Charles Stross - Iron Sunrise

“Corpsefuckers!” Wednesday stood up and paced over to the main door, like a restless cat. “What do they—”

“Anita,” Rachel said warningly.

Wednesday sighed. “Yes, Mom?”

Martin finished shoving the big diplomatic fab trunk up against the panels and turned round. She’s got the exasperated adolescent bit down perfectly, he noted approvingly. And she’d managed to change her appearance completely. Her hair was a mass of blond ringlets and she’d switched from black leather and tight leggings to a femme dress that rustled when she moved. The bows in her hair made her look about five years younger, but the pout was the same, and with the work Rachel had done on her cheeks and fingerprints — let’s just hope they crashed the liaison system hard enough that they don’t pay too much attention to the biometric tags, he thought grimly. Because—

“Sit down, girl. You’re making me dizzy.”

“Aw, Mom!” She pulled a face.

Rachel pulled a face right back. “We need to look like a family,” she’d pointed out half an hour earlier, while Martin was walling Steffi and a three-day supply of consumables into the priest’s hole. “There’s a chunk of familial backbiting, and a chunk of consistency, and we want you to look as unlike the Victoria Strowger they’re hunting for as possible. Wednesday wears black and is extremely spiky. So you’re going to wear pink, and be fluffy and frilly. At least for a while.”

“Three fucking days?” Wednesday complained.

“They’ve crashed the liaison network,” Rachel pointed out, “and crashed it hard. That’s the only edge we’ve got, because when they bring it up again they’ll be able to configure it as celldar — every ultrawideband node in the ship’s corridors and staterooms will be acting as a teraherz radar transmitter. With the right software loaded into the nodes they’ll be able to see right through your clothing, in the dark, and track you wherever you go to within millimeters. We have to act as if we’re under surveillance the whole time once the net comes back up, because if they’re remotely competent — and they must be if they’ve just hijacked a liner with complete surprise — it’ll give them total control over the ship and total surveillance over everybody they can see.”

“Except someone hidden at the back of a closet inside a Faraday cage,” Martin murmured as he slotted another panel into place, still stinking of hot plastic and metal from the military fabricator’s output hopper.

“Yes, Mom.” Wednesday paced back to the armchair and dropped into it in a sea of lace. “Do you think they’ll—”

The door chimed — then opened without pause. “Excuse us, sir and ladies.” Three crewmen walked in without waiting, wearing the uniforms and peaked caps of the purser’s office. The man in the lead had a neatly trimmed beard and dead eyes. “I am Lieutenant Commander Fromm and I apologize for the lack of warning. Are you Rachel Mansour? And Martin Springfield?” He spoke like an automaton, voice almost devoid of inflection, and Martin noted a bruise near the hairline on his left temple, almost concealed by his cap.

“And our daughter Anita,” Rachel added smoothly. Wednesday frowned and looked away from the men, scuffing the carpet with her boot soles.

“Anita Mansour-Springfield?”

Fromm looked momentarily blank, but one of the men behind him checked a tablet: “That’s what it says here, sir.”

“Oh.” Fromm still looked vacant. “Do you know of a Victoria Strowger?” he said stiffly.

“Who?” Rachel looked politely puzzled. “Is that the terrorist you’re looking for?”

“Terr-or-ist.” Fromm nodded stiffly. “If you see her, report to us immediately. Please.” His eyes looked red, almost bloodshot. Martin peered at him intently. He isn’t blinking! he realized. “I must revalidate your diplomatic credentials. Please. Your passports.”

“Martin?” Rachel looked at him. “Would you fetch Commander Fromm our papers, please?” She remained seated on the chaise longue at the side of the dayroom, a picture of languor.

“All right.” He walked over to the closet, throwing the doors wide, and retrieved the passports from the briefcase on top of the fab without turning on the closet light. Let them get a glimpse of a cluttered closet with no room for anyone to hide … “ We should like you to withdraw surveillance from this suite,” he added, as he handed the passports over. “And as soon as she’s up to it, I’d like you to convey my best wishes for a speedy recovery and a happy code red to Captain Hussein. I’d like to see her when she’s got time, if possible.”

“I am sure Captain Hussein will see you,” Fromm said slowly, and passed the passports to one of the other two officers for a check.

Captain Nazma Hussein is almost certainly dead, Martin realized, the cold hand of fear tickling his guts. And you should know what a diplomatic code red means. He forced a smile. “Are the papers in order?”

“Yes,” the man behind Fromm said curtly. “We can go now.”

Fromm turned round without a word and marched out the door. The two other men followed him. The one who’d checked their papers paused in the doorway. “If you hear anything, please call us,” he said curtly. “We’re from the ReMastered race, and we’re here to help you.”

The door clicked shut. Wednesday was on her feet almost immediately. “You fuckmonsters! I’m going to rip your heads off and shit down your necks! I—”

“Anita!” Rachel was on her feet, too. She grabbed Wednesday’s shoulders swiftly and held her. “Stay calm.”

Martin walked in front of her and held up an archaic paper notepad and a tiny stub of pencil, TERAHERZ CELLDAR SIGNAL IN HERE, he scribbled twitchily in small letters, REZ ONE CM. SOUND TOO. CANT READ XPRESSNS, CAN C GESTRS, SOLID OBJECTS IN POCKETS, GUNS.

“What’s—” Wednesday gasped, then leaned her head against Rachel’s shoulder. Rachel embraced her. She sobbed, the sound muffled. Rachel stroked the back of her neck slowly, CAPTAIN DEAD, FROMM REMASTERED ZOMBI.

“I’m not sure I believe this,” Rachel said quietly. “It’s awful, isn’t it?”

Wednesday nodded wordlessly, tears flowing.

“Looks like they lost the liaison network completely,” Martin observed, looking away. What set that off? he wondered. Her family? He wanted to be able to speak freely, to tell her that the scum who’d done it weren’t going to get away, but he also wondered how true any such reassurance would be. “On the bright side, they revalidated our passports.” Including the one in the name of Anita, with Wednesday’s face and biometric tags pasted in. “ Liaison,” he said, raising his voice, “what’s this station we’re putting into for repairs?”

The liaison network took a moment to reply. Its voice was slightly flatter than it had been the day before. “Our repair destination is portal station eleven, Old Newfoundland. This station is not approved for passenger egress. Do you require further assistance?”

“That will be all,” Martin said, his voice hollow.

“Old Newfie?” Wednesday asked incredulously, raising her tear-streaked face from Rachel’s shoulder. “Did you hear that? We’re going to Old Newfie !”

Thirty-two hours:

They stayed in their suite as instructed, forcing small talk and chitchat to convey the impression of familial claustrophobia. Wednesday milked her role for all it was worth — her adolescent histrionics had a sharp edge of bitterness that made Martin fantasize about strangling her after a while, or at least breaking character sufficiently to give her a good tongue-lashing. But that wasn’t on the cards. His book-sized personal assist, loaded with nonstandard signal-processing software, showed him some curious patterns in the ambient broadband signals, worryingly tagged sequential pulse trains.