by Jo Zebedee
She marched across to the elevator-shaft door. It sat canted against the corridor wall, neatly creased across the middle, one corner sheared away. Two figures lay beneath it. One had almost been cut in half. She would not survive long. The other stared white-eyed at his mangled arm, and made senseless choking noises.
“You, you, and you.” Rinharte pointed at three sturdy men. “Get this debris off them.”
Another casualty lay on the ground near the gaping doorway, bleeding from the ears and mouth. Rinharte had seen similar injuries during naval engagements. For a brief moment, she was back aboard Vengeful, the decking smashed and splintered, the bulkheads blackened and warped, smoke and screams filling the air—
Following Rinharte’s orders, half a dozen proles managed to clear the wreckage and free the two trapped beneath. One died as they shifted the last piece and his torso, neatly severed at the waist, fell to one side. They could not save the other’s arm but Rinharte tourniqueted her wound securely so she would not lose more blood. The third man… Perhaps one day he would regain his wits, but it was unlikely. Navy Hurt and Sick Board infirmaries were filled with rateds whose brains had been turned to jelly by a pressure wave in an enclosed space.
When a pair of proletarian surgeon’s mates arrived, Rinharte found her original guide. “Get me out of here,” she ordered. “Now.”
“But what was it?” demanded the prole.
“It doesn’t matter, damn it!” Fear had Rinharte on edge. She had tarried here too long, she could not be caught. “Where’s the elevator you mentioned?”
Blinking, he glanced back over his shoulder. “That way, my lady,” he replied dully. “Some forty yards, then make a left. About thirty yards on.”
“And where does the elevator take me to?”
“Above, my lady.”
She glared at him. Useless creature.
“Um, the high concourse. Back of the restaurant quarter.”
“Good.” Her gaze hardened. “You will on no account mention that you have seen me. Is that understood?”
He bobbed his head. “Yes, my lady.”
Rinharte strode away. An unpleasant after-the-battle smell scented the air of the corridor. She had never become used to it.
The high concourse restaurant quarter no longer served meals. The various eateries had long since closed down. Dusty chairs and tables littered the wide passageway, some in tottering stacks, others still laid out for a day of business that had never come. Dark windows fronted the restaurants, identified by faded menus and tarnished brass plates.
Rinharte brushed at her sleeves and skirt in a useless effort to remove evidence of the carnage below. She could do nothing about the disquieting odour that clung to the fabric. Unfortunately, all her other clothing had been destroyed when her trunk imploded. Nor was there anywhere on Tanabria Station she could purchase new garments. It was embarrassing how her mission had fallen apart in such a short time.
Her dress was clearly ruined. She gazed ruefully at her reflection in a darkened window, and wondered how she dared be seen in public. Not that she had any choice. If only she had thought to wear her sword. She felt almost naked without it—more so now than earlier.
There was nothing to be done about it. She pushed back a couple of locks of hair which had escaped her chignon, tugged at the bodice of her dress, and smiled wanly at the ghostly reflection hovering in the window before her.
She had gone no more than ten yards when footsteps sounded behind her. She looked back. A uniformed figure stood twenty yards away. Rinharte froze. It was the knight-captain. He reached for his sheathed sword. Behind him, his serjeant stepped into view, his stave held before him. Her booby-trapped travel-trunk had evidently not killed them.
Rinharte raised her hands. She was unarmed and could not outrun them.
The serjeant took a step forward—
A flurry of movement behind him.
His weapon suddenly leapt from his hands to hit the ground with a dull clatter. The point of a blade burst from the centre of his chest. It withdrew as rapidly as it had appeared. A geyser of blood sprayed from the wound and the serjeant toppled forwards.
Shocked, Rinharte saw a man wielding a regulation sword standing behind the dead serjeant. Blood dripped from his blade. He flicked his wrist, and a rain of crimson splattered the knight-captain. The knight stalwart turned—
The attacker stepped back and allowed the knight to pull his sword from his scabbard. They circled one another, blades held at shoulder-height and parallel to the ground. The ringing clash of sword on sword filled the passageway. The skill with which the attacker wielded his blade astonished Rinharte. The knight stalwart was out-classed: the attacker parried savage thrusts before they broke his guard and his own lunges seemed to ignore the other’s whirling blade.
A feint, a parry, a straightened arm…
The attacker’s regulation sword pierced the knight-captain’s chest. Even from twenty yards away, Rinharte could see the wound was fatal.
She clapped a hand to her hip. But, of course, she was not wearing a sword. The knight-captain’s killer turned to her and grinned.
Rinharte’s stared in shock at the man beside the two corpses. She knew his face, but could not place it. His sudden appearance, the subsequent duel, had made her stupid—
His name came to her : “Kordelasz!”
Marine-Lieutenant Garrin demar Kordelasz’s grin widened. He strode forward, keeping his blade pointed floorwards. “Well met, ma’am. It seems I was just in time.”
“What in heavens are you doing here?” demanded Rinharte. Kordelasz’s presence was a surprise—no, a shock—and she was too stunned to be properly grateful.
Kordelasz sketched a mocking bow. “Major Skaria felt you had need of backup, ma’am, and set me to see you came to no harm.”
Skaria, Vengeful’s major of marines, could not have chosen a better guardian: Rinharte did not know Kordelasz well—he was not senior enough to mingle with the battlecruiser’s command staff; and she did not mix with the warship’s marine detachment. She knew of his reputation as a master swordsman, however. If Vengeful had still been an Imperial Navy vessel, Kordelasz would have been decorated many times over for bravery and resourcefulness.
Rinharte said nothing, still too surprised to make sense of Kordelasz’s admission. She watched numbly as he glanced at his sword and then returned to the knight stalwart. He knelt, and used the dead knight-captain’s surcoat to wipe the blood and gore from his blade. Once he had slid his cleaned sword into its scabbard, Kordelasz searched the body’s pockets. “A knight stalwart on your tail,” he said in wonder. “And a knight-captain too. We have enemies in high places.”
“Two,” said Rinharte.
Kordelasz looked back at her. “Pardon, ma’am?”
“Two knights stalwart. There was a knight-lieutenant as well.”
The marine-lieutenant removed the knight-captain’s key-ring from the corpse’s belt. “A souvenir,” he explained. He rose to his feet. Returning to Rinharte, he asked, “Another hunter?”
Rinharte’s voice was flat: “He’s dead. I killed him earlier.”
Kordelasz barked a laugh. “I’m impressed, ma’am.”
“I was lucky.”
The marine-lieutenant shook his head. “You were unlucky. Two knights stalwart—”
“And serjeants.”
“—on your tail. Yes, and serjeants too.” Kordelasz cocked his head and peered at Rinharte. “I suppose you bested him as well?”
“No. He’s still at large.” She swung an arm wide in a vague gesture. “Or perhaps my travel-trunk got him—” She held up a hand in response to Kordelasz’s questioning look. “I’ll explain later. But if he’s still alive, my best guess is he’s guarding the Central Signals Office.”
“Ah. To prevent you from calling for help. What about the Signalling Agents bureau?”
“These two were there.”
“We sh
ould leave, ma’am. Sooner or later, someone will find these bodies and we don’t want to be around when they do.”
Rinharte nodded wearily.
“I take it you had planned to take a cutter to Darrus,” said Kordelasz. “If there are any knights stalwart still about, you can be sure they’ll know that.”
“No. They did know that. So I decided to find another route to Darrus. Have myself smuggled there, perhaps.”
Kordelasz flashed her a tight smile. “Not bad. You’re right: it’s probably our only way off the station.”
“You’ve done it before?”
“Dear Lords, no. I’m a marine, ma’am, smuggling’s not in our nature.”
CHAPTER TWO
Darrus, like Casimir Ormuz’s home world of Rasamra, was Lisanï. It was there to be seen in Minadar’s buildings: grubby white blocks with narrow windows in deep niches, slender flat-topped spires, pointed arches… A common architecture shared amongst the worlds which had been home to the Lisanï culture many millennia before. Ormuz halted in surprise as he stepped from Divine Providence’s hatch. The familiarity threw him. He had never been to this world before, and yet he knew the starport.
The setting sun cast a wan red light over the scene before him. Thin streamers of cloud diffracted pink and orange across the landscape. The sun hovered, swollen and fiery, above the horizon. Turning about, Ormuz saw a large area of runways, taxi-ways and aprons. A line of low, rounded hills bounded them to one side and, to the other, the distant towers of a city danced in the bronze haze of twilight.
Ormuz gazed at a huge, curved, aerofoil-shaped building on the far side of the apron. Its front expanse comprised a single sheet of solid glass which reflected a strangely-tilted and oddly-distorted roseate view of parked starships and boats. That building was for the use of yeomen and nobles. Ormuz would not be welcome there. He was a prole.
Wherever Ormuz travelled, the nobility and yeomanry had the best of everything. He had carefully circumscribed rights and obligations; they had privilege. He could not resent them for it—it had always been that way.
Minadar was not exotic enough, he decided. He had travelled for weeks, across countless light-years of interstellar space, and arrived somewhere that could be home. He felt disappointed.
Not that Rasamra was wholly Lisanï. No world was. The culture had been subsumed by the Old Empire more than four thousand years ago. Ormuz had learnt as much at school: landless scions of the nobility crusading across space in search of worlds to claim as fiefs… In this region, Makarta Province, they had found a culture scattered across a dozen planets. None of which possessed any form of interstellar travel. The Anyol must have done it, the semi-mythical race which had spread across the stars long before civilisation had arisen on the Old Empire’s capital, Geneza.
The Lisanï culture was little more than a veneer now, a faint colour tinting a planet’s history and its people’s culture. Ormuz was not Lisanï either, but for an entirely different reason.
At the age of twelve, he had finally understood the taunts of the older children at second school. When he looked at his parents or his two older brothers, Nessim and Narouz, it had never occurred to him that he was different. While he did not share their colouring, or any likeness of features, they were all the world he knew. But some worlds were built of words, and meanings could be changed in the time it took to speak. Ormuz had not understood his parents’ distance as they explained he was not their child, but he understood the news they imparted. When he turned sixteen and Sir Alar dem Tazher bought his bond from his adoptive parents’ liege, Ormuz welcomed the chance to escape his family.
Four years had passed since then—
No. The time-dilation caused by the topologic drive had shortened the intervening time-period for him. Ormuz himself was only four years older than he had been that day, but for his parents it had been more than six years.
Salmon-coloured light from the setting sun washed across the starport, making something magical of the battered hulls of starships and boats parked about the apron. Not even the hot stench of burning metals and lubricants could spoil the illusion. Many of the ships were data-freighters like Divine Providence, although differing in size and design. The insignia on their hulls showed just as great a variety.
Ormuz’s attention was drawn to one vessel on the other side of the landing-field. It squatted heavily on the apron before an immense, low hangar. The ship was equally enormous, a great sheer-sided building of a starship, without flying surfaces and possessing the aerodynamics of a rock. It was clearly incapable of gliding to a landing from orbit. But this did not matter: at each corner of the hull, like the towers of a keep, were great circular drive-tubes, powerful enough to lower the ship’s ponderous bulk down to a landfall—despite being considered dangerous to use near the ground.
From the size, and the grain-sack motif drawn hugely on the craft’s side, Ormuz knew it was a sutler barge.
Portable floodlights had been rigged around the barge, their actinic beams focused on the vast maw of its cargo hold. Directing several work-gangs were a number of sutler crew in their distinctive yellow coveralls.
A figure approached Divine Providence from the proletarian terminal-building. He held a notepad, a flat glass in a circular frame, in one hand. Ormuz smiled down at him, and descended the stair from the airlock. Before he could greet the man—a starport official by his uniform—a voice spoke from the data-freighter’s hatch: “Ah, good evening, sir.”
Ormuz glanced up the stair and saw the short, plump, balding figure of Adril Tovar scurrying down towards him. Tovar wore a dark blue coverall, as did Ormuz himself, a ship-patch on the right breast. The patch, an enlarged copy of the escutcheon at their collars, depicted a four-legged beast caught in a thicket.
The man introduced himself, “Berth-superintendent Sareer, Minadar Administration.” He glanced down at his notepad and flicked a switch with a finger. “Any passengers?”
Tovar blinked. “No, no passengers,” he said.
“Crew?”
“Ah, five.”
“No one else?”
The cargo-master shook his head.
The Minadar official lowered his notepad. “You’re ready to be inspected?” he asked brusquely.
Tovar clasped his hands. “But of course, Superintendent. We have nothing to hide.”
Sareer grunted.
Ormuz turned to the cargo-master. “Do you need me for this, Adril?”
“Um? No, no I don’t, Casimir. This shouldn’t take long.” He shook his head. “No, this shouldn’t take long.” He turned to hurry up the stairs after Sareer.
Ormuz saw a figure appear in the hatch. Tovar danced to one side to avoid a collision, and Ormuz barked a laugh at seeing him pirouette. The cargo-master was surprisingly light on his feet given his build. Tovar stood spread-eagled against the railing. Captain Plessant stepped out onto the landing. Light spilling from within the data-freighter cast shadows across her face, making her expression appear more severe than it likely was. She said something to Tovar, and jerked her head back towards the hatch. The cargo-master nodded.
Plessant gave a curt nod, and descended the stairs. She glanced at her wristwatch, looked up, spotted Ormuz and frowned at him.
Captain Murily Plessant was a hard-featured woman. Although not as tall as Ormuz, she always seemed to look down at him. She wore her authority like an extension of her personality. It was innate, and not a function of her captaincy. Ormuz liked her immensely. He smiled at her.
The tramp of feet on the stairs caused Ormuz to swing his attention from the captain. Marla Dai, ship’s engineer. She smiled brightly at Ormuz and came to a halt beside Plessant. “Ready?” she asked the captain breathlessly.
“Yes,” Plessant said. “Tell Adril we’re heading into Amwadina,” she told Ormuz. “Once the inspection’s over, get the ship battened down. Lex will know where to find us.”
“Can’t I come with you?” ask
ed Ormuz.
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Because I say so.” Plessant nodded at Dai, and set off towards the terminal-building.
Dai smiled apologetically at Ormuz. She hurried after the captain. When she reached Plessant’s side, she looked back and lifted a hand in farewell.
The captain and engineer strode towards the proletarian terminal-building. Their dark clothing outlined them against its peach-stained front, their shadows attenuated and alien behind them on the apron.
Ormuz was fond of Dai, but he liked the captain more.
Tovar, Ormuz and ship’s pilot Lexander Lotsman showed the escutcheons pinned to their collars to a bored sheriff and gave their names. There was a moment’s wait as the sheriff consulted her heraldic data-pool and verified the coat of arms of their bond-holder. Ormuz glanced up at the two official portraits on the wall. One, spade-beard and grave mien, he recognised as the emperor, Willim IX; the other, he guessed, was the noble who owned Darrus. Ormuz did not know his rank or his name.
The barrier across the corridor swung aside: the crew of Divine Providence had been permitted entry. Proletarians, the lowest rank of society and the most numerous, were forbidden to leave their home fief. However, since their occupation necessitated travel to other worlds, Divine Providence’s crew were permitted to do so by their bond-holder, Sir Borodisz demar Lewy, a wealthy yeoman on Antyde. A note to that effect was attached to Lewy’s record in the heraldic data-pool.
While Ormuz occasionally worried that the permission might one day be revoked, or the data-pool record mistaken, Lotsman and Tovar never showed any such qualms. Privately, Ormuz felt their confidence foolish—as proles, they lived at the whim of the yeomanry and nobility. And whims had a habit of changing for no reason at a moment’s notice…
The thought prompted another:
“Why are we here?” asked Ormuz.
Lotsman shrugged. “We’re going to meet the captain.”
“Not that. I mean, why are we on Darrus?”