CHAPTER TWO
The Langsarik Coalition
Jils Ivers had flown the Haspirzak thula from Haspirzak Proper—from the JFS Sondarkit—to Psimas, where seven former bond-involuntary troops were to undergo surgery to remove their governors and begin a two-year process of becoming free again. Three days. From there she, and Judge Bat Yorvik, were to travel on into Gonebeyond space.
She meant to embed herself with the Langsarik coalition’s military action against the criminal Biramie organization. Yorvik was coming to observe the execution of a coordinated and cooperative police action as a representative from Haspirzak Judiciary; and begin, perhaps, to lay the foundation for a legal relationship that would help define Gonebeyond as a politically autonomous force in its own right.
They had to change shuttles at Psimas, because Yorvik’s assignment was an informal one and the thula was a powerful symbol of Judicial dominance. The Third Judge—whose mission this was, at heart—meant to tread very carefully, doing everything she could to avoid the false impression that Yorvik was the advance scout for a Haspirzak takeover in Gonebeyond.
It had been rather tense on the thula from Haspirzak to Psimas with seven newly freed bond-involuntaries on board, a constant and elevated stress level from forward to fins generated by the sheer emotional upheaval they were experiencing. It’d get worse before it got better, she was afraid, and the man Janforth, for one, seemed altogether too likely to bolt before he could benefit from psychological counseling and knowledgeable emotional support.
As it happened she’d misjudged not the likelihood, but the timing. Halfway to cargo bay close, a dockmaster came out onto the tarmac of the launch-lane where Jils’ courier was taking on medical supplies for whichever of the Langsarik Coalition’s clinics came first.
The dockmaster had someone with her: Janforth Ifrits, with his bivvy-bag. In civilian clothes, now, and very pale, the knuckles of one hand where he clutched the strap of his bivvy bone-white; but unquestionably determined. “Your pardon, Dame Ivers,” the dockmaster said. “Mister Ifrits says he’s coming with you.”
The dockmasters on duty all knew who she’d brought in with her. Sondarkit’s liberated bond-involuntaries were the first to arrive at the Psimas Detention Facility, but there would be more, and now that the Third Judge had chopped off on her final agreement with Fleet she didn’t care who knew it. So the dockmaster knew Ifrits was man Reborn, even if few people could truly grasp all that Ifrits and the others had endured.
Janforth Ifrits was watching Jils patiently, as if waiting for her to catch up. “Thank you, dockmaster,” Jils said. “I’ll take it from here.” It hadn’t been a day. She couldn’t imagine that Psimas had had resources and preparations ready to conduct a complex surgery at such short notice.
Even if Ifrits had been first in line he couldn’t possibly have had surgery, recuperated, and been released from Infirmary within twelve hours of arrival. Therefore Ifrits hadn’t had the surgery. He was still porting an active governor. The only thing between Janforth and disaster was a Safe.
“Tell me what is on your mind,” Jils suggested. She could see Yorvik coming across the tarmac with his kit; he’d made a detour to local judicial Chambers to set any last-minute administrative tasks in order. She could see his subtle hesitation when he saw her there with Janforth; but he went on up the passenger loading ramp into the courier without remark. Minding his own business.
The transit had been a challenge for Yorvik, Jils knew. He was the one who most of all represented the system that had enslaved those people and put them to years of torture. He and Jils had divided the hours of detailed briefings due each man between them, one-on-one with people who knew more about the business of executing the Protocols than anybody apart from the Ship’s Inquisitor himself.
From what Jils had seen and heard from Bat Yorvik during their transit, she had fewer concerns than before over whether he knew when to keep his mouth shut and listen. His behavior had been nothing less than prudent and proper, just and judicious—calm and compassionate—throughout. She’d been impressed. It gave her good hope of Yorvik’s future, and that of his mission.
“Free passage on any Fleet or Bench carrier,” Janforth said, quoting from the list of privileges accrued to him in his new status. “This—” he nodded at the courier—“is an official Bench carrier, isn’t it? And you’re going to Gonebeyond. So I claim free passage. Take me with you.”
He had a point. He had earned that right, even if Fleet hadn’t taken the full thirty years off of him before releasing him to enjoy it. If it was his desire to go to Gonebeyond all she could say in the matter was to wish him every success. “All true things,” Jils said, nodding. “If you’ll permit me, though, my question for information only. What about your surgery?”
She was going to have a moral problem with herself if she let a man walk functionally naked into an unregulated environment with a governor that might wake up at any time, if the Safe should fail. No. She’d never heard of a Safe failing. But there simply wasn’t a large enough “people on Safe for extended periods of time” sample from which to draw a statistically valid conclusion.
Except Andrej Koscuisko’s Bonds, of course. They’d been issued Safes at Taisheki Station, because Captain ap Rhiannon’s actions had placed them all in an impossible situation through no fault of their own. Then Koscuisko had decided to arbitrarily remove their governors in order to smuggle them out into Gonebeyond, and none of them had died during the process: but they were Andrej Koscuisko’s security. There was a unique relationship. It couldn’t be used in a prediction model.
“I hear there’s someone in Gonebeyond who’s done five of them already. At Safehaven Medical Center,” Janforth said, and Jils could have closed her eyes and breathed a sigh of frustration. Koscuisko, of course. A force for chaotic disruption wherever he went, and he didn’t even have to be here to create one. “He’ll do it. I’ll be on Safe till then. So. When do we leave?”
She could challenge Ifrits on whether or not Koscuisko would be willing to pull Janforth’s governor, but she’d know there wasn’t really any question. Of course Koscuisko would. And do it correctly. She heard things. She knew. “Ask inside for a berth, we’ll be three days. Do you have any experience on a courier in this size and class?”
She thought she saw relief in Janforth’s eyes, but it came and went too swiftly for her to be sure. Bond-involuntaries didn’t show emotion. Even on Safe, his conditioning would continue to protect Janforth from discipline no longer in force.
“Ah, no. But navs-and-propulsion on a Wolnadi fighter.” Bond-involuntaries didn’t use personal pronouns because they didn’t have a legal identity. It was just the first of many things Janforth had to un-learn. “Appreciate the opportunity to qualify on a civilian craft.”
Transferable skills. That was good. Sooner or later the crew of the Fisher Wolf was going to want to partner up and settle down, or retire, or join a cloistered religious community of some sort. Garol wasn’t the only Bench specialist thinking about the future of Gonebeyond. “We’ll be off in an hour,” Jils said. “You can shadow on navs-and-propulsion for the duration, if you’d like. But I’d like to talk with you again, once we’re on vector. If you’re willing, of course.”
Janforth wanted out, fine, it was his right. She didn’t like his choice but that was her problem, not his. Koscuisko wasn’t at Safehaven, however; he was in Couveraine, or en route to Couveraine, or would have just arrived at Couveraine, so once they were on vector she could tell Janforth that she was taking him to Couveraine instead of Safehaven. He’d be going to Couveraine one way or the other because that was where the courier was going. He could find his own way from there, after he’d talked to Andrej Koscuisko.
Maybe Fisher Wolf would be there as well, maybe the crew would be willing to take Janforth in and help him through the rough patches Jils was sure were coming ahead. Maybe everything would work out for the best in the end, against all odds. But the odds were long and strong and Jils didn’t like them: she could only hope.
After the humiliations Danyo had experienced at the hands of Haspirzak Judiciary, the courtesies extended to him by Witt and his organization at Quanto were all the more gratifying.
He’d been met at the launch-field by a luxury groundcar, his luggage expertly managed by uniformed valet staff. The route they’d taken had turned away from busy ground transit lanes into a broad quiet boulevard generously shielded by mature flowering trees, and when they’d pulled at last into the graveled drive of a great mansion Danyo had found Chancellor Witt himself standing at the top of the grand stairs, waiting for him.
That had been hours ago. There’d been dinner, but a small one, just Danyo and Witt and a few of Witt’s officers. Only seven courses, but Witt was served the finest Dolgorukij elite cuisine so they were all exquisite. It was one of the many ways in which Witt’s otherwise risible obsession with Andrej Koscuisko enriched the lives of his guests even beyond the usual amusement Danyo derived from trying to guess what Witt had had done since the last time Danyo had seen him.
Had he had the follicles of his hair genetically engineered to a finer, flatter Andrej Koscuisko standard, rather than just styled? Progressed toward a more exact High Aznir accent in his voice studies? Had more work done to change the shape of his fingers, had his cheekbones adjusted again, sculpted his ears? Had the time come for him to start to work on his actual height, since Chancellor Witt had started into adulthood half-a-head taller than Andrej Koscuisko?
For once Danyo didn’t even care. He was too grateful to Witt for rescuing him, for the beautiful suite provided to him, the team of servants at beck and call to cater to his every wish, the meal and the wine and Witt’s deference. Witt had even made a point of bringing his new pastry-chef with him, in order to honor Danyo at table.
For the six days it had taken the Sondarkit to make the transit from Haspirzak Proper to Quanto, Danyo had been seething in internal outrage, careful all the while to keep the depth and intensity of his resentful fury pressed down out of the way as firmly as he could.
He wasn’t sure he’d been completely successful, but he’d decided that that was in his favor. If he’d been serene and accepting, people might too easily have realized he had an escape plan ready, and Infirmary staff by and large had restrained themselves from overt gloating. Maybe they’d just been saving it for when he’d been moved into as small a berth as would be granted a supernumerary virologist. The laugh was on them. He wasn’t going back to Sondarkit. Witt could get him out of here before Fleet knew he was gone, a deserter maybe but in Gonebeyond where Fleet couldn’t touch him.
He’d drawn up a plan for the transition. He’d disposed of the outstanding documentation awaiting his approval so that his successor would have a clean start. He’d issued himself a generous supply of several expensive medications with recreational applications, and though his Chief of Pharmacy had hesitated for a very brief moment, she’d authorized them—for the last time, and they both knew it. His authority to demand such perquisites would be withdrawn completely soon enough.
Nor had he been subjected to the indignity of a search prior to his departure. That was just as well. He hadn’t drawn those doses for his own use, but for currency; and in any other circumstances the discovery of the number and denominations of the generic currency markers he’d amassed over the years would have triggered an immediate Security investigation. Danyo no longer enjoyed the immunity of an Inquisitor from prosecution for almost any crime.
His duty uniform blouses—with the white Infirmary badge lined through with the red line of a Ship’s Inquisitor—would have been a doubtless appreciated gift for Witt, even if Witt could only ever have worn them privately. No chance of that, however. They’d already been removed from his quarters when he returned from Haspirzak. Only his duty whites had remained. At least they hadn’t stripped off his rank; yet.
All of that was behind him now. Cradled in the luxurious comfort of an armchair, deep within an intimately dimmed private room in Witt’s mansion, Danyo sipped his drink with profound gratification. Cortac brandy. Danyo didn’t know much about cortac, but it was Dolgorukij, and it was Witt’s, so he knew it was the very best cortac brandy in known Space, smuggled away from the Dolgorukij Autocrat’s household itself, perhaps.
True to Witt’s obsession, the room was coded for Koscuisko with what Danyo presumed to be ancestral elegance; a baroque rhyti-service, weapons on the walls, and an icon-lamp in one corner, in front of a little shrine of Saint Andrej Filial Piety. With a relic, perhaps. Danyo wondered from time to time what Danyo’s staff thought about the whole Koscuisko thing, really.
It was rhyti that Witt was drinking; perhaps because—according to all of the best rumors—when Koscuisko drank it was apparently to excess, and alone. “I have business interests in Gonebeyond, Doctor Pefisct, you know that it is true. I do not surprise you.” Witt sipped his rhyti, which was so hot that Danyo could smell it from where he sat. They were so close to each other that Danyo could have reached out to touch Witt’s knee had he wished. He didn’t wish.
Witt was still talking, meditatively, confidentially. “We knew that, yes, Haspirzak had things in motion that would affect you, so it was good fortune that the Bench specialist proposed herself for our little gathering. I hoped she would give you warning of things of which I have no official knowledge.”
Because at Haspirzak, Chancellor Witt was scrupulously clean, a respected community leader. The Third Judge herself never attended any of Witt’s entertainments, but Witt always received an invitation to her annual reception, along with representatives from the rest of Haspirzak’s business community. The presence of a Bench specialist at Witt’s party had been a peculiar signal: had it been an endorsement, though, or a threat of some sort?
“And I deeply appreciate it, your Excellency.” There was no such civil rank at Haspirzak, but here in Quanto it was not out of place. And Witt loved the sound of it. “I’m afraid I didn’t quite grasp the magnitude of the mistake they were making at the time. She’ll be sorry, but that’s none of my concern, thanks to you, Chancellor.”
He was careful to ensure he never lapsed into cynical flattery. Honest gratitude for genuine favors was one thing, and a little flowery language went a long way. But Witt for all his ridiculous obsessions was an intelligent man, as well as an immensely powerful one. Danyo knew quite well that his value in Witt’s eyes lay primarily in Danyo’s position as a social token, above and beyond his usefulness in validating the authenticity of Witt’s extensive library of black-market entertainment material. He was a status symbol. Any personal relationship they might have was incidental.
And Witt responded in kind, because that was how a Dolgorukij autocrat might phrase a gracious acknowledgement. “But that I might be in a position to recruit you, Danyo, that I never dared to dream. At just this time, and you just the man to make a success of my proposals. Truly the Holy Mother holds me in her heart.”
He’d heard that idiom from other Dolgorukij, though the ones Witt had encountered had been from far different levels of society. “Tell me how I can be of service, Chancellor.” He wasn’t going anywhere until Witt made it happen. And he was curious, though skeptical. None of Witt’s previous hints over the years had carried the slightest hint of torture-for-hire, but he had never been so entirely obliged to Witt before as he was now, and Witt was a businessman.
“There is a Langsarik coalition in Gonebeyond space, Doctor Pefisct, and it signals that my activities are no longer to be allowed to proceed without let or hindrance.”
Langsariks, Danyo thought. He maybe remembered something about Langsarik pirates, escaping Jurisdiction into Gonebeyond—some years back. He nodded; if Witt understood him to mean that he was more aware of exactly what Witt was talking about than Danyo actually was, that was what came of making assumptions, wasn’t it?
“It is time to come to an understanding with them, and recruit their cooperation,” Witt said. “You will be my ambassador, coming with an introductory gift that I have prepared. There is a salary attached, commensurate with that you currently enjoy; and there is also a hidden agenda, in which I have an earnest personal interest. Shall I explain?”
Danyo could easily imagine that any “hidden agenda” Witt had in mind for Gonebeyond involved his personal obsession with Andrej Koscuisko. “I am at your disposal,” he said, encouragingly; because he was, of course. “This introductory gift, it’s a field hospital? Surgical clinic?” Clearly something medical. Otherwise there’d be no point in sending a physician to accompany. “Where does Koscuisko fit in?”
“Ah, I am glad you have asked,” Witt said, with a smile of somewhat sinister self-satisfaction. “There will be raids, in the very near future. Of this I am reliably informed. Field medical resources will be welcome, but there will also be the Nurail intelligence moving with the action, and they will be bringing their best field-expedient interrogator with them. They will naturally post him to the field hospital we send, so you will be in proximity. That is where this comes in.”
This. Witt drew something that looked very familiar to Danyo out of the front plaquet of his overblouse, a small cylindrical object. A toothpick of a particular design and decoration, just like the one from Danyo’s grooming-set—just like the one he carried habitually in his pocket. Puzzled, Danyo reached into his own overblouse; yes, there it was. Reaching forward Witt plucked Danyo’s toothpick out of the palm of Danyo’s hand and tossed it behind him, over his shoulder.
“One opens the cunning little cap with one’s thumbnail,” Witt said, and dropped the one he had into Danyo’s still-upturned hand. “The virus it contains is specific to the medical profiles in Koscuisko’s records, we took them from Brisinje, where he had surgery on his hand. That was two or three years ago, yes, but genetic profiles do not change.”
He wouldn’t have guessed it wasn’t his. Holding it up to the muted light from a wall-sconce figure Danyo studied it carefully: yes, he could see a subtle little line, there towards its base.
If it was an aerosol under pressure—as he would expect—he might be able to deploy it if he assisted Koscuisko in surgery. Otherwise, all he really needed was for Koscuisko to somehow touch or inhale particles that had been contaminated by the virus. If there was the usually standard status meeting three times a day, for instance, and a person stood in proximity to the target.
“Koscuisko is exposed, Koscuisko falls ill.” Danyo talked it through out loud, to be sure he and Witt were running in parallel. “If you’ll excuse me for saying this in this way, your Excellency. So what?”
“So you are the virologist, it is your specialty. You are understandably perplexed by the savage progression of this infection, you fear for his life. He must go at once to a qualified hospital, and it doesn’t matter whether they accept your specific suggestion—” to a hospital associated with Witt’s organization, obviously—“or to any other. I will have people in place. We will take it from there.”
So long as there was no potential cross-infection of related ethnicities, so long as it was truly specific enough, no one else need be endangered; and if they were, did Danyo really care? “If the virus escapes?” Engineered viruses were by definition new, young. They might do unpredictable things. There could be unfortunate over-reactions from other peoples’ immune systems, more lethal than the virus itself.
“I do not mind if it is pure blackmail, we can rush immediately equipment and medications back on the freighter that carries Koscuisko away. I want him.” There was a note of true longing there, a tender wistfulness that Danyo almost regretted for Witt’s sake. Koscuisko was unlikely to requite Witt’s passion in any positive sense. “I cannot truly express how much this means to me, whatever may come of it in the end.”
It was a small enough price to pay for his escape, for Danyo. Maybe Witt would cut him off if he didn’t make this work, but he’d be in Gonebeyond. Even if he lost Witt’s support forever he’d have shown his bare ass to the Bench and pissed them good-bye.
“I think I understand.” He pocketed the toothpick that wasn’t. Witt would have ensured against any premature escapes, and people carried toothpicks around with them all the time. This one would become part of Danyo’s existing set. He’d made good entertainment for himself from time to time by dropping it somewhere and then challenging the bond-involuntary on orderly duty with having been careless with it. He was, as Witt had said, a virologist. He could adjust on the fly. “You can rely on me, your Excellency. I’ll make it work.”
Now Witt nodded, rising to go to his drinks service. “I know, and thank you,” Witt said. “I will see you chief medical officer of Safehaven Medical Center if I have to spend three field hospitals to buy it for you. Now. We were cheated of our evening’s entertainment in Haspirzak, Danyo, because of the Bench specialist, but we are safe together now, just you and I, and this is very special material. Another drink? Very well.”
And one wall of the room darkened; a holoscreen frame descended over the floor-to-ceiling bookcases with their antiquated volumes of old-fashioned paper. If they were going to be looking at “very special material” it would be old, and Danyo resigned himself to the murky images and blurred outlines that characterized evidence recovered from compromised Records in years gone past.
Witt had newer product, beautiful visuals, dimensional holovids at three-quarters scale; but they were fakes. There was a market for people who didn’t care, who were willing to squint at an Andrej Koscuisko who was not quite Andrej Koscuisko and let their fantasies supply the balance of the detail. Witt showed such creative re-enactments in strictly controlled environments from time to time, but what he shared with Danyo and Danyo alone in intimate moments was the genuine article.
So here they were. The visual encoding was correct for official evidence; Andrej Koscuisko, administrative facilities, Port Rudistal. Danyo frowned. He’d seen some of this before. There was the soul in custody, Administrator Geltoi, though no longer shown by his former title on screen.
There was the purpose of the recording: Tenth Level Command Termination per the decision of the Bench for crimes committed in Geltoi’s official capacity as Administrator of the Domitt Prison, Port Rudistal, during the period from and to, and so forth. By the solemn adjudication of Second Judge Sem Porr Har, Presiding.
Koscuisko’s Tenth Level had dragged on for days. The copies Danyo had seen had all been Bench archive material, though, record of execution in due form; this material appeared to be unedited, which would mean it couldn’t possibly be enjoyed in any three single sittings, and that it was—inevitably—going to drag. Here, for instance, Koscuisko was talking, just talking, and while Witt clearly enjoyed the native arrogance of the man for Danyo it was already a little boring.
Witt was a sensitive man. Danyo noted with regret that he’d been thinking too loudly; Witt had apparently heard him, had sensed Danyo’s relative lack of interest. Because Witt leaned forward and drew in the empty air, fingers flickering in and out of a narrow beam of focused light, changing the tempo, skipping ahead.
Geltoi on four-point suspension, Koscuisko’s progress clearly marked on Geltoi’s body in welts that showed the force Koscuisko had put into the whiplash that had laid them down. Geltoi on his knees on the floor with his hands behind his back, wearing a sensor hood, a mask, the controller suspended from Geltoi’s neck reflecting the progress of its programming. Restricted airway. Active gag reflex. Extreme visual pulses, random, searing, inescapable. Good stuff; but Witt hadn’t found what he was looking for, apparently, not yet.
The things Koscuisko could do with a flensing-knife. The things he could, and would, do with the whips at his disposal. He could have simply stripped meat from bone, with that peony; with the peony the challenge was not so much making an appreciable impact, a persuasive impact, as avoiding simply killing a prisoner before three hours were up: and Koscuisko had taken days with Administrator Geltoi.
What was Witt looking for?
If this unedited material had been in the Judicial record someone would have marketed it by now. So this was what had been sent back to Fleet Orientation Station Medical, Fossum, to complete Koscuisko’s certification, his qualification to be given custody of a Writ to Inquire. This wasn’t from Bench offices. This was from the torture school itself. Impressive, Danyo thought at Witt, admiringly.
“Oh, good,” Witt exclaimed suddenly. “Yes, this, this. I wanted particularly to share this with you. It is a delectable moment, have I ever seen anything its equal? I don’t know.”
In the Record, Danyo could see Koscuisko and Geltoi, both of them bloodied but one of them still clothed. Mostly. Koscuisko’s underblouse was soiled with drying blood, his face smeared along one side where he’d pushed his hair out of his eyes or some such thoughtlessly casual gesture; he’d rolled his cuffs up well back to just below the crook of his elbow, and his trousers were no longer bloused tidily into his boots. He had a knife. He’d made an incision.
There’d only been five viewpoints that Danyo had noticed on the fly as Witt sought his desired spot. Koscuisko had managed to find an angle that obscured them all. Danyo could still guess what Koscuisko was doing, with a visceral recognition like a stone-hard lump in his throat that brought the water of revulsion into his mouth and made him afraid that he was going to vomit. That wouldn’t do, of course, not in front of Witt. He had a reputation to uphold. Witt would lose respect, if Danyo showed him any weakness.
Danyo had seen patients in his Infirmary with traumatic abdominal injuries; he’d heard them. There were ways a knife in the gut could be worse than a knife to the testes. He couldn’t see Koscuisko’s hands, but he could hear Koscuisko talk, and at this moment even he was afraid, because he was in the virtual presence of a genuine madman, and profound psychological disturbance elevated to such a height made any sane person prepare to flee out of an instinct for self-preservation.
“You asked me before—” Koscuisko said, on record. “—what you had done to me, as though you believed I consulted anything but my own pleasure. And. No.” Working his fingers, from the shift in muscle at Koscuisko’s partially uncovered shoulder. Like telling beads. Like squeezing a damp cloth in his closed fist. Far too deliberate, too gentle, too controlled to imagine that Koscuisko had blocked the recorder’s vision in order to relieve some of the tension in his body in the most obvious and traditional way. Danyo knew what Koscuisko was doing.
“You deserve it all, for the dead of the Domitt Prison. But I admit there is in addition something personal.” Koscuisko made an emphatic gesture; Geltoi choked and tried to scream, but had no more screaming left in him. “On the night of my arrival, the ambush in the street, because someone thought I was you. I do not blame them. But Joslire died. Be grateful that I do not in the ways of my ancestors consult and roast these, Geltoi, bit by bit. You would breathe and feel until there was nothing left in your belly but the smoldering ashes.”
No. Of course Koscuisko couldn’t do that. It wasn’t in the inventory, not under Protocol, not authorized under any circumstances—except that this was a Tenth Level Command Termination and Koscuisko could do anything he liked. Koscuisko was insane and Koscuisko was capable of unheard-of, unimagined, unimaginable atrocities. Koscuisko stood up. Geltoi’s stomach was covered in blood, fresh, new, thick; Danyo was grateful for that, because it hid things.
“And I would. There is no one here to stop me. But he, the man for whose death you are responsible, he would take it as dishonor, and for that reason alone I merely suggest you meditate upon it until I see you again. Good-greeting, Administrator Geltoi.”
Witt stopped the record. Danyo tried not to take a deep breath that would betray his horror; he was only partially successful, but fortunately for him Witt mistook the signal. “Oh, I agree,” Witt said, one hand pressed to his chest as if to calm himself, to keep his passions in check. “It is of stunningly superlative artistry. I have seen such things done, yes, but where there is no awareness there is no real sublimity. I’m so happy I could share this with you, my friend. My dear, dear friend.”
Witt was being unusually demonstrative, even considering the influence of the things he’d just watched. Danyo had been my friend not infrequently, my dear friend seldom, but my dear, dear friend never before. “We should toast on it,” Witt said, standing up. “I have not been able with anybody else to this share.” He poured the drink himself, from a separate service at a side-table. “Here is wodac. Drink with me, Danyo, to our success in the future.”
Something, Witt’s movement to the side table, perhaps, had set the visual display into motion again; but—Danyo was more glad than he liked to admit, even to himself—the material was changed. Quite different. There was just a room, small, rather cramped, with someone seated on a cot just inside the door working on the polish of a boot.
There was something familiar about the scene. Danyo frowned, trying to recall. Of course. Fossum. Student quarters, and that man, or that bond-involuntary rather, could that actually be Joslire Curran, with whom he’d practiced so many pleasant ways to pass the time in admonition and instruction?
Then he’d seen Curran again. That was true. The once. A mass casualty exercise at Hassert, the infirmary staff of three Jurisdiction battleships pooled to triage and treat the wounded, soldiers and traitors and collateral damage alike.
He’d never thought to have the pleasure, and he’d been delighted. But Andrej Koscuisko had been there. Koscuisko had thwarted Danyo’s quite natural desire to revisit some points of discipline with his once-orderly to assure himself of Curran’s sensitivity with respect to lessons learnt. Koscuisko had taken Curran’s side. Koscuisko had insulted him, and denied him access. Koscuisko’s captain had backed his own man, and Danyo had been defeated.
Danyo heard his own voice, now, on the holo-vid. “Curran.” Somehow Witt had found a record, an actual record, of Danyo’s rooms during Danyo’s tenure. He could see Curran stand up, set the boot down neatly, hurry to comply. And there was his own voice again, from out of his past, innocent words, but Danyo remembered what would happen next. “Didn’t you hear me, Curran? Come here. We should have a little talk.”
Witt pressed an icy cup of wodac—so cold it was almost syrupy—into Danyo’s hand as Danyo sat there, stunned, suddenly terrified. Witt clinked the rim of Danyo’s cup with his own, smiling.
“You will not fail me,” Witt said, downing the entire cup of wodac in one swallow. “I of this have no doubt. Now. Ah. I regret the necessity that must deprive me of your company, but my plan was already in motion, and the ship leaves tonight. Go with this man, my dear dear friend, and let me hear from you when you can. We will be watching.”
Witt had signaled for escort, clearly; because there was someone at the door. “This person will escort you on my behalf.” Witt was all business, now. “The ship on which you travel is called Nikojek. You go to Couveraine by way of Langsarik Station. Andrej Koscuisko is there. The captain has your briefing, and my gift to the Langsarik Coalition. If I should never see you in person again, let me just say that I have enjoyed your company, and thank you for it. Good speed to you, Doctor Pefisct.”
“Thank you as well,” Danyo said, standing up, with a sincere bow of salute. “And no. I will not fail you.” Witt had played him a trick, a nasty trick, indicative of how deeply Witt had studied Danyo himself as well as Koscuisko. It was a useful warning. What Koscuisko would do to him if Koscuisko ever saw more of this record . . . with this weapon in Witt’s hands, it was a matter of Danyo’s plain survival to ensure that he delivered Koscuisko into Witt’s hands, finally and forever.
En route from Psimas to the Langsarik Coalition’s base at Couveraine, Bat Yorvik—who was the first Bench Judge of the male sex to have been seated at Haspirzak Judiciary in recorded history, more or less—had studied everything he could find within Bench records about the history and characteristics of Gonebeyond space, from the physical to the philosophical, the practical and the political. He knew how to study things.
One conclusion he had derived: there was really very little information. The Bench had expanded the scope of Jurisdiction by making first contact with already-cohesive communities; never something like Gonebeyond, so sparsely populated as to have been beneath the Bench’s notice for so long, and inhabited by refugees with no interest in joining the government from which they’d fled. He was the Bench’s first substantive overture for communication with any such community outside the defined boundaries of Jurisdiction space.
When he’d been a child he hadn’t known there was any such thing as outside the defined boundaries. The idea was absurd; all there was in Creation were worlds either under Jurisdiction or worlds to be integrated into Jurisdiction as Fleet located them, mapping the vectors.
When he’d been a boy he’d started wondering how it could possibly be that all worlds outside Jurisdiction had been absorbed entire, to become participants in—supporters of—the rule of Law and the Judicial order.
By the time he was nearing adulthood it had come to seem self-evident that some people just didn’t fit within the framework of the compulsory public education system that formed his understanding of society. Reasoning by extrapolation, there were almost necessarily worlds that might have as much to offer of value that were at the same time not interested in being drawn into an exchange under a complete and codified system of relatively inflexible rules and regulations.
It simply didn’t make sense, and Bat Yorvik had decided that when he was Judge he would see if he couldn’t derive a better way. Then, his determination had seemed misguided to his teachers and his counselors and his friends and his family, because men weren’t Judges, not at the highest levels of the Bench. Now, as it seemed, he was to have his chance.
Gonebeyond space was a far-flung collection of communities of all sorts, many no larger than a single small group, some one or two worlds linked by their history and culture; some large enough to qualify almost as world-families—the community made up by Nurail centered around the hub of Safehaven, for instance, or the formidable Langsarik fleet recently reinforced by a tentative stream of people from its home system of Palaam eager to make amends and become families again.
Some of them were criminal, like the Biramie cartel whose headquarters was under siege and blockade at Couveraine. Some were shipboard colonies; such a one was the Jurisdiction Fleet Ship Ragnarok, standing at the ready between the Pavrock exit vector and the planet on which the cartel had built one of its bases. Bat had studied the Ragnarok as well: but until now he had never seen it, nor thought to come on board.
He’d watched the Ragnarok on approach, as Specialist Ivers had plotted an intercept twelve hours off the vector. He’d toured one of the Jurisdiction Fleet ships in the Ragnarok’s class once before—as part of his orientation as a clerk of Court at Haspirzak—so the shape and size were familiar.
Such ships were less than half the size of the huge deep-space freighters, a carapace hull above, a maintenance atmosphere below, a constant stream of ship-traffic of various sizes going to and fro—but great Ragnarok had been an experimental ship, the pet research project of the First Judge na Roqua den Tensa that had been, and its carapace hull was distinctive.
Black hull technology.
The Ragnarok had never gone to war, before Jennet ap Rhiannon. It had never even drawn its base issue of weaponry and munitions, though it had fielded a full complement of the small five-soul Wolnadi fighters whose mission was primarily to protect the ship itself. There were experimental test beds among those Wolnadi fighters as well, Bat knew, though he didn’t have his hands on many of the details. Yet.
For now they were to dock and take a meeting, because the Langsarik coalition was using Ragnarok as its central command post while its Wolnadi fighters were occupied in encouraging surface traffic on Couveraine to mind its manners and stay dirt-bound.
Dame Ivers had surrendered the courier’s command systems to the Ragnarok’s Chief Engineer to guide the ship to its assigned docking slip. Bat had had four days in her company—hers, and the ship’s crew, and Janforth Ifrits. It had been an honor, and an invaluable opportunity. Truly once in a lifetime, unrestricted access one-on-one to a Bench intelligence specialist willing to speak to all of his questions.
He’d talked her almost hoarse, taken a break, had a meal, and sat back down again with her to talk some more: and she’d let him. There was only one subject she hadn’t been willing to discuss: where she’d come from, how she’d been tagged for the unique role of a high-level operative with powers of extraordinary discretion, why she’d accepted a job that kept her outside the normal human relationships of friends and family and elected to stand alone. Apart. With only other Bench specialists for occasional companionship.
The docking slip the courier settled into was big enough for a ship several times the courier’s size, with plenty of room for the reception committee. There were people waiting. Bat knew the Ragnarok’s senior officers from briefings he’d studied: the Captain, the First Officer, the Ship’s Engineer,
He’d been looking forward to meeting Ship’s Intelligence Officer particularly, because she was one of the relatively few non-hominid souls in Fleet. A Desmodontae sky-soarer, or, in common parlance, a bat. There had been no Desmodontae in public service when he’d been a child, for which fact Bat had reason to be grateful. The teasing alone . . .
Also there were others waiting, representatives from the Langsarik coalition, or so Bat surmised. He could recognize one or two of them on sight. There was the Langsarik mission commander, Hilton Shires, tall, rangy, sharp-eyed, keen of gaze. The short dark-haired man whose curling hair fell well down on his shoulders would be the Nurail spymaster-general Tamsen Gar.
Among the others Bat noted a tall rather hawk-faced man with a dour expression and red hair, and big hands. The Langsarik coalition’s Surgeon General, Yogee Gascarone, self-selected for the role—according to Haspirzak’s information—but who’d shown how much a Surgeon General had been needed by the results of his first steps in resource balancing and central inventory management of medical equipment and surplus supplies across as many of the communities in Gonebeyond as he’d gotten to, so far.
All of these people. Waiting for him. Waiting for the Bench specialist, yes, but Bat knew that Bench specialists rarely accepted formal welcomes and Ivers was going down first. Neither of them needed to duck their heads to clear the courier’s passenger access door, since they were both of a height; and yet Bat was conscious of being both in Ivers’ shadow and in the tri-lights at the same time.
Captain ap Rhiannon took two steps forward. Her officers stood at attention, and the other people there adopted slightly less uniform—but still formal—postures. There were crew members all over the maintenance atmosphere, but as Bat took an only partially theatrical look around for effect he could see that they’d all stopped and come to attention where they’d been standing. Eyes front.
Specialist Ivers was waiting for him at the foot of the passenger loading ramp. Wishing he’d remembered to wear his formal Judicial dress—then remembering why he’d decided not to—Bat stepped down off the passenger loading ramp and crossed the tarmac to where ap Rhiannon and her officers waited.
“Welcome to the Jurisdiction Fleet Ship Ragnarok,” ap Rhiannon said, with a crisp nod of her head—the bow in salute, from the neck—and a subtle emphasis on the ship’s formal status. Jurisdiction Fleet Ship. Making her position clear. “Speaking on behalf of officers and crew it is an honor to receive a Bench Judge. Let me personally escort you to the briefing room.”
He was glad she hadn’t said Bench Judge Presiding. He had yet to be assigned specific duties at the Bench level. Unless this was to be it, of course. He was here in a relatively undefined, if officially endorsed, capacity. The dream he’d been entertaining in transit—Tenth Judge Bat Yorvik, Gonebeyond Judiciary, Presiding—was clearly a vague fantasy for the future; he had no doubt the phrase would mean something quite different when it came, if it ever became reality.
“Thank you, Captain ap Rhiannon.” According to protocol he was to address her by rank, not by her courtesy title of “your Excellency.” That was because according to protocol he outranked everybody here, under Judicial ground-rules. Which in a sense he was here to represent. He wasn’t here as an entry-level liaison officer. He was here as a Judge whose senior position in the hierarchy was specifically intended as a signal of the weight Haspirzak Judiciary was willing to put on the importance of his embassage. “Shall we?”
The moment he and ap Rhiannon started moving, everybody else on the platform except for the First Officer evaporated: to meet them in the briefing room. On board the Ragnarok it was the Captain alone who could offer the official welcome aboard. Hilton Shires—as the leading representative of the Langsarik Coalition—was senior otherwise, but every captain was supreme authority on her own ship.
The briefing room was full when they got there. It was both informal and austere. The same room that served for formal briefings had other lives as a staff meeting room, Disciplinary Mast hearings room, and senior officers’ mess, to include ship’s officers, its Chief Warrants, and its section chiefs. No thick carpet. No draped walls. Modular tables; adequate chairs. Bat was immediately much more relaxed.
Ap Rhiannon escorted him to a place at the table that took up most of the space in an area slightly raised on a low platform at the far end of the room, marked off with a railing: the Captain’s Bar. He’d studied. But on one level at least there was no studying this ship, not just because it had begun its life as an experimental test bed built on a Fleet battlewagon model.
This was the Ragnarok.
That was Jennet ap Rhiannon, the crèche–bred Command Branch officer whose training and indoctrination had gone so spectacularly wrong when she’d shot her way out of Fleet Audit Appeals Authority at Taisheki Station rather than surrender crew she considered to be falsely accused.
She’d been right about that, but it wasn’t protocol, and how she’d gotten one of Fleet’s major depots to release an entire ship’s commissioning load of arms and armaments at Emandis Station was still the subject of lively debate in drinking establishments. It was widely supposed that it had had something to do with Andrej Koscuisko.
Who wasn’t here. Because Koscuisko had removed the governors from the brains of the bond-involuntary Security troops assigned to the Ragnarok and stolen them all from the Bench, at which point a career chief of Security had deserted his post to accompany the men into Gonebeyond, and the Ragnarok had followed in pursuit into Gonebeyond where it had been ever since. Mutiny in form, the Second Judge at Chilleau Judiciary had said—or her proxy, First Secretary Verlaine.
Who was rather unfortunately dead, of course, and long before the question of the Ragnarok’s exact legal status had even come to preliminaries, so Ragnarok was in its own unique and undefined status category. The Bench had other things on its mind. Bat believed it would be years before Fleet had time to present a formal complaint, especially since Fleet was to an extent fighting for its own survival.
That was Serge of Wheatfields, Ship’s Engineer, who’d been assigned to Ragnarok from its earliest days when it had still been in production, at least partially out of sheer guilt on the part of the Bench over a monstrous miscarriage of justice that had had to be hushed up because there were too many people with information for the cold truth to be denied.
First Officer Ralph Mendez, still proposed for his own command year after year by Fleet proponents whose recommendations were still formally marked “not received” by still-powerful political factions within Fleet’s command structure. Two, of course, Ship’s Intelligence and Communications, Desmodontae. The acting Chief Medical Officer, Dr. Mahaffie—nothing Bat had heard about him was off-kilter, but there had to be something, didn’t there? Because this was the Jurisdiction Fleet Ship Ragnarok.
The entire situation was already full of color and drama, and that was even before Hilton Shires began to speak. Hilton Shires and the Langsarik pirates were their own separate saga—but Bat knew he had to be Judge, not partisan, and formally, resolutely, immune to the romance of it all.
“Good-greeting, your Honor.” Shires had risen to his feet as Bat had come into the room. There were uniformed members of the Ragnarok’s crew seated among the people below the Bar in their own dedicated section, but now that the proceedings were at the Langsarik Coalition level they offered no separate salute to their captain. There was a place at the table for her: almost the junior-most, except for the Surgeon General. “Thank you for coming all this way to meet with us. We appreciate Haspirzak Judiciary’s representative as observer.”
Ivers didn’t have a seat at the table at all, which meant she didn’t need one; also that she wasn’t here in any official capacity representing the Bench as a whole, because there really wasn’t one any more, in a significant sense. That didn’t matter. A Bench intelligence specialist was an official capacity. Shires indicated a place for Bat, beside him at the table; there was a tray with water-glasses, but of even a cavene service there was no sign. Perhaps that would have been too informal, Bat decided.
Shires didn’t sit down. “Before we get started, let me introduce everybody. My name is Hilton Shires, designated mission commander for this action at Couveraine.” The title was a careful compromise, “commander” because any organization needed one, and linked to the specific mission alone because none of the Langsarik Coalition’s component forces had ceded its autonomy. Bat nodded, gravely; Shires continued.
“To your right, representing Safehaven space as collective for the Nurail members of the coalition, Tamsen Gar, our chief of intelligence and communication. Vandrill Hoggs, the Uritag confederacy, our Executive Officer and second in command; Nambroch Zoster of the Berico Reach, logistics.”
“Thank you, Mission Commander. And I’m Bench Judge Bat Yorvik, out of Haspirzak Judiciary. I’ve been sent to gain an understanding of Gonebeyond space.” He sensed, rather than saw, the reaction to his statement; he was a man, and yet he was a Bench-level judge. One would have thought, he told himself with resignation, that of all places in which one could make that statement without surprising people, it would be in Gonebeyond. “I look forward to the opportunity to learn from you all.”
“Then we’ll get right to it.” Stepping down from the platform, Shires took up a position in front of the wall to the left, where some charts started to tile themselves into a display. “We are over Couveraine Prime, Couveraine system, off the Pavrock vector. The Biramie cartel has enjoyed the development and use of an established base for possibly fifteen years, and does some of its most lucrative trade in its own marketplace. They’re entrenched.”
There was a city, set against the rising wall of what appeared to be the remains of an ancient volcanic caldera. A huge one. Bat could see a system of watercourses coming down the high slopes behind the city to braid themselves into a river washing the city’s outskirts before it joined an even deeper channel that flowed out of the caldera in what was probably a significant waterfall, but there were no pictures, just notations on a map.
“This serves as their control collection point for high-value goods, and is the administrative hub of the enterprise. Our first priority is to deny this facility to the cartel, because it will at least slow them down to have to fall back on the redundancies. We hope to identify these redundancies. Our second priority is to gain access to people and documentation through which we can further trace and neutralize traffic in illegal recreationals, stolen small-heavies, and slaves.”
The Bench didn’t traffic in bond-involuntaries, though the Bond amounted to term-limited slavery. There were other exceptions to the Bench prohibitions: within the Dolgorukij Combine, for instance, members of a particular order had always been slaves by definition, and there was a religious exception in place to cover that. The Malcontent could hold its members as slaves. Not even the Malcontent could traffic, however.
“We’ve been holding both ends of the Pavrock vector for seven weeks Standard. We’ve recently learned that there’s a second operational vector in the vicinity, and we don’t think we’ve missed any traffic through there—it’s unmapped as yet, Ragnarok will be working that issue—but we’re going to make sure. The city’s defenses are strong but not insurmountable, and we’ve neutralized the exo-atmospheric armaments. We’re down to the city itself. First line of defense yet to get past is the containment dome.”
Containment domes were for hostile environments. Insufficient atmospheres, temperature extremes, stations planted on miscellaneous asteroids without a star close enough for harvestable heat or light. The stats on Couveraine Prime indicated a perfectly adequate class-three environment for most classes of hominids.
In certain circumstances, though, a containment dome could serve as power generation and light gatherer; and, of course, a defensive barrier. A tricky one, however. Depending on the materials used they could be difficult to breach: but, once breached, there was the potential for structural components to be raining down into the city from a considerable altitude.
“The dome is vector-defined. It apparently went up in units as Couveraine was developed. This increases the complications involved with entering the city, to take control, as there are a minimum of three separate domes between the outermost perimeter and the administrative center. On the plus side, each of those domes is of relatively low height, and if we can time things right the impact from falling components can be used as resistance suppressants in their own right.”
Even at a relatively low height—that of multistory mixed-use structures, for instance—something dropped from the roof would have lethal impact below. It seemed almost suicidally risky, to Bat; but Shires had to have a plan.
“We’ll be taking two lines of approach on areas targeted as particularly vulnerable. Couveraine has used bunker-fired missiles against air-breathing reconnaissance aircraft, so we don’t know for sure what we’re walking into, but we can’t wait until the value of the intel harvest has declined to nil. Support functions—”
Another screen, another schematic, a highlighted area away well to one side of the city’s location, screened by a rib of rock between it and the city. “—have been bunkered. Couveraine knows we’re coming, just not precise timing and location. There’s our next phase, your Honor, any questions?”
Are you out of your minds, are you all going to die, don’t you have loved ones. Plenty of questions, but none within Bat’s purview. “Thank you, Mission Commander. I have nothing to say, except to wish every success on the enterprise.”
Where was he to be, during all this? On the Ragnarok? Where would Ivers be? On the ground? She was conferring with someone Bat thought to be one of Shires’ subordinates, quietly, head-to-head. The Bench couldn’t afford to risk one of its top firefighters under actual live fire, surely. But nobody told a Bench specialist what to do. More surely than that.
The room was clearing. People respectfully declined to try to engage Bat in conversation, and clearly they had a lot of work to do. Ivers came to join him, with one of the Ragnarok’s junior officers in tow; Command Branch, a lieutenant. Ragnarok only had the one, Bat remembered.
Full complement of top-level staff, though, even if ap Rhiannon remained a brevet captain rather than the formally instated kind; one lieutenant, and a field general of artillery, who’d come aboard at Pesadie Training Command to head up an investigation that had turned out to have a foregone conclusion, and who’d stayed on with the Ragnarok through its “mutiny in form” and ever since. Hadn’t approved of phony investigations.
That was a thought, though, Bat realized, one he’d not had at top level in his mind. General Rukota was an artilleryman. He’d have experience, as well as field exercise training, in getting through containment domes and capturing city commands as intact as possible. He wouldn’t have made it to general without participation in police actions on a “small war” scale.
“Your Honor,” Ivers said. “Lieutenant Renata Seascape is your command interface officer. You’ll observe from the Ragnarok, and I’ll see you again soon.”
Yes. She was going down-planet to participate in the shooting. “I wish you all the best,” he said. He could hear a little strain in his voice, because the reality of the situation—all of these focused and determined people, and he with no way of knowing whether and how many of them might be dead within days—was suddenly a little too real.
He could think of only one adequate response: it was all the more important for him to do his very best to derive a good outcome under Law for everybody who lived through this, and the survivors of anybody who did not. “Lieutenant Seascape. Do I have quarters? I should wash up.” Before the war starts. He suddenly wished he hadn’t said that in quite those words, but Seascape smiled in a friendly fashion, and bowed.
“Come with me, your Honor,” she said. “I’ll introduce you to your orderly, who can provide in-depth assistance on any administrative subjects. You have the freedom of the ship, saving the engineering bridge and the maintenance atmosphere, for reasons of preparation for hostilities. It’ll be this way.”
Should he demand to be taken down-planet, for a dirt-level view? No. He was a judge. He knew nothing about war that didn’t come out of textbooks. Did he wish he was going to be an active part of this, risking his life, shoulder to shoulder with seasoned warriors?
Just a little tiny fraction of an iota. Yes. Yes, he did. But realistically he would only be in the way. He was lucky to be as close to this as he’d gotten already. He’d never really seen himself being briefed by a mission commander in a life-or-death struggle about to take place while he watched from a safe distance on a renegade Fleet warship.
To the extent that it would make him a better Judge he welcomed the experience.