Angel of Destruction (19 page)

Or at least someone talking.

Raising his head to cast about for the direction of the sound, Hilton thought quickly, his heart beating faster with involuntary excitement.

There was nobody there.

No one was on shift for cargo handling. He made up the shift roster himself in Dalmoss’s absence. He knew. Not even he was scheduled to be there, but he was running late; on any normal day he would have left the area, hours ago.

Someone talking.

Hilton opened his mouth to give a hallo, then closed it again.

No one was supposed to be there; and the sound didn’t quite seem like a normal conversation, somehow, it seemed to be near whispered. As though someone was telling secrets.

He couldn’t see anything out of the ordinary down the long row of crates in either direction; but he thought he could get closer to the sound he heard. He had plenty of shadows to help him out. The lighting was still strictly minimal, and so far overhead that the cavernous deeps between rows of crates were almost as good as a shield against detection — so long as a man walked carefully, holding his tally board close so that any telltale glare off the document screen would remain hidden.

Whispering.

At the far end of the next row, at the back of the stacks, next to the rear wall that separated the warehouse from the back end of the administrative offices.

Hilton moved slowly and carefully through the shadows, keeping his breath quiet and his movement smooth.

He reached the far end of the back stacks, and when he bent his head — carefully, carefully — around the corner of the crates that ended the row, Hilton heard the voices quite distinctly.

Buyer at Kansin, especially the larger pieces. Guaranteed.

The speaker wasn’t at the back of the row where Hilton was standing, but appeared to be at the back of the next row; so that only the width of the aisle and that of the row itself stood between them, and Hilton had the shadows in his favor.

Lost the better part of our last take. Boss isn’t very happy about that. Not happen again.

He couldn’t hear everything. Bits and pieces of the words were lost in the great hush of the warehouse, muffled by absorption by the bulk of the stacked crates. What he could hear electrified him.

Shut us down sooner or later. Honan-gung. While we can. The arrangements.

Hilton eased his body carefully around the corner of the stack of crates and peered into the darkness across the circle, hoping that the whites of his eyes would not catch the light. Two people. One of them talking. The outlines were indistinct, and the voice was oddly muted or muffled. He had to get closer to hear what they were talking about. To hear the details, because it was clear enough to Hilton what they were talking about.

He had to know who they were.

While we can still blame Langsariks. Can’t have very much longer. One month, two months, tops.

Measuring the distance carefully in his mind, Hilton crouched down slowly to set the tally board on the ground. He could clear the space between them in four paces. He would have the advantage of surprise. He could get one of them, at least, and then they’d have a good chance of finding out what had been going on all of these weeks at Port Charid.

The tally board made no sound as he set it down.

But something alerted the whisperers regardless.

Hilton gathered up his energy to make his move, but one of them pushed the other suddenly.

Run.

He sprinted after them furiously, but they had a head start on him. They were both good runners. They had the darkness on their side.

Hilton followed the sound of footfalls as fast as he could run, spurred on by desperate fear of losing this chance; but the rows and rows of crates echoed the sound and confused the track, and Hilton had to stop at last and admit it to himself.

He’d lost them.

He’d had them within his grasp, and he had lost them, but he could go to the authorities and tell them . . .

Tell them what?

That he had heard someone plotting a raid, someone who took the blame for previous raids and exonerated the Langsariks by implication?

He couldn’t even go to the authorities. Maybe they wouldn’t laugh in his face, but there was no hope that they would take him seriously. He wouldn’t take himself seriously, in their position.

He needed more information.

Slowly, Hilton worked his way back to where he’d been to find his tally sheet. He would come back with a light and check the area, but he didn’t have much hope of finding anything.

He had the tally to complete.

If a raid was being plotted, and the conspirators had met among the stacks of cargo to confer, some one or more people who worked in the warehouse were in on it.

Not Langsariks. No Langsarik would have risked compromising the settlement by missing report in these troubled times.

There were other people on the various construction crews, and someone would give him a signal sooner or later. They didn’t know how much he’d heard. They couldn’t know. They’d think he’d just happened on them, and knew nothing.

He would be watching.

He wouldn’t rest until he had information that would give the Bench specialist who had come to end the raids the hard facts he would need to find the damned pirates, and punish them for murderers.

###

Kazmer had no documentation to show; the Bench had everything that the freighter had been carrying when it had been impounded at Anglace.

He didn’t need documentation.

“I was here not long before the raid on the Tyrell Yards,” he explained to the man behind the counter. “I’ve shaved my beard since, but I was with my principal. Noman, his name was. We came for a freighter tender to move some grain out of atmosphere, do you remember? The freighter tender was just being released to service after maintenance.”

The man behind the counter kept his face carefully expressionless. “I can’t say that I do remember any such thing.” No, of course he couldn’t, especially not knowing exactly who Vogel — beside Kazmer, but ever so slightly in the background — might be. Vogel was not in uniform, but it wasn’t a good time to trust strangers in Port Charid, especially not in seedy little third-rate freighter brokerages like this one.

“I’ll tell you one thing, though,” the man behind the counter said, turning and reaching behind him for a ledger portfolio. “All of our activity is fully documented. Correctly documented. Anything we do we get proper clearance for. See for yourself, maybe you can answer your own question.”

Whatever that might be.

“I expect the records all got a pretty good going-over, after the last raid,” Vogel said in a genial and conversational tone, stepping up to the counter. “More excitement than anyone really needs, if you ask me.” Vogel had turned to the section in the portfolio where the hard-copy requisition documents were kept. The ones that showed original approvals for release of transport.

The man behind the counter was too suspicious to allow himself to be drawn into the complicity of complaint. “We have nothing to hide, and it’s just what must be done. Our books are always open.”

There it was — the release order Noman had brought to this broker to obtain the security keys to the freighter tender Kazmer had piloted through atmosphere to rendezvous with the freighter they’d taken to the Tyrell Yards.

Vogel pulled the document away from its secures and laid it on the counter, turning to the back of the portfolio where the receipts would be kept. “Nice release seal here,” Vogel said, tapping the mark. “Combine Yards. Fisner Feraltz, that’s his mark, isn’t it? I suppose you’ve already had this run through authentication.”

The man behind the counter was agitated, but still wary. “No, why should we? There’s been no challenge. No question. What do you think you’re doing?”

Vogel had completed the hand receipt and passed it across to the man behind the counter. “I’m taking this document. You’ll initial, of course, as witnessing that all the information is correctly filled out? Thank you. Oh. Here. Have a look at this.”

Kazmer couldn’t tell exactly where Vogel got it, but Vogel was holding a little flat chop in his left hand. Could have been up his sleeve. On his chrono. Behind a button. Anything. “Bench special evidence sigil, there. This one’s genuine.” Vogel set chop to receipt, and the electronic traces of the micro-circuitry it embedded in the fibers of the document’s matrix glittered unnervingly in the flat light of the little front office.

Vogel folded the freighter-tender release and tucked it into an inner pocket somewhere. “If you’re lucky, you’ll never see another one like it. Thank you for your time.”

So they were leaving.

The man behind the counter was holding the receipt up to the light, staring at the seal Vogel had set upon it. Kazmer closed the office door behind him quietly, reluctant to interrupt the man’s awestruck concentration.

Vogel was standing with his arms folded, looking at people in the street. “That little courier,” Vogel said. That was right; he’d told Vogel about the Langsariks’ escape craft, the one with the contraband communications equipment. “Was that on the freighter tender? Or on the freighter you joined?”

“We transferred it with the grain,” Kazmer replied promptly. “And carrying battle cannon, they said? The freighter tender’s fuel burn did seem a little odd, now that I think of it. But I was thinking about other things.”

Vogel nodded. “It’d have to be a sweet little piece of machinery to carry battle cannon. I wonder whose it is.”

Kazmer knew.

But he’d almost reconciled himself to the fact that nobody would believe him.

It didn’t matter so much in the end if they believed him about the Angel. Most of the rest of the Combine had never believed Sarvaw about the Angel anyway; it was hard for people to face the fact that such atrocities occurred. What mattered first and foremost was only convincing the authorities that whatever was going on in Port Charid was not the doing of Langsariks breaching the terms of their amnesty agreement. If only that point got through, the Angel could go diddle itself blind, with Kazmer’s heartfelt blessing.

“Well, let’s go see whether Feraltz has any insight on this. It appears to be his chop. Let’s go visit the foreman, Daigule. Come on. Maybe could learn something.”

But Vogel didn’t start back toward the business district of Port Charid.

Vogel signaled for an auto-rent vehicle instead, and told the navigation unit — once he and Kazmer had gotten in — that he wanted to go out to the new construction south of Port Charid, where the Combine interests were building a new cargo-handling facility.

“Heard Feraltz was out on-site by default when I ran into him yesterday at the Factor’s office,” Vogel explained, once the vehicle was under way. “Lots of activity out there. Probably best if we don’t call him away from his job.”

Probably best if they caught him off guard and by surprise, Kazmer decided. Vogel had no reason Kazmer could imagine for suspecting Fisner Feraltz of anything; it was probably just second nature for Vogel to plan to his advantage.

Kazmer had reasons to suspect Madlev’s foreman, whether or not anyone would countenance them.

Madlev’s foreman was Dolgorukij, and the Angel of Destruction was made up of Dolgorukij.

Madlev’s foreman had been at the Okidan Yards and lived to tell the tale, as well: surely that could be suspicious in and of itself. The people who had done the murders Kazmer had seen at Tyrell Yards were not the kind to leave a man wounded but still alive to call for help.

In fact it was suspicious.

Wasn’t it?

Or was his dread and horror of the Angel of Destruction poisoning his mind, so that he saw the enemy around every corner?

###

Fisner Feraltz struggled to his feet gamely as Garol was announced at his office door in the administrative area of the new warehouse facility. Garol could appreciate the effort it took; still, a man learned to work with his bracing. So he’d been told. Wanting to get as fresh a reaction as possible, Garol reached into his jacket’s inner pocket as he entered the room, shaking the document free of its folds to set it down directly on the foreman’s desk.

“Good-greeting, nice to see you,” Garol said briskly, though he wasn’t all that interested in being polite. Feraltz’s maneuvers to be present at Garol’s report to First Secretary Verlaine yesterday had annoyed him; they had also raised questions in his mind. “Have a look at this for me. Your mark, here?”

There was no reason to suppose that Feraltz had anything against Langsariks, and every reason to suppose the contrary. Feraltz had certainly given an excellent impression of a man wishing to avoid the appearance of implicating the Langsariks for the Okidan raid. Too good an impression was suspicious in and of itself. Wasn’t it just that touch too convenient that Fisner Feraltz had been Okidan’s sole survivor — the sole survivor of any of these raids to date?

Precisely how had Feraltz survived the Okidan raid?

“It looks like my mark,” Feraltz agreed, readily enough. “But here. For the record.” He sat back down, carefully. Garol watched him sit back down. He didn’t think Feraltz moved like a man fully accustomed to his bracing; and there was no possible reason Garol could think of for so ungracious a thought but sheer contrariness on his part.

Feraltz pulled out the chop that he wore on a chain around his neck and keyed its confirm mode before he held it to the chop mark on the document.

The chop jumped in Feraltz’s hand, its static charge registering rejection of the chop mark on the document.

Feraltz frowned.

Pulling a ledger board from a side table, Feraltz leafed through the document originals until he found what he was looking for. Setting the open ledger board down on the desk beside the document Garol had brought, Feraltz keyed the confirm code on his chop again and held it to the chop mark on the document original in the ledger board.

The chop sang out its confirm code, shrill and self-confident. So Feraltz moved it over to the document Garol had brought once more, slowly, as if not to interrupt the micro-computer’s concentration.