Ray Aldridge - The Orpheus Machine

She went on with her story. After a period of relative calm, the battles had begun in earnest, and in the first three days, almost thirty percent of SeaStack’s combatants had died, by the estimates of her unit’s strategists. The weaker Lords had been destroyed, their stacks broken open and sterilized like so many termite mounds.

Then the violence had waned. Since then, the fighting had been periodic and intense, and another large portion of the city’s population had gone to feed the margars.

“But there’s no resolution, no matter how many die, which is why most of the merc units in the city sent representatives to this meeting. When you grabbed me, I was sure you were a Lord’s man, come to shut my mouth.” She grinned. “Are you sure you’re not?”

“I’m not,” Ruiz said. “Why do they want me so bad?”

She developed an incongruously coy expression. “I have a theory. Which was one reason I suggested my plan at the meeting.”

“Tell me.”

She hesitated. “Will you kill me if I guess true?”

“No… I just won’t tell you if you’re right.” Ruiz smoothed all expression from his face.

“A good gambler mask you have, Ruiz Aw,” Diamond Bob said, and then she smiled an oddly guileless smile. “All right. This is what I think: Because they associate you with this great treasure.”

“Why so?” asked Ruiz.

“Because of your connection with Publius the monster maker. They know you hired fighters for Publius — and Publius is connected to the changeling Lords, the puppets whose discovery began the war. He made them, or so it seems.” She shrugged. “And whatever job you did for Publius appears to have precipitated the first outbreak of fighting. Some unknown force destroyed his laboratories, and Publius disappeared. No one knows where he went, but his puppets were apparently equipped with some sort of deadman switch, so they lost any semblance of volition after he was gone — when he could no longer contact them with instructions. But none of this came out in the first days of the fighting.”

She stopped and gave Ruiz a shrewd look. “Any of this useful to you?”

“Maybe,” he answered.

“Well. So, Publius had some sort of vast scheme going, which may or may not have had anything to do with the Lords’ treasure. I think it did. He apparently had an ally — hence the deadman switches in his puppets. Insurance against treachery.”

Ruiz shook his head. “But why would they think I would know anything about Publius’s scheme?”

“Mostly, I suppose, because you’re the only loose end they can see in the fabric of the scheme. You might be this unknown ally.”

“Oh,” said Ruiz. “I take it you don’t think so.”

“No. I’m sorry to say, you just don’t have the air of a kingpin, Ruiz Aw. You’re more the cornered animal type. I think all you want to do is get away from Sook in one piece. I’m astonished to see you again, in fact.”

Ruiz wanted to tell her that she was absolutely correct, but he didn’t dare. “I was astonished to see you,” he said.

“So you say. Anyway… remember when you came to me and asked about Remint y’Yubere? And you spoke of a woman, a slaver called Corean? Of the connection between Corean and Alonzo Yubere? Yes?”

“Yes,” Ruiz said. He attempted to prevent any reaction from reaching his face.

“Well. No one but me knows of the connection between you and Yubere — and this is probably the reason no one has mounted a heavy assault on the Yubere stronghold. So I believe. If the Lords had found out what you told me, they’d have scoured the Yubere stack down to the magma. Right after they’d fought each other into extinction for the right to do so.” She shook her head wearily. “They really have gone mad. But anyway, you should be grateful to me for my silence… even if I was only waiting for the most opportune moment to make use of my speculations.”

“Why do you say that?” He had found out the crucial piece of information — Yubere’s stronghold remained intact — but he was curious.

She looked at him, wearing a crooked half-smile. “You’re no longer interested in Corean? In her whereabouts? In anything connected with Yubere’s stronghold?”

He shook his head. “I long ago removed what I valued from Yubere’s custody.” He told this half-truth easily.

“Oh,” she said. “Well, I had a bit of information about Corean… but I guess you wouldn’t be interested.”

“I might,” he said cautiously.

She laughed. “You might? I work for Battalion LeFebvre; you know it? Good intelligence arm, right? Three days ago one of our agents, monitoring a long-range spybead, saw a woman return to the Yubere stronghold with several prisoners. The woman matched your description of the slaver Corean. She unloaded three prisoners and went in.”

“So?” Ruiz strove for an air of casual curiosity.

“Our agent described the prisoners. The descriptions exactly matched those of three slaves you left with me, the ones Remint took.” She shook her head, her eyes full of some odd amusement. “Have you noticed how full of coincidence life seems to be?”

“Not really,” he answered. “In fact, I’m not sure I believe in coincidence anymore. Well, that’s interesting, but irrelevant to my current purposes.”

And then, for the next half-hour, Ruiz quizzed Diamond Bob on the military situation in SeaStack — troop strengths, dispositions, fortifications — all the things an ambitious warlord would need to know. As they spoke, he heard the shuffle and clatter of the returning mercenaries.

By the time he had drained her of all the news he could think to ask for, she had become uncertain again.

“Perhaps I underestimated you, Ruiz Aw,” she said, biting her lip and shifting within her bonds. “Are you raising an army? I’d enlist, if so. The situation here is volatile, but exploitable, for a properly ruthless person.”

Ruiz looked at her, expressionless. Perhaps he could make use of her suspicions. “I won’t say. But when I’m gone, talk to the other delegates. Don’t use my name, unless you’d trust that person with your life.”

Diamond Bob nodded somberly. “All right. Will you release me?”

He shook his head. “No, but I’ll leave the access open and someone will hear you.”

Her thin mouth trembled. “I must rely on a kindly mercenary?”

“I’m sorry,” he said. He smoothed the skinmask back into place, donned his helmet, and left. He didn’t look back.

When he was halfway to the lift cages, he heard fighting break out in the resumed meeting — the sound of weapons and the screams of the wounded. He ran the rest of the way and was well above the sub-basement when the first survivors came from the hall.

The Roderigan destroyer crushed its way into the Spindinny’s lagoon as the last of the escapees were fleeing down the adjacent waterways. Gejas stood in the navigation pod, watching the blips speed away.

“Something has happened here,” he said to the destroyer’s commander. “Decant a squad of cyborgs. I’ll reconnoiter.”

He hoped, as he waited for his squad to reach the deck, that he might find Ruiz Aw here. Where else would a man like Ruiz Aw go for sanctuary in SeaStack? And he could easily justify his lust to see Ruiz Aw again — who knew what the slayer might have learned in the virtual? Perhaps he was here in SeaStack to take the treasure for his own.

He took his squad through the Spindinny in a methodical manner, stunning everything that surrendered, for later interrogation — and killing everything that resisted.

When he reached the sub-basement and saw the charnel house that the meeting hall had become, he smiled in manic approval. “He’s been here,” said Gejas to no one in particular.