by Patty Jansen
Footsteps echoed in the courtyard below. Through the arch-shaped entranceway to the stairwell I could see a group of four people: Delegate Ayanu with three guards. Not gamra guards, but Coldi ones, dressed in the grey-silver characteristic for Asto employees of the Inner and First Circles. Guns on both arms brackets. What were they even doing here? When Ezhya visited, yes, but Delegate Ayanu?
They didn’t look our way and didn’t show any sign that they knew we were there. The sound of their footsteps changed as they went past and then up the stairs, presumably into the next entrance, but I couldn’t see that from where we were standing.
My feeder burst into life. We’re in.
Thayu replied, Get out now, Nich’. The Delegate is coming up with four guards.
We’ll grab Reida and go.
Please hurry up.
It would not be a good thing if Nicha and Sheydu were caught in there.
Veyada gestured for us to follow him. Quietly, we went back down the stairs, and ran along the wall of the building to the next entrance. Thayu unclipped the gun from her arm bracket. Veyada stopped at the bottom of the stairs, gesturing quiet. The guards’ voices echoed from above, through the hall of stone and metal.
We went up, very quietly sneaking along the side wall in single file. First Veyada, then Thayu, and I came last.
Through the metalwork of the balustrade, I could see a narrow strip of a door where the group waited while the first of the guards disarmed all the locks.
Come on, Nicha, get out of there, quickly.
The door slid open.
The guards took one step inside—
There was a shout and someone shot out from the doorway, crashing into one of the guards. The two of them went toppling, the attacker pushing the guard flat on his back. The other two guards had their guns out in seconds.
Suddenly, the stairwell was full of shouting.
“Freeze!”
“Hands up!”
The landing in front of the apartment’s door wasn’t big enough for the guards to move far enough away for a clear shot. The attacker kicked out like a bucking horse and hit the gun out of one of the guards’ hands. In the same movement, he swung his other leg aside, swiping a second guard off his feet.
While everyone was screaming, the attacker scrambled to his feet and pelted down the stairs—where we stood.
In the Delegate’s office, someone yelled, “Stop him!” That sounded like Nicha.
The escapee was Reida, and he had already reached us.
Before I could say or do anything, Thayu grabbed him by his shayka and belted him across the head with such force that he gave one surprised squeak and collapsed against the wall.
The delegate’s guards ran across the landing towards the stairs, and stopped dead when they saw us.
“What are you doing here?” one of them asked, his tone none too friendly.
Veyada stepped forward and conducted a conversation entirely in security code. The guards backed off a bit. They probably knew Veyada and knew about his previous employment.
I knelt next to Reida’s crumpled form. His clothes were ripped and dirty, his hands bloodied from where he had torn his fingernails. Trying to get out of the room where he had been locked in? His eyes fluttered and opened to a hazy expression. “I’m all . . . finished with her,” he said with a thick slur. “Sorry . . . sorry.”
Veyada stopped his discussion with the guards to wave a finger at him. “Shut. Up.”
This kind of callous-looking behaviour always disturbed me, no matter how often I experienced it. Coldi would tolerate a measure of poor behaviour from someone in their association and then all of a sudden they would lash out like this with excessive physical violence and callous remarks.
Maybe we humans were too soft, but damn it, belting someone senseless and then letting him recover on his own was not the way I liked to do things. Reida had been carrying a bag, and I used it as a pillow to support his head. Veyada was still talking to the guards and Reida didn’t look like he’d be going anywhere for a while.
Damn, Thayu, what was that good for?
He wiped a trickle of blood that ran from his nose over his lip, resulting only in smearing it over his face and the back of his hand. He also had angry bruises on his arms that were definitely not a result of Thayu’s belting. I searched my pockets for something to wipe the blood off, but came up with nothing.
“I’ll take you to the med post.” Better still, I sent them a quick message to come and collect him. Reida probably couldn’t walk, or it wouldn’t be a good idea for him to try.
“Leave him,” Thayu said to me, softly.
What do you mean? He can’t look after himself.
He’s looked after himself ever since coming here and maybe even before. I need you to be alert. I want you to listen and watch. We’re not safe here.
I looked up. Veyada was talking some bullshit about the reason for our presence being that we wanted to speak to the delegate before the meeting.
One of the delegate’s guards said, “Your personnel was trespassing on our property.”
Veyada said, “That person is also part of your association.”
“I don’t know anything about that.”
“He’s a spy for you. We can track and prove that. My leader is not impressed with this situation.” Veyada’s hand gestured behind his back for us to clear out.
I rose, because I trusted my association in matters of security.
Delegate Ayanu’s guards had come down the stairs and surrounded Veyada. They had their guns out of their arms brackets, ready to be used at the first opportunity.
“We’ll take care of the young rascal now,” one of the men said.
“No, he’s mine.” This was Nicha, at the door of the apartment. Sheydu was with him.
The guards whirled. Had they really been unaware that Nicha and Sheydu had been in the apartment as well? Sheydu held that fearsome gun in her left hand.
For a moment, I was afraid that there would be shots fired, but the delegate herself spoke up. She had been sheltering in the corner of the hallway.
Delegate Ayanu’s face was round and the friendly expression belied the iron nature of her personality. She had the typical round-waisted look of a middle-aged Coldi woman. Because of her position, she was allowed to dress in all blue, which she did in style. “What is the meaning of this? Since when do we have break-ins from two sides at once? Nicha? Care to explain to me?”
“I don’t think it needs any explanation,” Nicha said, his tone subservient, but his word choice interesting. Why should anyone use the zhyo pronoun form? I’d learned it as a form of reverence, but he used it sarcastically. Was that something he’d learned when I’d sent him to Asto?
The delegate snorted, not entirely comfortable. “I would greatly like you to explain, dear second of mine. I’m disappointed. I would have thought my apartment was safe from you.” Very sharp pronouns, those ones.
“I had my reasons.”
I said, “Nicha is working for me.”
Delegate Ayanu turned around. Her eyes met mine and her face showed a I should have expected that you were involved expression. “Is that so?”
I straightened. “He’s been working for me for years. Surely that is not news to you, and I’d be happy if you stopped acting like it was. I would like to know why you’re keeping one of our association locked up?”
“So, this good-for-nothing thief belongs with you as well?” She laughed. “You’ll have to train him better so that he can get away without being caught.” Her pronouns were all sneering and accusatory.
Thayu hissed next to me. The hide of her. He did work for her. Now she’s washing her hands off him.
Calm down, I sent her. Reida had already said that he was finished with her. That was a good thing.
That’s the most cowardly thing she could have done. I don’t like the way she speaks to you.
Whoa, Thayu’s anger almost bowled me flat. Keep calm. I’ve grown
used to her bluster. It wasn’t the rudest thing Delegate Ayanu had ever said to me either. Like most Coldi, she was all show and didn’t often follow through on her statements.
Ezhya is right, you are much too soft on people who are rude.
Delegate Ayanu came slowly down the stairs. Her footsteps were deliberate, her face determined.
I continued, “To be honest, I think the boy belongs with you as much as he belongs with me. Since he came to live in my apartment, he’s behaved strangely. At first, it seemed harmless. Breaking into councillors’ daughters’ bedrooms. Sure, their fathers were upset, but also smug that their daughters were so popular with a gamra official, even if only the most junior one possible. But you sent him to pretend he’s after the girls, right? To put everyone on a wrong trail. To let everyone think that he’s just a joker. Breaking into Federza’s office was what you wanted him to do, right?” I used professional pronoun forms, because I didn’t want to go into the question of whether she was a superior. With some people, I could make a reasonably accurate guess where I stood, but she wasn’t one of those people.
Reida’s voice came from behind, hoarse and slurred. “Ask her about the bugs she has all over the complex.”
I turned around and frowned at him. Bugs?
His eyes still looked unfocused. Damn it, he should be taken to the hospital soon.
He nodded. “Ask her. My loyalty to her is done. Finished.” A dribble of blood-stained saliva ran from his mouth.
I turned back to the delegate and frowned at her.
Her face had an expression of distaste. “He talks nonsense.” Damn it, that was a downright abusive pronoun form. “He is nothing more than an insignificant slug, who will go back to being less than an insignificant slug. He can go and join those zeyshi whose outfits he wears.”
Reida spat on the ground. “I’m not afraid of you. You should be afraid of me. I took the stuff that you were going to use to blackmail Federza. I know you got it on paper and destroyed the electronic copy, but it’s never really destroyed. I have the document with your electronic signature all over it.”
Whatever he had found had to be in the little bag that I’d been trying to use as pillow that now lay on the ground behind him.
He met my eyes and seemed to say take it.
Except I couldn’t pick it up without drawing attention to it. If Delegate Ayanu noticed me taking it, she would ask for it to be handed back to her and I would have to give it up, because it had technically been stolen from her apartment and I had my conduct code to observe as gamra delegate.
I sent to Thayu, Create a diversion. Draw her attention away from it. But Thayu was in conversation with the Delegate’s guards.
I had to do something. “I’m asking you to let the boy go. You are trespassing on my association.” A typical Coldi phrase.
Delegate Ayanu laughed, looking at my Domiri earrings. “I see Asha has been teaching you well, Domiri pet.” She snorted. “A pity that you’re nothing but a thief and I want my possessions returned to me.” She gestured and the guards came forward.
Immediately, regardless of what they’d been doing, Thayu, Veyada, Sheydu and Nicha sprang in front of me, guns drawn.
Thayu said, Take that thing and run. Copy it before they can get their hands on it.
What about you?
We’ll hold them off. Go now, Cory, run.
I snatched up the bag and ran.
Chapter 13
* * *
HOLY CRAP, I RAN. Down the stairs, where I narrowly avoided crashing into the two medical staff who had turned up to collect Reida. They greeted me with surprised looks.
One of them said, “We’ve come for an injured man.”
“Up there,” I replied, pointing at the entrance to the stairwell. Someone was shouting in the stairwell. I hoped Thayu and Nicha were all right. I hoped they could hold off any pursuit long enough for me to reach safety. Wherever that was.
I kept running, across the courtyard into the next courtyard, where people had returned to the outdoor eating-houses for breakfast and others were making their way to their various meetings.
My appearance drew a few raised eyebrows.
I turned into the first stairwell I encountered. This happened to be the building for minor delegates’ offices. At the top of the stairs, I came out in a long passage on the first floor that was part-balcony, part-corridor, also a typical Barresh architectural feature. On one side, the gallery had a view into the courtyard and there were doors on the other.
I sat down on a bench that overlooked the courtyard, still breathing fast.
Thay’ where are you?
There was no reply.
Maybe she’d closed the feeder. Delegate Ayanu’s guards would be able to hear me, too, if they were tuned to the right frequency. They’d probably have broad-frequency sweeps to scan the area.
Running footsteps sounded down in the courtyard. Not Thayu or Veyada or Sheydu by the lightness of the tread.
I ducked below the potted bush that stood next to the bench, but the person walking through the courtyard at a good pace was only a delegate carrying a reader, who was probably late for a meeting.
I sat back down on the bench after he had passed and opened the bag. Inside a piece of cloth, a shawl of some kind, lay a comm reader. I activated my recording facility on my reader before turning it on.
The screen went dark and then a menu appeared. I stared at the list of documents on the screen, not even sure what I was looking for.
Meeting brief took me to a detailed description of everyone we knew who would be coming to the negotiations in the assembly and who had any kind of interest in the matter. Reida had listed all their attributes, memberships, known associations and positions they held, in the past and present.
I was impressed. For a young man giving the impression of being a lout, he was highly organised and methodical. He didn’t misspell or make grammar mistakes either. It occurred to me that if I could remove the external pressure from him, if I could focus his loyalty solely on my association, then he could be extremely valuable.
But this was obviously not what I was looking for.
After going through a well-kept financial report of expenditures, including an entry that listed fine for trespass—seriously, what the hell—I opened a document entitled plan and communication.
The first page was in Aghyrian. Not phonetically written in Coldi characters, but with the proper characters. Which, obviously, he could read because why else would he keep the character set on his reader. Being used to the phonetic spelling, I could recognise a few words, but this was way too formal for me to understand it fully. The way the text was laid out made me think that it was a transcript from a conversation.
I would have to get someone to translate that, so I flicked to the next page, which was a page-filling image, a diagram of blue lines on a black background.
At first, I wasn’t sure what I was looking at. Some kind of shape. I peered at it for a while before I realised that it was a line diagram of a space ship in exquisite detail.
I had never seen anything like this ship before. If those little rectangles on the plan were human-sized doors, then this thing was huge. Much bigger even than the hundred-year-old behemoths used by Earth to travel to what limited space settlements they had access to without using the Exchange. Ancient vessels like the Venture which had brought me to Midway Space Station as a boy. This ship was much bigger than that. The Venture had three levels of cabins and living quarters and carried about eighty passengers on long anpar flights, which was roughly 60% of capacity.
This ship, if it could even be called a ship, would carry thousands. An entire town. There were cabins for sleeping and larger rooms that might be used for recreation, schooling or other communal activities. There were two entire decks devoted to what looked like agriculture and food production.
The engine compartment was huge, much bigger than that of the Earth ships in comparison to ship size. You could proba
bly fit the Venture inside the engine compartment of this ship three or four times. It contained two thick tubes, the function of which I could only guess. The legendary one-sided anpar generator? For a ship that size?
It had so little shielding, too. And what were the two flanges on the sides? Solar panels?
It had been a long time since I’d seen designs for ships like this. People on Earth used to love making plans for permanent live-aboard vessels that were self-sustaining floating towns. Getting to the natural anpar lines took a long time and the flight to Midway took three months. There had been talk of building bigger ships to forego the need of working with gamra and simply not using the anpar lines. I remembered competitions for the designs of such ships. I remembered poring over them as a little boy, to see where people would live their entire lives. The gardens fascinated me most of all. None had ever been built that I was aware of. With the anpar network, there was no need for long-haul vessels. Yet this looked like such a ship. Not only that, it looked like what people in my youth had called a generation ship.
Earth people had given up talking about generation ships long ago. Designs like this were almost ancient history. It was just so much easier to sign all the gamra statements so that individuals could travel on the Anpar network. Just use gamra transport, never mind that Earth governments had no authority over it, never mind gamra’s stand on religion. Ideology could only take a person so far.
I flicked to the next image, which showed the ship from the inside. I’d been on board several ships. Other than the behemoth Venture, I’d taken the shuttles, usually Hedron-made models with panelling made of the ubiquitous Hedron steel, recognisable by its purple sheen. The interior of those ships usually involved brightly coloured furnishings, often bright orange. I’d been on board Asto-made ships with their functional elegance in white, silver and maroon. I’d been aboard Asto military ships with their bare walls, and old-style Mirani ships with their wooden panelling and well-crafted fittings. I’d even been to the Asto military’s space station, with its broad walkways.
