Blood Orbit_A Gattis File Novel

by K. R. Richardson

  “Maybe you should listen to this,” he said, and held out his mobile.

  Kettenberg took it and listened to the recorded conversation, a sickened grin spreading over her face. “This . . . is this . . . ?”

  “That’s what you missed.”

  Matheson could barely hear orders being issued through the mobile links and he paid them no attention for his own sake, but watched everyone else on the roof. Some of the armed personnel began disposing themselves at more strategic locations rather than just holding position near the access points. One lay down with his rifle supported on the parapet, muzzle pointed toward the White Hotel’s south tower.

  Tchintaka had already been talking to the stream for three minutes, not in tones of demand or self-righteousness, but of heartache and sorrow that was beyond tears. And with his Dreihleen diction and accent deliberately softened. Dillal remained still and silent in the background, out of the camera’s sight. It turned and tracked Tchintaka automatically as he paced and gestured, but the Dreihle remained away from the north end of the room. “Whatever you’ve been told about me’s probably a lie,” Tchintaka said to the A/V unit. “Gattis Corporation profits on lies. Truth can only paint it as the monster it is. This planet’s beauty’s maintained by slavery and death, and corporate profits’re bolstered by oppression of the native races. We who’re yellow or red were born here just as those who are blue and our blood and our sweat waters the fields and fills the seas, yet we enjoy no part of the bounty. When we rise to protest, to ask for what’s ours by right, we’re struck down like predator cats of Agria, murdered by troops like the ones standing on Cove Quay this minute. What justice is that? That foreigners and mercenaries crush us at the pleasure of Gattis Corporation? That we’re denied education, opportunity, equality because of the color of our skin? We’ve no seats at Corporation House. We’re forced into ghettos where our livelihood—our lives—come at pleasure of Gattis Corporation. They color us parasites and criminals—but is they who’re eaters of human flesh and thieves of dignity and right, they who rape our posterity, who rob and murder and lie.”

  His voice soothed and sang as he looked into the A/V unit’s eye, persuading, swaying, seducing his invisible audience. He seemed oblivious to his surroundings—to Dillal and even the A/V unit itself—as if he stood face to face with each individual who watched him, and poured out his compassion and despair into sympathetic ears.

  “They’re the tyrant and is’t not right and proper that good people should cry out for relief, rise against tyrants to demand redress, and if they’re denied, should they not revolt? Should they beg the tyrant for bread, beg for common decency, for their lives, when so much blood’s already been spilled? Is this right? No! No, good people must rise up, they must demand their proper rights, and if the tyrant will not make way, they must take what should always have been theirs. It is the proper way of an oppressed people to water the roots of liberty with the blood of tyrants! And if we’ve risen against the tyrant in the Dreihleat and the Ohbata and in the filthy penal camps of Agria, then it is because we have no other recourse. We don’t run riot for petty gain, and I don’t speak, now, from this embattled place, for my own glory. I’m but a man who cries out for justice, for relief, for redress, for change—I’m no terrorist, nor are any of those who cry out as I do. They are the innocent who bleed and die for justice.”

  From the corner came Dillal’s voice, calm and tired, but strong enough to be heard clearly on the stream. “You’re no innocent. The innocent were the sixteen people you murdered at the Paz da Sorte and the two more you sent to Agria to die.”

  On the casino roof, Kettenberg stiffened, clutching Matheson’s mobile to her chest as she stared toward the White Hotel. Even the armed men leaned toward the nearest monitor. She pointed at her assistant. “Keep that channel open—whatever it takes.” Then she turned to Matheson. “Is he out of his mind? Tchintaka will kill him—he’s already tried once.”

  Matheson cast a glance up and then down to the tiny shadows that lay like dense pools under everything. “What time is it? Noon?”

  “Eleven fifty,” Kettenberg’s assistant said.

  Matheson nodded. “It’s a little early for insanity, yet.”

  “What are you talking about?” Kettenberg demanded.

  “Nothing, except I’d be surprised if provoking Tchintaka’s temper isn’t exactly what Dillal’s up to.”

  “But—”

  “Could you splice that audio into the live feed if you had to?”

  Kettenberg turned her head back to the view across the cove. “I could . . .”

  On the monitor, Tchintaka’s eye twitched and he stiffened just a little. Then he closed his eyes as if in pain. “This man belongs to the corporation and he believes I’m responsible for this hideous thing—”

  “I don’t believe something that is not true. I am the investigating ofiçe who came to arrest you with proof of these charges and am now your prisoner along with everyone in this building.”

  The camera juddered, swinging toward Dillal and then dipping in a wild, bouncing fall. The image blurred and filled with static for a moment.

  “Keep it up!” Kettenberg yelled, concentrating on the window across the quay, never turning her head away.

  “He’s turned it off,” the assistant shouted back.

  “Force it as long as the cap will stand! Hold onto the audio.” She backed up, holding out Matheson’s mobile. “We’ll go from my feed on one and prepare to splice this audio in when I give you the hack.”

  Her assistant snatched the mobile and Kettenberg moved forward almost to the edge of the parapet. She knelt to gain stability as she kept her head rig pointed at the bloodied window where Dillal slumped.

  “Three, two . . . one,” Kettenberg shouted.

  The monitor flashed a colored indicator in the upper right corner as the image changed to the view from Kettenberg’s rig. Text scrolled across the bottom of the display: Live—Petr Kettenberg, Casino Archon roof, Angra Dastrelas. The colors were a little pixelated from the extreme zoom, but with the cloud-striped sunlight directly above, the image was as clear as if the viewer stood in the air less than four meters from the windows.

  Matheson couldn’t see the downed camera, but he saw Tchintaka turn toward Dillal. Even in the lowered resolution, Tchintaka’s posture radiated rage and his voice through the link was icy and clear.

  “You’re think you’re make people doubt me, now? They’re see you’re the corporation’s dog,” Tchintaka spat.

  “The doubt is your own doing. Your lieutenants know you planned the robbery of the Paz da Sorte and they suspect that what happened was not an accident, though they want to believe in you. You’re persuasive, spellbinding, but I have a witness who knows the truth and he will speak.”

  “A boy’s got no clan? A fool who’s dream of glory? Criminals, both of them.”

  “So are you. Even before you chose to rob and murder your neighbors, you did unforgivable things and called them justice. You roused a riot that killed one-hundred twenty people at Camp Donetti a year ago, and another here on Sunday, but it was never you who was hurt, as you won’t be hurt this time either. You’ll run now that your chance to lie your way out is ruined.”

  “Will I?” Tchintaka asked, stepping closer, menacing Dillal, who was still slumped in his corner.

  “Yes. Down the tunnels and out through a watertight lock door into the cove. It’s the obvious path, but the water’s so clear here that the troops the corporation’s brought in will see you in a heartbeat from their positions on the rooftops.”

  “They’re not see me when they’re distracted.”

  “What distraction could keep them from looking into the water? Ah . . . but they can look all they want, can’t they? You won’t be the only man in the water. So there really is gas secreted around the hotel, but it’s not toxic—it’s flammable. The hotel burns, people dive for the water . . . I’ll have to be alive to unlock the emergency bars for that to work.�
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  Tchintaka crouched down over Dillal, glaring at him. “I’m never intend to kill you, Djepe.”

  Dillal gave a harsh laugh. “But now you do. You can’t afford to let me live. What will you do? Leave me chained here, knowing I’ll open the doors to save as many people as I can while you vanish in the crowd as you always do? Will it please you to think of me burning to death? The stench of it, the sound of my screams of agony and terror as I hope for someone to find me, to rescue me before it’s too late . . . But of course it will be too late. Another regrettable accident like Paz, like Donetti, like Zanesh and Banzet . . .”

  Tchintaka lunged and grabbed Dillal’s shoulders, hauling him to his feet and throwing him against the wall. “You’re open the doors! Now!”

  “And let your birds fly before you’re safe? Or are you surrendering to me?”

  “Never to you, Cousin. But you’re not let people below die,” he added, sneering. “You’ll open doors when you’re smell the smoke, hear the screaming.”

  Dillal slumped in Tchintaka’s hands. “I will open the doors.”

  The locks on the room doors slammed closed.

  “All but these.”

  Tchintaka shrieked and flung Dillal against the window. The inspector’s head rebounded off the glass and he stumbled forward into Tchintaka, who grabbed him by the throat.

  Matheson tore his gaze away from the monitor, looking up at the troops around him. He grabbed the nearest man in uniform and shouted at him, “Check the doors—tell them to rush the doors! They should be unlocked, now!”

  Over his shoulder he heard Kettenberg clap her hands and shout “Splice!” Then his earlier audio recording began to play back.

  “ . . . Think monsters can’t recognize doom?”

  “Is that how you see yourself? The doom of the system?”

  “Is what I’m make of myself, Cousin. How’re you see it?”

  “As if my opinion of you matters.”

  “It does. Or did, once. Your pursuit’s hurt my heart.”

  “Move away from the window, Oso, or someone may shoot you.”

  “You’re care if I die.”

  “No. I don’t care if you die—you will one way or another—but I care that others have died and more may because of you. I did believe as you did, years ago when we met in Agria, but I’ve learned more, read the charter and the books, tempered my anger to a more humane resolve. I didn’t track you down because of your political belief, but because you murdered sixteen people, and sent two more to die in the camps. If there is a monster in this, it’s you.”

  “Was given no choice. Denny’s killed Venn. What’s justice for that? We’re all should hang for him . . . ?”

  The soldier in front of him didn’t move. “What’s the matter with you?” Matheson yelled. “Tell Pritchet the doors are unlocked. Get those people out!”

  The man shook himself from his shocked stupor and spoke rapidly into his mobile.

  Matheson glanced again at the media monitor, but the situation only grew worse as explanatory text rolled along the bottom of the display. Tchintaka had flung Dillal against the window again. Tchintaka’s face—visible above a bloody smear on the glass where Dillal’s head had struck it—was twisted in unreasoning rage. The inspector’s bound hands jerked upward and scrabbled at the glass behind him as Tchintaka grabbed him by the throat.

  Matheson heard the order to rush the doors.

  “Cut off the video,” Matheson said. The assistant shook his head and Matheson screamed at Kettenberg. “Cut the video!”

  “No,” Kettenberg shouted back.

  “You’re going to watch a man murdered in front of your eyes and do nothing?”

  “Mother of stars, Matheson, there’s nothing I can do from here! My job says I stay put—I watch, I don’t get involved. You want it done, you do it! Blackness take it,” she added in a mutter, “do something . . .” And shifted her view down to the street.

  Now the monitor showed the troops and SOs rushing for the hotel doors as they swung open under the press of frantic people inside. The hostages flooded out, running for the cordon, into the arms of soldiers and ofiçes. Matheson was relieved and ill at once—they were out and nothing was burning, but even as fast as he was, he couldn’t make it up to the tower before Dillal would be dead. He saw the sniper still lying at the edge of the roof and ran to him.

  “Do you have a shot?” he demanded.

  “I do.”

  “Then take it.”

  “I have no order, SO. You are not my commander.”

  “Then stand down—if you’re not going to take the shot, you’re no use here. Stand down.”

  “I can’t.”

  Matheson glanced over his shoulder at the remaining people on the roof—only two additional media observers besides Kettenberg and her assistant, and a single SO to secure the door. He slipped the baton from his belt. “Then I’ll stand you down,” he said, kneeling, and struck the rifleman sharply behind his right ear.

  The sniper collapsed face down. Matheson hoped he wasn’t dead, but he didn’t bother to check as he threw himself down and took over the other man’s gun and position. The shot was already fairly lined up, the scope sighted in, and he ignored everything but the height line Dillal had made—the bloody smear on the glass half a kilometer away.

  Tchintaka’s face was so close to the window as he leaned his weight into choking the life from Dillal’s body that his breath made a cloud on the glass. It should take longer to strangle a Dreihle, shouldn’t it? Just above the breath . . . just above the blood . . .

  He breathed in . . . and out . . .

  And squeezed the trigger.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  Day 7: Afternoon

  Blood sprayed into the room, but he didn’t know if he’d killed Tchintaka alone or both of them. He dropped the rifle and started to his feet, but only got as far as his knees before his stomach knotted and he vomited with such force that he had to catch himself on his hands. Everything seemed darker . . . was he going to faint as well?

  Another shadow fell over him and he turned his head.

  Kettenberg and both the other media observers were crowding over him, babbling, as the SO from the doorway tried to push past and grab him.

  “Nice shot, Ofiçe Matheson,” Kettenberg said. Matheson could barely hear her for the ringing in his ears.

  He stared at the ground and sank back on his heels, then slumped away from the mess he’d made. He didn’t want to know how elegantly he’d taken a life, only if it had been the right one. He sat down harder than he’d meant to. He was shaking now, sweating hot and cold, not sure if he was going to heave again and hoping he was done. He didn’t raise his face, just wiped his hand across it and stared at the roof tiles.

  “Quite impressive,” Kettenberg continued. “You were a pentathlete in college, weren’t you?”

  Who gives a merry fuck about that? Matheson shook his head as much to clear the buzzing as to ignore the query. He didn’t want to ask, but he had to know, “Did I—that is . . . who was hit?”

  “Only who you were aiming at.” Her voice sounded distant and chopped by static, but he could still pick out her words, if he concentrated. She turned away and he lost her for a moment, then she turned back and said, “It looks from here like Inspector Dillal is alive—he was moving. There’s no sign of Tchintaka from this vantage point, but we did see the shot. I can show it to you if you like.”

  “Merry hell, no.” He shuddered and glanced up. “You still streaming?”

  “Not now. I just dropped feed control to an associate at ground level—that’s where the hot action is, at the moment. I can pick it back up . . .”

  “No!” He coughed and spat, wiped his mouth again, unable to rid himself of the taste. “May I have my mobile back?” His voice sounded hollow in his own ears.

  “Oh. Certainly,” she said. She motioned behind her back and then produced the Peerless, but her movement made room for the SO to shoulder thro
ugh the tight group around him.

  Matheson swiped through to re-secure the file, and called Andreus.

  The SO pushed forward, but had to stay a bit to the side to avoid standing in puke. “Matheson . . .” He cleared his throat and started again in a loud voice. “Eric Matheson. Put your hands where I can see them.”

  “Can’t you see them now?” Matheson replied, holding the mobile on his bent knees.

  The SO hesitated and said, “I think I’m supposed to detain you.”

  “Oh. Just this call, please. Then, whatever you want.”

  “What?” Andreus snapped—she sounded tinny and mechanical through the mobile’s speaker, but he didn’t want to put the MDD up to his ringing ear.

  “Doctor, I think your patient needs you.”

  “I already figured that out, thanks to the media. I’m almost at the quay. Meet me at the hotel and show me the way.”

  “I’m afraid I can’t—I think I’m being arrested.”

  He cut the connection and put the mobile in his shirt. Then his stomach heaved again, but he didn’t throw up this time.

  The sky growled and flashed, and rain poured down as if the lightning had gutted the clouds. He huddled on the tiles while the media observers scattered to drier ground. The SO stood over him until the sniper beside him groaned and sat up.

  The man looked dizzier than Matheson felt, but he still punched like a falling skimmer. Matheson sprawled backward onto the puddled tiles and chose to lie still until others came to carry him away.

  The sniper hadn’t broken anything with his fist and that was a pleasant surprise. Matheson stumbled along with the two SOs who’d arrived to move him, and Neme right behind them. She’d given him a sour look as they walked him down and confiscated his equipment and ID. He’d balked at the loss of the mobile, but in the end he couldn’t object—it was his own but he’d used it on the job and that made the content and access GISA’s property for now. He knew he should keep his head up—act as if he had confidence in his decision—but he couldn’t. He didn’t feel confident about much, but at least his hands had been cuffed in front and not behind—which he figured meant Neme was just following procedure and didn’t think he was a real danger. He appreciated that, though he didn’t know why he should.