“You’re in a hurry?”
“We’re on a rescue mission.”
“Ah.” He clasped his hands together. “In that case, I won’t waste any more of your time.”
“Thank you.”
“It’s just, I had a proposition for you.”
I sighed through my nose, resisting the urge to roll my eyes. “I’m sorry, Mr Mulch. Please, go on.”
He smiled. “That’s a large vessel you have, Captain.”
“It is.”
“Built to carry how many, two hundred?”
“Three hundred.”
“And how many do you currently number among your crew?”
I began to see where this was going. “Four.”
His grin broadened. He wasn’t actually rubbing his hands together, but something about his expression suggested he might. “So, you have lots of spare capacity?”
“As I said, we’re on a rescue mission. A liner went down in the Gallery with 900 people on board. If even half of them survived, we’re going to need every square metre of room.”
“Ah.”
“Now, what was your proposition, Mr Mulch?”
He shrugged, as if acknowledging defeat. “There is a civil war. People are unhappy. I have a hundred families who will gladly pay for passage off-planet.”
“I’m sorry, but I don’t have the room.”
“It’s just that ships visit us so rarely.”
“I appreciate that, but the answer’s still no.”
Mulch opened his arms wide. “Captain, I understand completely. You can’t blame a fellow for trying.” His grin turned sickly. He put a hand on my upper arm. “All I ask is that if you pass this way on your return journey, and you have space, you might reconsider your position.” He rubbed the fingers of his free hand together. “They’re willing to pay a lot, in cash. There’d be plenty for both of us.”
I shook him off and stepped back. “If I come back this way, I’ll be carrying wounded.” I let my irritation bleed into my tone. “I won’t have time to dally for passengers.”
Mulch looked crestfallen. “With respect, I’m offering you a good price.”
“And I’m declining.”
EIGHTEEN
ASHTON CHILDE
I heard a floorboard creak and reached for my gun. Laura Petrushka appeared in the doorway of the guesthouse bedroom. She saw the weapon and raised an eyebrow.
“The Trouble Dog is here,” she said. “Do you want to tell me the truth?”
I motioned her inside and shut the door. It had taken us sixteen hours to get to Northfield from the airstrip on the edge of the jungle a continent away—a rough and uncomfortable flight on board one of the civilian cargo planes.
“The truth about what?”
“About this jaunt to the Gallery, of course.” Since arriving at the guesthouse an hour earlier, she had changed into a navy-blue jumpsuit. The long streak of white in her hair ran like a vein of silver through her loosely tied ponytail. Her dark eyes shimmered with an iridescent sheen that reminded me of those high-altitude clouds you sometimes saw glittering after sunset, still lit up by the light of the vanished sun.
“A liner went down.” My voice felt hoarse and unreliable in my mouth. “I’ve been sent to look for one of the passengers.”
“And we’re going to hitch a ride on a Reclamation Vessel?”
I shrugged. “It’s the fastest way to get there.”
She crossed the room and perched on the corner of the unused bed. “Why would the Conglomeration pull you out of the jungle for a crashed liner?”
I moistened my lips. “It didn’t crash.”
“Then what happened to it?” Laura’s tone remained light, but she sat back a fraction and her eyes narrowed almost imperceptibly.
“We intercepted a distress signal. The ship was attacked.”
“And this was four days ago?”
“Six by the time we get there.” I dropped my pistol onto the bed.
“And your government hasn’t thought to share this with the Outward?”
“Apparently not.”
A frown creased the skin between her brows. “I don’t buy it. Say we get there and find it’s been shot down. So what? What do they expect you to do about it?”
“They don’t want me to do anything, just hunt for this one person.”
“Who is it?”
“Ona Sudak.”
For the first time, Laura looked surprised. “The war poet?”
“They want me to confirm she’s dead.”
“Can’t they wait for the official report?”
“Not if she’s been taken by anybody else.”
“Why would they think she might be?”
I splayed my hands. “Search me. They just asked me to find her. They said it was something to do with cultural pride.”
“But who would want to kidnap a poet?”
“An ardent fan?”
“Be serious.”
“You want serious?” I stretched, working out some of the aches and twinges in my back. I felt almost giddy at the prospect of leaving this planet, even if only temporarily. At the same time, the responsibility of my new mission left me queasy. This could be my one and only chance to prove myself, and I didn’t want to blow it. “The Gallery’s a disputed system. At least three races claim it. If people start shooting in there, who knows what might happen.”
“So, this is a strictly covert mission?”
“Hence the ride on the RV.” I lowered my voice. “I shouldn’t be telling you this, but there’s a Conglomeration Scimitar heading in this direction, but it won’t arrive in the vicinity for another few days. My job’s to get to the Gallery, find Sudak and ascertain whether she’s dead or alive, and then signal the Scimitar to come and pick her up.”
“And it doesn’t matter which?”
“The most important thing is that she doesn’t fall into enemy hands.”
“And by enemy, you mean…?”
I let out a breath. “Just about everybody else at this point.”
“Including me?”
“In theory, yes.”
Laura smiled. “Then why bring me along?”
It was a good question, and one for which I only had half an answer.
“Because I get the feeling this is going to be harder than they’re making out,” I said carefully. “And I could use the help of a professional.”
I watched her amusement fade.
“And you’re not worried about me reporting back to the Outward?” She said it quietly, all traces of camaraderie dispelled.
“About a dead poet?” I slipped off my jacket and dropped it onto the covers beside the gun. My clothes stank of the jungle and I wanted to burn them. Just the smell was enough to make my left eye twitch. I opened my luggage and pulled out a clean white t-shirt.
“Think of it as a holiday.” I hoped she couldn’t see my hands trembling. “A few days away from the humidity and stench.”
“And in return?”
“You get to find out what happened to your liner.”
NINETEEN
ONA SUDAK
Adam found me kneeling by the dead woman. I was surprised to see him, having already given him up for dead, and jumped up to crush him in a bear hug.
“There’s a shuttle coming in,” he said. He had an emergency survival suit in each hand. His features were ashen, his clothes ragged, his skin scratched and bleeding.
I peered back in the direction from which he’d come, trying to see through the two-metre gap between the bottom of the ’dam and the floor of the canyon, but fallen pieces of broken ship obscured my view.
“What kind of shuttle?”
“I didn’t get a good look.” He wiped his nose on the back of his hand. “Does it matter?”
I brushed a final strand of hair from the dead woman’s face and stood up. My knees hurt.
“Of course it matters. We don’t know what they want.” In the opposite direction, a hundred metres from
the outer fringes of the crash site, the canyon took a sharp turn to the left. If we could make it to that corner—and then into the rest of the labyrinth beyond—we’d have a fighting chance of losing ourselves before anyone came looking for us.
I walked around the hunk of machinery pinning the corpse to the canyon floor and retrieved her shoes, which I slipped over my own bare feet. They were a little large, but serviceable if I tightened them as far as possible.
Returning to Adam, I took one of the survival suits from his hands. The suit was dormant, wrapped into a grapefruit-sized ball with a toggle protruding from one end. I yanked the toggle and stepped back as the suit expanded.
“Come on,” I said. “Otherwise you’ll freeze.”
I watched as Adam activated his own suit, and then showed him how to wriggle into it.
I had worn survival suits many times before. They were tight all-in-one garments that you could wear in the cramped confines of a distressed ship or out on a planetary surface. They retained body heat and recycled sweat and other waste, ensuring a constant supply of potable water. Their hoods were capable of covering the face to form a rudimentary breathing mask, and they even contained a small supply of breathable air in case of atmospheric failure.
My arm still hurt where I had hit it against something during the impact. While I was reasonably sure it wasn’t broken, I knew there would be extensive bruising, and perhaps some ligament damage. It made donning the garment a painful and awkward process, but I eventually managed to work it into the sleeve and fasten the suit over my clothes. I left the hood down around my neck; there was no sense in using air I might need later.
When we were both dressed, I started walking, my shoes squealing against the smooth stone floor.
After a moment, Adam followed. “Where are you going?” He glanced back towards the ruin of the ’dam, still hanging like a boulder lodged in a crevasse, and the lights and noise coming from beyond.
“This wasn’t an accident,” I told him, cradling my damaged arm. “We were shot down.”
He raised a sceptical eyebrow. “Who would shoot down a liner?”
“It doesn’t matter.” My eyes were on the corner ahead. “I saw the torpedoes from the pool. I tried to get out and get back to you, but they hit us before I’d got half a dozen paces. Now, whoever fired them has come down here to make sure there aren’t any witnesses left alive.”
Adam stopped moving. “You’re serious?”
“Deadly serious.”
“And you think that shuttle might be… them?”
“I think it’s likely. Who else would be out here?”
For the first time, genuine concern creased his face. “Then what are we going to do?”
Something touched down on the canyon floor on the other side of the wreck. Through the tenuous nitrogen atmosphere, I heard the whine of its engines. The downdraught from its thrusters sent billows of dust and smaller fragments tumbling out from beneath the jammed section of the ’dam’s hull. Its landing lights threw long shadows through the debris field.
“We keep walking,” I said. “We stay out of sight, and we stay alive.”
* * *
The corner was a perfect, knife-sharp right angle. As soon as we were around it and out of sight of the wreck, we paused for breath. Hard, bright stars filled the strip of sky two kilometres above us. Our chests heaved and my injured arm ached. From behind, echoing up the canyon from the crash site, I caught a series of soft whines.
Adam cocked his head.
“What’s that?”
“Gauss rifles.” I knew the sound well. “I expect they’re shooting the survivors.”
Adam gave me a disapproving look.
“That’s not funny.”
“I’m not joking.” Whoever was back there had brought magnetic rifles, and they didn’t seem to be hesitant about using them.
“Come on.” I took hold of his upper arm. “We should keep moving.”
He hung back like an unwilling child. “Shouldn’t we do something?”
“There isn’t anything we can do.”
“But those people—”
I held up a hand. I was acutely aware that when the shooting stopped, the attackers would probably widen their search for survivors. If we were caught here, between the smooth, vertical walls of the canyon, we would be easy targets.
“They were people,” I told him. “But now they’re dead. There’s nothing we can do to help. We have to help ourselves.”
Adam swallowed. I could see he was going to argue, so I slapped him. The sound of it echoed off the walls.
“Right now, grief’s a luxury we can’t afford.” I spoke quickly, while he was still reeling from the blow. My palm stung, but I kept my voice low and dangerous. “When we’re safe, you can weep for the dead. You can write them a fucking sonnet. Until then, you need to stay close to me and follow orders. Do you understand?”
He blinked at me and cradled his cheek.
“Do you understand?”
“I—”
“DO. YOU. UN. DER. STAND?”
“Y-yes.”
“Yes WHAT?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
I turned on my heel and marched away, knowing he would trail along in my wake. He had no place else to go. His whole world had been upended, and he needed me to look after him, to tell him what to do. As long as I kept him moving and busy, he wouldn’t have time to succumb to shock.
Half a kilometre ahead, the canyon branched, and then branched again a little way further beyond. I chose the right-hand fork at the first junction, then the left at the second, convinced that if my choices were random, our movements would be harder for our pursuers to predict. As long as we kept moving and avoided dead ends, we would be able to stay ahead of anyone travelling on foot.
I didn’t mention the main anxiety gnawing at me: that if our attackers used their shuttle to sweep the canyons from above, we’d be as conspicuous down here as cockroaches in a laboratory maze. We had nowhere to take shelter and no way of fighting back. Our only hope was that they’d spend their time checking over the wreck rather than chasing down strays.
TWENTY
SAL KONSTANZ
I found it impossible to tell whether Armand Mulch’s moustache was intentional, or whether the bristles on his unshaven face simply grew more thickly in the region between his nose and upper lip. Whatever the truth, the overall effect was one of lubricious indolence, and I sensed that, despite the misdirection of his business suit, he was a man suited less to the bright lights and civilised discourse of the mainstream and more to the raw and shady politics of this out-of-the-way shithole, where the only real laws were those of unvarnished chance and necessity.
I had met his kind many times, on many worlds.
“Okay.” I swirled the drink in the bottom of my glass. “You must have known there’d be no way I’d take that many passengers.”
We were inside now, seated at one of the saloon’s tables. Mulch leant back and smiled, playing the gracious host. “I thought I might appeal to your better nature.”
I gave him a look. I didn’t have time for bullshit. “I leave in ten minutes,” I told him.
I watched him smooth down the edges of his moustache with a licked thumb tip.
“That is a real shame,” he said. He looked down at his fingernails.
Behind him, the front door opened. The pair who stepped into the bar looked, at first glance, to be a perfectly normal couple. Their clothes were unflattering and unfashionable, and had obviously been printed by the same tailor from the same set of templates. They could almost have been a couple of civilian off-worlders whose safari had taken an unexpected turn; and yet there was something in the straightness of their postures (and the way they positioned themselves to keep both of the room’s exits within their peripheral visual fields) that screamed military and, maybe worse, military intelligence.
“Are these two with you?” I asked Mulch. I thought they might be his enforcers, here
to help persuade me.
Mulch shook his head. He stood as they approached us.
“Captain Konstanz?” the man asked.
I held up a hand to stop him. “I’m not having any spooks on my ship.”
The woman looked startled. “What makes you think we’re spooks, Captain?”
“Are you telling me you’re not?”
She gave me an appraising look. “You served in the war?”
I scraped back in my chair. “If you’re who and what I think you are, you already know everything about me. So, stop playing games and tell me what you want.”
The two of them exchanged a glance. They glanced suspiciously at Mulch, and then the man spoke up.
“We want you to take us to the Gallery.”
I shook my head. “As I already told Mr Mulch here, I don’t have room for passengers.”
“We wouldn’t be passengers.” The man spread his hands. “We’re both trained in field surgery; we could be a big help.”
“You want to join the Reclamation?”
He smiled. “We want you to get us to that system. In return, we’ll do what we can to assist your rescue operation.”
“And why would you go to all that trouble?”
“We’re looking for a particular passenger.”
“On whose behalf?”
The woman leaned forward. “You were in the Outward, weren’t you?”
I made a face. “It’s no use appealing to my loyalty. I gave all that shit up when I joined the House.”
The two of them swapped another glance. With a roll of his eyes, Mulch turned and ambled over to the bar, where the barman passed him another drink and he stood, one elbow on the counter, patiently stroking his moustache with thumb and forefinger, waiting to see how the negotiations would pan out.
“My name’s Laura Petrushka,” the woman said with the air of a poker player laying her cards on the table, “and I work for Outward Intelligence. My friend here is Ashton Childe. He’s Conglomeration, through and through.”
That did surprise me. “And you’re working together?”
“We have an understanding.”
“I see.” I eyeballed Childe. “In that case, I should warn you my ship’s ex-Conglomeration. She defected at the end of the war, and I get the feeling she doesn’t take kindly to being reminded of the fact.”
Embers of War Page 9