by Ilsa J. Bick
I agreed, and that was that. We moved onto other things, and then I got busy and didn’t see him again, and then I left.
Got a bad feeling about that. About Theodore. Just about as bad a feeling as I’ve got about the Kitten. How to deal with her? The Kitten’s tough to read. She strikes me as a person used to hiding deep in the shell of her own skin, peering out at the world with these bright, sharp eyes that watch and judge.
We met the day before I left. Deciding exactly where and who should actually issue the invitation was a bit of a protocol nightmare. Lemme see, does tai-shu trump royal blood, five thousand times removed?
Anyway, I invited her to tea. Longest hour of my life. She actually critiqued my sim, the twit! Listening to that little kewpie doll dissect each and every misstep . . . and then I had to bite my tongue when she explained that she was just being helpful. (Oh, yeah, right.)
Long and the short of it: She’s got to gather up my Ronel troops now posted to Sakuranoki in the New Samarkand District and bring them bag and baggage to Halstead Station. I could use the men. Problem is Sakuranoki’s hell and gone. It’ll take two months just to pack up and then six, maybe eight weeks to make Halstead Station, maybe longer. But they’re more warm bodies.
Well, maybe the take-home is that things will happen when they happen. I need to learn to relax. Like now. Most people’d give their eyeteeth for a chance to travel in a Monarch. This sleek little baby’s built for comfort, not combat. When I went to Irece to beg the Cats for troops, I took a Fury. But when you’re in Luthien space, you don’t come armed to the teeth. The same way no one’s allowed weapons within the palace precincts. (Though Toranaga got away with it, and isn’t that interesting?) Oh, you can brag. You just can’t back it with muscle or . . .
Hang on. Captain’s on the horn.
13
Monarch -class DropShip Fury’s Lease, en route to Luthien jump point
Pesht Military District, Draconis Combine
23 June 3136
Her comm shrilled again, a high-pitched whistle, and Katana toggled off her microrecorder and punched up the comm. “Tormark.”
“I think you better get up here, Katana-san.” The captain, a grizzled Fury veteran and about as unflappable in a pinch as they came, sounded tense. “We’ve picked up a distress call from a DropShip but couldn’t get the registry. Sounds like they’ve suffered some sort of catastrophic hull breach. Comm says no other vessels are responding to the emergency. Request permission to change course to intercept.”
“Go,” she said. She pulled the sleeve of her olive drab jumpsuit down over her microrecorder. Time for journaling later, but it looked like she’d certainly have something pretty interesting to log. “Best speed.”
* * *
It took them forty minutes at full burn to pick up on visual. No one said much, and the bridge was silent save for the beeping of computers and the steady, basso hum vibrating through the deckplates from their fusion engines at max thrust. They were pulling three gs, one above the Monarch’s tolerance, and Katana felt gravity’s fingers tugging at her skin. She stood to the captain’s right, her left hand gripping the command chair, her eyes searching a myriad of stars on the viewscreen.
The captain picked out the ship first. “There,” he said, pointing. “About one o’clock. That corona, looks like the plasma burn from exhaust baffles. Comm,” he continued, turning to his communications officer, “adjust screen, center and magnify.”
“Oh, my God,” Katana said as comm complied and the stricken ship swam into focus. “What the hell is that doing here?”
The other ship was a sleek aerodyne Achilles-class vessel: half the tonnage of their Monarch but much more powerful, with weapons—autocannons and LRMs—out the wazoo.
Shouldn’t be this close to Luthien, only three days out. How did they slip past the security ships stationed at the jump point?
A mystery that would have to wait: She saw at once that the vessel was in big trouble, the telltale ghost-white plume of vented atmosphere still spewing from a jagged hole, a good twenty meters wide, in the ship’s port hull, aft of a cargo bay that normally held infantry on a combat drop.
“That’s one big hole,” she said. “Blew out the entire aft cargo door.”
“Mmmm-hmmm.” The captain’s eyes slitted. “But look at the edges. See all those curls, that stellate scoring? They weren’t hit by anything. Looks to me like something blew out.”
“Munitions?”
“No, munitions stores are forward and deeper in the ship. Comm, you got a registry ping?”
“Negative that, sir.”
“Then what?” Katana’s eyes picked through the details, trying to reconcile what she saw to what she knew. Still venting after all this time . . . Why haven’t they sealed off the section? The plume’s almost directional, jetting through the rip. “Something’s wrong here,” she said. “You see that plume? That’s coming out under pressure. Why haven’t they sealed off that section? For that matter, where’s the atmosphere coming from?”
The captain’s mouth set. “I was kind of wondering the same thing. Whatever they’re doing over there, they’ve got to be suited up, ready for evac. That’s what I would do.”
“But why haven’t they launched escape pods?”
“That is a very good question. Let’s ask them. Comm, can you . . .”
“Sir, their cap’s coming through now.”
“On speaker.” The bridge filled with the fizz of interference, and the captain said, “Achilles ship, this is Monarch Delta-Charlie-Tango-Five-Niner, what’s your status?”
The answer—a man’s voice, Katana was almost certain, and she heard his panic even through the distortion—filtered through in spurts and pops: “Monarch, this is Achilles Helo-Foxtrot . . . we . . . unable to evac . . . shorted . . . we have suited up . . . request . . . station . . . !”
The captain scowled. “Comm, can you clean that up?”
“Negative that, sir. That’s the best I can do.”
Katana was gritting her teeth hard enough for her jaw to hurt. “I think they’re requesting we go to stationkeeping.”
The captain nodded. “That’s how I heard it, too. That way, we can do an emergency dock, belly to belly. We’ve got the most tonnage, that’s how it should go. There are a couple problems.”
“You mean, beyond the fact that we’re all going to be panting on the deckplates when we do a rapid deceleration, not to mention burning up obscene amounts of fuel and screwing up our schedule besides?”
“To name a few.” The captain hooked a thumb toward the viewscreen. “I don’t like all that shimmy out there. This baby won’t exactly turn on a ten-stone. We slow to stationkeeping—yes, panting on the deckplates—and they can’t control that pitch and yaw out there . . .” He didn’t finish the rest of that thought.
“Can they make it under thrust to Luthien?” Even as she asked the question, she knew the answer. Under full burn, the Achilles would take two days to make Luthien. The crew’s environmental suits had enough air for thirty hours.
“You know they can’t. So, either we match their course and speed as an escort and hope someone hears us. Or we dock. There’s no in-between. Now, I can’t think of a reason in hell why we should slow down just to listen to them die. So it’s a dock. That’s my opinion.” His dark eyes fixed Katana’s. “But it’s your call, Tai-shu. Either way, we suit up just in case and dispatch an emergency distress, see if the cavalry comes charging over the hill. I don’t think it will, or else it would’ve shown up by now.”
It took Katana less than a nanosecond. “Suit up, Captain. Then let’s go save their asses.”
* * *
The captain’s voice was thin and attenuated through Katana’s helmet speakers, like they were kids talking through tin cans on a string. “Status, Helm?”
“Board shows we’re at stationkeeping, sir. Stationkeeping thrusters optimal, and we are holding position.” The helmsman, a youngish woman with a wedge cut of s
ilky black hair, turned to look back at the captain. Katana saw that she’d sweated enough for a swatch of her hair to glue itself to her cheek. The rest was standing on end under the sudden weightlessness that had come when they cut thrust and lost gravity. “Achilles vessel has cut transit drive and engaged braking thrusters. Distance, twelve hundred meters. Speed is five minus five and slowing. Board shows that she’s got maneuvering thrusters, but she’s still got some pretty bad yaw there, sir. If she can’t get under better control, I’m going to have to try to match the rate of her spin. Except . . .”
“Go ahead.”
“She’s smaller, sir. Not as much mass to move, plus they got that leak that keeps nudging them out of position. With our greater mass . . . Sir, this ship is going to be pretty mushy, and that ship is going to be moving much more quickly relative to us. I’m sorry, but this baby, she’s not designed for pinpoint maneuvers like this. She’s,” and now the helmsman sounded almost apologetic, “she’s a luxury liner, not an assault vessel. Sir.”
“Understood. You just do your job, it’ll be all right.” The captain spared the helmsman a reassuring nod that Katana didn’t think translated to his eyes. (That was okay. Her stomach was doing somersaults, too.) “It’ll be fine. But if it comes down to them or us, I want you ready to move us the hell out of the way. No use getting dinged up when we got time to try this half a dozen times if we need to. You got that?”
“Got it, sir.”
The captain looked up at Katana. “Now comes the fun part.”
His tone gave the lie. There wasn’t really anything she could say, so Katana just nodded, then cut her gaze to the viewscreen. The Achilles had slowed, yes, but it was jittering along its vertical axis, though it had managed to roll so its undercarriage grew larger in their screen. No damage there that Katana could see, and their docking collar looked intact. Now if they could just ease together . . .
Her mouth was desert-dry, and it hurt to swallow, but she was sweating like mad. So much so that when she took a careful step back from the captain’s chair to stand behind it, her grip-boots grabbing hold to anchor her to the deck, two tiny droplets shook free from her upper lip as wavering globules that splattered in slow motion against her faceplate. She thumbed down her suit’s temp, shrugged tension from her shoulders and blew out a breath. If she kept sweating like a pig, she’d have a hard time seeing past the smear.
We can do this, piece of cake, just kiss that belly . . . But we gotta watch that damn vent, and I don’t get that vent. Why is it still pumping?
“Here they come,” Helm warned, a knife-edge of apprehension cutting through. “Z minus thirty and holding. Distance, one thousand meters . . . ninety . . . Distance, eight-five-zero . . . Sir, they’re starting to roll.”
“Compensate, Helmsman. Keep our belly to ’em, keep . . .” The captain’s voice notched up in alarm. “What the hell?”
Katana gasped as proximity alarms screamed. “They’re pitching, bringing their nose down! Are they out of control?”
“Negative that, negative!” Helm whipped round in her seat. “Sir, they’ve engaged maneuvering thrusters!”
Nose is the most heavily armored section of the ship, and they’re bringing up their speed! Katana saw it in a flash. “Captain, they’re going to ram us! You’ve got to get us out of here!”
But the captain was already half out of his seat. “Helm, engage our transit drive, burn those sons of bitches before they can—!”
“They’re hot, they’re hot!” the helmsman cut in, her small gloved hands flying over her controls. “I read a weapons’ lock! I read—!”
“They’re going to hit us!” Katana shouted as the nose of the Achilles vessel speared space and blotted out the stars.
“Brace for impact!” the captain shouted. “Brace—!”
PART THREE
Tsumego: Life and Death
14
Armitage, Ancha
23 June 3136
The autopsy room was very quiet except for the soft hum of specimen refrigerators along the right wall. The temperature hovered at a cool eighteen C, enough to chill the tip of Detective Harry Loveland’s nose. The hospital laundry was just around the corner from the morgue, and the air smelled like soap laced with the sharper bite of fixative and the stink of decomposition mingling with the jagged tang of copper.
A fluorescent light-globe floated over a waist-high stainless steel autopsy table. A body, covered by a white sheet, lay on the table. The body might have been male or female. Loveland couldn’t tell.
They’d gathered at the medical examiner’s autopsy room workstation. “So are we talking about the same guy?” Loveland asked.
“Maybe.” The ME was a round man with eyes small as ball bearings. “I’ve never run into a killer with three distinctive killing styles.”
The man standing to Loveland’s right said, “Every killer’s different. Some evolve. But most serial killers eventually unravel.”
Special Agent Richard Thereon said this with no hint of superiority, and Loveland liked him for it. No matter what the planet, Bureau guys shared a sort of cookie-cutter quality: the gray suit, starched white shirt, nice tie. Agents had ’tude, couldn’t wait to show you what a moron you were. Thereon worked out of Ancha’s Bureau of Investigation and was . . . different. He could’ve been a turd. Loveland’s jurisdiction was Kordova on Towne. Detectives usually didn’t work cases out of their jurisdiction. Loveland did because the planetary legate said he could. (Other planetary jurisdictions hadn’t objected. Now they could blame Loveland if the investigation went south.) Anyway, Thereon wasn’t a turd.
“Well, if he is, it’s only sporadic.” The ME poked at his computer. The screen filled with the body of a nude woman on an autopsy gurney. Her skin was puffy but not hideously swollen, with a bluish hue. The long hair was dark and limp as seaweed. A deeply purple-black bruise encircled the woman’s throat right below the thyroid cartilage, like a too-tight necklace. Her eyes were gone, tags of bleached flesh highlighted against naked bone.
“Okay,” the ME said, “I’ve had a chance to review all the cases that the Kordova ME, Doctor Slade, did. The Little Luthien killer’s first vic, Alicia Lang, found 23 February 3134. Time of death was within the twenty-four hours prior to discovery. Cause of death was fatal brain anoxia secondary to ligature strangulation. The eyes were removed antemortem.”
“Before death,” Loveland said.
“Yup. But here’s what’s interesting. Your guy is ambidextrous and a pro. No nicks, no hesitation marks. The lids were cleanly sliced with a single-edged blade, likely a scalpel. Same with the second victim, except that woman had no ears, and the third, no tongue.”
“See no evil, hear no evil,” Thereon said. His eyes were gray, large and stormy, as if filled with heavy clouds. “A real joker.”
“Yeah, except Chuckles got a kill buddy, Shu Imashinigi,” the ME said. “Vic two had lots of hesitation marks, ripped skin. But by victim three—” Another woman, her mouth a bloody gaping maw. “Imashinigi’s improved. Only nine cuts to get the tongue. But even at the end, his technique was still pretty crude.”
Another click, and this time, there was an image of an adolescent girl in pieces. “When they found his daughter’s body in his deep freeze, she was in pieces. But she was surgically dismembered, very neatly. That’s Chuckles, not Imashinigi. That pelvic block dissection . . .” The ME was balding as well as plump, and he palmed his scalp, stroking the skin as if smoothing back hair. “I couldn’t’ve done it better.”
Loveland had investigated fatal rape cases where MEs cored the pelvis. He didn’t like the procedure now any more than he did then. In this case, that detail was kept back from the press as well as any hint there was a killing team. “Why the dissection?”
“To rub your nose in it, Harry,” Thereon said. “He wanted you to know that this girl had been brutally victimized by her father. Our unsub is extremely intelligent, highly organized—and having the time of his life.”
<
br /> * * *
At the autopsy table, the ME peeled back the sheet to reveal not a man’s face, neck and shoulders but a woman’s. “Just like Slade, I kept asking myself how Chuckles did it. How did he immobilize these women? Because they were alive. Then I read Slade’s reports, and then I got Agent Thereon’s report on that Ancha prostitute, the one got her throat ripped out, and the Bureau ME’s findings. So I looked at this lady—and I found it.”
Loveland stared down at this Jane Doe, unclaimed, not missed. Her face was pulpy. Her nose had been broken by a blow delivered by a right-handed individual. Her chocolate-brown skin was dusky, with extensive marbling by dark green vessels ballooning with stagnant blood. The morgue refrigerator maintained the body near freezing to prevent further decay, but Loveland still caught a whiff of rot.
And the woman didn’t have a throat. Instead, there was a ragged, bloodless crater. The trachea had been crushed, the left carotid artery severed, and the right pulped. As she suffocated, Jane Doe had seen her blood sheeting her killer’s face.
A year ago, there’d been a prostitute on Proserpina, who’d died in exactly the same way.
But their killer was starting to make mistakes. On Proserpina and here on Ancha, he’d left saliva. Saliva meant DNA.
But while the bite marks matched, the DNA samples didn’t. Both prostitutes had been murdered by the same man in the same way because the bite marks matched. Yet the DNA recovered in this woman’s throat and beneath her nails was different. They had two cold hits.
And there was one more crucial detail that tied all the killings together across the prefectures, from Towne to Proserpina to Ancha.
Using his gloved hands, the ME gently turned the woman’s head. Her hair was a spiked black tangle, but the running stitches, like the seam on a baseball, were clearly visible: the skin sutured after the skull cap had been refitted, and the woman’s face and scalp pulled back over the exposed bone. “Right there,” he said, peering through a magnifying glass. “Between the fourth and fifth cervical vertebrae. Impossible to pick up unless you knew where to look. The fact that all the victims since Proserpina have dark skin makes it that much harder to find.”