Cryoburn

by Lois M. Bujold

  "No, you can't have my mommy!" screamed Mina. "We just got her back!" She grabbed the folding chair, flopped it shut, and swung it as hard as she could. She might have been trying to hit the security chief in the stomach, but Mina was pretty short, and her aim was rather blind, as she whirled around. Instead, the chair legs took him square in the crotch-but not quite hard enough.

  He bent over, saying really horrible words, but didn't let go of their mother's arm. With his other fist, he backhanded Mina, who fell on her butt, crying. Their mother tried to kick him, more accurately than Mina had, but she was barefooted and frighteningly breathless. "How dare . . . ​you touch . . . ​my children, you . . . ​horrible murderer!"

  Remembering the blood running down Vorlynkin's face, Jin dodged around the table where Nefertiti stood stiff-legged, wings flapping, fur on end in a dark ridge running down her back, tail lashing, and shrieking incoherently. He grabbed her up and flung her at Oki, who was closest. The wide man yelled, waving his snapping and popping stick but only connecting with wing feathers, which scorched with a dreadful stink. Nefertiti leaped off him, shredding his jacket but only getting in one shallow bleeding scratch on his thick neck. Leiber-sensei broke from his grip, though. The scientist lurched and limped, dodging out of the way of the swinging baton.

  "Oh, for God's sake!" said Hans. "Akabane didn't say we'd have to capture a damned tribe!" As Jin made a head-down rush with some wild idea of head-butting him in the stomach, Hans shoved their mother away hard, so she fell and skidded on the floor next to Mina, who scrambled to reach her. The tall man grabbed for Jin instead, catching him by the hair and swinging him around. Jin yelled, tears of pain starting in his eyes. He heard a strange snick by his ear, and looked down cross-eyed to glimpse a steel blade at least fifteen centimeters long glint past his face and lodge below his upraised chin.

  "Everybody, freeze!" bellowed Chief Hans.

  Everybody did. Hans added impatiently, "Not you, Oki!"

  "Hans, no, he's just a kid!"

  "After the day we've had, don't push me."

  The belief and terror in Oki's face convinced the others that this was no bluff as nothing else could have, Jin thought. He could feel the edge pressing into his skin, and strands of hair popping from his stretched scalp.

  "All right," said Hans. The big chest against which Jin was now pressed heaved for air, and maybe for balance. Could the big man actually be frightened, too? That was a weird thought, and not reassuring. "Behave, all of you, or I'll cut the damn kid's throat, got it? You, quit wriggling!" He shook Jin's head back and forth by the hair.

  Jin's mother, still on the floor, glared up cold and furious, but said in a voice sharp with dread, "Jin, hold still!"

  Jin could see Leiber-sensei swallow. The limping sphinx had taken refuge in the shadows under a table, where she crouched and mumbled piteously, "Foes, foes, hurts, aowt, hum, hurts!" That, and people breathing, were the only sounds in the windowless room.

  Hans straightened. "That's better. Now, you, kid, stuff your hands in your pockets." Jin, after a glance at his mother, complied. "You, Sato, stand up. You too, Doctor, and put your hands on top your head. Sato, take the mini-bitch by the hand with your right hand. Now, you're all going to march out in file, and Oki with his stick will keep you all in line. Set it on high, Oki!"

  The broad man gulped, nodded, fiddled with the control in the base of the handle.

  "Now, you all follow Oki out the door and turn right. Sato first, Leiber next, then me."

  Their mother, her face utterly still and intent, grasped Mina's hand convulsively; they both stood up together. Her bare feet moved soundlessly on the floor, her padded robe flapping around her calves. Mina, sniffling and scared, trotted alongside. Leiber-sensei would have looked silly with his arms up like that, as if he were playing some toddler's rhyming game about touching your nose and ears and head, if he weren't so grim and pale and shivering. Jin waited for the grip on his hair to slacken, the knife edge to press less deeply, so that he could twist away and run, but the big fists holding him didn't ease.

  They followed the others out into the corridor, Jin's feet barely touching the floor as he was yanked along, and turned right. They took maybe three steps toward the end stairs.

  A bellow from behind them, Armsman Roic's deep voice: "Halt!"

  Chief Hans whirled, still holding Jin in front of him. Up the corridor from the other end-stairs strode Roic-san, with Miles-san running at his elbow and Raven-sensei sort of dodging behind him. Roic raised his right arm, something in his fist too blurred for Jin's pain-teared eyes to make out. His expression was very strange, cool and remote, like no expression at all.

  Jin felt his captor flinch. The knife edge bit harder. Hans yelled back, "You again! Drop that damned stuh-"

  A white light flared from Roic-san's hand, and a strange buzzing noise. The world, or maybe it was Jin's head, seemed to explode in a jagged shower of colored rain. The rain turned black, and drowned him deep.

  Chapter Nineteen

  To Roic's surprise, he was actually aided in his capture of the remaining NewEgypt security fellow by Dr. Leiber. Oki had grabbed the scientist when Roic had shouted, presumably to keep him from bolting, but then found him harder to get rid of; Leiber hung on to the thick left arm that was trying to shake him off, turning and twisting and evading what looked to be a heavy-duty shock stick, just long enough for Roic to close the distance and aim his stunner between Oki's eyes at point-blank range.

  "Give it up, Oki," Roic advised genially. "It's been over ever since I sent your confessions off in a bottle. I'd have thought you people would have realized that."

  Caught and nailed by Roic's steady and implacable gaze as much as by the weapon aimed at his head, Oki reluctantly held his right arm wide and released his shock stick, which fell with a clatter. As he slumped, Leiber stood away from him, wheezing but with his spine actually straight for a change. Unasked, Oki folded his hands atop his head and stood looking downright miserable.

  Madame Sato, distraught, slid to the floor to gather up her son's limp body. The unconscious boy was pale, but Roic saw with satisfaction that the cut on his neck was a mere shallow scratch, barely bleeding.

  "I'm sorry Jin was caught in my stunner nimbus, ma'am," Roic said to her. "But I've found it's usually better to resolve these hostage situations as directly as I can. Bad to let them spin out."

  "This is a nightmare," she groaned.

  Roic granted this with a nod, but said, "Cut short now, ma'am. Raven will get Jin some synergine right away"-Roic rolled his eye compellingly at Raven-"and he won't even wake up with a headache."

  Raven took the hint and scurried back to the recovery room for suitable supplies.

  M'lord strolled up, possessed himself of the shock stick, and regarded their captive with a curious and thoughtful air, like a biologist planning out the dissection of a promising new specimen.

  Oki regarded him back, bewildered. "Who the hell are you people, anyway?"

  "From your point of view," said m'lord, "I suppose we're your karma delivery service. Why the devil didn't you and your buddy Hans run and keep on running when you had the chance, earlier today? Yesterday, by now, I guess. Why ever did you go back to your bosses?"

  "We got families, you know."

  M'lord's brows rose. Had this not occurred to him before now, Roic wondered? "If you didn't want to be a disgrace to them, you're about eighteen months too late, I think."

  Oki rocked a bit. "That, and the money."

  M'lord brows went up a bit further. Oki said defensively, "For the first time in my life, the money was good. We bought a house."

  Oki's was not exactly a world of riotous living, Roic suspected. If NewEgypt's plant security hiring practices were any good, he'd probably been an honest man, before he'd been sucked down into this bog by his bosses. Roic glanced at m'lord, prepared to give a hint and a nudge, but m'lord was on it already.

  "It's not too late even now
to limit your damages. What's the local equivalent of turning Emperor's Witness around here, does anyone know? They must have one."

  "Prefecture's Evidence, I believe, m'lord," said Roic.

  "I happen to have a good lawyer on retainer who can advise you, if you cooperate with me in a timely fashion," m'lord told their captive. "That means, instantly."

  Roic took the cue and a tighter grip on his stunner, staring along its length into Oki's eyes, for emphasis.

  "Where were you taking Leiber and Sato just now?" asked m'lord. "Not for a walk, presumably."

  "Akabane's waiting for us out front in the street with the van," mumbled Oki.

  "The NewEgypt finance chief? Alone?"

  Oki wet his lips. "It was just supposed to be Leiber, see."

  M'lord's eyes lit. "That one we want, Roic-in flagrante delicto and arrested on the premises, if possible. An enemy's mistake is a tactical gift that must never be wasted."

  Oki added, unasked, "It was going to be wall-to-wall lawyers for them-President Kim, and Choi who runs Operations, and Napak, that research head. Akabane caught us after the big meeting-said it was plain that him and us were going to be the goats, that the other three would hand us over without a blink in the morning if nothing was done. But he knew from the last time that my brother-in-law was with the Legacy Liberators, and . . ."

  "Division and panic, ah," said m'lord, sounding quite satisfied. "That explains much. Hurry, Roic. Akabane's bound to bolt as soon as the police show up in force."

  Raven was returning with a medkit. Roic passed his stunner briefly to m'lord, circled Oki and fastened his wrists behind his back with his own tanglecuffs, was blandly handed back his weapon, grabbed Leiber's arm, and jogged for the end stairs.

  "What do you want me for?" asked Leiber, sounding a touch alarmed, as they scuffed rapidly down the steps.

  "You can ID Akabane for me. I wouldn't want to stun the wrong fellow, after all."

  "You're pretty free with that thing."

  "It's all right. I have a license to stun."

  "I thought that was supposed to be a license to kill."

  Roic grimaced. "That, too. But you would not believe all the forms that have to be filled out, afterward."

  Leiber looked as if he weren't sure if that was a joke or not, which was all right, since Roic wasn't sure either. The procedures hadn't been all that amusing at the time. Or in retrospect.

  They pushed through the heavy metal doors at the intake building's far end, turned left, and rounded the corner onto its long front side. A short, U-shaped driveway in the center led to a covered entry space, where patients and visitors had once been dropped off, no doubt. The drive embraced what had likely been a sweep of tidy lawn and landscaping, but now was a sad stretch of weeds. There was no security lighting, but a lot of flickering hand lights revealed a herd of elderly people in all sorts of dress and undress, milling about on the drive and the ex-lawn. To Roic's relief, no orange fire-glow reflected in the night mist from the other side of the complex, but various colors of flashing emergency lights did, which helped illuminate the scene in a dance-party sort of fashion.

  A double row of parking spaces ran the length of the facility's front-Roic could see the end of the administration building, beyond the intake building, and mentally located Madame Suze's corner office on its top floor. Beyond the parking row, the facility was bounded by the dilapidated chain link fence.

  In the street beyond, only one or two dark and distant vehicles were parked, but just past the gate with its tumbled-down old security kiosk, a familiar van lurked in the shadows. The gate, interestingly, had been forced open and left standing wide.

  "All right," said Roic. "Wait'll I take cover behind that gate kiosk, then go out to the end of the lawn and mill around like the others. Make sure you can be seen from the street, but don't get within arm's length of the drive."

  "Wait, what, you want to use me as bait?" said Lieber, indignant. "I thought you wanted me to identify Akabane!"

  "This'll do that," said Roic reasonably. "Nobody else here is going to go grabbing for you. Plus it will lure him out of his vehicle and onto the grounds." I hope.

  "Why bother?"

  "First, I can't stun him through the side of the van, and second, if nothing else, Lord Mark can charge him with trespassing. Which will hold him for the night, and by morning it'll be too late."

  "I thought that fellow Fuwa owned the place."

  "If Lord Mark doesn't own it by now, I don't know him." Not that anyone did really know him, not even m'lord. Well, maybe Miss Kareen. "Go on." Roic gave Lieber a little encouraging shove, then drifted away unobtrusively through the intermittent shadows to take cover on the facility side of the gate kiosk, out of sight of the street.

  Leiber stumbled around quite convincingly among the weeds, albeit at a few meters farther range than Roic would have preferred, looking up and around as if in bewilderment, showing profile and full-face. For a minute, Roic wasn't sure if Akabane would rise to his bait, and was just trying to think of a next ploy, when the van eased past the kiosk. Roic crouched down in the shadows.

  For a horrible instant, he wondered if he'd misjudged the situation-if Akabane just lifted the van to head-height and brought it down hard enough atop his victim, Leiber would be in no shape to confess anything to anyone again. Someone had tried to do that to m'lord once, as he'd told the story to Roic, with several passes like a big stomping boot coming within centimeters of reducing him to a smear on the pavement. Roic tensed like a runner at the start of a race, getting ready to sprint to his bait's rescue.

  But maybe these local vehicles had safety sensors to prevent those sorts of accidents, or maybe Akabane was inhibited by the hundred or so witnesses. In any case, as its side door slid open the van merely lurched up onto the lawn, cutting Leiber off from the sight of the old folks, who were mostly turned away craning their necks toward the source of the flashing lights.

  A dark shape leaped from the van toward Leiber, who recoiled. Roic took a sweeping knee shot and brought the figure down in a muffled cry of astonishment and rage. A few swift paces, and Roic was in position to put his favorite low-stun immobilization into the back of the fellow's neck, at can't-miss range.

  "Quick, help me toss him back into his van," Roic told Leiber, who, puffing, nodded and complied.

  Chief Financial Officer Akabane proved a local-looking sort-he might have been Raven's middle-aged wicked uncle, if the Durona clone had owned any uncles of any description. Although Akabane did not look especially wicked at this point, just pale and limp. And, Roic hoped, defeated.

  For all the days m'lord had been playing against the NewEgypt cabal, this was the first direct view Roic had gained of the enemy's face, except for a few vid scans. It had all been action at a distance, like a space war. Or perhaps some bizarre mutant form of chess where the rules changed every two moves. M'lord's formidable father, who'd once been a space admiral, might have felt at home, and m'lord had scarcely been given pause, but to Roic it felt strange and bloodless and removed, though he was very grateful for the bloodless part.

  And then Roic wondered how m'lord's sudden trail of chaos through their affairs, erupting out of seeming-nowhere, must have felt to the confused cryocorp men, who'd thought they'd had it all locked down. That was a vision to make a fellow smile, though it was a smile that made Leiber draw back in unease.

  From the corner of his eye, Roic saw the lights of emergency vehicles turning into the street; they'd be through the gate in seconds. "Melt into the crowd and meet me back at the end door," he told Leiber, and swiftly followed his own advice. Melting into this crowd proved a bit of a trick, as he was a head taller, as well as about a century younger, than anyone else around him. But there was plenty enough else going on right now that no one spared him much attention.

  Leiber arrived a few paces behind him. "That's it?" he asked.

  Roic nodded. "M'lord will arrange the rest. Stunner tag's over." Roic took a moment's m
odest satisfaction in his job performance. "It's all words from here on. Which are not my department." He added after a reflective pause: "Thankfully."

  Jin blinked open his eyes to discover himself staring at a ceiling-of the recovery room, he realized after turning his head. He touched his face, which was tingling, and scrunched his eyelids open and shut a few times, but he didn't feel especially sick or dizzy. He didn't feel especially good, either. Sort of blah, really. He seemed to be lying on one of the room's several raised, narrow bed-tables, though it didn't have any sheets, and its brittle old plastic felt nasty on his skin.

  "Jin, are you all right?"

  He sat up on one elbow to find his mother leaning over the side of the bed-table. She was wearing her filtering mask again, her robe all belted up tight, and her eyes searched him anxiously.

  "I guess so." He rubbed his face some more, then scrubbed his scalp where it still hurt from the hair-pulling.

  Mina skipped to their mother's side and looked up at him with great interest. "Armsman Roic shot you. I'd never seen anyone get shot for real before."

  Neither had Jin. It felt very strange to have been shot. For the first time, he wondered what it had really been like for Miles-san when he'd been shot with that needle-grenade. Of course, that was nothing like being merely stunned, Jin supposed, but that weird moment of looking into Armsman Roic's unyielding face, and feeling so helpless and too late and that his world was being taken away from him by people he didn't, couldn't, control . . .  He scowled, not liking that feeling much.

  "It's not broken," came Raven-sensei's voice, and, "You couldn't prove it by me," Vorlynkin's voice returned.

  Jin twisted around to find the pair of them at the next table over. Vorlynkin was sitting up with his legs dangling. His wide-sleeved coat was off, tossed aside, along with his undercoat, and his shirtsleeves were rolled up. Raven-sensei stood in front of him, poking at his left arm, which Vorlynkin was holding rather defensively.