Страница:
“Just as long as you appreciate all the factors.”
“Sure. Consider my wrist firmly smacked. What have your lot got planned for her, then?”
“Following acquisition, Consensus recommended placing her in zero-tau. At the very least until the possessed situation is resolved. Possibly longer.”
“How long?” Monica almost didn’t want to ask, or know.
“Consensus thought it prudent that she remains there until we have a requirement for the Alchemist. It is a large galaxy, after all; there may be other, more hostile xenocs than the Kiint and Tyrathca out there.”
“I was wrong, you’re not an evangelist, you’re a paranoid.”
“A pragmatist, I sincerely hope; as are all Edenists.”
“Okay, Samuel, so pragmatically, what do you want to do next? And please bear in mind that I am a loyal subject of my King.”
“Concentrate on finding her first, then get her away from the Dorados. The argument over custody can come later.”
“Nine-tenths of the law,” she muttered. “Are you offering me a joint operation?”
“Yes, if you’re willing. We have more resources here, I think, which gives us the greater chance of launching a successful extraction mission. But neither of us can afford to dismiss any avenue which will locate her. I am sure your Duke of Salion would approve of any action which guaranteed her removal from the scene right now. You can accompany her on our evacuation flight; and afterwards we would allow a joint custody to satisfy the Kingdom we have not acquired Alchemist technology. Is that reasonable?”
“Yeah, very. We have a deal.”
They touched bottles.
“The local partizan leadership has been called to a meeting here tonight,” she said. “Unfortunately, I don’t know exactly where that is in the asteroid. I’m waiting for our asset to get in touch as soon as it’s over.”
“Thank you, Monica. We don’t know where it is, either. But we’re assuming she will be there.”
“Can you track any of the partizans?”
“It is not easy. But we’ll certainly make every effort.”
For three days the rented office suite which had become the new Edenist intelligence service headquarters in Ayacucho had been the centre of a remarkable breeding program. When the agents of the “defence delegation” team arrived they brought with them seventy thousand geneered spider eggs. Every arachnid was affinity-capable, and small enough to clamber through grilles and scurry through the vast mechanical plexus of lift shafts, maintenance passages, environmental ducts, cable conduits, and waste disposal pipes which knitted the asteroid’s rooms and public halls together into a functional whole.
For over seventy hours the tiny infiltrators were coaxed and manipulated along black pipes and through chinks in the rock, slipping around cracks in badly fitted composite panels. Thousands never made it to their required destination. Victims of more predatory creatures, of working insect grids, of security barriers (most common in the corporate areas), sluices of strange liquids, smears of sticky fluids, and the most common failing of all: being lost.
But for every one which didn’t make it, five did. At the end of the deployment period the Edenists had visual coverage of sixty-seven per cent of Ayacucho’s interior (which was how Samuel found Monica Foulkes so easily). The three voidhawks perched on Ayacucho’s docking ledges, along with the ten armed voidhawks holding station inside Tunja’s particle disk, and the agents reviewed the spiders on a snapshot rotor, managing a complete sweep every four hours. As a method of locating one individual it was horribly inefficient. Samuel knew that it would only be pure chance if Mzu was spotted during one of the sweeps. It was up to the agents on the ground to lower the odds by procedural work; their dull routine of researching public files, bullying assets, bribing officialdom, and on occasion outright blackmail.
For thirty years the Garissan partizan movement had pursued a course of consistently lacklustre activity. It funded several anti-Omuta propaganda campaigns to keep the hatred alive among the first of a new generation born to the refugees. Mercenaries and ex-Garissan navy marines were recruited and sent on sabotage missions against any surviving Omutan interests. There were even a couple of attempts to fly into the Omuta system and attack asteroid settlements, both of which were snuffed by CNIS before the starships ever left dock. But for the last decade the leadership had done little except talk. Membership had dropped away steadily, as had funding, along with any real enthusiasm.
With such shoddy organization and defunct motivation it was inevitable that any intelligence agency which had ever shown an interest in the partizans had collated files on every person who had been a member, or even attended a fringe meeting. Their leadership was perfectly documented, long since consigned to the semi-crank category and downgraded to intermittent monitoring. A status which was now abruptly reversed.
There were five people making up the executive of Ayacucho’s partizan group. In keeping with the movement’s deterioration none of them followed the kind of security procedures they had obeyed so rigorously in the early days. That sloppiness in conjunction with an encyclopedic knowledge of their daily activity patterns allowed the Edenists to position spiders where they could provide a comprehensive coverage of the leadership’s movements in the hours leading up to the meeting.
Samuel and the voidhawks were presented with eyeblink pictures of the partizan leaders making their way through the asteroid. Respectable middle-age professionals now, they all had escorts of bodyguards, keen for any sign of trouble. These entourages were unmistakable, making them easy to follow.
“It looks like either level three or four in section twelve,” Samuel told Monica.
She datavised her processor block for a schematic of the asteroid. “It’s all offices there, corporate country. That makes sense, it’s more secure, and they are all rich. It wouldn’t be suspicious for them to be there together.”
“Unfortunately it makes life complicated for us. We’re having trouble infiltrating that area.” He was watching an inverted image of Ikela walking along a corridor at the centre of five boosted bodyguards. They were approaching a junction. A fast check with the voidhawks revealed that there were no more spiders left ahead. He ordered the one he was using to scuttle along the ceiling after Ikela.
There are UV lights ahead,a voidhawk warned. The spider is approaching a grade-five clean environment.
I know, but I need to see which way he turns.it was a strange viewpoint; to Samuel the corridor wasn’t particularly large, to the spider it was vast. The two visual interpretations tended to clash confusingly inside Samuel’s cortex unless he maintained a high level of concentration. Drab whiteness slid smoothly past galloping legs. Far above him was the sky of hazel carpet. Footsteps crashed against the spider’s pressure-sensitive cells. Stalactite mountains clad in expensive black silk marched on in front of the racing arachnid, becoming difficult to resolve as they approached the fork. He just needed a hint . . .
The affinity link vanished amid a violet flash. Damnation! A further review showed Samuel no spiders had managed to penetrate the area.
“What is it?” Monica asked as he flinched in annoyance.
“We just lost them.”
“So now what?”
He looked around at the other agents in the office suite. “Kit up and move out. We’ll cover as many approaches as we can. Monica, are you sure your asset is reliable?”
“Don’t fret; we’ve got him hoisted by the short and curlies. He won’t be able to datavise during the meeting, but as soon as it’s over we’ll know where it was and if she’s there. Did any of your infiltration systems see her going in?”
“No,” he admitted. “Not even a fifty per cent characteristics match.”
“I’m not surprised.”
The Edenist agents were putting on slim equipment belts and strapping up shoulder holsters. Monica checked her own maser pistol and ran a diagnostic program through her implants.
“Monica,” Samuel said.
She caught the tone. “I know: I’m not in your command network, I’d be in the way if I try to front-line. It’s all yours, Samuel.”
“Thank you.” Stand by,he told the voidhawks waiting on the docking ledge, if we do grab her we’ll need to exit fast.he led the team out.
There were only five people in the Tunja system who knew the real reason for forming the Garissan partizan movement. None of them lived on the same asteroid, so that if disaster did strike the others would be there to carry on with the plan.
In Ayacucho it was Ikela, the nominal head of the original five. It suited him to be one of the partizan group’s executives rather than the leader. This way he kept up-to-date on the movement’s activities while staying out of the limelight. His position was due principally to his financial support rather than any active participation. Again, according to plan.
Dan Malindi, the Ayacucho group’s leader, was the first to arrive at the secure conference office of Laxa and Ahmad, the legal firm they were using as cover. He gave Ikela a puzzled, vaguely annoyed glance as he entered. No one knew why Ikela had demanded the meeting at seven hours notice. And the executives weren’t people used to being kept in ignorance, not by one of their own. The sight of the normally composed industrialist sitting mutely at the table looking as if he were suffering some kind of fever with the way he was sweating did nothing to ease the tension.
Kaliua Lamu was the second to arrive; a financier who made little secret about his growing ambivalence to the movement. Partizan membership didn’t sit well alongside his newfound respectability.
Feira Ile and Cabral arrived together, the most senior ranking figures in the Dorados administration. Feira Ile had been an admiral in the Garissan navy and was now Ayacucho’s SD chief, while Cabral had built himself the largest media group in the Dorados. His company’s growth and popularity were due to the tabloid nationalism of its editorial policy, which made him a natural choice for the partizans. Most of the executive staff suspected his support was strictly for appearance sake.
Bodyguards and assistants left the room. Dan Malindi glared at the small woman sitting quietly behind Ikela, who obstinately refused to be intimidated into moving.
“She’s with me,” Ikela said.
Dan Malindi grunted in dissatisfaction and activated the office’s security screen. “All right, Ikela, what the hell is this about?”
Ikela gave the woman a respectful gesture, and she stood up, walking to the end of the table opposite Dan Malindi. “My name is Dr Alkad Mzu, I’m here to finish our war with Omuta.”
Dan Malindi and Kaliua Lamu both gave her a nonplussed glance. Cabral frowned, ordering a neural nanonics file search. But it was Feira Ile who produced the strongest reaction; he half rose to his feet, openly astonished. “The Alchemist,” he murmured. “You built the Alchemist. Holy Mary.”
“The what?” Cabral asked.
“The Alchemist,” Alkad told them. “It was our superweapon. I was its designer.”
“Feira?” Cabral prompted.
“She’s right,” the old ex-admiral said. “I was never given any details, the project was classified way above my security rating. But the navy built this . . . thing, whatever it is, just before the genocide. We were going to use it against Omuta.” He drew a long breath and looked at the diminutive physicist. “What happened?”
“Our flight was intercepted by blackhawks hired by Omuta,” Alkad said. “We never got there. The Alchemist was never used.”
“No way,” Dan Malindi said. “This is complete bullshit. You appear on the scene thirty years after the event and spin some crap about a missing legend you heard about in some bar. I bet the next stage is asking us for money to search for this Alchemist. In fact, I bet it’s going to take a lot of money to find it, right?” He was sneering contemptuously at her when he finished, but somehow her cold smile managed to rob his anger.
“I don’t need to search. I know exactly where it is.”
“It wasn’t lost?” Kaliua Lamu asked. His enthusiasm bought him a disgusted look from Dan Malindi.
“No, it’s never been lost. It’s been kept safe.”
“Where?”
Alkad merely smiled.
“Maybe it does exist,” Cabral said. “And our illustrious admiral here was right saying someone called Alkad Mzu built it. How do we know you’re her? We can’t make the decisions we need to make on the word of some stranger who turns up out of the blue, especially not at this precise time.”
Alkad raised an eyebrow. “Captain?”
“I can vouch for her,” Ikela said softly. “This is Dr Alkad Mzu.”
“Captain?” Dan Malindi asked. “What does she mean?”
Ikela cleared his throat. “It was my rank in the Garissan navy. I used to be captain of the frigate Chengho. We were flying escort duty on the Alchemist deployment mission. That’s how I know.”
“Datavise your command authority code,” Feira Ile said sternly.
Ikela nodded reluctantly, and retrieved the code from its memory cell.
“It would appear our colleague is telling the truth,” Feira Ile told the silent office.
“Mother Mary,” Cabral muttered, glancing at the man he thought he’d known for the last thirty years. “Why didn’t you tell us?”
Ikela sank his head into his hands. “The plan operates on a need to know basis only. Up until today you didn’t need to know.”
“What plan?” Feira Ile snapped.
“To deploy the Alchemist,” Alkad said. “After the original mission was crippled, Ikela and four other officers were detailed to sell the antimatter we were carrying. They were supposed to invest that money so there would be sufficient funds to hire a combat-capable starship and equip it to fire the Alchemist once the sanctions were lifted and the Confederation Navy squadron assigned to blockade duties returned home. The only reason you partizans exist is to provide me with a crew that will not flinch from the job that needs to be done.” She stared at Ikela. “And now I’m here, on schedule, and I find no ship, and no crew.”
“I told you,” Ikela shouted. “You can have your ship if that’s still what we want. I have more than enough money. Anyone of us in this room has enough money to provide a starship for you. I have never failed my duty to my people. Don’t you ever say that. But things have changed.”
“Looks like you’ve failed to me,” Cabral said briskly. “Looks like you’ve failed a lot of people.”
“Think!” Ikela stormed. “Think for the love of Mary what she is proposing. What will the Confederation do to us if we blow up Omuta’s star? What revenge will they take?”
“It can do that?” a startled Kaliua Lamu asked. “The Alchemist will destroy their star?”
“On one setting, yes,” Alkad said. “I don’t intend using that. I propose to simply extinguish the star. No one will die, but their planet and asteroid settlements will have to be evacuated and abandoned. They will become a broken homeless people, as we are. That’s fitting, surely?”
“Well yes . . .” He searched around the table for support, finding only uneasy confusion. “But I don’t understand. If you survived the blackhawk attack, why didn’t you continue with the mission? Why wait thirty years?”
“There were complications,” Alkad said tonelessly. “By the time we were in any position to function again the sanctions had been imposed, and the blockade squadron was in place. It was decided to wait until these obstructions were removed, which would give us a much greater chance of success. We did not have limitless government resources anymore, and we only have one chance to get it right. This is the optimum time to strike. We won’t have another chance; the intelligence agencies are pursuing me. And they will find me.”
Dan Malindi groaned. “Intelligence agencies? Holy Mary, they’ll find out where you’ve been.”
“Oh, yes, they’ll know you’re involved. Does that bother you?”
“Bother me? You bitch! I have a family.”
“Yes. I’ve heard this argument already today. It is beginning to bore me. I have lived the reality of the genocide for thirty years. You, all of you, have just been playing patriot. Each of you has profited in your own field by chanting the cry of nationalism. Well, my being here has put an end to your pathetic game.”
“Are you threatening us?” Cabral asked.
“I have always been a threat to your cosy life, even though you never knew I existed.”
“What exactly do you want?” Feira Ile asked.
“Two things. A combat-capable starship with a decent crew of committed nationalists. And a secure environment for myself while you prepare them. Do not underestimate the agencies. They now know for certain that the Alchemist is real, which means they will go to any lengths to acquire me.”
Ikela stood up, placing his hands on the table and leaning forwards. “I say we cannot do this. Mother Mary, we’re sitting here talking about wrecking an entire star system as if it were some kind of difficult business venture. Times have changed, we are not Garissans anymore. I’m sorry if that is painful for you to hear, Doctor, but we’re not. We have to look to the future, not the past. This is madness.”
“And that is treachery,” Cabral said.
“Treachery to what? To a planet that was killed thirty years ago? If that’s what it is, then fine, I’m a traitor to it. I don’t care.”
“Other people might when they get to hear.”
“Ikela, I really don’t think you’re in any position to back out now,” Feira Ile said. “Given your mission, you are still a serving officer. That means you are required to discharge your obligations.”
“Then I quit, I resign my commission.”
“Very well. In that case, I must ask you to hand over the T’Opingtu company to me.”
“What?”
“I believe we just heard that it was founded on money provided by the Garissan navy. That means it doesn’t belong to you.”
“Go fuck yourself.”
“Listen, we can’t make a snap judgement over this,” Kaliua Lamu said. “Ikela’s right, we’re talking about wiping out an entire solar system.”
“I might have known you’d take that attitude,” Dan Malindi said.
“Excuse me?”
“You heard. I’m willing to provide as much help as Dr Mzu wants. What the hell is the Confederation going to do to us if we’re armed with Alchemists?”
“There is only one,” Alkad said.
“You can build more, can’t you?”
She hesitated uncomfortably. “If there was a requirement, it could be duplicated.”
“There you are then. You can’t leave what’s left of the Garissan nation and culture unprotected, can you?”
“You want to start a damn arms race as well?” Ikela yelled. “You’re as mad as she is.”
“Curb your language. Have you forgotten the possessed?”
“In Mary’s name what have they got to do with this?”
“If we were armed with Alchemists, that bastard Capone would think twice before sending his fleet here.”
“And who precisely is going to be in charge of these Alchemists?”
“The Dorados council, of course,” Dan Malindi said scornfully.
“Exactly, and we all know how much influence you have there.”
“Enough!” Alkad slammed her fist down. “I will not supply Alchemists to anyone. You have no conception of what it is capable of. It is not some bigger and better bomb you can use for political advantage. It was built for one purpose, to destroy the people who threatened our world. It will be used for one purpose, our revenge against them.” She looked at each of them in turn, furious and sickened that this was all that remained of the planet she was once so proud of. Where was their dignity, their resolution? Could none of them perform one single act of remembrance? “I will give you thirty minutes to debate this. After that you will tell me which of you support me, and which do not.”
“I certainly support you,” Kaliua Lamu said loudly, but he was talking to her back as she limped away.
The shouting had already begun again before the door closed behind her. All the bodyguards and aides in the anteroom stared; Alkad barely saw them. If she had just known or anticipated the shambles which the partizans had become, then she would have been mentally geared up.
“Alkad?” Voi was bending down, giving the smaller woman an anxious look.
“Don’t mind me, I’ll be all right.”
“Please, I have something to show you. Now.”
The girl took Alkad’s arm, hustling her across the room and out into the corridor. Alkad couldn’t be bothered to protest, although force of habit made her activate a threat analysis program. Her enhanced retinas began scanning the length of the corridor.
“Here,” Voi said triumphantly. She opened her palm to reveal a tiny squashed spider.
“Mother Mary! Have you completely flipped?”
“No, listen. You know you said you thought the intelligence agencies were following you.”
“I should never have told you that. Voi, you don’t know what you’re getting involved with.”
“Oh, yes I do. We started checking the spaceport log. There’s a delegation of Edenists here to discuss strengthening our defences. Three voidhawks brought thirty of them.”
“Yes?”
“Mapire only rated one voidhawk, and six Edenists to discuss our mutual defence with the council. It should be the other way around, the capital should have got the larger delegation, not Ayacucho.”
Alkad glanced at the little brown blob in the girl’s hand, a bad feeling sinking through her. “Go on.”
“So we thought about how Edenists would search the asteroid for you. Adamists would use spylenses and hack into the communications net to get at public monitor security cameras. Edenists would use bitek systems, either simulants or affinity-bonded animals. We started looking. And here they are. Spiders. They’re everywhere, Alkad. We checked. Ayacucho is totally infested.”
“That doesn’t necessarily prove—” she said slowly.
“Yes it does.” The hand with the crushed blob was shaken violently. “This is from the Lycosidae family. Ayacucho’s ecologists never introduced any Lycosidaes into the biosphere. Check the public records if you don’t believe me.”
“All sorts of things can get through bio-quarantine; irradiation screening isn’t perfect.”
“Then why are they all male? We haven’t found a single female, not one. It’s got to be so they can’t mate, they won’t reproduce. They’ll die off without causing any sort of ecological imbalance. Nobody will ever notice them.”
Strangely enough, Alkad was almost impressed. “Thank you, Voi. I’d better go back in there and tell them I need more security.”
“Them?” Voi was utterly derisory. “Did they leap to help you? No. Of course not. I said they wouldn’t.”
“They have what I need, Voi.”
“They have nothing we don’t. Nothing. Why don’t you trust us? Trust me? What does it take to make you believe in us?”
“I do believe in your sincerity.”
“Then come with me!” It was an agonized plea. “I can get you out of here. They don’t even have any way to get you out of the office without the spiders seeing.”
“That’s because they don’t know about them.”
“They don’t know, because they’re not concerned about security. Look at them, they’ve got enough bodyguards in there to form a small army. Everybody in the asteroid knows who they are.”
“Truthfully?”
“All right, not everybody. But certainly every reporter. The only reason they don’t say anything is because of Cabral. Anyone coming to the Dorados who really wanted to make contact with the partizan movement wouldn’t need more than two hours to find a name.”
“Mary be damned!” Alkad glanced back at the door to the anteroom, then at the tall girl. Voi was everything her father was not: dedicated, determined, hurting to help. “You have some kind of safe route out of here?”
“Yes!”
“Okay. You can take me out of this section. After that I’ll get in touch with your father again, see what they’re going to do for me.”
“And if they won’t help?”
“Then it looks like you’re on.”
“Yeah? So, I’m late. Sue me. Listen, this meeting caused me a shitload of grief. I don’t need no lecture from the ESA on contact procedures right now.”
. . .
“Yeah, she’s here all right, in the flesh. Mother Mary, she’s really got the Alchemist stashed away somewhere. She’s not kidding. I mean, shit, she really wants to take out Omuta’s star.”
. . .
“Course I don’t know where it is, she wouldn’t say. But, Mary, Ikela used to be a frigate captain in the Omuta navy. He flew escort on the Alchemist mission. I never knew. Twenty years we’ve been plotting away together, and I never knew.”
. . .
“Sure you want to know where we are. Look, you’re going to come in here shooting, right? I mean, how do I know you’re not going to snuff me? This is serious heavy-duty shit.”
. . .
“All right, but if you’re lying you’d better make sure you finish me. I’ll have you if you don’t, no matter what it costs. And hey, even if you do kill me, I can come back and get you that way. Yeah. So you’d better not be fucking me over.”
. . .
“Oh, absolutely. I always believe every word you people say. Okay, listen, we’re in Laxa and Ahmad’s conference office. The bodyguards are all in the anteroom. Tell your people to be fucking careful when they come in. You let them know I’m on your side, yeah?”
. . .
“No, she’s out in the anteroom. She went out there twenty minutes ago so we could argue about what to do. The vote was three to two for wasting Omuta’s star. Guess how I voted.”
“Laxa and Ahmad, the conference office,” Monica said. “Mzu’s in the anteroom along with the bodyguards.”
Go,samuel ordered.
The twenty Edenist agents closed on the Laxa and Ahmad offices. Floor plans were pulled from the asteroid’s civil engineering memory cores. Entry routes and tactics were formulated and finalized while they jogged towards their target, the general affinity band thick with tense exchanges.
Monica kept three paces behind Samuel the whole way. It irked her, and she wasn’t looking forwards to her debrief, either. Teaming up with Edenists! But at least this way the Alchemist would be neutered. Providing Samuel kept his part of the agreement. Which she was sure he would do. Although high politics could still screw everything up. God!
It took them four minutes to reach Laxa and Ahmad. One featureless corridor after another. Thankfully there were few people about, with only a handful of workaholics left. They barged past an old man carrying several flek cases, a man and a woman who looked so guilty they were obviously having an affair, a pair of teenage girls, one very tall and skinny and black, the other small and white, both wearing red handkerchiefs around their ankles.
When she reached Laxa and Ahmad the Edenist team was already inside. Two agents stood guard out in the corridor. Monica stepped wearily through the crumpled door, drawing her pistol.
Samuel drew his breath sharply. “Damnation.”
“What?” she asked. By then they had reached the conference office anteroom. The partizan bodyguards were all sprawled on the floor with limbs twitching erratically. Six Edenists stood over them, their TIP pistols pointing down. Three scorch lines slashed the walls where laser fire had burned the composite. A pair of spent nerve short-out grenades rolled around on the carpet.
“Where’s Mzu?” Monica asked.
Samuel beckoned her into the conference office. The partizan leadership had been caught by the nerve short-out pulses, but the door and security screening had saved them from the worst effects. They were still conscious. Four of them. The fifth was dead.
Monica grimaced when she saw the broad char mark on the side of Ikela’s skull. The beam had fractured the bone in several places, roasting the brain to a black pulp. Someone had made very sure his neural nanonics were ruined. “God, what happened here?”
Two Edenist agents were standing behind Feira Ile, their pistol muzzles pressed into his neck. His wrists had been secured in a composite zipcuff behind his back. Crumbs of vomit were sticking to his lip; he was sweating profusely from the grenade assault, but otherwise defiant. A laser pistol was lying on the table in front of him.
“He shot Ikela,” Samuel said in bewildered dismay. He squatted down beside Ikela’s chair. “Why? What was the point? He was one of yours.”
Feira Ile grinned savagely. “My last duty for the Garissan navy.”
“What do you mean?”
“Ikela flew escort duty on the Alchemist. He probably knew where it is. Now he can’t tell you.”
Monica and Samuel swapped a grim glance.
“She’s gone, hasn’t she?” Monica said bitterly.
“It would seem so.”
“Fuck it!” She stamped over to Kaliua Lamu, who had an agent holding him upright in his chair. “Where did Mzu go?” Monica asked.
“Screw you.”
Monica gave an amused glance at the other partizans around the table. “Oh, come on, Kaliua,” she said sweetly. “You were eager enough to tell us this meeting’s location.”
“Liar!”
She took out a Royal Kulu Bank credit disk. “A hundred thousand pounds, wasn’t it?”
“Bitch whore! I never,” he shouted at his comrades. “It wasn’t me. For Mary’s sake, it wasn’t.”
Monica grabbed his chin, and slowly exerted her boosted grip. Kaliua Lamu gagged fearfully at the force which threatened to shatter his jawbone.
“You said I’d better be certain when I finish you. Well, I intend to be extremely thorough extinguishing your life unless I know where she went.”
“I don’t know.”
“Debrief nanonics would be the pleasant option, but we don’t have time for that. Fortunately, old-fashioned pain can still produce some pretty impressive results during field interrogation. And they trained me very well, Kaliua.” She pushed her face centimetres from his bugging eyes. “Would you like to try calling my bluff? Or perhaps you think you’re strong enough to resist me for a couple of hours after I’ve fused your neural nanonics into ash? Once they’re dead you can’t block the pain. And the field way to fuse neural nanonics is with electrodes. Crude, but it works. Guess where they’re applied.”
“No. Please! Don’t.” His eyes were watering as he started shaking.
“Where then?”
“I don’t know. I promise. She was gone when we finished. I told you she was supposed to be waiting outside for us to finish. But she wasn’t there.”
“Then who did she leave with?”
“It was a girl, my bodyguard said. Ikela’s daughter, Voi. She’s tall, young. They were talking together and never came back. Honestly , that’s all I know.”
Monica let go of his chin. He slumped back in the chair, trembling in relief.
“A tall girl,” Monica whispered. She was looking at Samuel in dawning dismay as the memory blossomed. She hurriedly accessed the neural nanonics memory cell she’d kept running to record the operation.
In the corridor on the way up. Two girls, one tall and black, the other white and small. Pressed against the wall in alarm as she and Samuel ran past. The memory cell image froze. Green neon grid lines closed around the smaller girl, calculating her height. It matched Mzu’s. So did the approximated weight.
A backpack fitted with a long shoulder strap hung at the girl’s side.
Monica had seen that backpack once before. Never in her life would she need help from neural nanonics to remember that time. The backpack had been flapping behind a small spacesuit-clad figure who was clinging desperately to a rope ladder.
“Dear God, we walked right bloody past her,” she told an aghast Samuel. “The bitch is wearing a chameleon suit.”
“Sure. Consider my wrist firmly smacked. What have your lot got planned for her, then?”
“Following acquisition, Consensus recommended placing her in zero-tau. At the very least until the possessed situation is resolved. Possibly longer.”
“How long?” Monica almost didn’t want to ask, or know.
“Consensus thought it prudent that she remains there until we have a requirement for the Alchemist. It is a large galaxy, after all; there may be other, more hostile xenocs than the Kiint and Tyrathca out there.”
“I was wrong, you’re not an evangelist, you’re a paranoid.”
“A pragmatist, I sincerely hope; as are all Edenists.”
“Okay, Samuel, so pragmatically, what do you want to do next? And please bear in mind that I am a loyal subject of my King.”
“Concentrate on finding her first, then get her away from the Dorados. The argument over custody can come later.”
“Nine-tenths of the law,” she muttered. “Are you offering me a joint operation?”
“Yes, if you’re willing. We have more resources here, I think, which gives us the greater chance of launching a successful extraction mission. But neither of us can afford to dismiss any avenue which will locate her. I am sure your Duke of Salion would approve of any action which guaranteed her removal from the scene right now. You can accompany her on our evacuation flight; and afterwards we would allow a joint custody to satisfy the Kingdom we have not acquired Alchemist technology. Is that reasonable?”
“Yeah, very. We have a deal.”
They touched bottles.
“The local partizan leadership has been called to a meeting here tonight,” she said. “Unfortunately, I don’t know exactly where that is in the asteroid. I’m waiting for our asset to get in touch as soon as it’s over.”
“Thank you, Monica. We don’t know where it is, either. But we’re assuming she will be there.”
“Can you track any of the partizans?”
“It is not easy. But we’ll certainly make every effort.”
For three days the rented office suite which had become the new Edenist intelligence service headquarters in Ayacucho had been the centre of a remarkable breeding program. When the agents of the “defence delegation” team arrived they brought with them seventy thousand geneered spider eggs. Every arachnid was affinity-capable, and small enough to clamber through grilles and scurry through the vast mechanical plexus of lift shafts, maintenance passages, environmental ducts, cable conduits, and waste disposal pipes which knitted the asteroid’s rooms and public halls together into a functional whole.
For over seventy hours the tiny infiltrators were coaxed and manipulated along black pipes and through chinks in the rock, slipping around cracks in badly fitted composite panels. Thousands never made it to their required destination. Victims of more predatory creatures, of working insect grids, of security barriers (most common in the corporate areas), sluices of strange liquids, smears of sticky fluids, and the most common failing of all: being lost.
But for every one which didn’t make it, five did. At the end of the deployment period the Edenists had visual coverage of sixty-seven per cent of Ayacucho’s interior (which was how Samuel found Monica Foulkes so easily). The three voidhawks perched on Ayacucho’s docking ledges, along with the ten armed voidhawks holding station inside Tunja’s particle disk, and the agents reviewed the spiders on a snapshot rotor, managing a complete sweep every four hours. As a method of locating one individual it was horribly inefficient. Samuel knew that it would only be pure chance if Mzu was spotted during one of the sweeps. It was up to the agents on the ground to lower the odds by procedural work; their dull routine of researching public files, bullying assets, bribing officialdom, and on occasion outright blackmail.
For thirty years the Garissan partizan movement had pursued a course of consistently lacklustre activity. It funded several anti-Omuta propaganda campaigns to keep the hatred alive among the first of a new generation born to the refugees. Mercenaries and ex-Garissan navy marines were recruited and sent on sabotage missions against any surviving Omutan interests. There were even a couple of attempts to fly into the Omuta system and attack asteroid settlements, both of which were snuffed by CNIS before the starships ever left dock. But for the last decade the leadership had done little except talk. Membership had dropped away steadily, as had funding, along with any real enthusiasm.
With such shoddy organization and defunct motivation it was inevitable that any intelligence agency which had ever shown an interest in the partizans had collated files on every person who had been a member, or even attended a fringe meeting. Their leadership was perfectly documented, long since consigned to the semi-crank category and downgraded to intermittent monitoring. A status which was now abruptly reversed.
There were five people making up the executive of Ayacucho’s partizan group. In keeping with the movement’s deterioration none of them followed the kind of security procedures they had obeyed so rigorously in the early days. That sloppiness in conjunction with an encyclopedic knowledge of their daily activity patterns allowed the Edenists to position spiders where they could provide a comprehensive coverage of the leadership’s movements in the hours leading up to the meeting.
Samuel and the voidhawks were presented with eyeblink pictures of the partizan leaders making their way through the asteroid. Respectable middle-age professionals now, they all had escorts of bodyguards, keen for any sign of trouble. These entourages were unmistakable, making them easy to follow.
“It looks like either level three or four in section twelve,” Samuel told Monica.
She datavised her processor block for a schematic of the asteroid. “It’s all offices there, corporate country. That makes sense, it’s more secure, and they are all rich. It wouldn’t be suspicious for them to be there together.”
“Unfortunately it makes life complicated for us. We’re having trouble infiltrating that area.” He was watching an inverted image of Ikela walking along a corridor at the centre of five boosted bodyguards. They were approaching a junction. A fast check with the voidhawks revealed that there were no more spiders left ahead. He ordered the one he was using to scuttle along the ceiling after Ikela.
There are UV lights ahead,a voidhawk warned. The spider is approaching a grade-five clean environment.
I know, but I need to see which way he turns.it was a strange viewpoint; to Samuel the corridor wasn’t particularly large, to the spider it was vast. The two visual interpretations tended to clash confusingly inside Samuel’s cortex unless he maintained a high level of concentration. Drab whiteness slid smoothly past galloping legs. Far above him was the sky of hazel carpet. Footsteps crashed against the spider’s pressure-sensitive cells. Stalactite mountains clad in expensive black silk marched on in front of the racing arachnid, becoming difficult to resolve as they approached the fork. He just needed a hint . . .
The affinity link vanished amid a violet flash. Damnation! A further review showed Samuel no spiders had managed to penetrate the area.
“What is it?” Monica asked as he flinched in annoyance.
“We just lost them.”
“So now what?”
He looked around at the other agents in the office suite. “Kit up and move out. We’ll cover as many approaches as we can. Monica, are you sure your asset is reliable?”
“Don’t fret; we’ve got him hoisted by the short and curlies. He won’t be able to datavise during the meeting, but as soon as it’s over we’ll know where it was and if she’s there. Did any of your infiltration systems see her going in?”
“No,” he admitted. “Not even a fifty per cent characteristics match.”
“I’m not surprised.”
The Edenist agents were putting on slim equipment belts and strapping up shoulder holsters. Monica checked her own maser pistol and ran a diagnostic program through her implants.
“Monica,” Samuel said.
She caught the tone. “I know: I’m not in your command network, I’d be in the way if I try to front-line. It’s all yours, Samuel.”
“Thank you.” Stand by,he told the voidhawks waiting on the docking ledge, if we do grab her we’ll need to exit fast.he led the team out.
There were only five people in the Tunja system who knew the real reason for forming the Garissan partizan movement. None of them lived on the same asteroid, so that if disaster did strike the others would be there to carry on with the plan.
In Ayacucho it was Ikela, the nominal head of the original five. It suited him to be one of the partizan group’s executives rather than the leader. This way he kept up-to-date on the movement’s activities while staying out of the limelight. His position was due principally to his financial support rather than any active participation. Again, according to plan.
Dan Malindi, the Ayacucho group’s leader, was the first to arrive at the secure conference office of Laxa and Ahmad, the legal firm they were using as cover. He gave Ikela a puzzled, vaguely annoyed glance as he entered. No one knew why Ikela had demanded the meeting at seven hours notice. And the executives weren’t people used to being kept in ignorance, not by one of their own. The sight of the normally composed industrialist sitting mutely at the table looking as if he were suffering some kind of fever with the way he was sweating did nothing to ease the tension.
Kaliua Lamu was the second to arrive; a financier who made little secret about his growing ambivalence to the movement. Partizan membership didn’t sit well alongside his newfound respectability.
Feira Ile and Cabral arrived together, the most senior ranking figures in the Dorados administration. Feira Ile had been an admiral in the Garissan navy and was now Ayacucho’s SD chief, while Cabral had built himself the largest media group in the Dorados. His company’s growth and popularity were due to the tabloid nationalism of its editorial policy, which made him a natural choice for the partizans. Most of the executive staff suspected his support was strictly for appearance sake.
Bodyguards and assistants left the room. Dan Malindi glared at the small woman sitting quietly behind Ikela, who obstinately refused to be intimidated into moving.
“She’s with me,” Ikela said.
Dan Malindi grunted in dissatisfaction and activated the office’s security screen. “All right, Ikela, what the hell is this about?”
Ikela gave the woman a respectful gesture, and she stood up, walking to the end of the table opposite Dan Malindi. “My name is Dr Alkad Mzu, I’m here to finish our war with Omuta.”
Dan Malindi and Kaliua Lamu both gave her a nonplussed glance. Cabral frowned, ordering a neural nanonics file search. But it was Feira Ile who produced the strongest reaction; he half rose to his feet, openly astonished. “The Alchemist,” he murmured. “You built the Alchemist. Holy Mary.”
“The what?” Cabral asked.
“The Alchemist,” Alkad told them. “It was our superweapon. I was its designer.”
“Feira?” Cabral prompted.
“She’s right,” the old ex-admiral said. “I was never given any details, the project was classified way above my security rating. But the navy built this . . . thing, whatever it is, just before the genocide. We were going to use it against Omuta.” He drew a long breath and looked at the diminutive physicist. “What happened?”
“Our flight was intercepted by blackhawks hired by Omuta,” Alkad said. “We never got there. The Alchemist was never used.”
“No way,” Dan Malindi said. “This is complete bullshit. You appear on the scene thirty years after the event and spin some crap about a missing legend you heard about in some bar. I bet the next stage is asking us for money to search for this Alchemist. In fact, I bet it’s going to take a lot of money to find it, right?” He was sneering contemptuously at her when he finished, but somehow her cold smile managed to rob his anger.
“I don’t need to search. I know exactly where it is.”
“It wasn’t lost?” Kaliua Lamu asked. His enthusiasm bought him a disgusted look from Dan Malindi.
“No, it’s never been lost. It’s been kept safe.”
“Where?”
Alkad merely smiled.
“Maybe it does exist,” Cabral said. “And our illustrious admiral here was right saying someone called Alkad Mzu built it. How do we know you’re her? We can’t make the decisions we need to make on the word of some stranger who turns up out of the blue, especially not at this precise time.”
Alkad raised an eyebrow. “Captain?”
“I can vouch for her,” Ikela said softly. “This is Dr Alkad Mzu.”
“Captain?” Dan Malindi asked. “What does she mean?”
Ikela cleared his throat. “It was my rank in the Garissan navy. I used to be captain of the frigate Chengho. We were flying escort duty on the Alchemist deployment mission. That’s how I know.”
“Datavise your command authority code,” Feira Ile said sternly.
Ikela nodded reluctantly, and retrieved the code from its memory cell.
“It would appear our colleague is telling the truth,” Feira Ile told the silent office.
“Mother Mary,” Cabral muttered, glancing at the man he thought he’d known for the last thirty years. “Why didn’t you tell us?”
Ikela sank his head into his hands. “The plan operates on a need to know basis only. Up until today you didn’t need to know.”
“What plan?” Feira Ile snapped.
“To deploy the Alchemist,” Alkad said. “After the original mission was crippled, Ikela and four other officers were detailed to sell the antimatter we were carrying. They were supposed to invest that money so there would be sufficient funds to hire a combat-capable starship and equip it to fire the Alchemist once the sanctions were lifted and the Confederation Navy squadron assigned to blockade duties returned home. The only reason you partizans exist is to provide me with a crew that will not flinch from the job that needs to be done.” She stared at Ikela. “And now I’m here, on schedule, and I find no ship, and no crew.”
“I told you,” Ikela shouted. “You can have your ship if that’s still what we want. I have more than enough money. Anyone of us in this room has enough money to provide a starship for you. I have never failed my duty to my people. Don’t you ever say that. But things have changed.”
“Looks like you’ve failed to me,” Cabral said briskly. “Looks like you’ve failed a lot of people.”
“Think!” Ikela stormed. “Think for the love of Mary what she is proposing. What will the Confederation do to us if we blow up Omuta’s star? What revenge will they take?”
“It can do that?” a startled Kaliua Lamu asked. “The Alchemist will destroy their star?”
“On one setting, yes,” Alkad said. “I don’t intend using that. I propose to simply extinguish the star. No one will die, but their planet and asteroid settlements will have to be evacuated and abandoned. They will become a broken homeless people, as we are. That’s fitting, surely?”
“Well yes . . .” He searched around the table for support, finding only uneasy confusion. “But I don’t understand. If you survived the blackhawk attack, why didn’t you continue with the mission? Why wait thirty years?”
“There were complications,” Alkad said tonelessly. “By the time we were in any position to function again the sanctions had been imposed, and the blockade squadron was in place. It was decided to wait until these obstructions were removed, which would give us a much greater chance of success. We did not have limitless government resources anymore, and we only have one chance to get it right. This is the optimum time to strike. We won’t have another chance; the intelligence agencies are pursuing me. And they will find me.”
Dan Malindi groaned. “Intelligence agencies? Holy Mary, they’ll find out where you’ve been.”
“Oh, yes, they’ll know you’re involved. Does that bother you?”
“Bother me? You bitch! I have a family.”
“Yes. I’ve heard this argument already today. It is beginning to bore me. I have lived the reality of the genocide for thirty years. You, all of you, have just been playing patriot. Each of you has profited in your own field by chanting the cry of nationalism. Well, my being here has put an end to your pathetic game.”
“Are you threatening us?” Cabral asked.
“I have always been a threat to your cosy life, even though you never knew I existed.”
“What exactly do you want?” Feira Ile asked.
“Two things. A combat-capable starship with a decent crew of committed nationalists. And a secure environment for myself while you prepare them. Do not underestimate the agencies. They now know for certain that the Alchemist is real, which means they will go to any lengths to acquire me.”
Ikela stood up, placing his hands on the table and leaning forwards. “I say we cannot do this. Mother Mary, we’re sitting here talking about wrecking an entire star system as if it were some kind of difficult business venture. Times have changed, we are not Garissans anymore. I’m sorry if that is painful for you to hear, Doctor, but we’re not. We have to look to the future, not the past. This is madness.”
“And that is treachery,” Cabral said.
“Treachery to what? To a planet that was killed thirty years ago? If that’s what it is, then fine, I’m a traitor to it. I don’t care.”
“Other people might when they get to hear.”
“Ikela, I really don’t think you’re in any position to back out now,” Feira Ile said. “Given your mission, you are still a serving officer. That means you are required to discharge your obligations.”
“Then I quit, I resign my commission.”
“Very well. In that case, I must ask you to hand over the T’Opingtu company to me.”
“What?”
“I believe we just heard that it was founded on money provided by the Garissan navy. That means it doesn’t belong to you.”
“Go fuck yourself.”
“Listen, we can’t make a snap judgement over this,” Kaliua Lamu said. “Ikela’s right, we’re talking about wiping out an entire solar system.”
“I might have known you’d take that attitude,” Dan Malindi said.
“Excuse me?”
“You heard. I’m willing to provide as much help as Dr Mzu wants. What the hell is the Confederation going to do to us if we’re armed with Alchemists?”
“There is only one,” Alkad said.
“You can build more, can’t you?”
She hesitated uncomfortably. “If there was a requirement, it could be duplicated.”
“There you are then. You can’t leave what’s left of the Garissan nation and culture unprotected, can you?”
“You want to start a damn arms race as well?” Ikela yelled. “You’re as mad as she is.”
“Curb your language. Have you forgotten the possessed?”
“In Mary’s name what have they got to do with this?”
“If we were armed with Alchemists, that bastard Capone would think twice before sending his fleet here.”
“And who precisely is going to be in charge of these Alchemists?”
“The Dorados council, of course,” Dan Malindi said scornfully.
“Exactly, and we all know how much influence you have there.”
“Enough!” Alkad slammed her fist down. “I will not supply Alchemists to anyone. You have no conception of what it is capable of. It is not some bigger and better bomb you can use for political advantage. It was built for one purpose, to destroy the people who threatened our world. It will be used for one purpose, our revenge against them.” She looked at each of them in turn, furious and sickened that this was all that remained of the planet she was once so proud of. Where was their dignity, their resolution? Could none of them perform one single act of remembrance? “I will give you thirty minutes to debate this. After that you will tell me which of you support me, and which do not.”
“I certainly support you,” Kaliua Lamu said loudly, but he was talking to her back as she limped away.
The shouting had already begun again before the door closed behind her. All the bodyguards and aides in the anteroom stared; Alkad barely saw them. If she had just known or anticipated the shambles which the partizans had become, then she would have been mentally geared up.
“Alkad?” Voi was bending down, giving the smaller woman an anxious look.
“Don’t mind me, I’ll be all right.”
“Please, I have something to show you. Now.”
The girl took Alkad’s arm, hustling her across the room and out into the corridor. Alkad couldn’t be bothered to protest, although force of habit made her activate a threat analysis program. Her enhanced retinas began scanning the length of the corridor.
“Here,” Voi said triumphantly. She opened her palm to reveal a tiny squashed spider.
“Mother Mary! Have you completely flipped?”
“No, listen. You know you said you thought the intelligence agencies were following you.”
“I should never have told you that. Voi, you don’t know what you’re getting involved with.”
“Oh, yes I do. We started checking the spaceport log. There’s a delegation of Edenists here to discuss strengthening our defences. Three voidhawks brought thirty of them.”
“Yes?”
“Mapire only rated one voidhawk, and six Edenists to discuss our mutual defence with the council. It should be the other way around, the capital should have got the larger delegation, not Ayacucho.”
Alkad glanced at the little brown blob in the girl’s hand, a bad feeling sinking through her. “Go on.”
“So we thought about how Edenists would search the asteroid for you. Adamists would use spylenses and hack into the communications net to get at public monitor security cameras. Edenists would use bitek systems, either simulants or affinity-bonded animals. We started looking. And here they are. Spiders. They’re everywhere, Alkad. We checked. Ayacucho is totally infested.”
“That doesn’t necessarily prove—” she said slowly.
“Yes it does.” The hand with the crushed blob was shaken violently. “This is from the Lycosidae family. Ayacucho’s ecologists never introduced any Lycosidaes into the biosphere. Check the public records if you don’t believe me.”
“All sorts of things can get through bio-quarantine; irradiation screening isn’t perfect.”
“Then why are they all male? We haven’t found a single female, not one. It’s got to be so they can’t mate, they won’t reproduce. They’ll die off without causing any sort of ecological imbalance. Nobody will ever notice them.”
Strangely enough, Alkad was almost impressed. “Thank you, Voi. I’d better go back in there and tell them I need more security.”
“Them?” Voi was utterly derisory. “Did they leap to help you? No. Of course not. I said they wouldn’t.”
“They have what I need, Voi.”
“They have nothing we don’t. Nothing. Why don’t you trust us? Trust me? What does it take to make you believe in us?”
“I do believe in your sincerity.”
“Then come with me!” It was an agonized plea. “I can get you out of here. They don’t even have any way to get you out of the office without the spiders seeing.”
“That’s because they don’t know about them.”
“They don’t know, because they’re not concerned about security. Look at them, they’ve got enough bodyguards in there to form a small army. Everybody in the asteroid knows who they are.”
“Truthfully?”
“All right, not everybody. But certainly every reporter. The only reason they don’t say anything is because of Cabral. Anyone coming to the Dorados who really wanted to make contact with the partizan movement wouldn’t need more than two hours to find a name.”
“Mary be damned!” Alkad glanced back at the door to the anteroom, then at the tall girl. Voi was everything her father was not: dedicated, determined, hurting to help. “You have some kind of safe route out of here?”
“Yes!”
“Okay. You can take me out of this section. After that I’ll get in touch with your father again, see what they’re going to do for me.”
“And if they won’t help?”
“Then it looks like you’re on.”
“Yeah? So, I’m late. Sue me. Listen, this meeting caused me a shitload of grief. I don’t need no lecture from the ESA on contact procedures right now.”
. . .
“Yeah, she’s here all right, in the flesh. Mother Mary, she’s really got the Alchemist stashed away somewhere. She’s not kidding. I mean, shit, she really wants to take out Omuta’s star.”
. . .
“Course I don’t know where it is, she wouldn’t say. But, Mary, Ikela used to be a frigate captain in the Omuta navy. He flew escort on the Alchemist mission. I never knew. Twenty years we’ve been plotting away together, and I never knew.”
. . .
“Sure you want to know where we are. Look, you’re going to come in here shooting, right? I mean, how do I know you’re not going to snuff me? This is serious heavy-duty shit.”
. . .
“All right, but if you’re lying you’d better make sure you finish me. I’ll have you if you don’t, no matter what it costs. And hey, even if you do kill me, I can come back and get you that way. Yeah. So you’d better not be fucking me over.”
. . .
“Oh, absolutely. I always believe every word you people say. Okay, listen, we’re in Laxa and Ahmad’s conference office. The bodyguards are all in the anteroom. Tell your people to be fucking careful when they come in. You let them know I’m on your side, yeah?”
. . .
“No, she’s out in the anteroom. She went out there twenty minutes ago so we could argue about what to do. The vote was three to two for wasting Omuta’s star. Guess how I voted.”
“Laxa and Ahmad, the conference office,” Monica said. “Mzu’s in the anteroom along with the bodyguards.”
Go,samuel ordered.
The twenty Edenist agents closed on the Laxa and Ahmad offices. Floor plans were pulled from the asteroid’s civil engineering memory cores. Entry routes and tactics were formulated and finalized while they jogged towards their target, the general affinity band thick with tense exchanges.
Monica kept three paces behind Samuel the whole way. It irked her, and she wasn’t looking forwards to her debrief, either. Teaming up with Edenists! But at least this way the Alchemist would be neutered. Providing Samuel kept his part of the agreement. Which she was sure he would do. Although high politics could still screw everything up. God!
It took them four minutes to reach Laxa and Ahmad. One featureless corridor after another. Thankfully there were few people about, with only a handful of workaholics left. They barged past an old man carrying several flek cases, a man and a woman who looked so guilty they were obviously having an affair, a pair of teenage girls, one very tall and skinny and black, the other small and white, both wearing red handkerchiefs around their ankles.
When she reached Laxa and Ahmad the Edenist team was already inside. Two agents stood guard out in the corridor. Monica stepped wearily through the crumpled door, drawing her pistol.
Samuel drew his breath sharply. “Damnation.”
“What?” she asked. By then they had reached the conference office anteroom. The partizan bodyguards were all sprawled on the floor with limbs twitching erratically. Six Edenists stood over them, their TIP pistols pointing down. Three scorch lines slashed the walls where laser fire had burned the composite. A pair of spent nerve short-out grenades rolled around on the carpet.
“Where’s Mzu?” Monica asked.
Samuel beckoned her into the conference office. The partizan leadership had been caught by the nerve short-out pulses, but the door and security screening had saved them from the worst effects. They were still conscious. Four of them. The fifth was dead.
Monica grimaced when she saw the broad char mark on the side of Ikela’s skull. The beam had fractured the bone in several places, roasting the brain to a black pulp. Someone had made very sure his neural nanonics were ruined. “God, what happened here?”
Two Edenist agents were standing behind Feira Ile, their pistol muzzles pressed into his neck. His wrists had been secured in a composite zipcuff behind his back. Crumbs of vomit were sticking to his lip; he was sweating profusely from the grenade assault, but otherwise defiant. A laser pistol was lying on the table in front of him.
“He shot Ikela,” Samuel said in bewildered dismay. He squatted down beside Ikela’s chair. “Why? What was the point? He was one of yours.”
Feira Ile grinned savagely. “My last duty for the Garissan navy.”
“What do you mean?”
“Ikela flew escort duty on the Alchemist. He probably knew where it is. Now he can’t tell you.”
Monica and Samuel swapped a grim glance.
“She’s gone, hasn’t she?” Monica said bitterly.
“It would seem so.”
“Fuck it!” She stamped over to Kaliua Lamu, who had an agent holding him upright in his chair. “Where did Mzu go?” Monica asked.
“Screw you.”
Monica gave an amused glance at the other partizans around the table. “Oh, come on, Kaliua,” she said sweetly. “You were eager enough to tell us this meeting’s location.”
“Liar!”
She took out a Royal Kulu Bank credit disk. “A hundred thousand pounds, wasn’t it?”
“Bitch whore! I never,” he shouted at his comrades. “It wasn’t me. For Mary’s sake, it wasn’t.”
Monica grabbed his chin, and slowly exerted her boosted grip. Kaliua Lamu gagged fearfully at the force which threatened to shatter his jawbone.
“You said I’d better be certain when I finish you. Well, I intend to be extremely thorough extinguishing your life unless I know where she went.”
“I don’t know.”
“Debrief nanonics would be the pleasant option, but we don’t have time for that. Fortunately, old-fashioned pain can still produce some pretty impressive results during field interrogation. And they trained me very well, Kaliua.” She pushed her face centimetres from his bugging eyes. “Would you like to try calling my bluff? Or perhaps you think you’re strong enough to resist me for a couple of hours after I’ve fused your neural nanonics into ash? Once they’re dead you can’t block the pain. And the field way to fuse neural nanonics is with electrodes. Crude, but it works. Guess where they’re applied.”
“No. Please! Don’t.” His eyes were watering as he started shaking.
“Where then?”
“I don’t know. I promise. She was gone when we finished. I told you she was supposed to be waiting outside for us to finish. But she wasn’t there.”
“Then who did she leave with?”
“It was a girl, my bodyguard said. Ikela’s daughter, Voi. She’s tall, young. They were talking together and never came back. Honestly , that’s all I know.”
Monica let go of his chin. He slumped back in the chair, trembling in relief.
“A tall girl,” Monica whispered. She was looking at Samuel in dawning dismay as the memory blossomed. She hurriedly accessed the neural nanonics memory cell she’d kept running to record the operation.
In the corridor on the way up. Two girls, one tall and black, the other white and small. Pressed against the wall in alarm as she and Samuel ran past. The memory cell image froze. Green neon grid lines closed around the smaller girl, calculating her height. It matched Mzu’s. So did the approximated weight.
A backpack fitted with a long shoulder strap hung at the girl’s side.
Monica had seen that backpack once before. Never in her life would she need help from neural nanonics to remember that time. The backpack had been flapping behind a small spacesuit-clad figure who was clinging desperately to a rope ladder.
“Dear God, we walked right bloody past her,” she told an aghast Samuel. “The bitch is wearing a chameleon suit.”