The Sixth Discipline

by Carmen Webster Buxton

  ***

  Francesca couldn’t seem to get enough air. She stood in the hospital waiting room, Marina Quinn on one side of her, Merced on the other side, and looked at Clara and Georges Rangoon standing silently on the other side of the room. Where did they fit in all of this?

  “Don’t you want to sit down, Baroness?” Quinn asked.

  “No, I don’t.” Francesca crossed her arms over her chest, almost clutching herself as she breathed rapid, shallow breaths. “Where the hell is that doctor?”

  Quinn made a soothing reply, but Francesca couldn’t have repeated what she said. A moment later, the door slid open and a petite, dark-skinned woman, her hair as gleaming black as her stethoscope, stepped into the room.

  “Which of you is the patient’s wife?” she asked.

  Francesca stepped forward, Quinn and her minion right behind her. “I am. Is he alive?”

  The doctor looked at her, curiosity mixed with sympathy in her gaze. “Yes, he’s alive. We resuscitated him with no difficulty. We were able to repair the damage to his heart and lungs, and the less serious head wound, and then we got his heart working again and replaced the lost blood. He’s off automated life support except for the ventilator, to give his lungs time to heal—and of course we’re pumping him full of drisophenine.”

  Francesca let out a deep exhalation. She hadn’t even realized she had been holding her breath. “What’s drisophenine?”

  “It’s a drug that helps the brain to repair itself,” the doctor said. “Fortunately, Baroness, your husband wasn’t dead for long. However, we’re taking no chances. Drisophenine must be given promptly if it’s to be of any use. Otherwise, any brain damage would be permanent.”

  “Brain damage?” Francesca said. She could feel the blood rush from her face,

  “The med team got him into the stasis box promptly.” The doctor sounded as if she were speaking to a small child. “Brain damage shouldn’t be a problem. It’s merely a precaution.”

  “Can I see him now?” Francesca demanded.

  The doctor nodded. “Yes. He’s not conscious yet, but you can see him if you wish.”

  Francesca followed her down the corridor, her two protectors following close behind. The doctor led the way to a room filled with medical equipment. A medtech stood in front of the bank of monitors, his back to the body lying motionless on the only bed in the room.

  Francesca stepped up to the bed and looked down at her husband. He didn’t look like a Sansoussy now. He barely looked human. A mass of tubes and cables snaked over his chest, a transparent mask covered his mouth and nose, and the nurturing embrace of an organic bandage hid most of his forehead. He lay perfectly still with his eyes closed but the tubes and cables rose and fell in a reassuringly regular pattern.

  Francesca took a deep breath of relief. “Is he going to be all right?” she asked the doctor.

  The woman glanced at the electronic chart displayed on the wall over Ran-Del’s head. “He should be, but I can’t give any guarantees, Baroness. The head wound wasn’t so bad. He had a groove cut in his skull, basically, but the brain wasn’t affected. The chest wound, however, was fatal. The heart was penetrated—sliced open, really. We’ve repaired the damage, as I said, but with surgery on that scale, complications are always possible.”

  “What was the weapon that caused the head wound?” Quinn asked, interrupting suddenly.

  “Hard to say for certain,” the doctor replied. “My guess would be a beamer. A laser cuts cleanly, either like a knife or like a drill, depending on how it’s used. That’s how the chest wound looks. The head wound was different; the damage was less localized. The main force of the blast actually penetrated the skull—the groove I told you about—but there was peripheral damage. Pieces of flesh and scalp looked as if they’d been burned with acid; we had to do extensive tissue repair. That’s why my guess would be an energy beamer of some sort.”

  Quinn looked as if she might have asked another question, but the portable com console strapped to her forearm beeped, and she stepped back to take the call.

  “Excuse me, Baroness,” she said after a moment, “the police would like to talk to you. They’re downstairs.”

  “In a moment,” Francesca said, still staring down at Ran-Del. She sighed and stood up straighter. He wasn’t dead. The doctor sounded as optimistic as was possible in these circumstances. She had to stop worrying and start thinking about what to do.

  “How long until he’s conscious?” she asked the doctor.

  The woman shook her head. “I’m not pushing him to come awake, Baroness. He’ll be in a lot of pain, and the less I have to medicate him, the better. Our monitors show that his vital signs are all stable, but he seems to be quite restless, almost as if he were having bad dreams. Without my forcing it, I’d expect him to be awake by tomorrow morning, but I couldn’t say for sure.”

  “All right,” Francesca said with a sigh. She straightened her shoulders as she turned toward Quinn. “Let’s go see what the cops have to say.”

  The officer who waited in an empty office wasn’t one of the two who had been first on the scene. This man was older, and wore a captain’s uniform. He rose politely when Francesca came into the room.

  “Good evening, Baroness,” he said, offering a hand. “My name is Captain Uvalde.”

  “It’s hardly a good evening,” Francesca said as she shook hands. She needed better control. Curtness would only alienate this man. “Who tried to kill my husband?”

  “We don’t know, yet, Baroness,” Captain Uvalde said. “That’s what I need to speak to you about. This crime is in our jurisdiction, physically, but as the victim is your husband, that gives you dominion rights. Do you want us to handle it? If not, we’ll back off and turn it over to your people.” He glanced at Quinn curiously.

  Francesca frowned, annoyed at having to make a decision so soon. “What have you found out so far?”

  “Well,” Uvalde said, “it was clearly an assassination attempt. They may have planned to make it look like robbery and then not had time, or they may simply not have cared, but no effort was made to obtain the victim’s money or valuables.

  “There were two different weapons, too. From the damage to the bridge and your husband’s wounds, we’re guessing a high-powered beamer and a laser pistol—both illegal. It looks like a simple case of assassination. The perps might be new at it, though, because they muffed it. If they’d waited until your husband was walking through the business district, where the offices are all closed, he could’ve been shot and bled to death with no one the wiser.”

  Francesca didn’t let herself think about the possibility. After only a short time, Ran-Del’s brain would have been hopelessly damaged, even if his body could be resuscitated. “Anything else?”

  Uvalde reached into an evidence pouch and took out a narrow-bladed knife sealed in plastic. Blood covered the blade. “Do you recognize this, Baroness?”

  Francesca jumped. “Yes. That’s Ran-Del’s—my husband’s—dirk. He always wore it.”

  Captain Uvalde nodded sagely. “That’s what his friends said. Looks like he got at least one of the perps, at least enough to draw a fair amount of blood. We’re testing all the blood on the scene very carefully. If there’s blood besides your husband’s, we’ll have an iron-clad clue from the DNA. If the perp’s DNA is on file, we’ll find him from that.”

  “If?” Francesca said. “Shouldn’t everyone’s DNA be on file?”

  “Theoretically,” Uvalde said. “But sometimes people move here from a farm or the suburbs and never get properly registered—or they sneak some credits to a crooked clerk in Records and get themselves taken out of the system.” Reluctance showed in the flicker of his eyelids, as though he didn’t like admitting this. “If there’s enough cash behind this operation, it’ll be difficult to trace the hit men.”

  “You said men?” Quinn asked. “Do you know that for certain?”

  Uvalde shook his head. “The first witness on the scene sa
id he thought he saw two people running away—no height or weight or even gender, just two shapes. One of them was limping.”

  “It’s not much to go on,” Quinn said.

  “No,” Uvalde said. “It’s not. Do we go with what we’ve got, Baroness, or do you want to handle it yourselves?”

  Francesca glanced at Quinn. Her face gave no clue what she was thinking.

  “I’d like to talk to my Security Chief for a minute, if you don’t mind, Captain,” Francesca said.

  “Certainly, Baroness,” the captain said with a bow.

  Francesca waited until he had withdrawn to the corridor. “Well, Marina,” she said, “what do you recommend?”

  “It depends, Baroness,” Quinn said, “on which is more important—locating the scum or dealing with them once we find them.”

  Francesca understood. Yielding jurisdiction to the municipal police meant yielding justice. If the police caught the assailants, the stiffest sentence they could receive for attempted assassination was mental conditioning. Francesca's right to punish whoever hired them would be lost.

  On the other hand, if she kept her right of dominion, she could mete out whatever penalty she desired, including death, so long as she could demonstrate the guilt of those she punished—if she could find them.

  “We haven’t had any luck finding out who killed Pop,” Francesca said.

  “We already knew the assassin for that one,” Quinn said. “All we had was one electronic funds transaction to try to nail down whoever paid for it.”

  Francesca shook her head. “Even if we find the hit men, what guarantee do we have that it won’t just lead to another electronic credit drop?”

  “There’s no guarantee, but this hit doesn’t seem as smooth.” Quinn scrunched her face into a speculative scowl. “I don’t think it was as well thought out. It has a sort of last minute feel to me.”

  Did that mean different circumstances or a different killer? “Do you think the same person who killed Pop tried to kill Ran-Del?”

  Quinn shrugged, as if to deny knowledge. “Who knows? I’d think it’s likely, but on the other hand, are the people who had a motive to kill the Baron also likely to have a motive to ice your husband once your father was gone?”

  It was a good point. Pop had almost certainly been killed by someone who planned to take over the House of Hayden through her. The same motivation could apply to the attack on Ran-Del. Unless the Sansoussy had somehow made an enemy on his own? “Motive is the key. Who would have benefited if Ran-Del had died?”

  Quinn smiled, a strange, twisted grimace. “I think you should rephrase that, Baroness. He did die. It’s a case of who would’ve benefited if he had stayed dead.”

  Francesca sucked in her breath at the thought. She considered her choices for a few seconds, then shook her head. “I know more about the cartels and Great Houses than that captain does. I have better ways of finding out who’s in bed with whom, so to speak, than anyone on the police force. What I don’t have,” Francesca said regretfully, “is access to municipal records.”

  “If it’s purely a case of getting information from them,” Quinn said with a slight grin, “credits will do it for you every time. The captain admitted as much.”

  “That’s another good point,” Francesca said. “Realistically, Marina, do we have a chance of finding them on our own?”

  “Realistically, Baroness,” Quinn said soberly, “we don’t have that good a chance, but it’s as good as or better than the one the police have.”

  Francesca stared at the wall. “If I give this up to the cops and it was the same person who paid for both murders then Pop’s killer could end up sitting in a nice cozy mental hospital.”

  Quinn said nothing.

  “All right,” Francesca said abruptly, “we keep it. You hire extra people if you have to, but you get going on this, Marina.”

  “Yes, Baroness,” Quinn said with satisfaction.

  Captain Uvalde looked almost relieved when Francesca told him her decision.

  “Certainly, Baroness Hayden,” he said, with just an intimation of a bow. “I’ll wrap up the datawork when I get back to the skimmer. There’ll be a report in your mailbox by the time you get home.”

  “I’m not going home,” Francesca said wearily. “Not for a good while.”