Maris sighed—quietly—and prepared to see what she could do with her own skills. Being a Diplo and probably able to call up reinforcements from Rezerval would've been nice, but being just herself, she'd have to rely on lying and evasion. Eavesdropping would've been a good supplement, but she couldn't follow the guards' mumbling, slang-filled conversation. Who was she kidding? She could barely follow a very slow, clear conversation in very basic Kalapriyan. If she already knew what it was about. Besides, she could barely hear the guards now . . .
A cold hand tugged at her arm. Maris started, cracked her head on something hard and sharp jutting out of the crystal pillar, and—it was only the child.
Who'd given them away to the guards, she reminded herself.
But probably not on purpose.
Now the child—a little girl, she thought, with those long black braids—was whispering something urgently. Maris bent down to hear. A lot of good that did—it was still bloody Kalapriyan. She fumbled for words and managed something like "No understand, talk slow please."
What she wouldn't have given for a Diplo's language implant.
Finally the little girl calmed down enough to put it in words of one syllable for the dumb outlander. "Guards gone now. We get my babaji. You come help!"
Maris realized that the voices of the guards were quite inaudible now; all she could hear was the continual low-toned babbling and moaning of, she supposed, the prisoners. Inaudible didn't necessarily mean gone. She risked a cautious peek around the crystal pillar and saw nobody standing, not even any long shadows of standing men.
Yeah, right. So maybe the guards were sitting down like everybody else.
The kid tugged more urgently. Maris dug in her heels and pulled right back, enough to get the girl's attention, then squatted down to bring their heads together. "Go slow," she whispered. "Careful. No talk loud." She hated trying to talk this language; it made her feel like an idiot. She added in Galactic, more for her own satisfaction than because she really thought she'd be able to communicate, "Look, kid, you are with an expert at sneaking around now. You just stay back and let me handle things, you hear?" Not that she had any idea how she was going to "handle" the situation, but at least she could scope it out better if this kid would just calm down and stay put.
Something in her tone seemed to work—maybe it was just the universal Voice of Adult Authority—and the little girl stayed quietly in the shelter of the crystal pillar while Maris slunk to the next bit of shadowy cover, thinking nobody-here-you-don't-even-want-to-look thoughts to discourage anybody who just might be looking.
The torchlight was some distance away, and anyway it did a terrible job of lighting this back part of the cave; patches of crystals sparkled in occasional pools of light, surrounded by dark shadows. Even if somebody saw a bit of movement, they'd probably take it for a crystal flashing in the wavering light. And the irregular walls of the cave provided plenty of solid cover. Maris couldn't have had a better environment for sneaking up on somebody if she'd custom-ordered it. Compared to following a mark along the brilliantly lit corridors of one of Tasman's toppie levels, this was a piece of cake.
Of course, last time she'd tried to do that, she hadn't been such a great success. But who'd have known the mark would turn out to be a Diplo? A bunch of stupid Kalapriyan guards had to be easy in comparison.
How do you know they're stupid?
Maris slipped from the shadows cast by a boulder sparkling with iridescent white snowflakes, across the narrow cavern and into the shelter of a stalactite cluster that seemed to be dripping half-melted crystals. This isn't exactly the kind of job that goes to the sharpest guys around, she answered the carping voice in her head.
And speaking of "around," where were all those guards who'd piled onto Gabrel and Chulayen? Maris peered between two flows of crystal and squinted into the uneven light of the cavern where it opened out ahead of her, carefully taking stock of every bit of information her senses could bring her.
Torches were fixed into the walls at head height every two or three meters. She avoided looking directly at the flames. Even the sparkling walls revealed by the torchlight were bright enough to mess up her vision. She directed her gaze down toward the cavern floor, where huddled dark shapes lined the walls.
People. Chained to the walls? Not moving much, anyway. Here and there she saw a head or an arm moving in a kind of aimless flopping motion, that was all. Some of them were moaning or babbling; nearly all the shapes looked wrong in some way that she couldn't make out from here.
None of them looked like Gabrel or Chulayen.
And they smelled—gods, how the place stank! You'd think they were sitting in pools of their own excrement.
As she moved into the open space, so slowly it was more like flowing than walking, Maris saw that was exactly what they were doing. The prisoners were chained by the neck to bolts driven deep into the cavern walls. Some flopped so limply against their chains that they had to be unconscious or dead. Just before her, two chained bodies sat in the frozen stiffness of death. Beyond them, a head wavered, fell forward into torchlight and revealed a gaping wound in the skull that exposed the brain matter.
Maris swallowed hard and ordered her stomach to control itself. She couldn't do anything about this, not now; she had to find Gabrel and Chulayen first. No point in even thinking about what tortures were being inflicted here what they might be doing right now to Gabrel don't think about that don't think. She managed a few more cautious steps and came to a halt right beside one of the torches. The flickering downward light showed the bodies beneath all too clearly and she could not resist a horrified look there's something growing out of his head don't look don't look . . .
"Ca— Maris!"
Gabrel's voice. "Go back, Ca— Maris," he called. "Something's distracted the guards. This is your chance to get away. Go back the way we came."
"Demons fly away with the way we came!" Maris followed the voice, kept her eyes averted from the parade of horrors against the cavern walls, finally came to where Gabrel and Chulayen were chained but, not, thank God, tortured yet . . . she felt his head to make sure.
"This is an order," Gabrel said in an urgent undertone. "You can't save us. Someone must tell Rezerval what's going on here."
The chains were some kind of antique metal, actual links, nothing programmable; she felt for a keypad or some device she could fiddle and cursed primitive worlds. "Mebbe you forgot," she told Gabrel while feeling down the length of the chain to the wall bolt and back again, "I ain't in yer army. Anyway, I don't take orders from somebody as can't even remember me right name." Ha! There was some kind of a catch here, holding the chain tight around Gabrel's neck.
"You'll do what I tell you—arrgh! Whose side are you on anyway?" Gabrel complained. "You trying to strangle me?" She had jerked his head sideways and cut off the slack in the chain while trying to get a view of the catch.
"The idea," Maris said between her teeth, "is not without its attractions. Gimme your dagger."
"Guards took it."
"Well, don't you have anything useful in those sash pockets?" Maris dug into the recesses of her own clothing and came up with a bone comb. That might work, if she broke off the inside teeth and used one of the strong outside teeth as a probe. She twisted the chain just a little more, using it to break off part of the comb and turn it into a tool, and Gabrel made gagging noises.
"Just hold on, I got to see what I'm doing," Maris muttered. Push the long bone tooth into this opening, feel gently, gently . . . Gabrel jerked and she lost her grip on the catch. "Hold still!"
"Not much point in picking the lock if I'm strangled first."
Maris was beginning to think she couldn't pick the lock anyway; the triangle of the bone tooth was too broad to slip deep enough into the catch. She could probably file it down on the metal of the bolt, but that would take time . . .
Steps at the mouth of the cave startled her. She crouched between Gabrel and Chulayen, trying to blend in with
the huddled prisoners.
Light blinded her for a moment—not torchlight, but a proper light that you switched on and off; like Gabrel's dagger, only about a hundred times brighter. Maris blinked and squinted at the figure behind the light. It wasn't a guard returning. Maybe worse—a tall, fair-haired woman who walked confidently, as if she thought she owned the caverns, and openly carried a flash that was way beyond anything legal to have in Kalapriya.
One of the arms dealers, come to inspect the bacteriomats they took in trade for their offworld weapons? Had to be—who else would be let past the guards like that? For that matter, who else would be foolhardy enough to just walk in like this, alone?
Of course, she thought everybody in the cavern was chained to the wall.
Maris let her get two steps farther in; the light shone on a man just beyond Chulayen, and she heard the woman make a gagging noise as though unprepared for the sight. Now.
It was a beautiful move, if she did say so herself, one that Ice Eyes had taught her back on Tasman: propelling herself straight out from the wall without worrying about the coming fall, arms out to grab the arms trader around the knees and bring the woman down in, hopefully, a surprised and breathless heap.
Of course, the way Ice Eyes taught the move, you were supposed to wind up on top of your adversary, not squashed between them and the floor. The extremely rocky and uneven floor, in this case. Fortunately the arms trader was not only surprised but also considerably older than Maris, and slow; Maris managed to reverse their positions and got a knee resting on the older woman's throat before the trader had recovered from the shock of being knocked flying.
"Call off the guards," she said, "or I'll choke you now."
The arms trader made a series of whooping, breathless noises. Someone else appeared behind her and cried out, "Annemari!" Another woman, from the voice. What was this weapons consortium, anyway, the first female-run business on Barents?
"If you're at all fond of Annemari," Maris said, "you just stay right where you are. All I gotta do is lean forward a little—"
A point of light flickered, burst into a spreading network of lights and settled over both Maris and her captive. Immobilized, Maris looked up at the new arrival as she came forward. It was like looking at her own face—with a bit more mileage on it—olive skin, black eyes, artful mop of black curls.
"You?" they both said at once.
"I thought you were a Diplo," Maris said.
"You've been pretending to be me, haven't you? Of all the nerve!"
"Oh, gods. If there's a Diplo in on this, Gabrel, there ain't nobody we can go to for help."
"You've got that right, anyway. Your guards are nice and secure in another tanglenet."
"My guards? You got them bastards in a tanglenet? I thought you were with them!"
"Aren't you working with them?"
A wheezing noise under Maris's knee reminded her of her hostage. The tanglenet allowed neither of them much freedom of movement, but she was able to draw her knee up a little and give the arms dealer a chance to breathe—and to speak.
"Delightful as it is to wander unchecked through this garden of bright images," the arms dealer said, "perhaps a little explanation would help here. Calandra, can you get this thing loose from me?"
"Not without letting her free," said Calandra, jerking her head at Maris.
"I suspect that won't be a problem," said the arms dealer. "Allow me to introduce myself."
For an old lady who'd just been knocked off her feet, half strangled, and caught in a tanglenet by her own side, Maris had to admit that she did have an impressive degree of aplomb.
"I," said the arms dealer, "am Annemari Silvan, of Rezerval. The lady wielding the tanglefield generator is Diplomat Vissi. We are here to investigate the source of the black-market bacteriomats recently appearing in Federation worlds, and—if this is the source—to put an end to the trade."
A chain clinked, off to the side. "Leutnant Gabrel Eskelinen, Barents Trading Society," Gabrel said. "My companions and I are investigating allegations of illegal technology imported onto Kalapriya." He looked pointedly at the tangler in Calandra Vissi's hand.
"There's a lot more illegal stuff than this floating around," the Diplo said, but at least she switched off the generator. Maris straightened with a sigh of relief, then offered her hand to the woman she'd knocked down, who was being a bit slower about getting up. Once up, though, she stood erect, brushed the dirt off her beautifully cut beige silk suit, and started talking as though she'd been in control of the situation all along. Maris had to wonder what would get this woman rattled.
"If what you say is accurate," she said, "it would seem that we are all on the same side."
"If you got them guards in a tanglenet, you bet we're on the same side," Maris said.
"Without wishing to give offense, have you any way to substantiate your statements?"
Maris was still trying to parse that when Gabrel spoke up.
"My companion let you up."
"Only after mine trapped her in a tanglefield net. Agreeing to break a stalemate is not the same as active cooperation. After a war, it is not unusual to find that the entire civilian population of the defeated country claims to have been secretly against their own leaders."
"If this is a war," Gabrel pointed out, "it's not exactly over."
"Oh, yes, it is," said Annemari. "Too much has been brought to Federation attention for anybody to hush it up now." She thought briefly of the colleagues whose surprisingly large secret credit accounts on Toussaint she'd discovered, back at the beginning of this investigation, and wondered how many of them would have some serious explaining to do when all was uncovered. And how many of them would have stopped her coming here if they'd known her plans. No, she'd been right to act alone and with no more authority than her title and a confident approach could give her . . . but this disheveled young man in chains might be right, too. The war was only over if she could carry off her bluff a little longer.
"Chulen!" a girl's voice called, joyous.
"Khati!"
A Kalapriyan girl appeared behind Calandra and Annemari, ran to Chulayen and knelt beside him, shooting off questions like a machine gun. Chulayen answered at the same speed.
"What are they saying?" Annemari demanded of Calandra.
"It's all right," Calandra answered obliquely. "They really are part of the underground resistance movement." She asked a sharp question in Kalapriyan and got a distracted agreement from Chulayen and Khati. "And these two are with them." She pulled a slender laserknife out of the decorative barrette holding back her curls and used it to slice through Chulayen's and Gabrel's chains. As soon as Chulayen was free, he grabbed for Annemari's flash.
"Let him have it," Gabrel said wearily. "He's . . . looking for his family." He swallowed. "You're right. This is the source of the bacteriomats. Chulayen tried to explain it to me on the way here, but my Kalapriyan isn't that good, and he didn't really have the background to understand and explain it. But it seems that somebody has figured out a culture medium that works for bacteriomats. Living human brains."
The flash, in Chulayen's hands, illuminated one scene out of nightmare after another: sunken faces, eyes glazed over with madness, wailing mouths. And, over and over again, opened skulls with greenish-grey mats of slime oozing over the exposed lobes.
"We have to get medical help for these people." Annemari turned to Calandra. "Can you transmit direct?"
"Not from in here, no. I'll have to go back to the surface."
"Transmit? Medical help?" Gabrel seemed to be having as hard a time as Maris in keeping up. It didn't help that they were talking over the moans of prisoners crying to be freed.
Annemari looked faintly amused. "You didn't think I'd go after a planetwide conspiracy without any backup at all, did you? But the medical problems, those I was not anticipating." Her lips tightened as she looked where Chulayen knelt, holding what seemed to be a living corpse in his arms, a bag of bones held togethe
r by tight-stretched skin.
"Anushka, Anushka," he mourned, then something in Kalapriyan. Maris recognized one of the words; that was enough.
"Gimme the laserknife," she demanded, all but snatching it out of Calandra's hand. "We gotta cut that one loose. That's his wife. That's why he came here."
"We shall free them all," Annemari said mildly, but Maris wasn't waiting to hear. The laserknife sliced through metal chains as if it were cutting soycakes; Chulayen stood with the bag of bones in his arms and said something else, urgently.
"Tell him we're getting doctors, Gabrel!" She looked at Annemari. "Aren't we?"
"Can your medical staff in Valentin help? Which of them can you trust?" Annemari demanded of Gabrel.
He shook his head. "Some of Valentin is in it. I don't know which ones—though I could make some guesses. But there had to have been a doctor helping them do this butchery."
"I think I know which one," said Annemari tightly. "Did you know that the Barents Resident in Udara was kicked out of surgical training for incompetence and unethical behavior? I didn't know that until I happened to mention his name to the right person. He had been studying under Nunzia Hirvonen, the leading neurosurgeon on Rezerval. I would be willing to bet this is his work. Ask any of these people—any who can talk," she corrected herself.
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