“Stand away,” she warned, raising her side-arm. If there was a bomb she needed to make sure that he didn’t touch a toggle with one last desperate gesture as he died. She could hear a commotion in the corridor behind her; the squads of Security that she’d sent down the air-well had arrived. One bomb; thirty-eight souls on station. “Hands to the front, Padrake, or I’ll shoot.”
He’d tried to kill her. He’d been willing to sacrifice the courier and its crew to protect himself. There was no guarantee that he might not decide to take them all with him, since he was going to die — more or less quickly. The game was up. He was discovered. There was no hope left for Padrake now.
“You couldn’t hurt me, Jils,” he said, but it was a challenge, calculated to make her angry. Angry enough to shoot him. His hand went out across the comm console behind him, his fingers searching for something on the board. “We love each other. I love you, Jils. Always loved. You couldn’t — ”
Hurt me.
She could hear Andrej Koscuisko’s voice, explaining it to her. Killed him because I loved him. Because. Not despite.
She could see Karol moving, again, so smoothly that it was almost invisible; and knew that within moments Karol would be on Padrake, to subdue him. The room was full of Bench specialists. Once let Karol close with Padrake and they would all mob Padrake at once. Padrake would be taken alive. She couldn’t let that happen.
She fired the round to strike him full in the chest at his left side, so that the reflex of his body would pull him away from the comm console. Her aim was off; she hit more of his chest than she’d needed to, stenciling patterns in blood and flesh against the back wall.
It was messy, but it worked. His body spun away from the console under the force of the impact, the walls and floor and furnishings drenched in an instant with the blood from the cavity in his chest. The uncoordinated flailing of his limbs was terrible to see. She couldn’t bear to look, even though his face was turned toward the wall. How many fractions of consciousness left to a man, when blood ceased to carry oxygen to the brain?
Padrake’s blood was all around him, the walls, his clothing, the floor. His body wriggled like a crushed insect’s, and it was unspeakably grotesque to see him — beautiful Padrake — made over by her hand into an object of horror.
At least it did not go on for very long.
She didn’t need to go down. She knew that he was dead. They didn’t have the resuscitation equipment here that they would need to even try to salvage him, and when traumatic injury led to such a sudden massive loss of blood there was very little chance of any medical intervention succeeding even in the best of circumstances.
Always loved you, Jils. And the Hell of it was that he had very possibly been telling the truth about that, even though he had tried to kill her with a bomb — and who knew what his role had been in the earlier incidents, the one with Nion, the one with the chair?
She sat down in the nearest chair very suddenly. Crossing her arms on the back of the seat in front of her — her side-arm still grasped in her right hand — Jils began to weep.
Always loved you. Killed him because she loved him. It didn’t change the fact that she had killed him, or that he was dead. She wished that somebody would do the same for her, right here, right now; but nobody had ever loved her as he had. And nobody ever would.
“Down the air-well?” She heard Balkney’s voice as though in another room, and knew that he was speaking to the Security. “Well done. You need to get out as quickly as possible. We don’t know what Delleroy may or may not have done.”
Karol was beside her with a hand around her upper arm, carefully. “Let’s go, Jils,” Karol said. “We’re evacuating. Now. First Secretary, tell her.”
“Get up and get back to the lift-car, Ivers,” Tirom said. “I’m not leaving without you. Come on. We need to leave. We need to leave immediately.”
And abandon Padrake’s body on the floor, there at the far end of the room? Let it lie there to rot without a word said over him, without a wish for a speedy passage, like vermin? Even vermin were cleaned up, cleared away, burned — how could she leave him here like an embarrassing lump of body-waste best left ignored and unacknowledged and forgotten —
She had to get the First Secretary out of here. She had to get them all out of here. Padrake knew bombs. There was no telling. He might well have been down here well before any of the others had arrived, under pretext of making necessary preparations.
Leaning heavily on Karol she stood up; she could hardly sense where her own arms and legs had gone, she moved clumsily, but she could move. Out of the theater with Padrake left behind like a soiled tissue. To the lift-car with Tirom and Karol, Rafenkel and Security, to make the ascent to the surface before some fail-safe device of Padrake’s could explode and kill them all anyway.
She had done her duty. It could not touch the comfort she had taken in his body, but it was all she had.
###
This is your Captain speaking. There has been an announcement from Brisinje with respect to the selection of a new First Judge.
It was end-of-shift on Scylla, and Doctor Benal Lazarbee was on his way to quarters with a little something extra in his duty-blouse. He’d heard the announcement. Irshah Parmin had had all of the senior people on board to the officer’s mess to hear the news, Ship’s Primes, Security warrants, staff officers and all, promiscuously together. The man had no sense of propriety, but Lazarbee didn’t care. Irshah Parmin was immaterial as of now, him and all the rest of his crew.
The Bench has determined that the rule of Law and the public weal is best served in the immediate future by operating on a confederacy model for the near term.
The message was being broadcast on all-ship three times a shift for four shifts, just to make sure that everybody had a chance to hear the news and meditate on its implications. As a senior officer his quarters would be blessedly quiet, however; and Lazarbee had plans for his peace and quiet, plans that involved the narcotics in his pocket and something that Delleroy had brought him on his last visit.
“Doctor Lazarbee!”
Someone was running after him through the corridor; moderately annoyed, Lazarbee turned around. One of the clinicians, one of the Old Guard, one of those tiresome people who were all too prone to tell tales of how it had been when they’d had Koscuisko as their CMO. “What is it, Galins?”
Once order has been restored and trade relations regularized the Bench will revisit this interim governmental model. All souls under Jurisdiction are urged to cooperate with the authorities to the maximum extent in their power in order to maintain the benefits of peace and justice for all.
Galins was in a state, so much was obvious; flushed in the face and sweating, speaking quickly, and a little out of breath. She’d been running hard. “Need you to release the secures on scheduled narcotics, your Excellency, we’ve got a pain management issue, and Doctor Phinny not on shift for another four eighths.”
What business was it of Galins’ if he’d ended his duty shift a little early, today? He was responsible for validating the narcotics inventory on a periodic basis; he’d signed off on the report and locked the stores. It wouldn’t do at all for him to open the stores on his own codes again before the pilferage was discovered. “Galins, I’ve had a very long shift, and I’m tired. I’m returning to quarters. It’ll have been four eighths by the time you get back to Infirmary, aren’t you on duty? Better hurry.”
No, he needed Phinny to open the stores; that way the reconciliation was Phinny’s problem. All of the stores had been accounted for when Lazarbee had signed off on them, after all, there was his chop, to prove it. And a nice little present from himself to himself in his pocket to help while away the time, as soon as he could get to quarters.
Fleet will continue to work closely with Bench officers to ensure a smooth transition and protect the rights of citizens from disorder and anarchy. Your pay and benefits will not be affected by this decision, but will continue to accr
ue according to the contract you have made with the Bench.
Firmly ignoring the tiresome person behind him Lazarbee betook himself down the corridor toward quarters. Galins wasn’t going to follow him. “Go take yourself off to polish my boots, or something,” Lazarbee said to the orderly who waited at the door to his rooms. Security. Another chapter of the Andrej Koscuisko Admirers club. “I want my privacy, for once.”
We remain attached to the Ninth Judiciary, and depart Emandis Station for Brisinje shortly. This is your Captain, thanking you in advance for your flexibility, your professionalism, and your continued support of the rule of Law and the Judicial order.
Finally, he was in his sanctuary, and it was quiet. Stripping off his uniform blouse he poured himself a drink, and toasted the irony; the confederacy model after all, and Delleroy had been dead set against it from the beginning. Not as though it mattered. Delleroy would continue to deliver. A Bench specialist knew how handy a cooperative Writ could be, and made generous and tangible gestures of appreciation.
The chastral that Delleroy had brought him was illegal in and of itself because its therapeutic applications were too unreliable for practical use and silly people were always overdosing. Reasonable people understood how to manage chastral, though, and properly handled chastral provided a wonderfully satisfying experience. That was the other reason it was so expensive. Lazarbee had counted up the profit he would make free and clear on Delleroy’s gift and decided that he truly deserved a little treat for himself by way of celebration.
The trick was to mix the stuff with a narcotic, and to have a reputable supplier. The narcotic served as a natural supplement that smoothed out chastral’s rough edges, and a reputable supplier could be counted on not to adulterate her product with cheap synthetic imitations. Lazarbee himself used a reasonable amount of an inert starch, but he had a quality product, and it was the buyer who was to beware, after all.
Lazarbee opened up the box that Delleroy had brought him and smiled happily. His flask was half-full of drink; he dropped a beautifully formed crystalline lump of chastral into the liquor and poured the narcotic he’d taken from stores in on top. He was Ship’s Inquisitor; under any other Command he would be free to prescribe himself whatever he liked, but Irshah Parmin was an uncooperative fellow who knew how to make himself tiresome and Lazarbee didn’t like any of his subordinate staff enough to worry about the explanations they’d have to invent to cover the discrepancies. Who cared?
He let the chastral dissolve in solution while he peeled himself out of his boots and unfastened his waistband. Taking up the glassful of elixir he lay down on his back on his bed and sighed deeply and happily, taking a drink. This was going to be so good. He could feel the sensation creeping into his fingertips almost immediately, a tingling in his earlobes and his nose; and hastened to finish the glass, so as to have the full dose before the drug distracted him.
It was wonderful. The prickling in his extremities had progressed to the palms of his hands and the soles of his feet, and he couldn’t help but shift uncomfortably as it took his genitals. All he had to do was wait. First there was the tingling; the alcohol helped to smooth that out. Then there would be a warming, and a sweet glowing sensation, and a swelling wave of rapture would take mind and body alike in its embrace and carry him away into the realm of the gods.
Delleroy had gotten his hands on some really good stuff. The prickling was more intense than he could remember ever having experienced before; and it seemed to be getting worse. Much worse. It wasn’t prickling. It was burning. The pins and needles had turned to shards of glass dipped in acid, and his skin was melting, dripping off of subcutaneous tissue, soaking into muscle, eating away his bones –
No. It wasn’t happening. It was just a stronger-than-usual reaction. There was no fire. There was no acid. All he had to do was wait. It would be worth it. He knew it would be. All he had to do was last this out, and he could smell the fragrance of resin and wet leaves perfuming the air. He breathed deeply, trying to focus, shaking with the intensity of his pain. Resin. Wet leaves.
Poison.
Delleroy was going to have a lot of explaining to do, trying to foist an inferior grade of chastral off on him as though it was worth money – this stuff was filthy with insecticide. A lot. A lot of explaining. A lot –
But the pain would not go away, and Lazarbee could not move. Security. Security would be back, the officer’s orderly, with his third-meal. Eventually. He’d quit his shift early. He’d sent Security away.
The drug was not adulterated. The drug was poisoned. It wasn’t a drug at all. It was just poison. Delleroy wanted to kill him. Why?
It was working, too. The narcotic paralyzed him, but did not stop the agony that was traveling up each nerve-fiber in his body to his spine and up the spinal column to his brain. He couldn’t move. He couldn’t speak. He could not even scream. Delleroy had killed him, but Delleroy was taking his own good time, and somehow that was the worst part about dying.
###
“No, Jils,” Karol said, sounding like a man who was tired of the argument. “There really isn’t any might-have-been there. Delleroy might have gotten away with fudging the tiles if you hadn’t taken Nion out. But by the time he got back from Emandis Station it was pretty clear that the unimaginable was in fact the best solution we had for now.”
The launch-fields of Brisinje lay in smoldering ruins; from where Jils Ivers stood with Karol on the wide white-scrubbed terrace of guest quarters, facing the river, she could see the towering clouds on the far horizon, the turquoise-colored mountains, the work crews in the river sieving the bottom clear of ash with divers. There were work-crews all over the city, washing and decontaminating as they went.
Traffic was far from normal — no heavy freight would move through the Ninth Judge’s capital for some time to come — but passenger traffic could get in and out, small ships, couriers. There was one out on the improv field, waiting for Karol to fly Andrej Koscuisko to Chilleau to file his documents before the Second Judge, and then go home. Not Karol, of course. Karol was for Chilleau, since Chilleau was short a Bench specialist. Jils wasn’t going back. Brisinje needed her. Padrake had done damage in this place; she meant to right the balance.
“If you’d have told me when I got here that there’d be no Selection I would have laughed.” The announcement had been made months ago, not as though she was ever going to get used to it. It was the end of the Bench as they knew it, the confederation model after all, but if it was the uttermost failure of everything that she’d believed in and worked for all her life still the Bench had not fallen into chaos and anarchy. Not yet.
“There are a lot of things I’d never have predicted.” Karol sounded amused, in a sad sort of a way. “All we can do is keep our eye on our duty and hope for the best.”
There were going to be problems with Fleet. She just knew it. Already Scylla had tried to poach Koscuisko out of his hospital bed and back into his old berth as its chief medical officer, Doctor Lazarbee having suffered an unforeseen accident involving excess quantities of the wrong sort of recreational drugs.
That Padrake had had other accomplices, even among surviving Bench specialists, was almost certain; but it didn’t matter now. Nobody was going to have time or energy to corrupt the Confederation and subvert the rule of Law. Everybody had far too much work to do.
“Well, come and see me from time to time, Karol.” Tirom had made her feel wanted here, as well as needed. Padrake’s old office had been returned to a senior administrative official and one found for her in much more congenial quarters — hidden away in the under-corridors, far away from Tirom and the Judge alike.
Maybe they felt regretfully responsible about Padrake’s role in the nightmare that Verlaine’s murder had been making of her life. She didn’t care what their reasons were. She liked it here. And she couldn’t bring herself to like the thought of working with the Second Judge again, not after those months of arctic suspicion, disapproval, frustrati
on.
“We’ll see.” He was turning his campaign hat around and around in his hands, as though committing the precise details of its sweat-band to memory. “I’ll be getting out to the launch-field. Wouldn’t do to keep Koscuisko waiting.”
No, of course not. Jils had to smile. Koscuisko had been as restless as an imprisoned animal, a predator, thirsty for blood — but in a good way. He’d be wearing a cyborg brace on his right hand for some time yet to make absolutely sure of some of the reknits, but the medical facility had run out of excuses why he had to stay. The interns were all in mourning. Having a surgeon of Koscuisko’s caliber captive in one’s own rooms had been the chance of a lifetime, for Brisinje’s teaching hospital, and they had exploited their access fully.
“Better get moving,” Jils agreed. She had decided, lying in the ruins of the courier’s bed-cabin, that Karol hadn’t killed Captain Lowden — Koscuisko had. She hadn’t said anything to either man about it. It somehow did not seem all that important. “But if you ever disappear into Gonebeyond again I’m coming after you. I promise.”
He didn’t seem to feel effectively threatened, which was a shame. “Later, Jils,” he said, and embraced her briefly, fraternally, almost shyly.
She watched him go across the terrace back through the building, heading out to take a ground-car to the improv field where his courier waited. It wasn’t an Emandis courier, this time, but something that the Combine had sent for Koscuisko’s use; Karol would be piloting alone.
A Combine courier could almost fly itself. They were the best that there was to be had in Jurisdiction space. Karol was a good pilot, too, she knew that from experience.
If anybody could see Koscuisko safely to where he needed to be, it was Karol Vogel. With that reassuring thought, Jils turned away from watching the divers in the river to get back to the administration of Brisinje Judiciary.
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