Fisner wondered whether the note of grim amusement he thought he heard in the First Secretary’s voice was really there, or just his imagination. Vogel bowed slightly toward the priority-access channel’s portal on Factor Madlev’s desk as he replied.
“We’ll mount a quiet search, of course, First Secretary. There appears to be more than one body missing, so we have good hope of finding something.”
Vexing. They’d noticed that Pettiche wasn’t there.
Should he have done that differently? After all — to die in the service of the Angel of Destruction was to go to heavenly glory and eternal overlordship beneath the canopy of Heaven —
It was too late now. Pettiche had gone to Geraint in Dalmoss’s place, with Dalmoss’s identity papers — since Fisner needed Dalmoss to remain behind for the raid on Honan-gung. Pettiche had been gone for two days now. No, there was no profit in second-guessing himself; best simply to concentrate on the piece of the puzzle that he still held and leave the rest for later.
He held the Langsarik they’d taken off Tyrell.
Vogel continued. “The principal problem is that for all the talk of Langsariks, there’s no hints as to how the Langsariks are supposed to have pulled things off. No missing crews. No unexplained affluence in settlement. We can’t make it stick without some explanation, First Secretary.”
Verlaine wanted Vogel to find the body, very well, Vogel would find the body; and if he didn’t, it would have to be the result of determined avoidance, as cleverly as Fisner meant to arrange things. Somehow. He didn’t know exactly how it was going to be yet, but the Holy Mother would guide him, as She had before.
“The public believes that the Langsariks can do magic, Vogel, evidence or no evidence. This is five within the year, and blood makes a strong impression on the minds of governments with merchants to look out for and collect taxes from. Things are warming up uncomfortably for the Second Judge. I’m promising a resolution soon, and doing my best not to define ‘soon.’ Any assistance you can offer will be greatly appreciated.”
Fisner had assistance to offer, though nobody here could even guess.
If the First Secretary is getting pressure now, Fisner told himself with satisfaction, just wait till the raid at Honan-gung. That would put First Secretary Verlaine into a position such that he would have no choice but to revoke the Langsarik amnesty. He’d have all the evidence he needed to back him up. After that the Bench specialists could leave Port Charid and go on to bigger, better, more important issues than that of determining exactly who was actually responsible for commerce raiding in the Shawl of Rikavie.
“Understood, First Secretary. That’s all I have. Bench specialist Garol Aphon Vogel, away, here.”
He’d be away himself as soon as he could be.
Now that Vogel was back in Port Charid the Honan-gung raid could go forward, just as soon as Hilton Shires could be convinced that he had intercepted incriminating and important information.
“Chilleau Judiciary off transmit. Closing session, clear.”
The Bench specialist terminated the transmit. “Thank you, Factor Madlev, I’ll be going. We have some investigations to conduct, but I have no information I can share with you at the present time.”
“Just keep me posted as you can, Bench specialist, and thank you. Don’t forget. Anything we can do to put your efforts forward. Anything at all.”
Vogel nodded and left; Fisner prepared to continue the presentation he’d used to cover his presence here for Vogel’s visit. It wouldn’t be long; he was nearly done.
Then he had things that he could do to put Vogel’s efforts forward.
And Vogel would never even know whom he really had to thank.
###
It was well past the end of his scheduled shift, but Hilton Shires had things to do before he could be comfortable leaving the day’s report for the foreman in the morning. Floor manager Dalmoss had apparently spent as much of his time in administrative tasks as in supervision, and while this new warehouse complex was still far from finished, the foreman had started to move crates into the roughed-out warehouse on overflow.
They simply didn’t have anyplace else to put the cargoes that were coming clear through to Port Charid now that they could no longer be accommodated at Okidan, at Tyrell, at the Combine Yards within the Shawl of Rikavie that had been absorbing the orphaned cargoes for months.
There were three freighter tenders on the airfield just then, and one under cover in off-load; where were they going to put all of this merchandise?
It had to slow down.
It had to.
The Combine’s cargo-handling facilities were already charging a significant premium for the service, in an attempt to bring demand into alignment with the increasingly limited supply of warehouse space and cargo-handling capability. Making money hand over fist, in Hilton’s estimation, because he knew what the Factor was charging, and for amateur handlers in an unfinished warehouse — well.
The second shift on construction had gone off; third shift was at the far end of the facility trying to get the rest of the exterior walls up before the winter rains set in. Hilton was alone at his end of the warehouse, walking from cargo tower to cargo tower as he struggled to locate all of the lots his record showed as having been off-loaded on his shift.
It was quiet where he was.
The far end of the warehouse complex where third shift was at work was out of earshot; though Hilton could see movement down at the end of the facility, it was only in a vague and generalized fashion. Quiet, and he was tired; only three more columns of figures to locate and he’d be able to sign off on the receiving report and log his duty roster and go to bed.
The dormitory building was still under construction as well, but he could sleep there free of charge and be accounted for when the midnight tally report was done. He didn’t relish the prospect of hiking all the way back out to the settlement at this hour. It was cold out there, and since the roads were not well lighted, it was a little difficult to navigate over the uneven terrain at the side of the transit track without mistaking a shadow for a rock or vice versa, with adverse consequences for one’s flesh and clothing.
The dormitory would be warm and dry, and Factor Madlev made sure there was always hot soup in the communal kitchen for people coming off shift. So that was dinner, as well, and his wages on top of it — it was a good bargain all around.
If it hadn’t been for the uncertainty that hung over the entire Langsarik settlement, life would be good. Factor Madlev firmly discounted the gossip, coming out very strongly against any loose anti-Langsarik talk on his work crews; but there would be no escaping it until the problem was solved somehow. Someone was raiding warehouses and murdering people. Langsariks had been very successful commerce raiders. Not all the public support Factor Madlev — and Foreman Feraltz, and floor manager Dalmoss, when he got back from Geraint — could give would change that fact.
Weaving his way through the towering stacks of off-loaded crates, Hilton checked crate markers against his list, filling out his tally sheet. Almost there. Less than two columns left to check, and he had hit a good grouping, the crates on this aisle seemed to have been stacked in order by accident. It didn’t always turn out that way. Hilton had almost wondered if someone had jumbled the crates on him on purpose, earlier in the day, as part of a scheme of petty harassment or something — or maybe it was just a form of hazing, on the part of the crew.
Or maybe there was no intention to blame for the confusion at all, and that had just been the way the crates had stacked. It didn’t matter. He was almost done. And he got paid for his overtime, so he had nothing to complain about.
He stopped at the end of one long row of crates to tilt his tally sheet to the light and check his figures; and then he heard something.
It was dead quiet in this part of the warehouse complex; there was no wind that night, and while the raw construction did creak and moan a bit while the temperature fell at sunset, what he thought
he could hear was not the groaning of a growing building talking to itself but someone talking to himself.
Or at least someone talking.
Raising his head to cast about for the direction of the sound, Hilton thought quickly, his heart beating faster with involuntary excitement.
There was nobody there.
No one was on shift for cargo handling. He made up the shift roster himself in Dalmoss’s absence. He knew. Not even he was scheduled to be there, but he was running late; on any normal day he would have left the area, hours ago.
Someone talking.
Hilton opened his mouth to give a hallo, then closed it again.
No one was supposed to be there; and the sound didn’t quite seem like a normal conversation, somehow, it seemed to be near whispered. As though someone was telling secrets.
He couldn’t see anything out of the ordinary down the long row of crates in either direction; but he thought he could get closer to the sound he heard. He had plenty of shadows to help him out. The lighting was still strictly minimal, and so far overhead that the cavernous deeps between rows of crates were almost as good as a shield against detection — so long as a man walked carefully, holding his tally board close so that any telltale glare off the document screen would remain hidden.
Whispering.
At the far end of the next row, at the back of the stacks, next to the rear wall that separated the warehouse from the back end of the administrative offices.
Hilton moved slowly and carefully through the shadows, keeping his breath quiet and his movement smooth.
He reached the far end of the back stacks, and when he bent his head — carefully, carefully — around the corner of the crates that ended the row, Hilton heard the voices quite distinctly.
Buyer at Kansin, especially the larger pieces. Guaranteed.
The speaker wasn’t at the back of the row where Hilton was standing, but appeared to be at the back of the next row; so that only the width of the aisle and that of the row itself stood between them, and Hilton had the shadows in his favor.
Lost the better part of our last take. Boss isn’t very happy about that. Not happen again.
He couldn’t hear everything. Bits and pieces of the words were lost in the great hush of the warehouse, muffled by absorption by the bulk of the stacked crates. What he could hear electrified him.
Shut us down sooner or later. Honan-gung. While we can. The arrangements.
Hilton eased his body carefully around the corner of the stack of crates and peered into the darkness across the circle, hoping that the whites of his eyes would not catch the light. Two people. One of them talking. The outlines were indistinct, and the voice was oddly muted or muffled. He had to get closer to hear what they were talking about. To hear the details, because it was clear enough to Hilton what they were talking about.
He had to know who they were.
While we can still blame Langsariks. Can’t have very much longer. One month, two months, tops.
Measuring the distance carefully in his mind, Hilton crouched down slowly to set the tally board on the ground. He could clear the space between them in four paces. He would have the advantage of surprise. He could get one of them, at least, and then they’d have a good chance of finding out what had been going on all of these weeks at Port Charid.
The tally board made no sound as he set it down.
But something alerted the whisperers regardless.
Hilton gathered up his energy to make his move, but one of them pushed the other suddenly.
Run.
He sprinted after them furiously, but they had a head start on him. They were both good runners. They had the darkness on their side.
Hilton followed the sound of footfalls as fast as he could run, spurred on by desperate fear of losing this chance; but the rows and rows of crates echoed the sound and confused the track, and Hilton had to stop at last and admit it to himself.
He’d lost them.
He’d had them within his grasp, and he had lost them, but he could go to the authorities and tell them . . .
Tell them what?
That he had heard someone plotting a raid, someone who took the blame for previous raids and exonerated the Langsariks by implication?
He couldn’t even go to the authorities. Maybe they wouldn’t laugh in his face, but there was no hope that they would take him seriously. He wouldn’t take himself seriously, in their position.
He needed more information.
Slowly, Hilton worked his way back to where he’d been to find his tally sheet. He would come back with a light and check the area, but he didn’t have much hope of finding anything.
He had the tally to complete.
If a raid was being plotted, and the conspirators had met among the stacks of cargo to confer, some one or more people who worked in the warehouse were in on it.
Not Langsariks. No Langsarik would have risked compromising the settlement by missing report in these troubled times.
There were other people on the various construction crews, and someone would give him a signal sooner or later. They didn’t know how much he’d heard. They couldn’t know. They’d think he’d just happened on them, and knew nothing.
He would be watching.
He wouldn’t rest until he had information that would give the Bench specialist who had come to end the raids the hard facts he would need to find the damned pirates, and punish them for murderers.
###
Kazmer had no documentation to show; the Bench had everything that the freighter had been carrying when it had been impounded at Anglace.
He didn’t need documentation.
“I was here not long before the raid on the Tyrell Yards,” he explained to the man behind the counter. “I’ve shaved my beard since, but I was with my principal. Noman, his name was. We came for a freighter tender to move some grain out of atmosphere, do you remember? The freighter tender was just being released to service after maintenance.”
The man behind the counter kept his face carefully expressionless. “I can’t say that I do remember any such thing.” No, of course he couldn’t, especially not knowing exactly who Vogel — beside Kazmer, but ever so slightly in the background — might be. Vogel was not in uniform, but it wasn’t a good time to trust strangers in Port Charid, especially not in seedy little third-rate freighter brokerages like this one.
“I’ll tell you one thing, though,” the man behind the counter said, turning and reaching behind him for a ledger portfolio. “All of our activity is fully documented. Correctly documented. Anything we do we get proper clearance for. See for yourself, maybe you can answer your own question.”
Whatever that might be.
“I expect the records all got a pretty good going-over, after the last raid,” Vogel said in a genial and conversational tone, stepping up to the counter. “More excitement than anyone really needs, if you ask me.” Vogel had turned to the section in the portfolio where the hard-copy requisition documents were kept. The ones that showed original approvals for release of transport.
The man behind the counter was too suspicious to allow himself to be drawn into the complicity of complaint. “We have nothing to hide, and it’s just what must be done. Our books are always open.”
There it was — the release order Noman had brought to this broker to obtain the security keys to the freighter tender Kazmer had piloted through atmosphere to rendezvous with the freighter they’d taken to the Tyrell Yards.
Vogel pulled the document away from its secures and laid it on the counter, turning to the back of the portfolio where the receipts would be kept. “Nice release seal here,” Vogel said, tapping the mark. “Combine Yards. Fisner Feraltz, that’s his mark, isn’t it? I suppose you’ve already had this run through authentication.”
The man behind the counter was agitated, but still wary. “No, why should we? There’s been no challenge. No question. What do you think you’re doing?”
Vogel had completed the h
and receipt and passed it across to the man behind the counter. “I’m taking this document. You’ll initial, of course, as witnessing that all the information is correctly filled out? Thank you. Oh. Here. Have a look at this.”
Kazmer couldn’t tell exactly where Vogel got it, but Vogel was holding a little flat chop in his left hand. Could have been up his sleeve. On his chrono. Behind a button. Anything. “Bench special evidence sigil, there. This one’s genuine.” Vogel set chop to receipt, and the electronic traces of the micro-circuitry it embedded in the fibers of the document’s matrix glittered unnervingly in the flat light of the little front office.
Vogel folded the freighter-tender release and tucked it into an inner pocket somewhere. “If you’re lucky, you’ll never see another one like it. Thank you for your time.”
So they were leaving.
The man behind the counter was holding the receipt up to the light, staring at the seal Vogel had set upon it. Kazmer closed the office door behind him quietly, reluctant to interrupt the man’s awestruck concentration.
Vogel was standing with his arms folded, looking at people in the street. “That little courier,” Vogel said. That was right; he’d told Vogel about the Langsariks’ escape craft, the one with the contraband communications equipment. “Was that on the freighter tender? Or on the freighter you joined?”
“We transferred it with the grain,” Kazmer replied promptly. “And carrying battle cannon, they said? The freighter tender’s fuel burn did seem a little odd, now that I think of it. But I was thinking about other things.”
Vogel nodded. “It’d have to be a sweet little piece of machinery to carry battle cannon. I wonder whose it is.”
Kazmer knew.
But he’d almost reconciled himself to the fact that nobody would believe him.
It didn’t matter so much in the end if they believed him about the Angel. Most of the rest of the Combine had never believed Sarvaw about the Angel anyway; it was hard for people to face the fact that such atrocities occurred. What mattered first and foremost was only convincing the authorities that whatever was going on in Port Charid was not the doing of Langsariks breaching the terms of their amnesty agreement. If only that point got through, the Angel could go diddle itself blind, with Kazmer’s heartfelt blessing.
Angel of Destruction Page 18