Lord Banshee- Fugitive

by Russell O Redman

  Flower picked up the thread again.

  “And I would have been caught in the war if it had started only a year earlier. I had joined the Spacers Guild and was a crew member in the freighter fleet, so I would have been drafted and sent to fight at Mars, except I had been very ambitious, very astropolitan, and Commerce bought out my contract half way through my third year. They sent me to school to learn how to wiggle truth out of liars and solve the mysteries of fraudulent business transactions. I was working on my first solo case in northern Scandinavia when the bombs fell.

  After that, Commerce went crazy, trying to sort out the damage caused when every major spaceport in the world disappeared into radioactive dust. I was too junior to see the worst of it. I had been implanted with a simple medical monitor but did not yet qualify for a proper comm unit. They gave me what looked to be a simple case in Italy in which a string of theatre companies broke their contracts and whole troops had disappeared. The entertainers continued to send happy and enthusiastic messages home, but nobody knew where they had gone.

  “All the disappearances happened in Sicily. The economy of Sicily was a mess, since its largest city, Palermo, had been the capital of the region and had hosted a spaceport on one corner of its airport. The spaceport, of course, was just a taxi-strip leading to the maintenance hangers, but the whole city was bombed to prevent anyone from rebuilding the facility. Of course, the moment the port authorities got warning of incoming trouble, most of the shuttles and the heavy-lift aircraft that hauled them above the lower atmosphere were scrambled into the air, so we hardly lost any of them. But we had lost the ability to feed and employ most of the surviving population of Sicily.

  “Oh, I suppose Mindy will not know that the regions of southern Italy have mostly chosen aristocratic governments. A dozen large aristocratic families formally own most of the land in Sicily and collect rent from the inhabitants, which they use to hire people to maintain the roads, public buildings, and so forth. The families have a lot of children and at any given time designate one of their members who has met what they call the Terms for Noble Service to be the Dom, the landlord in charge of everything the family owns. They serve as a Dom in the court of the Prince for terms of up to ten years. At the end of their terms, the most effective Dom is selected by the court to become the Prince of the region for the following decade. Property leases are as permanent and heritable as land ownership elsewhere, and paying rent to a landlord is not much different from paying taxes to a municipal council. The system does not violate anybody’s rights, so the system works and is acceptable to the Terrestrial Government.

  “When I arrived and started investigating, I found that the groups who had gone missing had all been contacted by a representative of Dom Caruso, who owned a large estate high in the mountains southeast of Palermo. His oldest daughter was celebrating her birthday, so he had invited many guests and hired several troops of entertainers. They had been spared the worst of the fallout, but most of the entertainers had cancelled, so he was scrambling to find replacements. With help from my supervisor, I presented myself to the family representative as a booking agent for theatre groups from Scandinavia who were looking for work in Italy. They snatched at the opportunity and flew me off to the estate.

  “The core of the estate was a beautiful hill town, which in former times had been a convention centre, resort town, and family estate all rolled into one. They called it Monte Caruso, but it did not appear on many maps. It had a small airstrip where a private plane would drop off supplies every day, sometimes bringing guests like myself. When I arrived, the streets were almost deserted, except for the Dom and his closest political companions, who were using it as a retreat from the disaster unfolding around them. I met his daughter, who was understandably distressed that her birthday party had gone so badly wrong. Aside from that, it was like a small, peaceful paradise, with swimming pools, walking paths, little colourful restaurants and squares, and small troops of entertainers giving private performances for the aristocrats. There was plenty of food, plenty of wine, plenty of time to ramble and interview the entertainers. I found our missing troops quite easily, just by asking. They said they were free to go any time they wanted, but the Dom had warned them that it was dangerous outside the estate, and the few people who had tried to leave had never made contact again. That did not jibe with what I had seen, but I composed my first report and sent it to my supervisor.

  “She never got it. The Dom had intercepted it and came by to request that I rewrite it, because he wanted to draw people back to Sicily with his estate as a new entertainment hub, to help rebuild the shattered local economy. I made the requested rewrite but included a coded warning that my messages were being intercepted and read. That evening I tried to send it again, but again it failed to get through.

  “Now I was getting worried, because messages from an agent in Commercial Intelligence should have priority over any other commercial traffic, and intercepting my messages was a serious offense in itself.

  “The Dom invited me to dinner. He was handsome, suave, flattering, erudite and persuasive. His Sicilian accent was thick, but I liked him, liked the attention I was receiving, and was willing to hear what he had to say. He felt I had not really understood the role of a booking agent yet, being so young. I needed to present this as a must-do destination for any ambitious troop, with great scenery, food, and, most importantly, high-paying customers. There was a lot of money to be made for anyone who played by the rules of his court.

  “He then propositioned me, promising mountains of money if I would spend the night in his bed. Of course, I was on duty and had to turn him down, which he chose to interpret as me playing coy and hard to get. He became more imperative, threatening to make my life much harder if I persisted in my impertinence. I started feeling drowsy, and my med monitor reported that drugs had been put into my wine, so I excused myself and ran from the palace. I kept running until I was almost into the hills, then worked my way around to the far side of town and waited until the med monitor had time to clean out the poison. I did not quite fall asleep, but it was two in the morning before I felt rational again.

  “By then, the entertainers were either in bed with their clients or heading back to their rooms. I walked beside them and started to ask some sharper questions without the Dom’s attendants listening. I should have done that from the start. It turned out that every one of them had tried to leave, by walking over the hills, buying a ticket on the plane, stowing away in the plane, arguing with the Dom, or even threatening him, which resulted in them being beaten up by his guards. No one got out, although a few had disappeared recently, making everyone scared to try again and even more afraid to talk to strangers about their predicament.

  “As best any of them could tell, the Dom thought that they would all be dead within a few weeks. A new war was starting that would make the Final War look like a picnic. He felt fully entitled to spend his last days eating, drinking, killing his rivals, and raping any man or woman who caught his eye. Sober and calm, he was charming and delightful company, but catch him drunk or cross any of his plans and another Dom emerged. Without the restraint of a real future, it seemed he felt no need to hide any more.

  “I rewrote my message, making it glow with praise, sparkle with delight in everything around me, and included in it another code phrase that translated as ‘kidnapped’. I sent it out early, before the Dom got up, and it went without anyone noticing the call for help.

  “I got a few hours of sleep before I was pulled out of bed by the guards, who gagged me, put a sack over my head that was held in place with a chain locked around my neck, and dragged me across town into a villa with a deep basement. They dumped me in a room by myself and handcuffed one of my arms to a bed. From time to time, I heard people pass by outside the door, sometimes the sounds of beatings, sometimes desperate screaming.

  “Hours later, the Dom himself arrived with some of his guards and began berating me, demanding that I tell him who I really
worked for. He was drunk and was convinced that I was employed by a rival family. It took him a while to remember that I was gagged inside the bag over my head, so he told the guards to remove everything I was wearing. He would not believe that I worked for Commerce, but I could barely understand his speech and in my own fear and confusion fell back to Russian and the little Swedish I had learned. His guards were just starting to play the games that drunken young men with no future are prone to do with helpless young women, when the Dom suddenly stopped them and they all hurried from the room.

  “I did not know it then, but my message had been received and my supervisor had passed an officer-down up the chain in Commerce, who tried to send in a team of more experienced investigators. The Prince refused them entry, claiming that such an egregious violation of the privacy of one of his most distinguished Doms had to be justified with something better than a glowing, and entirely true, review of the beauty and charm of his family estate. He then sent a warning to Dom Caruso with a demand to know what was happening to justify such an inquiry from the Terrestrial Government.

  “The Prince had the right to ennoble any peasant who gave exceptional service and had the wealth to maintain zer position properly, but also had the authority to strip any aristocrat of zer title, banish zim from the region, and hand zer estate to someone else. Dom Caruso took his imminent death as an excuse for every excess, but the threat of losing his title, of dying a peasant, was so terrifying, so humiliating, that it stopped him in mid-rape.

  “They did not come back that day, nor the next, but with my one free hand I did manage to get my clothes back on and crawl back onto the bed, off the cold floor. I was desperate with thirst by the time I was rescued.

  “Dom Caruso gave some plausible excuses, but the Commerce team was getting increasingly worried as time passed and I still had not made contact. They knew where I was supposed to have gone and could confirm that my message had come from that location, but kidnappers often move around, so my location became more uncertain with each passing minute. Finally, they lost patience and passed the officer-down to Legal Affairs, with an extreme urgency because the region was deliberately obstructing an investigation that appeared to be a kidnapping and might turn into a murder at any moment.

  “Because of the turbulence after the bombing, the TDF had a rapid response force in the neighbourhood, which was primed for action but had completed most of its original duties, so the TDF sent half a battalion to occupy the estate and Legal Intelligence sent six agents to investigate what was wrong.

  “Dom Caruso tried to escape by running into the hills to hide in a small cave but was rapidly caught and dragged back for questioning. He refused to divulge anything, so they began a room by room search of the town. They liberated the entertainers, and ultimately found three dungeons like the one I was in, holding the people who had disappeared as well as several people from neighbouring estates whom he suspected might be spies. There were several recent burials hidden under the floors. If I had not been able to get that one message out, I might have been buried there myself within another day.

  “I had made a whole string of rookie mistakes, of course. I had not secured my communications channels, failed to identify an escape route, and had not organized my own backup in case things went wrong and I needed some muscle. I have never repeated those errors, until this last week.

  Flower paused her story, looked sadly at the floor, then apologized, “That was not nearly as cheerful as I had intended. I am sorry everyone, I should have thought about the context a bit more and left out some of the details.”

  She smiled a bit wanly, “But I always liked the part where a foolish young woman calls for help and half a battalion of soldiers comes to her rescue. Every girl should be able to do that once in her life.”

  Mindy just stared ahead. “An army is coming for me, but to kill me, not to rescue me. I should be dead already.”

  I sighed, “Ah, Mindy, I know what you mean, to have outlived the moment when in all justice you should have died.”

  Then the screaming filled the back of my head and my voice would not work anymore, so I stopped.

  Distantly, I heard her ask, “What happened to Dom Caruso? I hope he was executed in public as a deterrent for other criminals.”

  Flower almost choked, “Good heavens, NO! The whole purpose of the Terrestrial Constitution and the Law on Freedoms, Rights, and Duties is that we are not EVER supposed to be like Dom Caruso! The Prince stripped him of his title and banished him permanently from the region to prevent him from doing more damage. Legal Affairs clarified his banishment to three months in a mental care institution and probationary confinement to a small Japanese fishing village. He was assigned work as a custodian in a warehouse and was required to attend counselling sessions every afternoon, while he relearned respect for his fellow citizens. The last I heard, quite a few years ago, he had become a well-liked foresir and was studying Japanese poetry of the eighteenth century. He does in fact make a good example, having been a nasty, vicious, worthless man who reformed and now works as a productive member of society with a circle of real friends.

  “I have never trusted aristocrats since then, however, and have found that far too many of them exhibit the same traits of arrogance, entitlement, and indifference to other people’s suffering, along with a well-hidden brutality that only emerges when they feel threatened. Politicians can also be bad, as can business and religious leaders, indeed almost anyone who exercises real power, but the worst are aristocrats. I think it comes from the knowledge that they did not earn their position and only possess it by an accident of birth. They do not know how to earn real honour.

  “The Sicilian aristocracy were by no means the worst, and the Prince later modified the Terms for Noble Service to include a demonstrated respect for the rights of others, regardless of rank. Dom Caruso’s cronies were also stripped of their rank, and other more useful citizens raised to replace them. usually from their own families. The Caruso family were punished for failing to recognize his manifest character flaws by losing half their estate. A hospital administrator and the head of a construction company who had done exemplary work in the rescue effort after the bombing were ennobled to take over the other half of the estate.

  She paused again, probably worrying about what she wanted to say next.

  “Mindy, I know you believe in the Imperium, and I truly hope it brings peace and good government to Mars, but it terrifies me to the very heart of my soul. I watched the condemnation of Governor Kigali today on the news. It was horrible, everything that I fear from aristocratic government, the opposite of everything the Terrestrial Constitution is intended to protect. The Governor had obviously been tortured into that confession, and many of the things in the Mandarin confession happened before he even arrived on Mars. He could not have been guilty of those crimes. And then he was condemned to further torture for the rest of his life, with no opportunity for reform or restitution. Is there no justice on Mars? No mercy?”

  Mindy could not squirm but looked profoundly uncomfortable. “Kigali is gone? Good! He was a willing Ghost Follower and inherited those crimes from his predecessors. Do you not pay your debts? Will your heirs not inherit your debts when you die?”

  Flower replied, “My debts, yes, up to the value of my estate, but no more. My guilt, no, not at all. My offences are mine alone and no one else shares them unless they choose to claim them as their own.”

  Mindy turned and looked Flower directly in the eyes. “If you claim you are not a Ghost Follower, do you therefore condemn everything he did?”

  Flower stared back and answered very quietly. There was a catch and a tension in her voice that to me sounded like the words were torn directly out of her heart. “Mindy, no one supports the Ghost, and he has no defenders anywhere.”

  One of our guards stepped through the door to warn us that we would start moving out of orbit in five minutes, and that anyone injured should be stabilized before we started because it might be a
rough ride. Then he saw Mindy and startled.

  “Sir, why are you here? You were supposed to be in the infirmary with the surgeon. I was to go there next to advise him that you should sleep through the flight to the Moon.”

  I looked at Doctor Marin quickly and saw her eyes narrow in anger, but her words were soothing as cool water and hard as ice. “We can take care of her here, but please inform the Acting Cap and the Admiral that a mistake was made, so that they can arrange pickup at the Moon from the correct room.” And behind those flashing eyes I could see a string of angry messages demanding to know who had made the decision to put Mindy in our room, and what they had intended as a result. Why had the surgeon not reported the error already?

  However it had happened, we had a Martian terrorist in our midst who could identify all of us by sight. She could be expected to betray us to any Martian intelligence officer she met, either voluntarily or under interrogation. Half a dozen more possibilities flashed through my mind, each more menacing than the last. I recalled that Mindy knew we were using our comm, so she had to have one as well. Was she broadcasting our location, every word we said?

  But then I calmed myself. Mindy had been on board the whole time I had been in the MI office, and I had not seen a single comm message from her. Why would she have a comm unit if she never used it to talk? Asked that way, one possible answer presented itself. She had the comm unit to listen for orders from her commander but was not trusted to command others. She had probably got the implant on one of the earth stations. If it was one of the newer models, it might have the new emojis built in.

  Mindy had been out of her mind with hate when she had attacked the Mao, but since then she had only been contemptuous and despairing so far as I had seen, perfectly reasonable responses after the failure of a suicidal attack. I wondered if Mindy had been driven to the Mao by an emoji attack.