‘The Daughter has a good library of forensics pathology skillsofts. It’s not as good as actual training but it will do in a pinch. Would you have me join the investigators looking into the Trafalgar massacre?’
Does this guy ever blink? Miska wondered.
‘Yeah, I really want to know what happened to them. They had fungus growing out of the wounds, you’ll love it.’
Doc gave this some thought and then slowly nodded, smiling slightly.
‘Will Special Agent Corenbloom be joining me?’
Miska suppressed a slight shiver. It was as though the Doc had read her mind. Though the disgraced FBI agent was of course the obvious choice to accompany him.
‘We’ll see,’ Miska said. The problem was she still had to talk him into it.
Why did I let my dad talk me into only taking volunteers for active service? she wondered. It had been so much easier when people just did as she told them or she blew their heads up.
‘Vido, where are you?’ she subvocalised over the comms link. She’d put her clothes back on, somewhat gingerly as a surprising amount of her left side – as well as her face, arm, hand and stomach – still hurt. She didn’t care what was being said. She could accept getting a kicking, like the one she had at the hands of Torricone’s mom. She knew there were better, stronger, more experienced fighters out there. She was self-aware enough to understand the limitations of her own skills, but Colonel Duellona had breezed through her as though she didn’t exist.
As Miska made her way through the bowels of the ship towards the hangar deck she tried to find the least edited footage of the fight to play back. Duellona had done her job well. It hadn’t looked like Pavor/Phobos, the entity that had taken over Teramoto’s body, cutting through Miska and the other Bastards in the warehouse back in New Verona. Instead the Triple S colonel had made it look as though Miska was just hopelessly outclassed in terms of skill level, rather than technology. Torricone had been right, though. If she started screaming that Duellona was a Small God then she would just be labelled a sore loser and a conspiracy theorist. It would have the opposite effect to what she wanted.
‘I’m back at Camp Reisman,’ Vido answered. That meant he was back in his suspended animation pod in GenPop, or general population, and tranced in to the VR construct that Miska and her father used to train the Bastards.
‘What was the verdict as regards the gas mine operation?’ she asked.
‘Legally do-able but it’ll ruffle feathers at MACE,’ Vido told her. She could tell he didn’t approve. ‘You’re going to do it, aren’t you?’
‘Probably,’ she told him.
‘Are you just doing this to piss off Triple S? Because we’ve got lots of other ways we can do that.’
She didn’t really want to analyse the answer too carefully.
‘Any other business?’ Miska asked.
‘Mostly routine stuff. The Ultra reached out to me. He wants Gumbhir on his squad.’ She could tell that Uncle V didn’t enjoy talking about the Nightmare Squad, Miska’s scorched-earth option. ‘Want me to speak to Golda?’
Miska gave the question some thought.
‘What do you think?’
‘I think Gumbhir’s sick enough but I think Grig will probably kill them all anyway.’ Vido meant Rufus Grig, a British vigilante, and the only other person on board the Hangman’s Daughter with special forces experience.
As far as you know. Miska was thinking of the people who had murdered her father, hidden somewhere in the ship’s criminal population.
‘But?’ Miska asked.
‘Golda will try and build an empire …’ Vido told her.
‘Like you,’ Miska said.
‘Well, yes,’ Vido said. She suspected he was suppressing a little irritation. ‘But I’m not sure that’s a bad thing. He’s effectively run an insurgency. Frankly, I think we can use him in a command position, but he should be made to work for it. Gumbhir’s an animal but I think Golda getting what he wants is actually the gain for us.’
‘Enlightened self-interest?’ Miska asked.
‘Indeed.’ It was practically Uncle V’s mantra. He attributed his success to it, well, at least until he fell afoul of the RICO act and ended up in a maximum-security prison barge.
‘Where’s Golda now?’ she asked.
‘He’s in here training,’ Vido told her after a slight delay.
‘Okay, I’ll speak with him once I’ve talked to Corenbloom.’
‘Uh huh,’ Vido said. She could tell he didn’t approve of the crooked FBI agent either. Few criminals did approve of law enforcement when they ended up sharing the same prison air. ‘Look, I know you don’t want any old-life problems landing here but some beefs run deeper than others. It’s worth keeping Mass and Corenbloom away from each other. I don’t think Mass could help himself.’
Miska wanted to ask but she couldn’t shake the feeling it just legitimised whatever the problem was. Instead she closed the comms link down.
Corenbloom, Franklyn, had been a special agent in the FBI’s Criminal Investigative Division. Although he was a trained behavioural analyst in the CID’s violent crimes section, he had used his position to set up a protection racket for criminal street gangs in New Erebus, a ski resort and vice capital on Barney Prime’s night side. He had finally been caught after he had arranged to have his partner, who had been his accomplice in the protection rackets, killed because he had insisted on a larger cut of the profits. Hated by his victims and the Mafia, whom he had acted against to protect his ‘clients’, it was astonishing to Miska that nobody had managed to kill him in the exercise yard under the Hangman’s Daughter’s old regime. Even now nobody wanted to work with him during training and he hadn’t volunteered for active duty.
She could see the prisoners, wearing printed battle dress uniforms and carrying heavy packs, running around the cavernous hangar deck. They were escorted by guard droids. The lead droid had a screen mounted on it. From the screen
