“Doctor can you bring them hope, not just for their own lives but for their families, for their whole clans? Not false hope and empty promises, but real hope?
“This is the future I want for all of you. Real work, doing great things. We must start small, start here, start with something we are already trained to do. Doctor Toyami, you are a psychiatrist and a trauma specialist. You know how to help people get through the terror until they are ready to begin a new life.
“Doctor, will you be my Messenger of Hope? Will you carry that hope to Leilani, to the farmers, to the pirates?”
She had been absolutely silent, staring at me through the mask. I could not see her face and could not tell whether she was incredulous, scoffing, or repelled. Instead she gave an inarticulate howl, scrambled across to the physiotherapy room, and slammed the door.
Sergei to Raul, Me/private, “Raul, Brian, we have got to be careful in what we say to Luciana. I have been talking with Leilani who tells me she is so lost in fear that she is also close to suicidal. Brian, you must be especially careful. I think she is in awe of you for having survived a whole night of those dreams without losing your humanity. For whatever reason, she trusts you, and I fear it is becoming far more than trust. From what I have seen, she engraves every word you say in gold letters on her heart where they have become the Toyami Sutra.”
Raul/converse, “Sergei, do not make light of her distress.”
Sergei/converse, “I am not. I truly hope that someday she will honour us with what she heard.”
Fifteen long minutes later, the door to the physiotherapy room opened, and Toyami emerged. Still in her armour and mask, which now displayed the same Banshee regalia that Sergei wore, she came across the prep room, clipped her toes to the floor and prostrated herself in the doorway before me. In her distress, she spoke out loud.
“Lord Banshee.”
I cried, “Doctor Toyami, NO! Stop! Get up.”
“Brian Douglas, I know who you are. Do not deny me the right to honour you the only way I can.
“My Lord Banshee, I deserve to burn in the hells that you showed us, but instead you have blessed me past measure.
“Today, you gave me back my parents. I never understood them. They loved me but always seemed so cool, so distant. In the temple, I loved the monkeys more than my parents because I was one of them. I cared about food and excitement and having fun. I have been a monkey ever since. This day, for the first time in my life, I am a girl.
“What I never understood was that they were filled with compassion and were trying to guide me gently into a path I did not want to follow. Their path was wisdom and mercy, even to those who hurt them. If I could, I would prostrate myself before my parents and beg their forgiveness. I would honour them as I should have when I was a child. I understand that I can never see them again without drawing the suspicion of Martian Intelligence, but I can try to honour them by learning what they were trying to teach.
“I am still terrified and I know I need therapy, but I will carry the peace of that mountain temple and the mercy of the Buddha inside me. I will join my mother and father in meditation wherever I go.
“It is your unbelievable compassion that has revealed this to me. I can never thank you properly. I beg that you will let me honour you. I remember the lesson you taught us, that our mission is to bring warning and healing. I do not think I need to bring warning to these people, but if they are without hope I may be able to help them heal. If I can, I will be your messenger of hope.
“Cap Thieu asked me to be a counsellor for the farmers and pirates. I wanted to refuse, but with your help I am finally ready to accept this calling. I will visit them now, while Raul is with Leilani. I will try to pass on your wonderful compassion as I do my rounds.
“My Lord Banshee, forgive me, I must go.”
She rose and left to do her rounds. Earth girls are never easy but are often worth the effort.
It was strange. I was the Ghost, manipulating people as rationally as I could to fulfill my self-appointed Mission. I knew she was a psychiatric doctor with a Japanese Buddhist background who had been badly traumatized. I had pulled the strings and enforced my will, yet aside from one tall tale I had not told a single lie, and even that fiction had a certain plausibility. For the first time in many years, I, the Ghost, felt pleased with what I had done. The Cripple had had that sensation regularly, the Assassin never. I almost sensed the Cripple was proud of me. Was it rational for me to feel grateful?
At the same time, Sergei was right. Toyami was too vulnerable for the overblown exhortation I had given her. She might have picked up “My Lord Banshee” from Sergei but did not say it with his playfully mocking tone. The awe in her voice did not come from anything I was trying to say.
As for compassion, I was the Ghost. The Cripple had an abundance of compassion, ethics and morals. Other people liked him, and that let me talk to people who might otherwise have been hostile. As the Ghost, I had none. Saving the pirates fit naturally into my Mission, along with everyone else in human space. Otherwise, they were unimportant compared to the welfare of the Earth and Mars, of my team, and of Leilani above all.
Besides, how could I judge people I knew nothing about? Weeks or months of effort were needed to understand someone well enough to prepare a case that would stand up in court, and I had done nothing yet.
Nor was I fit to be a judge. If they were unforgiving, I knew myself to be despicable, a creature without honour. If they were murderers, I had killed fifteen million people, maybe twenty million, hundreds of them with my own hands, and effectively castrated the survivors of the Counterstrike. The pirates were not soulless, but in the persona of the Ghost I was, an artificial mental construct implementing a logical program to complete the Mission, with the aid of a badly programmed comm unit and medical monitor. To have less of a soul, I would have to become a robot. The pirates were real people; desperate, violent, angry, greedy, misguided and badly led, but real. Who was I to stand in judgement over them?
I needed to be more careful.
Sergei/converse, “I rest my case.”
2357-03-13 00:00
Gathering
I still had not had any breakfast, so when a surgeon came around again I asked about food. She checked my chart and grunted, “No solids until your attending surgeon says so. I can get you a beverage if you like.”
I requested something that sounded like an imitation chocolate milk. Sergei declared that he was also hungry and received a bar of basic rations and spacer beer. As the orderly left, we had her close the door so that we could pop off our helmets and lift our masks to eat. I could have fed my beverage through the feeding attachments in the mask, but it was a relief to have a bare face again.
As I expected, my drink was only vaguely like chocolate milk, judging from the one time I had tried real chocolate milk on the Earth. Chocolate had nearly gone extinct in the unstable climate since the Final War, but a few underground arboreta had been able to maintain appropriate lighting, temperature and humidity to preserve the species. Maintaining swamp-like conditions for the flies that pollinated the trees had apparently been the hardest challenge. Chocolate was dreadfully expensive and even with a spacer’s wealth, anything containing real chocolate was a rare treat. Still, I would credit them with a good try, and I recalled that some of the guests who had tried real chocolate milk had made faces and declared that they would save themselves a lot of money in the future by never touching the stuff again. Wonderful flavours quite often offend a palate that is used to another cuisine.
I asked Sergei how he had got hurt. He waved a hand while he swallowed the last of the ration bar, then picked up the bulb of spacer beer. “Why do they never have real beer on these ships? We need beer and babes for a tale as great as this.”
There was a knock on the door, so we snapped our masks back down and called for them to come in. Three armoured figures appeared, Begum being escorted by a marine and a sailor. I laughed, and said out loud, “Cap Thi
eu, you have arrived just in time to fulfill the King’s desire. Half of it, anyways.”
Sergei/private, “Shut up! Don’t you dare try to explain that!”
I continued, out loud for the sake of the sailor and marine, “He was just going to expound on how he had single-handedly captured the ship and rescued all the maidens.”
Sergei, out loud, “Do not believe him. I was the last one in and the first one out, and in between got myself shot for my stupidity and bravado. These two will tell you.”
The sailor objected, “But my Lord Banshee, it is almost true. The officers had locked themselves in the bridge. Their mandarin was enraging them with emojis and giving them terrible orders on internal channels we could only block from inside the bridge. They had set the port reactor to overload. It cannot explode, but a meltdown would have blown radioactive gases through the whole ship and forced an immediate evacuation before we had freed half the farmers from the prison. Many would have died, including most of the women.
“He talked them into letting him enter the bridge, alone and unarmed. The cowards insisted he had to remove his armour and then his clothes in case he was carrying hidden weapons.
Sergei, “I was outraged when they made that demand. If I had just come from the Earth, I would have told the marines to break in, shoot the scum, and try to clean up the mess later.”
Marine, “And if we had, the reactor would have fried, because their control systems are completely different from ours. We could not have shut it down in time without their assistance.”
Sailor, “But he did it, took off everything except for his mask and ID grabber. They wanted him to take those off too, but finally accepted that he had been humiliated sufficiently to be helpless as a negotiator.
“He signed to us to do a top-jamb entry, so we swung him up like a battering ran just below the top of the door frame. As soon as they opened the door a crack, we pushed it half open and heaved him through. We disabled three of their guns with tokens, but there was a fourth officer behind the door who shot him. If he had tried to enter politely upright, he would have taken that shot through his head instead of grazing his back.”
Sergei, “I am very grateful for all the practice Cap Thieu made us do. Sir, I have you to thank for my life.”
Sailor, “We disabled that gun as well, but they tried to strangle him even while he was healing them. When the mandarin realized that he had lost the ship, he killed his wife and concubine and shot himself before we could break into his quarters.
“The King you called him? Sir, I come from southern Italy and have seen lots of petty kings who thought that nobility meant fancy clothes and bossing people around. This was real nobility. I have rarely seen such honour, prowess, and self-sacrificing courage. You may have been joking, but the title fits.”
Oh, dear. I let that one slip through pure carelessness. And where did they get “My Lord Banshee”? Had they overheard Doctor Toyami on her rounds? I REALLY had to be more careful.
To Begum/private, “I do not suppose there is any way to prevent this from getting out?”
Begum/private, “I have reminded the whole crew that this whole mission is highly classified, but the lid is off since we rescued the farmers and took the pirates on board. They are not TDF and will be impossible to control. It gets worse. The bullet grazed a long strip across his back, a flesh wound but painful and bloody, so the marines gave him heavy pain killers, popped him into a body bag and sent him here. Unfortunately for Sergei, the bag was transparent to help the surgeons with triage and there were a dozen crew and farmers along the evacuation route. I do not think Sergei realizes yet just how many people know what he looks like below the mask. We are probably going to have to make some changes. Now is probably not a good time to discuss them.”
Crap. “Were there any surveillance cameras along the evacuation route?”
Begum, “Probably. We do not know much about the organization of the pirate’s ships, so our Eng is making a very detailed inspection. We should know soon.
“I really came to see how you were both doing. It looks like you are recovering well, considering what you have been through.
“Also, we should be relieved by the TDF Hai Ba Tru’ng in about twenty hours. It is another FAS like us and was dispatched from the Moon at the same time we received the orders to rescue the farmers. They replaced two of their transports with extra fuel packs and are driving hard to get here and back. Lunar Recovery is also sending the Quetzalcoatl, which will be along about three hours later. Their ships are as fast as ours, which is a little disturbing, but makes sense if they are using the same drives. Regardless, they had the foresight to wait for three lawyers and their assistants to start taking statements. That delayed their departure but it addresses some major political and legal issues, so we will wait long enough to take on one lawyer and two assistants, then will run for the Moon as fast as we can.
“They are still trying to decide whether the TDF or LR brings the pirate ship back to the Moon, because both have valid claims. The TDF needs to study the technology for defensive purposes, LR for rescue operations. Unfortunately, the only crew able to fly the beast are the pirates, so the TDF needs to guard and command them. They have not yet been charged with anything by anybody, and until they are, they more naturally fall under LR’s jurisdiction.
“We do not even know who to charge, because they clearly are controlled by an unknown organization in the Belt and cannot be held completely responsible for their actions. The Imperium may also make a claim, because the pirates were their citizens and attacked a facility that they must consider precious.
“Very messy and sure to keep the lawyers employed for years to come.
“I hear the Lunar Council is in panicky negotiations with the Imperium to resolve the jurisdictional issues for the legal cases that are emerging. I would like to be there and unload all of you as part of the crew before they reach any conclusions.”
There was screaming from the Censor and I realized I was the Cripple on the verge of unconsciousness. With my wits fading, I just barely hammered myself back to being the Ghost. The screaming cut off abruptly. As I lay gasping for breath, I could hear a banging in the hall, getting closer, then the sound of Toyami arguing loudly with some unseen guards. She was joined a few moments later by a voice that sounded like the lead on my surgical team, followed by the surgeon who had brought our food, and an orderly.
Alexander/private “Are you all right? I just got a priority alarm. I will come if you need me.”
I took a few deep breaths, and replied to Alexander, “Just got some critical news. I think I am in good hands medically but would appreciate updated code to reduce the Censor to something manageable, ASAP.”
Alexander, “Working on it. Be there soon.”
Begum/private “Can you tell me what I said? That was not just scary, it triggered something serious.”
To Begum/private “Later. Be absolutely certain that Leilani and I both survive and that we travel separately to the Moon.”
Toyami, the surgeons and the orderly were all at the door, shooing out everyone else and having trouble dragging Begum away. She only retreated with her guards to the entrance of the prep room. In a minute, we went from a tiny room stuffed with five people to the same tiny room crowded with a different set of five people and one unhappy orderly in the door. The head surgeon tried to close the door, but could not, even by chasing the orderly out. It slowly occurred to me that the door must have been open while we discussed the invasion of the pirate ship, and that there were guards within earshot who had overheard that conversation. It had been open when Toyami had cried out and jumped across to the physiotherapy room. Worse, there were patients within earshot, some of whom were former pirates; all of them now knew that the Lord Banshee, the Banshee King and Doctor Toyami were in this room.
To Begum, Toyami, Sergei/private/very_urgent, “We need to get out of here NOW, and silently. Doctor, your patients will have to learn to hope without you
for the minute. After our indiscreet conversation, everyone in the hallway knows that there are three Banshees in this room.”
There were a few moments of quiet, at least for me, but apparently an intense conference amongst everyone else.
Toyami/private “Brian, I am passing your medical care to Surgeon Leyland MacFinn who did most of the actual surgery. Thank you for today, which I will remember as my soul’s birthday. I will take care of Leilani, and I now have hope she will take care of me. We will get back together on the Moon. Stay calm. I miss you already.”
MacFinn/private “Well me boy, it seems I ha’ joined your merry band for a wee. You an I are goin t’the Moon t’gether, wi Lunar Recovery no less. I will na have ye dyin on me now, so no nonsense, hear?”
Begum to Sergei, me/private “I am setting your armour to sailor whites, complete with insignia. Brian, Surgeon MacFinn will handle your medical needs and will transport you personally to the Moon aboard the LR Quetzalcoatl. He will rejoin us there, but we still need a cover for you. Can you give a plausible imitation of a sailor or marine?”
To Begum, Sergei, MacFinn/private “Me? A sailor or marine at my age? Never. I am a broken agent and that is my best cover. Let us pretend that I was embedded on the farm, working as one of the people who was listed as killed but that I was actually badly injured and hid until rescued. Pretend that the Imperium gave us warning of the impending attack and that the true reason the Columbia went to Thule Station was to be in position for a rapid run to the farm at L1, with the rescue of Alexander as a cover story. As an agent/farmer I can legitimately travel on the Quetzalcoatl, with Surgeon MacFinn as my medic because of the severity of my injuries. Use the ID from one of the dead farmers if you can. My temporary persona can die after arrival on the Moon so the real body can be released for recycling.”
Lord Banshee- Fugitive Page 36