Broken Angels (39 page)

“Was already open.” I couldn't be bothered to construct lies, guessed in any case that he'd interrogate the others soon enough. “For all we know, there are no shutout controls.”

“On a warship?” His eyes narrowed. “I find that hard to believe.”

“Isaac, the whole ship mounts a spatial shield that stands at least two kilometers out from the hull. What the fuck would they need with individual docking station shutout?”

“You saw that?”

“Yeah. Very much in action.”

“Hmm.” He made a couple of minor adjustments in the coil. “The sniffer units found human traces a good three or four kilometers into the interior. But they found you in an observation bubble not much more than a kilometer and a half from your entry point.”

“Well, that couldn't have been hard. We painted the way with big fucking illuminum arrows.”

He gave me a hard look. “Did you go walkabout in there?”

“Not me, no.” I shook my head, then regretted it as the little cabin pulsed unpleasantly in and out of focus around me. I waited it out. “Some of them did. I never found out how far they went.”

“Doesn't sound very organized.”

“It wasn't,” I said irritably. “I don't know, Isaac. Try and incubate a sense of wonder, huh? Might help when you get over there.”

“So it, ah, appears.” He hesitated, and it took me a moment to realize he was embarrassed. “You, ah, you saw. Ghosts. Over there?”

I shrugged, suppressing an urge to cackle uncontrollably. “We saw something. I'm still not sure what it was. Been listening in to your guests, Isaac?”

He smiled and made an apologetic gesture. “Lamont's habits, rubbing off on me. And since he's lost the taste for snooping, seems a shame to let the equipment go to waste.” He prodded again at the datacoil. “The medical report says you all showed symptoms of a heavy stunblast, except you and Sun, obviously.”

“Yeah, Sun shot herself. We . . .” Abruptly, it seemed impossible to explain. Like trying to shoulder a massive weight unaided. The last moments in the Martian starship, wrapped in the brilliant pain and radiance of whatever her crew had left behind them. The certainty that this alien grief was going to crack us open. How did you convey that to the man who had led you behind raging gunfire to victory at Shalai Gap and a dozen other engagements? How did you get across the ice-aching diamond-bright reality of those moments?

Reality?
The doubt jolted rudely.

Was
it? Come to that, come to the gun-barrel-and-grime reality that Isaac Carrera lived,
was
it real anymore? Had it ever been? How much of what I remembered was hard fact?

No, look. I've got Envoy recall—

But had it been that bad? I looked into the datacoil, trying wearily to muster rational thought. Hand had called it, and I bought in with something not much short of panic. Hand, the hougan. Hand, the religious maniac. When else had I ever trusted him as far as I could throw him?

Why had I trusted him then?

Sun.
I grabbed at the fact.
Sun knew. She saw it coming and she blew her own brains out rather than face it.

Carrera was looking at me strangely.

“Yes?”

You and Sun . . .

“Wait a minute.” It dawned on me. “You said except Sun and
me
?”

“Yes. The others all show the standard electroneural trauma. Heavy blast, as I said.”

“But not me.”

“Well, no.” He looked puzzled. “You weren't touched. Why, do you
remember
someone shooting you?”

•         •         •

When we were done, he flattened the datacoil display with one callused hand and walked me back through the empty corridors of the battlewagon and then across the nighttime murmur of the camp. We didn't talk much. He'd backed up in the face of my confusion and let the debriefing slide. Probably he couldn't believe he was seeing one of his pet Envoys in this state.

I was having a hard time believing it myself.

She shot you. You dropped the stunner and she shot you, then herself. She
must
have
.

Otherwise . . .

I shivered.

On a clear patch of sand to the rear of the
Angin Chandra's Virtue
, they were erecting the scaffold for Sutjiadi's execution. The primary support struts were already in place, sunk deep into the sand and poised to receive the tilted, runneled butcher's platform. Under the illumination from three Angier lamps and the environ floods from the battlewagon's rear drop hatch, the structure was a claw of bleached bone rising from the beach. The disassembled segments of the anatomizer lay close by, like sections of a wasp someone had chopped to death.

“The war's shifting,” Carrera said conversationally. “Kemp's a spent force on this continent. We haven't had an air strike in weeks. He's using the iceberg fleet to evacuate his forces across the Wacharin Straits.”

“Can't he hold the coast there?” I asked the question on automatic, the ghost of attention from a hundred deployment briefings past.

Carrera shook his head. “Not a chance. That's a floodplain a hundred klicks back south and east. Nowhere to dig in, and he doesn't have the hardware to build wet bunkers. That means no long-term jamming, no net-supported weapons systems. Give me six more months and I'll have amphibious armor harrying him off the whole coastal strip. Another year and we'll be parking the
Chandra
over Indigo City.”

“And then what?”

“Sorry?”

“And then what? When you've taken Indigo City, when Kemp's bombed and mined and particle-blasted every worthwhile asset there is and escaped into the mountains with the real diehards,
then what
?”

“Well.” Carrera puffed out his cheeks. He seemed genuinely surprised by the question. “The usual. Holding strategy across both continents, limited police actions and scapegoating until everyone calms down. But by that time . . .”

“By that time we'll be gone, right?” I shoved my hands into my pockets. “Off this fucking mudball and somewhere where they know a losing game when they see one. Give me that much good news at least.”

He looked across at me and winked. “Hun Home's looking good. Internal power struggle, lots of palace intrigue. Just your speed.”

“Thanks.”

At the bubblefab flap, low voices filtered out into the night air. Carrera cocked his head and listened.

“Come in and join the party,” I said morosely, pushing through ahead of him. “Save you going back to Lamont's toys.”

The three remaining members of the Mandrake expedition were gathered in seats around a low table at the end of the ward. Carrera's security had broomed off the bulk of the inhib units and left each prisoner at detention-standard, a single inhibitor squatting like a tumor at the nape of the neck. It made everyone look peculiarly hunched, as if caught in midconspiracy.

They looked around as we entered the ward, reacting across a spectrum. Deprez was the least expressive; barely a muscle moved in his face. Vongsavath caught my eye and raised her brows. Wardani looked past me to where Carrera stood and spat on the quick-wipe floor.

“That's for me, I assume,” the Wedge commander said easily.

“Share it,” suggested the archaeologue. “You seem close enough.”

Carrera smiled. “I'd advise against cranking up your hate too far, Mistress Wardani. Your little friend back there is apt to bite.”

She shook her head, wordless. One hand rose in reflex, halfway to the inhib unit, then dropped away. Maybe she'd already tried removing it. It's not a mistake you make twice.

Carrera walked to the splatter of saliva, bent, and scooped it up with one finger. He examined it closely, brought it to his nose, and grimaced.

“You don't have long, Mistress Wardani. In your place I think I'd be a little more civil to the person who's going to advise on whether you're resleeved or not.”

“I doubt that'll be your decision.”

“Well.” The Wedge commander wiped his finger on the nearest bedsheet. “I did say
advise
. But then, this presupposes that you make it back to Landfall in some resleevable capacity. Which you might not.”

Wardani turned to me, blocking Carrera off in the process. A subtle snub that made the diplomatic strand in my conditioning want to applaud.

“Is your catamite here threatening me?”

I shook my head. “Making a point, I think.”

“Too subtle for me.” She cast a disdainful glance back at the Wedge commander. “Perhaps you'd better just shoot me in the stomach. That seems to work well. Your preferred method of civilian pacification, presumably.”

“Ah, yes. Hand.” Carrera hooked a chair from the collection around the table. He turned it back forward and straddled it. “Was he a friend of yours?”

Wardani looked at him.

“I didn't think so. Not your sort at all.”

“That has nothing to—”

“Did you know he was responsible for the bombing of Sauberville?”

Another wordless pause. This time the archaeologue's face sagged with shock, and suddenly I saw how very far the radiation had eaten into her.

Carrera saw it, too.

“Yes, Mistress Wardani. Someone had to clear a path for your little quest, and Matthias Hand arranged for it to be our mutual friend Joshua Kemp. Oh, nothing direct, of course. Military misinformation, carefully modeled and then equally carefully leaked along the right datachannels. But enough to convince our resident revolutionary hero in Indigo City that Sauberville would look better as a grease stain. And that thirty-seven of my men didn't need their eyes anymore.” He flipped a glance at me. “You must have guessed, right?”

I shrugged. “Seemed likely. A little too convenient otherwise.”

Wardani's eyes snapped sideways to mine, disbelieving.

“You see, Mistress Wardani”—Carrera got up as if his whole body ached—“I'm sure you'd like to believe I'm a monster, but I'm not. I'm just a man doing a job. Men like Matthias Hand
create
the wars I make my living fighting. Keep that in mind next time you feel the need to insult me.”

The archaeologue said nothing, but I could feel her gaze burning into the side of my face. Carrera turned to go, then stopped.

“Oh, and Mistress Wardani, one more thing.
Catamite.
” He looked at the floor, as if pondering the word. “I have what many would consider a rather limited range of sexual preferences, and anal penetration doesn't feature among them. But I see from your camp records that the same cannot be said for you.”

She made a noise. Behind it, I almost heard the creak and shift of the recovery scaffolding Envoy artifice had built inside her. The sound of damage done. I found myself, inexplicably, on my feet.

“Isaac, you—”

“You?” He was grinning like a skull as he faced me. “
You,
you
pup
. Had better sit down.”

It was nearly a command, nearly froze me in my tracks. Envoy bile rose sneering and beat it aside.

“Kovacs—” Wardani's voice, like a cable snapping.

I met Carrera halfway, one crooked hand rising for his throat, a muddled kick emerging from the rest of my sickness-tangled stance. The big Wedge body swayed in to meet me, and he blocked both attacks with brutal ease. The kick slipped away left, taking me off balance, and he locked out my striking arm at the elbow, then smashed it.

It made a crunching noise in the back of my head, an empty whiskey tumbler crushed underfoot in some dimly lit bar. The agony swarmed my brain, wrenched out a single short scream, and then subsided under neurachem pain management. Wedge combat custom—seemed the sleeve was still good for that much. Carrera had not released his hold, and I dangled from the grip he had on my forearm like a powered-down child's doll. I flexed my undamaged arm experimentally, and he laughed. Then he twisted hard on the shattered elbow joint, so pain rose back up like a black cloud behind my eyes, and dropped me. A casual kick to the stomach left me fetal, and not interested in anything much above ankle height.

“I'll send the medics,” I heard him say somewhere above me. “And Mistress Wardani, I suggest you shut your mouth, or I will have some of my less sensitive men come and fill it for you. That and maybe give you a forcible reminder of what the word
catamite
means. Don't test me, woman.”

There was a rustle of clothing, and then he crouched at my side. One hand gripped my jaw and turned my face upward.

“You're going to have to get that sentimental shit out of your system if you want to work for me, Kovacs. Oh, and just in case you don't”—he held up a curled-up inhib spider in his hand—“temporary measure, purely. Just until we're done with Sutjiadi. We'll all feel a lot safer this way.”

He tipped his opened palm sideways, and the inhib unit rolled sideways into space. To my endorphin-dulled senses, it seemed to take a long time. I got to watch with something approaching fascination as the spider unrolled its legs in midair and fell flailing to the floor less than a meter from my head. There it gathered itself, spun about once or twice, and then scuttled toward me. It clambered up over my face, then down around to my spine. A tiny spike of ice reached down into the bone, and I felt the cablelike limbs tighten around the back of my neck.

Oh well.

“Be seeing you, Kovacs. Have a think about it.” Carrera got up and apparently left. For a while, I lay there checking the seals on the cozy blanket of numbness my sleeve's systems had wrapped me in. Then there were hands on my body, helping me into a sitting position I had no real interest in attaining.

“Kovacs.” It was Deprez, peering into my face. “You okay, man?”

I coughed weakly. “Yeah, great.”