by Mel Keegan
They had been assigned to Hangar 9, in the keel of the platform, just short of the comm arrays and too close to one of the massive Arago generators for Marin’s liking. He felt the droning buzz, like a low level resonance in his bones, as Fargo took the Rand in and set it down neatly between a disgustingly cherry pink Tropheo and a small, sunshine yellow Kotaro-Fuente sportplane.
The engines shut down and Fargo woofed a sigh. Perlman applauded with a few sharp claps, and thumped her shoulder. In the back, Inosanto said loudly, “Hey, dudes, you notice something? We’re still alive!” Fargo turned the seat around and showed him her middle finger.
“Best behavior,” Travers said mock-sternly. “You’re not going to mingle, but you are going to show the face of this unit while this ship is on this deck, and you are not going to get that face punched.”
“Yes, Sergeant,” Inosanto groaned. “’Scuse me, Major. And I still haven’t gotten used to that.”
“Neither have I,” Travers admitted, “and either way – best behavior.”
Shapiro allowed himself a quiet chuckle as he stood, ran his palms over the perfect gray surface of the dress uniform, and Perlman popped the hatch. Travers went aft to break sidearms out of storage as the ramp whined down, but Marin held up a hand to stop Shapiro before he could head out.
“We go first,” he said firmly.
“Security,” Shapiro’s voice was sharp with bitter tones.
“Dendra Shemiji,” Marin corrected. “I’ve seen Fleet’s idea of security, and you’ll forgive me if it didn’t fill me with confidence.”
“All guns and bluster,” Shapiro guessed.
“Something like that.” Marin took a Zamphir pistol and a Chiyoda AR-60 from Travers. The Chiyoda fit the holster at his left side, and he primed the smaller, lighter Zamphir. “Neil?”
“After you,” Travers invited.
In fact, Travers had only begun the Dendra Shemiji studies, and they were likely to be interrupted for a long time. He deferred without comment to Marin’s far greater experience – hung back on the ramp, halfway down from the hatch, and let Marin work. Surveillance and security duties were little like the battlefield for which he was trained.
The hangar air was cold, a little thin, breezy with the equalizing pressures after the Montenegro came in. Marin’s senses were wide open as he deliberately dropped off the ramp and stood in the cover of the lander’s nose. The cavern was half dark, half neon glare, which made for difficult visual conditions.
His eyes protested the lights and he slid on a pair of blue glasses, which flattened colors and dimmed the glare while he panned a small handy around the full three-sixty. Heat traces were everywhere; standby drones were parked, still hot, in service bays, and the pink Tropheo was still warm enough to have been powered up very recently. The sensor sweep was filled with useless information, and he fell back on his own senses.
The only things moving were handling drones, little machines shuttling baggage from a plane across the hangar and into the elevator. He heard only the shush of the air vents and the whine of overstressed servos from the drones, and he smelt only the acrid, ozone tang of hot Aragos, lift engines cycling down to idleness.
“Clear,” he judged.
Travers hopped off the ramp and joined him by the forward struts. His voice was very quiet. “I saw the nostrils flare. What were you sniffing for?”
“Perfume, cologne, even sweat.” Marin gestured at the parked ships. “There’s twenty places to hide in here, but you can’t hide the cologne you doused yourself with two hours ago! I was listening for the knock of heels on the deck as someone moved about, out of sight.”
“And if you were up against someone with the same skills,” Travers wondered, “who didn’t hose himself – herself! – down with perfume and then try to hide, maybe someone who wore soft-sole shoes?”
“That’s when it gets interesting,” Marin admitted. “It’s down to who shoots fastest, and can get on target.”
“I had to ask.” Travers slid his own Zamphir into its holster. “Mark taught you this stuff.”
“Most of it.” Marin stepped away from the lander’s nose as Shapiro appeared on the ramp.
“The AI has already announced us. They’re waiting for us.” Shapiro lifted a curious brow at Marin. “Your hackles are up, Curtis?”
“Not yet,” Marin admitted. “But I don’t want to be picking up the pieces and wishing. Where do they want us?”
“Elevator 6. And by all means, lead the way,” Shapiro invited.
A step out of the hangar, and the opulence of StarCity began. The elevator was sleeved with amber mirrors, its air smelt of neroli and the unmistakable, contrapuntal strings of Bevan Daku accompanied them up four levels to a reception kiosk where a hostess waited. She was taller than Marin, reed slender, with red-gold hair and eyes bluer than natural human eyes ever were. The designer body and a business college degree brought her here, dressed in a pale green skinthin and a smile that never slipped for an instant, directing guests as if it were the greatest honor to which any mortal could aspire.
A buggy stood by the kiosk, and as they slid into it Marin gazed across the wide park at the center of StarCity. The mansions were ranged around it, under the armorglass dome; below, the city of Elstrom stretched to the horizon and beyond, and at night it was like being suspended between two starfields, with the Mare Resalq above and a million city lights below.
The mansion belonging to Robert Chandra Liang stood on the eastern perimeter, bordered by gardens as impeccable as Marin remembered, arranged around terracotta courtyards with thickets of potted palms and fountains. And Chandra Liang had volunteered to host the company gathering for the memorial for several reasons.
He was at the heart of the Velcastran republican movement, and if the colonial governor appointed by the Confederacy were to step down tomorrow, he would walk into the Grand Senate and take the oath as Velcastra’s first president. Michael Vidal had been his eyes and ears in Fleet for more than five years; he was related by marriage to several of the oldest, richest houses on Velcastra, families that had come to this world with its First Fleet.
Did he feel in part responsible for Vidal’s death? Marin stood back with Travers in the warm, shaded courtyard, watching as Chandra Liang clasped Shapiro’s wrist, and for a moment he thought he saw the shadow of something that might have been guilt. Yet Vidal would have made scornful noises and told them he had done what he was born to do, and if it was the last thing he ever did, so be it.
“Harrison, welcome,” Chandra Liang was saying. “You’re almost the last to arrive. We’ve been waiting for you. The rest of the late-comers are just distant relatives and some CNS people who’ve been given permission by the family to cover the event for CityNet. It’s a sad time for the Vidals, the Shackletons, the Rusches. They were immensely proud of Michael. So was I.”
And he meant it, Marin decided. He had been watching the man closely, with the eyes of Dendra Shemiji, from which few lies could be concealed. Chandra Liang was dressed in white, the Daku color of mourning, and the open-headed ankh was displayed clearly, a pendant on his breast. The long, raven’s wing hair was swept back, clasped, and he wore a grave face, which had as much to do with the political ramifications of the gathering as the memorial.
The courtyard and the lounge off which it opened were busy with people, and Marin recognized many of their faces. He saw Kristyn Bauer at once, and her Pakrani husband – Mike Quinn, the partner who had cost her a career in the higher echelons of Fleet, back on Earth itself, where the real power lay. Marin had never seen the man in the flesh before, and took the opportunity to look him over, head to foot. Quinn must be fifty-five by now, by no means a boy. He was as big as any full-blood Pakrani, hard as an athlete, handsome, with thick hair as white-blond as Jazinsky’s, worn as short as Travers’s dark hair. He wore a simple linen suit, some shade between blue and green, elegant and understated. He and Kristyn Bauer had married almost a quarter century before, and they wer
e so easy in each other’s company, Marin might have envied them.
On the other side of the buffet table, they were talking with Colonel Alec Tarrant, head of the resistance militia in Hydralis, Omaru, and with a young woman Marin was surprised to see. It was Zulika Garrick – Mitch Garrick’s sister, married to the ill-fated Marty Cimino, who still lay in a cryogen tank on the Borushek base, waiting for cloned organs to repair the lungs that had been ruined in the fires when Hydralis became a battlefield. Garrick was at Tarrant’s elbow, small, elegant, attentive – behaving much like a political secretary.
Beyond them was Colonel Alexis Rusch – Vidal’s aunt, who was a distaff Shackleton by birth. The Vidals were also distaff Shackletons, and proud of it. The commander of the super-carrier Kiev was accompanied by her aide, Paul L’Engle, the young lieutenant whom she trusted enough to let him work in her private spaces on the carrier. And she was listening with an expression of disdain to a young man and a young woman, whose faces Marin recognized from file images. These were the cousins, Trick and Ying – Patrick and Mei Ying Shackleton, who would have shared the inheritance with Mick. They stood to benefit from his death, which might explain the disdain with which Alexis Rusch viewed them.
Sitting in a palm-shaded corner of the courtyard, drinking cocktails and looking ill at ease, were Elaine Osman and her new husband, Senator Rob Prendergast. Marin’s eyes narrowed on these two, while Travers fetched a glass of something sparkling for Shapiro, and two mineral waters for himself and Marin.
So this was Vidal’s celebrity mother. She was no longer a girl, but she was still startlingly beautiful, and at once Marin could see the likeness to Mick. They shared the same brow line and nose. So this was the aeroball star who had married the already elderly Charles Vidal for the sake of a fortune and a social position, and then divorced him and married the senator who was soon to be the president of Jagreth. Osman was as mercenary as any politician or professional soldier; the hardness was written into every line of her face, as well as the anger, the resentment, at the death of her son. Marin was too young to have seen her play professionally, but he had seen classic replays of the games in which she won herself superstar status on the aeroball court. The same hardness was in her face even then, and today she was glaring at Shapiro, literally daring him to look her way. Perhaps wisely, he did not.
The senator was much older again, with iron gray hair and skin tanned brown, seamed and lined by too many years under Jagreth’s strong sun. But the air of power about the man was palpable – political power. He spoke for Jagreth. CityNet would report that he was on Velcastra, accompanying his new wife on the occasion of her son’s memorial, but the truth was much more complex.
As Marin watched, Chandra Liang drew them all together. Prendergast, Tarrant and Shapiro followed him into a study off the lounge area; the door closed, sealed, and Marin relaxed. Those four men were about to schedule the birth pangs of the Nine Worlds Commonwealth, most of which would be suffered out here on the frontier, and Marin was keenly aware of the gravitas of the moment.
He had turned toward Travers, about to suggest the buffet table, when Alexis Rusch’s voice cut rudely across the buzz of more polite chatter. “Oh, for heaven’s sake, Patrick, you’ll just have to muddle along like everyone else, and wait for your uncle to pass away peacefully. I suggest you find yourself some cushy little job and learn how to set yourself a budget and adhere to it!”
With that she marched away from the Shackletons, stiff backed and tense in the immaculate Fleet dress uniform, and zeroed in on Travers and Marin as the nearest familiar, friendly faces she could see. Halfway between the lounge and the courtyard, she swiped a fresh glass of champagne from a passing tray, and the glass was half empty by the time she came to rest in the shade of the potted palms, where Marin had settled to observe the guests.
“Good Christ,” she said by way of greeting, “that little shit needs five years on a Fleet crewdeck to get him thinking properly, but even if he gets his conscription papers, which is doubtful, you know where he’ll be? Daddy will get him an assignment jockeying a desk on the base in Sark, and he’ll come out of the service worse, more conceited, callow, selfish and narcissistic than he went in! Hello, Marin, Travers. How the hell did you get yourselves roped into this pack of jackals?”
Marin chuckled, and Travers suppressed a snort of amusement. “We’re running the security screen for the general,” Neil told her.
“Because Harrison doesn’t feel safe … and he isn’t,” Rusch said darkly. “None of us is.”
“You know something?” Marin’s nerve endings were prickling.
Her eyes were hawkish as she looked over the gathering. “God, I wish Michael were here. Isn’t that pathetic? I could use him. I miss his bad manners and snarky attitude – his complete honesty and loyalty. I need someone I can trust to the last, even if he’s as Daku as Bobby Liang.” She shook herself hard. “Yes, Marin, I know a good deal. I know you’re about to get an extreme closeup view of the Chicago. It’s in the Middle Heavens, and it’s coming this way, with battle orders. You’ve been told?”
“We’ve heard it mentioned,” Travers said carefully. “Shapiro’s here to negotiate where the first battle’s going to take place.”
Her mouth compressed. “Make the bastards fight where and when we need them to. I’m not privy to the Chicago’s orders, but it’ll either be Jagreth, Omaru or Velcastra, and they could easily try to crush Ulrand along the way.”
“They tried before,” Marin said quietly.
“And failed, which is all the more reason to do it right next time,” Rusch said harshly. “It’s bad, Curtis. It’s all dead wrong.”
“What do we know about the Chicago?” Travers wondered. “The command corps, at least. I know the ship well enough. I served five years aboard her, as a conscript.”
Rusch frowned at him, shrewd, interested. “I read your files when you signed with Harrison. It’s ten years or so, since you were on the Chicago.”
“It’s gone to hell?” Travers’s brows arched. “Like the old Intrepid – what, command corps corruption?”
But Rusch’s dark head shook. “Far from it. It’s one of the few ships where the officers in charge have a great deal of integrity, a powerful honor, and a history of exemplary service. All of which makes it so difficult to conceive of them coming out here and literally laying waste to a colony in order to subdue it. Rounding up ‘criminals’ for execution by the tens of thousands – if you’re known to be a republican, you’ll automatically be deemed a traitor, due a military trial and a firing squad.” She sighed heavily. “I know both the captain and the executive officer on the Chicago, and I swear to any god you want mention, Neil, I do not understand how Allan Bronhill and Valerie Sung accepted the orders to commit mass murder.”
She was agitated, carrying a burden of stress Marin did not envy. “People change,” he offered. “Bronhill and Sung could be under duress themselves.”
“It’s possible.” Rusch gestured across at the buffet table, where Kristyn Bauer and her husband were availing themselves of lobster and green salad. “You know General Bauer? Of course you do. Well, then, you know the pressure Kris was under to just bugger off, leave Earth and take her undesirable Pakrani husband and her mongrel children with her. And she did leave,” Rusch finished. “She was smart enough to turn the deal to her advantage, got herself a promotion, a new home, top salary, everything laid on for herself and Quinn and their daughters. But Fleet, and the politicians of Earth? They make me sick. They can tighten the screws, Curtis, till you just don’t have a choice, and you’ll do things, bad things, you would never have dreamed of doing before.
“But … I know Allan. He’s a scientist and an engineer as well as a career officer. I know his father, old Cornelius Bronhill – and that’s General Bronhill, Retired, formally the big he-bull at Fleet Sector Command, Darwin’s World, in case you’re wondering! These are decent human beings, with more integrity and compassion than most of the politi
cians who’re polishing senate seats with their fat asses!”
And she was furious, Marin observed. He shared a glance with Travers, and it was Neil who said, “Is it possible the senior officers have been replaced? It would have happened before the Chicago deployed, if Fleet was in any doubts about them.”
Rusch worked her neck around, betraying its stiffness. “Highly possible. If Allan begged off, you can take it as read that Val Sung left with him. She’s spent twenty years in Fleet, more, trying to stand by whatever honor the service used to have.” She glared at her empty glass. “This whole thing,” she said bitterly, “has gone to hell. It’s turned into a great, steaming pile in the years since I went through the Academy myself – and what did I join up for? I used Fleet to get me into Hellgate! Jesus, I’m not a career Fleet officer, I’m a physicist in fancy dress! My six-times great uncle would be ashamed of me.”
She meant Ernst Rabelais, whose direct descendents were the Shackletons and Vidals. She was a Shackleton to the bone marrow, through the matriarchal line. The only Rusch was her father, Congressman Bernard Rusch, whose name she assumed because she shamelessly used his money to drive her life in the directions she wanted it to go. All this, Marin and Travers knew from file data, but it was infinitely more interesting, more real, to get it from the woman’s own lips.
“He’d have been so proud of Michael,” she was saying wistfully. “Ernst and Michael had the same soul, the same spirit. Explorers, navigators, idealists, the pair of them.” Tears glistened on her eyelashes as she looked from Marin to Travers and back. “Michael will be remembered forever. There’s going to be a statue of him, after the war … if there’s anything left after the war.”
“Zunshu or Colonial?” Travers asked in an acid tone.
“Both.” Alexis Rusch set her back against the green marble pillar that held up the pergola, and closed her eyes. “I had the job telling his father, you know. Michael’s father, old Charles Vidal himself. I had to walk in there while the man was still mooching around, wondering what he did wrong to make that bitch, Elaine, leave him, and I had to deliver the usual speech.” He voice dropped several notes and fell into the flat intonation of formality. “It is my solemn duty to inform you of the sad death of your son, who gave his life in the performance of his duty and was lost to space – and blah blah, and so on.” Her brow creased in memory. “I watched Charles age ten years in that many seconds. He’s hanging on to see the memorial, to see Michael honored publicly, and then I think this city will be hosting another memorial. One of the last flesh and blood links to the colonial era is going to pass away, decades before he should.”