A fit of coughing erupted from the makeshift infirmary between the trap room and bunkhouse, a wet, whooping explosion of breath painful to listen to. The spasms carried on and on, increasing in length and intensity until each ended in a choked, gasping wheeze just before the diaphragm rebounded to begin the cycle again.
Grogan spun toward the door and hurled the tool in his hand against the wall with a clang. “Shut that fucker up!” he bellowed. “I have to listen to this shit one more night I swear I’ll bust his head!”
“I’ll take care of it,” O’Brien hastened, stepping to the door to block his way if he decided to make good on the threat. He glowered at her, but snatched the tool from the floor where it landed and turned back to the pod.
It was hard to believe that a person could remain unconscious through the paroxysm. The dirtsider lay against one wall on a doubled-up sleeping pad, covered by a thin, sweat-soaked blanket. Leprous-looking gray patches of frostbite marred his face and Liz hovered over him, covering his mouth with a cloth to catch the blood-flecked sputum and muffle the sound as best she could.
“How’s he doing?” O’Brien asked.
“I finally got some meds down his throat,” the younger woman replied tonelessly, “but it’s a waste of time. You should have left him.”
O’Brien wasn’t certain which made her feel the most uncomfortable: hearing someone talk about another human being as if he were a piece of equipment that was too much trouble to fix or the fact that, for just a split second, she agreed.
The Fort: 2709:09:21 Standard
Dozens of aircraft icons crawled across a map of the Great Northern Preserve, a near duplicate image of the one that sent Hal on the disastrous foray to confront Sorenson and locate Reilly less than forty-eight hours earlier.
“They began to move in the moment the storm broke,” said Tamara Cirilo via video link from the safe house in Saint Anatone. “Based on the chatter, I’m confident that they’re only looking for their missing aircar.”
“Can you call them off?” Hal asked.
“Possibly, but I recommend against it. They’ve got more resources than we can field, and if they do find Reilly we’ll know it.”
“Agreed. Anything else?”
“We’re getting a good picture of Sorenson’s illicit operations now that we have access to his network,” Tamara said. “Apparently Sorenson Exports sells poached animal protein to the Belters in return for refined elements, most of which they ship out-system. Some of it gets smuggled back to Nivia and traded to the Minzoku for grains, fruits and so on.”
“What elements was he selling to the Minzoku that they couldn’t get themselves?” Hal demanded.
“Indium, gallium and antimony,” Tamara replied glumly.
“That doesn’t make any sense!” Hal asserted.
“Unless he and Den Tun were stockpiling it for large scale production of Tiger Opal,” Tamara suggested.
“How did he move that volume of material off-world without getting caught?”
“The company that handles ninety percent of Nivia’s toxic waste disposal is a subsidiary of Sorenson Exports,” Tamara said. “I suspect we’ll find that he accomplished most of his out-bound smuggling by disguising the cargo, including ours, as waste. That’s one export the federal authorities don’t look at too closely—they’re happy to see it gone and don’t ask questions about where it ends up.”
“Did you find anything likely to lead back to us?” Hal asked.
Tammy pursed her lips thoughtfully. “Not directly. His poaching operation involves most of his company, but effectively camouflaged his interaction with the Minzoku from even his own people. He played that aspect of his operation close to his chest.”
“Lucky for us,” Hal sighed.
“Not entirely,” his cousin said. “It appears that he managed the Family/Minzoku facets of his operation personally.”
“And I killed him,” Hal groaned. “The Old Lady is going to have a fit when she finds out!”
“Probably,” Tamara smiled, “but my report could read several ways. We’ll talk about it when I return. One last thing,” she added. “Sorenson’s death will draw a lot of attention from the local authorities. I recommend we come clean about it with our federal contact—as clean as we need to, anyway.”
“Fine,” Hal sighed. “Set it up.”
“Done. I’ll see you when I get back.”
The connection faded and Hal ran both hands through his hair. I did it to myself. Built the trap for her and walked right in. The fact of Sorenson’s death would be of less interest to the Family than the repercussions it had on their currently unfulfilled obligations and future operations. Blaming the assassination on a fit of pique would do him no good at all and Tamara knew that.
Hal left the command post and headed straight back to his quarters to check on Dayuki. The Fort’s physicians had confirmed the field diagnosis—a lung punctured by a broken rib, a serious injury but survivable with adequate care. The trick, it turned out, was convincing Dayuki that her greatest obligation to him was to recover, not to concern herself with his comfort.
She was awake when he arrived, the pain medication he’d set out for her that morning untouched. “The doctor said you’ll heal faster if you take it,” Hal informed her.
“The medicine makes me sleepy, and I wish to hear what you learned from Mistress Cirilo,” she explained.
“Mixed news,” Hal sighed, and explained his predicament.
Dayuki put her hand on his arm when he finished. “Perhaps,” she said consolingly, “you will learn to love her.”
TWENTY-THREE
Great Northern Preserve: 2709:09:23 Standard
Terson drifted in dreamlike confusion; thick, muddled perceptions of the present blended with the past. Someone held him on his side and beat on his back, commanding him to cough. Virene swam within a school of bejeweled fish. Wet, hacking spasms shook his body. Jack and Terson stood back to back in the middle of the tavern giving as good as they got. Angry demands for silence.
The Big Man passed him on a street in Windstone one night.
Their eyes met and Terson felt the helpless terror of the paralyzed little boy he’d once been, but the Big Man shambled on without any hint of recognition. The young boy whose family he’d butchered had changed considerably more during the intervening twelve years than he had.
Terson turned to follow. The Big Man turned into a dimly lit alley, stumbling in a little way before stopping to piss.
Terson slipped the knife from his boot used it like Boss Hanstead taught him. It was easier than he expected—the Big Man was nothing but a drunk now, and the bottle had taken away any fight left in him. Terson stared at the lifeless body at his feet for a moment then leaned over and added vomit to the pool of blood and urine.
Terson spun in total, absolute darkness. He tried to speak. A painful, racking cough exploded from deep in his chest instead. “God damn you!” someone hissed from the darkness, “Start that shit again I’ll cut your fucking throat!”
“I’m cold,” he managed to croak out.
A light flicked on suddenly. Terson squeezed his eyes shut against it. Someone laid a cool object against his forehead. “Fever hasn’t broken,” a woman said, “but it’s dropped. See if he’ll drink.”
A warm hand lifted his head. A tube touched his lips. “Slowly.” Terson sucked on the tube, found his mouth full of cold water. He let it trickle to the back of his throat, swallowed a little, then a little more. The tube withdrew. “Go back to sleep.”
Terson gazed down on Den Tun’s tapestry from orbit, taking in the rare view of the planet as seen from the northern approach to Saint Anatone. Tiny figures of finely stitched thread cavorted at the base of a triple-peaked mountain.
The universe snapped into lucid focus, and Terson’s eyes flew open.
He knew the reason for the tickle of familiarity when he first saw the tapestry. He knew what Den Tun’s Onjin and gaijin were willing to kill to protect.<
br />
The revelation that explained everything blazed in his mind as he woke, crisp and certain and unassailable, then guttered out like a snuffed candle before his consciousness could seize hold of it. He lay still, listening, with the dank, musty scent of stagnant air in his nose. Illumination from beyond one of two doorways cast enough light to make out smooth stone walls. Lighter colored lime deposits lined cracks in the ceiling above.
He was naked except for his shorts, swaddled up to his neck in blankets. He wrestled with them for a moment to free himself and sat up, head pulsing with waves of dizziness amplified by hunger and thirst. The tips of his fingers and toes ached, and his chest felt as if someone was sitting on it. He was somewhat more than mildly surprised that he was alive.
Low voices emanated from beyond the room. Terson pulled one of the blankets around his shoulders and sidled up to the lit doorway, ears straining for the sound of anyone approaching. The room on the other side was larger, filled with trapping paraphernalia and unoccupied. A sensor pod sat on a work bench surrounded by tools.
A topographical map lay next to the pod. The maddening tickle in Terson’s head stirred up again as he approached. Someone had penciled a path leading from a location apparently inside the Great Northern Preserve eastward to the edge of the map. Judging from the notations scrawled alongside the course they’d misinterpreted the elevation lines and their journey would end in an abrupt intersection with the ground roughly fifteen kilometers from its point of origin.
The damaged sensor pod explained the use of the map, but offered no clue to the identity of those who’d rescued him. If they were the same people Zarn worked for he could be on his way to freedom, but there was no guarantee that all of Zarn’s coworkers were privy to the plot. They might hand him over to the authorities as a suspected poacher. If they were poachers themselves, they might decide to kill him to spare themselves the risk of discovery.
Terson needed a weapon. The room contained plenty of blunt instruments, but nothing small and effective enough to conceal. He crept back to the room he woke in and peered through the second, darkened doorway. This room, too, was larger than the first, and possessed a second entrance on the right-hand wall from which the voices came.
Mounds of bedding and personal gear on the floor emerged from the darkness as his eyes adjusted. The nearest pile yielded a twelve-centimeter hunting knife, which Terson thrust into his waistband at the small of his back. Another pack rewarded him with a package of hard candies. He shoved a handful into his mouth then stepped lightly to the second doorway. It led to a small lit anteroom and yet another doorway. Through it he heard people moving about and conversing. He edged along the wall to a shadowed corner where he could peek out without being seen.
Half a dozen men and women wearing shipsuits sat around a bank of heaters. Two more knelt by a communications module discussing their situation with someone on the other end of the circuit. It didn’t take Terson long to get the gist of who the spacers were, what had happened to them, and his own part in it. Eventually they got around to talking about what to do about him.
“…So we can’t fly in daylight until they leave,” O’Brien finished, “and getting out at night will be dicey without the FLIR.”
“I understand your situation,” Shadrack’s voice cracked back, “but the only other option is to leave you behind.”
O’Brien looked sidelong at Grogan, who nodded his head as if addressing their captain in person. “We’ll do’er, Cap’n.”
“The lander’s at the spaceport now. It lifts in the morning, with or without you.”
“Sir,” O’Brien said, “What about our, ah, friend?”
Shadrack replied with dead air for a moment. “Use your best judgment.”
“We leave him here,” Grogan announced when the Embustero signed off.
“He goes,” O’Brien countermanded. “He’s our responsibility, and he’ll die for sure if we just go off and leave him.”
“Your responsibility,” Grogan said, “not ours. You want him along, you give up your cargo-share; equal mass.” He looked about for allies. The others seemed inclined to agree.
“I didn’t say take him to the ship!” she exclaimed in exasperation. “We can drop him off in God’s Saucer.”
“So he can turn us in?” Grogan snorted.
“He’s been unconscious since we found him, you idiot!”
“And how do we explain where we got him?” the man demanded. “Medics are going to ask questions, and remember us when the folks looking for him track him down.”
He had a point, there. “We’ll pay somebody to get him to a hospital,” she ventured.
“We’ll pay?”
“God damn it, I’ll pay, alright?”
“Suits me,” Grogan shrugged.
“We’ll split the cost,” Mackey said, turning to the other spacers. “Would you like to get left behind for the sake of a few hundred euros?” It wasn’t a fair question; involuntary grounding was a fate worse than death to a spacer.
“She already said she’d pay!” Grogan objected.
“Put a sock in it, you pitiless bastard.”
“And who the hell are we going to get to do it?” he pressed.
“That guy you paid to fix the sled the first time was willing to make a buck without asking too many questions,” Mackey replied with a tight smile. “Maybe you can have him rebuild the FLIR, while he’s at it.”
Grogan glared at him. “Go to hell!”
“But how do we get there?” Berriochoa asked, bringing the conversation back to the subject that concerned them the most.
“Leave that to me,” Grogan told him. “I can fly out of here with my eyes closed.”
“They must have been,” Mackey sniped. “Try to spare the trees, this time.”
“He’ll hit more than trees, if he doesn’t learn how to read a map,” said a gravely voice. The blanket-clad dirtsider emerged from the shadows in the anteroom leading to the bunks and leaned heavily against the threshold, pale and unsteady. He turned his head and hacked a wad of crimson phlegm into the corner.
“If it wasn’t for you we wouldn’t be in this fix,” Grogan growled, advancing on the man menacingly. “I should pitch your ass back outside!”
The dirtsider was in no condition to defend himself. O’Brien jumped to her feet, too far away to intercept her crewmate. “Leave him alone, Grogan!”
The dirtsider shifted his weight from the wall and extended a stiff arm to ward off the spacer. Grogan stopped abruptly and looked up at the ceiling with eyes wide, arms limp at his sides. “Easy with that, now,” he said in an unusually restrained tone.
It took the rest of them a moment to recognize what the dirtsider had pressed against the underside of Grogan’s chin. “He’s got a knife!” Mackey exclaimed. The spacers scrambled to their feet, snatching up whatever weapon or blunt object came to hand.
Perspiration beaded Grogan’s forehead. He held still, not daring to so much as swallow while the others circled uncertainly. “You threatened to cut my throat, I recall,” the dirtsider said. “Not much fun on the receiving end, is it?”
Mackey pulled out a pistol and pointed it at the pair. “Let him go!”
The dirtsider’s hard eyes turned to him. “You’re just as likely to hit him, the way your barrel’s wobbling. And if you do happen to hit me the last thing I’ll do is rip him open.” He pressed the blade a bit harder to make his point. Grogan rose up on his toes, whimpering.
“We’re not part of whatever you’re mixed up in,” O’Brien said. “We’re getting ready to pull out and there’s people looking for you. We’ll leave you for them if that’s what you want.”
“Who are they?”
“We don’t know,” O’Brien said.
“You’re poachers,” the dirtsider observed.
“We saved your life,” Mackey reminded him.
“Yeah, I guess this isn’t very grateful of me.” The knife left Grogan’s throat, but he did not offer to surre
nder it. “You did me a favor; I’ll return it.”
“How do you think you’ll do that?” Grogan glowered. He rubbed his neck instinctively to reassure himself he was well and whole.
“I can get you out of the mountains,” he said.
“We can do that ourselves!”
“I can get you out of the mountains alive,” he amended.
“Sure,” Grogan scoffed, “like we trust you to know what you’re doing!”
“The papers in his belt say he’s atmosphere rated,” Mackey confirmed.
“I want my property returned,” the dirtsider said.
“We’ll hang on to it for now,” O’Brien replied. “Are you sure you can get us out of here?”
“Not absolutely, no,” he shrugged. “But I’m so sure you won’t make it if he flies that I’ll go ahead and take my chances here.”
“That’s a plan I can live with,” Grogan sneered.
“Shut up,” O’Brien sighed. “Liz, go get the map.”
As anxious as the spacers were to find a way out of their predicament, watching the dirtsider hunched over a map of indecipherable squiggly lines could only hold their attention for so long. They drifted back to the heaters by ones and twos, leaving the responsibility of monitoring him to O’Brien. Monitoring in this case simply meant observing where he went and what he did, both of which were essentially irrelevant.
Her observations did, however, raise more and more questions about him—where he came from, for starters. They’d found him in a shredded emergency survival suit without even street clothes underneath. There were no roads or civilian flight paths for hundreds of kilometers in any direction, yet he clearly wasn’t part of the local militia or law enforcement. He appeared competent and familiar with the wilderness, yet ended up perched in a tree surrounded by vicious predators, slowly freezing to death.
Grogan maintained that he’d made no errors in deciphering the topographical map the dirtsider now studied. The explanation the dirtsider offered as proof that he had required an understanding of the concepts involved that none of the spacers possessed. Had it been luck that got him this far, or ability? The distinction was important, given that they were about to place their lives and freedom in his hands based more on Grogan’s known inadequacies than trust in him.
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