Bitter Angels (16 page)

The fury on Siri’s face could have peeled paint, but I didn’t back down. I could not forget how she had talked so urgently about Bianca’s maybe being alive on Hospital, a
place we knew next to nothing about. I had turned the idea away because it would make it impossible for me to do my job. But I knew she hadn’t let the idea drop. Siri did not let things drop.

But even as I moved my fingers to start another message, Dr. Varus had caught Captain Jireu by the arm and pulled him out of our earshot, speaking urgently. Jireu frowned, then the frown softened. He touched her hand in a way that spoke of friendship, or, possibly, love. I glanced sharply at Siri. She nodded, a bare hint of movement, and touched her set. I touched mine, and I heard:

“Amerand, can you hang until I’m done with the scans? I’m going to need a flight to Fortress.”

“Are you cleared for that, Emiliya?”

“I will be.” Her tone was flat and tense.

Jireu hesitated. “What’s going on?”

“Nothing, but I’m going to have to report in person rather than over the line, and I was hoping to get a decent pilot.”

That sounded lame, even to me. She’d found something unexpected. If Siri was hiding something from me…Maybe she’d managed to bring Jerimiah in the middle of this paranoia.

I had no chance to get her another message, because Captain Jireu was walking back toward us.

“There’s been a change in the scheduling requirements,” he said. “No one is being permitted to fly out until everyone has been cleared. I’ll have to ask you to wait aboard the ship.” His gesture toward the docking-bay door was as smooth as his lie.

I watched him long enough to see his smooth expression falter, just a little. Did he think we didn’t notice? Yes, he did. He didn’t take us seriously yet. I felt the claws of my pride extend.

“Of course.” I pasted a false, pleasant smile on my face. Captain Jireu walked past us, his shoulders stiff, and we fell in behind, heading back toward the bustle and chaos of the main bay.

What do you suppose all that was? Siri’s message glowed faintly on my palm.

I closed my fist around her words.
That, Captain Baijahn, was just the beginning
.

Field Commander Drajeske cocked her head at me, clearly looking for an explanation, but I had none to give.

“Excuse me.” I bowed, and turned away to climb the ladder to the cockpit.

Of all my Security duties, I hated piloting the most. I knew others who thought it was liberating. They created elaborate fantasies of how one day, they’d beat the cameras, scam an internal drive, and just…leave, make their way to another system to become black-sky gypsies and never look back.

I knew of only one pilot who actually tried it. It turned out the Blood Family was perfectly willing to sacrifice ship, crew, and cargo to make a point. I had every faith they’d be willing to do it again.

The shuttle I had license to pilot was a standard design: three large, mostly spherical pods hooked together in a straight line. The main crew area was in the center with
passengers and cargo on one side and engines on the other. The cockpit made a large blister on top of the central pod.

It was an ungainly design, good only for the barest of atmospheres or pure vacuum, but it had two advantages: It was cheap and it was modular. If necessary, the engine compartment could be detached at the heavily guarded shipyard that had been made of Habitat 1 and replaced with a compartment containing an internal drive. This meant Habitat 1 didn’t have to keep whole ID ships around. After all, the last thing the Blood Family wanted was anybody tempted to steal one.

I had piloted and crewed ID ships for a while before I got my posting on Dazzle. The flights were not pleasant. But then, I understand transporting slaves never is.

And of course, whether FTL or STL, all the ships were equipped with so many eyes that I was surprised they didn’t glitter.

Leda and Ceshame were already in their chairs by the time I climbed into the cramped cockpit. We had to move carefully to avoid elbowing each other, but it was a dance we were used to. I took my chair and strapped myself in.

“Any thoughts, Captain?” said Ceshame.

“All of them my own.” I moved my hands over keys and screens, running through the prelaunch checks.

Leda was eyeing me. “Any about these new saints?”

“Big guns,” remarked Ceshame before I could answer.

“I’ll say.” Leda shook her head. “So much for ‘Ooo, we are happy, peaceful, and wise. We don’t kill anybody.’” She folded her hands prayerfully, then added a rude gesture in the direction of the passenger compartment.

“Or they shoot tranqs or something.”

I swiveled my chair and raised an eyebrow at Leda. Leda was as trustworthy as anyone I knew in the Security, but she had a reckless streak. “Planning on finding out?”

Leda snorted. “I’ll leave that to you, Captain.”

“Lock it down and prepare for launch,” I said.

“Yes, Cap’n.”

Behind me Ceshame chuckled.

After that, it was all business. There was no place for humor while Flight Control was paying attention. We recited our ID codes, made sure that the backup codes for the ship and the engine were received and confirmed. Our launch and descent path were received, loaded, and locked into the computers. I opened the scope I had access to in the passenger cabin. The saints and Emiliya had themselves strapped in. I couldn’t see the weapons, so I scanned for them. The saints, experienced travelers, had stowed them securely in the floor lockers.

I found myself wondering if I should have confiscated the guns. I had never dealt with armed Solarans, or armed travelers of any kind. There was no procedure.
Did I just endanger my mission?

As I remembered Terese Drajeske facing me, to my shame, my ears began burning. When I first looked at her, all that I saw was the uniform, and the shining black body armor beneath the blue tunic. I hadn’t thought Solaris saints might have uniforms, let alone people to wear them. But when I was able to see past that, to the woman who wore it…she was beautiful.

The docking clamps finally let us go, and we fell away from the habitat. The computer handled acceleration and direction. We accelerated to create a match for Moonthree gravity and the nauseating drift of zero g faded. As the authorized pilot, I had to do the checkback with Flight Control, reciting all the codes again, confirming all the readouts while my people settled down into patient boredom.

After I closed off with Flight, I officially passed cockpit watch (calling it piloting was an exaggeration—I was there to make sure no one hacked the ship’s systems to divert it by remote) over to Ceshame. He shot me a dirty look as he palmed the authorization plate. This meant he was trapped up here until I decided to relieve him, but he didn’t complain. Rank has its privileges.

I unstrapped myself and climbed down into the main crew compartment. It was little more than a narrow aisle with coffinlike bunk compartments bolted to the walls on one side. The rest of the room was taken up by a hyperefficient—and consequently nearly impossible to use—cooking and eating area.

To my surprise, Emiliya was already there. She stood at the galley counter, tracing the circle on the sealed burner with her long fingers.

“Emiliya?”

She glanced up, unsurprised to see it was me. “Sorry. I just didn’t feel…it was awkward sitting in there with the
saints. Something’s going on between them. It’s pretty tense.”

“You insisted on coming,” I reminded her.

“Yeah. Mistake probably.”

I waited a long moment for her to turn around, but she didn’t. She just stayed as she was, one hand pressed against the counter’s rounded edge, one hand tracing the cold and covered burner.

“Emiliya,” I said at last, hoping she would hear the plea to turn around in my voice. “What is going on?”

She shook her head. “Nothing. Sorry. Tired.”

“Why did you want to come back with me?”

“So I could ask you a question.”

“Here?” The word blurted out of me, but I couldn’t help it. She knew how wired the ship was. Even if Flight wasn’t paying attention at this moment, the Clerks would be reviewing every micropixel of data when we got back.

She hung her head and planted both hands against the counter, leaning her weight on them. “Can we trust any of them?”

“Who?” I asked, confused. “The saints?”
Why would you be wondering about the saints?

“The Family,” she whispered. For the first time I saw how tightly her skin stretched over the bones of her face. “The people on Fortress. Can we trust any of them?”

But she was serious, and she was frightened. I looked away, to the screen, and the window, and the screen again.
We were on course, our path was clear. There was nothing out there that was not licensed. Moons, ships, planets, stars—all moved in their proper orbits. The only thing off course was our conversation.

“Does this have something to do with Kapa?” If he was legal, no harm in asking. If he wasn’t, no harm in trying to find out what he was really up to. Investigating the shadows was part of my job.

“No,” she answered flatly. “This is just me. I just need to know.”

I didn’t want to answer, but I couldn’t refuse. All I could do was take my time putting the words together.

“If I were going to speak to any member of the Blood Family about something that was important to me, it would be Grand Sentinel Torian.” Torian at least left Fortress sometimes. He at least knew something about what our lives were really like.

“Thank you.” Her smile was reflexive and weak. “Is it okay if I borrow one of the bunks? I haven’t been sleeping well lately.”

It wasn’t strictly regulation, but it wasn’t forbidden either. “Sure. Take this one.” I tapped the sliding door on the middle bunk. “Leda and Ceshame are pigs.”

Her smile was quick and mirthless. She didn’t look at me as she swung herself into my bed, but she did whisper something, just before she shut herself in.

I believe, but I do not know for certain, that last thing was “I’m sorry.”

I stood beside the closed door for a long moment, trying to understand what had just passed between us. I needed to move, to walk, to do something, but my options were extremely limited in this falling tin can.

I was not surprised to find that Field Commander Drajeske and her captain had already abandoned the couches in favor of the fold-down seats by the “window.” It was a live but inactive screen that displayed whatever the navigation ’scopes saw. In this case, it showed the appearance of Moon-three from around the massive curve of the gas giant. The Field Coordinator—Siri Baijahn, I remembered her name was—had her legs stretched out in front of her and a set of flat dark goggles covering her eyes. Her lips and fingers both twitched in time with whatever she saw on that private screen. I had a moment of imagining the Clerks grinding their teeth in frustration at the sight of a screen they couldn’t spy on.

Field Commander Drajeske had discovered the small store of beverages in the cold locker and sat with her back to Coordinator Baijahn, sipping from a drink box and watching the stately emergence of Moonthree, like a white egg from the larger world, lost in nothing more complex than her own thoughts.

Commander Drajeske turned when she heard my footstep on the deck and raised her drink to me in salute. She reached out to touch her second on the arm, but I gestured she should leave the other woman be. She shrugged easily and got up to join me instead.

“All well, Captain Jireu?” she asked. Her hands were
smooth, with rounded fingertips and short nails. A heartbeat later I realized I was staring at them.