Moonsteed (3 page)

He looked at her and looked away to stare at the horse. “Hi.”

Had he come in here looking for an apology? Verity wasn’t going to apologize to him. He should have got out of the way. In the horse’s vision, his skin looked greenish, because horses can’t see red, but even in Verity’s own eyesight he looked sickly and nauseous.

She stared at him. “I’m busy.” She turned back to the horse, but its eyesight confirmed he was still standing there, watching her. Couldn’t he take a hint? Didn’t he have work to do like everyone else on this base?

“It’s Zeta, isn’t it?”

The memory of what had happened outside flashed before Verity. How did this man know that? Who was he, and what was he doing here? Her hand gripped the hilt of her katana. “Don’t call me that!” The ears of every horse in the stable block turned back, hooves stamped and Verity’s horse let out a whinny. “No one calls me that! You understand?”

“I--I’m sorry... I looked you up in the staff directory. I was told you were the person I needed to speak to... I understood that was your name.”

“My name’s Sergeant Verity!” Verity’s hand still rested on her katana, but the slight pressure of her fingers brought back not the steady glide of steel in the sheath, but a sticky, viscous resistance. Too late she remembered the blood. “
Shite
!” She would have to deal with that later. Verity tried to control her temper, transmitting soothing thoughts to the horse, who snorted and moved uneasily as she lifted its foot to remove the shoe.

The man flinched at the expletive. “I was told you were the best person to approach on the matter of the horses. My name’s Vladimir Bolokhovski.” It was only after speaking a longer sentence like this when Verity noticed his slight accent.

“Look, I’ve told you I’m busy. If you’re a civilian, you’re not supposed to be in the stable block at any rate.” Verity wished he would go away. The bleed-back from her anger affected the horses, and he was making it worse. She unlocked the bolts securing the shoe to the bone implants and separated the inner cushion from the thick protective outer, its surface scalloped for grip and patterned with the holes of the retracted crampons. “You need to see Commodore Smith if you need access to the horses.”

“I already did. He told me to speak to you.”

Verity looked over her shoulder at him, narrowing her eyes as she stroked the powerful black neck of the horse. “What for? He knows I’m busy.” She ducked under the horse’s neck and went between it and the wall to take the shoes off the other side.

Vladimir put his hands on his knees and craned his neck forward, trying to look under the horse at her. “I’m writing a thesis.”

Verity grimaced. Was he trying to impress her? “What’s that make you, a not-properly-a-doctor?”

“I’m working in the research group of Professor Eglin at Torrmede.”

“Torrmede? Didn’t think they let foreigners into Torrmede.”

“I’m not foreign. I’m half-British. And Torrmede aren’t racist. They’ll let in anyone with the grades.”

“What did you study there? Spying, poisoning or nuclear weapons?”

The horse’s vision showed Vladimir straighten and make a distasteful face. “Russia hasn’t been communist since the late twentieth century, and we’re starting to adopt meritocratic rule.”

“Starting?”

“We have public referenda on many political decisions. A democratically elected government still makes some of them, but we’re gradually moving toward meritocratic autonomy.”

Verity scowled. “No country under the yoke of
politicians
can be called a meritocracy. If your country was worth the soil it was made of, its electorate would make all its decisions.”

“Hmm, wise words,” said Vladimir quietly, “yet I’d say that wisdom was beyond your years, and I recall once reading something attributing a very similar comment to Jananin Blake.”

Verity squeezed between the horse’s rump and the wall with the shoes in her hands. “Well, I think I can be forgiven for stealing Blake’s words. After all, she was
Blake
.”

As the horse pawed the ground, enjoying the light weight of its feet and the sensation of the layer of warm sand on the floor, Verity put the shoes in the storage rack opposite and lifted the saddle. The metal edge on the outer part of one of the stirrups caught the light, sending a bright reflective rectangle flitting about the roof of the stalls. The stallion’s eyes rolled. His nostrils flared and he backed away from the stall door with a snort.

Verity stared at the stallion. “He’s afraid. He’s not fearless?” She dumped the saddle on the rack.

“You don’t mix testosterone with fearlessness.”

Apparently satisfied that the threat posed by shiny things was gone, the stallion stretched his neck over the door of his stall to smell Vladimir. The man took a step out of the way. He didn’t look as if he’d seen very much in the way of either horses or testosterone.

“What do you know about it?” Verity scowled at him.

“That’s what my thesis is about.” He raised his voice at the end of the statement, making it sound like a question. “I’m doing a doctorate in genetic engineering. I engineered this horse.”

“Oh,” said Verity after a pause in which things started to make sense. “Well, congratulations. He’s a nice animal. Apart from being frightened of tack.”

“That’s why I need to talk to you. There’s supposed to be a breeding program commencing at this base.”

Verity picked up her armor, closed the stall door and reached up to the implant on her forehead, cutting her connection to the horse. “You’re going to have to speak to me later. I have a meeting with the Commodore.”

* * * *

In Verity’s billet, she threw the armor on the bed and examined the katana, swearing at the blood smeared up the blade and inside the sheath. She rinsed out the sheath and dumped it in the bath before wiping the blade carefully and polishing it. She laid it down on the floor close to the wall before stripping off the rest of her armor and throwing that on the bed and pulling on the charcoal boiler suit that was standard indoor dress on the Callisto base.

She exited her quarters and walked straight into the Commodore.

“Ah, Sergeant Verity. I understand you want to speak to me?”

“Yes, Commodore, Sir.” Verity stepped back from him in a hurry. “There’s been an incident involving Private Aaron. I think he might have absconded.”

Verity had never seen Commodore Smith smile, but he raised his eyebrows and turned his dark-brown eyes to her. “I had a quick read through the ANT’s details on the matter. Let’s discuss this in my office.”

In the Commodore’s office, Verity took a seat on the outside of the desk.

“Well,” said Commodore Smith, sitting. “Can you go through what happened? I’m going to need your account for the report.”

Verity hesitated. If she had made a bad decision, she could be court-martialed. She carefully explained the horse chase, how she had shouted twice for the spy to stop, how he’d reached for a weapon, and how she’d beheaded him, how Aaron had got hold of her katana--and at this point, she noticed the Commodore cast his eyes down to her belt to check she didn’t have it--and how she had overcome him but sent him back with the horse because of the necessity to return the spy’s head as quickly as possible.

Smith frowned, fingering his upper lip. “Did he say anything when he attacked you?”

“Uh,” said Verity. She didn’t have to tell him the exact circumstances of her birth. The Meritocracy made that information private from employers, so people with powerful relatives couldn’t exploit their connections. “He’d found out someone who was my ancestor had done something he didn’t agree with. He thought killing me would avenge a crime he thought had been committed against him.”

The Commodore grimaced. “Sounds like he was psychologically disturbed. That should have showed up in his screening.”

“Do you know where he might have gone, Sir?” Anxiety crept back into Verity’s stomach.

“If he’s not back, I don’t know what’s happened to him. The ANT can’t find him, so he mustn’t have left the scarp. It’s quite probable he could have fallen off the horse and killed himself, with no interface. Perhaps even deliberately after he realized he’d dishonored himself.”

“I doubt it,” said Verity, thinking privately that John Aaron didn’t have any honor. “You don’t think he could have gone anywhere?”

He shrugged. “Where?”

She considered. “There’s no proper GPS for getting detailed surveillance beyond the base. He could have had an ally put a ship down. The spy took the horse and he was going somewhere. He presumably got his information from someone. It might be John Aaron was an inside informant.”

Smith shook his head. “Unlikely, but it bears consideration. I’ve no idea how the spy got in here. The ANT reported unauthorized personnel, but we recently had a shipment of goods and a staff change, so it’s most likely he found a way to stow away on that. It is an awfully long way to come to Callisto to steal something, and rather expensive using one’s own transport. Possibly the spy panicked when the alarm went off, and took a horse in some kind of desperate hope, thinking he might be able to hide outside.”

Verity thought that seemed a bit of a stupid thing for a spy to do, but then she also thought it was stupid of the spy to have reached for a weapon when she had told him twice to stop. It could be he was merely a very inept spy. She said nothing.

“I’ll need to speak to Inquisitor Farron about the spy.” The Commodore’s face gave a slight twitch when he spoke Farron’s name, and his tone changed slightly. “It makes sense to ask him if he knows anything about Private Aaron while we’re there but, before we go, there’s another matter I need to discuss with you. There’s a breeding program commencing involving the base’s horses. Torrmede have sent someone to oversee it, some sort of scientist.”

“Vladimir Bolokhovski.” Verity pulled the name off the ANT. “He was hanging around the stable block earlier.”

“Yes. I’d like you to introduce him to the facilities here, and make sure he knows what he’s doing with this breeding program.”

“But, Sir,” she said, “it’s Referendum Day! I’m supposed to get the afternoon off so I can read and vote.”

“Sergeant Verity, I am not suggesting you have to do it this afternoon. I meant for you to arrange with him to do it in your own time.”

Verity protested, “I’m looking after the core-sampling project already. Sergeant Black’s better at this sort of thing than I am. She harps on about it enough. Why don’t you ask her to do it?” Verity frowned. “Has Sergeant Black been saying things about me?”

“Verity, we are not discussing Sergeant Black’s profile of abilities, we are discussing yours. I’m aware you have recently been involved in an incident, but may I remind you that you are a sergeant in the Sky Forces, and while this particular branch of the Sky Forces is not a true military division, you are still expected to conduct yourself in the proper manner!”

Something in Smith’s posture and parlance told Verity her suspicion was correct. Sergeant Black had never liked Verity, since even before Callisto. When she’d confided on the matter to Gecko, he’d thought it was because Verity was younger than Black, and Black envied her Magnolia Order connection. Her enmity had worsened when Verity was promoted to sergeant only a month after Black, who was five years Verity’s senior. Furiously, Verity wondered why, if Black had a problem with her, she couldn’t say it to her face. Backstabbing arse-licker!

“Do you think it is acceptable, just because certain aspects of your career profile are very strong, that you should neglect other parts of it?”

Verity folded her arms. “I don’t know what you mean.”

“Don’t be disingenuous! You weren’t promoted to sergeant for nothing, but it certainly wasn’t your interpersonal skills that put you in line for it. Now, if you are at all concerned about what I am going to write on my report about this incident, you can put those concerns out of your mind. I’m convinced you acted in a manner that was absolutely judicious and rational, and your training has served you extremely well today. Had you contacted me through the ANT and asked me what to do, I would have told you to do exactly as you did. Only you didn’t, quite rightly, because you knew explaining the situation to me would cost you time you needed, and so you made the decisions yourself, and they were the right ones.”

Smith paused to give Verity some time to consider this before continuing. “Now, your most recent appraisal shows that your interpersonal skills need work. This is one of two reasons why I’ve decided to give this duty to you. If you want to know my other reason, it’s because I honestly think you are the best member of staff here in terms of handling the horses. Certainly Sergeant Black and I are trained to use them, and do so effectively, but you
understand
them. Surely you can see that the best person to train someone how to handle horses is such a person who understands them thus?”

Verity took her gaze away from his face and stared at the surface of the desk. “I suppose so, Sir.”

“Good, then. Let’s go to the Inquisitor’s laboratory.”

* * * *

The Inquisitor greeted them in the entrance to his laboratory. Lloyd Farron had wavy hair with a tawny, auburn color, extending into luxuriant full-length sideburns. With his sturdy, medium-height build, he looked like a lion. He had a mug of tea in one hand and a chocolate biscuit in the other.

“Morning, Commodore. Sergeant Verity.” Lloyd glanced sideways at Verity and smiled, one eyebrow twisting below his interface apparatus. In addition to the standard fixed neural shunt in the center of the forehead, the Inquisitor had two auxiliary shunts just forward of his temples with a web of diodes and extra wiring interconnecting all three, supposedly to shield his mind from bleed-back off the people he interrogated. Verity doubted the efficacy of those, and there had to be some truth somewhere at the root of the rumor of the inquisitors’ compromised sanity. No one can dodge bleed-back, same as you can’t evade age and death. A hundred years ago, people used to say “death and taxes,” but that no longer worked since the Meritocracy made paying taxes an optional privilege. Perhaps one day scientists would find a cure for ageing, and then there’d only be bleed-back and death left. Verity couldn’t see death ever going away. Probability always wins in the end.