Angel of Destruction

by Susan R. Matthews

  Politics.

  “Track that Fleet Interrogations Group for me, Jils. Let me know when they clear the exit vector at Sillume.”

  And thanks.

  But she knew that.

  Extra words were dangerous when communications were on redirect.

  Jils was off; Chilleau Judiciary was off. He was alone with his thoughts.

  If there was to be a raid at Honan-gung at all, it had to happen soon, before the Fleet Interrogations Group arrived.

  Could he rely on the greed of this so-called “Angel of Destruction” of Cousin Stanoczk’s to try for one last payout?

  How long would the Angel keep him waiting — and how long could he afford to wait before he would be forced to admit defeat?

  He was already defeated.

  If he could not take prisoners in a raid at Honan-gung, there would be no proving to Chilleau Judiciary that the Langsariks were innocent victims of conspiracy.

  He would hold where he was, and wait.

  He had no acceptable alternatives to hope for.

  ###

  Kazmer Daigule parked his for-hire well clear of the little house where Walton Agenis sat under house arrest. The lights that the guards had trained on the building cast shadows in sharp relief, so the scene took on an air of unreality, strange and oppressive in the darkness of the settlement. Was it some variety of harassment? Kazmer wondered. Or was it just unthinking cruelty, the sort of blind impersonal brutality that was that much the more difficult to bear for being so completely thoughtless?

  The guards were warehousemen from the Combine Yards in Port Charid proper — Dolgorukij. Uncomfortable with their role as security, they gathered at the front of the house as Kazmer approached, frowning and doing their best to look stern, bulked up with cold-weather gear in the crisp night air.

  When he was within easy hailing distance one of them spoke. “You, what’s your business here? You can’t go in, you know.”

  The awkwardness they clearly felt in their performance of their task was eased by their quick recognition of what, if not who, he was. Dolgorukij knew Sarvaw as Sarvaw knew Dolgorukij, and honest warehousemen were naturally put at ease by their inbred knowledge of their racial superiority.

  It was a useful trick of the blood, something the Holy Mother had ordained to give Her Sarvaw children an edge even in adversity against their opponents. Kazmer knew how to deal with Dolgorukij bullies. It was nothing personal, not really.

  “There should be no problem, cousin, surely.” In the shadows cast by the bright lights against the greater darkness Kazmer could see eyes narrow in disdain and suspicion at his choice of words. But even a Sarvaw could lay claim to a privileged position, without blushing, when it was a Malcontent who spoke. “I’d just like to go and see Modice. She’s at home? With her aunt?”

  The guards were not receptive to his powers of persuasion, however. Kazmer fingered the neckline of his blouse nervously, pulling at the fabric next to his skin as though his collar were too tight — taking care that the red ribbon that he wore next to his skin showed clearly.

  The guards relaxed.

  “Sorry, cousin, no offense,” the spokesman said. Kazmer was amused to note that he ranked greater kinship as a Malcontent than he could ever have been granted as a Sarvaw. “Don’t bring us shame before the foreman, though. Go on in.”

  He was a Malcontent. He could go anywhere, do anything, and be bowed on his way by people who would never dream of granting such a privilege to anyone else. It was funny.

  Crossing the brilliantly illuminated space between the cordon and the house, knocking softly at the door. “Is Modice home?”

  They knew that he was there, of course. They’d seen him coming. It was almost as bright inside as if the lights had been on, and the lights weren’t on, though the windows had been only partially screened over. Frugal. Saving of energy. Why turn on the lights when Port Charid provided such ample illumination at no charge?

  Modice let him in and closed the door behind him.

  Walton Agenis sat in the tiny living room watching him come. The effect of the shadows on the wall from the lights outside was ghastly.

  “You’re looking well, Modice,” Kazmer said. Modice had gone out to fetch the gel-sheets that she’d been preparing in the kitchen, but they wouldn’t know that, outside. They could be listening. He had to assume that someone might be listening. But whoever might be listening could only guess at the potential meaning of whatever they might hear. “Are you getting enough rest?”

  Modice was back with gel-sheets in a pan, paper — thin sheets of gelatin made opaque with starch. And a stylus. “Not very well, Kazmer, I’m afraid. These lights.”

  Kazmer wrote on the top gel-sheet and passed the pan to Walton Agenis. FIG clears vector w/in 24 hrs. Must raid before pursuit possible.

  It was a form of freehand code; he couldn’t afford to arouse suspicion by concentrating so long on what he needed to write that there was a break in the conversation. “Do you have something you could use as a compress, to cover your eyes? A scarf might do it. If the colors weren’t too bright, of course.”

  Agenis lifted the gel-sheet from the pan and folded it up neatly. “Would you get me something to drink, girl.” Writing on the next gel-sheet in the pan. “I don’t want you coming around to court Modice, Daigule. I’ve told you before. You’re not fit to husband a Langsarik.”

  Progress of organization. Contingency plan?

  “Modice could do worse than take a Sarvaw sweetheart,” Kazmer protested, mildly. Even a Malcontent lover would be a better fate than the Bond, after all. “I might be able to protect her. Things don’t look very promising, you must know that.”

  Quiet, no alarm. Good progress. Vogel returns PC if raid delayed.

  If the Angel cut the margin for its raid too fine, Vogel would be forced to abandon the ambush; Vogel was adamant on the subject. He would be at Port Charid before the Fleet Interrogations Group arrived, one way or the other.

  Kazmer had his doubts about that.

  Vogel was clearly all but desperate to prevent the Fleet Interrogations Group from settling in to do its work; but without the evidence that ambushing the raid would produce, how did Vogel hope to prevent it?

  “Better pure and falsely accused than soiled and safe, Daigule,” Agenis insisted, inflexibly. “Modice.”

  Modice had returned with a tray and a pitcher of water, three glasses.

  “Modice, I don’t want you seeing this person again. You are not to let him in, if he has the audacity to return to my house to insult me with his importunity. And in our hour of vulnerability, Daigule, you should be ashamed.”

  “Aunt Walton, please. You’re just upsetting yourself. Here. I brought us all a nice glass of cold water.” Three gel-sheets from the stack in the pan had been discarded; that was one for each glass. It would be a moment before the gel-sheet in his glass dissolved, however.

  If anything goes wrong, Aunt Agenis wrote on the next gel-sheet in the pan. Get Modice out of here.

  It was a firm hand, though written on a gel-sheet. The tension and the waiting, the uncertainty and the anxiety, were taking their toll on Walton Agenis; but she saw as clearly and as far as ever she had. Kazmer could only bow in her direction. It was not for nothing that she had been called the Deep-Minded.

  “I’d better not, Modice, your aunt wants me out of the house. But if there’s anything I can do, you send for me, all right? You don’t have to toady to this harridan; she’d rather see you dead than with me. And I could make you happy.”

  He kept his tone very reasonable and calm, he thought. All things considered. Walton Agenis straightened up in her chair so abruptly that she spilled half the water in her glass, her face suddenly transfused with mirth despite it all, and mouthed the words back at him with a look of exaggerated outrage. Harridan?

  “You can’t talk about my aunt that way.” Modice’s voice trembled as she fought to keep her composure. “Perhaps you’d better leave, Kazmer.�
�

  The gel-sheet in his glass had dissolved; Modice would take the unused sheets back to the kitchen, to make cellophane dumplings. It took a steady hand to make Langsarik cellophane dumplings under the best of circumstances. That she could pretend to do so convincingly under these was a measure of her nerve.

  “Well. I’m sorry you feel that way.” He could express all the resentment he had a right to feel, without holding back. Modice made wonderful cellophane dumplings. He wouldn’t be there to help eat them. “You’ll be sorry. I wouldn’t wait too long to change my mind if I were you, though. I’ve got my pride, you know.”

  And she could buy it for three dumplings and a smile. She had. Or rather she could have, in the past, because it was no good anymore, no matter how good a cook she was.

  Take care of Modice, Walton Agenis had said.

  Now that it was too late, she would trust him.

  Kazmer paused on the threshold of Agenis’s house to let the resentful anguish in his heart paint his countenance an appropriate shade of outrage and insulted fury; and left them there together in the surreal shadows of the floodlit house.

  ###

  “The Third Fleet Interrogations Group is due off the Sillume exit vector in twenty hours.” They would be able to stage from the new airfield at the construction site; Dalmoss was in no danger of an accidental meeting with any Malcontents, Sarvaw or otherwise, out here. Those people were in Port Charid proper, where they belonged.

  No, they belonged in Hell, but it was not Fisner Feraltz’s mission to see them escorted safely to their destination — he knew where his special duty lay. “You must be near enough to the entrance vector to make pursuit a clear waste of energy.”

  “How do I know that, eldest and firstborn?” Dalmoss asked, and there was just the slightest trace of insubordinate challenge in his voice. His long days of seclusion had worn upon him; the proximity of the Langsarik corpse had made him nervous. It would be all right. After this Dalmoss would be able to rest and recreate himself in the bosom of his family, at home, on Arakcheyek. “In order to time my raid. Must I have special knowledge?”

  Good question. Fisner thought for a moment. “The Langsarik leader was present when we talked to Chilleau Judiciary. She passed on the information somehow. If you set your margin carefully enough, it will seem clear that you miscalculated, you didn’t expect the Fleet Interrogations Group in system so soon, you flee in disarray — leaving the body of at least one of your people behind.”

  Hilton Shires.

  How beautifully it all fit together, when the Holy Mother smiled upon the enterprise.

  “Twenty hours. Ten hours from the exit vector to Port Charid.” Dalmoss was talking it through, out loud. Fisner could bear the trivial details of it patiently: it would serve as a useful check on the soundness of Dalmoss’s reasoning, tipping Fisner off if he needed to retire his raid leader. “Four hours from Port Charid to Honan-gung, at this time of year. So if we leave in panic and disarray as soon as the Fleet Interrogations Group clears the vector, there is no point in pursuing us.”

  Dalmoss would hit Honan-gung; there would be a raid in process as the Fleet Interrogations Group came off the Sillume exit vector. The raiders would escape, but they would not be able to save their families. The Bench’s punishment would be stern and swift — though after the Fleet Interrogations Group had done its work, the Bench sanctions would be perhaps something of an afterthought.

  “You must prepare,” Fisner urged Dalmoss to energize him, get him going. “You must be away from Honan-gung inside of thirty-four hours. There is much to do. This is our finest moment, second eldest and next born.”

  Dalmoss bowed, his expression determined and joyful. “Sweet indeed is Holy ordinance, firstborn and eldest. With your blessing we triumph.”

  With the Holy Mother Herself on their side they were invincible.

  Before two days had passed it would be over for the Langsariks at Port Charid.

  Chapter Eleven

  Hilton lay flat on his back on a scoot-plank on the floor beneath the crane’s trolley with a probe in one hand and a gleam in the other. “What exactly am I looking for, Jevan?” he asked, trying to make sense of the bewildering array of nozzles and blind access bits on the underside of the crane’s power box. “Hydraulic scan? Flux regulation coupling?”

  Silence.

  Hilton wondered if he’d lost his work partner. That was more serious than not knowing what to do with the problem at hand. Jevan was the only Dolgorukij on the crew here, the man the Malcontent had identified as a probable agent for the Angel of Destruction. Hilton needed Jevan where he could keep an eye on him, figuratively if not literally. If Jevan had some means of sending a covert signal to warn the raiders away, Hilton needed to know immediately.

  So where had Jevan gone?

  Footsteps approached the crane trolley where Hilton lay; Jevan. Maybe. “Sorry, Shires.” Yes, that was Jevan. “Maybe we should hold off on this for now. I just heard, there’s a freighter coming in. They might need help load-out.”

  Hilton thought for a moment. Jevan could have heard, yes, if he’d been chatting with someone in the dock-master’s office when contact was made.

  “Maybe we should all go get sticks,” Hilton suggested, not moving. “Can’t be too careful. Might be Langsariks.”

  Jevan laughed, crouching on his heels to stick his face into the gap between the bottom of the crane’s trolley and the floor.

  “You’re a funny man.”

  Jevan could well laugh, Hilton told himself, excitement building within him. If Kazmer’s Cousin Stanoczk was right, Jevan already knew that they weren’t Langsarik raiders.

  “Come out from there, Hilton, we’ll be wanted.”

  Yes, he’d wager on it. Shutting off his gleam, arms straight to his sides, Hilton pushed himself out from underneath the crane’s trolley on his scoot-plank, using his feet for propulsion. “No arguments from me, friend. I’d much rather load than muck around with this stuff.”

  He felt a tingling sensation, in the sole of his work boot.

  Vibration from the movement of the scoot-plank?

  No.

  Vogel’s signal.

  Jevan was holding out a hand to help him up. Hilton took the welcome assistance in the spirit in which it was offered. It was nothing personal. Jevan was a perfectly amiable person; but he was in league with the enemy of the Langsariks, plotting the ruin of the Langsariks. There was blood to balance between them besides.

  Maybe it was personal after all — at least on Hilton’s part.

  “Ready?” Jevan asked. “I should probably go and find the others. In case we’re needed.”

  What made Jevan so sure that they would be?

  Still, it might just be common practice on warehouse crews to minimize work effort. “I know,” Hilton suggested, to enter into the spirit of the game. “I’ll go help find people. I think Teller and Ames are on remote.”

  The hesitation in Jevan’s eyes was very quickly masked. “Well. Sure. Why not? I’ll get out to interim stores, then.” But it was there; and Hilton could have smiled out loud to see it, except that he might be misinterpreted. Or tip Jevan off.

  The signal buzzed twice more in his work boot and was still.

  Hilton waited until Jevan was out of sight; then turned, heading toward the corridors that led to the maintenance tunnels for the remote sites where the solar arrays were generating the station’s power.

  Where he had a raiding party that needed to get to the docking bay.

  They had been on alert for two days. They were ready for some action.

  ###

  Garol Vogel stood behind the dock-master in her office with his back to the windows in the wall, watching as she engaged the incoming craft.

  “All right, Melrick, your credentials clear. Permission to dock, transmit your manifest.”

  It claimed to be the freighter Melrick from the Bortic Yards, outbound from Charid for Lorton and scheduled to carry a consignment
of cultural artifacts for the cultural institute there as well as licensed replicas for sale on the open market.

  “Freighter Melrick here, thank you, dock-master. Initiating transmit.” Was it his imagination — Garol wondered — or did he recognize that voice? Had he heard it somewhere before? One thing was for certain — the accent was good. Garol knew it wasn’t really Langsariks. He believed and hoped it wasn’t Langsariks. But the freighter’s captain sounded Langsarik to Garol.

  The freighter claimed to have off-loaded at Port Charid and taken on cargo at the Combine Yards before paying a visit to Honan-gung as its next-to-last stop before it made the Sillume entry vector. The next-to-last part was a good touch, Garol felt. Subtle. These people were good.

  Garol watched the freighter on approach as its manifest scrolled over the receiver. Shires was with the Dolgorukij, but not so close that the man had no opportunity to send the all clear for the raid to his headquarters. There had been no signal that Garol had intercepted: yet the freighter was here. Garol could only hope that meant that the signal would only have been sent if there had been a problem.

  Kazmer Daigule had been tracking the freighter Melrick without pause since it had made rendezvous earlier today with a freighter tender from Port Charid — that freighter tender, the one whose weight indicated that it was carrying battle cannon or something equivalently and anomalously heavy.

  This was what they had been waiting for.

  The hardest part of this mission was about to start. He had to keep the raiders distracted while the Langsariks did their thing.

  All he really wanted to do was to borrow someone’s weapon and shoot them all, simply shoot them all, for the trouble they had caused and the people they had killed, for the hazard they’d created for a people trying to integrate peacefully into Jurisdiction, for the shockingly insolent disregard they showed toward civil society and the common right of common people to live free from fear in an ordered society.