Lord Banshee- Fugitive

by Russell O Redman

  “Now the Imperium has come to the Earth. I remain under deep cover, and I delude myself that my performance since my escape has been respectful and responsible. My life is yours to keep or discard. If you can use me in any capacity, I am yours to command.”

  There was a very long pause. “You were an assassin on Mars, and a savage one. We believe your commander at Syrtis London was the Ghost. How do you justify those crimes?”

  “I cannot justify the murder of patriots. I was a fool trapped in a vicious system. I became good at murder because failure meant death. Safety lay only in rigid obedience to orders. I kept my political opinions to myself since any suspicion would have been grounds for immediate execution. That is the reason I did what I did, but it is in no way a justification.

  “As for the Ghost being my commander, I assume you mean the mission director, DS277-15. Within the Death Squads, we knew each other only as codes. I was DS277-5. My commander was DS277-1. He had commanded the squad for six months, honourably and without excess. At the time, to maintain my reputation, I loudly chafed at his moderation. But he was not the Ghost. He died with the rest of the squad in the bombing of Syrtis London, long before the Ghost committed his worst atrocities.

  “The mission director, DS277-15, was an outsider with a fearsome reputation, who might well have been the Ghost. He scouted the site and gave DS277-1 detailed orders on how to kill the patriotic commanders. It would have been in character for him to have ordered the bomb that killed the squad.

  “I had been ordered to assassinate Colonel Mayberry on the Earth by officers even higher in the Spooks than DS277-15. DS277-1 ordered me to meet him at a safe house outside the city, where he would arrange the relocation off Mars. All my colleagues in the squad remained in Syrtis London, where they were murdered.

  “He knew a great deal about me, but I knew nothing about him. He wore armour with a darkened faceplate, so I never saw his face. So far as I know, I had never met him before, and have neither heard from him nor reported to him since. However, if he stood naked before me today, I would not be able to recognize him.

  “Since my orders originated with someone else, I do not believe I ever obeyed a command from DS277-15, although that excuses nothing. I would willingly have fought and died in Syrtis London in obedience to the orders he gave DS277-1.”

  There was another long pause, while I continued to stare at my toes. Finally, she declared, “You will remain on this ship under armed guard until we are required to release you back to the TDF. Expect to be contacted in the future. You have confessed to working under cover and will therefore be assigned a new ID when you have recovered enough to return to work. How long do you expect to retain your current ID?”

  I replied, “I do not know when I will be reassigned, but probably not before I am able to report on this trip. That will be at least several days after we arrive at the Moon. When I am reassigned, I will necessarily disappear, so it may be useful to arrange an innocuous mechanism to re-establish contact. I can always be reached through the Ministry for Commerce and probably even the Terrestrial Defence Force, but they may deny that I am alive, whether I am or not.

  “It would probably be best to meet quite soon in a public place, so we can arrange more private contacts after the Imperium has taken proper control of the Moon. You must expect the meeting to be under surveillance, regardless of assurances to the contrary. Aside from that, public places are quite safe for casual contact because there is very little crime on the Moon. No one who knew that we were introduced on this ship would question our social reasons for meeting. There will be numerous small cafes and restaurants around the squares in front of any major Ministry for Commerce office.

  “It will be difficult and insecure to continue to use these pass phrases. They will now be on record within this ship and may be copied. They also require that I find you, which is awkward and dangerous while I remain incapacitated. Travel is very difficult right now and will be for some time. MacFinn told the truth about the severity of my condition and how it occurred, to the extent that he knows it. Your medics can verify that I am incapable of running or attempting escape.”

  There was another long pause in which I did not dare to straighten my neck, although it was starting to ache. “Why did you command the fool MacFinn to spy upon our medical facilities?”

  “I told MacFinn that the TDF was now under the control of the Imperium. I told him that we were not and never had been enemies, just two peoples separated by misunderstanding and bad governments. He was terrified at the thought of coming aboard this ship and had to be ordered to do it. I suggested that we might arrange to move amongst the medical facilities on each ship to tempt his curiosity, but my real motive was that moving between ships would confuse renegades on other warships who would not know which ship in this flotilla to attack. They would risk the wrath of the Imperium and every other major faction if they hit the wrong target. Ships belonging to extremely honourable factions have tried several times to attack the Quetzalcoatl, apparently unaware or uncaring that it carries no weapons and is prepared even now to heal the people who attacked it. We who were on that ship are very grateful for the protection given by the Imperium.”

  There was another pause, which I took as a good sign. The soldiers on either side made no move to kill me or move me into detention. “Why were you at Thule Station? Did you work in Valhalla?”

  “I do not remember. I am not sure I was actually at Thule station, nor whether I ever entered Valhalla, given that my memories have been tampered with during that period. I cannot even verify that MacFinn believes the story, and it would not matter if he did since he is a surgeon, not an agent, officer or soldier.”

  A shorter pause. “Who is Agent Margaret Lakshmi-Lee and what is your relationship?”

  “She is an undercover agent in Commercial Intelligence. Although I also work for the Ministry for Commerce, I never met her nor even corresponded with her before this incident. I know she was working on LUVN and was shot by partisans affiliated to the Sultan Mustafa, whoever that might be. I believe you will find her to be a supporter of the Imperium, if only to protect an institution she believes will bring real benefit to the people of Mars and the Belt. For the rest, I can report only hearsay. You will need to ask her yourself.

  “If I might be bold, she will be utterly unaware of the conventions of polite society on Mars. I expect she will treat you with the respect she would give to colleagues and superiors within CI, but she is young enough to need coaching on diplomatic protocols and respectful forms of address. So are almost all of us. I am certain that Surgeon Kaahurangi meant no disrespect when he addressed the former Western Textiles captain as ‘Great Lady’. He intended only to emphasize that to him she was his patient and therefore the most important person in his professional life. He has never been to Mars, but I recognized immediately that the usage must have terrified the woman and offended every officer in the room. There was no respectful way that I could correct his ignorance. I am equally certain that my own experience as a Spook has given me many extremely offensive habits of speech that I desperately wish to leave behind. I might beg the indulgence of this ship to grant us a short seminar to outline the appropriate forms of address and proper means of making requests within the Imperium.”

  There was a very long pause. “You are a fool, a traitor, and a murderer. No one can ever trust you again, and the earth oppressors are fools to employ you. You will be returned to your quarters and held under guard until you are returned to the TDF.”

  That was a remarkably polite interview, given that I had confessed to being a member of the most hated institution within the former government of Mars, to being an enemy, a coward, and a failure. I had hoped for a more collegial contact, but their reaction to MacFinn’s request had pre-empted any more dignified approach. I was grateful for their reluctance to execute DSS277-5 without even the formality of a trial. Even with both poloffs under an emoji attack, our diplomatic cover was strong enough to hold.<
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  Best of all, I could expect to be isolated like radioactive waste for the rest of the trip, eliminating the need to answer questions. That had been my primary purpose in making the false confession, and I was pleased to have achieved so much with a simple ruse. I doubted that anyone else would be as happy.

  The soldiers escorted me back to my quarters, one floating me along in my frame and the other carrying my field station. Home on the Lansdorf was going to be a small cell, barely large enough for three people at a time. MacFinn was waiting with his own escort when I arrived, pale and nervous. He was brusquely ordered to set up the field station for automated operations. He was then forced to leave.

  I would be attended to ensure that my condition did not deteriorate (guarded to prevent escape, I translated), but I was explicitly forbidden to speak to anyone until I left the ship. The medic who had been my nominal physician during the demonstration took the first shift. Silently, ze cycled through the controls on the field station, mastering the interface but giving me no hint of what ze found.

  The rest of the day was very quiet, without even an interruption for physiotherapy. I would, indeed be as flabby as MacFinn’s old Pa, and maybe worse at this rate. There was a brief break for lunch, and I luxuriated in the flavours of Martian food. Even their military rations had more and better flavours than anything served in the TDF, regardless of having come from the same kinds of algae and bacteria that grew in huge vats on every farm in space. After lunch, I finished construction of my list of people to protect.

  MacFinn had warned me I would spend much of my time asleep, so it did not come as a surprise when the field station warned me that it was adding a soporific to help me rest. It also told me that it was primed to record any dreams using my private encryption. That was a bit of a surprise; I could only guess that Commander Sa’id had supplied the Banshee encryption, but how he had got it was a mystery. Then I relaxed. The message meant what it said – a private encryption accessible only by myself and my attending physician. The resulting files could be displayed on the monitor built into the field station, but nowhere else unless I supplied the key.

  When I awoke, a different medic was on duty, still one of the three Imperial medics I had met, but the one who had worked with Lakshmi-Lee. Checking the logs, I saw I had been asleep for ten hours, and had completed six dream cycles. From the record, each of them had been terrifying to my mind, but harmless to my body. The medic looked a little ashen, but true to orders made no conversation, supplying food and beverage on schedule until relieved by the third medic at the demonstration. The pair ducked out of the room for a few minutes, then the third medic took charge and ignored me until it was time for my next meal.

  MacFinn arrived back with the meal, made a few adjustments, added a small file to the station and left without comment. The file was titled ‘read and delete’, so I read it carefully and deleted it. It gave an account in precise and unemotional Mandarin of his visit to the Imperial health facilities on board the ship, detailing the physiotherapy equipment, and the saws, knives and clamps in the surgical theatre, reminiscent of medical facilities two hundred years before, but updated in surprising ways. There were also medications, lacking the sophistication of those produced by the Earth and especially lacking the molecular cages that guided the chemicals to the proper sites, but again surprisingly different from anything in the Earth’s pharmacopeia. He highlighted several areas where collaborative efforts would be productive.

  A major point of interest was the treatment of advanced cancerous tumours, which were rarely encountered near the Earth but appeared to be common amongst Belters and Martians who had served long careers in space. Direct removal of large masses with nearly fractal boundaries would be necessary for many of the larger tumours that had been encountered. This was no longer common practice on the Earth where cancers were detected and destroyed early but would be surprisingly easy with the sophisticated knives and saws he had been permitted to examine. Follow up with the standard anti-cancer meds from the Earth should provide quick and effective treatments for many serious cases.

  A while later, Kaahurangi arrived, made a few very minor tweaks of his own and left a similar file reporting on a discussion of surgical approval protocols between the Imperium and Lunar Recovery, subject to agreement by both parties. A note mentioned that similar protocols might be of interest to the TDF and the civilian hospital facilities on the Moon. He also left a program of light exercise I could do while still clipped into my frame, which he explained to my attendant medic without speaking to me directly.

  Not mentioned in either document was the older healer we had met, but he reported on several simpler cases that would benefit from similar treatments.

  I smiled to myself. I was a spy and a war criminal, and by association neither MacFinn nor Kaahurangi could be trusted. If we could work together on even a limited basis, we had a seed for the creation of an Imperial Ministry for Health. I wondered if anyone outside this ship was aware of what was happening but decided that negotiations with this import had to be approved somewhere up the chain of command.

  I did not dare to check the Path, knowing that in my current state of uncertainty it would still present a churning tube of hellgate with at best a tiny thread of justice leading me on. For the moment, I was not dead. The Martian officers would remain confused for a few days more whether I was the Ghost, or just a secondary war criminal who could be arrested later when circumstances were more appropriate.

  The time passed peacefully, a steady cycle of sleeping, waking for food, exercise and contemplation. MacFinn and Kaahurangi visited regularly, each time leaving another small file that I read and deleted.

  Most of my contemplation was spent trying to find plausible alternative stories that would protect the people who I placed at risk. It was acceptable for me to absorb their guilt since I was doomed to execution already, but only if my new story did not violate anything that could be verified from other sources. It was not acceptable to discredit my own confession, which would put everyone I mentioned at risk.

  2357-03-20 02:00

  Threading a Hellgate

  I struggled awake howling with despair and horror. A mounted army of Valkyries rode through my head, forcing me to experience the nightmare as the Cripple. What was left of my consciousness was filled with the screams of the dying. In the background, MacFinn roared, “Stop, you fool. End the dream before you wake him! Now, put him back to sleep!”

  I woke again, with an indelible image of a hallway in the Qinghai Mining fortress far out in the Belt, a twenty-kilometre asteroid that had been excavated to produce living quarters, armouries and command centres. The fortress was being bombarded by hundred-metre boulders that Syrtis had accelerated months before, believing that Qinghai Mining had unleashed a lethal plague against them. They had subsequently recognized that the Sultanate had been the true origin of the plague, but by then there were too few crews left alive to stop the boulders already in flight. Together, Qinghai Mining and Syrtis, with their few remaining ships, had exterminated the perfidious Sultanate partisans, but the Syrtis crews were dying of the plague as they fought and Qinghai Mining had no ability to repair their damaged vessels. The three combatants were all that remained of human existence.

  I watched as a boulder broke a crevasse open in the hallway ahead, tearing apart an air-tight room where a child-care facility had taken shelter. Toddlers and their parents spilled out of the tear in the wall of the room. They were dragged screaming towards the crevasse as the air in the hallway vented into space. Their bodies were battered and torn as they were sucked into the narrow, jagged gap in the rock.

  All for nothing. All for nothing. All for nothing.

  MacFinn was there, speaking his precise, classical Mandarin. “Lad, it was just another dream, no better and no worse than the others. It is over now. This fool of a medic was watching it for entertainment and is now becoming suicidal, like all the others. I told them and told them not to watch the dreams,
but the temptation was too great.”

  The Imperial poloff waited behind him. “What are you trying to do? Drive us all mad so you can kill us more easily?”

  Slowly I got myself back under control and reset myself to the Ghost. My voice still sounded gravelly, as though I had been howling in terror for a long time. Perhaps I had.

  The most I could get out was, “How did it start?”

  The medic replied, “It does not matter. They all end the same way. Everybody dies.”

  The poloff insisted, “Answer the damn question, fool.”

  The medic murmured, “He surrendered to you, Benevolent One. Western Textiles were the only faction willing to start the hospitals, and only after you ordered their officers released. Then, everything started going wrong. Like it always does. There is no hope.”

  I could not let that sit. “Medic, there is hope. I run one scenario after another in my sleep, trying to find a way to heal the future, and I succeeded once. There was peace everywhere in human space, our diseases were all cured and our justice was based on truth and mercy. But I do not know how to make that scenario happen. I must surrender in such a way that I am tried on the Moon in the Lunar courts for crimes committed on Mars, then turned over to Martian Justice for execution. That works, because the Moon will insist that I give a complete and honest confession, explaining how and why I committed my crimes. On Mars, the prosecutors write the confessions and they have all been lies for a hundred years. Yet, I committed no crimes on the Moon, so they will not arrest me. If I surrender to you now, you will be forced to send me to Mars, and I will die before I get there without ever having a chance to confess. I committed crimes against the Earth, but they would sentence me to a few years of therapy, and Mars would be outraged. This is a political issue before all else. Can you help me?”