A Night Without Stars (54 page)

Florian started to chuckle, and it soon became a full laugh.

“What's so funny?” Castillito asked curiously.

“You know Ry Evine saved me? He snatched me and Paula away from Chaing.”

“Yes. You said.”

“Ry is related directly to Slvasta.”

She grinned. “I never knew Giu had such a sense of irony.”

“Thank you for telling me, Mum.” He embraced her. “I missed you. If you'd asked me to stay, I would have. You know that, don't you?”

“That's why I never did, darling. It's not easy being a mother; we all know we have to let go at some time. And you couldn't have stayed in Opole. You were so miserable it was killing me to see you like that. You had to leave to grow. And how you have grown!”

Florian was worried he was going to start crying.

“We're going to save Bienvenido. You'll see.”

“I know, darling.” She patted his leg. “Just don't go thinking you're invincible. You're not.”

The Ankatra Café was at the western end of Port Chana's waterfront, with a hedge of bushy heliotrope-shaded trasla trees marking out a snug area for their pavement tables outside. Jenifa walked along the edge of the marina at midday, where the rigging ropes slapped constantly on the masts of the yachts and yigulls circled overhead, vigilant for unwary sightseers leaving their pasties or ice creams unguarded. Her legs still ached from last night's hot athleticisms; with Chaing practically immobile she had to exert her splendid body to thrilling extremes. In bed he was completely obedient, so much so she sometimes wondered if he did remember what she'd done to him in the Opole hospital. Uncertainty heightened the whole experience quite deliciously.

She walked past the outside tables into the café. It was darker inside, with traditional valseed oil lamps hanging from the beams, casting a shady jasmine illumination across the small black tables. Corilla was sitting in her usual corner, munching on an almond croissant, with a glass of hot chocolate with whipped cream in front of her.

Jenifa sat opposite her, keeping her face rigid with disapproval. “Do you have anything for me?” she asked the Eliter.

Corilla shrugged pugnaciously. “Plenty. It's all crud, though.” She slid a brown paper store bag out from under her seat.

Jenifa dropped it into her own bigger, woven shoulder bag. The weight of the dockets from the rail freight office meant a couple of extra hours tonight. She almost asked:
Then why did you bring it?
But that would have been an excuse for Corilla to start bitching. So instead she asked: “What are the Eliters talking about today?”

“Same as yesterday. Everyone's worried about the Faller Apocalypse. They know Opole docks was important.”

“Did they say how it was important?”

“No, just that the Warrior Angel wouldn't show herself unless something really heavy was going down. People are speculating about Florian.”

“In what way?”

“Saying he has weapons. Does he?”

“No. He's a forest warden, for crud's sake!”

“Okay. No need to bite my head off.”

“Are they saying anything about the Warrior Angel?”

“Not much. No one knows if she can hold off the Fallers if they do overwhelm the rest of Lamaran. Talk is, probably not. Unless we use nukes.”

“There's too much talk of the Faller Apocalypse,” Jenifa grunted disapprovingly. “Too much like traitor propaganda.”

Corilla rolled her eyes. “One day you'll learn: We're all in this together. The only people who discriminate between humans are you. What kind of person would ever ally themselves to Fallers?”

The image that immediately dominated Jenifa's sight was the firefight outside Cameron's, where gangsters had fought alongside Fallers. “Bad ones,” she said softly.

“You're crazy. No human would do that. We'll be fighting against them just as hard as you, despite everything you've done to us.”

“Faller Apocalypse is just more Eliter lies.”

“Like breeder Fallers and the Warrior Angel? So what was that attacking us in Frikal Alley?”

“A cat.”

“Like bollocks it was!”

“You would be wise to focus on your job.”

“I'm working ten-hour shifts in that cruddy office. Those are dockets that I thought you might want to see. It's not me that breaks deals.”

Jenifa picked up her shoulder bag and stood up. “I'll see you tomorrow.”

“Already looking forward to it.”

Jenifa smiled thinly, imagining how Corilla would look, stripped naked and strapped to the frame in the safe house interrogation cell.
Not so smug, I'll bet.
She wondered if Chaing would agree to that. He'd enjoy watching; she'd make sure of that. “And if you hear anything—”

“Emergency phone number memorized.”

Jenifa walked out and hailed a taxi. “DeMarco Hotel,” she told the driver.

Nobody apart from her mother knew about the room she'd taken at the DeMarco, which was an easy three-street walk from the safe house. She spent a couple of hours there every day, which was why she was always so far behind when Chaing came back to the safe house at night. She spent those hours going through his old Portlynn case files, which Yaki had sent to her.

The DeMarco was a lovely old five-story building with an elegant interior that had remained in good condition. She walked through the lobby, heading for the broad curving stairs.

“Ma'am,” the receptionist called.

He had to call again before Jenifa even looked around, surprised to find he really was calling to her.
Why?
She felt a slight chill, her senses alert. Hand at her side, resting close to the concealed pistol.

“What?” she asked crisply as she reached the desk.

The receptionist was intimidated by her attitude. He reached to the wall of pigeonholes behind him. Room 101—her room—had a folded sheet of hotel notepaper. He handed it to her, and quickly looked away.

It read—

Courtyard Bistro, Corporal.

C.

Jenifa took a good look around the lobby but couldn't see anything remotely suspicious. “Who gave you this?” she demanded.

“It was given to Mariebelle; she was on duty this morning. I can ask when she comes back for the evening shift.”

“Never mind. Where's the Courtyard Bistro?”

“Through the bar, ma'am.” He pointed.

As she went through the bar, she slipped the safety off her pistol. Calling it the Courtyard Bistro was somewhat aspirational for a paved area eleven meters long and three wide, possessing five tables
à deux
under pergola beams draped with a vine. The ancient granite wall at the back had two narrow slit windows opening to the alley that ran behind the hotel. It was empty.

Jenifa gave the kitchen doorway a suspicious look. She could hear the head chef shouting at his sous chef inside.

“Over here, Corporal,” a female voice said.

Jenifa drew her pistol and walked to the back wall. “Who is it?”

Castillito walked past one of the open slits. Jenifa ran forward and shoved her pistol through the gap. Castillito was out of sight, and she couldn't get any kind of angle up or down the alley.

“Remove your hand or I'll smash an iron bar across it,” Castillito said.

“Crud!” Jenifa glanced up, but the granite wall was nearly four meters high. No way could she scramble up it.
Bring one of the tables over?
But the pergola beams formed an effective cage lid. Something slapped her hand firmly in warning. Furious, Jenifa withdrew the pistol. When the barrel was level with the slit she had her widest angle, but Castillito remained out of sight. She was on the left, though; Jenifa was sure of that. “What do you want?”

“I've got some information for you. It concerns your boss, Captain Chaing. You know, the one who betrayed you back in Opole?”

Jenifa gritted her teeth and brought the pistol back through the slit. “What about him?”

“Those old files you're looking through in your room upstairs, they're not going to tell you what you want to know.”

“How did you—” She cursed herself for playing Castillito's game. “Then what do I need to know?”

“The two of you are alone in that PSR safe house every night. Are you screwing him?”

“I am going to come around there, and you'll be—”

“He's one of us.”

“Us? What do you mean? A radical?”

“Oh, no, little girlie,” Castillito chuckled. “Think bigger.”

Jenifa slammed her fist against the stone slit. “Tell me!”

“He's one of us, a filthy Eliter. How do you think he managed to call the Warrior Angel to Xander Manor? How did she know he was heading for Hawley Docks?”

“No! You're lying.”

“Oh, you'll rage and shout about it for a few minutes, then you'll calm down and you'll know. Goodbye.”

“Wait! If he was an Eliter, there's no way you'd betray him to me!”

“This is personal now. He was going to catch Florian, my son. Prove to you all what a perfect little PSR bastard he is. Florian would have been tortured for weeks; and when you were through with him, you'd either murder him in your dungeons or send him to a yellowcake mine where the radiation would rot him to death. So, yes, I'm betraying comrade Chaing, because I know what you'll do to him. My only regret is that I don't get to watch.”

“How much has Chaing told your people? Does the Warrior Angel know we're here? We want to talk to her!”

There was no answer. Jenifa shoved her face into the slit, but she still couldn't see along the alley. She knew it was empty, though. Castillito was gone. “Giufuckit!”

The crypt after midnight always seemed to be quieter than during the day—which was ridiculous, Faustina acknowledged. The advanced science division's machines still hummed and buzzed at the same volume. There weren't any technicians about, but that was the only physical difference. Yet somehow, night's calm had descended to claim the big chamber.

She often worked late into the night, but tonight was the first night since the Commonwealth space machine had arrived that her colleagues had finally packed in and gone home before one o'clock. They'd made some progress on various measurements, and they knew for sure that electric discharges couldn't penetrate the force field; nor could a thermal lance. For the last couple of days they'd been working on the maser device that had been brought out of storage.

Faustina kept on reading the old reports for twenty minutes after the last technician left, then got up and stretched. She walked over to the bank of recording instruments that were focused on the big pearl-white cylinder, and carefully unplugged the sensor components. That way the tapes would keep running, but record nothing. Her u-shadow opened a link. “Can you receive me?”

“Oh, this is interesting,” the machine replied. “That's a Commonwealth u-shadow format link you're using, but the same generation as my own routines. So I'm guessing you've not arrived here recently?”

“No, I'm one of the Warrior Angel's team. Two things. First, she thought you'd like to know that Paula is now safe and grown up.”

“Thank you. Which makes me curious what the second thing is.”

“Paula wants to know if you can get into space again. She needs you to fly some kind of survey mission of Valatare.”

“What's a Valatare?”

“It's the gas giant planet. And if you can fly, you have to go into polar orbit around Bienvenido first to see if you can locate the
Viscount;
we think it crashed at the southern pole.”

“If I could fly properly, there's no way I'd be here. Sorry. My drive units took a pounding in the quantumbuster blast.”

Faustina gave the cylinder a small smile. “I remember that. The light was brighter than a hundred suns.”

“You remember it? Your Advancer genes' age resistance is the best I've ever seen.”

“They're not. I've been rejuvenated a couple of times in Kysandra's medical module. Each time I come back with a new face and start to work my way back into government. It's my penance.”

“I'm starting to understand; I did wonder if you knew the connotations of your name. That must have been some original sin.”

“It was. I used to be called Bethaneve. I was at the heart of the revolution; I helped overthrow the Captain. I believed in us back then. I believed we were ushering in an age of freedom and liberty. Then my husband took over. He was a monster, and I never saw that until it was too late.”

“We all have a bad
morning after
at some point in our lives.”

“You're a very strange machine. I know the ANAdroids, and they don't talk like this.”

“You'll have to forgive me; I'm somewhat hazy on recent local history. Are you talking about Nigel's ANAdroids?”

“Yes. Do you know them?”

“I have a file on them. This machine was a subsidiary component of
Skylady,
Nigel's starship.”

“Is there any way you can be fixed to fly again?”

“I have a couple of integral semi-organic synthesizers, but they don't add up to self-repair functionality. So unless you happen to have a lot of sophisticated manufacturing systems at hand, I've got all the flight characteristics of a brick.”

“Alas, that's our problem.”

“Please explain.”

“It's called the Faller Apocalypse.” Faustina told her u-shadow to send over various files.

“Those goddamn monsters,” the machine exclaimed when the download finished. “They're the ones that got me, right at the start.”

“Got you?”

“Yeah. I was on the
Vermillion
—or rather, my original body was. I'm Joey Stein, I was part of Laura Brandt's shuttle fourteen mission into the Forest. But these days, I'm just a backup memory waiting for a re-life clone. And that likelihood seems to be slipping farther and farther from reality.”

“You're Joey Stein? Amazing,” Faustina said. There were so many questions she wanted to ask, but none of them relevant to helping Paula and Kysandra.

“But if the
Viscount
survived, then Paula really may be able to do something,” Joey said. “Our cargo was deliberately built
sturdy.
Each of those colony ships was self-sustaining, in case we got separated by some freak accident—and you don't get more freaky than the Void. In theory, you should be able to rebuild an entire Commonwealth-level society with just half the systems carried on one ship.”

“You can?”

“A lot of
ifs
in there, my new friend, including the biggest ask of all: time. And from what you've shown me in those files, time is getting kinda critical.”

“It is.”

“All right, so we have to do what we can.”

“You said you can't fly again.”

“That's not the kind of help I was thinking of. Our people, Paula and the Eliters—part of their plan is to open this wormhole, right?”

Faustina's gaze lifted to the enigmatic gateway at the back of the crypt. At the same time, her u-shadow reported the space machine was transmitting a torrent of link files. She held her breath, fascinated to see if the guardian force field would finally switch off.

“Bollocks,” Joey said. “Laura knew what she was doing when she codelocked that. Paula might be able to crack it, but I can't.”

“I see.”

“That was five seconds of trying. You're not going to quit on me just with that, are you?”

“Of course not.” She grinned.

“Glad to hear it. So, if we can't go down the physical route…This city—Varlan, right? This is the capital?”

“Yes.”

“So we've got all the top politicians here?”

“Quite literally. This palace is still the seat of government. They're sitting six levels above us.” She gave the cylinder a thoughtful look. “How does that help?”

“We arrange for Paula to have political cover.”

“How is that possible?”

“Politicians in a one-party state are paranoid little shits, always looking to do a deal to put themselves on top. At least, that's how it used to be on old Earth. I take it that hasn't changed?”

Her grin faded. “It hasn't.”

“So we make them an offer they can't refuse—especially if we can make them think they're making the offer to me.”

Jenifa sat in the safe house's living room and dialed the direct number. A loud two-tone whistle sounded in the headset, and she dialed another four numbers. A small blue light came on, confirming the link was scrambled and secure.

“Hello, dear,” Yaki said. “What have you got for me?”

“I've found it,” she said, so excited there was a tremor in her voice. “I know his secret.”

“Superb. What is it?”

“He's an Eliter.”

“Chaing? Not possible. It would be on his file.”

“Like Lauraine, you mean? This makes perfect sense. How else did the Warrior Angel show up at Xander Manor at the right time? And Hawley Docks? He must have called her with a link.”

“How did you find this out?”

“Castillito told me.”

“Castillito? I didn't know she'd been captured.”

Jenifa was glad Yaki was more than a thousand kilometers away, couldn't see her clenching her jaw. “I didn't capture her. She came to me.”

“You didn't interrogate her, then? She volunteered that information?”

“Yes.”

“You've been played, dear. They found out you're in Port Chana and want to break your operation apart. But at least it confirms you're getting close.”

“Chaing is an Eliter,” Jenifa said stubbornly. “He's always been cozy with that Corilla.”

“Give me one reason why they would expose one of their own to you?”

“Castillito wasn't acting for the radicals. This was personal. She wants revenge for Florian. We would have tortured him to death, you know that.”

“You probably would.”

Jenifa said nothing. Waited…

“All right,” Yaki said eventually. “I admit, that was quite a coincidence, the Warrior Angel showing up each time. But that doesn't give you enough to arrest him.”

“I wasn't going to. This is a section seven safe house. I can go to work on him here. The interrogation room in the basement is fully equipped. I can break him before the local PSR office even realizes he's gone. He'll confess, I swear.” She licked the sweat that had started to bead on her upper lip.

“And without him, your investigation to find the Commonwealth girl will slow. It's too convenient.”

“Mother! This is what you wanted. No, it's better. Stonal personally recruited an Eliter into section seven. He'll be ruined. And you can bring it to the attention of the security cabinet.”

“All right. Forget Chaing's old case files. I'm going to send you a link detector.”

“A what?”

“A gadget section seven have developed. It detects Eliter transmissions, and it's small enough to fit in your pocket. So carry it with you at all times.”

“Suppose he doesn't—”

“For crud's sake, do me the courtesy of
trying
to think like a PSR officer! It'll be with you by tomorrow evening. Once you have it, feed him some information that any Eliter would have to tell his fellow radicals about. See if the device lights up.”

“Of course. Yes.”

The blue light went off. Jenifa stared at the dead handset for a long moment before replacing it in the cradle. “Crud!”

Chaing got back to the safe house an hour after sunset. The wind from the sea had been constant all day and now clouds were scudding in, blocking any view of the Ring glinting across the night sky.

He found Jenifa sitting at her usual chair, the living room illuminated by five wall lights that seemed dimmer than usual, casting long shadows off the piles of paperwork. For once she wasn't reading through files. He took one look at her pensive expression. Most people wouldn't be able to tell, but he knew her well enough to see the burning anger held back like a beast in a cage.

“What's wrong?” he asked.

“I found something, today, sir. It might be our first lead.”

“Excellent.” He slung the briefcase on the table and sat beside her. “Show me.”

Reluctantly, she handed over a slim folder. There were only four sheets of paper inside, a ship's manifest. He skimmed through the typed lines. Shrugged. “Looks okay to me.”

“Does it, sir?” The tone was pure aggression.

“Is there a problem?” His leg had been aching all day, the painkillers were making him feel queasy, and the sense of frustration from the going-nowhere investigation was turning him tired and short-tempered. What he wanted was a rest, a quiet meal, and a decent sleep.

“I don't know, Captain,” she replied levelly. “Read it again, please.”

To duck out of an argument he glanced at the file again. The manifest was for the
Gothora III,
which had just arrived in the harbor—a small independent ship that carried cargo up and down the coast, with agents in every port pushing their contacts for consignments. One of hundreds of small similar ships, whose captain-owners were up to their eyeballs in debt and struggling to pay the state maritime enterprise office its percentage.

Gothora III
had arrived from Helston, delivering crates of spare parts to several Port Chana companies that specialized in servicing agricultural vehicles. It was due to depart in a few days for Perranporth, after taking on supplies and a new cargo.

“I still don't see anything wrong,” he told her.

“The cargo has been changed,” she said.

Another glance at the papers, exasperation building now. “Yeah, it was due to take timber along to Lynton. The agent switched it. Perfectly normal for this kind of small-time operation. Someone undercut them, or the Perranporth contract pays better.”

“The economic investigation team at the PSR office is supposed to be on the lookout for change.”

“Something out of the ordinary, is their actual brief.”

“Which is why they singled this out in the first place. An unexplained change.”

“And why they haven't followed it up. It's perfectly normal.”

“It's the only one.”

“What do you mean?”

“I've looked through hundreds of transactions, every type of company for fifty kilometers—chemicals, ores, engineering, agricultural, electrical, cars, truck haulage firms, train freight, even banks. All the abnormal orders and cancellations and changes. Thousands of the crudding things. This is the only ship that's changed
everything.
You're quite right: Other ships have added to their cargo, they've had orders withdrawn and given to other captains, it happens all the time. But the
Gothora III
's entire cargo has been changed, along with its destination. All in the last three days.”

Chaing frowned, his finger tracing down the manifest. “Engineering supplies for Rodriguez Tooling, and Katina Precision Milling, type not listed. Hmmm. The order was put together by South Coast Wide Shipping.” He glanced up at Jenifa. “Are they legitimate?”

“I checked with the state enterprise register. South Coast Wide is over forty years old, founded and owned by someone called Lubbeke, employs nine people in its office. All perfectly normal.”

“Well, they would have to be,” Chaing murmured.

“So?”

“Unusual,” Chaing agreed. He opened the bottle of painkillers and popped a couple of pills. “Okay, here's what we're going to do. If it is something the Warrior Angel is involved with, I don't want to warn them off, so we don't tell Director Husnan's people.”