After the four-hour formal meal, he felt like a bird stuffed and trussed for roasting.
The winged children on the walls looked at him hungrily.
Next day, Martinez was in the Flag Officer Station briefly asIllustrious launched a pair of pinnaces, one of them piloted by the lone Daimong survivor of theBeacon. These would race past Termaine, their powerful cameras and other sensors trained on the Termaine ring to make certain that Lady Michi’s orders were obeyed, that all docking and construction bays were open to the vacuum and that all ships, including those under construction, had been cast off.Illustrious would recover the pinnaces on the far side of the system.
At Bai-do, the Naxids had opened fire on the pinnaces as they passed, killing the cadets who flew them, and Lady Michi had retaliated for this defiance by destroying the ring. Billions died in exchange for two cadets, making a point that it was hoped the Naxid high command would respect.
This time the pinnaces would have an escort. Each pinnace would fly surrounded by a cloud of twenty-four antimatter missiles, all under command of the pinnace pilots themselves. The missiles could either be used offensively or to counter missiles launched from the ring. The missiles, like the pinnaces, could be recovered after the completion of their mission, or diverted to other targets, like the merchant vessels that were accelerating madly in an effort to clear the system before Chenforce destroyed them.
Martinez watched as the missiles were flung from the tubes, as chemical rockets ignited to carry them a safe distance from the cruiser before the antihydrogen engines started. The pinnaces followed shortly thereafter, engines firing to take them on a long curve that would carry them on either side of Termaine.
The Flag Officer Station stood down once the pinnaces and the missile barrages were on their way, and Martinez tucked his helmet under his arm and made his way to his cabin, where his orderly, Khalid Alikhan, helped him out of his vac suit.
Alikhan was a thirty-year veteran of the Fleet who had retired with the rank of Master Weaponer, and who still proudly wore the goatee and curling mustachios of the senior petty officer. Alikhan was a fountain of vivid anecdotes, technical arcana, and knowledge of the devious paths one might take to circumvent the formalities and custom of the Fleet, and Martinez had employed him with the intention of taking advantage of those thirty years’ experience in the weapons bays.
Alikhan hung the vac suit in its locker and served Martinez coffee from the vacuum pot that waited on a sideboard in the office.
“I was wondering, my lord, if I might trouble you for an advance on my pay,” he said as he placed the cup on Martinez’s desk.
Martinez paused in surprise, the cup halfway to his lips. Alikhan had never before asked for an advance.
“Yes,” he said. “Yes, of course.” He rose from his chair, opened his office safe, and handed Alikhan five zeniths. “Will that be enough?”
“That’s more than sufficient, my lord. Thank you.”
Martinez closed the safe. “Is the petty officers’ club doing something special?” he asked. He couldn’t think what it could be. With the ship’s canteen running low after months away from port, the nearest place to spend money was Termaine.
“No, my lord,” Alikhan said. His stern face hardened into an expression of vexation. “I was unlucky at cards.”
Martinez looked at him, surprised again. “I didn’t know you gambled,” he said.
“I venture now and again, my lord.”
Alikhan braced, which indicated that he hoped the conversation was over. Martinez decided it might well be.
“Carry on, then,” he said, and Alikhan made his way out.
Martinez sat at his desk and sipped his coffee, then checked the tactical display.
The rebels at Termaine were obeying orders, so far as he could tell. Termaine was now surrounded by a small cloud of vessels that had been cast adrift, ready to be destroyed by Chenforce as it swept past.
Martinez didn’t find the sight completely assuring.
Bai-do too had complied with Michi’s demands, right up to the point where they opened fire.
SIX
The bomb was disassembled and brought up to the High City in pieces, hidden in Team 491’s toolboxes and then stowed in PJ Ngeni’s guest cottage behind the Ngeni Palace. The explosive itself, which might have triggered the sniffers at the funicular, was brewed in PJ’s kitchen out of components purchased from hardware stores and cleaning supply houses.
As the bomb reached final assembly, PJ hovered above the table in the study, torn between anxiety and an eerie delight. Eventually he became a distraction, and Sula had to take him to his study and pour several drinks down him before he calmed down.
Sula had at one point expressed doubts about smuggling arms past the detectors on the funicular, and PJ promptly volunteered the Ngeni clan’s collection of sporting weapons. Sula was about to decline-the guns were registered, and if they had to be left behind would point straight at PJ-when she hesitated and went to the nearest comm terminal.
Checking in at the Records Office, she found the arms registry and erased anything connected to anyone named Ngeni.
The police would have ballistics and forensics information regarding any legally purchased firearm, but they would be useless for an old weapon that had been fired many times. Sula made certain to equip her team with weapons that were centuries old.
On the day of the operation, Zanshaa’s viridian sky was clear and sunny, which made it more likely that Lord Makish would be walking home. This was desirable from Sula’s point of view, but less desirable was the probability that other Naxids, who preferred their weather hot, would be on the streets.
If they die, they die.She certainly didn’t intend to risk herself in order to spare a few stray Naxids.
Shortly after noon, Spence went off to Garden of Scents to stand lookout. Sula and Macnamara strapped their toolboxes onto the back of his two-wheeler at the Ngeni Palace, got aboard, and hummed away through half-empty streets. They traveled along Lapis Street, which paralleled the Boulevard of the Praxis to the north, and parked in the lane to one side of the Urghoder Palace, the empty building next to Judge Makish’s residence.
Sula tucked her hair into a bandanna, and over this put a worker’s lightweight cap; then, with Macnamara following, she carried her toolbox around the corner, past the inscribed entrance to the Urghoder Palace, and to Makish’s elaborate wrought-silver-alloy gate. She entered, approached the front door-whose form echoed the artichoke shape of the towers-and pressed a button that caused a clacking noise in the interior, similar to the sound of theaejai.
Behind her, Macnamara hovered near the gate, as though uncertain. He’d already put one of his toolboxes down behind some bushes near the path.
The liveried servant who answered the door reared back, in loathing or surprise, and stood as tall as her short-legged centauroid form permitted, on tiptoe reaching Sula’s shoulder.
“You should have come to the back entrance!” she declared in a voice that rose nearly to a screech.
“Beg pardon,” Sula said, “but we were told to work on the garden. If this is the Urghoder Palace, that is.”
“The Urghoder Palace is next door!” the servant said. “Be away!”
“We were told wrong, then,” Sula said cheerfully. “Thanks anyway!”
“Away!” the servant repeated.
Hope we blow your ass to the ring,Sula thought. Under the servant’s black-on-red eyes she and Macnamara left the garden and neatly closed the gleaming alloy gate behind her. While the servant continued to watch, the two made their way to the Urghoder Palace and entered the overgrown, disused front garden, where-behind the ivycrusted flanking wall of yellow sandstone-they were out of sight of the Makish front door.
They opened their boxes and readied their tools. Sula and Macnamara each inserted a receiver in one ear, clipped a tiny microphone to their collars, and did a brief communications check with Spence. For the rest of the afternoon they worke
d steadily in the garden a task that Sula found more taxing than she’d expected. She had been raised in cities and grown up in ships and barracks: her experience with domestic plants was limited. Macnamara, fortunately, was from the country, and had lived so bucolic a childhood he’d actually worked as a shepherd. Under his guidance Sula pruned and hacked at the overgrown foliage and thought herself lucky that no actual sheep were involved. Macnamara assisted when a bough or a root needed more muscle than Sula possessed, but was otherwise busy in a secluded corner of the garden, digging a slit trench with a portable pick.
Sula wanted someplace for them to hide when the bomb actually went off. They had debated whether they truly needed to be anywhere in the vicinity-possibly a real professional saboteur, certain in her luck and in the technology of remote-controlled detonators, wouldn’t need to be anywhere closer than the Garden of Scents-but Sula lacked that confidence. If one of the Makish servants found the toolbox hidden in the garden, she wanted to be close enough to claim it before anyone opened the box to find the bomb.
Plus the bomb might not quite do the job: Sula wanted to be on hand in case Makish needed to be finished off, and if she was to be nearby, she wanted a safe hiding place.
Macnamara sweated great stains in his coveralls as he swung his pick and cursed the roots that got in his way, and perspiration poured down Sula’s face as she gasped in air heavily perfumed by sweet blossoms while she hacked at chuchuberry bushes and tried to avoid impaling herself on the diabolic swordlike thorns of pyrocantha. At least her labors kept at bay her nagging suspicion, the silent voice in her ear that told her she was an amateur, that her plan was idiotic and that when this went wrong she was going to share the fate of her superiors.
Her training in building bombs and other items of sabotage had been thorough. How and when to use them hadn’t been a part of the course. Perhaps, she thought, her superiors hadn’t known either.
She and Macnamara had broken out their water bottles, picked some overripe chuchuberries, and were taking a break from their exertions when Spence’s voice whispered in Sula’s ear that Makish and his guards were coming on foot.
It was four hours past noon. Surveillance had shown that the High Court did not keep burdensome hours, which was why Sula had decided to spend all afternoon waiting.
“Comm: acknowledge,” Sula replied. “Comm: send.”
At her command, the message was encoded and sent in a brief burst transmission, lasting a hard-to-detect fraction of a second. The communications protocols were an echo of those used at the disastrous Axtattle action, and at the memory, Sula felt a shimmer of unease pass along her nerves. A fresh sheen of sweat broke out as she and Macnamara tossed their tools in a corner, took refuge behind some bushes, and dug weapons out of their toolboxes.
“I believe this is yours!” came a shrill voice. Sula’s heart gave a leap. She hastily stuffed her pistol into a thigh pocket, parted the branches of a chuchuberry bush, and saw Lord Makish’s servant thrusting a toolbox at them, balancing it on top of the low wall that stood between the sidewalk and the Urghoder garden.
“You careless people left this in the Makish garden!” the servant cried.
“Take cover,” Spence said in Sula’s ear. “Less than half a minute now.”
“Thank you,” Sula said as she rushed forward, arms outstretched for the box and its bomb.
Leaning against the wall on the garden side, she observed, was a saw, a sharp-toothed blade fixed in a metal frame and equipped with a pistol grip.
“Who do you work for?” the servant demanded as Sula claimed the toolbox and lowered it carefully to the ground. “I shall contact your employers with a complaint.”
“Please don’t do that, miss,” Sula said as-her eyes scanning the street-she reached for the pistol grip of the saw.
“Twenty-five seconds,” Spence reported-a quarter minute, more or less.
“You are impudent and careless with your employer’s property,” the servant said as she leaned intently over the wall. “You have-”
Sula slashed her across the throat with the saw. The Naxid reared back as she had when she’d first seen Sula, hands scrabbling for her neck.
“Comm: abort! Stand by!” Sula said. “Comm: send!”
“Abort” and “Stand by” were actually two different orders, but Sula didn’t have time to sort them out. With any luck, Spence would take her binoculars off Makish and see what was happening at the Urghoder Palace.
The Naxid fell to the sidewalk in a tangle of elaborate livery, her polished shoes kicking. Sula peered over the wall and looked down the Boulevard of the Praxis: she saw Judge Makish and his guards, and accompanying them an officer in the viridian green of the Fleet. Badges of high rank glittered on the officer’s shoulders and medals gleamed on his chest.
“Standing by,” came Spence’s reply. Sula was aware of Macnamara emerging from cover, a pistol held warily behind his leg.
She picked up the bomb and vaulted the wall. The servant gasped and sputtered at her feet, black scales flashing red in what Sula hoped were unreadable patterns. Sula turned toward Makish and his group and advanced at a trot.
“Sir!” she called, waving. “My lords!”
The bodyguards swept to the front, alert, hands reaching for weapons. “Your servant is ill!” Sula said. “She needs help!”
The entire group increased speed, bodies weaving as the foremost pair of limbs dropped and began to be used as legs. Sula had to leap out of the way. Surprise swirled through her head as she looked at four receding Naxid backs, at black scales glittering in the brilliant light of Shaamah. Sula put the bomb down and followed the Naxids, her hand reaching into her thigh pocket for her pistol. The two guards-trained in first aid, no doubt-bent over the wounded servant, hands plucking at her livery.
The flat Naxid head served only as a platform for sensory organs: a Naxid’s brain was in the center of its humanoid torso, with the heart and other vital organs being in the lower, four-legged body. Sula would prefer to have shot the guards first, but Makish and the Fleet officer-a junior fleet commander, no less-stood between her and the military constables, so she chose the more dangerous of the two and put a pair of shots into the center of the fleetcom’s back.
As she shifted her aim, a long series of shots rang out, and her startled nerves gave a leap with each angry crack. Had the bodyguards got to their weaponsthat fast? she wondered. She shot Makish, her body braced for the impact of enemy bullets that didn’t come, and then she realized that the other shooter was Macnamara, firing over the stone wall and catching the enemy in a cross fire.
There was a pause in which the only thing Sula heard was the singing in her ears caused by the shots’ concussion. The pistols PJ had given them proved rather noisy. There were Naxid bodies sprawled on the sidewalk and a lot of deep purple Naxid blood.
“Run!” Sula said, the idea occurring to her suddenly; and she sprang over the Naxid bodies, the pistol still in her fist. Behind, Macnamara vaulted the wall and pelted in her wake.
“Comm: stand by! Any second now! Comm: send!”
The bomb was now redundant as an assassination device, but it could still serve as a propaganda weapon. The government might deny a pair of assassins with pistols, but they couldn’t deny a big explosion on the Boulevard of the Praxis, right in the middle of the High City.
A file of Naxid children approached, neatly attired in school uniforms, their bodies snaking from side to side in the wake of an adult supervisor.
Sula preferred not to murder children, not even if they were Naxids, but fate had not consulted her, and she wasn’t about to slow down and explain things. “Run!” she said as she dashed past. “Bad things!”
“Wait!” the supervisor said, her black-on-yellow eyes going wide. Sula didn’t spare her a backward glance.
She skated around the side of the Urghoder Palace and into the narrow lane that ran down its side. The cool shade of the lane was welcome after the afternoon sun. Sula slowed to a t
rot, and Macnamara slowed in her wake, pausing to pull an emergency flare from his pocket, strike it on the cool sandstone wall, and toss it behind them. Their retreat would be covered by billowing red smoke.
Sula gasped for breath, her hand trailing on the palace wall for balance, and she wondered how much time to give the Naxid schoolchildren to get out of the way. She counted to ten, then spoke.
“Comm: detonate. Comm: send.”
A scant second later the sandstone wall punched her fingers with surprising strength and the ground lurched beneath her feet. She didn’t feel the explosion so much with her ears as with her insides, an uneasy stirring as the shock wave passed through each organ. The red smoke at the end of the lane was blown over them in a thin scarlet fog; and suddenly they were in a rain of rubble and trash blown off the Urghoder Palace roof. Sula tried to knock the stuff off her cap and shoulders as she ran.
She unfastened the gray jumpsuit as soon as she made her way out of the cloud, and when they got to Macnamara’s two-wheeler, they both peeled out of their suits and took off their headgear, revealing richer clothing beneath. The workers’ costumes were shoved into the two-wheeler’s panniers, and with Macnamara driving, the vehicle moved out into traffic, the two passengers to all appearances a pair of upper-middle-class youth on a summer joy ride. Anyone looking closely would have seen that the clothing was soaked through with sweat, but the gyroscopically stabilized two-wheeler was moving too fast for that, weaving through the traffic, darting into lanes and alleys.
Behind them the gray cloud of debris towered over the High City like an omen foretelling dark events to come.
“The plan was too elaborate,” Sula said, blinking against the setting sun. “It would have been safer to plant the bomb somewhere along the route or pull up alongside Makish in a car and gun him down.”
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