The Anchorite nodded.
“May I be permitted a question of my own?”
Skilling shrugged. “gO AHEAD.”
“You’re not here for slaves. This whole world is home to only seventeen officially registered people. You’re here for Hans Trapp. Am I right in assuming you need him to open a door?”
Skilling slapped his thigh. “EXCELLENT! MOST PERCEPTIVE. i HAVE INDEED COME INTO A MOST SINGULAR PIECE OF PROPERTY, THE USE OF WHICH IS SADLY DENIED ME ONLY BY THE FACT THAT SOME CHURL HAS PUT IT IN A LOCKED BOX. a LOCKED BOX WHICH, OF ITSELF, IS A MOST AMAZING PIECE OF WORK. eVEN MY EMPLOYEE, THE REDOUBTABLE mR. sKUSE, IS INCAPABLE OF OPENING IT.” He waved cheerily across the plain at the grey-cloaked man, who did not trouble to wave back.
“Is it a weapon?” said the Anchorite.
Skilling considered this. “You know, I really have no idea. All I know is that the vessel carrying it was escorted by three first-rate void Superiority cruisers, and that those CRUISERS were ambushed and destroyed by a Made squadron in the first year of the Great Big War. The vessel itself was left drifting; very possibly the Made did not realize its importance. Now both vessel and cargo have fallen into my hands.”
“Was the vessel in question called the Dawn Treacher?”
Skilling blinked. He peered into the Anchorite’s eyes curiously, as if trying to see the ideas being formed inside the head. He looked over at Didier.
“Are we sure that telepath is still somewhere in Third Landing?” he said. “this one appears to be reading my thoughts.”
“Have I earned myself another ten seconds of life?” said the Anchorite wryly.
Skilling waved a hand indulgently. “Why stop at TEN?” he said. “Have twenty if you will. Thirty! I am in a generous mood.”
“I only needed ten,” said the Anchorite.
“Why—” said Skilling, and never finished the sentence.
“STOP,” said the Anchorite.
The robot Devil stopped, frozen in the act of severing the neck of Didier. Skilling’s corpse hit the ground, whooshing out dead breath, blood and fart gas as it impacted. The Anchorite heard several ribs snap as it did so.
“He is dead now,” said the Anchorite.
Didier nodded. His face was ashen.
The Anchorite snapped his fingers; the robot Devil’s claws retracted from Didier’s throat. It stood to attention. It had come here in a hurry; parts of it were glowing.
“Who is in charge of me now?” said Didier.
“You,” said the Anchorite sourly. “If you wish it.”
“I do not wish it,” said Didier, with a horrified expression. “You killed Mr. Skilling; you are now in charge of me.” He bowed curtly. “I require instruction.”
“Good grief,” said the Anchorite. “I don’t know. Walk north till your hat floats.”
“Sir, the slave does not understand the instructions of his master, sir.”
The Anchorite, however, was now staring up into what Mount Ararat called a sky. The air was full of twinkling points of light that were not stars; white noise in heaven. Through that static, something brighter was approaching, moving fast, decelerating on a pentagon of fire.
“What is that?”
The Revenue Grey Ops ship Death and Taxes slowed on a plume of flame at the very last moment, minimizing the time during which she would be exposed to enemy ground fire. Maximum use of the retros was needed, as Ararat’s atmosphere was not thick enough to provide much help in deceleration. The ship had kept Mount Ararat between herself and the enemy for as much of her approach as possible, which had meant staying under thrust constantly for several hours; had her crew been normal men, this would have caused blackouts, thrombosis and vomiting. But when Death and Taxes opened her parachutes, spread her atmosphere wings, and slammed down into the South End Saddle, grey-clad heavily-armed qualified tax accountants poured out of her without even breaking step.
The Saddle and Third Landing comms towers died first, victims of an anti-radar missile which keened down through the air broadcasting through tinny speakers: “EMP WEAPON! EMP WEAPON! CLEAR THE AREA! CLEAR THE AREA!” By the time Death and Taxes was on the apron, the vessel purporting to be the Revenue vessel Render Unto Caesar had had her avionics nose shot off and her main plasma vents sealed shut by laser fire. From that point on, any of Skilling’s crewmen foolish enough to attempt an EVA carrying anything Death and Taxes’ sensors construed to be a weapon rapidly became charcoal fused into a circle of smoking glass in the runway.
The air was full of falling chaff litter, reeking of dimethylhydrazine and magnesium. The amount to which Ararat’s limited atmospheric oxygen was being used up now activated monoxide alarms in both hemispheres. Through the incandescent countermeasure snow moved grey-uniformed snipers, picking off running men with specially-designed rounds that recorded the DNA of their victim, matched it against the central Revenue database, and added the cost of the shooting to the victim’s current tax statement. Those men unlucky enough never to have been centrally registered had tax accounts created and immediately debited with back tax bills appropriate to their ages. Mr. Skuse, hit in the back by an Accounts Receivable round, squealed in pain and horror as the bullet inside him extended a metre-long aerial back out of the entry wound and began flashing rhythmically to attract clerical processing staff following in the combatants’ wake, accompanied by a stentorian bellow of “CASE FOR SPECIAL ATTENTION! CASE FOR SPECIAL ATTENTION!”
A small group of AFV’s, infantry riding on their upper hulls, rolled into Third Landing, the target acquisition systems on their weapons acquiring and just as quickly ignoring as threats a gaggle of confused goats, hyraxes, Persian cats and magpies. Nowhere in the whole shabby one and only thoroughfare could a human being be found. The wreck of an EVA rover was bobbing in a pond that adjoined a secure State Penitentiary across the street. The communications tower, although present, was broadcasting no more radio traffic than a totem pole. Occasional dead bodies of Armitage’s men lay in obscene positions in the waterless dirt, appearing variously to have choked to death on their own fists, brained themselves on the stone walls of nearby houses, and shot themselves in the anus with their own weapons.
At the very end of the main street was a halted EVA rover with three people bent over it, arguing vehemently—two men in dishevelled Revenue uniforms and an unthinkably tall but undeniably female farmer’s daughter wearing her brother’s overalls.
The EVAFV ground to a halt in a cloud of dust, its pilot running the tracks for an extra few metres in order to maintain forward visibility. Armed men leapt from the hull and secured the area around it whilst still more armed men dashed into the first line of houses, directed to clear them one by one. The turret on the vehicle, meanwhile, tracked menacingly up and down the street.
The officer commanding, his eyes obscured by an anti-laser visor, ran up to the rover, halted with his weapon at low port, and addressed the two putative Revenue men.
“Senior Tax Comptroller Vitaly Lahti, Special Revenue Service. We happened to be in the area conducting a heavy audit on several local billionaires and received a distress call. Are you in distress? Not being in distress would constitute grounds for a chargeable addition to your tax statement for this current period.”
The shorter Revenue man swallowed hard and stared down at the device strapped to the back of the EVA rover as if violently ill. “Erm, it is safe to say we are in distress. What do you know about defusing nuclear weapons?”
His tall, scarred-faced colleague snickered in a way unbecoming a Revenue officer.
Comptroller Lahti frowned. “A little. What form does the fuse take?” He flipped up his visor, revealing eyes blue as acid lakes. “Aha, a simple time switch with keyed firing authorisation.”
“Which wire do we cut?” said the tall girl, her voice tremulous.
“Well,” mused the Comptroller, “this red wire here is the fibre optic link to the simultaneous firing triggers, and this blue one here is the power to the d
etonator, the fusion core apparently having no protective shielding and looking pretty subcritical in mass, so—” he raised his weapon and fired point blank into the machine, which erupted in a cloud of searing white sparks. He lowered the gun and fanned his hand over the device, which was now a tangle of melted wires. No nuclear detonation appeared to have happened.
“That should do it,” he said cheerfully. He looked up at the two Revenue men, and pulled his Revenue officer’s sash around his body until the warrant badge showed. “Comptroller Lahti 3412713 identifying.”
The shorter man showed his own warrant. “Collector 9315824 Aidid identifying.”
Lahti turned to the taller man.
“Do you not understand?” said the scarred face. “I have skipped here out of the frying pan like an idiot, because I was afraid of being shot. But he is still here. The man out of the machine. He is more dangerous than this little trifle.” He tapped the box. “He will kill us; he will kill us all. And once he takes your ship, he will take his anger to the stars.”
Comptroller Lahti looked across the nuclear weapon at Aidid and Unity.
“It’s true, I’m afraid,” said Unity. “An escapee from the Penitentiary. This man here and his associates hijacked a Revenue vessel in an attempt to cut their way into the gaol to free a prisoner.”
The scarred man grinned in glee. “And what a prisoner! We got the wrong man, sprung the wrong jack out of the box. You and I are dead as the lost art of conversation. Those who are capable of flying a starship might live a little while longer.” He turned his sash badge round to face front. “Officer XYZ One Zillion Armitage reporting.”
“Impersonating a Revenue officer,” said Comptroller Lahti. “That will cost you dear in both years and tax credits. I am going to shoot you in the leg now. When a processor arrives to talk to you, please render up your central registration code if the round has not identified it, or it will go badly for you.”
“You don’t understand,” guffawed Armitage. “You are as dead as I am—OUCH!”
Having shot Armitage in the leg, Lahti turned to address a Revenue Service trooper approaching at a run from the Penitentiary, accompanied by a squat, heavy automaton trundling on three stubby legs and bristling with weapons orifices.
“This is the Warden from the Penitentiary,” explained the trooper. “He, it, believes three of its prisoners have escaped.”
“Which three?” said Armitage, grinning in agony on the ground.
“He is not at liberty to divulge that information. However, one of them is a highly dangerous Grade Seven telepath.” The trooper bowed curtly to Unity. “It is not safe for your people to be here. You should prepare yourself to be evacuated at a nominal zero-profit charge to your personal tax account.”
“I HAVE TRACKED THE TELEPATH’S DNA MOVING IN A SOUTHERLY DIRECTION FROM HERE,” said the Warden. “LEADING TOWARD A STARSHIP PARKING AREA.”
“I have seen this man,” said Unity. “He believed he was the Devil.”
The Warden’s turret turned towards Unity. She stood still, uncertain whether what was being directed at her was a sensor or a weapon.
“THAT INFORMATION IS CONSISTENT WITH THE PRISONER’S PERSONAL PROFILE,” said the Warden.
The southern horizon—from Third Landing, all horizons were southerly—was suddenly thrown into saw-toothed relief as something horribly, infernally bright blazed behind it.
The Comptroller dropped his laserglare visor and began yelling commands into his communicator, then stood around conducting a one-sided conversation with the inside of his own helmet. Finally, he turned and condescended to speak to Aidid and Unity again.
“Someone has just taken off from your landing strip,” he said, “in the vessel we disabled. She’s running on chemical boosters only, and stick only, with no avionics. There’s no way the pilot will get her as far as orbit, certainly not in these gravitational gradients, and—”
Three shining points of light rose toward the zenith, then suddenly became the focus of a three-dimensional ripple in space-time as the object that contained them vanished from the conventional universe.
Mr. Lahti gawped up into the sky.
“A considerable pilot to get so high on chemical boosters alone,” he said. “A considerable navigator to engage FTL so deep in a gravity well.”
“Whoever he is,” said the other trooper, cupping his hand over an earful of radio traffic in his helmet, “he also killed two of our men taking off. As soon as the ship floated on its retros, it turned arse-end on to Death and Taxes and fired its orbital boosters at spitting distance. There’s a ten-metre hole down our left side, and all our sensors are blind with unburnt heptyl. We couldn’t see to shoot shit, otherwise he’d never have made orbit. He’s also abandoned a heavy payload on the ground. It seems to have been pushed out of the ship to allow it to make orbit. A secure packing container of some sort. The fall from the cargo bay seems hardly to have scratched it.”
“It won’t have,” said Mr. Aidid.
“We can try and cut it open,” suggested the trooper to Comptroller Lahti.
“You can try,” said Mr. Aidid. “That container is the reason why Armitage, Skilling and Skuse were here. They couldn’t open it, and they’d tried everything with the exception of a skilled cracksman imprisoned in the Penitentiary. Your men will notice minor abrasions on it which were inflicted by light field artillery. Whatever is in there was put there in the days of the Dictatorship, and the Dictator evidently didn’t want it to fall into the wrong hands.”
An emerald insect settled unnoticed on Mr. Aidid’s shoulder.
“Fascinating,” said the Comptroller. “We will take charge of this container. Is it small enough to fit into our cargo bay?”
The trooper nodded. “Only a cubic metre or so. But Forward sensors indicate it has a mass of over nine hundred tonnes.”
“Hence the reason for slinging it out as waste payload. We’d need a reinforced cargo bay to carry it. For the time being, detail a squad of men to bury it, and spread the word among the men that it does not exist.”
“Don’t you want to know what’s in it?” said Unity.
The Comptroller shrugged. “Money, thieved art treasures, a weapon prototype of some sort or another. If men are willing to kill each other over it, the less my men know the better. The appropriate authorities will be informed; whatever is in the box, it will be liquidated and put towards the Dictator’s back taxes. He is still our most wanted individual in real terms, though I appreciate your escapees are a pressing local concern—”
“Why would the escapee leave?” said Unity suddenly. “He was such a powerful telepath I half thought he was the Devil. And I’m sorry to point this out, but you’ve all just come down here and played right into his hands.”
The Comptroller shrugged. “Maybe he figured it was best to get out while he had a chance.” He turned to the warden. “You’re missing three prisoners?”
The Warden’s YES light blinked. “ALL HIGHLY DANGEROUS.”
The Comptroller turned to his trooper. “Set up a perimeter, conduct emergency repairs, and send out another distress missile for assistance.” He nodded to Unity. “Ma’am, we’re going to have to ask you to spread the word and ensure nobody comes within a kilometre of your landing field until all prisoners are either accounted for or known beyond reasonable doubt to have escaped offworld.”
Aidid cleaned his throat. “Comptroller, my own crew are still being held captive on their ship in the Verdastelo system.”
“I’m afraid not,” said Lahti. “An Admiralty frigate passed through there several hours ago. Render Unto Caesar had had her fuel lines opened and her crew executed in a common Slaver amusement, putting them into the airlock and stepping up the air pressure until one of them grew narcotic enough to open the outer lock. Commonly there is betting on the time it takes, the first victim to break, and so on. The crew were found in orbit around the craft. At that distance from the star, not only their blood, but the air around
them had frozen solid.”
“So the men who did this are still out there,” said Aidid. The colour had drained from his face. “Comptroller—are there any vacancies in the Special Revenue Service?”
Lahti eyed Aidid warily. “The SRS commonly rejects applicants whose psychological profile indicates a desire for revenge. It is a hard selection process, a harder induction, and a still harder life. In the Homeaway system, the site of our last audit, extensive legal advice had been hired by the auditees, much of it heavily armed. The entire Toilette Douche Turks and Caicos Loopholeers were waiting for us.”
Aidid paled. “The most feared tax accountants in space.”
The Comptroller nodded. “Three of my section were fatally wounded, two of them with posthumous suits for invasion of privacy lodged against their estates. And,” he said, eyeing the close and tense proximity of Unity and Aidid’s elbows, “it is unheard-of for a married man to be selected. It is unacceptable that any officer of the Service might have a threat placed against the life of his or her spouse or child by an auditee.”
Mr. Aidid turned and, despite the fact that he had never spoken to her before on any subjects but tax piracy, kidnapping, the sending of distress signals, and the disarmament of nuclear weapons, looked—upwards—directly into Unity’s eyes.
Still more incredibly, Unity said: “It’s okay. I can wait.”
Aidid turned back to Lahti. “Comptroller, it remains only for me to say that this world appears not to have received a tax audit since the inception of the New and Improved Era.”
Lahti’s eyebrows raised. “Indeed. This is a serious situation, one requiring an immediate intensive investigation, would you not say?”
“Indeed, Comptroller. It is my belief that certain tax breaks and colonization incentives offered to startup settlements have not been claimed in this case. I have, in the free time afforded me by my kidnapping, conducted a brief preliminary study which I could with your permission firm up into a more detailed investigation, but my initial findings are that Central Revenue owes Mount Ararat ten credits, eleven cents.”