A Dark and Hungry God Arises (38 page)

'You probably wish you knew what's going on. So do I. But we don't need that. All we need is orders. As long as he's alive, he isn't going to abandon his ship. That means he isn't going to abandon us. The best thing we can do to keep ourselves alive is follow his orders.

'If you believe you know somebody better qualified' -

she stressed the word sardonically - 'to give us orders and keep us alive, you have my permission to leave the ship. You can go join Mikka. Or hide out on the cruise until this is over.

'But if you can't, then do what I tell you and don't ask questions. Once we start, I won't tolerate anything else. '

Steadily she scanned the bridge.

Carmel shrugged; Lind nodded. Both of them had been with Nick too long to start doubting him now.

Malda assented for reasons of her own - reasons, Liete suspected, which she and the targ first had in common.

But Pastille grinned like a weasel. 'Is it all right, ' he asked in a rank sneer, 'if we think while we're working?

I mean, it might be useful if we're allowed to at least think:

That didn't deserve a retort, so Liete didn't give it one.

Instead she met his gaze until he ducked his head and nodded.

'All right. ' She took a deep breath, held it for a moment, then let it out softly. 'From now on, you're on battle alert until I say otherwise. When I give the word, we'll get started. '

The chronometer on her board measured out seconds; minutes. No one spoke. Pastille squirmed in his g-seat.

Everyone else sat still.

Ignoring the uncertainty and silence around her, Liete waited until the deadline Nick had set for his return came and passed. Then she began.

While the black wind hinted ruin in her ears, she ordered her watch to run their checklists as if Captain's Fancy were bound for deep space.

At the same time, she told Lind to monitor every conceivable channel for messages from Nick, the Bill, the Amnion, or Trumpet. And she instructed Carmel to lock scan on Soar: if Soar gave any sign of leaving the installation, Liete wanted to know about it instantly.

After the checklists were complete, she began to power up Captain's Fancy with as much subtlety as she could devise. In order to postpone as long as possible the moment when Operations would notice the ship's status and challenge it, she had Malda use installation current to charge the weapons systems. And Pastille drew on the same source to prime the thrusters for cold ignition, so that drive emission wouldn't betray the ship.

Riding the long black air for reasons she couldn't guess in a direction she couldn't identify, Liete Corregio deliberately de-activated the docking failsafes. When she was done, Captain's Fancy could rip free of Billingate without risking shutdown by either the installation's alarms or the ship's own in-built survival mechanisms.

She intended to follow Nick's orders no matter where they took her.

Mikka Vasaczk sat at the small table with an untasted drink clenched in her capable hands, glowering at everything.

She glowered at the false glitter of the lighting, molded to resemble archaic chandeliers; at the walls, which were decorated with mirrors and holographic nudes; at the painted cruisewalkers who moved occasionally among the tables, trolling for business. She glowered at the bar itself, as well as at the young woman who tended it - a girl so expressionless that she might as well have had no face. She glowered impersonally at the spacers drinking and gibing at the other tables.

From time to time she glowered at her companion, even though he hadn't done anything to deserve it.

'Why are we doing this?' Sib Mackern had asked her as soon as they left Captain's Fancy.

Past clenched jaws she'd replied, 'He kept my brother. '

Confused, he'd begun to say, 'That's not what I-'

Then he'd stopped himself. 'Your brother? Who is that?'

'Pup, ' she'd told him shortly.

He'd stared at her as if she'd frightened him. 'I didn't know Pup was your brother. '

Now she and Captain's Fancy's data first were in a place called Paunchys, a nearly clean, almost civilized bar-and-sleep at the fringes of the cruise. For some reason, Soar's crew liked to come here off-watch.

A sour barkeep deeper in the cruise had told her this.

He would have told any paying customer anything which might conceivably encourage them to buy from him. And Soar came to Billingate so often, spent so much time in the vicinity of Thanatos Minor, that her people were known.

Ignoring Sib's knotted anxiety, Mikka had led him to Paunchys, seated him at a table not too far from the ones where a small group of spacers already sat, and used some of Captain's Fancy's little credit to buy drinks neither he nor she wanted.

Why are we doing this?

Good question. She understood Nick's orders. I want you to start a rumor about the immunity drug. Say you've heard Soar's captain has a drug that protects her from the Amnion. Talk about it until you're sure her crew hears you.

But why he'd given those orders — and given them to her

- was another matter.

He'd said he wanted to prime the Bill. To do business.

She didn't believe that. She had other ideas.

He wanted to get rid of her.

Because she didn't trust him anymore.

Trust him, hell! When he'd turned Morn over to the Amnion, Mikka had realized that she didn't even like him.

It was possible that she'd never liked him, even though she'd been ready to kill for him ever since they'd first met.

But his hold on her had started to fray when she'd seen that he was perfectly willing to sell Morn's son to the Amnion. And it had snapped completely when he'd given away Morn herself.

The knowledge that he could force her to do anything he wanted by threatening Pup filled Mikka with dry, grim rage, as if she'd swallowed a mouthful of alum.

Glowering and bitter, she carried out Nick's instructions just long enough to see tension accumulating in the shoulders at the other tables; long enough to hear strain in the way the spacers tried to pretend they weren't listening. Then she quit. Sitting there in the bar, with Sib's moist, worried eyes on her and nowhere to go, she came to the end of what she was willing to do for Nick Succorso. If one of Soar's people had stopped by her table to probe for more information, she might have answered by telling the truth.

She ignored the bugeyes which surveyed the bar. As far as she was concerned, she had nothing left to hide. And they might not be sensitive enough to pick up her voice.

Driven by tension, she told Sib again, 'He kept my brother. '

Sib hunted for a reply. After a moment he repeated, 'I didn't know Pup was your brother. '

Gripping herself so that she wouldn't groan, she murmured, 'Nick knows. '

Mackern's eyes were as eloquent as a kid's: they showed every shade of his fear, his self-distrust. Sweat darkened his pale mustache until it looked like a smudge across his upper lip. Trying to cool his anxiety, he rolled his drink between his wrists. But his fever was too acute for simple remedies - and in any case most of the ice in his drink had already melted.

After a time one or two of the spacers who probably belonged to Soar left Paunchys. The rest regrouped themselves at other tables farther away.

Sib rephrased his question. 'Why does Nick want us to do this?'

Mikka didn't want to say, To get rid of us. Not here: not now, while Pup was still at risk. Instead she muttered, To make trouble for Soar — for Sorus Chatelaine. It doesn't have anything to do with the Bill. Or the Amnion. Hurting them is just a fringe benefit. He's after her. She's the one who cut him.

'And it's going to work. ' Her disgust came out in a snarl. 'Rumors about an immunity drug in a place like this, for God's sake! The Bill is going to go wild. The Amnion will too, if they hear about it. We would be safer tossing around vials of concentrated hydrofluoric acid. If we did what he told us — if we kept moving, kept spreading his rumor — the Bill would have us hanging by our entrails before we crossed half the cruise. '

Sib stared at her with all his uncertainty and dread showing. 'Is that why we're still sitting here?'

'Yes!' she grated. Then she said, 'No. I don't know. I just can't do it anymore. I hate it too much. '

For the third time, she told him, 'He kept my brother. '

The data first seemed to consider this part of a ritual to which there was no appropriate response except, 'I didn't know he was your brother. '

Glaring at him despite the fact that most of her anger was directed at herself, she completed the pattern. 'Nick knows. ' Then, because her heart hurt, and she'd spent most of her life forcing herself to look coldly at whatever hurt her, she added, 'His real name is Ciro. '

Stiffly, as if he'd decided on suicide, Sib raised his glass like a gun to his mouth and drank.

Mikka didn't touch her own drink until Vector Shaheed walked into the bar-and-sleep. Then she swallowed it all in one long draught because he had Pup with him.

The alcohol wasn't enough to muffle her relief- or her awareness of treachery. She couldn't keep the tears from her eyes as Vector and Pup headed for her table.

'God damn him, ' she breathed to Sib, her voice shaking. 'He wants to get rid of them, too. '

Apparently Pup didn't understand. His young face showed a relief of his own, showed confusion and uncertainty; but no betrayal. The incompleteness of his gan-gling limbs — he still didn't have his full growth - made him look vulnerable and precious to Mikka; the only treasure she had left.

Vector understood, however: his clear blue gaze made that plain. Complex perceptions twisted his smile as he stopped at the table. He noticed her tears, but didn't comment on them. 'Mikka, ' he said mildly, 'Sib. Imagine my surprise. '

'No, ' Mikka retorted through her teeth, fighting for self-command. We don't have time.

'Sit down, both of you, ' she ordered. 'Start by telling me how you found us. '

Vector turned and waved at the woman tending the bar. Across the intervening tables, he requested coffee for himself, some kind of beer substitute for Pup.

By the time the engineer was seated, Pup had already taken a chair beside Mikka and blurted out, 'Nick told us to go talk to the shipyard foreman, but we didn't, do it. '

She stifled an impulse to put her arms around him.

That wasn't what he wanted - and in any case she didn't trust herself. Caught up in her own fear and anger, she'd forgotten that her brother still considered Nick a hero.

We were supposed to make sure the shipyard was ready to work on Captain's Fancy', ' Pup went on urgently.

That's what Nick told us. ' Despite his intensity, however, he remembered to keep his voice down. 'He found a way to rescue us, get us fixed. He's going to get us out of this mess. We were supposed to be sure the shipyard has the right parts.

'But we didn't do it. ' He flung an accusing glare at the engineer. "Vector says that isn't what's going on. ' In a shocked whisper, he said, We're disobeying a direct order, Mikka. '

She made a hushing gesture. 'Give him a minute. ' She wanted to comfort her brother: she needed that more than he did. 'He'll explain. But first I want to know how you found us. '

Vector tasted his coffee, then grimaced in mock disgust. Where I come from, ' he pronounced, 'making coffee this bad is a capital offense.

'It wasn't hard, ' he went on without transition. 'I told a data terminal in Reception I wanted a room. The program ran a routine check on Captain's Fancy's credit. I expressed my indignation that the total was so low' - he gave Mikka a round smile - 'and demanded a record of recent expenditures. The terminal told me you were using ship's credit to buy drinks here. ' He widened his eyes humorously. 'Expensive ones, apparently. '

'But why?' Pup's impatience made him sound younger than usual. Why are you doing this? Nick gave us orders.

If you wanted to talk to Mikka, you could have found her after we made sure the shipyard is ready. '

Vector looked at Mikka. The humor slowly faded from his eyes, leaving them cold and hard.

'You might as well say it, ' she growled. 'Somebody has to. '

Sib took another drink. When he put his glass down, liquid slopped onto the table.

Vector shrugged; he turned to face Pup squarely. 'Captain's Fancy isn't going to be repaired. Not now - probably not ever. Nick is finished. He'll never be allowed off this rock. He just doesn't want to admit it. ' The engineer's tone was quiet and sad. 'Anything he says about repairs is crap. '

Then why - ?' Pup began hotly.

'Ciro. ' Vector's voice sharpened. 'Listen to me. He's weeding out the malcontents. Getting rid of people he doesn't trust. He's fighting to survive. Not for the ship

- not for us. He's fighting for himself. And we're a threat to him. The four of us here. Personally. He might have simply killed us, but that would have made a bad impression on the rest of the crew. So he sent us away. Now he'll make sure we never get back. '

This was hard for Pup. He'd inherited too much of Mikka's devotion - and learned too much of his own.

For reasons he may not have been able to identify, his face flushed scarlet.

'But why? he demanded. 'You still haven't told me why.'

Vector shrugged again. 'Why is he finished? Or why are we a threat to him?'

Studying her brother, Mikka felt a small leap of pride and relief when she saw that he didn't need to ask why Nick was finished. Pup was young and inexperienced; still growing; barely trained. Nevertheless he was smart enough to recognize that Vector's analysis - or Mikka's

- of Nick's fate was secondary.

His cheeks were hot with blood as he said, 'Why are we a threat to him. '

Vector looked at Mikka. Mikka glared back at him, avoiding Pup's gaze. Suddenly she found the words difficult to say. She'd given Nick too much of herself for too many years. Even now she was ashamed to admit her disloyalty.

Vector also avoided Pup's eyes and said nothing.

She'd decided long ago that Sib Mackern considered himself a coward. Regardless of his opinion of himself, however, he found the courage to speak before she or Vector did.