Queen of Nowhere

by Jaine Fenn

  Imbarin left her alone unless she asked for his assistance.

  However, he had, without her asking, provided a secure apartment and unlimited beevee access. Both were essential if she were to implement her plan in her chosen timescale, so whenever the thought of being in his debt worried her, she turned that concern into an urge to work faster and better, the sooner to be free of the need for another’s generosity.

  As she worked, she visualised the transformation she was preparing to trigger throughout her network. For nearly two decades she had built up the web that allowed her to work towards her goal, using it to collect and collate intel. Now the flow of data was about to be reversed.

  Overnight, her hyper web would go from intel-gathering tool to trap.

  R-Day itself was an anti-climax. She spent the preceding day setting up the last of her newsfeeds. At the moment her chrono indicated the start of another arbitrary unit of beacon-maintained time, she paused to watch the count: 24:59:59 to 00:00:00 …

  Nothing changed, of course, save the knowledge in her heart that the next twenty-five hours would bring the culmination of her life’s work.

  When twenty minutes passed without news or incoming contact - not that she had expected any yet - she decided to get some rest, although she had to resort to a sedative to overcome her nervous anticipation.

  When her alarm woke her six hours later, the first report was just in. It came from Ylonis, one of the two systems that produced shiftships. The other shiftship construction company was under the control of an untouchable Sidhe agent with a solid ID. But the Sidhe on Ylonis, Target93, had just been arrested pending an investigation into corporate malpractice and identity fraud. Bez smiled for what felt like the first time in weeks.

  The shift from instigator to observer turned her into a newshound, obsessively reviewing events from systems where her agents had been charged with carrying out her will.

  By the time a week had passed, the initial surge of arrests was tailing off. After two weeks she had to acknowledge that in some systems, such as on the chilly and factional world of Tetrial Beta, her agent had failed to act. And there was one Sidhe in particular that she waited in vain to hear about.

  Too many of the Enemy remained free. She hadn’t won yet.

  Despite all the effort she had put in, there was no guarantee she would.

  Even so, she began to think about the future. There was still work to do, follow-up intel to distribute, further investigations to lend her aid to, but the time would come when, whether or not she succeeded in breaking the Enemy’s hold over humanity, she would have done all she could. When that happened, would she really be able to settle down in one place, living out her life as one person? Or would she continue to travel, and databreak, because that was all she knew?

  A lot of her time was spent on analysing events in systems where the Sidhe had escaped initial attempts to apprehend them.

  She needed to turn more near misses into ultimate successes.

  Earlier today she had received a full newscast from Bryntarin, a one-world system two transits from Tarset. When Imbarin Tierce commed her, she was watching it for the fifth time.

  The footage showed the launch of a ship, one of the superliners that circumnavigated Bryntarin’s equatorial ocean. The world was a capital-based democracy, ultimately run by corporations. The Sidhe there, Target258, was the head of a major company and a member of the ruling elite. Her company had built the superliner, and now she was launching it.

  The hovercam recording showed a crowd of the great and the good, filling the parade deck of the ship. The Sidhe was standing on a low dais against flower-covered railings, making a speech that Bez had sat through the first time but now muted. Three minutes and twenty seconds into the speech, Target258 made an extravagant gesture, then dropped. When Bez had watched this section with the sound up, enduring the Enemy’s glib words, she had clearly heard the whistle-crack of the projectile shot at this point. The Sid he ducked at exactly the moment the assassin took his shot. All around, heads were turning. The viewpoint wobbled as the cam’s controller tried to work out what was happening.

  By the time the cam stabilised, chaos had broken out. The assassin was now shooting into the crowd. Even without the soundtrack of screams, it made grim viewing: an elderly man was spun around by a shot, his female companion falling when he did, clutching at him open-mouthed; a child was kicked to the floor and trampled; a young, pretty woman stood still, too shocked to move, until another shot punched her to the deck in a spray of red.

  This time though, Bez wasn’t looking at the mayhem in the foreground. She was focused on the figure of Target258, standing aloof behind the crush of desperate humanity. The Sidhe hadn’t run or taken cover. Instead she had climbed up on to the railing among the flowers, making herself an obvious target. She was staring across the cam’s field of view over the heads of the panicking crowd. Even after four viewings Bez couldn’t be certain, but the sims she had run strongly indicated that the Enemy was looking directly at the assassin, who according to later reports was stationed in one of the dockside towers.

  When she got an incoming com call, Bez froze the image. She knew how the rest of the newscast played out: there was another thirty seconds of death and mayhem before the security forces managed to locate and take out the assassin, then started dealing with the casualties.

  The call was from Imbarin Tierce; she cut across his greeting.

  ‘Have you seen the news from Bryntarin?’

  ‘I’d heard about it, yes. Not seen, though. You requested a full cast?’

  ‘I needed to see for myself. I hope that’s all right.’ She cursed her timidity; he had given her the beevee account, it was up to her how she used it.

  ‘I guess so, if you felt it necessary to actually watch what went wrong…’ She was getting better at reading his moods, and even with no visuals she could tell he wasn’t convinced.

  ‘I did,’ she said firmly. ‘Seventeen dead, Imbarin. Seventeen innocent people whose deaths that bitch was responsible for.

  Eighteen if you count the assassin; he’d have escaped if she hadn’t forced him to shoot into the crowd. And she got away without a scratch.’ More than that: to Bez’s deep disgust, the report from Bryntarin said Target258 had been awarded a medal for her courage during a ‘devastating and unprovoked terrorist attack’.

  She was likely to remain at large: if they had had enough intel to take her out legally, then Imbarin wouldn’t have had to resort to hiring a local assassin in the first place. Another favour he had done for her, albeit one that had gone horribly wrong.

  ‘We knew they wouldn’t go quietly,’ said Imbarin.

  ‘Next you’re going to tell me it’s a small price to pay.’

  ‘It is. You know it is, rationally. You’re just letting your emotions get the better of you.’

  Not something she remembered anyone accusing her of before.

  ‘Those emotions are what make me human.’

  ‘So they are. Anyway, I actually called to ask you out to dinner.’

  ‘Dinner?’ Her overlays were full of people running, panicking, dying. ‘I’m busy.’

  ‘Busy punishing yourself over things you can’t change?’

  ‘I have to know which fail-points can be salvaged.’ But he had a point: Bryntarin’s Sid he wasn’t going down.

  ‘Yes you do. But you also need to eat. I’ve managed to get a reservation at Cherry. It’s the best restaurant on Tarset.’

  ‘That’s not saying much.’

  ‘I’m hurt, Bez. Really, I am. You can be very rude sometimes, you know.’

  ‘I thought that was what you liked about me.’ Odd how easily they fell into this casual, friendly banter. ‘And if I don’t like the place, you’ll be paying for me to be rude in public,’ she added. She was trying to rationalise Imbarin’s continuing outlay on her behalf as only fair given that she was refraining from databreaking at his request, but she wanted to remind him she wasn’t comfortabl
e being beholden to anyone.

  ‘I’m willing to risk your sarcasm. The reservation’s at twenty hundred.’

  ‘I’ll see you there.’

  EVOLVING WILDNESS

  The restaurant was in a respectable lower block in the quietest part of the dockside mall. When she arrived, a uniformed server tried to intercept her, but she spotted Imbarin sitting at the back, dodged the waiter, and went straight over. Her heart did a stupid little double-trip when Imbarin caught her eye. She fought the urge to sigh at herself. That kind of crap had been happening all too often recently. She appeared to be developing feelings for the man.

  He was wearing the style of dinner suit tourists favoured for formal meals on starliners, and Bez felt suddenly self-conscious, even as he said mildly, ‘You’ll set a trend.’

  She was so used to considering clothes as costume that it hadn’t occurred to her that, when not actively impersonating someone, she might wear something other than a plain coverall. People were looking at her. Heat rose in her cheeks and she sat down abruptly.

  A server slid a hardcopy menu into her hand. Addressing 1mbarin, he said, ‘Your drinks will be along shortly, sirrah.’

  Imbarin nodded an acknowledgement and said to Bez, ‘I took the liberty of ordering wine.’

  ‘Thanks.’ She glanced at the menu, which was printed on embossed card. Phrases like ‘truffle souffle’ and ‘tenderloin cutlet’ leapt out. Also, logically enough, a lot of dishes involving cherries.

  There was a note at the bottom of the page stating that all the fruit used was imported from farms on Alixer; having to actually ship the main ingredient in from a nearby planetary system might explain the exorbitant prices. Good job she wasn’t paying. She had planned to suggest Imbarin order for her, but now she changed her mind and read the whole menu.

  The wine arrived and was served, after which the waiter took their orders, claiming insincerely that every choice they made was ‘Excellent’.

  When they were alone again, Imbarin raised his glass in a toast.

  ‘To victory.’

  She tasted the wine; it was, as she was sure the waiter would say, excellent. She took a second sip and put down her glass. ‘Let’s not be premature.’

  Imbarin’s sparkling smile dimmed fractionally. ‘Fair point.’

  ‘Take Bryntarin,’ she said, fighting the distracting rush of alcohol from tongue to blood to brain. ‘I didn’t watch that newscast just to satisfy my curiosity.’

  ‘I thought you already extrapolated what must have happened: the target spotted the assassin and took control of him. That is what you found, isn’t it?’

  ‘It is,’ said Bez slowly. ‘But I wanted to know if she knew someone was there. She responded very quickly.’

  ‘She could have sensed the assassin, if she was paranoid enough to be scanning for threats. It’s equally possible she was lucky, or the assassin was shoddy. I told you when I hired him that all I could get was a local contractor. Let this one go, Bez. Bryntarin isn’t a key system.’

  He was right, damn him. She should focus on what was important, and could be influenced. ‘I found something interesting on one of the alternative channels out of Mercanth.’ Imbarin grunted encouragingly, so she continued, ‘They’ve made the connection with, well, not the Sidhe per se, but the pundits there are talking about disconcerting echoes of Protectorate times.’ Bez realised she had just unhesitatingly named her enemies in public.

  ‘Well, if the trusted and well-trained men and women you send after your suspects keep going mad or suffering brain haemorrhages, then something odd has to be going on, doesn’t it?

  That’s good news: we need to win the public over if we’re going to catch the ones who’ve got away so far.’

  The idea that the Sidhe’s continued existence might one day be accepted as fact had been one of Bez’s great hopes, yet now the possibility was being acknowledged it made her oddly nervous.

  Imbarin was saying, ‘What is the current score, anyway?’

  ‘It can only be an estimate.’ Commercial newsfeeds were hardly a reliable way to gather statistics. ‘We have fifty-six probable kills and another eighty-one detentions. In addition, there’re at least seventy systems where warrants have been issued.’

  ‘So that’s just over a third actually exposed.’

  ‘So far, yes.’ Not as many as she had hoped. ‘Do you really think the others will run?’

  ‘When they realise there’s no chance of regaining control, yes.

  The point at which those targets we haven’t yet touched start to disappear is the point at which we know we’ve won.’

  ‘I’ll drink to that,’ she said, and did. .

  The waiter approached with their starters. Bez· had ordered roasted sour cherries with curd cheese. The dish looked like a work of art. It tasted good, though: tart yet creamy. She allowed herself to enjoy the sensual pleasures of food and wine for a while, although she ended up leaving some of the extraneous leafage.

  She had just put down her fork and taken another sip from her newly refilled glass when Imbarin said, ‘I have an apology for you.’

  ‘An apology? Why, what have you done?’ Just when she thought he was trustworthy …

  ‘It’s not from me. It’s from Xantier.’

  ‘I’m sorry?’ The unaccustomed alcohol must be going to her head.

  ‘Well, when I say Xantier … my counterpart there. The one who abducted you. In the light of recent developments, he regrets his earlier actions.’

  ‘You mean…’ Bez was caught between incredulity and fury.

  Fury won. ‘You mean he’s sorry he nearly killed me then left me to rot in the hab-rat tunnels?’ she whispered.

  Imbarin grimaced. ‘Yes. That. He’d temporarily lost sight of who the real enemy was, the idiot.’

  She sat back and crossed her arms. ‘Well, that’s all right, then.’

  Another visit from the waiter, this time to remove their plates, shut her up. By the time they were alone again, her anger had subsided. Perhaps it was the soft glow of food and drink, or perhaps it was Imbarin himself, who looked genuinely, almost comically, pained.

  She leaned forward again. ‘You know, if everyone in your organisation had just cooperated with each other - and me - from the start, we might have eradicated the Sidhe completely by now.’

  ‘I’m not disagreeing with you there.’

  The next course arrived: seared pork fillets on stir-fried something-she-had-forgotten. But her appetite was not up to the cuisine. Pushing food around her plate she said, ‘Take beevee.’

  ‘What about beevee?’

  ‘Do you monitor it?’

  ‘That would be illegal.’

  Bez laughed. ‘Yes, and neither of us would ever do anything illegal. But if your group did somehow get access to a suspicious beevee transmission, possibly from our adversaries, would you have passed it on to another cell?’

  ‘Probably not,’ he admitted, ‘though now, with success in our sights, it’s more likely. But that assumes we could spot the suspicious transmission, then break the encryption on it, and then decode any meanings hidden in the plaintext. Something like a stock investment report might contain a brief but vital message only comprehensible to someone aware of the encoding regimes in place.’

  She smiled and said, ‘Oh, don’t I know it.’

  ‘So to answer your question: no, we haven’t done that well at spotting and intercepting the Sidhe’s use of beevee.’

  ‘You know what the problem is, don’t you?’

  ‘At a guess: ThreeCs.’

  ‘We need to take out the head Sidhe there, Imbarin.’

  ‘I agree. And knowing you as well as 1 hope 1 do, 1 can’t believe you don’t have a back-up plan in place to do just that.’

  ‘I did.’ The wine was making her careless. She knew what he would ask next.

  ‘But not anymore? What went wrong?’

  She could have claimed the intel she had needed was among the stored data she had
lost, but she disliked lying to him. Instead she said, ‘I made an error of judgement.’

  ‘Ah. Is the situation salvageable?’

  ‘Possibly.’ In theory she - or he - could engage a professional assassin to travel to Tethisyn and take out TargetZero. But as events on Bryntarin showed, that was a risky proposition. A criminal gun-for-hire would never be as effective as an Angel.

  ‘Just let me know if! can help.’

  She wondered if Imbarin himself had the skills she needed. He had certainly surprised her so far. But she did not like the idea of him putting himself into direct danger.

  The waiter took their plates. Silence fell while they waited for dessert. Every time she met up with Imbarin, she gave away more of herself - yet she didn’t mind. Should she? She still knew so little about her new ally, for all she wanted to trust him. More than trust him, if she was honest.

  The next course arrived: cherry mousse. It was so light it evaporated off her tongue, leaving tingling fruitiness in its wake.

  Somewhere along the way they had acquired another bottle of wme.

  ‘Can I ask you something?’ said Imbarin as she sat back after finishing her dessert.

  ‘Yes,’ she said warily.

  ‘Why do you hate the Sidhe so much?’

  ‘It‘s personaI. ‘

  ‘I see.’ She hoped he wouldn’t pursue the matter and wondered what she would tell him if he did. Then he added, ‘Is that all?’

  ‘What do you mean, “all”? Trust me: it’s enough.’

  ‘I understand: that’s a very … human … reason. But is there something more? Something ideological, perhaps.’

  Despite the wine, she saw what he was getting at. ‘Depends what you mean by ideological. I truly believe that humanity - possibly the universe itself - would be better off without them. They’re an aberration. A force for chaos.’