you all right?” Matheson asked, fighting an irrational urge to pull away, to run, to scream. Mud turned lavender with blood . . .
“No, but I can go on long enough once I’m done here. And the ocular should be back online. Who do you imagine is our problem?”
Matheson frowned. “I’m not following.” He also wasn’t following the inspector’s mercurial changes of temper. Dillal was ill and in pain, but otherwise much as he had been before they’d interrogated either Zanesh or Banzet, not the intimidating and terrifying figure he’d become in the nearly empty briefing room with the two Dreihleen.
“That person most likely to be the source of our leaks as well as the real link between the Ohbata and Dreihleat in this case. I suspect he or she is also responsible for Santos’s death.” He paused a moment and added, “And Bomodai’s. At the moment, we still have the director’s support—according to the messages I’ve just seen from Pritchet. But we do have to identify and take the individual as well as retrieving the other gun.”
“Could we send someone to pick up the second gun before we get back? This will be a faster lift than the one we took from Angra Dastrelas, but we’re still four or more hours out.”
“Who could we trust? Minje or Aya won’t be allowed out of the Dreihleat at this time and we have no true allies at GISA—one of them is our leak and an active enemy of our case and ourselves,” Dillal replied. “Banzet can’t seem to describe the individual and I’m surp
rised he or she hasn’t already done something to injure us more directly.”
“Tyreda?” Matheson suggested.
Dillal scoffed. “Wouldn’t risk his hide.”
“You think whoever it is would try to kill one of us or our agent?”
“Why not? He or she killed Santos.”
“I still don’t understand why.”
“The presence of a persuasive drug in his blood makes me think that Santos didn’t give you all the information he had—this other ofiçe knew that, and he or she is the last key to the problem. So, what’s your instinct?” Dillal asked, switching from blotting up the gruesome fluid that had collected in the back of his eye socket to cleaning the frame with the contents of a different packet. It was a repulsively fascinating action and Matheson’s mind started to wander. He had to force his thoughts aside to answer Dillal’s question.
“Neme. She’s been very interested in the investigation from the beginning, even though she claimed she didn’t want it. Also, she’s the only GISA ofiçe I’m aware of who’s blue—and has the seniority to get access to the files as well as connections at Corporation House.”
“I see the attraction of that solution.”
“But you don’t agree with it.”
“Personal dislike may color our view and ‘blue dehka’ may refer to some other blue thing that defines this individual. The color of their clothes, or their eyes.”
Dillal didn’t respond to Matheson’s quizzical look and concentrated on cleaning the ocular, which was still held in the tool like a gory trophy in some raptor’s disembodied claw. His hands were slightly unsteady.
Matheson looked aside, but a devious idea swarmed into his head like a fever and he crouched down beside Dillal, staring hard at the deck—it was all he could stomach—until the inspector stopped working and looked up. “We need to buy back that time Pritchet promised.”
“If we can.”
“Then let’s use this leak against . . . whoever this is.”
Dillal folded his hands. “How?”
“They’re using our investigation notes against us. But they haven’t got this information—that we know a GISA ofiçe is involved—because none of it’s been uploaded since I went into the tunnels with Aya, and I assume you’re not sending anything either. So we can play this game, too—leak the information.”
Blood Orbit_A Gattis File Novel Page 37
