Starhammer (6 page)

Once off the ramp, he headed into the park. The trees and open spaces were lit with the first sunlight of the day, mirrored, filtered, and given an ancient terrestrial tinge by the engineers.

Pretty good crowds were out already. On the paths to the Hyades Monument a cloud of joggers passed him. Two women were flying a kite in the shape of a gigantic female figure, and a small cult group in white robes was burning incense and prostrating itself in worship ceremonies. Dawn brought out a certain kind of crowd. Evening had another. Human variety was infinite on Hyperion Grandee.

He reached the Hyades Monument with its twenty-seven planetary models, each a meter across, with tiny clouds swirling over their miniature oceans. If you stood by the monument long enough, it was said, you would see virtually every form of human weirdness, except the horrors on laowon worlds. You'd see laowons though, plenty of them, especially in late afternoon when the light was closest to that of Laogolden.

Past the monument he turned through a dark grove of terrestrial pine trees. He liked this stretch of the walk the best, and he often jogged down here, too. The smell of the pines was similar to that of the woods around Castle Firgize beside Lake Sweetcrystal in that other life, which some days seemed almost a dream to him now.

He emerged from the pines near the exit to Octagon Five. The ramps there were crowded with morning office workers. Iehard stopped off for a breakfast special. While he ate he checked the news updates. Arnei Oh hadn't been the only bad craziness of Wintergame night. Someone had thrown a fragmentation bomb into an office party on Octagon Two. Nine good citizens had been scraped together afterward for the morticians and another twenty-four were in the hospital. The perpetrator had escaped with barely a witness to the act.

Finishing up his muffin and bacofreef, he passed his card over the table function box and set out for the temporary office.

The Mass Murder Squad was not a big, well-accredited department of the Hyperion Grandee Police Department. Mass Murder, in fact, didn't operate out of police headquarters in Octagon Three. Instead, it moved constantly from one nondescript little office to another. Wherever it went, though, the office was always the same, jammed with computer equipment, screen to screen, wall to wall. Operatives shared desks, assistants crowded the hallways.

In fact, the police department preferred to keep Mass Murder at arm's length. It was messy, nasty stuff, politically dangerous. The whole business of the Kill Kults sent a political contradiction right down the middle of the public mind. Random mass killings, the taking of grisly trophies, the defiant posturing of captured suspects, all these made the public demand harsh, effective measures, essentially "shoot on sight," to stamp out the killers. Unfortunately, that led to the occasional slaughter of the innocent, and that was media poison of the worst kind.

Currently, the squad was working out of a run-down office suite on a ground floor in Octagon Five. It was gray and grim and looked like some elderly gas haulage agency with long-term contracts since the year dot. It was also ringed by invisible security teams.

Jon took the ramp to the main plaza and then moved onto the blue corridor past Zeppo Uniti, who worked the coffeeshop on the corner. Zeppo checked everyone who went by.

Up the corridor was a scuffed gray door marked "Fabulous Bioengineering." Jon rapped three times and then slipped inside.

It was bedlam. The security team nodded him through into the labyrinth of computer screens. Telephone babble filled the air along with fumes of instacaf and syntabac. He shouldered through to the desk he shared with Operative Elvis Kee Hoi Apollo and checked his messages. Most were routine. He paused over one from Melissa Baltitude, in the Downtown Emergency Hospital. It was warm and flip and thankful. He smiled and punched it to phototron oblivion and called up the next.

He frowned. Commander Petrie, Chief Executive of the Nocanicus Military Corporation, wasn't the kind who normally would be in his office at eight in the morning. Nor did he normally call on the services of the killer trackers of the Mass Murder Squad when he had the Military Intelligence Unit already to hand. The message meant trouble. And it had to be laowon business.

With a certain amount of foreboding, he walked over to the Military Intelligence building through the midmorning crowds. Everywhere he looked people jammed the corridors, flowing over the ramps like waves, a veritable sea of faces, hopes, and dreams. And among them lurked how many random killers? A grim thought, but one that had to be faced: Arnei Oh, king of Kali Dragons, had turned out to be somebody called Danuel Mitshi, who worked as a lighting designer for one of the big ad agencies of Octagon Eight. The kults were pervasive and hard to crack.

The MI offices were in a slim, gray, windowless tower situated close to the octagon station. Security was tight. His weapon was tagged and removed, retina and fingerprint checks were run before he was shown to an elevator protected by steel blast shields.

"Ah, Jon, do come in." In a civilian-cut gray suit, Petrie welcomed him out of the elevator. A slim man of medium height, a scion of a very famous family, the commander was in medium extended age, around eighty-five. Iehard's practiced eye quickly picked out such aging details as the resistant little pot belly.

The outer office was filled with young workers and small trees in ceramic tubs. An air of studious industry filled the place.

Jon saw that Petrie was wearing a little psi field deflector, the metal headband gleamed across his forehead. Must keep the operative from picking up more than he should, thought Jon. Deflectors never worked well with fear sensors. Jon could easily read Petrie's unease.

"Good of you to get down here so fast. We've got a crisis on our hands. An emergency, otherwise I wouldn't dream of interrupting your work. I know how overloaded you poor devils are. Sometimes I think our society's going to the damned, I honestly do. That one yesterday, that...?"

"Arnei Oh."

"Yes, that one. Very bad business. Very bad; a
lighting
designer of all things, I read." He sighed. "Well, it's over at last. Do take a seat."

Petrie's private office was bowl shaped, with exotic tropical flowers that grew on mirrored tiers all the way to the mauve ceiling. Iehard sank into a sensual sofchair that started to massage him lightly, almost imperceptibly. He didn't want to sound ungracious but the thing made his spine crawl. "Is there any way to turn this chair off?"

"Yes, of course, right by your right hand, the stud."

The massage ended.

It was much too early in the day for Petrie to offer Jon a drink, though Iehard had the strange feeling that Petrie rather wished he could, and thus have had one for himself. Perhaps the commander hadn't slept at all well.

"Well, Jon, I won't waste time, we have to hurry as it is. We live in a big system, don't we? So all our problems are pretty big, aren't they?"

Trouble, Jon thought.

"This involves laowon, Jon. It's a dreadful case." Petrie had an electronic wand out and a picture popped up on a TV screen nestled among yellow orchids.

Head and shoulders shot, an old man, face dominated by a large, slightly bent nose; broken and improperly repaired. The eyes were blue and bored into the camera. The gray hair was tied up in a knot at the back of the head. A single earring of red enamel stood out on the heavy tan of someone who had been to hot stars.

"An Elchite?" Iehard voiced a certain amount of wonder. "There aren't any Elchites within a hundred light-years of here. Not on this side of the Hyades anyway. They're anticorporate."

"He's a fugitive, on the run from laowon justice."

There it was, filthy laowon work.

"What did he do?"

"They say he planted a bomb on a private space habitat, in laowon space, and among those killed were twenty excellencies, including nine Exalted of Blue Seygfan."

Jon sucked in his breath. "Grand Weengams and Twirsteds then?"

Petrie nodded.

"Then the cult is involved, for Bloodrite?"

"Not as yet, not at least as far as we can detect."

"But there is Superior Buro." Jon said it with certainty.

Petrie nodded. Of course there was. Laowon Superior Buro penetrated all known space.

"Noble blood, the most exalted. They must want this old man very badly. Where exactly did it happen?"

"There are quite a few mysteries about this case. All we have is what I told you."

"That's not much to go on." Jon waved his hands.

"I know. I'm sorry, Jon, Superior Buro have a lock on the data. We're not to ask too many questions, it seems. They're very sensitive right now. I don't need to tell you that on the laowon levels they are howling with rage over this. The man is to go to Lao itself and expiate on the chair before the Grand Court. Can you imagine? So we must move quickly but we must move carefully, diplomatically. The last thing they want is a big full-bore investigation. They don't trust the police department whatsoever. That nest of leakers is a very last resort. If this hits the media..."

"How long has the man been here?"

"We believe just a few days."

"A few days is enough time for someone to go far. This is a big system."

"We do not think he has even left Hyperion Grandee yet. He was only tracked here by the merest chance. I am assured that the man cannot know he has been followed."

Jon's visions of combing the eight hundred-odd megahabitats, gigahabitats, asteroids, and moons for that face faded. "I suppose that's something."

"Of course, it goes without saying the man is extremely dangerous. However, this is a job calling on your extraordinary tracking skills, rather than your normal, aah, line of work. No gunplay is expected of you. At least that's my fervent hope. But you're the best psi senser we have, Jon. So it has to be you. There was a specific request from the laowon ambassador. You'll be given all the personnel and equipment. I will see to it personally that you have the fullest cooperation of my staff. Any nonsense about your origins and I'll—"

"What's his name?"

Commander Petrie swallowed. There was a short, uncomfortable silence. "Eblis Bey, an Elchite of the Red Crescent. Has been involved in Elchite outrages before this. Extreme Panhumanist, charged in the murder of laowons on at least one other occasion. He's regarded as so dangerous that you are not to make personal contact with him. No communication is permitted, the laowon have stressed this to me several times."

A chime sounded. The elevator was coming up again.

"That will be their excellencies. They wanted to see you in person to impress upon you the importance of the task."

Laowon here? Outside the laowon level, maintained for them free of charge by the Hyperion Grandee taxpayer?

They were anxious indeed.

The doors slid apart to reveal three laowon led by a full Urall in gold and blue. They wore dark glasses, and only removed them when Petrie dimmed the light. Jon's eyes widened at their magnificence.

"His Excellency, Gold and Blue of Chashleesh," Petrie said, bowing low from the waist as dictated in the diplomatic protocols.

Iehard bowed. He felt the compulsion to do so from long ago. These were mighty excellencies, full Weengams of the Blood. The blue-skin superior race were among them! His heart wanted to sing, his feet to dance. He had to fight the disgusting doglike joy in himself.

The Urall was a distinguished-looking specimen, in fighting trim, wide-faced with tawny gold eyes. He wore a black and gold uniform. "Roaring Clusters" glittered on his chest. His skin was a dark mauve.

"The Lady Blasilab of Chashleesh" was a haughty female relative of the Urall, slightly taller than Iehard and with a cadaverously thin face and large teeth. A much paler blue, she wore a green gown, of the high neck, long-sleeve fashion still common in military families on the frontier. Behind her ears she wore triplets of purple spines. She feigned indifference but Jon sensed an intense inspection from under heavy-lidded eyes.

"His Excellency, the Morgooze of Blue Seygfan." Petrie indicated the third laowon, a young male still with the heavy uncut mane of adolescence. His chest bristled with family emblems. He wore a dark-blue tunic and met Jon's eyes with a flat, level stare.

Jon tried not to let the shock show on his face. This was the Morgooze of Blue Seygfan itself! Only the hereditary Urall could stand higher.

He knew that each laowon would have noticed the faint scars on his forehead that marked the site of the old brand.

Before anyone had sat down, the Lady Blasilab turned to Petrie and started speaking to him as if she were addressing a gardener or a house servant. "Petrie, have you briefed the operative?"

The commander flushed, forced a smile, and showed the Grand Urall to a seat.

"Yes, Lady Blasilab, he has been briefed. There is not much to tell him in fact. Superior Buro, you see." Petrie was ingratiating, humble. Still, Iehard sensed laowon discomfort. Petrie had been too assertive. They-who-were-innately-glorious might have been offended by human clumsiness. What if the blue ones would leave as a result? Taking away the radiance of their presence! Heaven forfend!

"Damned Superior Buro!" exploded the young male in the lao hunting tongue. "I told you they'd be tampering. There was a clear edict from the court. If they've curtailed information on this case I will lodge a formal complaint. We are to be the primary contact."

The Urall waved a hand, almost indulgently. Iehard heard the overtones, read the intricate pattern of facial expressions that accompanied the words. "Blue Seygfan does not fly alone in its concern in this case. But no Seygfan should raise formal complaints before a proper examination of the details. Otherwise Blue Seygfan will eventually fly alone."

Was inter-Seygfan conflict brewing? Iehard knew that whole planetary systems had been burnt out before by warring fleets dedicated to different Seygfan.

Petrie's knowledge of the face tongue was limited. He had only the formal tongue, the language of the lao court's paper correspondence. However, the Urall had noted that Jon understood their words.