Dark Tempest (10 page)

Unless
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Perhaps a shield stronger than any weapon protected this seignior. What, then? Perhaps the man was so well-armed an attempt to attack him would be risible. Perhaps Viprion led Wolff and Rh’Arrol to a simple intercom with which to commune with the seignior.

Viprion swung open the door at the end of the corridor. “Gerald Wolff to see you, seignior,” said the castellan ingratiatingly.

A ropy, stocky sort of man leant over a couch with his back to the door. He was either bald through genetic fault, or his head had been shaved. A pair of feet, human but abnormally small and slender with ankles covered in silky hair, protruded from one end of the couch, shaking spasmodically. At first Wolff thought the seignior was fornicating with the person on the sofa, but then the man turned around.

Wolff looked at the Seignior’s bullish features, surely not a man of the Blood then could not help but look at the shivering thing on the couch. Superficially, it appeared to be an elongated boy with a bulbous cranium and huge wet eyes, and white-golden hair covering the wrists and ankles and forming a mane around the face. His milky skin was as pale as Jed’s, and his limbs were so thin and delicately jointed he looked as though he would shatter like china if caught by a wind. This was a man designed for survival in low gravity, on moon worlds—a Lunatic as they were called.

“Lestel here is annoying me, Viprion!” the seignior roared. The Lunatic boy drew his hands up over his face. His fingers were as pale and sculpted as bleached driftwood.

“And you annoy me, Castellan Viprion,” the seignior continued, striding gracelessly toward the Castellan. “You and your pathetic advices and strategies! You’re only fit for the knacker’s yard!”

“What is a knacker?” Wolff wondered aloud.

“What?” The seignior turned on him. His face had the bloated look imparted by too much alcohol, and pockmarks scarred his forehead and cheeks. While Viprion, as a man of leadership, had quite clearly been brimming over with devious, opportunistic artifice, none of these qualities were at all evident in the seignior. How could a man not of the Blood be the seignior of a circumfercirc? He was, Wolff assumed, either an arrant tyrant, or a figurehead chosen for his lack of insight.

“I said, what’s a knacker?”

“A knacker’s yard is a place where beasts too old to enter the food chain go to be slaughtered!” the seignior shouted.

“Yes, but what’s a
knacker
? Presumably an individual who works in such a yard. But did you ever meet one?” Wolff made an elaborate, flourishing bow. “Delighted to meet you, seignior. I am but a humble knacker. Did you ever wonder how many people put ‘knacker’ in the job title section of their census form?”

The seignior’s frown relaxed. “You’re an idiot!”

“Yes, that’s what I put on my census form.”

The seignior ignored him and continued his advance on Viprion. “Why have you brought here this foolish man?” The Seignior broke off to stare at Wolff. “Who is a criminal and a thief, and who eats fruit out of my garden? And why have you let this disgusting urchin in here?”

“He wishes to speak to you.” Viprion licked his lips and took a nervous step backward. “The man, I mean, not the disgusting urchin. I think you should know that he came aboard by virtue of an Archer’s vessel.”

“How exciting for him!” The seignior turned to Wolff but he did not look into his eyes, staring instead at Wolff’s shoulder. “And you, you stole fruit from the gardens, did you not?” He pushed his florid face toward Wolff, still not looking him full in the eyes. A stench of alcohol hit Wolff like a sheet caught in the wind. How did he know Wolff was a criminal? How had he seen him eat the fruit?

Lestel groaned. The seignior spun round, saw that the Lunatic had slid off the couch and was crouching on the floor, and kicked him hard in the leg. The boy’s thigh splintered with a nauseating crack. Lestel cried out in pain and fell on his side. The seignior drew back his foot to aim another kick, and Wolff saw that for sure it would shatter Lestel’s ribcage and crush his heart and lungs. He seized the seignior by his loose white tunic and wrenched him back.

“You dare to touch me?” the seignior spoke to Wolff without looking round. “You do not know the way of these parts, Citizen Wolff!”

Lestel groaned again. The seignior stepped toward him. Lestel raised his face, and an expression of acute horror spread across it. Then he screamed in pain. His eyes rolled back to the whites, slaver ran from his mouth, and his limbs shook.

“What are you doing?” Wolff demanded, disbelief overcoming horror. Surely the simple act of looking at a person could not induce such agony. Perhaps Lestel was acting, or it was the pain from his leg. “That can not be! Steel and Fl—” Wolff was cut short as the seignior turned and looked straight at him, and an insane agony erupted from the back of his neck, grating on every nerve of his body. Somewhere from his right came a strangulated shriek from Viprion, and he heard the sound of the castellan’s head hitting the wall. Wolff sensed that he, too, had fallen over, but he could no longer tell directions from one another or see anything but a red haze. An icy swash of pain engulfed him. His diaphragm contracted into a tight knot and he could not draw breath.

The pain ceased as quickly as it had begun, leaving him ringing like a tuning fork. He raised his hand to his temple and realised he was physically untouched. His heart pounded and his breath came ragged. His sight returned to him as though surfacing from the water, Lestel still lying on the floor. Viprion, when Wolff sought him, was lying near the wall on the other side of the door, moaning. Blood made a thick track from his nostrils to his upper lip. Rh’Arrol crouched near the door whimpering, and the seignior was approaching aer.

“Foul urchin, blight upon this circumfercirc!” he cursed then Rh’Arrol fell sideways and screamed, curling aer limbs up like a stunned spider. A crash issued from the far wall, and a second morran fell out of a ventilator shaft.

The seignior desisted, and looked round at the morran. “Eavesdropping scum!” he shouted at it. Rh’Arrol half rose and struggled for the door. The seignior’s power hit the morran who had fallen through the wall, and it went into spasms. Wolff realised he intended to hold it there like that until the life drained out of it, like a man holding someone’s head underwater. He got onto hands and knees, and crawled toward the door. Rh’Arrol had fallen in the entrance. Wolff put his arm around the morran and stood, half carrying, half dragging aer into the corridor. Rh’Arrol’s breathing steadied as they moved away, and Wolff set aer down outside the door to Viprion’s office.

“Why did you not warn me he could do that?” said Wolff, striking the ground with his fist.

“I did not know he could do that!” Rh’Arrol shrieked. “I did not see him before this day! I thought him a man, as you!”

“I doubt he could even provide an answer to the question I was going to ask him. He’s insane! What did you take me to him for? Are you stupid or something?”

“I did not see him before! Men on Carck-Westmathlon do not have business with morrans! I took you to him knowing only his location from the blueprints.”

Wolff calmed himself down a bit. It wasn’t Rh’Arrol’s fault and, as far as he could tell, whatever it was the seignior had done to him did not have a lasting effect.

How could someone inflict pain like that? He’d heard of people under
hypnosis
who felt no pain, but never of someone imagining a pain that was not real due to it. That went into superstition and voodoo. “Steel and Flame,” Wolff muttered.

Wolff sensed footfall in the doorway, and looked round to see Viprion leaning on the frame. He stood immediately. “What did he do?” he demanded.

Viprion, breathing rapidly and wiping the blood from his nose, ignored the question. “He is in a foul temper, and has been drinking.”

“Why did you not warn me?”

“Certain people of deluded impressions, mostly males of your own age, seem to think they can defeat our seignior. I assumed you were merely another of the insurgent rabble.”

Wolff frowned. It was patent that the castellan didn’t think he was stupid, and surely since he’d told Viprion he arrived on the Archer’s ship and was not local, this was not truly the man’s reasoning. “That man is your leader? I cannot imagine him being anything short of unnegotiable.”

The castellan arched one eyebrow into a dark chevron. “What is it you wish to negotiate?”

Wolff looked at the castellan. He hadn’t trusted him from the start. Some tribal instinct too deeply ingrained to be ousted from his sentience by education or culture had told him this was not the individual to invite into one’s cave. Potentially a dangerous man, he supposed, and something about him put Wolff on his guard. But he had come here to get answers, and with time at a premium, Viprion was the best source of those answers he had yet found. He chose his words carefully. “If I were to tell you Carck-Westmathlon was the focus of malign interests, might you tell me what you have here that could attract such interest?”

The castellan’s face changed, but not to an expression that could be interpreted as surprise or shock. “Many reasons could be postulated. Satigenaria is a wealthy system, and much of that wealth occupies the circumfercirc. That said, lucre is never evenly distributed, and the Kuiper mining community of this system has ever hovered on the edge of revolt. This is an old settlement and not run as well as it once was. Unscrupulous rulers like our own seignior cause factionation and civil unrest in the populace of the circumfercirc itself. And to add to that,” Viprion said, casting a critical glance toward Rh’Arrol, “we have an overpopulation of morrans, which themselves are a threat to security. Cull the morrans and you incite further ructions among men who see it as unethical. Any one of these factors could prove a point of weakness marauders might exploit.”

“A man by the name of Taggart planned a convergence at these coordinates. I do not know the magnitude of the impending attack, but this man was a criminal and I believe this settlement should be assumed under great threat.”

“I see,” said Viprion dryly. “In that case we will go at once to the surveillance and scanning department.” He set off down the corridor, away from the direction Wolff had come.

Wolff looked at his watch again. “Will this take long?”

“The Archer’s ship?”

“If I do not arrive back there within the hour, it may depart without me.”

“There may be some way to delay it. I know not of this Taggart,” Viprion said, looking straight ahead. “Where is he?”

“Oh, he is dead,” said Wolff.

“I see.”

“Although I am sure Taggart would have a reason to come to Carck-Westmathlon over any other settlement in this area. If one could be thought of, it may help.”

Viprion twisted his mouth and shook his head. “This circumfercirc has no specific assets. It may be that he has—had—or believed he could find allies here, which would not be unfounded had he some knowledge of the political situation.”

Wolff heard Rh’Arrol clicking again, behind him. “If you must lead that morran about like a pet,” said Viprion, “make it silent.”

“Be quiet, Rh’Arrol,” said Wolff.

“How should you likes it?” retorted the morran indignantly. “If I were to say ‘Shut your eyes, they offend me’?”

Someone appeared far ahead of them. It seemed as if she had fallen into the corridor from one of the doors leading off it. She cast about herself, looking flustered. “Castellan! Castellan,” she said, panting, as she reached Viprion. “I report unusual solar activity. We’ve got an ion storm on our hands in half an hour.”

“You know the drill,” said Viprion. “Close off all exposed points. Retract the docking dendrites and raise electrostatic shielding to full. No ships are to dock or depart from the circumfercirc until the storm abates. To the surveillance and scanning department, now.”

“Close the docking dendrites?” Wolff asked. “The
Shamrock
—the Archer vessel—will it be prevented from departing?”

“Is it armed?” The man looked at Wolff.

“It has a synchrotron cannon of some sort, I believe.”

“Then yes, it will be sequestered.” The informant took off in the direction she’d come from, and Viprion followed. Wolff made a grab for the Castellan’s arm. “What is going on?”

“The sun just sneezed.” Viprion looked at Wolff sideways with his sly steel-grey eyes. “Harken, Gerald Wolff, a storm is brewing.”

* * * *

Jed felt awareness returning to herself and the bridge, dimly at first, from a concentration so acute corporeal encumbrances had melted to insignificance. She raised her head, flexed limbs stiffened by inactivity, felt blood flow quicken and tasted the air.

With a thought, the ship’s small maintenance robots swarmed out of hatches low down on the walls and pulled the connection cables away from the
Shamrock
’s mainframe. They set upon Taggart’s device like flies upon a carcass, quickly dismantling it, the pieces carried away into the walls to be fed into the onboard recycling plant.

Jed stood, arched her back and stretched, and scanned the interior of the ship for infra-red presences. Wolff was not on board. She’d been in mindlock with the ship, Jed calculated, for about an hour and a half. To be whole again, at last! She checked the navigational systems, the details of the course to Satigenaria that had so eluded her at the time, the vessel’s blackbox recording of the past day. Everything was there. The
Shamrock’s
power was once more at her beck and call.