The Night's Dawn Trilogy (227 page)

“Indeed? Well, Officer Mabaki, I am sixty-three.”

“Yes?”

Alkad sighed quietly. Exactly what was included in the Dorados’ basic history didactic courses? Did today’s youth know nothing
of their tragic past? “That means I was evacuated from Garissa. I survived the genocide, Officer Mabaki. If our Mother Mary
had wanted me harmed, she would have done it then. Now, I am just an old woman who wishes to come home. Is that really so
hard?”

“I’m sorry, really. But no civil starships can dock.”

Suppose I really can’t get in? The intelligence services will be waiting back at Narok, I can’t return there. Maybe the Lord
of Ruin would take me back. That would circumvent any personal disaster, not to mention personality debrief, but it would
all be over then: the Alchemist, our justice.

She could see Peter’s face that last time, still covered in a medical nanonic, but with his eyes full of trust. And that was
the crux; too many people were relying on her; those treasured few who knew, and the blissfully ignorant masses who didn’t.

“Officer Mabaki.”

“Yes?”

“When this crisis is over, I will return home, will I not?”

“I shall look forward to issuing your ship docking permission personally.”

“Good, because it will be the last docking authorization you ever do issue. The first thing I intend to do on my return will
be to visit my close personal friend Ikela and tell him about this ordeal you have put me through.” She held her breath, seemingly
immersed in zero-tau. It was one lone name from the past flung desperately into the unknown. Mother Mary please let it strike
its target.

Captain Randol gave a bass chuckle. “I don’t know what you did, Alkad,” he said loudly. “But they just datavised our docking
authority and an approach vector.”

•  •  •

André Duchamp had long since come to the bitter realization that the lounge compartment would never be the same again. Between
them, Erick and the possessed had wrought an appalling amount of damage, not just to the fittings, but the cabin systems as
well.

The small utility deck beneath the lounge was in a similar deplorable state. And the spaceplane was damaged beyond repair.
The loading clamps hadn’t engaged, allowing it to twist about while the
Villeneuve’s Revenge
was under acceleration. Structural spars had snapped and bent all along its sleek fuselage.

He couldn’t afford to rectify half of the damage, let alone replace the spaceplane. Not unless he took on another mercenary
contract. That prospect did not appeal, not after Lalonde. I am too old for such antics, he thought, by rights I should have
made a fortune to retire on by now. If it wasn’t for those bastard
anglo
shipping cartels I would have the money.

Anger gave him the strength to snap the last clip off the circulation fan unit he was working on; the little plastic star
shattered from the pressure, chips spinning off in all directions. Bombarded by heat from a possessed’s fireball, then subjected
to hard vacuum for a week, the plastic had turned dismayingly brittle.

“Give me a hand, Desmond,” he datavised. They had turned off the lounge’s environmental circuit in order to dismantle it,
which meant wearing his SII suit for the task. Without air circulating at a decent rate the smell in the compartment was unbearable.
The bodies had been removed, but a certain amount of grisly diffusion had occurred during their flight from Lalonde.

Desmond left the thermal regulator power circuit he was testing and drifted over. They hauled the cylindrical fan unit out
of the duct. It was clogged solid with scraps of cloth and spiral shavings of nultherm foam. AndrÉ prodded at the grille with
an anti-torque keydriver, loosening some of the mangled cloth. Tiny flakes of dried blood swirled out like listless moths.

“Merde
. It’ll have to be broken down and purged.”

“Oh, come on, AndrÉ, you can’t use this again. The motor overloaded when Erick dumped the atmosphere. There’s no telling what
internal damage the voltage spike caused.”

“Ship systems all have absurdly high performance margins. The motor can withstand a hundred spikes.”

“Yeah, but the CAB… ”

“To hell with them, data-constipated bureaucrats. They know nothing of operational flying.”

“Some systems you don’t take chances with.”

“You forget, Desmond, this is my ship, my livelihood. Do you think I would risk that?”

“You mean, what’s left of your ship, don’t you?”

“What are you implying, that I am responsible for the souls of humanity returning to invade us? Perhaps also it is my fault
that the Earth is ruined, and the Meridian fleet never returned.”

“You’re the captain, you took us to Lalonde.”

“On a legitimate government contract. It was honest money.”

“Have you never heard of fool’s gold?”

AndrÉ’s answer was lost as Madeleine opened the ceiling hatch and used the crumbling composite ladder to pull herself down
into the lounge. “Listen, you two, I’ve seen… Yek!” She slapped a hand over her mouth and nose, eyes smarting from the unwholesome
scents layering the atmosphere. In the deck above, an air contamination warning sounded. The ceiling hatch started to hinge
down. “Christ, haven’t the pair of you got this cycled yet?”

“Non,”
AndrÉ datavised.

“It doesn’t matter. Listen, I’ve just seen Harry Levine. He was in a bar on the second residence level. I got out fast, I’m
pretty sure he didn’t see me.”

“Merde!”
AndrÉ datavised the flight computer for a link into the spaceport’s civil register, loading a search order. Two seconds later
it confirmed the
Dechal
was docked, and had been for ten days. His SII suit’s permeability expanded, allowing a sudden outbreak of sweat to expire.
“We must leave. Immediately.”

“No chance,” Madeleine said. “The port office wouldn’t even let us disengage the umbilicals, let alone launch, not with that
civil starflight proscription order still in force.”

“The captain’s right, Madeleine,” Desmond datavised. “There are only three of us left. We can’t go up against Rawand’s crew
like this. We have to fly outsystem.”

“Four!” she said through clenched teeth. “There are four of us left… Oh, mother of God, they’ll go for Erick.”

•  •  •

The fluid in Erick’s inner ears began to stir, sending a volley of mild nerve impulses into his sleeping brain. The movement
was so slight and smooth it made no impression on his quiescent mind. It did, however, register within his neural nanonics;
the ever-vigilant basic monitor program noted the movement was consistent with a constant acceleration. Erick’s body was being
moved. The monitor program triggered a stimulant program. Erick’s hazy dream snuffed out, replaced by the hard-edged schematics
of a personal situation display. Second-level constraint blocks were erected across his nerves, preventing any give-away twitches.
His eyes stayed closed as he assessed what the hell was happening.

Quiet, easy hum of a motor.
Tap tap tap
of feet on a hard floor—an audio discrimination program went primary—two sets of feet, plus the level breathing of two people.
Constant pulse of light pressure on the enhanced retinas below closed eyelids indicated linear movement, backed up by inner
ear fluid motion; estimated at a fast walking pace. Posture was level: he was still lying on his bed.

He datavised a general query/response code, and received an immediate reply from a communications net processor. Its location
was a corridor on the third storey of the hospital, already fifteen metres from the implant surgery care ward. Erick requested
a file of the local net architecture, and found a security observation camera in the corridor. He accessed it to find himself
with a fish-eye vantage point along a corridor where his own bed was sliding underneath the lens. Madeleine and Desmond were
at either end of the bed, straining to supplement the motor as they hauled it along. A lift door was sliding open ahead of
them.

Erick cancelled the constraint blocks and opened his eyes. “What the fuck’s going on?” he datavised to Desmond.

Desmond glanced around to see a pair of furious eyes staring at him out of the green medical nanonic mask covering Erick’s
face. He managed a snatched, semi-embarrassed grin. “Sorry, Erick, we didn’t dare wake you up in case someone heard the commotion.
We had to get you out of there.”

“Why?”

“The
Dechal
is docked here. But don’t worry, we don’t think Hasan Rawand knows about us. And we intend to keep it that way. AndrÉ is
working on his political contact to get us a departure authorization.”

“For once he might make a decent job of it,” Madeleine muttered as they steered Erick’s bulky bed into the lift. “After all,
it’s his own neck on the block this time, not just ours.”

Erick tried to rise, but the medical packages were too restrictive, he could only just get his head off the pillows, and that
simple motion was tiring beyond endurance. “No. Leave me. You go.”

Madeleine pushed him down gently as the lift started upwards. “Don’t be silly. They’ll kill you if they catch up with you.”

“We’ll see this through together,” Desmond said, his voice full of sympathy and reassurance. “We won’t desert you, Erick.”

Encased in the protective, nurturing packages, Erick couldn’t even groan in frustration. He opened a secure encrypted channel
to the Confederation Navy Bureau. Lieutenant Li Chang responded immediately.

“You have to intercept us,” Erick datavised. “These imbeciles are going to take me off Culey if no one stops them.”

“Okay, don’t panic, I’m calling in the covert duty squad. We can reach the spaceport in time.”

“Do we have any assets in the flight control centre?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Activate one; make sure whatever departure authorization Duchamp gets is invalidated. I want the
Villeneuve’s Revenge
to stay locked tight in that bloody docking bay.”

“I’m on it. And don’t worry.”

Desmond and Madeleine had obviously devoted considerable attention to planning their route in order to avoid casual observation.
They took Erick straight up through the rock honeycomb which was Culey’s habitation section, switching between a series of
public utility lifts. When they were in the upper levels, where gravity had dropped to less than ten per cent standard, they
left the bed behind and tugged him along a maze of simple passages bored straight through the rock. It was some kind of ancient
maintenance or inspection grid, with few functional net processors. Lieutenant Li Chang had trouble tracking their progress.

Eighteen minutes after leaving the hospital they arrived at the base of the spaceport’s spindle. Several intrigued sets of
eyes followed their course as they floated across the big axial chamber to a vacant transit capsule.

“We’re two minutes behind you,” Li Chang datavised. “Thank heavens they chose a devious route, it slowed you up.”

“What about the departure authorization?”

“God knows how Duchamp did it, but Commissioner Ri Drak has cleared the
Villeneuve’s Revenge
for departure. The Navy Bureau has lodged a formal protest with Culey’s governing council. It should earn us a delay if not
outright cancellation; Ri Drak’s political opponents will use the complaint to make as much capital as they can.”

The transit capsule took them to the bay containing the
Villeneuve’s Revenge
. It was a tedious journey; like the rest of the structure the transit tubes were in need of refurbishment, if not outright
replacement. The capsule juddered frequently as it ran through lengths of rail with no power, the light panels dimming, then
brightening in sympathy. It paused at several junctions, as if the spaceport route management computer was unsure of the direction.

“Can you manoeuvre a bit now?” Madeleine asked Erick, hopeful that free fall would grant them some relief from straining at
his mass. She was carrying two of the ancillary medical modules which were hooked up to his dermal armour of packages, feeding
in a whole pharmacopoeia of nutrients to the new implants. The tubes were forever tangling around her limbs or snagging on
awkward fixtures.

“Sorry. Tricky,” he datavised back. It might earn them thirty seconds.

Madeleine and Desmond swapped a martyred glance, and bundled Erick out of the transit capsule. The hexagonal cross-section
corridors that encircled the docking bay were white-walled composite, scuffed to a rusty grey by the boots of countless generations
of crews and maintenance staff. The neat rows of grab hoops running along the walls had snapped off long ago, leaving only
stumps. It didn’t matter, the kind of people frequenting Culey spaceport were hardly novices. Madeleine and Desmond simply
kept Erick in the middle of the corridor, imparting the odd gentle nudge to prevent him touching the walls as inertia slid
him along.

Once the transit capsule door closed behind him, Erick lost his communications channel to Lieutenant Li Chang. He wished the
packages didn’t prevent him from sighing. Did nothing in this rat’s arsehole of a settlement ever work? One of his medical
support units emitted a cautionary bleep.

“Soon be over,” Madeleine soothed, misinterpreting the electronic tone.

Erick blinked rapidly, the sole method of expression left to him. They were risking themselves to save him, while he would
be turning them over to the authorities as soon as they docked at a civilized port. Yet he’d killed to protect them, leaving
them free to commit murder and piracy in turn. Applying for a CNIS post had seemed such a prestigious step forwards at the
time. How stupid his vanity appeared with hindsight.

His eye focused on a two-centimetre burn mark scoring the composite wall. Instinct or a well-written extended sensory analysis
program, it was the result which mattered. That burn mark was on the cover of a net conduit inspection panel, and it was fresh.
When he switched to infrared it still glowed a faint pink. With the spectrum active, other burns became apparent, a small
ruddy constellation sprayed around the corridor walls, every glimmer corresponding to an inspection panel.