Death Sentence Read online

  "Have you made us feel as good as you do yet?" Hannah asked. "Or is there more?"

  "No," said Kelly. "That's the whole brief. That's all."

  "That's enough," said Jamie.

  Kelly smiled. "Do you want to know the real reason the ventilation is so bad in these conference rooms? It's so we'll all have an excuse for sweating so hard in meetings like this one." She checked the time. "They'll have the Sholto and the Adler prepped for launch in three hours. Be ready by then."

  THREE

  HURRY AND WAIT

  "Okay," said Hannah as she walked up to Jamie's cubicle. "Got your queries done?"

  "Yeah, for what they're worth," said Jamie. "Sometimes a job gets easy because it's nearly impossible. We haven't the faintest idea what Wilcox was carrying, or anything else about the case. What was I supposed to ask?"

  "Point taken. So what did you do?"

  "I queried for all data on Metrannans and the planet Metran, a full bio and service record of Wilcox, a copy of his mission briefing, Vogel's autopsy of Wilcox, plans of the Irene Adler, and all logs and records of the ship."

  Hannah grinned. "Great minds thinking alike, I guess. I went for all that as well--plus survey information on whatever conflicts the Metrannans have been involved with in the last thousand years or so."

  "I should have thought of that one," Jamie said. Standard operating procedure dictated that once BSI Special Agents were summoned from the Bullpen and assigned to a case, they should expect to depart at once. Normally, the standard was an hour. Hannah and Jamie were catching a break; they had three whole hours to work with.

  There was logic behind the one-hour standard. The minimum possible travel time between two planets in separate star systems was measured in days or even weeks. But practically every Bullpen case was time-critical--and the mere fact that Wilcox had been dead for months didn't change that in the least. If he had been killed trying to warn them of some danger that was months off back then, they might have mere days or hours left.

  The solution to the problem, or at least the BSI doctrine meant to solve it, had been drummed into Jamie's head from the first day of training: Sit in your Bullpen cubicle and bombard the datastores with questions. Scoop up as much raw data as possible and pipe it to the ship you're going to boost out on. Then spend every waking moment available on the outbound trip digging through the gigabytes of data you had generated with your queries, trying to find the one-one-hundredth of a percent of it that would actually be of some use. It wasn't an elegant process, but it worked.

  "Well, we've got what we're going to get," Hannah said. "Time to get moving. We've got some special equipment to draw for this mission."

  "What kind of equipment?" Jamie asked suspiciously. There had been something in her tone of voice that warned him that the joke, whatever it was, was going to be on him.

  "You'll find out soon enough."

  "And you're having fun being mysterious, so it won't do me any good to ask 'soon enough' for what, will it?"

  "No it won't. Come on, Special Agent Mendez. Quit your stalling and let's move."

  Jamie sighed. Whatever it was, Hannah wasn't going to spill the beans until she was good and ready. "Do you ever get used to it?" he asked Hannah as he secured his cubicle, his tone of voice more serious. "Will I ever get used to it?"

  "Get used to what?" she asked.

  He opened up his locker and pulled out the duffel bag hanging there. "This, among other things," he said. "Being packed and ready to go at all times. An hour ago we were hanging around the office shuffling papers and trading rumors--and now we're scheduled to boost out of here in two hours and prevent a war--and we're not even sure who would be fighting whom, or over what. And we've got a few days between now and when we get to Metran to turn into experts on--on whatever it is, so we can deal with it all when we get there." He hoisted the duffel bag up, and stepped out of his cubicle, Hannah right beside him, hoisting her own duffel onto her shoulder.

  "Look on the bright side," she said. "Our ride isn't quite ready, so today we have two extra hours."

  "If that's your idea of a bright side, we're going to have to talk," said Jamie as they headed out of the Bullpen. "But seriously, you didn't answer my question. You've been at this longer than I have. Does it ever get less disorienting?"

  Hannah thought it over for a minute. "No," she said. "Not exactly. But you get used to being disoriented. At least I have." Her voice went quiet. "Though I can think of a few senior agents that never have."

  "Me too." There were a few lost souls among the population of the Bullpen. They did their jobs, and they were good agents--but something in their eyes hinted that they had seen too much, been exposed to a few more completely alien things than they should have. They made Jamie think of jigsaw puzzles that had been put back together with a few pieces missing, holes in the picture that could be guessed at but never known for certain. They coped as best they could--sometimes in ways that were not altogether wise. "Let's hope I don't get that way."

  "Agreed," said Hannah. "I don't want to get partnered with Boris Kosolov--or someone twitchy enough to be doing an imitation of him."

  BSI Special Agent Boris Kosolov did not so much speak a variety of languages as much as prove himself equally adept at mangling all of them. Somehow, despite work habits that were so haphazard as to be undetectable, he always closed his cases and completed his assignments. But it was far from the first time Jamie had gotten the message don't wind up like him.

  They made their way through the labyrinth of corridors, entered an elevator, and headed down to the outer decks. Jamie punched at the button for the Main Docking Complex, but Hannah pushed the button for the floor above it, marked ARMORY, ADMIN & GENERAL SERVICES. "We've got that special equipment to collect," she said.

  "And you're having so much fun not telling me what it is that there's no point in my asking again."

  "You know me too well," said Hannah with a grin as the elevator door opened. "The thing is, I've dealt with the Metrannans before," she went on. "That's probably part of the reason Kelly dropped this particular case in our laps." She led him along a corridor full of glass doors with very official placards posted beside them. The first doors they passed were to larger rooms with signs that read ARMORY, ALTERNATE COMM GEAR, ENVIRONMENTAL GEAR, and SPECIALTY TRANSPORT.

  "Go out on a case, and you learn a few things that aren't always emphasized enough in the datastores, or aren't even in them at all," Hannah said. "Details get overlooked. Like, maybe, yes, you can eat the local food--but it's normally odorless. If it smells good, it's gone bad. There's a high-gravity planet where you don't dare use an exoskel walker to get around because the walkers resemble a local species of giant carnivorous pseudoarthropod, and it's a deadly insult to the locals. But there's a low-gee planet where the local species always use the equivalent of exowalkers or lift chairs, even though they aren't needed. And you better use one too if you don't want to be arrested for devolutionary behavior--walking on your own two feet is considered animalistic and degenerate."

  They turned a corner and kept walking. "And then there are the Metrannans," said Hannah. "Very concerned with appropriate behavior and appearance. You don't want to appear disrespectful by showing up dressed the wrong way. They don't expect you to wear Metrannan garb. You quite literally don't have the legs for it. Metrannans have four. However, they do expect the equivalent dress for your species. And the Metrannans will know if you show up in inappropriate clothes. They have a very elaborate database that covers just about every known race and the forms, styles, meanings, and rankings of any piece of clothing or decoration or body paint or whatever any being might use. They're well-versed in the dress of all sort of human cultures. In other words, Special Agent Mendez, you can't just wander around the landscape in your usual flight-suit and flak-jacket outfit. Not on this mission." She stopped in front of a door marked MEN'S TAILOR.

  Jamie looked through the glass doors at a vast room in which every sort of costum
e, from kimonos to tuxedos to academic gowns, was hanging in the racks. "Wait a minute! I've got a business suit in my duffel bag. I'm not going to play dress-up just to keep--"

  "Yes you are," she said, "because it's necessary for the case, and because I know for a fact that the suit you keep in that duffel bag has a missing button and a tear in the lining and it stopped being wrinkle-proof about five missions ago, and because there isn't time to argue. Now get in there for your fitting. They have your measurements on file, of course, but it's always best to double-check the fit. So go."

  "What are they going to make me wear, exactly?"

  "I don't know. The tailor shop has its own database of what you ought to wear when."

  "So I have to wear whatever the tailors think the Metrannans think humans ought to wear? At whatever sort of occasion it happens to be? Suppose they've got their database wrong and they think I'm supposed to dress like an expatriated Zulu warrior?"

  Hannah grinned. "Look on the bright side. The first time I dealt with a Metrannan, he was doing his best to dress like a human--not easy, considering he had four arms and four legs and eyes in the back of his head. But he tried. Believe me, you ought to be glad they don't expect us to dress like them. Anyway, I'll be next door in the women's tailor shop. I'll be as quick as I can. Have fun."

  If there was in fact a male shopping aversion gene, forty-five minutes later, Jamie was sure he had it. Not that he had done any actual shopping, in the sense of browsing or selecting or even looking. Instead the staff in the clothier's section had treated him like a poorly designed tailor's dummy, prying him in and out of check-fit garments, slipping shirts and jackets and shoes on and off him with a complete disregard for whether or not he was cooperating. They might not have been pleasant, but they were at least efficient, and they ushered him firmly out of the shop almost before he knew what was happening. He was still carrying nothing but his duffel bag, but the tailor shop manager assured him that everything that had been selected for him would be aboard ship by the time they boosted.

  Hannah wasn't there when he came out. He checked the time. Roughly ninety-five minutes until they were cleared to boost--and Commander Kelly would not be much interested in the reason why if they were still on-station in ninety-six minutes. He decided to give Hannah five minutes, then head for the ship. But it only took two minutes of cooling his heels to realize why the time between briefing and boost was so short. It allowed less time for worrying.

  By the start of the fourth minute, Jamie was twitchy enough to jump out of his skin. Hannah emerged, looking calm and self-possessed, moving at a pace that could only be described as leisurely. "So," she said, coolly glancing at her wrist display, "it looks like we've got a little time to kill. Let's go see how they're coming on the ship."

  She walked away, without looking back to see if he was coming. Jamie stepped lively to catch up, not sure if he wanted to yell at Hannah for teasing him or laugh at himself for worrying too much. Probably Hannah had set the whole prank up to get his mind off larger worries. He needed to get the big problems out of his head, if only so he could concentrate on sweating the small stuff.

  After all, it was the small stuff that was going to keep them alive--or kill them, if they got it wrong.

  He hurried after her.

  FOUR

  DOWN IS UP

  Hannah looked out the viewport of BSI HQ's Main Docking Complex and at the pair of fat cones, docked nose to nose, that hung there in the darkness. A system of bracing pylons held the two little ships firmly to the station, and an access tunnel led from the side air lock of the closer vehicle back toward the station. A tug was coming into view, carrying a booster unit that would add its thrust to the Sholto's own propulsion system in order to compensate for the doubled weight of the combined vehicle. Without the booster, the time needed to reach their transit point out of the Center System would have been doubled--and a burn that long would have put dangerous strains on the little ship's own propulsion system.

  Another tug was attaching six strain-relief cables between the two vehicles. Sherlock-class ships were fitted with a variety of hold-down points--recessed heavy-duty metal rings to which cables could be attached. The hold-downs were normally used to lock the little ships in place when they were being carried on or in larger vehicles. On this mission, they were seeing a different use. One set of six hold-downs was placed around the circumference of each of the cone-shaped ships about halfway up. Cables were being strung between the two ships, each cable strung from a hold-down on one ship to the corresponding hold-down on the other, then pulled taut.

  The cabling was one of about a half dozen hastily improvised fixes being done on the ships. It was a lash-up, a crude sort of insurance policy against the fact that, while the Sherlock-class ships were designed to travel while docked nose-to-nose, or with a booster stage attached, there was no data that anyone could find in a hurry about whether it was such a good idea to fly them docked nose-to-nose and with a booster. The idea was to transfer as much of the load and dynamic stress away from the docking ports and onto the main structure of the Sholto and the Adler.

  The engineers were all confident the cables would provide sufficient additional stiffening and strengthening to keep the combined vehicle safe. Hannah was glad to hear that--although she couldn't help thinking that the engineers weren't the ones who were going to be flying the monstrosity in question. What had her worried was how they were going to detach the cables when it was time to fly the Sholto on a solo run--and then how they were supposed to reattach them for the return flight.

  Never mind. Those were worries for later. She touched Jamie on the elbow and nodded toward a lock entrance a bit down the corridor. "Enough with the sightseeing," she said. "Time to move. That's where we're headed."

  Jamie frowned and pointed out the port. "The single-ships are, ah, docked sideways to the station," he said. "That's going to make getting aboard a little tricky. Gravity's going to take a ninety-degree twist. Or do they just have the grav generators shut off in the ships so they're in zero gee?"

  Hannah grinned. "That one they've managed to solve with the Sherlock-class ships. You'll see how. Come on."

  She led him through the entrance and down a short passageway that ended in the access tunnel they had seen from the viewport. They walked down and came to a closed hatch that was plainly sideways, rotated ninety degrees clockwise from where they were standing. Right-way up, it would have been two meters high and a meter across. There were the usual red arrows labeled RESCUE pointing to the latch fixing, and a whole raft of yellow signs in any number of human and xeno languages explaining, in incomprehensible detail, how to open the door in an emergency.

  In the center of the hatch, at eye level--or what would have been eye level if the hatch hadn't been on its side--painted in very official-looking black lettering, was a much larger notice. Hannah had to crane her neck to read it properly.

  United Government Vessel

  Bureau of Special Investigations

  Vessel S/N UGV-BSI-3369-MTA6.167-JMAO.708

  and, in elaborate red script under that,

  BSI-3369

  "Bartholomew Sholto"

  "Okay," said Hannah, "so we've got the right ship."

  "No we don't," said Jamie. "This is the Irene Adler."

  Hannah looked at him oddly for a moment. "You having a little vision problem?"

  "No," said Jamie. "But the paint on the signs is still fresh. Almost still wet. You can smell it a little. I assume they wouldn't just freshen up the paint job for the heck of it when the ground crews are under a lot of pressure to get us launched quickly. And pretending that the Adler is the Sholto is a big part of the plan. What sense would it make to play that game if the first xeno ship that got within range to read her hull markings would know she was the Adler?"

  Hannah nodded. "So someone decided they'd have to re-mark the Adler if we're going to make it believable." One of the side effects of the brief-and-boost policy for Special Agents
was that there was next to no time to discuss things, to decide things, to report decisions. Someone would realize something needed doing and just do it without telling anyone.

  In the roughly one hundred minutes since the mission had been assigned, someone on the ground crew had shown enough initiative to repaint the hatch. There had no doubt been barely enough time to do the job itself--and there wouldn't have been a chance in the sky of getting it done if that someone had been required to get four approvals first. It was a system--if one could even call it a system--that required a good deal of common sense and initiative, and a great deal of trust among all the members of the team.

  And it also required that the agents be ready to deal with any surprises that were thrown at them. "Your logic's good," Hannah said. "Let's see if it holds up." She consulted the access codes she had jotted down in the lockmaster's office, flipped open a panel in the hatch, and twisted her body around to punch in the key combination for the Sholto--only to be rewarded with a flashing red BAD CODE warning on the display panel and a harsh, low, error tone. "All right," she said, "we'll try it your way." She entered the Adler's access code. There was a confirming beep, and a series of smooth clunks and thuds, and the hatch swung up and open. They had to step back a bit to get out of its way. "Right you are, Jamie," she said. "Let's see what other surprises there might be inside."

  The two of them ducked to get under the hatch, and entered the air lock chamber. The chamber was a cylinder on its side, about two meters high and eighty centimeters wide--a fairly snug fit for two people in flight suits, each carrying a duffel bag. If they had been in pressure suits, they wouldn't have fit in at the same time. The chamber's steel-mesh floor was level with the deck of the station's Docking Complex, so that it was offset from the inside and outside air lock hatches by a full ninety degrees.