Landfall (The Reach, Book 2) (35 page)

“No, I can manage.”  He gripped Silvestri’s arm.  “I need you to look after Talia for me.  I’m worried about her.  Can you do that?”

“Of course.  She’s safe where she is, but if it makes you feel any better I’ll head back to Skybreach immediately.”

“One other thing,” Knile said.  “Why didn’t you ever take Lazarus up on the deal yourself?  Why didn’t you just go
to the Infirmary?”

Silvestri shook his head slowly.  “This is a dangerous thing that you do, Knile.  I won’t lie to you.  Heading that deep into forbidden territory scares me.”  He gave Knile an appreciative nod.  “You have courage, I’ll give you that.  And my respect.”

Knile shook his hand.  “Thank you, Silvestri.  For everything.”

Silvestri flashed his gold tooth again.  “You see?  I’m not such a bad guy after all.”

He pulled open the creaking wooden doors of the chapel and proceeded to hold them while Knile carried Roman across the threshold.  As he left, Knile looked back and saw Lazarus watching them solemnly from the altar, cloaked in a blaze of what he might fancifully have called holy light from the window above.  As the doors swung shut, Lazarus clasped his hands together once more and began to pray.

34

Ursie got to her feet hesitantly as van Asch moved purposefully toward her.  From the look on his face he was displeased about something.  She braced herself for his rebuke, wondering what she’d done wrong.  Perhaps he suspected that she had been using her abilities again, or perhaps he was upset that she’d been speaking to Tobias.  He hadn’t explicitly told her not to talk to anyone, however.  In fact, he hadn’t raised any objections to her walking out the door whatsoever, so why should he be angry?

Or had she simply been gone too long?

As van Asch bore down upon her she almost reached out with her mind, such was her desperation to know what he was thinking.

No.  Don’t do that.  It will only make things worse.

She opened her mouth to speak, but van Asch beat her to it.

“Ursie, come with me,” he said in a quiet but commanding tone.  “Hurry.”

“What’s happened?” Ursie said, starting forward tentatively.  “What did I do wrong?”

“What?” van Asch said, pausing curiously as he was about to walk away.

“If I did the wrong thing I–”

“Nothing’s wrong,” he assured her.  “I apologise for my brusqueness, but we need to get moving.”  He pushed his sunglasses firmly against his face with one finger.  “He’s here.”

Ursie felt a strange tightness in her belly at those words.

“Who?” she said curiously.

“The captain,” he said, as if that should have been obvious.  “He’s returned.  We’re leaving.”

Ursie felt a wave of relief wash over her.  Van Asch wasn’t upset after all – he was excited, and that had given him an air of urgency.  The man simply had such a limited emotional range that the two states were barely indistinguishable from one another.

“How?  When?” she said, feeling her own excitement growing.

“Come.”  Van Asch waved at her.  “I’ll explain on the way.”

Ursie followed behind van Asch as he started off down the concourse.  She practically had to run to keep up with him, such was the speed with which his long legs carried him across the floor.

“You’ll need to pack right away, but I expect that won’t take long,” he said.

“No.  I’ve hardly taken anything out of my case since I got here.”

“Good.  I received the call from the captain a few minutes ago.  He’s running ahead of schedule and we only have a small window in which to meet him.”

“Why?  Is he in a hurry?”

“As I told you earlier, the captain bends the rules.  When he arrives he’ll be forced to dock illegally, and that will limit how long he is able to stay.”

Ursie frowned.  “Why are we even dealing with this guy?  Why doesn’t the company just book another flight?”

“Because it could take weeks to find a cruiser that’s headed to where we want to go.  We don’t have the per
mits to stay in Habitat Thirty-O
ne for that long.”  He glanced down at her.  “I’m sorry for the confusion, but there really was no other option at short notice.  I believe I explained this before.”

Ursie shrugged.  “As long as you know what you’re doing.”

They exited the concourse and began to wind their way through the narrow corridors again, and with her departure looming close, Ursie’s thoughts began to drift once more
to Knile.  She didn’t
want to think about him anymore; she wanted to forget that they’d ever met, but she couldn’t seem to do so.

You’re more like me than you could ever know
, he’d said to her as she left, moments after he’d come to a great revelation about his life and the mistakes that he’d made.  He’d seemed so content within himself, as if he’d finally found peace despite the turmoil around him.

When he’d said those words, had he also meant that Ursie could come to the same realisation about herself?

They reached their quarters, and van Asch glanced down at her.

“You’re very quiet,” he said.  “Are you all right?”

“Just nervous, I guess.  Thinking about what I’m leaving behind.”

“You’re not having second thoughts, are you?”

“No,” Ursie said quickly.  “Not at all.”

Van Asch paused with his hand on the door.  “You know that there’s no room for doubt, don’t you?  You must commit wholly to what we are about to do.  I won’t accept anything less.”

Ursie stared up at van Asch’s blank expression.  She thought of Knile again, but suddenly she couldn’t dredge up those same feelings of regret toward him.  What had he really done for her, anyway?  He’d always treated her with a kind of disdain, as a nuisance who had cramped him as he went about achieving his own ends.  Even on the roof, when he’d dropped the passkey at Ursie’s feet, he’d only done so because he no longer had any use for it.  He hadn’t done it because he’d wished Ursie well or because he’d wanted to help her.

I don’t care what you do with that, Ursie
, he’d said. 
I don’t need it anymore.

He couldn’t have stated it more plainly.

I don’t care about you,
he might as well have said
.

So why should Ursie care about
him?

“Yeah,” Ursie said, pressing her lips together in determination.  “I’m committed.  I’m ready to leave.”

Screw you, Knile
, she thought, but she kept that part to herself.

Van Asch nodded, then eased the door open.  Inside their quarters, Ursie gathered together her possessions and stuffed them into her tiny suitcase once more.  As she placed her own keepsakes inside, she thought of Tobias Krump and his pocket watch.

Hope you find it one day, old man
, she thought.

She hefted the suitcase and stepped over to the oval window while van Asch finalised his preparations.  Craning her neck, she tried to see the place where their captain might have docked further along the structure, but t
he curvature of Habitat Thirty-O
ne was too great.  She could see nothing of the cruisers that might be berthed there.

“Are you ready?” van Asch said behind her.

“Yeah.  Let’s go.”

They went back the way they had come, and as they came to the concourse, Ursie’s heart began to beat in her chest like a bass drum.

This is it.  This is what I’ve been waiting for!

They headed toward the departure gates, where a Redman was discussing something with a technician who was working on a circuit board in one of the gate assemblies.  Ursie’s step faltered at the sight of the Redman, but van Asch gave her a reassuring look over his shoulder.

“Keep up,” he said discreetly.  “Here we go.”

35

Duran watched over Robson’s shoulder as the tech manipulated the many different feeds that were flitting across the screen.  His fingers moved with dazzling speed and precision.  Duran had only been watching him for a few minutes
, but he had already developed a headache just from trying to keep up.

“How is it you see more than all of the Enforcer security team put together?” Duran said, turning away and rubbing at his eye sockets.  “They don’t seem to track targets the way you do.”

“Because I’m motivated,” Robson said, his fingers never skipping a beat.  “And I put together half of this system myself.  You could say there was a bit of a brain drain when I left.”  He chuckled.  “I bet they’re still trying to figure out most of the stuff I can do in my sleep.”

Duran watched the tech carefully.  “Do you ever wish you hadn’t left?”

Robson relented from his manipulations for a moment, lifting his fingers from the keyboard and leaning back in his chair to look at Duran.

“Not really, no.  The Enforcers are just treading water.  They’re not trying to change anything.”  Robson shrugged.  “Frankly, I don’t like the idea of where that might lead us.”

“Yeah.  I see that now.”

“How about you?” Robson said.  “You having any regrets about how things have played out?”

“You mean with Tunks?”

“With everything.”

“The guy needed to be rubbed out.  If it hadn’t been me, it would have been someone else sooner or later.”

“Right.”  He leaned across and gave Duran a good-natured slap on the arm.  “I don’t think anyone is going to miss Sergeant Tunks, Duran.  Don’t sweat it.”

There was noise in the corridor outside, and then de Villiers and Zoe appeared in the doorway.  De Villiers nodded in greeting to Duran and then dumped a mangled gadget unceremoniously on the desk.

“Robson, they got another camera.”

Robson bent over the chunk of aluminium and silicon and clucked his tongue.

“This the one from Avenue P?  I saw it go down last night.”

“Yeah.  Looks like they took to it with a hammer.  Made a mess.”

“So can you fix it?”

“Hell no,” Robson said, pushing the ruined camera back across the desk.  “I’m not a miracle worker.”

De Villiers sighed and glanced at Zoe.  “The unrest is escalating.”

“Agreed,” Zoe said.  “There’s an uprising coming.  I can feel it.”

“There’s been an uprising coming for about a decade, if you hadn’t noticed,” Duran said.  “Most of the people around here haven’t been happy with the way things are going for a while now.”

“It’s gaining momentum,” de Villiers said.  “It’s becoming dangerous.”

“Wait a minute,” Duran said.  “Isn’t this what you guys want?  You’re trying to overthrow the system.”

“Not like this,” Zoe said.  “This path leads to anarchy.  If the Consortium feels threatened
,
it will pull out, and then the whole economy will fall apart.  We all lose if that happens.”

“So what do you suggest?” Duran said.

Zoe exchanged a glance with de Villiers.  “Change the system but don’t destroy it.  Cut out the rotten heart of the Enforcers.”

“I’m not following,” Duran said.

Zoe gave him a pointed stare.  “
Kill
Prazor.”

Duran laughed, but then realised he was the only one who had found the comment amusing.

“Wait a minute,” Duran scoffed, looking at each of them in turn.  “Some punks smash a camera and now you want to go and assassinate one of the most powerful men on the planet?  Are you insane?”

“It’s not one smashed camera,” de Villiers said.  “It’s one small crack in a much larger divide.  Prazor is a cancer.  He’s been spreading corruption from the top for years.  He’s left a litany of cover-ups, lies, blackmail–”

“You’d never get away with this,” Duran said.  “You’d never get to him.”

“No,” de Villiers agreed.  “We wouldn’t.  But you might.”

Duran stared at him in disbelief.  “What?”  He looked accusingly at Zoe.  She returned his stare, unflinching.

“You heard him,” she said unsympathetically.

“The barrel of my piece is still warm from dropping Tunks, and now you want me to head over and kill the Commissioner of the Enforcers?”

“You think popping one fat lowlife gets you a free lunch around here?” de Villiers said.  “That was nothing more than your entry ticket into this team.  Now you have to do something to prove your worth.”

“Like killing one of the most powerful men on the planet,” he said sarcastically.

“Right,” de Villiers said.

“What would that even achieve?” Duran said.  “The Enforcers would just replace him with someone worse, more likely.”

“No,” de Villiers said.  “Superintendent Lang is the most likely successor.  He’s a hard nut, uncompromising, but he’s fair.  We believe he could right many of the wrongs that Prazor has done.”