A Dark and Hungry God Arises (35 page)

At the moment, however, she wasn't looking at the door. Her attention was fixed on a man shambling toward her from the other direction.

As Min Donner scrutinized him, adrenalin slammed through her, and her palms started to burn as if they were on fire.

He was no newsdog. And he wasn't from Maintenance, even though he wore an old worksuit and carried a small toolcase; even though the security badge clipped at his shoulder was Maintenance-green. The way he moved - stiffly, carefully, as if he cradled something fragile in his chest - told Min at once that he wasn't here for any kind of repair or inspection.

He moved like a man who hadn't healed yet because he'd been operated on too quickly; too shoddily.

She was the director of Enforcement Division, as well as Warden Dios' sometime bodyguard and occasional executioner. She knew a kaze when she saw one.

She didn't hesitate. This was the work she did best.

Her impact pistol leaped into her hand as she pulled Captain Vertigus back from the door. 'Get down,' she breathed in an urgent whisper. 'Behind your desk. '

He stumbled against the edge of the desk, but didn't move to obey. He'd been away from ships too long; no longer recognized an order when he heard one. Instead he gaped at her, his old face full of astonishment.

'What-?'

She had no time for his confusion. Her attention focused like a laser through the crack of the door. The man had reached Marthe's desk. He was talking to her, showing her what may have been a work-order, gesturing toward the captain's office.

'I said get down, ' Min hissed. There's going to be an explosion. That man's a kaze. '

She didn't glance at Captain Vertigus: he understood what a kaze was. She could tell by the sounds he made that he was fumbling around the desk, crouching behind its inadequate shelter.

Abruptly the intercom chimed. A woman's voice said,

'Captain Vertigus? There's a man here from Maintenance. He says he needs to test the wiring of your data terminal. '

'What about Marthe?' the captain croaked at Min's back. 'You've got to get her out of there. '

She was Min Donner; familiar with extreme decisions and bloodshed. 'If I do that, ' she articulated so softly that he may not have heard her, 'she'll know I was here. '

Nevertheless she had to make the attempt.

To serve and protect.

Through the crack, she heard Marthe say to the kaze,

'I don't think he's in. '

'I'll just check, ' the man replied. 'This'll only take a minute. '

As soon as he stepped past Marthe's desk, Min kicked the door open. With her gun aimed as steady as steel for his sternum, she roared at Marthe, 'Take cover!'

The kaze's eyes widened in surprise; he faltered momentarily.

Frozen, Marthe stared at Min as if she'd just arrived from forbidden space.

Captain Vertigus' voice cracked into a wail: 'Marthe!'

Then the kaze launched himself toward Min and the door.

Shielding herself behind the door-frame, Min shot him in the chest.

She'd waited too long: she should have shot him as soon as she saw him. When the explosives surgically implanted in him detonated, the blast caught her past her shield and flung her against the wall like a handful of rags.

Chunks of concrete sprang off the walls; sound-proofing and ducts ripped out of the ceiling; debris whined like shrapnel. Blood burst from Min's nose; impact numbed her whole body. Yet the explosion didn't seem to make any noise. As she rebounded from the wall and sprawled into the wreckage, she already knew that she was deaf.

But she didn't stop. Rolling to get her legs under her, she staggered to her feet.

Swaddled in silence, she checked on Captain Vertigus.

He blinked up at her, his eyes full of powder and shock.

His mouth made noises she couldn't hear. If he hadn't been protected by his desk - and if his desktop hadn't been made of crystallized formica - he might have been seriously injured; might have been killed. As it was, he was only stunned.

Her sheaf of hardcopy was scattered around the office like confetti. Most of the pages appeared intact, however.

Her own voice was nothing more than a vibration in the bones of her skull as she told him, 'I wasn't here. No matter what happens, I wasn't here.

'Get that bill ready as fast as you can. '

Stumbling as if her neurons were no longer sure of their synapses, she left him alone.

As she passed Marthe's spattered remains and headed for the stairwell, she wondered which of the futures she and Captain Vertigus had tried to make possible no longer existed.

By the time the shuttle neared UMCPHQ's Earth-side dock, she began to recover her hearing.

The process was slow. At first only a high, thin wail registered, barely audible: a sound like someone keening in the distance, grieving for the dead - or like the screech of a shuttle's warning sirens muffled by an EVA suit. For a moment she thought it was the sirens; and her palms caught fire again. But neither the crew nor the other passengers reacted. Gradually the sensation of violence faded from her hands. The wail settled into the background until it became almost subliminal; mere neural feedback from her over-stressed eardrums.

Then she seemed to hear the muted hull-roar of the drive as the shuttle fired braking thrust. It, too, was imprecisely audible. Unlike the wail, however, it was real.

She could feel the same resonance when she touched one of the bulkheads.

Despite the soundless protests of the crew, she unbelted herself from her g-seat and drifted weightlessly toward the airlock. She wanted to disembark the minute the shuttle finished docking.

One of the crew touched her arm; she turned toward him and watched him speak. From somewhere beyond the wail, behind the hull-roar, she heard him - a voice like the whisper of fabric when her arm brushed her side.

'Director Donner, this isn't safe. '

'If I wanted to be safe' - her voice buzzed in the bones of her skull - 'I would choose another line of work. ' A moment later she ordered, 'Flare Director Dios. ' Flare was UMCP slang for contact urgently. Tell him I want to see him. Tell him I want to see him now. '

She would have sent that message earlier if she could have trusted her voice through her deafness.

The crewman saluted and went back to his duties.

Her handgun was back in its familiar place on her hip. She'd restored it as soon as she'd gained the relative privacy of the shuttle. Pains filled her body and her head: the residual throbbing in her sinuses, which persisted although her nose no longer bled; the deeper ache of contusions and bruises. But she ignored them. Other hurts were more important.

She wondered if she would be able to hear Warden Dios answer when she asked him questions.

Hints of noises which might have been dock-alerts reached her. That was a good sign. On the other hand, the crews' routine explanations and announcements were wrapped in silence; baffled by old grief.

When station g pulled her feet to the floor, she keyed open the airlock, equalized the pressure, and cycled the outer doors. By the time the crew had given the other passengers permission to leave their g-seats, she was face-to-face with the nearest guard, telling him to take her to the director.

For all she knew, the familiar authority of her voice came out as hysteria.

Warden Dios must have been expecting her message.

Whatever he was doing, he dropped it. No more than five minutes after she left the shuttle, she was with him in one of his secure offices; out of circulation; off the record. Again she temporarily ceased to exist.

Seated behind the desk with a blank data terminal in front of him, he studied her gravely. His human eye and his prosthesis seemed to search her inside and out.

Broadly speaking, he must have known what had happened: reports from GCES Security, as well as from his own personnel on Suka Bator, would have reached him faster than any shuttle. But no one except Captain Vertigus could have told him that Min Donner had set off the kaze herself; and she doubted that the captain and the UMCP director had been in contact with each other.

So Warden also had no idea what the outcome of her meeting with the senior member was.

Nevertheless he didn't rush her. No matter what he'd dropped to answer her flare, he seemed to offer her all the time and attention she needed. After he'd studied her for a moment, he pointed her toward a chair. As she eased her sore limbs into it, he asked, 'How badly are you hurt?'

His voice murmured against a keening background. If she hadn't noticed the tension in the cords of his neck, she wouldn't have realized that he was nearly shouting.

She shrugged. 'Nothing serious. Bruises. I had a bloody nose. And I can't hear very well - concussion deafness. '

'That's obvious. ' Unexpected strain underlined his whisper. 'I've been talking steadily, but you didn't react until you looked at my face. This can wait, you know. I can live with my impatience while you see the medtechs. '

'I can't. ' Heard through her skull, her voice was coarse, almost guttural. 'A crazy man killed an innocent woman. '

She had Marthe's blood on her hands, if not her conscience. 'If he'd arrived a couple of minutes earlier - or if I hadn't set him off - he would have killed Captain Vertigus as well as me. I can't wait. I want to know what's going on. '

Warden spread his hands. They looked strong in the light over his desk; as steady as stones. 'All right. Let's start with this kaze. That's your department - tell me about him. '

'A human bomb, ' she reported automatically. As she spoke, she stopped monitoring the modulation of her voice. The director would tell her if she didn't speak clearly. 'A terrorist on a suicide mission. We haven't had much trouble with them recently. Most of the fringe groups are in disarray - they can't decide who they hate enough to kill themselves for. Forbidden space scares them too much. About the only group that regularly tries to blow up GCES policy is the native Earthers. But this kaze didn't come from them. '

'How do you know?' Warden asked.

'Because he got through Security. He had legitimate maintenance id. That's not easy to come by - especially for a group like the native Earthers, with an established history of - her mouth twisted - '"opposition" to the GCES. Security is using all kinds of embedded verifications in the id tags of everyone who belongs on Suka Bator. And we' - she meant Data Acquisition - 'supply CMOS-SOD chips for GCES function id. Those chips can't be counterfeited, the same way datacores can't be altered. '

Dios knew all this, but he gave no hint of impatience.

'What does that prove?'

Min did her best to explain details and perceptions which came to her intuitively. 'Assuming it's possible to steal or fabricate the chip to fake that maintenance id -

which I don't assume - you can't get the job done over-night. You have to prepare for it. And even if you have the chip, you can't just stamp out that kind of id. You need too much specific information about how GCES

Security works - for instance, how they rotate their passcodes. For the native Earthers to pull off something like this, they must have started getting it ready months ago.

'But nobody got that kaze ready. He was in pain when he moved. The surgery was too recent - a day or two ago at most. Why do the kind of long-range work you need to produce fake GCES function id without preparing your kaze at the same time? That part of the job is a hell of a lot easier. '

Warden shrugged. They didn't think they were going to need him so soon. ' The muffling of his voice made him sound abstract. The original plan was to use him later, in some other situation. The decision to act now was made suddenly. In response to the events of the past twenty-four hours. '

A tingle ran through Min's palms. The muscles at the base of her spine tightened. Without warning the atmosphere in the office seemed to take on threats; obscure implications gathered at the edges of the light. The UMCP director gave her an opening to ask questions -

questions which had swarmed like pain through her head ever since she'd taken her seat on the shuttle. Because she needed so much to believe in him, the prospect of challenging him scared her.

But her questions scared her more.

'Then why attack Captain Vertigus?' she countered.

'The native Earthers consider him a hero. '

'To make him a martyr?' Warden offered impassively.

Maybe he couldn't feel her challenge in the air; maybe he couldn't guess where she was headed. The only strain in his demeanor came from the effort of speaking loudly enough to be heard. 'To prove that the enemies of the native Earthers are evil?'

Her voice felt like a snarl in the bones behind her ears.

'And what has that got to do with "the events of the past twenty-four hours"? If the native Earthers are involved, why is today different than any other day? Where does the need to attack so suddenly come from?'

His single eye held her gaze. His IR vision must have told him that her nerves were burning.

'This is a crucial time for the Council, ' he answered.

'Issues have come up concerning everything we do in space - and they've certainly come up suddenly. Precisely because Captain Vertigus is a hero to the native Earthers, the attack on him validates his convictions. I mean it validates his opposition to Holt Fasner and the UMC.

Remember the captain has always backed us up - and fought Fasner. He doesn't reject our function, he rejects UMC policy. Terrorists have always attacked their enemies - but sometimes they attack their friends in an effort to make their enemies look bad. '

Min fought an impulse to lower her head. She wanted to drop her eyes; but the pressure to look away, to fix her attention on anything except the man she served, didn't come from him. It came from inside her: from what she was thinking; from what she feared. The weakness was hers. For that reason she refused to give in to it.

Facing Warden Dios straight, she took a step closer to what she believed was the heart of the matter.