Charles Gannon - Raising Caine

Which was not overly peculiar. The customary preacceleration protocols would, if followed, enable a fair estimate of the time at which the ship’s velocity — which was to say, its increase above rest-mass — reached the point at which it could engage its shift drive. But typically, sensor operators did not seek the bloom except to confirm that a ship had shifted when and where it said it would. “Are you saying that Nezdeh pinpointed the shift-bloom even before Ferocious Monolith ’s tight-beam shift notification reached us?”

“Yes, Tagmator.”

That was a fairly impressive sensor achievement. But it was also an expenditure of effort without any meaningful gain. “Has Nezdeh put us at risk of discovery by the Aboriginals? Has she been overly bold in shadowing the Aboriginal shift carrier that is refueling above us, the Arbitrage ?”

“No, Tagmator. If anything, she has been remarkably circumspect in the performance of that particular task. Indeed, she has shown her greatest skills in trailing the megacorporate craft at considerable distance while remaining beneath various meteorological disturbances. She was able to track it by the slight ionization path that the craft’s passage leaves as it moves through the thin particulate field at the highest level of the gas giant’s exosphere.” Letlas paused. “Given the ease with which she did it, I suspect she has performed that task many times before.”

Hirkun heard the implicit warning in Letlas’ observation. “It may be that she is one of the Evolved, and that she has been displaced by the dissolution of her original House. And I intend to inquire into that matter when Monolith returns for us. But in the meantime, there is no cause for alarm.”

“I hear the dominance and wisdom in your words,” recited Letlas carefully. “I was simply perplexed that her dossier contained no special mention of her origins, as would be customary if she was Evolved.”

Hirkun was resolved not to be schooled by an upstart, a mere aspirant to the ranks of the Intendant class, but he could not bring himself to rebuke her for being both prudent and perceptive. The lack of greater detail surrounding Nezdeh’s posting to his command was atypical. “Antendant Letlas, your input has been noted. You shall now put this matter from your mind. After all,” he waved his hand at the screen’s depiction of onrushing vaporous drifts, “we are in the high guard position within a gas giant, unable to exit without risking detection by the Aboriginals, and without any means to leave the system until Monolith returns to covertly extract us.” He leaned back in the wide commander’s seat, affecting more ease than he felt. “Even if the irregularities in Nezdeh’s posting were, somehow, indicative of a threat, just what could she — what could anyone — hope to achieve in circumstances such as ours?”

The iris valve dilated as if in direct response to Hirkun’s rhetorical question, opening without the prefatory activation tone. Which is not possible, unless—

Hirkun was on his feet before his startled blink was completed. He measured — only semi-consciously — the rate of the ship’s forward momentum, and how that would complicate his rise into a spin-and-draw crouch. Without so much as a wobble, his Evolved senses combined to place him in two-thirds cover behind the command couch’s heavy back, his liquid-propellant handgun up, his thumb already adjusting the zero-gee setting to a full-gravity regime. He felt a satisfied smile on his face, exulting in the lethal grace with which he now drew a bead on the iris valve—

And felt two impacts in his chest, very near his heart. They staggered him enough to throw off his aim: three percussive blasts from his pistol drilled expanding rounds into the valve’s coaming, less than ten centimeters from where Agra Nezdeh’s cheek was resting, her feet braced, her body mostly behind the bulkhead. Two other recent rotations into his crew — the Evolved Antendant cousins Vranut and Ulpreln Balkether — had rolled into the room under the cover of her fire, were already rising with the speed one would expect from their genelines.

Hirkun willed the circulation in the vicinity of his clustered wounds to decrease, boosted both the arterial and venous peristalsis to compensate for the redirection of that blood flow, triggered a full spectrum endorphin and adrenal cascade, and, in the same moment, expanded his peripheral awareness to take stock of Letlas’ reaction to the mutiny.

She was sheltering behind her seat, her hand conspicuously far away from her sidearm. No real surprise: she is no fool.

Using countervailing hormones to steady the incipient tremor from the adrenal flood, Hirkun tracked over toward Nezdeh. She ducked behind the starboard bulkhead—

— Just as Idrem, the Red Lurker ’s senior lictor, leaned around the port side rim of the iris valve with a needler. The coil rifle emitted two of its characteristic high-frequency snaps. Hirkun felt two hammers rip through his body, one shattering his left hip, the other blasting through his right lung.

As he fell, struggling against the loss of control, he appreciated the conservative tactics that had been used to kill him. The mutineers had known that they would not have sufficient aiming time to be sure of scoring immediately lethal hits upon him. So they had concentrated on inflicting wounds that cost him initiative and reflexes to counteract. That, in turn, had allowed Nezdeh — the apparent ringleader — to stay exposed just long enough to draw his attention away from where Idrem emerged with the far more lethal, but less handy, needler. The traitor had aimed, wisely, at the center of mass: the shattered hip overcame even an Evolved’s ability to stand, and the punctured lung forced Hirkun to choose between conscious control of blood loss, or making a counterattack. In such a rapid exchange as this, there was no time to sequence them: it was one or the other.

Hirkun resolved to shoot as he fell to the deck. He missed, but came close enough to keep the mutineers’ heads down.

But only for a moment. As the Red Lurker ’s master converted his fall into a roll that put him behind his command couch, Vranut Balkether popped around the far edge of Letlas’s couch and fired his own liquid propellant handgun into the prostrate, struggling Hirkun. The Tagmator tried to concentrate on how many of that quick flurry of rounds had hit him, where, and how to respond. I have lost, but as long as I live, I can bargain. And lie. Vengeance can come later.

But he felt control of his body slipping away along with the fixity of purpose that had allowed him to track and respond to his numerous injuries. He saw Nezdeh’s face loom over him and he knew, with dull certainty, that there would be no bargaining.

As her pistol came up level with his forehead, Hirkun reflected that here was the proof of yet another Progenitor Axiom, the one that explained why women should not be sent on field missions:

They are simply too dangerous.

* * *

Nezdeh, late of House Perekmeres, stepped over Hirkun Morsessar’s corpse, fired two rounds into the cowering pilot, and then leveled the weapon at Letlas. “You. Antendant.”

Letlas made the appropriate prostration with reassuring swiftness and enthusiasm. “I hear your words, Agra — no, Berema Nezdeh Kresessek-vah.”

She laughed. “What an inanity. That you style me a Lady of a House for which I am still ostensibly a ’vah, an Aspirant? Your eagerness to flatter leads you to foolishness.”

“I mean to respect, not flatter. But I know not what to call you, Berema.”

Nezdeh considered. “There is merit in that point. Scant merit, but merit still. Look up, Antendant, and tell me: do you wish to live?”