truth,” he admitted. “Now that High Guard worked you over, didn’t she? Med bay tells me you were a right mess when they brought you in. Broken ribs, some fractures. Internal bleeding. Serious stuff. So serious that the only reason we’re having this little chat is because they used nanites on you.”
“I’m good, Colonel. But I’m not good enough to take out a High Guard in hand-to-hand without injuries. Nobody’s that good.”
He shrugged and smiled again. “Now that’s where you and me disagree, Lieutenant. Somebody is that good. Good enough to take one of the daggers in that cute little belt of yours and put it in the back of that High Guard’s neck, right between the second and third vertebrae, without anyone noticing, and there were plenty of people present to notice at the time. Neatly done, that. If I were anything like an expert on such things, I would even go so far as to say ‘professional’.”
“Yeah,” Petrov snickered. “But she’s not an assassin.”
I ignored Belisle’s pup. “Do you know who did it?”
Belisle shook his head. “No. An anonymous tip—we’re still trying to trace who made the call—said a League soldier was in trouble behind the Sarcodinay secure area. Maybe a dozen fellows jumped right up to help, some League boys, and some dock loaders who were just a little eager to spice up a dull day. Honestly, responding to that call probably saved some lives—otherwise they might have been in the wrong part of the bay when the debris hit. I’m told though, that it was quite a pig wrastle.”
I blinked, “Did you just say ‘Pig wrastle’?”
He grinned then, the first honest smile I’d seen from him. “Pardon, Lieutenant. I grew up on a farm out on Paradise. Sometimes it sneaks through. What I mean is that twelve guys fought this one Sarcodinay who had an arm so broken it was flopping around to its own tune, and she was still throwing them around like they were the autumn harvest. Then, she stops. Just like that. It took ‘em all a few seconds to realize she’d stopped fighting back ‘cause she was dead. Boy, you know when I grow up I sure do want to be the boy who can kill someone in front of that many witnesses, and not one of them see me do it.”
“You’ve accounted for all the people who showed up to help?”
He grimaced. “There might be some discrepancies between how many people eyewitnesses say showed up versus how many the checkpoints say crossed over. Looks like we have a phantom.”
“What did the vids show?
He uncrossed one leg, crossed the other back over it, and rested his elbow on his knee. “Funny you should mention that...”
I felt ill. “No vid footage?”
“Not a lick of it. Just gone. Now I hear you’re good with computers. How hard would it be to set up a thing like that?” Belisle’s manner was pleasant and relaxed, and it was easy to see how people could open up to him—even if they knew he was a high ranking member of Szabo Ernak’s secret police.
I fidgeted for a minute, scowled, examined the inside off my coffee cup. “Hard,” I finally said. “Or it should have been hard. This station has a classic set-up. To play with the computers, you had to already have access to the base, which you wouldn’t get until you had played with the computers, which aren’t exactly the friendly sort. Normally, that would be difficult indeed.”
“Yeah, but the Sharks made it easy, almost like they wanted someone to come have a little fun with their toys.”
My lips tightened. “I think someone played too rough.”
Petrov had done a good job of keeping silent, but he couldn’t help himself any longer. “So you admit that you could have erased those files?”
I glanced at him, annoyed. “So could any of the people who have had clearance to be on this station for the last week. Check your files, Petrov. I wasn’t here an hour before everything went to Rio. That’s not much time to set up the root access I would need to pull something like this. Also, and I cannot stress enough, I unconscious at the time.”
“Maybe you’ve got a partner. One of the dockworkers? Someone who was here before you? Someone on standby to clean up in case the job went wrong?”
Kovacs put his hand on Petrov’s arm, but the man was clearly warming up to his stand-up routine. “Come on, Colonel! This is obviously a black bag job, isn’t it? I bet you were after Shaniran, before the treaty ink dries and he goes back home. You were going to get him while he’s vulnerable. Maybe you even rigged that shuttle by some kind of remote—”
I inhaled sharply, both because of how close that comment hit to home and because of the implications. I shook my head, looking at Belisle and wishing for the hundredth time that I didn’t want a cigarette. “He’s new, isn’t he?”
Belisle’s eyes sparkled as he smiled and ducked his head. “Pardon him, Lieutenant. He don’t know.”
Petrov drew back like a spooked cat. “Don’t know what?”
“The Lieutenant here worked on Janus.”
Petrov’s eyes shadowed. He frowned. “I know that. I read the file. That’s why—”
“Maybe you don’t know how personal the staff over there took it when that terrorist group come along and swiped one of their test models. Used it to deliver a nice fat nuclear warhead over to the city of Nalagur on Sarcos, if I recall. Now you grew up on New Mecca, Petrov. Maybe you don’t recall what the Sharks did when they found out?”
Petrov made a great show of examining the carpet under his feet. “No Sir, I remember.”
“I—we made some changes after that,” I said. “If there’s a system out there that’s as hard to hack as an AI, it’s a Janus drives’ navigational computer. Each ship is designed and specially keyed to a specific pilot or small group of pilots. There’s a certification program, security checks. No one else can make the ship jump to hyperspace. They can’t be operated by remote. The pilot has to be physically present in the cockpit.”
“It ain’t foolproof,” Belisle said. “But what ever is? I once found a group of pirates that had hijacked this one ship. Had the old captain chained up in the control room like some kind of whipped dog. As far as the computer knew, everything was golden. Still, it does make me smile when I think of most of the time, when those fellows take over some ship, kill the crew and realize they’ve got themselves nothing more than a whole mess of scrap.”
Petrov stared at me, mouth open. “You mean that ship had to be manned? But who’d be crazy enough—”
“Now you don’t want to follow that train to the end,” Belisle told him. “What did I tell you about Nalagur? It was an accident. The destruction of the Starfire was an unfortunate, unpreventable accident.”
Kovacs straightened. He had a look of wisdom on his face. He was enjoying the show. He’d seen which way the fighting was going to go from the beginning. “Come on, Petrov. Let’s go get some coffee.”
“Oh yes. Cream, no sugar,” I said.
“I’ll take mine black,” Belisle added.
Like your heart, I thought to myself.
Petrov looked slightly perplexed. “But—”
Kovacs shook his head. “I’m amazed you’ve lasted this long, Petrov. Come on.”
“Charming boys,” I said after they were gone.
Belisle shrugged. “They have their uses.”
“Was that true? What you said about the vid files?”
Belisle tipped his chin. “Why would I lie about a thing like that?”
My eyes never left him. It wasn’t a good idea to take your eyes off a man like Belisle. “I can think of a reason or two.”
He stared back serenely. “And I think you should leave this Lorvan business alone.”
“I’m not interested in that.”
“No? MOJ seems to think that’s why you’re here.”
“MOJ?” I frowned. “MOJ’s here?”
He nodded. “A big, intimidating cowboy named Tal-Campbell Stewart. He’s hanging around the landing bay near your shuttle, trying to look like he’s used to zero gee and failing. He is not what I would call a happy man.”
I fought the temptation to cl
ose my eyes. Campbell was the last person I wanted to see. “Great. Just great.”
Belisle uncrossed his legs and leaned forward. He was my best friend, trying to help a pal. “Why don’t you tell me what’s going on? We can work something out.”
“I’m sure that’s what you tell everyone before you have them brought up on sedition.”
The smile left his face then. Maybe we weren’t friends after all. “I have a job to do.”
“Oh, and I bet you’re the best at it, too. But I do remember when Szabo started forming Navy Intelligence. I remember the shake-ups and the midnight arrests. Navy Intel doesn’t put people on trial. They just vanish one night when no one’s looking.”
“You’ve got a lots of balls,” he told me. “Or you’re real stupid.”
“Try real certain that Szabo didn’t bail me out of jail in FirstCity so I could disappear at a more convenient location. If he wanted me dead or gone, he could have arranged it earlier.”
“Sure,” Belisle said with a slight grin back on his face. “But you weren’t investigating the Lorvan murder earlier.”
“I’m not investigating it now, either.”
“Keep it that way.”
“That sounded like a threat.”
He stood up. “Friendly advice. This is going to be a nasty one. It’s gonna get real nasty, real quick, and you’re in a bad position. Someone who looked over what happened in FirstCity, what happened here, would draw the conclusion that you were not an innocent bystander. Now maybe you were just here looking for a little revenge after your friend