Charles Stross - Iron Sunrise

“You’ll have no backup,” said Cho. “If they panic and decide to bury the evidence—”

“I’ll be right there to stop them,” Rachel said firmly. She glanced out the window. “It won’t be the first time. But if we do it, we have to do it right now. The Romanov is due to depart in less than five hours. I need to be on board with a sensible cover story and a full intrusion kit. A diplomatic bag, if possible, with full military cornucopia, just like the one we used last time.” She pretended not to notice George’s wince. “And I need to get out of this fucking rubber mask, and call Martin to tell him to stay aboard the Romanov , if you don’t mind.”

“If I—” George shook his head. “Tranh. How do you evaluate Rachel’s proposed course of action?”

“I’m afraid she’s right,” Tranh said stiffly. “But I—” he paused. “Who do you need?”

“For a job like this?” Rachel shrugged. “ Nobody is ready for this. I submit that the best cover is no cover. If I go with Martin, we should be overt — a couple of UN diplomats taking low-priority transport between postings, to meet up with the rest of our mission on Newpeace. No cover story at all, in other words — it takes the least effort to set up and it also gives me a clear line of authority back home, reason to talk to the Captain, that sort of thing. I’ll—” She looked worried. “First New Prague, then Newpeace. I heard that name before somewhere, didn’t I? Something bad, some atrocity.”

“Newpeace.” George made a curse of it. “Yes. You don’t want to go there without immunity. Even with immunity. I’m going to have to send you the internal briefings on the place, Rachel. You don’t want to land there.”

“Is it that bad?”

“It’s a dictatorship run by the ReMastered,” Tranh said grimly. “Nasty little local ideology that seems to pop up like a poisonous toadstool in patches. And that fits with a bit of intel our back-office trawl pulled in. We’ve been grepping the public feeds for any references to Moscow, and we got a high probability hit off of a warblogger who’s traveling on the Romanov . He’s poking around the Moscow business from the other end, making some unsubstantiated but very paranoid suggestions about survivors — not diplomats — being tracked down and murdered. What’s more interesting is that he’s on board the Romanov and ReMastered was one of the keyword hits that flagged his column in our trawl. Nothing but innuendo so far, and he’s got an axe to grind — I was following up his history when things fell apart here — but they’re a local power, and they’ve been known to meddle in foreign affairs before now.”

“They’re also ruthless enough that if they’re involved in this mess, I don’t want you going anywhere near one of their worlds, with or without diplomatic papers,” George added. “Look, you’ve got five hours until departure, and you’re going to take at least three to get up the beanstalk and into orbit. Get going. Get ready. I’ll get Gianni to open a credit line to the mission for you to use, and you, Tranh, you’re going along as Rachel’s backup. Make sure to brief her on who these ReMastered are, just in case. Rachel, Martin will travel with you. He knows the ship, so he’s your technical adviser. We’ll talk by channel once you’re under way and damn the expense. Right now I’ve got this mess to clean up. So don’t hang around.” He extended a hand. After a moment, Rachel took it. “Good luck,” he said. “I’ve got a feeling you’re going to need it.”

The horror never ended, but after a while you could learn to live with it, Rachel reflected. Or rather, you learned to live between it, in the intervals, the white space between the columns of news, the quiet, civilized times that made the job worthwhile. You learned to live in order to make the whitespace bigger, to reduce the news, to work toward the end of history, to make the universe safe for peace. And you knew it was a zero-sum game at best and eventually you’d lose, but you were on the right side so that didn’t matter. Somebody had to do it. And then -

Scum. There was no other word for it. Fragmentation grenades in the audience at a nondenominational secular-friendly memorial ceremony spelled scum . The audience screaming, a child with her hand blown off, a woman with no head. The pale-faced girl in the front row, desperately leaning over her friend, his head bloodied by the -

“Is the payload ready?” she asked mildly.

“One moment.” Pritkin unplugged his diagnostic probe. “Primed. Stick your finger in here. Shared secret time.”

“Okay.” Rachel extended a hand, wrapped her fingers around the probe and waited for it to bleep, signifying successful quantum key exchange. Pritkin stuck the probe back into the slot in the large traveler’s trunk and waited for the light on its base to begin blinking red. Then he ejected it. “It’s all yours. Armed and loaded.” He straightened up and put the probe away.

“Which department is this one billed to?” Rachel asked. “After the last time…”

“Department of Collective Defense.” Pritkin smiled grimly. “You may find its inventory tree a little alarming.”

“Indeed.” Rachel eyed the trunk appraisingly. “Full military fabworks?”

“Yup. This little cornucopia can, with a bit of guidance and your authority, generate an entire military-industrial complex. Try not to lose it.”

“Once was an accident, twice would be careless. All right.” She spoke to the trunk. “Do you recognize me?”

The trunk spoke back, in a flat monotone: “Authorized officer commanding. You have control.”

“Hey, I like that. Trunk, follow me.” She nodded to Pritkin. “See you at Newpeace.”

Scum! she thought, her rage controlled for the time being, directed and channeled. I’m coming for you. And when I find you, you’ll be sorry …

The express elevator up the beanstalk gave Rachel time to confront the horrors and try to shove them back into a corner of her mind. Tranh, she noted, was even more quiet and reserved than normal. The elevator car was almost two-thirds full, carrying a good number of crew members and tourists returning to the Romanov before it departed; also a sprinkling of quiet, worried-looking Dresdener citizens. While the R-bombs remained decades away, and the recall codes could still be issued, the panic hadn’t set in. Only the most paranoid tinfoil-hat wearers would be thinking about emigrating already. But with a population of hundreds of millions, even the lunatic fringe was large enough to populate a medium-sized city, and some of the middle-aged men and small family groups wore the cautious, haunted expression of refugees. They’d probably be checking in to steerage, to sleep away the long jump sequence without spending precious savings. Rachel figured her assassin wouldn’t be among them. He or she would want to be awake, to plan the next atrocity and keep a weather eye open for pursuers.

She tilted her seat back as far as it would go and waited for the oppressive shove of acceleration to go away. The car was only pulling two gees, but it was enough to make walking unfeasible and lifting a drinking cup uncomfortably difficult. The glowing blue space elevator cable zipped past beyond the transparent ceiling, an endless string with knots flickering by several times a second — the bulbous shells of the boost coils that coupled the car to its invisible magnetic corridor. They’re up there , she reminded herself. Along with a couple of thousand innocent passengers and crew. Over six hundred people had come down from the Romanov while it was docked; nearly four hundred had returned to the ship. Of those, three hundred and fifty had been aboard the ship — and taken their leave on the surfaces of each planet it had visited, including the ones where Muscovite diplomats had been attacked.