“Hard to say,” Fisner replied politely, just in case she was talking to him. “But it does seem a little other than one would expect. Maybe we could ask the captain about it. Get a tour. You never know what’s coming out of shipyards these days.”
He was lying, in a way, because he knew quite well that it was a heavy transport freighter. It hadn’t come to deliver stores to Okidan. It was here to take the Okidan Yards for everything it could plunder.
The dock-master clearly didn’t have a clue, not yet — just the germ of a suspicion. She pivoted slowly around in her seat and stood up, frowning slightly. “Good manners to go say something, either way. Coming?”
“No, thanks. I’ve got finishing up to do.”
Inventory validation was a chore, but it had to be done. Since the Combine Yards were the largest in system, it had quite naturally fallen to the Combine Yards to oversee and facilitate, to manage all of the administrative details required to keep the flow of traffic moving, to provide insurers and contract holders alike with assurances as to the quality and condition of goods, to collect and remit fees and taxes, and generally to act as the Bench proxy in Port Charid.
The dock-master left Fisner to his task. He was alone; and after a moment he locked the office door, secure in the knowledge that the observation ports — which were proof against unplanned decompression — would not be easy to break in, should someone on staff try to find shelter in the office from what was to come.
On the station’s master monitor screens Fisner could see the dock-master cross the load-in apron to where the freighter’s cargo umbilicus debouched into the load-in docks. No one had appeared from the freighter yet. Abandoning his task for more pressing concerns, Fisner moved to the dock-master’s master-board to cut the video feeds between the docks and the rest of the warehouse complex.
The dock-master’s chair was still warm from her body heat. Fisner hefted it to test the weight, and smashed it down across the master communications nexus board. The auxiliary fail-safe panel was on a subsidiary board some paces removed, and he left that intact. He had no intention of dying here.
There were people coming out of the freighter’s umbilicus now, the cheerful color of their Langsarik blouses clearly visible even at a distance. They had the dock-master, but she had yet to panic — at least to judge by appearances. Was it his imagination, or was she looking up into the monitor, up into the screens?
She knew he was in the office. She might be hoping for some quick-witted action on his part.
Fisner bore her no ill will. It wasn’t her fault. It was the fault of the Bench, the Jurisdiction’s fault for suffering Langsarik predation to go unpunished. Fisner set off the station alarms: standard emergency procedure, and it would bring everyone on station running to the load-in docks. The freighter’s crew had had enough time to get themselves into position by now, and were lying in wait.
The Bench had said that he had no claim against Bench or Langsariks for damages, that the loss he had suffered had been through misadventure. An accident.
The Angel of Destruction said differently.
The Angel of Destruction said that it was an offense against the Holy Mother herself that an ungodly and alien hand had been permitted to steal from Dolgorukij, and with impunity; an amnesty was no punishment for such a crime. The Angel of Destruction had sought him out and recruited him, sounded him out and tested him, tried his mettle and his faith — but at the end of it all the Angel had opened its arms to him and welcomed him, granted him membership in its sacred fellowship and made him the agent of the vengeance of the Holy Mother against the Langsariks at Port Charid.
The warehouse staff were unarmed; the slaughter was quick and efficient, over almost as soon as it had begun. Fisner scanned the load-in docks outside the dock-master’s office with the remote monitors, counting the bodies.
Everyone seemed to be accounted for.
The dock-master was to be shot over her boards, as if in the act of trying to call for help. She was still alive, standing under guard with two raiders in Langsarik dress as the plunder of the warehouse commenced. The hand of the Holy Mother was clearly discernible in the fortunate circumstance that had brought the Langsariks to Port Charid. They were a perfect cover for the Angel’s fund-raising activities, and once they were shown guilty — too guilty for the Bench to overlook their faults and let them live free, this time — Port Charid would go begging for labor once more.
Labor that the Combine was in a position to provide, at a premium, of course.
Labor that would only solidify the hold the Holy Mother held over trade at Port Charid and access to the Sillume vector alike.
Meanwhile the Angel stood in need of goods to convert into funds, because the righteous were not welcome in the debased Church of the Autocrat’s court. The Angel of Destruction had been outlawed through the malice of its enemies and the weak-spirited failings of the Autocrat himself octaves ago, when even Chuvishka Kospodar — the man who more than any other had nurtured their holy order, and welcomed it as the hand of the Holy Mother on Sarvaw — had been forced publicly to repudiate the Angel and its fearless defense of Her honor.
The money had to come from somewhere.
Just now it was coming out of the Okidan Yards, and the Langsariks would be blamed — two blessings in one devotion.
After a while the raiders in Langsarik dress came to the door of the dock-master’s office, and Fisner opened the door. They had the dock-master with them, and her eyes brightened with sudden hope when she saw him.
Hadn’t she figured it out yet?
No, for they had been coached very carefully, Langsarik phrases, Langsarik swear words, Langsarik songs. Langsariks were responsible for the slaughter here, not honest Dolgorukij.
“Here?” raid leader Dalmoss asked Fisner, gesturing toward the broken master console with a tilt of his chin. A shot could serve to disguise the previous damage that had been deliberately inflicted on the communications console; with enough blood, people would be discouraged from looking very closely. It wouldn’t be a problem. There were good reasons for the Langsariks to have first smashed the console and then shot the dock-master, if anyone felt honor-bound to establish a precise sequence of events.
Fisner nodded.
Dalmoss bowed his head and glanced toward his people. They pulled the dock-master over to her console and turned her so that she faced Fisner and the raid leader alike; but the venom in her expression, the hatred in her eyes, the acid in her voice was all for Fisner.
“You. I should have known better.”
It was as if she no longer even saw the others, staring at Fisner with baffled rage. “Sharing spit with Langsariks, you might as well have been one of them all along. Imagine you working for the Combine. I guess you must have grown to like the life, is that what happened?”
He could snatch Dalmoss’s weapon and kill her himself.
But that would have been a gesture of anger, an act of violence done with a resentful heart. The Angel killed without mercy, but without malice. The Angel was only the humble tool of the Holy Mother, blessed by Her toward the furtherance of Her sacred plan; and therefore when the Angel killed it was without anger, without fear, without hatred or joy in cruelty.
It was for that reason that the Angel could kill, and not sin in doing so.
Therefore, Fisner simply nodded to Dalmoss. The raiders in Langsarik dress who had brought the dock-master to her console backed away; she was so focused on Fisner that there was no need to watch for any sudden moves on her part. She was paralyzed with hatred as surely as though it had been fear.
Dalmoss shot her in the middle of her body, and her shoulders and head fell backwards over the top edge of the communications console while her legs fell in opposite directions, to each side of her shattered pelvis, as her arms flew wide.
What a mess, Fisner thought. And Dalmoss had prudently used his sidearm. Had he used one of the others’ more powerful weapons — it didn’t bear thinking on.
>
Just as well that the false Langsarik colors didn’t have to be particularly clean to be recognizable for what they were.
“And now you, firstborn and eldest brother,” Dalmoss said respectfully.
This was the most challenging part of this raid; but Fisner almost welcomed it. He would put any lingering doubts about his courage to rest, he would bear witness to his devotion to the Holy Mother with his body. And not least of all, he would bear witness with his words as well, damning witness against the Langsariks — so long as he survived, and his testimony was properly handled.
“I’m going over here to the auxiliary call,” Fisner explained, setting the scene, proud of himself for being able to speak so calmly. He was afraid. But he would not falter. “You shoot me down, I fall, you leave. Near miss, but there must be enough damage to make it convincing.” They’d been over all that already. They’d carefully chosen the angle of the shot, and where Dalmoss should aim. “Here I go — to reach the auxiliary call, and give the alarm — ”
He had his back turned, so he didn’t have to see Dalmoss raise his weapon.
And when the blow came it was so huge and shocking that he completely lost track of what he was doing.
People were dragging him along the ground, why was that?
Lifting, pressing his hands against the console.
Something was wrong with him.
The right side of his body seemed to have disappeared, and yet he could see it well enough — arm, leg, foot, hand.
He was bleeding, and his clothing was torn. Something in his mind noticed that no blood gushed, though it seeped quickly, and took that for an encouraging sign.
He lay against the auxiliary communications console with his face to the panel. Someone moved his hand; and there was a light, there, very close to his eyes. Green. Communication. Sending.
“Help me,” Fisner croaked. He was supposed to say something. What was he supposed to say? He needed help. Yes. Langsariks had attacked the Okidan Yards. “This is Okidan. Feraltz. We’re raided. Dying. Help.”
His hand dropped away from the toggle, then his body followed, sliding slowly to the floor.
He didn’t feel the impact as he fell.
He lay on the floor and stared at the wall stupidly until the room went black on him.
Langsariks.
Langsariks had done this.
It was all the Langsariks’ fault that this had happened.
###
Standing at the aide’s station in the small Combine hospital, Garol Vogel scanned the status report. Fisner Feraltz, Combine citizen, Givrodnye national. Injuries sustained at the hands of armed pirates at the Okidan Yards in the Shawl of Rikavie, Rikavie system.
Rikavie system: port of departure, Charid — where the Langsariks had been settled by the Bench, just over a year ago, now. Checking the date on the status report Garol made a quick calculation. Twenty days. They’d brought Feraltz here as soon as he could be stabilized for distance transport; Port Charid had a small clinic of its own, and they could handle just about anything there, but Feraltz was Dolgorukij, and Dolgorukij suspected that nobody else really understood the intricacies of a Dolgorukij physique.
And perhaps they were right.
Injuries including but not limited to mass soft tissue laceration, especially of the right portion of the body. Knee joint requiring replacement, ankle may require fusing, biomedical netting wrap on long bones of thigh and lower leg, silica glazing therapy in effect over 85 percent of rightmost surface of hip.
“Lucky to be alive,” Garol said to the patient’s advocate who was serving as his guide and escort. The advocate nodded.
“That’s what the staff says as well, Bench specialist. But since he is alive, the surgical board felt it best to postpone any interviews until he had regained at least some of his mobility. Since his basic evidence had already been read into the record at Port Charid.”
Well, there wasn’t a Record at Port Charid, not in the formal sense. For a Record to be official a Judicial officer qualified for custody was required, and Port Charid didn’t rate any on-site staff, let alone a Record of its own. It was on circuit, yes, but that was it.
So far.
Once traffic started to pick up at Port Charid the Bench would site Chambers there — as well as a fleet detachment, to monitor attempts at unauthorized communication across the Sillume vector with Free Government insurrectionaries outside the pale of Jurisdiction, out in Gonebeyond space.
But first Port Charid had to grow its traffic. It took an on-site tax base to support Chambers and Fleet detachments, and so far Port Charid’s tax base simply did not qualify.
“Langsariks, I heard.” Garol frowned down at the closed medical record. “In fact I’m told there’s been more than one disturbance at Port Charid recently.”
The patient’s advocate shrugged, looking almost bored. “If that’s what they say, Bench specialist. Nothing to me one way or the other, except of course when they start shooting at honest Dolgorukij. No aspersion on the Bench umbrella, of course.”
Of course not. Equal respect in theory for all hominid species under Jurisdiction was an important aspect of good Bench citizenship. And sensible acknowledgment of the fact that people would always favor their own was just common sense, and no offense to it.
“Very properly so, Advocate. Can we go in now?”
The patient’s advocate looked to the medical aide who waited in the doorway; the medical aide nodded, and opened the door. It was a hinged door, here, in a hospital. Dolgorukij knew what was proper: at least what they believed to be proper. This little hospital smelled of money all the way out to the street. And Fisner Feraltz, the patient Garol had come to see, was here at his employer’s expense, heroically wounded in a cowardly attack.
Garol had a notion that they’d made Feraltz very comfortable indeed, here.
The patient was in plain clothes, resting on an incline-board and doing a slow lift with his right leg. Physical therapy; Garol recognized the apparatus, and he could sympathize deeply with the look of carefully screened pain and concentration on Feraltz’s face.
Even with the brace, it wasn’t fun.
Feraltz wore bracing all over his right side, but Garol knew how little of the load the bracing really took off injured limbs and joints — not nearly enough. Feraltz would be wearing pieces of that body-bracing for months, if not years.
Personally Garol had always preferred to discard such aids as quickly as possible and pay the price of mobility in pain.
Garol stopped a pace or two from where Fisner Feraltz pursued his physical rehabilitation with grim determination and nodded a polite greeting.
“Thank you for seeing me, Feraltz. I’m Vogel, Bench specialist Garol Aphon Vogel. Doing your exercises I see.”
Feraltz was middling tall but well made, to look at him, more bone than flesh but adequately muscled by his hands and shoulders, fair-skinned and blue-eyed and very nearly blond. It was a type more general than some Dolgorukij Garol had met, who could have never been mistaken for Dynad or Jekrab, Nurail, or any other similar ethnicity; still, it was a type. Garol was a mixed category hominid himself, and his family generally tended toward a muddier complexion and less lithely limber a frame.
Feraltz lowered his eyes in acknowledgment. “Yes, thank you, Bench specialist. — Not at all, my pleasure, sir, as well as my duty.” Well-spoken young man, and no trace of an accent that Garol could detect offhand. He noticed that. Dolgorukij generally had an accent, in part because of the basic conviction of the superiority of their blood and culture, in part because as a result of that conviction Dolgorukij who spoke Standard had very seldom learned to do so as children.
Nor had they taken it quite seriously as adults.
There almost wasn’t any such thing as an unaccented Standard. The only people who spoke Standard as their native tongue were wards of the Bench raised at public expense; those, or the crèche-bred Command Branch officers the Bench was experimenting with
, the orphaned children of the Bench’s enemies raised by the Bench in strict indoctrination to serve the Bench and uphold the rule of Law.
“I’m concerned that the evidence I gave the Clerk of Court could be too liberally interpreted,” Feraltz added, while Garol mused, distracted, on Feraltz’s lack of an accent. “So I hope you haven’t come on a misunderstanding, Bench specialist. But I’m glad to answer any questions you might have, sir.”
Polite, as well as a well-spoken man. “How do you mean, ‘liberally interpreted’?” It was an interesting thing to say, and could serve to ease in to the questions Garol had come to ask. “If you would care to elaborate.”
The statements that had been forwarded to him said Langsariks. If there was going to be any trouble with the Langsarik settlement at Port Charid, Garol needed to cut it out quickly and quietly, before Chilleau Judiciary got any creative ideas about revising the amnesty.
Feraltz was very willing to elaborate, apparently. “If I can say so without reproach, Bench specialist, the Clerk of Court who came to see me seemed to be determined that she already knew exactly what had happened. She kept on helping me out, you know the kind of thing I mean, and I think she recorded things I didn’t actually say. I really think she did. There’s no real reason to blame the Langsariks for that raid, it’s just circumstantial evidence, from start to finish.”
Well, that was a start on what Garol wanted to hear; so it was that much more important to be careful about it, accordingly. “I’ve reviewed the evidence certified by the Clerk of Court who interviewed you, but it’s been a few days since then. I do seem to recall a positive identification attributed to you. Langsariks, in the raiding party.”
Difficult to tell whether Feraltz’s pained expression resulted from psychological distress over a potentially serious misunderstanding, or just reflected physical pain. “I never made any such assertion, Bench specialist, I’d swear to it. I might not have been as coherent as I would have liked to be, though.”
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