Ethan of Athos b-6 Read online

  "Aw, shit," yelled Commander Quinn, and bounded forward. The stunner clattered across the catwalk and spun over the side to whistle through the air and burst to sizzling shards far below. Her clutching swipe was just too late to connect with Okita's trouser leg. Blood winked from her torn fingernail. Okita followed the stunner, headfirst.

  Ethan slithered bonelessly down to crouch on the mesh. Her boots, at his eye level, arched to tiptoe as she peered down over the side. "Cee, I feel really bad about that," she remarked, licking her bleeding finger. "I've never killed a man by accident before. Unprofessional."

  "You again," Ethan croaked.

  She gave him a cat's grin. "What a coincidence."

  The body splayed on the deck below stopped twitching. Ethan stared down whitely. "I'm a doctor. Shouldn't we go down there and, um…"

  "Too late, I think," said Commander Quinn. "But I wouldn't get too misty-eyed over that creep. Quite aside from what he almost did to you just now, he helped kill eleven people on Jackson's Whole, five months ago, just to cover up the secret I'm trying to find out."

  His syrup-slow logic spoke. "If it's a secret people are killed just for knowing, wouldn't it make a lot more sense to try to avoid finding it out?" He clutched his shredded acuity. "Who are you really, anyway? Why are you following me?"

  "Technically, I'm not following you at all. I'm following Ghem-colonel Luyst Millisor, and the so-charming Captain Rau, and their two goons—ah, one goon. Millisor is interested in you, therefore I am too. Q. E. D.—Quinn Excites Dismay."

  "Why?" he whimpered wearily.

  She sighed. "If I had arrived at Jackson's Whole two days ahead of them instead of two days behind them, I could tell you. As for the rest—I really am a commander in the Dendarii Mercenaries, and everything I've told you is true, except that I'm not on home leave. I'm on assignment. Think of me as a rent-a-spy. Admiral Naismith is diversifying our services."

  She squatted beside him, checked his pulse, eyes and eyelids, battered reflexes. "You look like death warmed over, Doctor."

  "Thanks to you. They found your tracer. Decided I was a spy. Questioned me…" He found he was shivering uncontrollably.

  Her lips made a brief grim line. "I know. Sorry. I did save your life just now, I hope you noticed. Temporarily."

  "Temporarily?"

  She nodded toward the deck below. "Colonel Millisor is going to be quite excited about you, after this."

  "I'll go to the authorities—"

  "Ah—hm. I hope you'll think better of that. In the first place, I don't think the authorities would be able to protect you quite well enough. Secondly, it would blow my cover. Until now I don't think Millisor suspected I existed. Since I have an awful lot of friends and relatives around here, I'd just as soon keep it that way, Millisor and Rau being—what they are. You see my point?"

  He felt he ought to argue with her. But he was sick and weak—and, it also occurred to him, still very high in the air. Green vertigo plucked at him. If she decided to send him after Okita… "Yeah," he mumbled. "Uh, what—what are you going to do with me?"

  She planted her hands on her hips and frowned thoughtfully down upon him. "Not sure yet. Don't know if you're an ace or a joker. I think I'll keep you up my sleeve for a while, until I can figure out how best to play you. With your permission," she added in palpable afterthought.

  "Stalking-goat," he muttered darkly.

  She quirked an eyebrow at him. "Perhaps. If you can think of a better idea, trot it out."

  He shook his head, which made shooting pains ricochet around inside his skull and yellow pinwheels counter-rotate before his eyes. At least she didn't seem to be on the same side as his recent captors. The enemy of my enemy—my ally… ?

  She hoisted him to his feet and pulled his arm across her shoulders to thread their way down stairs and ladders to the docking bay floor. He noticed for the first time that she was several centimeters shorter than himself. But he had no inclination to spot her points in a free-for-all.

  When she released him he sank to the deck in a dizzy stupor. She poked around Okita's body, checking pulse points and damages. Her lips thinned ironically. "Huh. Broken neck." She sighed, and stood regarding the corpse and Ethan with much the same narrow calculation.

  "We could just leave him here," she said. "But I rather fancy giving Colonel Millisor a mystery of his own to solve. I'm tired of being on the damn defensive, lying low, always one move behind. Have you ever given thought to the difficulty of getting rid of a body on a space station? I'll bet Millisor has. Bodies don't bother you, do they? What with your being a doctor and all, I mean."

  Okita's fixed stare was exactly like that of a dead fish, glassily reproachful. Ethan swallowed. "I actually never cared much for that end of the life-cycle," he explained. "Pathology and anatomy and so forth. That's why I went for Rep work, I guess. It was more, um… hopeful." He paused a while. His intellect began to crunch on in spite of himself. "Is it hard to get rid of a body on a space station? Can't you just shove it out the nearest airlock, or down an unused lift tube, or something?"

  Her eyes were bright with stimulation. "The airlocks are all monitored. Taking anything out, even an anonymous bundle, leaves a record in the computers. And it would last forever out there. Same objection applies to chopping it up and putting it down an organics disposer. Eighty or so kilos of high-grade protein leaves too big a blip in the records. Besides, it's been tried. Very famous murder case, a few years back. The lady's still in therapy, I believe. It would definitely be noticed."

  She flopped down beside him to sit with her chin on her knees, arms wrapped around her boots and flexing, not rest but nervous energy contained. "As for stashing it whole anywhere inside the Station—well, the safety patrols are nothing compared to the ecology cops. There isn't a cubic centimeter of the Station that doesn't get checked on a regular schedule. You could keep moving it around, but…

  "I think I have a better idea. Yes. Why not? As long as I'm going to commit a crime, let it be a perfect one. Anything worth doing is worth doing well, as Admiral Naismith would say…"

  She rose to make a wandering circuit of the docking bay, selecting bits of equipment with the faintly distracted air of a housekeeper choosing vegetables at the market.

  Ethan lay on the floor in misery, envying Okita, whose troubles were over. He had been on Kline Station, he estimated, just about a day, and had yet to have his first meal. Beaten up, kidnapped, drugged, nearly murdered, and now rapidly becoming accessory-after-the-fact to a crime which if not exactly a murder was surely the next best thing. Galactic life was every bit as bad as anything he had imagined. And he had fallen into the hands of a madwoman, to boot. The Founding Fathers had been right….. "I want to go home," he moaned.

  "Now, now," Commander Quinn chided, plunking down a float pallet next to Okita's body and rolling a squat cylindrical shipping canister off it. "That's no way to be, just when my case is showing signs of cracking open at last. You just need a good meal," she glanced at him, "and about a week in a hospital bed. Afraid I shan't be able to supply that, but as soon as I finish cleaning up here I will take you to a place you can rest a bit while I get the next phase started. All right?"

  She unlatched the shipping canister and, with some difficulty, folded Okita's body into it. "There. That doesn't look too coffin-like, does it?" She made a rapid but thorough pass over the impact area with a sonic scrubber, emptied its receptacle bag in with Okita, hopped the canister back onto the pallet with a hand-tractor, and replaced everything else where she had found it. Lastly, and somewhat mournfully, she collected all the pieces of her stunner.

  "So. That gives the project its first deadline. Pallet and drum must be returned here within eight hours, before the next scheduled docking, or they'll be missed."

  "Who were those men?" he asked her, as she had him crawl onto the pallet and settle himself for the ride. "They were insane. I mean, everyone I've met here is crazy, but they—they were talking about bombing Athos'
s reproduction clinics! Killing all the babies—maybe killing everyone!"

  "Oh?" she said. "That's a new wrinkle. First I've heard of that scenario. I am extremely sorry I didn't get to listen in on that interrogation, and I hope you will, ah, fill me in on what I missed. I've been trying to plant a bug in Millisor's quarters for three weeks, but his counter-intelligence equipment is, unfortunately, superb."

  "You mainly missed a lot of screaming," said Ethan morosely.

  She looked rather embarrassed. "Ah—yes. I'm afraid I didn't think they'd need to use anything but fast-penta."

  "Stalking-goat," Ethan grumbled.

  She cleared her throat, and sat cross-legged beside him with the control lead in her hand. The pallet rose into the air like a magic carpet.

  "Not—not too high," Ethan choked, scrambling for a non-existent hand-hold. She brought it back down to a demure ten centimeters altitude, and they started off at a walking pace.

  She spoke slowly, seeming to choose her words with great care. "Ghem-colonel Luyst Millisor is a Cetagandan counter-intelligence officer. Captain Rau, and Okita, and another brawn by the name of Setti, are his team."

  "Cetagandan! Isn't that planet pretty far from here to be interested in, um," he glanced at the Stationer woman, "us? This nexus, I mean."

  "Not far enough, evidently."

  "But why, in God the Father's name, should they want to destroy Athos? Is Cetaganda—controlled by women or something?"

  A laugh escaped her. "Hardly. I'd call it a typical male-dominated totalitarian state, only slightly mitigated by their rather artistic cultural peculiarities. No. Millisor is not, per se, interested in either Athos or the Kline Station nexus. He's chasing—something else. The big secret. The one I was hired to find out."

  She paused to maneuver the float pallet around a tricky ascending corner. "Apparently there was, on Cetaganda, a long-range, military-sponsored genetics project. Until about three years ago, Millisor was the security chief for that project. And the security was tight. In 25 years, no one had been able to find out what they were up to, beyond the fact that it seemed to be the one-man show of a certain Dr. Faz Jahar, a moderately bright Cetagandan geneticist who vanished from view about the time it started. Do you have any idea how incredibly long that is to keep a secret in this business? The thing has really been Millisor's life work, as well as Jahar's.

  "In any event, something went wrong. The project went up in smoke—literally. The laboratory blew up one night, taking Jahar with it. And Millisor and his merry men have been chasing something around the galaxy ever since, blowing people away with the careless abandon of either homicidal lunatics, or—men scared out of their wits. And, ah, while I'm not sure I'd vouch for Captain Rau, Ghem-colonel Millisor does not strike me as a madman."

  "You couldn't prove it by me," said Ethan glumly. There was still something not quite right with his vision, and tremula came and went in his muscles.

  They came to a large hatch in the corridor wall.

  RENOVATION, said a bright sign. DO NOT ENTER. AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY.

  Commander Quinn did something Ethan could not quite see to the control box, and the hatch slid open. She floated the pallet through. There came a voice, and a laugh, from the corridor they had just vacated. She closed the hatch quickly, leaving them in total darkness.

  "There," she muttered, switching on a hand light. "Nobody saw us. Undeserved luck. Bloody time for it to start averaging out."

  Ethan blinked at his surroundings. An empty rectangular basin was the centerpiece for a large airy chamber full of columns, pierced lattices, mosaics, and elaborate arches.

  "It's supposed to be an exact replica of some famous palace on Earth, " Commander Quinn explained. "The Elhamburger or something. A very wealthy shipper was having it done—all finished, in fact—when his assets were suddenly tied up in litigation. The suits have been going on for four months now, and the place is still padlocked. You can babysit our friend here till I get back." She rapped on the lid of the canister.

  Ethan decided that all that was needed to make his day complete would be for it to rap back. But she had grounded the pallet and was piling up some cushions. "No blankets," she muttered. "I gotta keep my jacket. But if you sort of burrow in here, you should be warm enough."

  It was like falling into a bank of clouds. "Burrow," Ethan whispered. "Warm…"

  She dug into her jacket pocket. "And here's a candy bar to tide you over."

  He snatched it; he couldn't help himself.

  "Ah, one other thing. You can't use the plumbing. It would register on the computer monitors. I know this sounds terrible, but—if you've gotta go, use the canister." She paused. "It's not, after all, like he didn't deserve it."

  "I'd rather die," said Ethan distinctly around a mouthful of nuts and goo. "Uh—are you going to be gone long?"

  "At least an hour. Hopefully not more than four. You can sleep, if you like."

  Ethan jerked himself awake. "Thank you."

  "And now," she rubbed her hands together briskly, "phase two of the search for the L-X-10 Terran-C."

  "The what?"

  "That was the code name of Millisor's research project. Terran-C for short. Maybe some part of whatever they were working on originated on Earth."

  "But Terrence Cee is a man," said Ethan. "They kept asking me if I were here to meet him."

  She was utterly still for a moment. "Oh… ? How strange. How very strange. I never knew that." Her eyes were bright as mirrors. Then she was gone.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Ethan awoke with a startled gasp as something landed on his stomach. He thrashed up, looking around wildly. Commander Quinn stood before him in the wavering illumination of her hand light. The fingers of her other hand tapped a nervous, staccato rhythm on her empty stunner holster. Ethan's hands encountered a bulky bundle of cloth in his lap, which proved to be a set of Stationer coveralls wrapped around a matching pair of boots.

  "Put those on," she ordered, "and hurry. I think I've found a way to get rid of the body, but we have to get there before shift change if I'm going to catch the right people on duty."

  He dressed. She helped him impatiently with the unfamiliar tabs and catches, and made him sit again on the float pallet. It all made him feel like a backward four-year-old. After a quick reconnoiter by the mercenary woman, they left the chamber as unseen as they had entered it, and drifted off through the maze of the Station.

  At least he no longer felt as if his brains were suspended in syrup in a jar, Ethan thought. The world parted around him now with no more than natural clarity, and colors did not flash fire in his eyes, nor leave scorched trails across his retinas. This was fortunate, as the Stationer coveralls Quinn had brought him to wear over his Athosian clothes were bright red. But waves of nausea still pulsed slowly in his stomach like moon-raised tides. He slouched, trying to lower his center of gravity still further onto the moving float pallet, and ached for something more than the three hours sleep the mercenary woman had allowed him.

  "People are going to see us," he objected as she turned down a populated corridor.

  "Not in that outfit," she nodded toward the coveralls. "Along with the float pallet it's the next best thing to a cloak of invisibility. Red is for Docks and Locks—they'll all think you're a porter in charge of the pallet. As long as you don't open your mouth or act like a downsider."

  They passed into a large chamber where thousands of carrots were aligned in serried ranks, their white beards of roots dripping in the intermittent misting from the hydroponics sprayers, their fluffy green tops glowing in the grow-lights. The air of the room through which, Quinn assured him, they were taking a short cut, tasted cool and moist with a faint underlying tang of chemicals.

  His stomach growled. Quinn, guiding the float pallet, glanced over at him. "I don't think I should have eaten that candy bar," Ethan muttered darkly.

  "Well, for the gods' sakes don't throw up in here," she begged him. "Or use the—"

 
Ethan swallowed firmly. "No."

  "Do you think a carrot would settle your stomach?" she asked solicitously. She reached over, tipping the pallet terrifyingly, and plucked one from the passing row. "Here."

  He took the damp hairy thing dubiously, and after a moment stuffed it into one of the coverall's many closured pockets. "Maybe later."

  They rose past a dozen stacked banks of growing vegetables to take an exit high in the chamber wall. NO ADMITTANCE, it said in glowing green letters. Quinn ignored the admonition with a verve bordering, Ethan thought, on the anti-social. He glanced back at the door as it hissed closed behind them. NO ADMITTANCE, it repeated on this side. So, they had committees on Kline Station too….

  She brought the pallet down in the next cross-corridor beside a door marked ATMOSPHERE CONTROL.

  NO ADMITTANCE. AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY, by which Ethan reasoned it must be their destination.

  Commander Quinn unfolded herself from a half-lotus. "Now, whatever happens, try not to talk. Your accent would give you away at once. Unless you'd rather stay out here with Okita until I'm ready for you."

  Ethan shook his head quickly, struck by a vision of himself trying to explain to some passing authority that he was not, despite appearances, a murderer searching for a place to bury the body.

  "All right. I can use the extra pair of hands. But be prepared to move on my order when the chance comes." She led on through the airseal doors, float pallet following like a dog on a leash.

  It was like stepping into a chamber beneath the sea. Viridescent lines of light and shadow waved and scintillated across the floor, the walls—Ethan gaped at the walls. Three-story-high transparent barriers held back clear water stuffed with green and pierced with brilliant light. Millions of tiny silver bubbles galloped merrily through the minute fronds of aquatic plants, now pausing, now streaming on. An amphibian fully half a meter long pushed through this underwater jungle to stare at Ethan through its beady eyes. Its skin was black and shiny as patent leather, striped in scarlet. It shot away in a spray of silver to vanish in the green lace.