“What?” That was more than four times as long as his usual off-Watch.
“You know, new faces and all that.” There were branches of his Watch tree that had not had much time. Tomas and the manager committee—Qiwi and Ezr included!—had thought everyone should get hands-on time and exposure to the usual training courses.
“You’re starting a little early.” And 50Msec was longer than she expected.
“Yeah. Well, you have to start someplace.” He looked away from the video pov. At Trixia? When he looked back, his tone was less impatient but somehow more urgent. “Look, Qiwi. I’m going to be on ice for a big fifty, and even afterwards I’ll be on a low duty cycle for a while.” He raised a hand as if to forestall objections. “I’m not complaining! I participated in the decisions myself…. But Trixia will be on-Watch all that time. That’s longer than she has ever been alone. There’ll be nobody to stand up for her.”
Qiwi wished she could reach out and comfort him. “No one will harm her, Ezr.”
“Yeah, I know. She’s toovaluable to harm. Just like your father.” Something flickered in his eyes, but it wasn’t the usual anger. Poor Ezr was begging her. “They’ll keep her body working, they’ll keep her moderately clean. But I don’t want her hassled any more than she already is. Keep an eye on her, Qiwi. You have real power, at least over small fish like Trud Silipan.”
It was the first time Ezr had really asked her for help.
“I’ll watch out for her, Ezr,” Qiwi said softly. “I promise.”
After he rang off, Qiwi sat unmoving for several seconds. Strange that a phone call that was an accident and a scam should have such an impact. But Ezr had always had that effect on her. When she was thirteen, Ezr Vinh had seemed the most wonderful man in the universe—and the only way she could get his attention was by goading him. Such teenage crushes should vape away, right? Occasionally she wondered if the Diem massacre had somehow stunted her soul, trapped her affections as they were in the last innocent days before all the death…. Whatever the reason, it felt good that she could do something for him.
Maybe paranoia was contagious. Luan Peres dead. Now Ezr gone for even longer than they had planned.I wonder who actually specified thatWatch change? Qiwi looked back through her cache. The schedule change was nominally from the Watch-manager committee… with Ritser Brughel doing the actual sign-off. That happened often enough; one Podmaster or the other had to sign for all such changes.
Qiwi’s taxi continued its slow coast upward. From this distance, the rockpile was a craggy jumble, Diamond Two in sunlight, the glare obscuring all but the brightest stars. It might have been a wilderness scene except for the regular form of the Qeng Ho temp gleaming off to the side. With augmented vision, Qiwi could see the dozens of warehouses of the L1 system. Down in the shade of the rockpile were Hammerfest and the distillery, and the arsenal at L1-A. In the spaces around orbited the temp, the warehouses, the junked and semi-junked starships that had brought them all here. Qiwi used them as a kind of soft auxiliary to the electric jets. It was a well-tended dynamical system, even though it did look like chaos compared to the close mooring of the early Exile.
Qiwi took in the configuration with practiced eyes, even as her mind considered the much more treacherous problems of political intrigue. Ritser Brughel’s private domain, the old QHSInvisible Hand, was outward from the pile, less than two thousand meters from her taxi; she would pass less than fifteen hundred meters from its throat.Hmm. So, what if Ritser had kidnapped Luan Peres? That would be his boldest move ever against Tomas.And maybe it’s not the only thing. If Ritser could get away with this, there might be other deaths.Ezr.
Qiwi took a deep breath.Just take one problem at a time. So: SupposeFloria is right and Luan still lives, a toy in Ritser’s private space? There were limits to how fast Tomas could act against another Podmaster. If she complained, and there was any delay at all, Luan might die for real—and all the evidence could just… disappear.
Qiwi turned in her seat, got a naked-eye view of theHand. She was less than seventeen hundred meters out now. It might be days before she could wangle a configuration this slick. The starship’s stubby form was so close that she could see the emergency repair welds, and the blistering where X-ray fire had struck the ramscoop’s projection flange. Qiwi knew the architecture of theInvisible Hand about as well as anyone at L1; she had lived on that ship through years of the voyage here, had used it as her hands-on example of every ship topic in her schooling. She knew its blind spots…. More important, she had Podmaster-level access. It was just one of the many things that Tomas trusted her with. Until now she had never used it so, um, provocatively, but—
Qiwi’s hands were moving even before she finished rationalizing her scheme. She keyed in her personal crypto link to Tomas, and spoke quickly, outlining what she had learned and what she suspected—and what she planned to do. She squirted the message off, delivery contingent on a deadman condition. Now Tomas would know no matter what, and she would have something to threaten Ritser with if he caught her.
Sixteen hundred meters from theInvisible Hand. Qiwi pulled down her coverall hood, and cycled the taxi’s atmosphere. Her intuition and her huds agreed on the jump path she must follow, the trajectory that would take her down theHand ’s throat, in the ship’s blind spot all the way. She popped the taxi’s hatch, waited till her acrobatic instinct saidgo —and leaped into the emptiness.
Qiwi finger-walked down theHand ’s empty freight hold. Using a combination of Tomas’s authority and her own special knowledge of the ship’s architecture, she had reached the level of the living quarters without tripping any audible alarms. Every few meters, Qiwi put her ear to the wall, and simply listened. She was so close to on- Watch country that she could hear other people. Things sounded very ordinary, no sudden movement, no anxious talk….
Qiwi moved faster, feeling something like the giddy anger of her long-ago confrontation with Ritser Brughel —only now she had more sense, and was correspondingly more afraid. During their common Watches since that time in the park, she had often felt Ritser’s eyes upon her. She had always expected that there would be another confrontaion. As much as it was to honor her mother’s memory, Qiwi’s fanatical gym work—all the martial arts— was intended as insurance against Ritser and his steel baton.Lot ofgood it will do, if he pots me with a wire gun. But Ritser was such an idiot, he’d never kill her like that; he’d want to gloat. Today, if it came to it, she’d have time to threaten him with the message she’d left Tomas. She pushed down her fear, and moved closer to the sound of weeping.
Qiwi hovered over an access hatch. Suddenly her shoulders and arms were tense. Strange, random thoughts skittered through her mind.I willremember. I will remember. Freaky craziness.
Beyond this point, her only invisibility would be in her Podmaster passkey. Very likely that would not be enough.But I just need a few seconds. Qiwi checked her recorder and data link one last time… and slipped through the hatch, into a crew corridor.
Lord.For a moment, Qiwi just stared in astonishment. The corridor was the size that she remembered. Ten meters farther on, it curved right, toward the Captain’s living quarters. But Ritser had pasted wallpaper on all four walls, and the pictures were a kind of swirling pink. The air stank of animal musk. This was a different universe from the
Like they had a life of their own, her shoulders cramped tight, aching to bounce off the wall and race back the way she had come.Do I need anymore proof? Yes. Just a look at the data system with a local override. That would mean more than any number of hysterical stories about Ritser’s choice of video and music.
Door by door, she moved up the corridor. These had been staff officer quarters, but used by the Watch crew on the voyage from Triland. She had lived in the second room from the end for three years—and she really didn’t want to know what that looked like now. The Captain’s planning room was just beyond the bend. She flicked her passkey at the lock, and the door slid open. Inside… this was no planning room. It looked like a cross between a gym and a bedroom. And the walls were again covered with video wallpaper. Qiwi pulled herself over a strange, gauntleted rack and settled down, out of sight of the doorway. She touched her huds, asked for a local override connection to the ship’s net. There was a pause as her location and authorization were checked, and then she was looking at names and dates and pictures.Yes! Ol’ Ritser was running his own small-scale coldsleep business right here on theInvisible Hand. Luan Peres was listed… and here she was listed as living, on-Watch!
That’s enough; time to get out of this madhouse. But Qiwi hesitated an instant longer. There were so many names here, familiar names and faces from long ago. Little death glyphs sat by each picture. She had been a child when she last saw these people, but not like this… these faces were variously sullen, sleeping, terribly bruised or burned. The living, the dead, the beaten, the fiercely resisting.This is from before Jimmy Diem. She knew there had
