Bitter Angels (17 page)

“Yes, thank you,” I answered, remembering to meet her eyes. She was looking keenly at me, assessing me, judging me. That thought stiffened my spine. She had no business, no right to judge me. “But I need to see where you’ve stored your armaments.” I already knew, but I wanted to make sure she knew I was keeping an eye on her; that
I
was in charge in this place.

She blinked. “Of course.” She slotted the drink box into the table compartment. In her chair, Coordinator Baijahn twitched and smiled.

The Field Commander shook her head. “I’m going to get her help for her game addiction, I swear.” She pulled open the floor locker and showed me both weapons strapped and secured. I rattled them once for form’s sake.

“We don’t normally go into a new situation armed,” she said as I closed the locker. “But Liang Chen reports there’s still some violence where we will be stationed.”

“Some?” The diplomatic language sounded very like Liang. “Yes. There’s some.” I faced her, mindful of the surveillance around us but intensely curious. No one could fault me for getting a little extra information out of her while I had the chance. “I thought you were not permitted to defend yourselves in your service.”

“We’re not permitted to kill,” she corrected me. “We’re trained to avoid inflicting unnecessary harm in case of physical conflict. That is not the same as not defending ourselves.”

I folded my hands behind my back. “So, what kind of gun is that?” I nodded down toward the weapons in the locker.

“And is that part of your function as well?”

That drew a smile from her. “On occasion.”

“Who were you expecting to have to confuse?”

She shrugged. “I seldom know until I’m on the ground.”

“You’ve done this before?”

She cocked her head at me, her eyes wide with mock horror and surprise. “Are you asking if you’re my first?”

The corner of my mouth flicked upward. “It appears so, yes.”

She nodded, her lips pursed as if acknowledging a point. “Sorry to say, Captain Jireu, you are not. I have done this sort of thing before.”

“And exactly what is ‘this sort of thing’?”

I expected another joking or evasive reply, but it didn’t come. “I’m here to find out why one of our best officers is dead, and to help with an aid mission your people requested. I’ll do that in whatever way works.”

I turned my face away. On the screen, Fortress had fully emerged from behind the gas giant and waited like a pearl on black velvet as we slowly fell down toward it.

“My people requested nothing from you,” I whispered.

“Someone did,” she answered. “We don’t go where we’re not invited.”

I had to shake my head. “That is either naive or dishonest.”

“Which would you prefer?”

To my own complete surprise, I laughed. “I’d prefer naive, but somehow I don’t think that’s what I’m going to get.”

“No, I don’t think I do.”
What are you really here for, Commander Drajeske? Are you and your gun and your coordinator here to take Erasmus apart?

The thought sent a jolt through me. Did the Family suspect? They must. If the thought had crossed my mind, it had certainly crossed theirs.

And they had given her over to my keeping, probably quite secure in the knowledge that if they decided she needed to die, I would do the job. I didn’t like saints, and I had never refused an order, no matter how distasteful, because my father lived in my back room, and I didn’t know where my mother was except that she was still in their hands.

Did Terese Drajeske suspect me of being a potential assassin? She couldn’t possibly. She was a free person. No person who had a choice would walk into such a threat.

I shot to my feet too fast and nearly overbalanced. Terese reached out to steady me, and I snatched my arm away. She folded her hand and lowered it. I was staring at her again, half in horror, half in confusion.

“It’s all right, Captain,” she said softly. “I understand.”

“Excuse me.” I bowed and strode out of the cabin, cranking the door shut behind me hard enough to slam. I pressed my fist hard against the wall and my forehead against my fist.

I straightened up. The cameras, the Clerks, the Blood
Family had already seen far too much. I couldn’t undo it, but I could limit further damage. With the discipline of a lifetime, I made my face blank and still.

As I moved toward the cockpit ladder, I touched my hand to Emiliya’s sealed bunk, my sealed bunk.

If I had thought the precautions taken by the Flight Control for entry into the Erasmus system were a trifle…overdone, they were nothing compared to the precautions around Fortress. I tried to calculate how much fuel Captain Jireu burned to negotiate the maze of satellites and patrol ships and gave up. We, of course, were not privy to cockpit chatter in our threadbare passenger cabin. I had a feeling Siri could get to it if she wanted, but there was no point.

“He might not even be flying,” she pointed out. “They might be doing it by remote.”

I raised my eyebrows to her. “Are we that scary?”

Siri chuckled and I looked away before she could see me wince. I hated not being able to speak to her directly, but we were being watched. Whatever she was up to, if she was up to anything at all, I had to let it go for now.

Even the spaceport on Fortress was a tribute to the resources lavished on that world. The ice skin on which the hangars and landing fields floated had to be kept smooth and steady. Huge sealed Zambonis were constantly at work, maintaining the shining ice sheet. The port was filled with
workers. There were no cleaning drones here—everything was done by hand or with mechanical assistance. I counted half a dozen different kinds of work uniforms, and that did not include the uniforms of the soldiers who stood watch beside every door, their guns at rest in their hands.

I wondered briefly if this display had been arranged for our benefit. Not even Bianca had managed to record anything inside Fortress. From the way Siri was blinking and rubbing at her temples, I had the distinct feeling she was suffering equipment trouble.

The second elevator shaft was glassy, and let us see the mottled white-and-silver ice as we were plunged through it into the deep turquoise of the living water. The Hall itself was high enough up that the sunlight penetrated the ice, but far enough down that its ocean waters protected us from the gas giant’s overenthusiastic particle discharge. When we emerged into the corridor, a Clerk bowed to us and took our palm prints, including Captain Jireu’s. Once we had all been verified, he bowed again and took point in front of us, leading us deep into the palace, past the soldiers, past the servants, who did not lift their eyes to watch us. Captain Jireu walked beside us, but Dr. Varus did not. One of the Clerks had led her away. I noticed how Captain Jireu tracked her until she was led out of sight around one of the steeply curving corridors.

Uniformed servants stood by each door to open it before us and close it behind us. They lined the walls, making a stiff and silent audience for our passage, turning the act of walking down a hallway into a parade.

Captives, every single one of them, held hostage to the good behavior of their families on the other moons. That fact weighed heavier on my mind with each step. I wondered if
Dr. Varus had family here, and if that was where she disappeared to. I hoped that was it. She had bioscanned me and Siri, had been all but invisible on the flight across, and now had been taken away. It was not a sequence of events that made me feel comfortable.

It took a team of six men to pull open the huge gilded doors to the Great Hall. Three-quarters of the circular chamber had a wall of clear arched glass edged with something that shone like frosted silver. As a concession to the human need for edges and boundaries, the floor was solid: a gleaming surface much like marble but in swirling blues and greens. It had been inlaid with a pattern of sweeping tree branches and names so elaborately scripted they’d become decorations rather than text. A rail that might actually be wood ringed the room, cut and bent into fantastic abstract waves and curls and polished to a high shine. Transparent pillars filled with bubbling water extended from floor to ceiling, where proud and benevolent faces I took to be gods were painted to look down on us.

The materials engineers must have had a field day. I was sure the view into this place was nowhere as clear as the view out of it, but I couldn’t catch how the trick might be accomplished.

It was the only place we had been so far that was empty of servants. As the doors clanged shut behind us, Siri and I were left alone with Captain Jireu. It was a nice trick, very effectively disconcerting, especially when you were being reminded everywhere you looked that you are alone in a bubble of air beneath the ocean.

But what struck me most in that first glimpse was the life.

Outside in a world of indigos and greys, there swayed a forest of broad-leafed, ruby-red kelp, its edges glowing
gold. A tangle of blaze orange drifted past, bumped against the glass, shuddered and re-formed into a sail that shot away into the forest. Silver fish turned their glowing faces hopefully up toward the white ice. A rain of white stars drifted down and the fish burst into motion, snapping them up. A jet-black eel at least three meters long undulated slowly toward the seaweed, ignoring the rippling, color-shifting mounds that floated along underneath it.

I splayed my hand against the cool window and stared. I couldn’t help it. I had seen alien life before, but not much of it. Siri stood beside me, not blinking, just taking in all the silent wonder. Amerand stared too, but his was a hungry stare. He didn’t see the fantastic life that swam and hunted, bloomed and played out there. He saw the water, which was life and wealth and freedom, and power. Power above all. All that water, the only natural water source in the Erasmus System, was the way the Blood Family kept control.

I found myself wondering what he would make of the home I’d had in the middle of Lake Superior, or the one in the living darkness of the Mariana Trench. I didn’t know what to make of him. He was so used to being watched that he wore a permanent armor over his thoughts, and yet he was still a very young man, not even through his third decade, and as thick as that armor was, I could still catch a glimpse of the struggling human heart underneath.

When he noticed me staring at the ocean—and at him—the hunger vanished behind a kind of bleak amusement for the tourist. His expression sobered me and reminded me where I was. I pulled back my hand and collected my wits.

“Amazing, isn’t it?” said a man’s voice behind us, and I turned to greet the ambassador of the Pax Solaris to the Erasmus System.

“Field Commander Drajeske.” He held out both hands as he crossed to me, the soles of his heeled boots ringing on the marble-patterned floor. Gold buttons made a sparkling line down the front of his knee-length coat and his straight grey trousers were trimmed in silver braid. The scarlet, blue, and gold of his sash made a swath of color diagonally across his chest. “It is good to see you again.”

“Good to see you too, Ambassador.” I clasped his hands. Ambassador Bern had been Assistant Secretary Bern when we’d worked together during the Redeemer crisis. He was cool, strong, and utterly determined. His facility for diplomacy was all that kept those he worked with
and
against from applying the term “ruthless” to him. At that moment I saw sorrow and regret written across his face. I squeezed his hands, trying to tell him that, whatever had happened, I knew he had done his best. We would talk later, but I already had the feeling whatever he would tell me was not good news.

“Field Coordinator Baijahn.” Bern turned to Siri and took her hands as well. “I am glad to see you again.”

“Thank you, Ambassador,” replied Siri stiffly. I bridled at the enforced silence. I knew what Ambassador Bern had done for me. For Bianca, he would have moved whole worlds.

The ambassador turned from us to Captain Jireu. “Thank you for your escort, Captain Jireu,” he said.

Captain Jireu bowed. “You are both most welcome. Field Commander, I will leave you and the ambassador to make
your formal presentation. You can ping me when it’s time for us to travel to Moonfour.” With a final glance at me, he turned crisply on his heel and marched away, becoming a shadow behind the aquamarine glass walls as he turned the corner.