Angel of Destruction (34 page)

Kazmer thought of the bodies he’d seen at the Tyrell Yards, the look on the face of the dock-master; a woman who had been alive when he’d left her, a woman who had offered no threat to the raiders.

He found that his instinctive sympathy for any man in Feraltz’s position — in the hood, and the gag — was absent.

“Thank you, gentlemen,” Cousin Stanoczk said. “We’ll be leaving. Should you be rebuked by the Factor or by the Bench specialist for transferring the prisoner just be in touch, and the Malcontent will see that all is made right for you.”

The crewmen who had hooded Feraltz were already moving him down the hall and toward the exit as Stanoczk spoke. Feraltz couldn’t walk very quickly with his ankles hobbled; but there were straps on the outside of the security hood, so the crewmen simply dragged Feraltz along with them. Kazmer hurried after them, while Cousin Stanoczk stayed behind for a moment to soothe any doubts that the two guards might have.

It took no time at all to reach the waiting transport. They loaded Feraltz into the passenger compartment, secured between two crewmen; but there was a problem.

It was a six-man transport, and Feraltz made seven.

Cousin Stanoczk stood beside the transport with Kazmer, scratching his head behind one ear as if in confusion.

“Well,” Cousin Stanoczk said. “Kazmer, this won’t do. I don’t have room for you. You’d better see if you can get a berth with your Langsarik friends, and you’d better hurry, too, if you don’t want to be left behind.”

Kazmer frowned. What was Stanoczk saying? “Get a berth, Cousin Stanoczk, I don’t understand. Oughtn’t I be coming with you? I’ll get a for-hire and meet you.”

Stanoczk shook his head with impatient disgust. “I don’t want you, Kazmer; I can’t use you, and the Langsariks need you. You’re a good pilot. You’re none of mine, though, so give me your halter and get out to the airfield.”

Give him his halter?

Was Stanoczk even speaking plain Standard?

Kazmer stood and stared. Stanoczk reached out for him with a short sharp obscenity, pulling Kazmer’s collar open at the throat to snap off the red leash of the Malcontent in one quick and almost savage gesture.

“We made a contract so that you could protect your friends, Kazmer, and your friends have not been protected. There is no contract. What part of ‘get out of my sight’ did you not understand?”

This couldn’t be happening.

It was too much to grasp.

Kazmer seized Cousin Stanoczk by the shoulders and kissed him passionately, first on one cheek and then on the other. Free. That was what Cousin Stanoczk was saying. He was free.

“Your for-hire is waiting,” Stanoczk pointed out. “Stupid Sarvaw.”

Free to court Modice like an honest man.

Kazmer fled from the street to the for-hire that Cousin Stanoczk had pointed out, the one Cousin Stanoczk had readied, waiting for him.

He had to get out to the airfield. Now.

Once he was away with the Langsarik fleet, he would see what the books said about how a man should honor the Malcontent, to give thanks for a miracle unsought but even so granted.

###

It was four hours till dawn, and the Fleet Interrogations Group had cleared the Sillume exit vector hours ago. It would reach Port Charid soon. Unless the Langsariks left local orbit at Port Charid within the hour, they would have no chance of outrunning a predictable attempt on the part of the Fleet Interrogations Group to stop them short of the entrance vector.

It was going to be complicated enough to move so many ships of so many sizes through the Sillume vector at something approaching one and the same time as it was.

Shires had mustered ten freighters in all, with the one they’d confiscated from Fisner Feraltz’s people added in. There was loot on that ship that the Bench might want to have, to build its case against Feraltz’s cabal; but the Langsariks were going to need capital.

Garol was sending them out into Gonebeyond space, and who knew exactly what they would find there?

“You can come back, of course,” Garol said diffidently to Walton Agenis, standing beside her at the airfield. Watching the last of the Langsariks load. “Once the uproar’s settled down. We could try to work a rehabilitation. Think about it.”

She shook her head. “I don’t think so. But I won’t rule it out. Hadn’t you better come with us, Garol? To, oh, preserve contact between the Bench and the Langsariks, maybe gain insight into the political situation in Gonebeyond. To the extent that there may be one.”

Garol kept his voice even with a terrible effort. She couldn’t know how much he wanted to. “I have enough explaining to do at Chilleau Judiciary to keep me busy. Thanks for the offer, though.”

He wanted to go.

He liked the Langsariks. And Walton Agenis was in his heart, a woman of courage and wisdom and beauty and grace. A friend.

She said nothing. Garol watched a for-hire pull up to the bottom of the load-in ramp, deployed on the tarmac before them. Kazmer Daigule stumbled out, almost tripping over his own feet in his eagerness to clasp Modice Agenis to his heart and spin around three times with her in his arms before disappearing with her up the ramp and into the ship.

Cousin Stanoczk had warned him; sending word that since the Langsarik fleet was short on current experience at vector transits, having been land-based for more than a year, he was sending Daigule out on loan. So he said.

Garol had his doubts about the “loan” part.

“Come with
me
, then, Garol,” Walton Agenis said quietly. “Or I’ll miss your company. We could be good for each other, I think. I don’t want it to be that I’ll never see you again.”

Passionate words, but she said them so calmly that it was too clear that it was the mere truth.

It tore a hole in his heart and let all of his anguish out, all of his pain, all of his grief at what had become of the Langsarik settlement, all of his hopeless certainty that he was condemned forever to walk through the world and never be part of it, to see joy and love and never have any.

He couldn’t handle it.

Drawing her to him with a carefully controlled gesture Garol folded her to himself, standing for a long moment heart to heart with the Flag Captain of the Langsarik fleet, Agenis the Deep-Minded. Walton. Maybe not the only woman he had ever loved, but unquestionably the one he loved more deeply than any before her.

She’d be all right.

He’d be all right.

He had to hold on to knowing she would be out there, somewhere, in Gonebeyond space, and that if he ever saw her again, she would greet him with a bowl of her niece’s grain soup and pick up the threads of their conversation as though they’d never been apart from each other.

“Not just yet.” He couldn’t let go of her. And he had to. Shires was waiting at a polite distance to escort his commander on board her flagship. It was the last to ferry Langsariks to the freighters that waited in orbit. They had to get away. “But I appreciate the offer. Maybe later, Walton, you’d better go.”

He didn’t dare kiss her, nor did he need to.

She stepped away from him and took a deep breath. “Very well. Not good-bye, Garol. See you later.”

Sometime, someplace.

She walked away from him past Shires, to the base of the loading ramp; and Garol knew that he had to say something, or hate himself for it for the rest of his life.

So he waved. “Have a good!”

Have a good trip. Have a good transit. Have a good escape. Have a good life.

Apparently startled, she paused halfway up the ramp, looking back over her shoulder, then broke into a broad grin and waved back.

It was just what he needed, no more and no less, and he turned his back on the freighter transport as the airfield’s leftover Dolgorukij ground crew closed up the ship, walking almost calmly off the scorched tarmac to take shelter in the control room, and watch her leave.

They would make the vector. They would be gone before the Fleet Interrogations Group could intercept them, and the Fleet Interrogations Group had no Brief to try to do so — he intended to make that point very clear. As soon as the Langsarik fleet was safely away.

He’d given up too much to let any six Fleet Interrogations Groups stand in the way of a successful escape.

###

Standing in the traffic controller’s map room at Combine headquarters, Garol Vogel watched the Third Fleet Interrogations Group on its way to Port Charid, and the ragtag Langsarik fleet nearing the Sillume entrance vector at the far end of the vector aisle.

It was going to be close.

The lead ships in the Fleet Interrogations Group convoy — three ships, out of twenty — were altering trajectory, but not on approach to Port Charid: on a course to bypass Rikavie entirely and head for some target as yet unidentified. In the Shawl of Rikavie, perhaps.

Garol knew better.

“Hail the Fleet convoy, please.” The communications master was on his boards; by the swiftness of his reply he had anticipated Garol’s request.

“Your channel is open, Bench specialist, skein in braid. Stand by for the commander, Third Fleet Interrogations Group, coming on line. Now.”

Garol meant to leave no doubt in the commander’s mind as to who was in charge at Port Charid. So he spoke first. “This is Bench intelligence specialist Garol Vogel, on detail by instruction from Chilleau Judiciary. Why have your leaders changed course, please.”

It annoyed Fleet when they were in the position of answering, rather than asking, the questions. That was all right. Garol didn’t need them cooperative. He just needed them at Port Charid, rather than chasing out after ships on their way to the entrance of the Sillume vector.

The leading edges of the Langsarik fleet had begun their vector spins, their sensor traces distorting with the activity.

“Third Fleet Interrogations Group commander Minrodie, Bench specialist. We see a suspicious population movement in flight from Port Charid for the Sillume vector. The possibility exists that they are Langsariks. There is no response to lawful requests to stand down and return to Port Charid for interview. Pursuit is required to resolve questions about identity and motivation.”

Yes, as he’d thought. Minrodie had done the analysis; Garol couldn’t fault her reasoning. He was just going to have to be unreasonable. “Commander Minrodie. Does your Brief extend to conduct of search and seizure of commercial shipping? Abort your pursuit and make your scheduled orbitals at Port Charid. Acknowledge compliance.”

No, her Brief did not authorize any such interference with trade. It was a formality, perhaps. But it was all Garol had to go on.

At the plotter scan to the right of the map wall Garol thought he saw the first of the Langsarik ships drop off the scope.

But the three ships from the Fleet convoy were making good progress and gaining on the tail end of the escaping Langsariks. A ship pursued by another of similar size accelerating in too-near pursuit could not make a vector transit; the perturbation in trajectory created by such pursuit made a correct calculation impossible. He had to call the Fleet convoy ships off.

“Request your confirmation that subject ships are civil transports engaged in the lawful conduct of Bench-sanctioned trade, Bench specialist.”

Minrodie wasn’t giving in. Garol didn’t blame her for it, though he had to force her compliance any way he could.

“I affirm that to my personal knowledge subject ships are all commercial hulls en route to the Sillume vector, so directed by me in response to instruction received from First Secretary Verlaine, Chilleau Judiciary. Abort your pursuit. You are exceeding the terms of your Brief.”

Not as if that ever stopped Fleet.

But Minrodie’s conviction did seem to falter. The three pursuit ships had not swerved from their intercept course, but none of the other ships in the convoy showed any signs of joining the chase. Yet.

Three more of the Langsarik ships were gone, including the first of the freighters. Some Langsariks had escaped, then, but Garol needed them all to be out of there, because the Langsariks were going to need each other in order to survive. Not only that — but the last of the freighters, the last of the ships, the freighter that had been the last to clear Port Charid, that was the ship carrying Walton Agenis.

“Failure to respond to a lawful request to stand to is a violation of Bench commercial procedure and within Fleet’s Brief to enforce,” Minrodie insisted.

Her three pursuit ships were gaining on the Langsarik fleet.

“And when a Fleet commerce-control group is posted at Port Charid it will duly enforce the commercial codes, that will be its charter. It is not your charter. You are not a Fleet commerce-control group, and you have been ordered to Port Charid. You will proceed to Port Charid. Any harassment on your part of commercial hulls can be expected to generate adverse notice at the highest level of authority.”

He was beginning to sound desperate.

He was afraid it wasn’t going to work after all. Agenis’s freighter might be able to outrun the Fleet ships, but he couldn’t risk finding out. If the Fleet ships got really annoyed, they could fire on the freighter. The Langsarik fleet needed its Flag Captain. Garol could not afford to contemplate what it would mean if Agenis were taken — Agenis, and her beautiful niece Modice, and her very capable nephew Shires, and even Kazmer Daigule, a basically decent man even if his grasp of Bench commercial codes was a little on the questionable side.

One of the ships among the fleeing Langsariks faltered.

It was a very small craft, the smallest on scan, so small in fact that it might well have escaped attention had it not started to transmit. A courier. A bomb ship? A decoy?

The acerbic tones of Cousin Stanoczk’s strongly accented voice cracked over the comms, and Garol had to rub his chin briskly with his hand to cover a smile of relief and gratitude. Cousin Stanoczk. Intervening just as things were near critical, to hold the Fleet pursuit up just enough.

“This is a privately registered courier ship with diplomatic papers for the Dolgorukij Combine, what is the meaning of this outrage?”

Cousin Stanoczk, Garol noted, could do “outrage” with the best of them. There was a confused babble of circuit overrides and half-finished questions from the Fleet side of the communications; then Commander Minrodie was back.