Cauldron of Ghosts (38 page)

Three. Advance the proposition—as a conjecture, at least—that the Audubon Ballroom’s presence and capacity for action on Mesa might be a lot greater than the authorities wanted to admit. That last part, her superiors had cautioned her—as if she’d needed them to!—had to be done carefully, lest suspicion arise that she was inflating the threat for the sake of sensationalism.

But, of course, that wouldn’t be a problem. First, because she’d always conscientiously avoided any reputation for sensational reportage. And, second, because if she was right about the immediacy of whatever evacuation plan was in place, and if the concerns of those same superiors about where she was to stay were well placed, it would soon be all but impossible to oversensationalize the events that would actually be occurring.

It was a good thing, she reflected, that
The Truth Will Out
allowed her such a generous operating budget. She’d need it. Within two days, at the outside, she had to hire some good bodyguards. An attempt on her life was very likely, and it couldn’t be obviously fumbled, either. It would have to look quite serious—the sort of murder attempt that might be made either by Ballroom killers or (take your pick) agents from one or another disgruntled official body or aggrieved transstellar who’d finally decided she’d made herself a pain in the posterior once too often.

Two such murder attempts had been made on her before. In both cases, the perpetrators’ identity had never been established, although theories abounded. And in both cases, that hadn’t mattered at all. One of those attempts had been completely genuine, as a matter of fact, and that hadn’t mattered, either. The attempts had sent viewership through the proverbial roof—and, of course, cemented the seriousness with which her reports were seen by the public. After all, if they hadn’t been accurate, why would anyone have wanted to shut her up?

Luckily for her—well, no, it had been
planned
for, generations before—her genetic line had as one of its characteristics a pronounced taste for excitement. Some people called it
adrenaline junkie
.

A crude and rather silly term, she’d always thought. Adrenaline was the effect, not the cause. The cause lay in a complex constellation of genes carefully nurtured by the Alignment’s gengineers.

* * *

The next morning, she began recording her first report.

“This is Audrey O’Hanrahan, reporting from Mesa, where disaster and catastrophe are in the air.”

Good
, she thought.
It’s not just a decent intro; it’ll make a good tease before the report actually runs
.

“Viewers who followed my reports on the events on Mesa after the Green Pines terrorist attack may recall that I was both skeptical of the official accounts and critical of the behavior of Mesa’s security forces at the time. Their brutality—I would not and did not shy from the term bestiality—was astonishing. Coupled to that, however, was the incompetence I suggested was running in tandem. Brutal people are not necessarily stupid; but the fact remains that brutality tends to stupefy. That is just as true of the perpetrators as it is of their victims.

“It now seems my cautions were justified. A highly placed spokesman for the government admitted to me yesterday that the claims made at the time by Mesa’s security agencies that they had crushed the Audubon Ballroom and its associated terrorist cells among the so-called ‘seccies’—Mesa’s second-class, largely disenfranchised citizens—were ‘magnified by optimistic bias.’

“This is what’s known in the journalist’s trade as a weasel statement. What he really meant was: ‘We were so besotted with vengeance that we never actually bothered to check our victims’ guilt or innocence.’ Which also meant, of course, that those who might
actually
have been guilty would have found it much easier to escape punishment. This is the sort of ineptitude that makes it possible for a society’s enemies to evade apprehension while they lay plans for further outrages.

“Brutality married to ineptitude—Mesa’s Office of Public Safety ought to use that slogan instead of the preposterous one they now have: ‘Always vigilant, always prepared.’ ”

She looked directly into the pickup and shook her head.

“Talk about ‘magnified by optimistic bias’!”

* * *

Twenty minutes later, she’d finished the rough recording and replayed it, considering it this time from an editor’s perspective. It was good, she thought. Possibly a little over the top in a few places, but not bad at all for a rough cut. She could always tone those places down a bit if they really needed it, but she’d learned long ago to put at least a few hours between the actual recording and any editorial decisions.

Besides, now that she’d had a chance to appreciate it properly, she’d probably better not wait about that other little matter.

She activated her com and punched in the combination of the private security force she’d used before on Mesa. It was not an Alignment front, as such, but it had been carefully vetted—and in some cases staffed by—the onion’s own security experts.

“Cerberus Security? This is Audrey O’Hanrahan. Could I speak to Lee Seagraves, please. Yes, I’ll hold.”

She
loved
her job.

Chapter 42

The down-at-the-heels freighter came over the alpha wall just over twenty-three and a half light-minutes from the F7 star which had been christened Balcescu by its ethnic Hungarian settlers. Its Warshawski sails flashed blue brilliance as they bled transit energy before reconfiguring into a standard impeller wedge. It took a moment orienting itself—even the best astrogation was usually off at least a little—then began its steady acceleration towards its destination, just over eleven light-minutes farther in-system.

* * *

“We’ve got a hyper translation,” Sophie Bordás, Balcescu Station’s sensor officer, reported.

“Really?” The station’s CO, Zoltan Somogyi, set his coffee cup aside and rotated his comfortable station chair towards the sensor section. “And what can you tell me about it?”

“Not much,” Bordás replied, carefully not adding the word “obviously” to her response. “It’s right on the hyper limit, and all I got at this point is the FTL signal from its impeller wedge. Looks to be somewhere around one million tons, give or take, from its wedge strength, and it’s only hitting about one hundred and seventy-six gravities’ acceleration.” She shrugged. “The little I can see so far, looks like it’s probably a tramp freighter. They only brought about fifteen hundred KPS across the alpha wall with them, so assuming constant acceleration, we’re looking at about four hours and twelve minutes for them to reach Debrecen orbit, with turnover in just under three hours.”

Somogyi tilted back in his chair, his expression thoughtful. The hardscrabble colony on Balcescu’s only habitable planet of Debrecen didn’t ask many questions about the goings-on aboard the installation orbiting it. Until some OG’s superiors in the Jessyk Combine had stepped in to take over its management, Balcescu Station had been slowly disintegrating from lack of maintenance. And it had suffered that lack of maintenance because the entire star system didn’t have a collective pot to piss in and there had been no real traffic through it for at least the last forty T-years or so. As far as the people of Debrecen were concerned, it didn’t matter why Jessyk had wanted the derelict platform. What mattered was that it actually offered to lease it, repair it, and bring at least a trickle of trade into the system. If anyone on Debrecen had really thought about the economics involved—or been sufficiently aware of those economics’ reality—he would quickly have realized that the in-system “trade” carried out by Jessyk’s corporate partners couldn’t possibly allow them to recoup even the pittance they paid the system government for their lease. It was highly probable that none of them would have cared, either, of course.

Balcescu Station was divided into two parts. The main body of the station was exactly what it appeared to be—a somewhat rundown trading depot. The slave trade was conducted entirely out of a portion of the station that was kept segregated from the rest, with only limited access from one part to the other.

As deceptions went, this one was awfully threadbare. Few if any of the people working in the legitimate area of Balcescu had any illusions about what was happening in the restricted area. But the old expression applied to them—
see no evil; hear no evil; speak no evil—
or they’d be looking for another job. And jobs on Balcescu Station paid far better than most jobs planetside.

Furthermore, the Jessyk Combine had a quite clear—and mutually lucrative—understanding with the local OFS authorities, which meant that unlike the situation in the nearby Maya Sector, the Solarian League Navy would never dream of dropping by Balcescu without warning them to get any embarrassing evidence of prohibited activities out of sight before its arrival. Nobody else was likely to have much interest in this armpit-of-the-universe star system—they were over two light-centuries from Erewhon—much less one of those busybodies like Haven or Manticore. And from the most recent news reports, Manticore had enough problems with the League already without adding another unauthorized incursion into Solly-climb space to the pot. Still . . .

“Keep an eye on it, Sophie. Make sure it’s really alone. And let me know as soon as it squawks its transponder code.”

“Sure,” Bordás responded. “I already requested them to, but it’s going to be another eight minutes or so before my transmission reaches them.”

“Understood,” Somogyi said, and reached for his coffee cup once more.

* * *

“They’re requesting our transponder code,”
Hali Sowle
’s com officer said crisply.

“Why, that’s right neighborly of them,” Ganny El observed, raising her battered, silver-chased coffee mug in salute.

“Should I respond?” Lieutenant Frank Johnson looked up, his eyes settling on a point midway between Ganny El and Lieutenant Colonel Kabweza.

“Well,” Kabweza smiled faintly, “I think we should leave that up to the experts. Ganny?”

“Wouldn’t want to be all neat and orderly on the bastards,” Ganny replied. “Last thing we need is for the misbegotten SOBs to think we might be . . . oh,
military
or something. Let ’em wait for another six or seven minutes, Frank. Then switch ’er on and let’s see if they welcome us back with a big slobbery kiss.”

* * *

“I’ve got the transponder code from our visitor,” Sophie Bordás said with an expression of mild surprise. “It’s the
Hali Sowle
. Were we expecting them back this soon?”

Zoltan Somogyi swiveled in his chair to face her again. He was a bit surprised by the identification himself, but not so surprised that he spilled any coffee from his cup.

“No, we weren’t. The impression I got from their captain—what was that harpy’s name—?”

“Gamble Las Vegas.” Bordás had rather enjoyed the older woman herself, although she was admittedly a bit odd. She wondered if the name meant something in Vegas’ native tongue, whatever that was.

“Yeah, her. What a piece of work. Anyway, she did say they’d be coming back this way, but I got the impression they were headed for Prime next and then on to Ajay.” He pursed his lips. “Although, now that I think about it, I can’t recall her saying anything specific. Maybe I misunderstood her.”

He leaned forward to study the sensor officer’s display. “Anything look wrong to you?”

“Not really. Hold on. Let me check.” Sophie tapped commands, bringing up some data, and examined it for a few seconds.

“Nope. Everything looks the same. Signature matches the database from her last visit perfectly.”

Satisfied, Somogyi leaned back in his chair and lifted his cup. “Well, we’ll find out soon enough.”

There was nothing in sight for her to do for a while—as usual, here at bustling Balcescu Station—so Sophie brought the romance she was reading back up on her display. People could say what they wanted to about Somogyi—yeah, sure, he could be an asshole sometimes—but he wasn’t given to fussing over pointless rules like the prohibition against personal entertainment on the job, even when the alternative was twiddling your thumbs.

It’d be pretty hard for him to do so, of course. Given that at that very moment he was playing solitaire on his own console.

* * *

While Bordás found her bookmark and resumed reading, other members of Balcescu Station’s personnel were busier. In Station Flight Control, Csilla Ferenc was discussing
Prince Sundjata
’s projected outbound vector with Tabitha Crowley, her astrogator, while Béla Harsányi monitored the newly arrived incoming freighter and András Kocsis oversaw
Luigi Pirandello
’s final preparations for getting underway.

They weren’t all that busy, though. For three controllers to oversee the same number of ships was an easy workload, especially since the incoming ship was still eleven light-minutes out. For that matter, even
Prince Sundjata
wouldn’t be getting underway for over three hours yet, so there wasn’t that much rush.

* * *

Zachariah McBryde wasn’t sorry to be leaving Balcescu Station, even if the ship on which he found himself was an antiquated slave trader instead of the luxury liner upon which he’d made the first leg of his voyage from Mesa. Or even the rather less prepossessing general utility hauler which had delivered him to Balcescu in the first place. As depressing as he found the slave ship
Prince Sundjata
, it had at least the virtue that the slaves were kept in their quarters so he didn’t have to see them.

Balcescu Station had been an active depot, but not one oriented toward visitors. To make things worse, their Gaul keepers had insisted that Zachariah and the other “special passengers” had to remain at all times in the restricted area of the station—
restricted
being a euphemism for that portion devoted to the slave trade. The only thing to do, for the three days he and his companions had spent there while waiting for their further transport, was to sit at a none-too-sturdy little table in a “bistro” with delusions of grandeur and drink coffee whose claims to being “gourmet” were even more delusional.

And watch, as slaves were moved through the facility, either being shipped onto or from slave traders or being reassigned to new quarters. It was one thing to know in the abstract about the critical role genetic slavery played in the Alignment’s long-term plans. It was another to watch the concrete results parading back and forth in front of you. Try as one might, it was impossible for anyone with any imagination or empathy at all not to see those wretched creatures as one’s own kin. A fair distance removed, perhaps, but still kin.

Coming on top of his depression at being separated from his entire family, the time he’d spent in Balcescu had left Zachariah in a very dark place. He was glad to be leaving.

His only real regret was that Lisa Charteris was being shipped out on a different vessel, the
Luigi Pirandello
, scheduled to leave the station soon after
Prince Sundjata
. She was the last personal contact he had with his previous life. The one other project director he’d known slightly, Joseph van Vleet, would be leaving with her.

That left him only the company of Stefka Juarez and Gail Weiss, both of whom he knew by name only. Juarez been the director of a project far removed from Zachariah’s concerns—he didn’t even precisely know what her field was; something to do with nanotech, he thought—and he’d met Gail Weiss for the first time when Marinescu had assembled the five of them as part of Houdini. He had no idea at all what her work had been.

The two women had to share a cabin. Thankfully, Zachariah had one to himself. He been told that the voyage to the next destination, whose identity had not been revealed, would take several weeks. He figured on spending most of that time catching up on research papers and finishing a couple of long postponed projects of personal literary advancement. He hadn’t read Tolstoy’s
War and Peace
since he was a university student, and he’d never been able to do more than put a small dent in Natchaya Suramongkol’s eleven-volume magnum opus The
Annals of Ayutthaya
.

The one other advantage to
Prince Sundjata
was that the cabins were so tiny he no longer had to share his accommodations with his Gaul keeper, A. Zhilov.

No, two advantages. When their party of five reached Balcescu Station, three of the five Gauls who’d accompanied them had returned the next day to Mesa. From this point on, apparently, the people overseeing the Houdini evacuation had decided that only one Gaul keeper per ship was enough. So, S. Arpino would be going with Lisa and van Vleet on the
Luigi Pirandello
, while Zhilov would be hovering around Zachariah and the two women. With three of them to hover over, hopefully Zachariah would be spared the Gaul’s dour company at least most of the time.

He still didn’t know what the “A” stood for. Being honest, he didn’t care either. Zachariah had found the Gauls to be as entertaining and convivial as so many toadstools.

“
Leaving Balcescu Station in ten minutes
.” That terse announcement came over the cabin’s com, and he recognized the ship’s captain’s voice. He wasn’t quite sure of the woman’s name—Bogdanov? Bogunov?—because he’d only heard it once. But she had a distinctive, gravelly voice.

To Zachariah’s surprise, that announcement was followed by: “
If any of the passengers want to join us on the command deck, feel free to do so. Just
stay out of our way
.”

It took him no more than five seconds to decide that anything was better than staying in this claustrophobic small cabin. At least on the command deck he’d be able to see something. Probably not a lot, given the injunction to keep from getting underfoot, but at least there’d be displays.
Prince Sundjata
was a working vessel—a very working vessel—not a liner or a cruise ship. There weren’t going to be any observation decks or viewports. Which was fair enough, he supposed, if somewhat grumpily. After all, viewports really weren’t all that useful in space travel.

* * *

“Looks like we may lose at least one fish.” Commander Loren Damewood was monitoring
Hali Sowle
’s drone sensor platforms. The freighter had made turnover and begun decelerating towards Balcescu Station at its same steady hundred and seventy-six gravities eighteen minutes ago. She was still over eighty-two million kilometers out, her velocity up to 16,604 KPS, but it would be close to two more hours before she was in any position to . . . inconvenience the station’s inhabitants. Now he looked up from his displays with a grimace.

“Bogey Two’s just brought her impellers up and gotten underway. She’s headed almost directly away from us, too. Looks like she’s pulling around a hundred seventy gravities, so she’s a little slower than we are, but she’s going to have an awful big head start. If any of the others pull out in the next hour or so, were going to lose at least one of them for sure. Unless we send both frigates after them, anyway.”

Major Anichka Sydorenko glanced at her Havenite advisor, Lieutenant Commander Loriane Lansiquot. “I don’t like the thought of losing one of them, either,” she said. “But I think I like the thought of not keeping
Geronimo
close enough to cover
Hali Sowle
and the station if any surprises turned up even less.”